Poland was the chief thorn in his side in 1828; two years after his coronation at Moscow he caused himself to be crowned King of Poland at Warsaw. The ceremonial was gorgeous, and the King-Emperor, invoking the Supreme Majesty of Heaven, prayed that he might govern for the happiness of his people. He also wrote to the Pope, thanking His Holiness for the reception given to the Tsarevitch, promising to “protect the well-being of his Catholic subjects respecting their convictions,” etc. That he was sincere in these undertakings admits of little doubt. Unfortunately he was represented at Warsaw by his brother Constantine, who, as his elder, and as having renounced the throne in his favour, had more influence than an ordinary governor would have had. The revolution in Poland broke out in 1830, and Prince Sanguszko, the head of one of the noblest families in the country, people whom I afterwards knew, was one of the leaders. He was taken prisoner and degraded, and his estates were forfeited. It was said that when he was sent to Siberia, the Emperor, with his own hand, wrote that the journey was to be made on foot. When I was in Russia many years later, I had reason to believe that this was not true. The troubles in Poland lasted for many years—indeed, were never extinguished—and they led to gross exaggerations. I was in Paris as a small boy in 1845, and I well remember hearing all the horrors that were hawked about there, and all the stories of cruelty. Especially I recollect one day how when certain news came to one of the Prince de la Moskowa’s concerts—he was the son of Marshal Ney and an accomplished musician and conductor—the pious Roman Catholics present lashed themselves into a fury of emotion over the sufferings of the nuns of St. Basil. It was affirmed that they had been stripped naked, flogged and tortured, and that when they were starving and begged for food their mouths were filled with earthworms. Those were the lies by which the indignation of their co-religionists was aroused by Polish agents. The best informed people did not believe them. That the Poles were cruelly treated, and harshly misgoverned, was certainly to be laid to the charge of the Grand Duke Constantine. He had inherited the still-living hatreds and the memory of Moscow in the beginning of the seventeenth century. There were old scores to be settled, and his doctrine was an eye for an eye, the _lex talionis_ in its greatest rigidity. It would have been a hard matter in any case for the Tsar to bring Russia and Poland into harmony. With Constantine at Warsaw it was impossible—yet the Grand Duke had married a Polish lady.