THE WINTER PALACE AND THE FINLAND GUARDS.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3539, 29 April 1880, Page 2

THE WINTER PALACE AND THE FINLAND GUARDS.

' The Pall Mall Gazette says:—The thanks and acknowledgments which the Emperor Alexander has returned to the soldiers of the Finland Regiment of the Guard, who, by the latest accounts received, have lost ten killed and forty-seven wounded from the effects of the exploßion, were certainly no more than the courage and presence of mind they displayed on (his one occasion deserved. But he must have remembered, if everyone else hed forgotten, that this was not the first tin* he was greatly indebted to the loyalty and courage of this regiment. . A terrible shock or. an imminent danger awakens, they say, the memory of things long dead and buried; and it would be strange indeed if, in scattering words of consolation among the wounded Finns, the Czar did not travel back in spirit to another conspiracy attempted and detected in' the Winter Palace just 55 years ago, to another signrl act of devotion on the part of the Finland Guards, On the 24th of December, 1825, the Emperor Nicholas, who had up to this iime inhabited the little Anitchkoff Palace, in the Nevski Prospect, took up his quarters with his wife and family id the huge Winter Palace, on the Isaac Square. On the day following he received a secret communication from the sublieutenant Eostoftsof, which might well make turn exclaim, " What a beginning of a reign!" He was prepared to hear of a revolt breaking out in the south. His letters from Taganrog had informed him of Colonel Pestel's conspiracy, the news of which had excited such a consternation round the dying bed of Alexander, the well" intentioned," and had poisoned his last moments. He knew that some of the chief families of Russia were concerned in it, and that captains of frigates and colonels of regiments were bound by an oath to ask for a Constitution ; but he was not prepared to hear . that a plot was ready to break oat in the Winter Palace itself, and that the regiment of Grenadiers of the Guard that was on duty about his person had been canvassed for days to join it. No sooner, however, had he read Rostoftsof's letter than he saw that not,a moment was to be lost in getting rid of this armed band of conspirators, who were his guard, and might very likely be his assassins, even if the revolt was precipitated by big so doing. The manoeuvre, it may be remembered, was carried out by Alexis Orloff, Nicholas's right-hand man, with - consummate ability and corresponding success. A numerous detachment of the Finland Regiment of Guards was sent for from their barracks in the dead of the night; their superior force overawed the Grenadiers, who left the Winter Palace without a show of resistance, the new comers taking their places. This change —and, curiously enough, if reports from Vienna are true, a similar change of-the guard wa9 made a short time before the late explosion, two sotnias of Cossacks making way for the Finland Regiment-was-not carried out one moment too soon, for the next day the shell burst. And when the revolt had fairly begun, it was to this v same Finland Regiment that Nicholas entrusted the care of his family. Taking the little Grand Duke Alexander by the hand, he said, " I confide my ton * to- your care; if will be your duty to defend his life." The rough Finns, it is said, were moved to tears. They took up the child, then only seven yean old, in their arms, passed him from rank to. rank, and swore to form a rampart of their bodies behind which he should be safe. All this must have come back to the Czar of to-day, the baby Czarewitch of 1825, when he thanked the Finland Regiment for their devotion to his person and house on Wednesday last. It is another curious coincidence that the regiv ment of Preobrajensk, which was nearly also playing an important part in the "recent explosion, was, next to the Finland Regiment, that on which Nicholas most relied v 1825. Of all the Russian • Praetorians, this regiment, which goes back for its origin to the days of the great Peter, has been most concerned in palace revolutions and in pulling dowu and setting up sovereigns of Ail the Russias. It was at the head of its first battalion that the Czar weat to meet the mutineers, having left the Finland Regiment to keep guard. over the two Empresses and the Imperial'family in the Winter Paltfe.