DISGRACE AND EXILE 195Grande Armee wasted away on the battlefields of Europe in a last futile
effort at saving Napoleon's empire, Speransky spent his days in the
drab and uneventful solitude of exile in remote corners of Russia. We
must follow him there.
The first destination of the exiled dignitary was Nizhnii Novgorod,
the ancient and lively trading center on the Volga. According to
Emperor Alexander, he had given Speransky the choice between several
towns for his enforced residence, and Speransky had preferred Nizhnii
Novgorod.^1 At the same time, Magnitskii had been sent to Vologda,
in the North of European Russia. The disgrace of Speransky had been
so unexpected that outside a very limited circle in St. Petersburg,
nobody knew about it for several weeks. This resulted in the ironical
situation in which the officer who escorted Speransky to the Volga
had to ask his "prisoner" to use his influence to procure the horses
and other necessities for their journey. The trip to Nizhnii Novgorod
was completed without undue hardship, quite rapidly. As we have
mentioned, Speransky had not wished to bid goodbye to his family
before leaving. He left word that they should rejoin him later,. with
the onset of the good travel season. However, his mother-in-law, Mrs.
Stephens, decided to leave St. Petersburg immediately - perhaps she
was prodded by the government into taking this decision - and a few
days after the State Secretary had left the capital, his daughter and
mother-in-law followed him on the road to Nizhnii Novgorod.
The Civilian Governor of the Volga town, Runovskii, had been in-
structed by the Emperor, through Balashov, to keep the exile under
close surveillance, to forward all his correspondence to the Minister of
Police, and to take note of all persons who maintained contact with
him. The Governor carried out these instructions strictly, and Speransky
found himself cut off from his acquaintances and former colleagues
in St. Petersburg. Eluding the police, though, he succeeded in main-
taining some contacts with his closer friends by transmitting messages
through friendly merchants who traveled between the Volga and the
capital. It was also through these merchants that the slavishly devoted
Masal'skii, Speransky's business agent, provided him with money.
Speransky's name had become a sort of symbol for the patriotic
discontent with Russia's alliance to France. Of course such feelings
were not truly "popular" feelings, they rather reflected the sentiments
of the nobility and bureaucracy. But as the war against the French
invader turned to Russia's disadvantage and as increasingly more
Russian territory was ravaged and occupied by the Grande Armee,
1 Grand Due Nicolas Mikhailowitseh, L'Empereur Alexandre ler, I, p. 91.