w. His younger brother, Nicholas, at St. Petersburg,
had him proclaimed emperor. When they brought him Constantine's written
abdication, Nicholas refused to acknowledge it and caused the troops to
take their oath of allegiance to his brother. Constantine in Warsaw
proclaimed Nicholas emperor. Nicholas would not accept the crown unless by
the direct command of his elder brother. At length the matter was adjusted,
after an interregnum of three weeks. On Christmas Day, Nicholas ascended
the imperial throne. The confusion at St. Petersburg was turned to account
by the military conspirators who had plotted against Alexander's life. To
the common soldiers they denounced Nicholas as a usurper who was trying to
make them break their recent oath to Constantine. When ordered to take the
oath to Nicholas, the Moscow regiment refused, and marched to the open
place in front of the Senate House. There they formed a square and were
joined by other bodies of mutineering soldiers. It is gravely asserted by
Russian historians that the poor wretches, ignorant of the very meaning of
the word constitution, shouted for it, believing it to be the name of
Constantine's wife. An attack upon them by the household cavalry was
repulsed. When General Miloradovitch, a veteran of fifty-two battles
against Napoleon, tried to make himself heard, he was shot. The mutineers
would not listen even to the Emperor. Not until evening could the new Czar
be brought to use more decisive measures. Then he ordered out the artillery
and had them fire grapeshot into the square. The effect was appalling. In a
few minutes the square was cleared and the insurrection was over. Its
leaders were wanting at the moment of action. A rising in the south of
Russia was quelled by a single regiment. Before the year ended, Nicholas
was undisputed master of Russia.

[Sidenote: Death of Fresnel]

By the death of Augustin Jean Fresnel, France lost a brilliant scientist,
who shares with Thomas Young the honor of discrediting the old emission
theory of light, and of formulating the undulatory theory.

[Sidenote: Death of David]

Jacques Louis David, founder of the new French school of classicism in
painting, died at the close of the year at Brussels. Many of his paintings
were on exhibition before the fall of the old regime in France. In the days
of the French Revolution, David was a Jacobite and friend of Robespierre,
and suffered in prison after the latter's fall. It was not, howe