When Nicholas finally ordered the oath to be taken to himself is emperor, they spread a report that he was defrauding his brother of his rights, and that Constantine was on the march from Warsaw to defeat his insidious designs. Growing bolder as they met with some success, they raised the cry of " Long live Constantine and Constitu tionl" and it is said that the private soldiers who joined it imagined that the word ' constitution,' which is a foreign word in Russian, and has a feminine termination, was the name of Cooetantiuti's wife the Pulish countess. The formidable revolt which grew from the refusal of the regiment' to take the oath to Nicholas, in consequence of there false representations, was crushed by the firmness and presence of mind of the new emperor. The coronation of Nicholas was appointed to take place at Moscow, and on the evening before it Nicholas was greeted with the unexpected intelligence that Constantine hal come spontaneously to do him honour. The next day saw the remediable sight of the elder brother walking in the younger brother's corona. Lion procession, and taking the oath of homage—more remarkable still that the difference of ege was so great—no less than seventeen years, Nicholas having been born in the year in which Constantine was married.
Constantine returned to Poland from the coronation at Moscow, and from that moment he was more than ever the master at Warsaw. Constantine was perhaps not naturally savage, and his marriage had made him more disposed to be affable, but his good nature could not be counted on for a moment ; when reviewing his troops be would often at the sight of some trifle not to his mind, fly into a fit of furious passion, and for the venial offence of an iudirlduul, inflict some annoying puoishutent on a body of 40,000 wen. In his eyes, too, no consideration at all was due to thee. who forgot. what he regarded as the duty of unconditional obedience to the sovereign.
Ile was sometimes deliberately cruel himself, and lie suffered deliberate cruelties in others to those who had thus put themselves in his opinion beyond the pale of mercy. The proud and spirited Poles, who in their own opinion owed no allegiance at all to the Russian emperor, endured all this remarkably lung, but the whole of Poland was reedy for a conflagration when the French revolution of 1830 applied the match. It is said that a conspiracy which Constantine fancied he had discovered was fictitious, but on the night of the 29th of November /830, there could be no doubt that a real insurrection buret out. The palace of the Belvedere near Warsaw, iu which he resided, pro tected by a girdle of moats, was entered by it hedy of insurgents, and he only escaped with his life by the protection of some of his Polish guard-'. In the course of the next few days ho is accused of having committed an imprudence by meeting with the insurgents on terms of equality, but the result was that he was allowed to leave Poland without any serious obstacle. Nicholas rejected peremptorily the terms of the Poles, and in the war which commenced Constantine bore a very insignificant part. He was present at the battle of Gruohow, but not in command, and it is said that lie could not avoid expressing some satisfaction at the conduct of the Polish army, which had become under his training one of the beet disciplined armies of Europe. Soon after be was obliged to withdraw with the troops under him before a division commanded by his brother-in-law the Polish general Chlapoweky, and an attack of cholera carried him oil' at Witepsk, on the 27th of June 1831. His wife who had borne for some time the title of Princess of Lowica, died on the 29th of November iu the same year, at the palace of Tearalice Selo. Ilia first wife the Princess Juliana, the aunt of Queen 'Victoria, is still living.