It was at this critical juncture that a messenger arrived with the welcome news of the sudden death of the Russian Emperor. Paul had been the victim of a palace revolution which resulted in seating his son, the popular young Grand Duke Alexander, on the throne. All Russia breathed more freely, but nowhere, we may be sure, was the news of this change more welcome than in the famine-stricken camp where, on the pitiless Turcoman desert, the uncalculating ambition and faulty geography of a tyrant had engaged the Cossacks of the Don in a hopeless quest. Thus ended the first and last atfirm belief in the uncanny powers of the yellow races. The magic lore of the Tartar priests and Kalmouck bonzes is held in high respect to the present day among the superstitious peasants of the Russian frontier. See M. P. Price's "Siberia."
tempt of an invasion of India by land, a plan which, since the days of Peter the Great, had tempted the ambition of succeeding Russian sovereigns.
The years that ensued between the events just related and the outbreak of the Napoleonic wars of 1807-1812 were perhaps the happiest of Platov's life. The Russian biographer assures us "the hetman was looked upon by the Don Cossacks as a father to whom the wants of all the Cossacks were as well kno^Ti as the needs of his own family." The peaceful duties of administrating the Cossack stanitzi kept him more busily employed than during his most energetic campaigns. The capital of the Don pro\inces, Novotcherkask, was moved under his direction to its present site, and the ancient capital, always subject to the inundations of the Don, was abandoned. The foundations of several important public buildings were laid, and among the first of these a cathedral and public schools. The education of the Cossack children was the subject of the hetman's particular attention. A school system was organized caring for the needs of the children in the most remote stanit:d. Those who could not otherwise secure the services of a teacher were brought to Novotcherkask at the pubhc expense.
At the same time Platov used all his powerful influence to preserve the traditions of Cossack national life. To those who wished to change the "old frontier ways" he pointed out that it was only their military organization which differentiated the Cossacks from the surromiding peasant population, whose abject condition they all despised. Towards a class of young Cossack officers, who thought by abandoning their characteristic uniforms and by imitating the ways and manners of the local Russian nobility to raise themselves above their fellows, he was especially severe. Recognizing that in universal service — the basis of the Cossack system of land tenure — lay their chief usefulness to the Russian state, he mercilessly enforced the discipline necessary to ensure their privileged position. Even at the present day the lessons taught by the worthy hetman are playing their part in keeping the Cossacks alive to their duties in the great struggle which Russian democracy is waging against Bolshe\^sm and the poison of Marxian Kultur.
At the outbreak of the first Russian campaign against the Emperor Napoleon, in 1807, Platov was nearly sixty years of age. He might, therefore, have honourably asked for permission to continue his calm and useful retirement. But like another famous Cossack leader, Mazeppa, his most renowned exploits were to be performed after the age when a general — and especially a leader of light cavaliy — is considered unfit for active service. During the Turkish wars Russia's Cossack cavalry and the peculiar tactics which their officers had perfected had aroused the interest of military students all over Europe. But although invaluable