"Constantine and Constitution" Anecdote
There's a historical anecdote that soldiers in Saint Petersburg were said to chant "Constantine and Constitution", but when questioned, many of them professed to believe that "Constitution" (Russian konstitutsiya) was Constantine's wife.
Pyotr Kakhovsky in a letter to General Levashev, mentioned the anecdote and denied it:
"The story told to Your Excellency that, in the uprising of 14 December the rebels were shouting 'Long live the Constitution!' and that the people were asking 'What is Constitution, the wife of His Highness the Grand Duke?' is not true. It is an amusing invention."
Read more about this topic: Decembrist Revolt
Famous quotes containing the word constitution:
“I never did ask more, nor ever was willing to accept less, than for all the States, and the people thereof, to take and hold their places, and their rights, in the Union, under the Constitution of the United States. For this alone have I felt authorized to struggle; and I seek neither more nor less now.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)