[1] To seize control of the government and implement a regime change, it sought to convince the military that Nicholas was usurping the throne from Konstantin.

[2] On 26 December, Northern Society members led a force of approximately 3,000 troops into Senate Square to prevent the loyalty-swearing ceremony and to rally additional soldiers and officers to their cause.

This group of rebels, although disorganized due to indecision and dissension among its leaders, confronted troops loyal to Nicholas outside the Senate building in the presence of a large civilian crowd.

During his early years in the regime, Speransky helped inspire the organization of the Ministry of the Interior, the reform of ecclesiastic education, and strengthening the government's role in the country's economic development.

[5] However, internal and external unrest, which the tsar believed stemmed from political liberalization, led to a series of repressions and a return to a former government of restraint and conservatism.

Meanwhile, the experiences of the Napoleonic Wars and realization of the suffering of peasant soldiers resulted in Decembrist officers and sympathizers being attracted to reform changes in society.

These new practices captured the spirit of the times as a willingness by the Decembrists to embrace both the peasant (i.e., the fundamental Russian people) and ongoing reform movements from intellectuals abroad.

Pavel Pestel identified reasons for reform: The desirability of granting freedom to the serfs was considered from the very beginning; for that purpose, a majority of the nobility was to be invited in order to petition the Emperor about it.

Pestel was supported by Yakushkin when there were rumors that the emperor had intended to transfer the capital from Saint Petersburg to Warsaw, and to liberate all peasants without the consent of Russian landlords.

With the capital in temporary confusion, and one oath to Konstantin having already been sworn, the society scrambled in secret meetings to convince regimental leaders not to swear allegiance to Nicholas.

At the same time, a rebelling squad of grenadiers, led by Lieutenant Nikolay Panov, entered the Winter Palace but failed to seize it and retreated.

[citation needed] After spending most of the day in fruitless attempts to parley with the rebel force, Nicholas ordered a cavalry charge by Her Sovereign Majesty Empress Maria Theodorovna's Chevalier Guard Regiment that slipped on the icy cobbles and retired in disorder.

Eventually, at the end of the day, Nicholas ordered three artillery pieces to open fire with grapeshot ammunition to devastating effect.

There was a rumor that during the nighttime, police and loyal army units were detached to clean the city and the Neva river, as many of the dead, dying, and wounded had been cast into it.

Decembrist Nikolay Vasil'yevich Basargin was unwell when he set out from Saint Petersburg, but he recovered his strength on the move; his memoirs depict the journey to Siberia in a cheerful light, full of praise for the "common people" and commanding landscapes.

Few Russians inhabited these places: The populations consisted mainly of Siberian aborigines, such as Tunguses, Yakuts, Tatars, Ostyaks, Mongols, and Buryats.

Siberian Governor-General Lavinsky argued that it was easiest to control a large, concentrated group of convicts,[29] and Emperor Nicholas I pursued this policy in order to maximize surveillance and to limit revolutionaries' contact with local populations.

The move to Petrovsky Zavod, however, forced Decembrists to divide into smaller groups; the new location was compartmentalized with an oppressive sense of order.

[32] Owing to a number of imperial sentence reductions, exiles started to complete their labor terms years ahead of schedule.

[31] Those Decembrists who had already lived in or visited Siberia, such as Dimitri Zavalishin, prospered upon leaving Petrovsky Zavod's confines, but most found it physically arduous and more psychologically unnerving than prison life.

Certain Decembrists, including the Volkonskys, the Murav'yovs, and the Trubetskoys, were rich, but the majority of exiles had no money, and were forced to live off a mere 15 desyatins (about 16 hectares) of land, the allotment granted to each settler.

This process of petitioning, and the resultant concessions made by the tsar and officials, was and would continue to be a standard practice of political exiles in Siberia.

All throughout Siberia, the Decembrists sparked an intellectual awakening: literary writings, propaganda, newspapers, and books from European Russia began to circulate the eastern provinces, the local population developing a capacity for critical political observation.

[44] The Decembrists even held a certain influence within Siberian administration; Dimitry Zavalishin played a critical role in developing and advocating Russian Far East policy.

Although the Decembrists lived in isolation, their scholarly activities encompassed Siberia at large, including its culture, economy, administration, population, geography, botany, and ecology.

[citation needed] On 26 August 1856, with the ascent of Alexander II to the throne, the Decembrists received amnesty, and their rights, privileges were restored.

For the first time, a cultural, intellectual, and political elite came to Siberian society as permanent residents; they integrated with the country and participated alongside natives in its development.

In 1826, Speransky was appointed by Nicholas I to head the Second Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery, a committee formed to codify Russian law.

Although the revolt was a proscribed topic during Nicholas' reign, Alexander Herzen placed the profiles of executed Decembrists on the cover of his radical periodical Polar Star.

In the Soviet era Yuri Shaporin produced an opera entitled Dekabristi (The Decembrists), about the revolt, with the libretto written by Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy.