innKVKfxP 
 
 ~75
 
 TilE KNOUT.— P«jre 179.
 
 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, FRAMLIN S(iUARE.
 
 THE KNOUT 
 
 THE RUSSIANS 
 
 OK, THE 
 
 MUSCOVITE EMPIRE, THE CZAR, AND HIS PEOPLE. 
 
 / 
 By GERMAIN DE LAGNY. 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FREXCH 
 
 Bt JOHN BRIDGEMAN. 
 
 NEW Y K K : 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 82 BEEKMAN STREET 
 
 18 54.
 
 -t^K 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 t 
 iNTBODUcno:^ 9 
 
 II. 
 The Abkt • . 24 
 
 ui. 
 The Nobiutt . £7 
 
 IV. 
 
 The Cleeot C7 
 
 V. 
 
 The Natt 103 
 
 VI, 
 
 The Magistbact, Justice, AKD THE PoLicB . • ,113 
 
 vu. 
 The Finakces ...•«.•• 136 
 
 1231019
 
 8 CONTENTS. 
 
 vm. 
 
 SlAVEET • . « • • • • t 143 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Knout 174 
 
 X. 
 
 The Climatd ........ 190 
 
 XI. 
 
 St. Peteusbtjug ...••••• 206 
 
 XII. 
 
 The Emperob Nicholas I. . . o • • 223 
 
 Appendix .••••*••• îï^i
 
 THE KNOUT 
 
 AND 
 
 THE RUSSIANS 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I. 
 
 KussiA, wliicli has always engrossed, in a high degree, 
 the attention of Europe, is now playing a part which 
 has spread uneasiness on all sides, and is exciting a 
 feeling of curiosity, which \Ee believe it is in our power 
 to satisfy. 
 
 There exists, with regard to this country, a profoimd 
 state of ignorance, kept up by books Avritten in a spirit 
 of complaisance, and in which fiction has almost invari- 
 ably usm-ped the place of truth. 
 
 The national historians do not possess the power of 
 writing according to the dictates of their consciences ; 
 it is the gold of the government that determines the 
 conclusions at which they arrive. 
 
 As to foreign travellers, they are watched with such 
 strictness that, in respect of the impressions produced 
 ou them dui-ing their travels, they can hardly be sup- 
 
 B
 
 10 THE KNOUT AND THE RTTSSIANS. 
 
 posed to bring back with them any more than jiTst 
 60 much as the Russian police is kindly pleased to 
 allow. Indeed, it is quite sufficient for us to know 
 with what suspicious care the said police stops the 
 traveller and qu sstions him at the froalio •. Permission 
 to enter the country is only granted him, after he has 
 undergone a searching examination as to his conduct, 
 his opinions, and, above all, the object of his Ti«i.t. He 
 is required to explain his connections ai^.i social 
 position. Does he belong to any association ? Is he a 
 freemason ? What has he come to the country for ? 
 Are his resources sufficient to maintain him, during the 
 period that his business or his pleasure will keep him 
 there ? i 
 
 Should he let fall the slightest intimation that he is 
 desirous of making observations upon or devoting him- 
 self to the study of the manners or state of society of 
 the country, he is inexorably turned back. 
 
 This explains why people know so little concerning 
 this colossus. 
 
 In Germany, more than in any other country, the 
 Russian name is abhorred. It is looked upon as the 
 most complete expression of all that is barbarous and 
 savage ; and, for the greater proportion of the other 
 nations of Europe, the Russian is still the wandering 
 Tartar of Gengis-Khan and Tamerlane. There is some 
 truth in this opinion, but, at the same time, it must be 
 allowed that though Russia is a nation that stands alone 
 in history, by the singularity of its customs and the 
 ^ See Appendix, A.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 monstrosity of some of its political institutions, it is no 
 longer what it was at the time when its Czars, drunk 
 with wine and blood, used to let loose, in the streets 
 and public squares of Moscow and Novgorod, bears, 
 wolves, and famished dogs, to devour the mutilated and 
 bleeding corpses of the victims whom they had them- 
 selves transfixed, or caused others to tranfix, with their 
 lances, and had then thrown out upon the ignoble 
 causeway. It is no longer what it was in the days 
 when its Czar, Peter the Great, used to mete out 
 justice, sabre in hand, cutting off the heads of eleven of 
 the revolted Strelitz, and presiding, for ten whole days, 
 at the most atrocious executions. At present their 
 barbarity is the same as it used to be, only that it 
 assumes more hypocritical, and, if I dare use the term, 
 more civilised forms. 
 
 If Europe is still, at this moment, under the do- 
 minion of a great many prejudices and errors, unfavour- 
 able to Russia, who is to be blamed for it ? The 
 Russians themselves. Habits of dissimulation and 
 flattery, are carried to such an extent by them, that 
 every one, without exception, renders himself the 
 accomplice of the Czar and of the government, in 
 deceiving and leading into error, by the grossest false- 
 hoods, those travellers who, by their spirit of impar- \ 
 tiality and investigation, would have been most capable \ 
 of thoroughly examining certain questions and placing 
 
 the country in its true light. / 
 
 / 
 
 b2
 
 12 THE KNOUT AND THE KUSSIAN8. 
 
 IX. 
 
 It is by viewing Russia from a political point 
 of view, and reading the history of the country, 
 that we perceive how easy it is to crush this people's 
 pride. 
 
 The real aggrandisement of Russia dates from the 
 time of Peter I. Well, we will here take the liberty of 
 rapidly showing that the conquests of this empire, since 
 the period in question, prove its personal impotence, 
 by revealing a moral or actual complicity on the part 
 of Europe to facilitate them, and to open all the routes, 
 V through which Russia unaided would never have been 
 able to penetrate. We are not going upon any mere 
 hypothesis ; we transcribe facts which people do not 
 appear sufficiently to bear in mind. 
 
 Everywhere, indeed, do we find Russia conniving 
 with some other state, which aids and favours its 
 projects for the satisfaction of its ambitious designs. 
 
 If Germany fears, at the present day, the force and 
 power of Russia, it was she herself who laboured 
 hardest to promote the rapid growth of this giant of 
 the north. 
 
 Let us set out from the dismemberment of Poland, 
 as our point of departure. 
 
 Was this conquest, so glorious for Russia, the result 
 of its own political plans or of any victory over its 
 enemies ? No ! Poland was dismantled by the efforts
 
 INTEODUCTION. 13 
 
 of three great powers, united to commit the most 
 brutal and atrocious act of spoliation, and, strange to 
 say, in the midst of a complete European peace. 
 
 To whom was the first idea of this due ? To the 
 Austrian cabinet, and particularly to the Prince of 
 Kaunitz. 
 
 ^.Austria was fearful of seeing Russia, profiting by 
 the rapid decay of Turkey, seize the Crimea and tbe\ 
 Wallachian provinces, and menace to engross cxclu- 
 sively-the navigation of the Lower Danube. To declare 
 war was a difficult task for Austria, who had, at that 
 period, to repair losses which were too great to allow of 
 her raising fresh armies. She could not have looked for 
 any aid from Prussia, bound by the treaty of 1 764 to 
 the Czarina Catherine, and, consequently, obliged to 
 furnish Russia with aid and assistance in case of an 
 attack. Besides this, Frederick had put Prussia on such 
 a footing that, as a military power, she already 
 frightened her neighbours. 
 
 The cabinet of Vienna was in this state of per- 
 plexity, when the splendid project of the dismember- 
 ment of Poland sprang £i-om the brain of the Prince of 
 Kaunitz. 
 
 The frightful anarchy into which Poland had fallen 
 since the accession of a favom-ite of Catherine II. 
 to the throne of the Jagellons served as a pi-etext. 
 Joseph II. broached the matter to Frederick, who joy- 
 fully approved of the proposition. The Russian cabinet 
 was sounded, and, on the solicitation of the King of 
 Prussia, the Czarina consented to re-assure Austria by
 
 14 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 renouncing (momentarily) tlie occupation of Moldavia 
 and Wallachia. 
 
 A first treaty, of the l7tli of January, 1772, regulated 
 the pretensions of each of the parties concerned, and, 
 on the 5 th of August following, another treaty pro- 
 nounced the dismemberment of Poland. 
 
 In 1794 and 1795, precisely at the epoch when the 
 French Convention was proclaiming those democratic 
 principles which astonished nations and terrified kings, m 
 spite of the efibrts of the great Kosciusko and the day of 
 Dubienka — ^which afforded the Russians one more proof 
 that it is difficult for them to vanquish a civilised 
 people — the last remains of Poland, which, xmder a 
 false pretence of modesty, the three powers had, until 
 then, respected, were definitively shared between them, 
 in order to smother, said the coalition, the Jacohinical 
 ideas that had come from France, and which infested 
 Warsaw and threatened their dominions. 
 
 On the part of Prussia, this was not only a piece of 
 perfidy, but an enormous fault and impolitic act as 
 well, for she was overthrowing the barriers which 
 guaranteed her from the ambition of Russia, who 
 became her neighbour, to meddle afterwards in the 
 affairs of Germany, and constitute herself the cham- 
 pion of Absolutism there. 
 
 Let us cast a glance in another direction. 
 
 After the death of Soliman, the power of the 
 Porte sinks rapidly towards complete ruin. In the 
 provinces the pashas revolt and proclaim themselves in- 
 dependent. At Stamboul, the janissaries raise or over-
 
 INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 throw sultans, just as their caprice dictates ; and 
 Turkey, like Poland and like Persia — whose downfall 
 is advancing likewise with rapid strides — reaches a state 
 of social decomposition, worse, perhaps, than actual 
 barbarism. It was under cover of this complete decay, 
 that Russia succeeded, though not without great efforts, 
 in seizing on the Greco-Turkish provinces which border 
 on the Black Sea, and that the Czarina constituted her- 
 self the protectress of the Danubian Principalities. 
 
 With the death of Frederick, vanished the fear 
 with which his great genius inspired his neighbours, 
 and which alarmed Catherine as' well, for she, better 
 than any one else, well knew the weak points of her 
 empire. Russia was the first to reveal her views on 
 the East ; they tended to nothing less than brutally to 
 dispossess the Sultan of his dominions, from the shores 
 of the Bosphorus to thosp of the Gulf of Venice ; 
 Pansclavism already formed one of the ideas of the 
 Russian government. The cabinet of St. Petersburg 
 concluded a treaty with Austria, who, once again, 
 had stupidly seconded it, and once again became the 
 victim of her perfidious ally. 
 
 After this treaty was signed, Catherine quitted her 
 capital, followed by an escort of forty thousand men, 
 under pretence of visiting the remote parts of her 
 vast empire, appeared suddenly on the shores of the 
 Black Sea, and took possession of the Crimea before 
 the Turks were even informed of her departure from 
 St. Petersburg. When people employ such means 
 as these, success is easily achieved.
 
 16 THE KXOTTT AND THE EUSSIANS. 
 
 Let US continue this retrospective history of the 
 foreign means and succours, by the aid of which 
 Russia always finds interested allies or impoli- 
 ticly complaisant friends to satisfy her projects of 
 ambition. 
 
 After the interview at Tilsit, Napoleon, finding it 
 necessary to interest the Czar Alexander in the plans 
 he was meditating with regard to Spain, gave him 
 Finland as a sop. It was easy to foretell the result of 
 this war. Russia being free on all sides, and, likewise, 
 encouraged and morally sustained by Napoleon, fell 
 with all her enormous weight upon Sweden, a poor 
 and almost sterile country. It is quite possible, how- 
 ever, that the Muscovite empire would have succumbed 
 in the contest, had it not been for the treachery of 
 Admiral Cronstedt, treachery dearly bought with large 
 sums of gold, and which compelled the cabinet of 
 Stockholm to conclude a peace and give up Finland, 
 at the same time that she delivered into the hands of 
 the Russians the fortress of Sweaborg, which bore the 
 reputation of being impregnable, and which was the 
 key of the province as well as the depot of the mili- 
 tary resources of the country. 
 
 Lastly, to give the finishing touch to all these 
 easy victories, is it necessary for us to remind om* 
 readers of the unheard-of and for a long time fruitless 
 efforts of Russia to put down the Polish insurrection 
 in 1831 ? Was it not Prussia, too, who with a total 
 disregard of all conventions of neutrality, opened to 
 Russia the port of Dantzig and the course of the
 
 INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 Vistula, to facilitate the passage of lier armies and the 
 transport of her warlike stores ? 
 
 In every case, and on every occasion, has Russia 
 invariably had recourse to the assistance of her neigh- 
 bours. Unaided and alone she has never undertaken 
 or accomplished anything. 
 
 But -what kind of language was it, which the same 
 Russian cabinet, that, in 1808, dictated such pitilessly 
 cruel conditions to Sweden, when the question turned 
 upon setting limits to Finland, held, the year before, 
 when Napoleon drove the king of Prussia from his do- 
 minions, and terminated his memorable campaign, by 
 the peace of Tilsit? The reader will be enabled to judge 
 by the document which I give at the end of the volume. 
 It is a curious, and exceedingly rare composition. ^ 
 
 It is quite as well, too, for us to bear in mind that 
 the Russian armies, which, for centuries, have overthroion 
 their adversaries in all par Is of the globe, by their valour, 
 their triumphs, and their intrepidity, were, in spite of 
 all this, utterly destroyed at Eylau and Friedland, just 
 as, two years previously, they had been drowned and 
 cut to pieces at Austerlitz. 
 
 III. 
 
 Russia, by her enormous population, and geogra- 
 phical position, is, without the slightest doubt, a power 
 of the first class, but she is a passive power, whose 
 
 * See Appendix, B.
 
 18 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 •weight would never be decisive in the balance of trea- 
 ties, unless backed up by one of the two great German 
 powers. We place her in her true rank, but we must 
 not believe in the fabulous destiny predicted for her by 
 most statesmen who know nothing of the country, save 
 what they have seen on the map. 
 
 The fact of her placing her armies, and her money, 
 gratuitously, at the disposal of Austria, to enable 
 the latter to suppress Magyarism, betrays rather 
 her pangs of wild alarm, than proves her devotion to 
 her ally. 
 
 From 1848 to 1851 her fears were intense. She 
 felt ill at ease during those three years, and nothing 
 short of the re- establishment of the empire in France 
 could again inspire her with confidence, although she 
 recognised it with a very bad grace, and cavilled at the 
 protocols usual between different sovereigns, y 
 
 During this period, I repeat, her fears were so great, 
 that in a cabinet council, at which the Emperor Nicholas 
 presided in person, it was debated whether all the pea- 
 sants should not be emancipated at one stroke. Orders 
 had been issued to the military and civil governors of 
 the fifty-four provinces of the empire, as well as to the 
 principal manufacturers, to study the necessities of the 
 case, and report what concessions were most imperi- 
 ously called for. But since the coup d'etat of Decem- 
 ber, 1851, which ruined the hopes of Socialism, the 
 terrer of Eussia has gradually subsided. The projects 
 of emancipation, inspired by fear, slumber at present in 
 the portfolios of his Czarish Majesty.
 
 TNTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 We -will add a few more words previously to tcrmi- 
 natinsj this introduction. 
 
 At'tei- a profound peace of now nearly forty j-ears, 
 Europe sees the probability of being involved in one 
 general conflagration. 
 
 The disasters occasioned by the wars of the conclu- 
 sion of the last century, and the commencement of the 
 present one, have gradually become eflFuced. Shall in- 
 dustry and commerce — whose progress, not even the 
 events of 1848 had been able completely to arrest, and 
 which have carried abundance, comfort, and prosperity 
 into the most remote regions of Europe — be now placed 
 at the mercy of the torch of the first Cossack who shall 
 receive orders to fire the world ? 
 
 The war with which Russia threatens mankind is 
 not a war of conquest, nor a war of propagandism, or 
 preponderance ; it is a war of religion in which she is 
 about to engage, as we are told, in the name of her 
 clergy, and her fanatical population. 
 
 By whom is Russia urged on to this pretended reli- 
 gious war ? 
 
 Is it by the army ? 
 
 Among all nations living in a state of civilisation, 
 there exists a governmental axiom, which is this: — 
 The army never reasons or deliberates. 
 
 If, then, in the civilised and free states of Europe, 
 the army exercises no influence on the decisions of the 
 government, involving or compromising the future 
 prospects of the country, how can we believe that the 
 Russian army, the ofispring of slavery — the army which,
 
 20 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 taken individually, merely represents a number of 
 walking war machines, and, collectively, the only in- 
 strument by which slavery is held in respect — can 
 compel the Czar to march forward to the conquest of 
 Saint Sophia ! 
 
 Is it by the people ? 
 
 There is here a distinction which we must bear in 
 mind: 
 
 There are two distinct streams of population which 
 roll through Russia, without ever mingling with each 
 other — the serfs and the nobles. The middle classes 
 do not exist, for we cannot designate by this name a 
 few thousand merchants, some of whom have remained 
 faithful to the cultivation of large beards, and thick, 
 shock heads of hair (a race that is distinguished as the 
 Russian party), while the others flatter the weakness of 
 the Czar, by civilising themselves, — that is, by shaving 
 their beards, and wearing their hair close cropped (this 
 party is that of yoimg Russia). 
 
 Now, if the slave possessed, as some people have 
 wished it to be supposed, any influence, it is most cer- 
 tain that the first crusade he would umdertake would 
 be one to obtain his freedom — it would be one to de- 
 liver himself as soon as possible from the servitude of 
 the knout and the stick. 
 
 Is it in the name of a population of this description 
 that the autocrat demands, lance in hand, privileges 
 for the Christians of the Ottoman Empire ? Out of 
 sixty-six millions of inhabitants, there are not more than 
 from twenty to twenty-two millions — forming the real
 
 Introduction. 21 
 
 Muscovite nucleus — who profess the Greek ritual. 
 The rest are Protestants, Catholies, Mohammedans, 
 Idolaters, Parsees or Pagans, and trouble themselves 
 very little about the question of the Holy Places, and 
 still less as to whether the church in the East is or is 
 not molested by the Turks. 
 
 Besides, if it were really true that it is in the name 
 of these twenty-two millions of Russians professing the 
 orthodox Greek religion, that this crusade is now being 
 undertaken against the Turks, it would be necessary 
 for us to be informed — and it would be a very curious 
 piece of information — how these twenty-two millions of 
 slaves, who are nothing more or less than mere brutes, 
 — who, like animals, possess but one mechanical and 
 walking action, which actionals even confined to the 
 village or estate on which they are trained up, — 
 managed to convey their wishes to his Czarish Majesty ? 
 They, who do not even possess the right of complaining 
 directly to the Czar of the cruelties they suffer at the 
 hands of the noble, whose beast of burden, Avhose 
 plough-horse, whose property, they are, without ex- 
 posing themselves to the utmost rigour of the law ! * 
 — they, who are ignorant that they are made after the 
 image of God ; who do not know a word of the Bible, nay, 
 not so much as a word of prayer ! — they, who imagine, 
 in imitation of the people of ancient times, that the 
 world ends where Russia ends ; — they, who, in a word, 
 have not the consciousness of their individuality, nor, 
 
 1 Art. 950, and folloving ones, of the Kussian code concern- 
 ing slavery.
 
 22 THE KNOTTT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 perLaps, even that of their existence, unless it be after 
 the manner of mere animals ! 
 Is it the clergy ? 
 
 To believe that the Russian clergy possesses n power 
 capable of swaying the policy of the Czar, is to believe 
 in an absurdity. To suppose it exerts a moral influence 
 which would force such a mission on the Russian 
 government, we must be unacquainted with its cus- 
 toms, its relative position with regard to the state, and 
 what it calls its institutions. 
 >The Russian church enjoys, so to say, no constitu- 
 ' tion. The Czar governs it as he governs his army and 
 his serfs. He is the head, the born-president, of the 
 holy synod, the vice-presidentship of which is vested 
 in one of the metropolitans of the empire. The five 
 councillors of this kind of tribunal are named by the 
 choice and will of the Czar, to whom they all take an 
 oath of obedience and Jideliti/. /The autocrat, not being 
 able to attend to temporal and spiritual affairs at the 
 same time, causes himself to be represented at the 
 holy synod by one of his aides-de-camp, a cavalry 
 officer, who alone has the power of proposing and dis- 
 cussing all the regulations of the church. Such things 
 as amendments, or contradiction, are unknown ; no one 
 ever thought of offering any opposition, and General 
 Protosoff governs the clergy as he would a regiment. 
 
 Is it some few thousand monks, living in the depths 
 of the forests, in a state of the most profound ignorance, 
 in grossness, and in depravity, who would ever involve 
 the Emperor in the chances of a war capable of over-
 
 INTRODUCTION. 2S 
 
 throwing the world, and Russia, perhaps, first of all ? 
 Assuredly no ! 
 
 VRïèy are, perhaps, greater slaves and more mal- 
 treated than the serfs ; besides, the Czar has accus- 
 tomed them too well to a state of passive obedience, 
 and one in which they are too much used to bow their 
 neck beneath his foot, for them ever to dare to exert 
 any influence upon him. Up to the present time, the 
 Emperor has been the master of his government ; he 
 has always guided his country according to his o^vn 
 personal inspirations, and consulted only his own will. 
 To suffer the influence of any one whomsoever, 
 Avould be for him to abdicate lus throne.
 
 24; THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 THE ARMY. 
 
 I. 
 
 AiGAKOTTi has said that St. Petersburg is the win- 
 dow through which Russia is continually looking out 
 upon Europe. The simile is a happy one, for it pre- 
 sents to our minds a perfect picture of the Czar, 
 watching — with marvellous sagacity for his owti ag- 
 grandisement and the preservation of his conquests — 
 the faults committed by Europe. 
 
 We cannot avoid confessing that the means, of all 
 kinds, at the disposal of Russia, are formidable ; but, in 
 this respect, the weight with which she bears down 
 upon the West is derived less from her own real and 
 permanent strength, than from the state of ignorance 
 in which all our governments still remain with regard 
 to her resources and her customs. 
 
 Her passive power is enormous ; this is as incon- 
 testable as the light of day. No one would ever think 
 of attacking her behind her deserts of ice and snow, 
 where she is naturally entrenched. All the armies of 
 the world that attempted to do so would inevitably 
 meet with ruin and death. 
 
 The Russian soil, properly so called, is covered with
 
 CuirasMiT 01' Imperial Guanl. Cliassiur ol'llit! Cossacik of the 
 
 the Guard. (Uiard. Gaurd. 
 
 Till; Rl -i<IAN AUMV— llE(;rLAU TROOl'b.
 
 THE ARMY. 25 
 
 sombre and still virgin forests. What land there is 
 capable of cultivation is a mere accident, and even this 
 land, with some rare exceptions, is almost completely- 
 unfruitful, and for the greater portion of the year under 
 water. The arts and manufactures are yet in their 
 infixncy in Russia, and its trade is but poor. In spite 
 of its mines in the Oural mountains and Siberia, gold 
 and silver are rare, while its paper-money is not cur- 
 rent throughout the whole empire, many of the pro- 
 vinces having rejected it. But if the country is poor 
 in coin, we must acknowledge that articles of the first 
 necessity are so cheap that a man can be fed, clothed, 
 equipped, and armed, at one-eighth of the cost in 
 France. 
 
 In spite, however, of the unfruitfulness of the soil 
 and the severity of the climate ; in spite of its despotic 
 government, and the degraded condition of its popula- 
 tion, Russia has increased in the most unprecedented 
 manner. 
 
 Scarcely a century since, Russia inspired neither un- 
 easiness, fear, nor jealousy. Although already power- 
 ful, she was, by her strange customs and her form of 
 government, placed so far beyond the sphere of the 
 political action of Europe, that she was only spoken of 
 a6 a country peopled by savages, inhabiting the holes 
 of rocks, or the hollows of trees, and living on raw and 
 stinking meat and fish. She was unknown. We had 
 more to do with China thau with her. She possessed 
 no navy, no army, no manufactures, and, so to speak, 
 no language or national customs. 
 
 O
 
 S6 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 Despite all this, she suddenly rises up before the 
 eyes of astonished Europe, and, from the first day of 
 her appearance, aspires with haughty insolence to the 
 dominion of the world by putting forth claims to the 
 dictatorship of Europe. 
 
 Strange fact! Such as this nation, was when it 
 first felt the influence of civilisation, two centuries ago, 
 such is it at the present hour. It has not advanced a 
 single step ; it has remained exactly in its original state. 
 
 From whatever side we view it, it has absolutely 
 nothing European about it. 
 
 I have just said that scarcely a hundred years have 
 elapsed since the Russians had neither an army, a 
 naYj, nor any system of administration. At present, 
 they possess formidable fleets, and prodigious arsenals, 
 in which all the iron, bronze, and copper of Siberia 
 have been accumulating, for the last fifty years. They 
 possess armies supported by innumerable tribes of wan- 
 dering Cossacks, sufficient to make men apprehend an 
 invasion of barbarians, a hundred times more disastrous 
 and redoubtable than the hordes of Attila which 
 crushed the Roman Empire, for the Russians are more 
 destructive than their predecessors. Did they not 
 overthrow and raze to the ground the town of Cafia, 
 and almost all the towns of the Crimea, to obtain the 
 leaden pipes of the fountains, and to steal the copper 
 and the iron which decorated and sustained the public 
 edifices, the minarets, and the cupolas? Did they 
 not destroy the marbles of the palaces, the sar- 
 cophagi, and the bas-reliefs, to build their huts.
 
 THE ARMY. 2/ 
 
 sweeping away objects of art whicli centuries had 
 respected ? 
 
 II. 
 
 Although this empire appears, in the eyes of 
 sceptics, to be like a harlequin's jacket, sewn together, 
 more or less strongly, of five hundred incongruous pieces, 
 it is, for all that, peopled by sixty-six millions of human 
 beings, and this enormous population is increasing, 
 every year, at the rate of more than eight hundred 
 thousand souls ! 
 
 From east to west, from Petropaulowsk, in the depths 
 of Asia, to Kalisch, beyond Warsaw, is a distance of 
 fourteen thousand five hundred versts, — that is to say, a 
 length of 10,875 English miles ; while the distance from 
 Alexandropol or Sebastopol to Archangel — from north to 
 south — is three thousand three hundred and sixty 
 versts, which represent 10,080 miles. 
 
 This immense extent of country is dotted over with 
 more than a thousand cities, three of which have each 
 a population of more than a hundred thousand sovls : 
 these three are the capitals, — Moscow, St. Petersburg, 
 and Warsaw ; six towns have populations of from 
 forty-five to sixty thousand souls ; twenty-three have 
 more than twenty-thousand ; seventy-five, from ten to 
 twenty thousand ; one hundred and forty-one fi'om five 
 to ten thousand ; one hundred and seventy-six from 
 two to five thousand ; one hundred and thirty-eight 
 from a thousand to two thousand ; seventy-one
 
 28 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 somewhat less than a thousand ; and so on : while in 
 addition to these towns, there are countless thousands of 
 villages. 
 
 A single man governs this country, and governs 
 it as an inflexible and inexorable autocrat. His 
 will — supreme, unique, never contested, and never 
 even discussed — stretches, in all directions, to the 
 extreme points of his empire with the certainty of the 
 telegraph. 
 
 This would, at first sight, lead us to believe that, in 
 politics, ignorance and barbarous manners are the 
 best guarantees of moral and social order, for I have 
 seen these sixty-six millions of souls — or brutes, if you 
 prefer the term — yielding blind obedience, bowing 
 their necks and grovelling beneath the feet of their Czar, 
 but ready to rise, with one bound, at the first signal from 
 him, if the whim of endeavouring to crush the old 
 world, with his armed avalanches, should by chance 
 enter his head. 
 
 This extent of Russia is what, in the eyes of 
 many persons, constitutes its force. But they are 
 mistaken ! It is, on the contrary, the cause of its 
 weakness. 
 
 Of all the various races which acknowledge the 
 authority of the Czars, there is not one which has 
 merged iato the great Russian Unity which the Emperor 
 Nicholas has so perseveringly attempted to efiect. 
 
 Each of these races has preserved its nationality, its 
 language, its religion, its customs, and even its own 
 peculiar laws ; and, among those who are the most op-
 
 THE ARMT. 29 
 
 posed to these attempts to bring about a fusion, the 
 very members of the great Sclavonic family are not the 
 least eager to reject them. These races are not bound 
 to each other by any natural affinity, or any common 
 interests, either political or commercial : they all desire 
 to live after their own peculiar fashion, and they can 
 do so. Russian Unity is a chimera. All these remark- 
 able races, strangers to each other, arbitrarily agglome- 
 rated by the chances of politics and war, and sewn 
 together like so many pieces of various colours, are 
 only maintained in their present condition by skilful 
 Machiavelism, and a system of inexorable discipline, the 
 ■workings of which absolutely stupify the mind. 
 
 If, to-morrow, the genius which governs this em- 
 pire with a will of iron, were to disturb this fabulous 
 equilibrium ; if an easy or incapable Czar were to 
 f ucceed the eminent man who, at this moment, presides 
 over the destinies of the country, and occupies a throne 
 founded on so many different elements, Russia would, 
 very soon afterwards, fall into a thousand pieces. 
 
 What affinity can there be between the Poles and 
 the Cossacks, who, the very day after their submission, 
 regretted the independence of their previous nomade 
 life? 
 
 "What affinity can there be between the Germans 
 of the shores of the Baltic and the Greeks of the 
 Crimea? or between the Swedes of Finland and the 
 inhabitants of all the ranges of the Caucasus? 
 
 This vast assemblage of heterogeneous races and 
 tribes would evidently be dissolved in a few hours, were it
 
 30 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 not held together by a formidable army, and Russia 
 would perish as did the Roman empire, with which, by 
 the way, it possesses more than one point of resem- 
 blance. 
 
 At the first summons to rise in insurrection, or if 
 Russia were once engaged in a serious war, who can 
 say where the conflagration would end? At Rome, 
 slaves were rigorously excluded from military service ; 
 in Russia, on the contrary, slaves are the only persons 
 who carry arms. The remembrance of Ikelman Pugat- 
 scheff, that second Spartacus, is not yet effaced from the 
 memory of many, many Russians. 
 
 III. 
 
 The effective force of the Muscovite armies, which, 
 for the last thirty years, and especially since 1848, have 
 excited such lively interest in men's minds, is not at all 
 exaggerated. 
 
 These masses of cannons, men, and bayonets, are, 
 however, not to be looked upon as a permanent cause 
 for dread, as people are pleased to imagine. Russia is 
 positively obliged to maintain them, in order to protect 
 its immense surface, and guarantee from attack its coasts 
 and frontiers, which extend for some thousands of 
 miles along kingdoms, empires, and provinces, which 
 an unexpected cause might bring down upon it, because 
 almost all of them have to recover some territory or 
 other, ^vrested from them by violence. 
 
 The army is divided into three very distinct cate-
 
 Grenadier. (:ii;isseur of Fiferofthe Dragoon. Cuirass.^r. II— ear. 
 
 the Guard. Guard 
 
 THE RUSSIAN ARMY REGULAR TROOPS.
 
 THE ARMY. 81 
 
 gories, possessing nothing in common with each other. 
 These are: — 
 
 The Imperial Guard, the Army in Active Service, 
 and the Military Colonies. 
 
 The Imperial Guard consists of twelve regiments of 
 infantry, two regiments of hussars, two regiments of 
 lancers, four regiments of cuirassiers, two regiments 
 of specimens^ (one of infantry and one of cavalry), two 
 regiments of Cossacks, and seventy-two field-pieces, 
 besides two Cossack batteries and a pontoon-train. 
 
 The cavalry regiments are eight hundred men 
 strong, divided into six squadrons. The infantry regi- 
 ments are four thousand men strong, divided into four 
 battalions, the fourth battalion belonging to the reserve 
 for the instruction of the recruits. 
 
 This Guard forms in itself a regular corps cC armée. 
 
 In this account I have not reckoned several squad- 
 rons furnished by the wandering tribes, such as the 
 Kirghiscs, with their glittering coats of mail, and their 
 bows and arrows ; the Circassians, the Georgians, and 
 the Armenians, who are never called upon to do any 
 more serious service than to parade themselves on the 
 occasion of grand festivals or grand reviews. The 
 effective force of these squadrons varies considerably. 
 
 The Army in Active Service is formed of nine corps. 
 Each of these corps is exactly divided, like the Iniperial 
 Guard, into twelve regiments of infantry and four regi- 
 ments of light cavalry (two of chasseurs and two of 
 
 1 See Appendix, C.
 
 32 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 lancers), with seventy-two field-pieces and a pontoon- 
 train. 
 
 Besides these corps, there are two others of heavy 
 cavahy, dragoons and cuirassiers, each consisting of 
 ten regiments. 
 
 In addition to several detachments, formed princi- 
 pally of Cossacks, which guard Siberia and the wooden 
 fortlets bordering the right bank of the Oural, Russia 
 counts upon its lists of forces in active service : — 1st, 
 the corps of Orenburg ; 2nd, the corps of the Caucasus; 
 3rd, the corps of Finland — each of which is formed on 
 a similar plan to that of the army in active service, and 
 always counts an effective force of forty thousand men ; 
 and 4th, thi-ee detached corps of Cossacks, one of which 
 is called the corps of the Kuban, another the corps of 
 the Oural, and another the corps of the Crimea. 
 
 Next come the vast Military Colonies, the creation 
 of the Emperor Alexander and his favourite Avatcheieff, 
 some of which are placed in the centre of the empire, 
 stretching across the road that connects the two capi- 
 tals, on the banks of the Volkov, near Lake Ilmen and 
 Novgorod, and some at Mohilew, Vitepsk, Ecatheri- 
 noslaw, and other places. All these colonies vmited form 
 together ten more distinct military corps, di^4ded in the 
 same manner as the army in active service, and, like that, 
 furnished with artillery, pontoon-trains, and cavalry. 
 
 Lastly, there is what the Russians term the Reserve, 
 comprehending all soldiers either out of service or dis- 
 banded. It would be difficult to obtain from these men 
 any other service than that of performing duty in the
 
 
 osEUin. Cossack of Circassian. Tartar Cossack Cossack oi Cossack oi 
 
 Ihe Don. of the Crimea. the Caucasus. the Ural. 
 
 THE RUSSIAN ARMY UlREGULAR TROOPS.
 
 THE ARMY. 33 
 
 fortified towns in the interior of the empire, or of acting 
 as gabehiicn on the more distant coasts. 
 
 All these corps united give a total of nearly Fifteen 
 Hundred Thousand Men in active, or quasi-active, 
 service, of which more than One Hundred and î^ifty 
 Thousand are cavalry. These numbers will strike the 
 reader as fabulous, but they are incoutestably correct. 
 
 17. 
 
 The army is kept up by a system of recruiting. 
 The number of men to be furnished by the Boyars' is 
 determined, every year, by the state. The choice of 
 the individual men is left to the arbitrary judgment of 
 the nobles or their intendants. Provided the recruits 
 are neither halt, nor lame, nor blind, the government 
 accepts all that are sent, without troubling itself in the 
 least about their moral condition. 
 
 The Boyar and his intendant begin by satisfying 
 their personal hatred and antipathy, whatever may be 
 the importance of the wrongs for Avhich they seek 
 satisfaction. They care very little about breaking 
 up a family, or tearing away a son from his father 
 and mother, infirm old people who will be left without 
 assistance and support; they spread desolation and 
 misery in every house which has resisted their cxac- 
 ùons, and, when a recruit is taken, his son, if he be 
 less than ten years old, lollows him. 
 
 ^ The feudal nobility.
 
 34 THE KXOTJT AXD THE KUSSIANS. 
 
 After having gratified their feelings of vindictive- 
 ness, they proceed to cleanse all the villages of robbers, 
 vagabonds, rogues, thieves, idlers, drunkards, and in- 
 cendiaries, until they have made up the number which 
 they are obliged to contribute to the quota required of 
 the district. 
 
 The government itself seizes and enlists, on its owti 
 authority, and without appeal, all awkward coachmen, 
 and thieves whose muscular force adapts them for 
 being converted into machines of war. 
 
 As soon as the selection is made, the authorities 
 proceed to the toilet of the men they have taken. In 
 order to prevent desertion or flight, they cut their hair 
 very short in front, and almost shave it behind, and then 
 send the recruits off to the chief town of the district, 
 where they are delivered into the custody of a non-com- 
 missioned ofl&cer, charged with the task of conducting 
 them to the depot, whence they are drafted off into 
 the different regiments and drilled. 
 
 The army is, as we see, composed, for the most 
 part, only of the very dregs of the serfs ; no other 
 method of recruiting it is ever practised in Russia. 
 
 This explains the profound feeling of horror, the 
 invincible aversion, of the entire Russian population 
 for military service. There never was, to my know- 
 ledge (and I have also been informed so by others) an 
 instance of any one enlisting of his own free will. 
 
 But, say the Russians, as soon as he becomes a 
 soldier, the peasant is emancipated ; at the expiration 
 of twenty-five years' service, he is free ! Exquisite state
 
 THE ARMY. 8S 
 
 of freedom, indeed, which obliges him, for tlirec quar- 
 ters of his existence, to bow his head and bend his 
 shoulders beneath the most severe and odious system 
 of discipline in the world ! 
 
 When a man is once enlisted, the brutality of his 
 instructors, the cruelty of his officers, the privations of 
 every description which he has to undergo, and the 
 passive, animal-like submission to the requirements of 
 a torturing system of discipline, soon reduce him to the 
 level of a mere walking machine. 
 
 At the expiration of twenty-five years of service, 
 supposing he has not been condemned to remain a sol- 
 dier all his life, whether he be infirm, whether he be 
 used up, broken, without strength or not, a man is dis- 
 charged. The state owes him nothing, and gives him 
 nothing — but the liberty of providing, in any manner 
 he can, for his own support and that of his family. 
 If he is merely lame or deaf, he becomes a fireman or a 
 breaker of stones upon the highways, two occupations 
 ■which offer the advantage of placing him temporarily 
 beyond the absolute danger of dying of hunger. But 
 to attain so favoured a condition as this, he must have 
 patronage ! 
 
 Most of the men, on their discharge, become 
 ostlers, porters, or beggars. Some drag out a miser- 
 able existence of sufiering along the public roads, in 
 the endeavour to regain the village in which they 
 were born, but they are received by the boyar, who, 
 cudgel in hand, exclaims : " Avaunt, venomous beasts ! 
 in this place I have, and will have, only slaves !" so
 
 36 THE KNOUT AND THJE RUSSIANS. 
 
 that, to enjoy the privilege of obtaining food, and a 
 roof to protect them, the unhappy wretches are com- 
 pelled once more to become serfs ! Some of them turn 
 robbers, and seek a refuge in the immense forests which 
 cover the surface of the country. They live by rapine, 
 by hunting, and by robbing travellers. Neither the 
 police nor the government troubles its head about them, 
 or ever thinks of pursuing them, for the police cares 
 nought about any persons save those whom it can 
 despoil, and what could it obtain from a soldier covered 
 with rags, or what could it do with a man whose 
 strength is gone and whose constitution is broken ^ 
 
 The operation of recruiting is long and difficult. 
 The difficulties are not caused by the men alone, but 
 also, and to a greater extent, by the nature of the 
 country itself and of the elimate, which no mortal 
 power can ever overcome. There are no highways, 
 save those which connect St. Petersbui-g M'ith Moscow 
 and Warsaw. The empire is intersected with paths, 
 and cross-roads running over marshes, spongy land and 
 moving sands, into which men and horses sink up to 
 their middle. 
 
 The recruits, who are sent from all parts of the em- 
 pire, from the Oural, the Don, the Dnieper, the Vistula, 
 and the Nieman, to St. Petersburg and Moscow^, tra- 
 verse these enormous distances on foot, badly fed and 
 never housed, through the rain and snow, and over 
 roads that give way beneath their feet. In the eyes of 
 the government, this is not looked upon as a difficulty j 
 beasts make the journey, and, therefore, men can make
 
 THE ARMY. 37 
 
 it as well. But we are not informed how many death 
 carries off before the end of the journey is reached. 
 In addition to this, all these men are of different origin, 
 and do not speak the same language, so that the task 
 of instructing them is a long and difficult one. 
 
 What matters all this to the Russian government ? 
 it is not stopped by trifles like these. What words 
 cannot convey into the heads of the poor brutes, will 
 be beaten into them with the stick. 
 
 The pay of the Russian soldier is nine shillings and f 
 two-pence a-year ; and his food consists of a little less 
 than eighteen quarters, twenty-two pounds, two ounces 
 of coarse wheaten flour, mixed with bran and flour 
 made from rye. A colonel does not get thirty-two 
 pounds sterling, and a full surgeon receives the same 
 pay as a colonel. A captain receives twelve pounds 
 sterling ; and so on for the other officers. Most of the 
 officers and even of the soldiers are married ! 
 
 The married soldier, if he is at the same time a father, 
 receives three-tenths of a penny supplementary pay and 
 half a pound of flour daily for himself and his family. 
 Besides this, government gives him lodgings in barracks. 
 
 Ten, twelve, and sometimes as many as twenty or 
 thirty, different families live promiscuously, in the full- 
 est acceptation of the word, in the same room ; the 
 only thing done in the cause of morals being to sur- 
 round each bed by a coarse paper or canvas screen,
 
 28 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 which the soldiers manufactui'e themselves. It is be- 
 hind these screens that the nuptial rites are consum- 
 mated, in the hearing, if not in the sight, of a roomful 
 of people ; it is behind these screens, upon a low, foetid 
 bed, that the women are confined, and that the children 
 are brought up to fear and respect the Czar. 
 
 When a soldier begets male children, his condition 
 is ameliorated ; the crown adds a ration of flour for 
 each male child. Until they are eight or ten years old, 
 the children remain with their parents. When they 
 have attained this age, government places them in the 
 military schools, where they are rigorously fashioned 
 to the military yoke. At sixteen or eighteen years of 
 age they enter the army in active service, as non- 
 commissioned officers, and remain in this grade all 
 their life, there being a special law which prohibits their 
 advancement. As for the girls, the state does not derive 
 any advantage from them, and therefore gives them 
 nothing. They are, poor creatures, a real calamity to 
 their parents, who see themselves bowed down by fresh 
 burthens without the hope of their rations being in- 
 creased a single ounce. No one ever troubles his head 
 as to how the soldier will provide for their subsistence. 
 As for education, they receive none. 
 
 In the imperial guard, the soldiers are somewhat 
 more favoured than those of the army in active service. 
 When one of them has a son, he is allowed to suppli- 
 cate the Emperor to stand godfather to him, and the 
 Emperor never refuses this favour and mark of honour. 
 He causes the new-born infants to be held at the font,
 
 THE ARMY. 89 
 
 a dozen at a time, by one of his aides-de-camp, who, 
 after the ceremony, makes the father a present of two 
 shillings and eleven-pence. The protection of the Czar 
 is limited, for the moment, and also for the future, to 
 this. He shows the same honour only to those officers 
 who are notoriously without resources ; in such cases 
 he relieves their distress with a sum of money, which 
 never amounts to more than a few hundred rubles. 
 
 As you perceive, reader, Kussia has copied a great 
 deal from the institutions of the Chinese. In China, 
 the government encourages, as much as it possibly can, 
 the marriages of soldiers, and, as is the case in Russia, 
 assigns so much pay to male children from the moment 
 of their birth. 
 
 VI. 
 
 I have mentioned the prodigious number of soldiers 
 and cannons : I must now speak of the officers. If the 
 privilege of birth were always accompanied by that 
 of intelligence and merit, nowhere in the world would 
 there be so many good officers as in Russia. The 
 nobility alone can reach the higher grades. The mem- 
 bers of the feudal nobility very seldom enter the arniy ; 
 they have a horror of military servitude, and, in spite 
 of all the Emperor's efforts, prefer living in indolence 
 and luxury, or filling at court the offices of grooms, 
 valets, or cooks. The second order of nobility, called 
 the Tchinn, is in almost undisputed possession of all 
 the various grades. There never was such a thing
 
 40 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 known, as a soldier of fortune rising from the lower to 
 the superior ranks of the army. It never entered the 
 brain of any Russian to think, and still less to believe 
 and to say, that every soldier, as in France, carries the 
 baton of field-marshal in his knapsack. The Russian 
 who gave utterance to such an assertion, would be 
 looked upon as the most abominable of revolutionists. 
 The members of the tchinn possess neither peasants 
 nor estates. They live, at least the greater number 
 of them, on the emoluments of the posts they occupy, 
 and, in some slight degree, like all other persons hold- 
 ing ofiices under the Russian administration, on the 
 produce of their venality and plunder. 
 
 Brought up in special schools, at the expense of the 
 government, the officers quit their studies while very 
 young, with a commission They do not inspire the 
 soldier with any feelings of respect, either by their be- 
 haviour, their disposition, or by habits of reflection 
 matured by the influence of serious and scientific studies. 
 
 Rank is not given to merit ; the only road to it is 
 favour. 
 
 Each regiment has its o^vn treasury, into which the 
 Czar pays a certain fixed sum, with which the command- 
 ing officer is bound to provide for aU the wants of his 
 soldiers, such as firing, food, clothes, etc. But as this 
 sum is well known to be insufficient for the purpose, the 
 soldier, Avhen not on service, is obliged to seek for some 
 other means of providing for his own subsistence and 
 that of his family. If he knows no skilled manual calling, 
 he becomes, in turn, according to circumstances, porter,
 
 THE ARMY. 41 
 
 water-caiTÎer, sweeper, labourer, and messenger — he 
 unloads the vessels in the ports and alongside the quays 
 — he -wheels away in barrows, saws, cleaves, piles up, 
 and carries firewood into the various houses. In the 
 evening, he is a supernumerary at the theatre. He is 
 obliged to give a part of his time for the common good, 
 and what he then earns goes to the funds of the regi- 
 ment. The barracks are literally so many permanent 
 bazaars, where men are hired for all descriptions of 
 work, at so much a-day. Does any one require twelve 
 or twenty pairs of arms ? If he does, they are sent to 
 him, under the escort of a corporal. 
 
 The commanders of the regiments of the imperial 
 guard, being under the immediate eye of the Czar 
 himself, perform their duties as treasm-ers and admi- 
 nistrators with tolerable regularity. It sometimes hap- 
 pens, however, that the funds of the regiment vanish 
 at a game of cards. If the dishonest officer has no 
 friend or family to be responsible for his embezzle- 
 ment, nothing is left him but suicide, Siberia, or mili- 
 tary degradation, which is always followed by his 
 becoming a common soldier /or life. 
 
 But in the interior of the country, at a distance 
 from the supervision of the Czar and the direct action 
 of the government, abuses in the administration of the 
 army in activity are more frequent; and there have some- 
 times been cases, in which whole army-corps, men and 
 horses, have been decimated by hunger, cold, and dis- 
 ease. Exactly in the same degree as the imperial 
 guard is gaudily decked out from head to foot, are the
 
 43 THE KNOUT AND THE RTJSSTAN8. 
 
 corps of the army in activity ragged and wretchedly 
 kept. I myself saw, in September, 1848, the army 
 in activity encamped in Poland. Its appearance was 
 most saddening : the clothing of the troops was worn 
 threadbare by long use, and grossly patched up, while 
 the lean aspect of the men themselves betrayed too 
 plainly hunger and every other kind of privation. 
 
 A few years since, the army of the Caucasus pre- 
 sented a spectacle of abject wretchedness which would 
 have surprised people, if people in this country ever 
 could be surprised at anything. The Czar, happening 
 to cast his eyes, by chance, over the retui-ns made to 
 the ministry of war, and which he was accustomed to 
 sign as a matter of course without perusing, perceived 
 with horror the immense amount of mortality in one of 
 the corps stationed on the lines of the Kuban, Even 
 at the period when the cholera was raging with the 
 most fearfal violence throughout the empire, death had 
 never mowed down so many men. " The cause of this 
 frightful state of things was unknown :" such was the 
 answer given to the Czar. Upon this, he sent one of 
 his aides-de-camp to inspect the corps. On his re- 
 turn, the aide-de-camp asserted that the army wanted 
 for nothing, though the Emperor knew that both men 
 and horses were in a state of the utmost wretchedness. 
 The aide-de-camp was sent back to observe things 
 more closely. Again he returned and again he affirmed 
 that he had found everything in its normal state. This 
 aide-de-camp and the commander of the corps, who 
 had bought his silence, were both degraded, and re-
 
 THE ARMY. 43 
 
 duced to the ranks. Similar examples of justice and 
 severity are often met with in the life of the Em- 
 jjcror, but so profound is the evil which devours his 
 dominions, that he has never been able to eradicate it 
 completely. 
 
 TII. 
 
 In the cavalry of the imperial guard, all the ofl5cers 
 belong either to the feudal nobility, for whose encour- 
 agement the Czar always keeps commissions and com- 
 manderships, or to the Swedish families of Finland, or 
 of the German provinces of the Baltic. The members 
 of the latter are the best officers in the army. To serve 
 in the cavalry it is necessary to possess a private fur- 
 tune, because the expense of mounting the regiment 
 falls entirely on the officers, in turn, up to the rank of 
 captain inclusively. In the first instance, however, 
 this honour is reserved for the officer who has la^t 
 joined. The government allows, for this purpose, only 
 a very trifling annual sum, which is far from being suffi- 
 cient, and is, in fact, perfectly ridiculous. The officer, 
 on whom the expensive task devolves, visits all the 
 studs in the empire, and chooses only horses of the 
 particular size and colour adopted by the regiment. 
 £2,400, and sometimes more, added to the sum allowed 
 by the croMTi, is not sufficient to mount a regiment. 
 
 On their arrival at St. Petersburg, as soon, at least, 
 as they have been allowed to rest and recover their 
 condition, the horses are all inspected by the Czar. 
 
 D 2
 
 44 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 The white horses must not have a single black hair in 
 their coats, nor the black horses a single white one, 
 and so on. 
 
 If the Czar is satisfied, a rise in rank, a decoration 
 and a patronising look, are the only rewards received 
 by the officer, who has just made a terrible hole in his 
 patrimony, and, perhaps, ruined himself or his family, 
 to gain them. 
 
 In order to rise, every cavalry officer must go 
 through this expensive ordeal. The Czar does not ask 
 him whether he has talent, genius, or courage ; all 
 that the Czar requires, is that an officer should be of 
 good family, possess a great deal of money, and spend 
 it generously, to ease the finances of his country. By 
 the adoption of this plan, however, the Czar's cavalry 
 is a perfect model ; the men are giants and the horses 
 enormous. 
 
 And here, I beg to ask, whom must we pity, whom 
 must we blame ? Is it the Czar for keeping up and 
 turning to account, with such skill, the baseness of his 
 nobility, or is it the nobility for its platitude in purchas- 
 ing its grades by the ruin of all those who are con- 
 nected with it r 
 
 As you have just seen, reader, all the cavalry regi- 
 ments of the imperial guard are distinguished from 
 each other by the colour of the horses ; with the 
 exception of their horses' coats, they are all alike.
 
 THE AKMT. 45 
 
 Tiir. 
 
 The Russian soldier does not lead a life like that of 
 other men ; he is a human machine, and that is all. 
 
 It is a great error, which many travellers have 
 committed, to assert that the duties of a husband and 
 the cares of a father are the principal causes which 
 prevent the Russian soldier from assuming a smart 
 military appearance. The only cause is that which I 
 have already given ; there is no other. 
 
 For nearly thirty years, the Emperor has been 
 making unheard-of efforts to inculcate in the hearts 
 of his troops what is called a military spirit. Up to 
 the present time, he has not succeeded, and he never 
 will succeed, because such a thing is not in accordance 
 with the character of his people. His army is not, 
 and never will be, aught but a troop of automata, 
 tricked out in various costumes, which he moves ac- 
 cording to his whim, and causes to sink into the earth 
 beneath an irritated look. 
 
 No noble sentiment ever vibrates in these souls, 
 stultified by serfdom, debauchery, and depravity. 
 
 Everywhere else in Europe, it appears to me, 
 the soldier represents to our mind a man who has 
 devoted himself to the defence of his country, as much 
 as he does an agent of the public authorities, charged 
 with maintaining order and preserving the most sacred 
 interests of society ; the flag shelters the honour of the
 
 46 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 country in all its purity. In Russia, the flag shelters 
 nothing at all ; on the contrary, it is the emblem of 
 the most monstrous state of moral degradation. 
 
 How could it be otherwise ? 
 
 Everywhere else in Europe, rank is within the 
 reach of talent, merit, and courage, from whatever class 
 they may spring ; it is for all men an inalienable pro- 
 perty, which neither the caprice of the sovereign, nor 
 the covetousness of courtiers, can violate, and which 
 cannot be touched, or taken away from its possessor, 
 save in virtue of a lawful judgment and on account of 
 his having committed some ofiFence against the laws of 
 honour. In Russia, the sword of an officer is broken, 
 if he happens to stand in the way of some courtier's 
 promotion, or even if his superiors have taken a dis- 
 like to his appearance. 
 
 Regarding it from a moral point of view, the 
 Russian army is anything but respectable. Its funda- 
 mental vice (the expression is a harsh one, but I use it 
 all the same) is an almost universal spirit of dishonesty, 
 which forms the prevailing characteristic of almost 
 every one. The cupidity of the superior officers 
 in cutting down the rations of the common soldier, 
 authorises the latter to practise the arts of deceit and 
 pillage. In the day time, he lurks about the environs 
 of the city, in the public walks, the by-paths, and 
 the parks, where I myself almost fell a victim to his 
 violence. At night, he posts himself at the passages 
 over the Neva, or walks about the streets, despoiling 
 those who may happen to be out late, and, if he has the
 
 THE ARMY. 47 
 
 time or is forced to do so by a dangerous and obsti- 
 nate resistance, cleaves his victim's head with an axe 
 or sabre, and then pushes him under the ice. The 
 next day, he sells the spoils iu the open market under 
 the nose of the police, which shuts its eyes and stops 
 its ears, but which opens its hands to receive a goodly 
 portion of the produce of the robbery or murder. 
 
 The barracks remain open all night as well as all day, 
 and the sentinels allow any one to pass in and out at 
 all hours. On his return from his marauding expedi- 
 tion, the soldier hastens to invite his family and his 
 friends to a grand entertainment, in which a common 
 kind of brandy plays the first and almost the only part. 
 In his noisy drunkenness he will, perhaps, half confess 
 the truth, and excite the suspicion of some officer, who, 
 out of respect for morality, will give him, with closed 
 doors, a sound cudgelling, which he will receive with 
 his left hand on the seam of his pantaloons, and his 
 right on a level with his ear, in the position of a 
 soldier saluting his Czar. 
 
 I always ask myself, on seewg these things, whethe 
 Russia possesses the consciousness of its existence. 
 If it does, it can only be after the fashion of animals 
 or savages, who care little for this world and nothing 
 at all for the world to come.
 
 48 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 IX. 
 
 In the interior of the empire, the officers of the 
 army in activity are no better off than the common ; 
 soldiers ; they endure the same misery and the same I 
 privations. A great number of them, with their 
 breasts covered with orders, beg of such strangers as 
 may be passing through the place where they are 
 quartered. I have seen this with my own eyes : it 
 was the first thing that struck me at Taganrog, when 
 I entered the Russian territory. They might, if they 
 chose, practise, both by day and night, all kinds of 
 robbery and crime, without any risk of being arrested, 
 for an officer in Russia is" as sacred and inviolable a 
 being as the Czar himself. If he were surprised in 
 the commission of a crime, he would only have to open 
 his cloak to the patrol, and the latter would allow him 
 to pass on unmolested. Those who have said that 
 Russia is in a state of suppressed anarchy, are right. 
 
 Officers of high rank — we have very recently had 
 a proof of this in all the newspapers — increase their 
 pay, we must once again use a harsh expression, by the 
 robberies and fraudulent practices of which they are 
 guilty in the accounts of their administration. The 
 famous revolt of the military colonies at Novgorod, 
 which caused Russia and the throne of the Czar to 
 tremble, in 1831, was caused by nothing save the num- 
 bei'less exactions committed by the staff of the colony.
 
 THE ARÎIY. 49 
 
 The facts of the case are as follow : — 
 The administration of this colony, like that of all 
 the rest, was in the hands of a rapacious and indescrib- 
 ably cruel governor-general. He received the sum 
 due in kind by each colonist to the crown. Out of the 
 produce of the entire colony, he took, illegally and ex- 
 clusive of his own rations, which he sold, the keep of 
 his own horses and of those of his aides-de-camp, be- 
 sides exacting something extra for short measure. All 
 the produce was then put in boats and despatched to 
 St. Petersburg and Moscow by way of the Volkov, 
 Lake Illmen, and the canals. In the autumn of 1831, 
 however, the boats were overtaken by a- tempest on 
 their entrance into the lake, cast against the shore, and 
 sunk. The governor had them raised, and compelled 
 the colonists to give the state an equal quantity of un- 
 damaged produce in the place of that which had been 
 spoilt. This was an odious robbery. Ever since the 
 foundation of the colony, the soldiers had patiently 
 supported many an egregious wrong, for the course of 
 the administration was nought but one uniform system 
 of violence. Every year tl^ had been pillaged, 
 robbed, and beaten. But, on this occasion, the injus- 
 tice of their superiors was the signal for a formidable 
 insurrection. The soldiers had suffered too long; their 
 vengeance was terrible, atrocious, and savage. Almost 
 all the officers were massacred without pity, and their 
 houses ransacked and burnt. In retaliation for what 
 they had undergone, the troops perpetrated on the 
 officers' wives and daughters the most abominable acts 
 c
 
 so THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 of bestiality ; tlie poor creatures were all violated pub- 
 licly in the streets, under the eyes of twenty thousand 
 men, wbo exhibited the most awful signs of rage and 
 frenzy. These miserable victims were then mutilated, 
 their breasts, eyelids, noses, lips, and ears being cut off ! 
 Bound back to back with the mutilated corpses of their 
 male relatives, they were afterwards thrown into the 
 river, or burnt alive in ovens heated to a white heat. For 
 an entire week, without cessation, there was nothing 
 going on, save scenes worthy of maddened cannibals, 
 and a system of carnage such as wild beasts alone 
 ■would practise. This revolt was just what we might 
 expect from savage hordes loosed from all restraint, and 
 drunk with vengeance long suppressed. 
 
 A certain number of officers of superior rank suc- 
 ceeded in escaping from the fury of the troops, and 
 retired on board two or three small men-of-war, at 
 anchor in the middle of the stream. 
 
 If a fresh insurrection Avere to break out, exactly 
 the same scenes would be enacted over again. I most 
 firmly believe that the day on which the first revo- 
 lution in the palace ^lall cause these armed bands to 
 rise, Russia's last hour will have come. All the various 
 parts of which it is composed will fall from each other, 
 and join the states from which they have been torn.
 
 TIIK All.MV. 61 
 
 From the 1st to the 5th of May, every year, 
 the Emperor reviews all his guard, who then put on 
 their white trousers. There is still snow in the air, 
 and snow in the streets and on the housetops, with 
 hoarfrost on the trees, and blocks of ice ©n the river 
 and canals ; what matters this, however ! it is spring, 
 and the costume in question must be donned to please 
 the Czar ; but as the cold is still extremely piercing, 
 and pantaloons of mere linen would paralyse the sol- 
 dier, the summer pantaloons are slipped on over the 
 winter ones. This reminded me of the supernumera- 
 ries of the Cirque National, on the boulevards of Paris, 
 whenever military spectacles are represented. They 
 are swathed in three or four different dresses, one over 
 the other, in order to become, as occasion may requix*e, 
 Bedouins, Turks, Cossacks, or soldiers of the Celestial 
 Empire. 
 
 Whatever may be the severity of the weather, both 
 the court and the town are obliged to be present at this 
 review. Not one of all those persons who approach the 
 imperial family would, on that day, be impertinent 
 enough to be indisposed. The ladies themselves are 
 not the least eager to flatter the eyes of their master 
 with silk gowns and mantillas of very tei^der and 
 spring-like hues, under which, however, they take the 
 precaution of envelopmg themselves in cotton wadding,
 
 62 THE KKOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 in order not to be killed with, the cold. I do not, in 
 sober truth, know whether from having seen this 
 comedy played so often, the Emperor is still the dupe 
 of it. 
 
 Followed by a brilliant and numerous staff, the 
 Emperor, at a slow pace and with a haughty and 
 severe look, passes in review the eighty thousand men 
 of his guard. Such is the keenness of his glance, that 
 he remarks the absence of a button. During this time, 
 the soldiers do not move a muscle ; they are so many 
 idolaters in the presence of their irritated god. When 
 the inspection is over, the troops defile, as straight and 
 regular as obelisks, before the front of the court. Woe 
 to the regiment that bends or breaks its lines ; for 
 several months afterwards it will be compelled to go 
 through, without leaving off, during ten or twelve 
 hours a-day, the most fatiguing exercises, while the 
 officers and generals who command it will be loaded, 
 by their superiors, with epithets that defile the lips 
 which pronounce them. 
 
 The Russian army is not intelligent. Beneath the 
 European costume in which it is tricked out, it still 
 betrays its origin. Look at it ! it presents so heavy 
 and singular an appearance that the least practised 
 eye immediately recognises the disguised peasant, the 
 savage tamed but yesterday, hardly knowing* how to 
 march, and studying, to the best of his power, his part 
 of soldier, for which he was not intended. It is only 
 redoubtable by its masses ; which, however, can be very 
 efficaciously acted on by grape shot, as we have seen
 
 THE GRAND-DUKE MICHAEL.
 
 THE ARMY. 63 
 
 at Austerlitz, Friedland, and other places. The Rus- 
 sian soldier is not easily shaken. He docs not possess 
 that cool energy and contempt of danger, nor that 
 powerful reasoning of true courage, which characterises 
 the French army and makes heroes of men ; he is 
 merely a machine of war, which never reasons and is 
 cumbersome to move. His popes, moreover, foster in 
 him the idea that he is invincible, and that the bullet 
 or the cannon-ball destined to kill him, will reach him 
 quite as well from behind as from before ; but that, 
 nevertheless, if he turns his back to the enemy, and is 
 spared by death, he will be beaten with the stick and 
 with the knout. 
 
 People have often spoken of the passive obedience 
 of the llussian soldier to his orders. I believe in this 
 most implicitly, for his obedience is the natural result 
 of a murderous system of discipline, and is, besides, in 
 keeping with the disposition of the people. On the 
 occasion of an inundation or a fire, the sentinels will 
 rather be drowned or burnt alive than desert their 
 posts. 
 
 The penal system for the army is the same as that 
 for civilians. It is as arbitrary as the system of 
 recruiting or the decisions in the courts of law. It may 
 be summed up as consisting of three kinds of punish- 
 ment : the stick — the knout — and the rod. Hanging 
 is not practised, save for so-called political crimes and 
 attempts upon the life of the Czar. To restrain men 
 like these, the blood must flow, the flesh must be 
 hacked about, torn, and cut into bits, in a word, the
 
 54 THE KNOUT AND TUE RUSSIANS. 
 
 criminal must be cut to pieces in the sight of every 
 one. The Prussians know nothing of consigning a 
 man to barraclis, or condemning him to prison, or 
 inflicting on him any of the military punishments em- 
 ployed in all other countries for the suppression of 
 offences. 
 
 I have now drawn a picture of the Russian army. 
 I have magnified nothing, exaggerated nothing, ex- 
 tenuated nothing. Such as I myself found it, have I 
 described it. 
 
 Europe stands, therefore, face to face with a million 
 and a half of armed men, whose number, in a few 
 months, the Czar could double or treble, according as 
 the necessity of the case should be more or less impera- 
 tive. It is, most certainly, not a penury of men which 
 will ever embarrass Russia. That is not the cause of 
 its perplexity. What disquiets and worries the Czar, 
 is money and credit. But money and credit are not 
 the only things which trouble him, and of which there 
 is a scarcity ; that which he cannot obtain nor buy at 
 the greatest sacrifice, neither with the knout nor with 
 tne stick, is, as I said a few pages back, military intelli- 
 gence ; that unquenchable fire, in a word, of all free 
 nations, the honour of the flag ; this he finds impos- 
 sible to inculcate in his people. 
 
 I will conclude by relating a fact, which imtil now 
 has remained unknown, and which will show how 
 odious and coldly atrocious is the policy of the Czars, 
 when it is under the necessity of freeing itself from 
 those who embarrass it, or whom it fears. In such
 
 THE ARMY. 55 
 
 cases, it has recourse to the most perfidious means : 
 none are too bad for it. 
 
 In the sad and foolish disturbance of 1825, several 
 hundred young men of the highest families were gravely 
 compromised ; almost all of them belonged to the army. 
 Five were hanged upon the glacis of the citadel ; fifty 
 transported for life into the most savage and unhealthy 
 solitudes of Siberia, and the others drafted into a regi- 
 ment of the army of the Caucasus. I have before said 
 that a man is condemned to be a soldier for life with 
 fewer formalities than are observed, in other countries, 
 to sentence him to imprisonment for a few days. 
 Thus, in 1831, after the taking of Warsaw, the Czar, 
 without the least regard for the peculiar situation in 
 which several thousand yoimg Poles, who had served 
 in the army of independence, had been placed, defend- 
 ing their country, as they did, against slavery, looked on 
 them merely as revolutionists, and caused them also 
 to be incorporated in the same army of the Caucasus. 
 He would have preferred having them hanged or shot, 
 but he wished to give himself airs of generosity in the 
 eyes of Europe. We shall see what is called generosity 
 in Russia. 
 
 About 1835 or 1836, the Grand Duke Michael, the 
 Czar's brother, was sent to the Caucasus, under pre- 
 tence of inspecting the army, and being present at the 
 decisive blow which the Riissians were about to give 
 the ever-reviving power of Schamyl. But his journey 
 was really \mdertaken for a very different purpose. 
 
 Intelligence had been received at St. Petersburg, of
 
 56 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 the germs of a secret society having been sown in the 
 army, and the Poles were accused of being the prime 
 movers in the matter. It was necessary that it should be 
 crushed at any price. Immediately after his arrival, the 
 Prince published an order of the day, which he addressed 
 more particularly to the battalions composed of the 
 Poles and the condemned Russians. The moment was 
 come for them, he said, to regain their former 
 position in the mind of the Czar, who was already dis- 
 posed to pardon and forget their crimes. The troops 
 were about to proceed, he told them, to the assault 
 of an entrenched camp or of a town vigorously defended 
 by the Circassians, and the honours of the day were 
 reserved for these young men alone. He added that 
 he would see them properly supported, should this be 
 necessary. The next day, the Polish battalions set out, 
 and were allowed to get entangled in an ambuscade, 
 where they were all massacred under the very eyes of 
 the Muscovitish Prince, who, two days subsequently, 
 returned to St. Petersbiu-g, and announced to his 
 august brother that he had j^ti^'ffcd the army. 
 
 Was this a crime ? No — it was a trait of Kussian 
 manners !
 
 Tlfv. NnBn,TTY. 67 
 
 THE NOBILI'fY. 
 
 I. 
 
 Two classes of nobility are now contending with eact 
 other for the future direction of Russia; the feudal 
 nobility and the Tchinn. The first is in the exclusive 
 possession of all privileges as well as of the soil and the 
 peasants, while the second alone sways everything con- 
 nected with the machinery of the public administration, 
 the colleges, the gymnasia, the universities, and the 
 entire course of education in the empire. 
 
 This tchinn is a very strange institution ; it has not 
 its fellow in the world. Does it represent the middle 
 classes ? No. We may, perhaps, assimilate it to our 
 beaurocracy ; but it possesses power and influence, and 
 sometimes inspires the government with serious mis- 
 givings. 
 
 On his return from his travels in Holland, Ger- 
 many, France, and Italy, Peter the Great reckoned on 
 the transformation of his people proceeding from his 
 aristocracy. He hoped that the aristocracy which sur- 
 rounded him, perceiving the importance of the reforms 
 which he meditated introducing into his dominions, 
 would lend him its assistance and second him in his 
 efforts. He was A^Tong. The mae-nificcnt boyars rc-
 
 68 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 sembled then, as they stïll do even at the present day, 
 so many chiefs of different tribes. 
 
 Each village, commanded by the seignorial chateau, 
 was, in fact, a tribe, in which all the authority was 
 divided, without the least control, between the boyar 
 and the priest. Not only did they all energetically re- 
 fuse to lend themselves to the innovations of the Czar — 
 innovations which, after all, were calculated to augment 
 and strengthen rather than lessen their power — but 
 raised a thousand obstacles and impediments in his 
 way. Their opposition was, indeed, so violent some- 
 times, that the Czar was obliged to overcome it with the 
 sabre and the axe. As may easily be believed, his 
 ukases were not always looked on as right. His reforms 
 were too profound, and struck too much at the roots of 
 things ; they woimded the Oriental indolence and the 
 old prejudices of the nobles. 
 
 Irritated at seeing himself misunderstood by the 
 very persons on whose assistance he thought he had 
 the greatest right to reckon, since he did not deprive 
 them of any of the numerous privileges which they 
 enjoyed, and filled with bitterness at seeing these 
 boyars prefer the debauchery and orgies of a life of 
 luxury to the sweets and advantages of a state of 
 civilisation, ready made to their hands, he revenged 
 himself on their indifference. 
 
 Had the aristocracy possessed only a single head, 
 that head would have immediately been severed from 
 its body. There was something of Richelieu as well as 
 of Nero in the nature of the Czar. But the aristocracy
 
 TUE NUlilLll'ï. 59 
 
 was numerous and powerful ; he was obliged to treat it 
 with consideration. 
 
 II. 
 
 He turned his eves ekewhere. He sought among 
 the mass of his people for men wtio should assist him 
 in preparing his country to receive the seeds of civilisa- 
 tion, and in initiating it into his grand and sublime 
 plan for the future. 
 
 By a ukase, he declared that all persons who served 
 the state, either in a civil or military capacity, shoidd 
 be entitled to the same distinctions as the feudal 
 nobility ; that they should enjoy the same privileges 
 and prerogatives (except hereditary rank and the right 
 of possessing slaves) ; and that they should be pro- 
 moted, according to their merit and fitness, to Dublic 
 oflBces, observing, in their advancement, the rules of a 
 military hierarchy ; in a word, he formed a regiment of 
 all the ofiicials employed in the administration of his 
 vast empire. 
 
 The titles, grades, and distinctions created by Peter I. 
 remain unaltered at the present day. 
 
 Tn the first class of the tchinn are ranked the titles 
 of field-marshal, high-admiral, and grand-chancellor of 
 the empire. 
 
 In the second class are ranked the titles of generals, 
 admirals, governors of provinces, marshals of the court, 
 and councillors of the senate. 
 
 In the third class are ranked the vice-admirals, the 
 grand- equerries, and the procureurs of the senate. 
 
 £ 2
 
 60 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 In the fourth class are ranked the chamberlains, 
 rear-admirais, major-generals, etc. 
 
 In the fifth are classed the post-captains, the secre- 
 tary of the Emperor's cabinet, colonels in the army, the 
 officials of the post-office, of the imperial stables, etc. 
 
 In the fourteenth and last are ranked the valets-de- 
 chambre of the Czar and the princes, the supernu- 
 meraries employed in the public offices, etc. 
 
 The feudal aristocracy did not, at first, perceive the 
 trap which the Czar was laying for it. Perhaps even 
 he himself did not imagine what a future he was open- 
 ing to this army of scribes. The feudal nobiUty saw 
 in this institution only a pettish whim of Peter's, 
 a mere bait thrown to emancipated slaves and sons of 
 tradesmen, for consenting of their own free will to de- 
 vote themselves exclusively to the interests and affairs 
 of the state. It laughed at this petty nobility, which, 
 however, was destined to grow up by its side ; but 
 which, and this is an important fact, was not allowed 
 to hold either lauded property or slaves. It thought 
 that Peter was only endeavouring to create for himself 
 a nursery of devoted officials, who would spare it, the 
 feudal nobility, which hitherto had been the sole power 
 in the state, the ti'ouble, annoyance, and drudgery of 
 public affairs. It did not perceive that the Czar, by 
 removing it from the government, wrested from it its 
 influence for ever, and that on some future day, still far 
 distant doubtless, it would be at the mercy of the 
 tchinn, a new kind of aristocracy, but an envious and 
 jealous ai-istocracy, as everything spi-uug from nothing
 
 TUE NOBILITY. 61 
 
 is, when it begins to grow strong ; and an aristocracy 
 which is also destined, sooner or later, to become an 
 object of real danger to the state. 
 
 The hatred of the tchinn was increased every day 
 - — like the pride of a parvenu — by the marks of pre- 
 ference which the successors of Peter I. openly showed, 
 on all occasions, for the feudal nobility, whose wealth 
 was regarded with a jealous eye by these emancipated 
 serfs and titled tradesmen. 
 
 The last Czars who have governed Russia have, 
 however, skilfully introduced, in certain cases, heredi- 
 tary rank into the order of the tchinn. In spite of 
 the ancient nobility, they never refused to inscribe in 
 the " Book of Gold " such members of the petty 
 nobility as had deserved well of their country, either 
 by their services in the public administration, or by 
 brilliant actions in the army and navy. To adduce 
 but one example, I may state that Marshal Paskevitsch, 
 Count of Erivan and Prince of Warsaw, sprang from 
 the tchinn. 
 
 IV. 
 
 A century has hardly elapsed since the first creation 
 of the tchinn, and it is already a formidable power in 
 the empire, and one which the Czars will henceforth 
 have to respect. At the present day, it alone directs 
 the entire administration of Russia, and occupies 
 almost all the public offices and superior posts. It 
 presides in the senate. It is at the head of the pubUc
 
 62 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 tribunals, the army, the navy, and the church. It 
 forms the majority in the councils of the government ; 
 in a word, Russia is in its hands. 
 
 If this aristocracy of recuit date, which is extend- 
 ing every day, remembered its origin and preserved 
 the simple traditions belonging thereto, if it possessed 
 Bcience, education, probity, and aptitude for business, 
 if, at least, it inspired respect by the regularity of its 
 conduct and the purity of its morals, it would be ex- 
 tremely redoubtable. Feudalism woidd be crushed to- 
 morrow, and the power of the Czars be on the eve of 
 perishing. But it is ignorant, coarse, and vain, feared 
 and hated by the very people from whom it sprang, 
 and whom it treats even worse than they are treated 
 by the boyars themselves. 
 
 Recruited from among the ranks of the people, it 
 possesses nothing ; it does not enjoy, so to speak, an 
 independence, and subsists solely on the slender income 
 which it receives from the crown. This income is not 
 sufficient for the first and most simple necessities of 
 material existence. Niggardliness in the salaries of 
 officials is the evil which is eating away Russia, for 
 whenever the remuneration for services is insufficient, 
 abuses commence and venality appears. In Russia, 
 venality shows itself luider the most hideous and 
 cynical forms, and assumes proportions that are 
 actually frightful ; it has, if I may use the expression, 
 become endemial and chronic. The country is eaten 
 up by it to the very marrow. It not only infests the 
 inferior classes of the beaurocracy, but even men in
 
 THE NOBILITY. 63 
 
 the highest positions, and the most considerable per- 
 sonages in the empire. From the highest to the 
 lowest, among superiors as well as subalterns, every one 
 has his price, and the evil is still on the increase. 
 We must, however, except from this accusation, some 
 few great names, some few great families, among whom 
 the antique honour and hospitality of the country, are 
 still preserved in all their inviolability. 
 
 This wound is so profound and so incurable, it 
 is so fearfully palpable to the eyes of all men, that, one 
 day, the Czar Nicholas let fall these sad words : " The 
 tchinn would rob me of my cannons and my ships, if 
 it only knew where to hide them and to whom to sell 
 them." 
 
 In proportion as the tchinn felt its strength, it 
 tried it. Its first victim was Alexander I., for whose 
 death it was waiting impatiently, in order to annihilate 
 the feudal nobility, Avhose riches and privileges it 
 covets. But it had reckoned without the masculine 
 energy of the eminent man who at present governs 
 Russia. 
 
 y. 
 
 There exists an old tradition, accredited at Moscow, 
 and in which the people blindly believes, — namely, that 
 the Czar never reigns more than twenty-five years. 
 Having ascended the throne towards the end of 1825, 
 Nicholas, in the course of nature, ought, therefore, ac- 
 cording to this tradition, to have ceased reigning in
 
 64 THE KNOUT ANB THE EUSSlANS. 
 
 1850, and the two opposite parties were prepared, if 
 necessary, to aid in bringing this result about. 
 
 From 1839 till towards the end of 1847, a vast 
 net-work of conspiracies spread over Russia. The 
 Czar suspected their existence, but could not seize 
 their thread. The tchinn suffered nothing of its 
 plans to be perceived. Its opposition manifested itself 
 by an eternal small war of piquant jokes and even 
 caricatures, which covered the tables of their saloons, 
 of course without the names of their authors. Nicholas 
 was threatened with the same fate as his father, when 
 the revolution of February suddenly burst out in 
 France. Vienna, Berlin, and Stockholm fell into a 
 state of anarchy, and the populace was guilty of the 
 most abominable excesses. The boyars M^ere seized 
 with fear at this state of liberty, and felt that it would 
 cause the loss of their privileges and fortune. They 
 remembered the massacres of the military colonies in 
 1831, and trembled lest the same fate should be re- 
 served for themselves. They accordingly once more drew 
 near the court, and grouped themselves around the 
 Czar, whose assassination they had been plotting only 
 the day previous. 
 
 As for the tchinn, it believed naively in the pro- 
 phecy of General Lafayette, and continued to conspire. 
 Thanks to the humanity of the Emperor, the con- 
 spiracy ended only in the transportation to Siberia of 
 the majority of the conspirators, whom a generous 
 pardon has, since then, sought out beyond the banks 
 of the Yenisei.
 
 THE NOBILITY. 65 
 
 We may fearlessly assert that Socialism did the 
 Emperor Nicholas good service, and saved him from 
 death. 
 
 The -wisdom of the Monarch has, for the present, 
 warded off many dangers. Gradually, however, all 
 fears will vanish ; and with the return of calm, ideas of 
 independence will again assume the upper hand. The 
 old feelings of hatred may again be revived, more ter- 
 rible than ever, between the two castes, both equally 
 incapable of governing the state, but both animated by 
 an ardent thirsting after liberty, and both hating, fi^m 
 the bottom of their hearts, the family of the Romanoffs, 
 who, in their eyes, represent nothing save the most 
 terrible servitude and despotism. What will be the 
 result ? No one can say, but we may be permitted to 
 believe that the serf will only take a part in the move- 
 ment in order to assist in the massacre of those feudal 
 nobles of Tartar origin, who, for we must freely speak 
 the truth of all, have so long and so cruelly oppressed 
 and maltreated him. 
 
 On the ruins of the institutions which the tchinn 
 or the feudal nobility will have overthrown, what 
 structvire will be built up ? An oligarchic republic, 
 the most monstrous of all forms of government, would 
 strike root in this strange land, destined, before the ex- 
 piration of a centmy, to see many other singular things. 
 It would not be the first time that this Utopian project 
 had entered the heads of Russians. Did not the Princes 
 Dolgorouky vainly attempt the foundation of an im- 
 possible oligarchy, in the time of the unfortunate
 
 66 ' THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 Peter II., who died under the blows inflicted by their 
 savage brutality? In 1825, too, had not the efforts of 
 Petel Mouravieff and Prince Troubetzkoi, the same ob- 
 ject ? Moscow would become the seat of government, 
 and we should see in the old Kremlin, that gorgeous 
 palace built by barbarians, a Council of Ten, and, — who 
 knows ? — perhaps also a Doge. 
 
 In no case, however, would either the tchinn or 
 the feudal nobility emancipate the people from the 
 state of brutal serfdom in which they have ever been 
 kept.
 
 THE CLERGY. 67 
 
 THE CLERGY. 
 
 I. 
 
 Among all nations of the earth, even amongst the 
 most barbarous savages of Polynesia, the priests, or, 
 to speak more generally, the representatives of re- 
 ligion, enjoy a certain amount of consideration, and con- 
 stitute a power, more or less preponderant, in the state. 
 
 In Russia, the exact contrary is the case ; they 
 form the class which is the least respected of any. 
 
 In every other country, in which the Christian reli- 
 gion has spread its benefits, barbarism has gradually 
 made place for a milder and purer state of morals and 
 manners. In Russia, the contrary is again the case. 
 A state of most foul barbarism is there kept up in the 
 name of religion and of God Himself, by His own 
 ministers. The inequality of social rank is there 
 maintained, with barefaced effrontery, at the very foot 
 of the cross and before the altar. 
 
 The Russian clergy obeys none of the precepts 
 of the Almighty or of the Evangelists ; it does not 
 preach, catechise, nor teach the doctrines of Holy Writ. 
 It is destitute of that sacred authority which inter- 
 poses between sovereigns and the rigoiu's of the law. 
 Never, to my knowledge at least, was there an in- 
 stance of a priest soliciting or obtaining the pardon of
 
 68 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 a criminal. So far from this being the case, the Rus- 
 sian clergy, on the contrary, has constituted itself the 
 servile instrument of the government, to keep the po- 
 pulation under the yoke of passive and unlimited 
 obedience ; it has allowed itself, like the peasant, to be 
 moulded to the most abject servitude. The govern- 
 ment, far from endeavouring to ameliorate the moral 
 condition of the clergy by the diffusion of knowledge, 
 does all it can, on the contrary, to increase its ignor- 
 ance and state of mental darkness, in order the better 
 to assure its own domination. 
 
 It is a hard thing to avow, but the Russian clergy 
 is neither learned nor moral. It is intolerant, gross- 
 and debauched ; religious sentiment, as well as the in, 
 stinct of a high order of morality, is entirely unknown 
 to it. It never performs its sacerdotal functions ac- 
 cording to the rules of wisdom and simple probity. It 
 directs no one's conscience, because it does not possess 
 that lively faith which carries conviction with it ; it 
 does not trouble itself about those who suffer, it does 
 not seek out nor alleviate misery, it dries no tear, 
 cicatrises no wound, and cures no disease of the soul, 
 because it has neither consolation nor hope to offer 
 those who are afflicted and unhappy. It never thinks 
 of correcting vice, and it prays for no one, because no 
 one ever comes to request its help. 
 
 Like the chamanes' of the most remote parts of 
 Mongolia, it passes its life plunged in idleness and 
 
 1 The name given to the native priests.
 
 THE CLERGY. fi9 
 
 ignorance. Such is tlie grossness of its manners, that 
 it does not even feel the want of raising itself in its 
 own esteem, in order to merit the respect and esteem 
 of others. In a word, the Russian clergy does not live 
 for prayer, nor aspire to heavenly things ; the priest- 
 liood, in its eyes, is not a vocation, but a trade ; the 
 only thing it troubles itself about is its material sub- 
 sistence. 
 
 It endeavours to fulfil the office of Providence for no 
 one ; it is neither the safeguard of family honour, nor 
 the protector of the peasants against the brutal, de- 
 praved, and lustful passions of the boyars, or their 
 intendants, whose oppressive, murderous, and homi- 
 cidal doctrines it never interposes to check, for it is 
 itself the most hypocritically domineering body of men 
 in the whole world. 
 
 II. 
 
 In Roman Catholic and Protestant countries the 
 clergy devotes itself, body and soul, to its flocks ; but 
 we must not look for anything of the kind in Russia, 
 where the clergy possesses neither pity nor self-devo- 
 tion. A Russian priest was never seen endeavouring 
 to reform a hardened criminal, or sitting at the bed- 
 side of the sick, lu'ging the sufferer to resignation. 
 Their missionaries are not endowed with the heroic 
 spirit which inspires others to make converts in India, 
 Australasia, China, in the most savage countries of the 
 globe, and, in a word, in every place where there are souls
 
 70 THE KNOUT AND THE EUSSIANS. 
 
 to be enlightened and gained over to God, and -who die 
 terrible deaths by the sword of the idolator or the hand 
 of the pagan. For this reason, the Russian clergy has 
 no list of martyrs to oflPer for our admiration. 
 
 Since I am upon the subject of Russian mission- 
 aries, shall I tell you, reader, how they fulfil their 
 sacred office ? Theii- baggage does not exactly resemble 
 that of our priests. The latter possess faith, courage, 
 and hope ; the former set out upon their expedition, 
 followed by carts loaded with tobacco, brandy, and 
 other strong liquors, and escorted by a few Cossacks, to 
 visit the Samoëdi, the Kamtschatkans, the Laplanders, 
 the Vogouls, and others, whom they attract by the 
 promise of rewards, and, instead of preaching the Gos- 
 pel, preach intemperance. Each neophyte receives a 
 bottle of brandy, a pound of tobacco, and a salkou (two- 
 and-elevenpence). For half this, these people would 
 become anything — Jews, Christians, or Mohammedans ; 
 they would adore the sun or the moon, a camel or a 
 hippopotamus. The missionary immerses them in the 
 first muddy stream he comes across, makes them kiss a 
 large cross, hangs a smaller one round their neck mth 
 a piece of string, and converts them without more ado 
 into Christians and members of the Greek church ! 
 By the time a village has been thus baptised, all the 
 inhabitants are in a state of intoxication. The mis- 
 sionary then proceeds to the next village, and re-com- 
 mences, in the same manner, the same kind of religious 
 propagandism, with the same ceremonies and without 
 any Christian instruction. The Russian missionary
 
 THE CLERGY. 71 
 
 does not trouble his head about instruction ; he teaches 
 his savages neither to read nor to write ; this would 
 be teaching them to think, and the government is not 
 particularly anxious for them to do that. 
 
 When the Esquimaux have devoured the proceeds 
 of their baptism, they immediately set out to look for 
 another missionary, whom they request to baptise them 
 again, and give them another gratuity : it is rare to 
 meet one of them who has not been baptised half-a- 
 dozen times. Not one knows a word of prayer ; all 
 their religious knowledge is limited to making the sign 
 of the cross. 
 
 Formerly, not fifteen years ago, Russian mission- 
 aries proceeded with less gentleness, for the government 
 had said to them, "Go and make Christians!" In 
 obedience to this command, they set out, followed by 
 an escort of Cossacks, sword in hand, and lance at their 
 side. On arriving at any tribe, they assembled all its 
 members. Those Avho would not come of their own 
 free will, were dragged thither by Cossacks, who hunted 
 the poor wTctches before them by driving their lances 
 into their backs ; those who refused to be baptised 
 were thrown without further ceremony into the water. 
 
 If you tell a Russian priest to take the initiative in 
 a work of charity, or to economise in order to assist 
 the wretched being who extends his hand for alms, or 
 the infirm old man who can no longer labour, he will 
 laugh in your face. Acts of sublime devotion, charity, 
 and humility, are virtues not current in the Russian 
 church.
 
 72 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 The Russian saints are rare and seldom invoked. 
 The Russians cite scarcely any others than St. Andrew, 
 St. Gregory, St. Dmitry, St. Nicholas, St. Peter, and 
 St, George. The rest are very little known. 
 
 I have one remark to make here, and that is, that 
 the Russian calendar offers but a very small number of 
 female saints for the respect of the faithful. 
 
 III. 
 
 Instances of superstition among the Russians are 
 innumerable. These superstitions do not assume, as 
 with us, a certain appearance of poetry, which renders 
 them excusable ; but are, on the contrary, absurd, 
 ridiculous, brutal, and barbarous, like those who practise 
 them. It is easy to see that the people have been but 
 recently converted to Christianity. 
 
 The clergy makes no attempt to root out and destroy 
 those superstitious notions, the children of paganism, 
 which are to be met with in countless numbers among 
 the coimtry people, and also the inhabitants of the 
 cities. No — no ! the clergy has something else to do. 
 Besides, by working upon their prejudices and super- 
 stition, it can govern better, and more easily keep under 
 its yoke, the degraded people. 
 
 There is nothing in their religious rites and cere- 
 monies which equals the pomp and the sublime gran- 
 deur of the Roman Catholic church. Never did a 
 Russian church echo back the sacred songs, prayers, 
 and canticles which elev.nte the soul towards its Créa-
 
 THE CLERGY. 73 
 
 tor. The snuffling voice of the popes, whose tone 
 betray their habits of drinking, mingles with the hoarse, 
 brutal voice of the deacon, who alone chaunts a few 
 prayers. 
 
 There is no pulpit in a Russian church ; of what 
 good would it be, since both the Old and New Testa- 
 ments are prohibited works, in the same manner as a 
 love- tale is a sealed book to a young girl ? ^ Besides, 
 what would a Russian priest say from the pulpit, sup- 
 posing there was one, seeing that he is endowed neither 
 with the grace of piety nor the power of forgiveness, and 
 since he does not inspire any respect either for his 
 chastity, the purity of his morals, his discreetness, or 
 any of those virtues which even the most indulgent 
 persons expect to meet with in a clergyman ? 
 
 To enter the Russian church, it is not necessary to 
 possess any certificate of capacity ; it is not necessary 
 to be educated, moral, or chaste, or to have devoted 
 years to special study. An educated man would be a 
 dangerous personage ! The popes and protoj)opes do 
 not possess the slightest knowledge of the rudiments 
 of polite learning or the arts ; they are ignorant of the 
 laws and history of their country, and hardly know their 
 own language. Under Peter I., and even Catherine II., 
 they knew nothing about it at all. They are not ac- 
 quainted with the fathers of the primitive chm-ch, and 
 have scarcely studied the Sacred Writings. Of what 
 use, in fact, would a knowledge of all these subjects be to 
 
 ' The propagation of the Bible was prohibited in 1826. 
 D
 
 74 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 them? Would it serve to instruct the people ? No! 
 because the people are not beings possessed of minds ; 
 for brutes like them, all that is requisite are certain 
 formulce and superstitious practices. 
 
 Any individual can become a priest. As a first 
 step towards learning his business, a Russian is ap- 
 pointed subdeacon, an office which we may look upon 
 as several degrees beneath that of a beadle or sacristan, 
 whose duties he fulfils. He lets his beard and his hair 
 grow, for this is the distinguishing sign of the priest- 
 hood. He sweeps out the church, lights the candles, 
 takes care of the holy vessels, and chaunts mass in a 
 tone that is calculated to make the panes rattle in the 
 •windows, or even to break them and frighten all the 
 children. His advancement depends upon the volume 
 of his voice : the more formidable that is, the greater 
 chance he has of rising. When a candidate is declared 
 to be sufficiently instructed in his duties, he is conse- 
 crated, having first been obliged to marry before he can 
 celebrate mass and enter on his office. He is then sent 
 to some village or other, to stagnate in the same im- 
 purities as his predecessors and his masters. 
 
 IT. 
 
 It seems a strange thing, that, contrary to the 
 general custom of the coimtry, which is remarkable for 
 anything but gallantry and refinement to the fair sex, 
 all the members of the clergy profess the greatest kind- 
 ness for their wives, whom they treat with the utmost
 
 THE CLERGY. 75 
 
 consideration, respect, solicitude, and even weakness, — 
 so much so, indeed, that it is often the women Avho 
 govern the church. The secret of this respect and ten- 
 derness, so much at variance with the disdain and 
 brutality of which the women in all classes of Russian 
 society are commonly the victims, is easily explained. 
 
 I observed, a few lines back, that, to be qualified 
 for entering into holy orders, the Russian priest must 
 be married ; if he is a widower, he cannot pursue his 
 sacred calling without the express permission of his 
 bishop ; if this is refused, there are two doors open for 
 him : he either retires into a convent, in which case he 
 has a chance of being made a bishop, or else he hastens 
 to marry again, but he then once more becomes a 
 layman. 
 
 Tradesmen's daughters are very partial to marriages 
 with priests, as it promises them a certain amount of 
 domestic happiness. 
 
 It often happens that there is but one priest and 
 one church for the entire estate of a boyar, and that 
 this estate contains several villages separated from each 
 other by enormous distances, which it is almost impos- 
 sible to traverse at any season of the year, save in 
 winter by means of sledges. The peasants, who have 
 neither priest nor church, live like mere brutes. 
 
 The priest dwells near his church, which is always 
 situated wherever the chateau of his lord may be. 
 The boyar will not put himself out of the way, even to 
 pray to his God. To spare these corrupted nobles the 
 fetigue of a few steps, a population of several thousand
 
 76 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 souls is necessitated to travel seven or eight leagues on 
 foot, across spongy marslies, vfith. -water and mud up to 
 their middle, or snow up to their shoulders, at the 
 risk of being engulphed and perishing. The priests 
 have never complained of this state of things. What 
 matters it that the unhappy peasants die like dogs by 
 the roadside, killed by the cold or suffocated in the 
 quagmires ? It is certainly a very important affair to 
 trouble one's head about, that a few persons should be 
 suffocated or killed by the cold ! Neither the boyar 
 nor the priest takes even as much care of the peasants 
 as the planters of America do for the preservation of 
 a negro. Nowhere in the whole world is a man's life 
 held so cheap as in Russia. 
 
 The village cemeteries resemble the yards in our 
 cities where knackers slaughter and flay horses. A 
 hole, some few feet deep, is dug in the earth, and the 
 bodies are thro\vn into it, without a prayer, and almost 
 without a tear or a last farewell ! Nothing on the tomb 
 ■will ever call to mind the name of him who has just 
 expired, and who now lies beneath the sod. A simple 
 cross, made of two branches of green wood, broken off 
 in the forest, is the only memento placed there. The 
 priest does not put himself out of the way to attend a 
 burial. The dead body is brought to him on a cart or 
 sledge — according to the season — drawn by the nearest 
 relatives of the deceased, or by a cow or horse, without 
 the slightest ceremony whatever. 
 
 In the large cities, matters are not managed with 
 more decency or pomp than when a peasant is concerned.
 
 THE CLETIGT. 77 
 
 At St. Petersburg, the cemeteries are, so to speak, 
 under water. The tombs are obliged to be raised. In 
 spite of this precaution, however, when a storm drives 
 back the Neva into the streets of the city, the waves 
 beat against and throw down the tombs. The coffins, 
 being carried away by the waters, float along on the 
 gulf or the river, and, when driven by the wind, are 
 stranded in the streets or on the quays of the capital, 
 carrying infection with them. This was especially the 
 case in 1824. 
 
 The clergy, like the govei-nment, shows no respect 
 for the living ; it shows no more for the dead. When 
 there is a scarcity of room, the tomls are profaned, 
 and the corpses, scarcely putrified, dragged out. The 
 bones, still covered with pieces of flesh, and the skulls, 
 with the hair still on them, are scattered around, pell- 
 mell, to whiten on the ground, if the wolves of the 
 neighbouring forests happen not to devour them. 
 
 V. 
 
 I repeat it : the Russian clergy is without instruc- 
 tion and without morals. In the country, its members 
 live exactly as the peasants do. They do not enjoy 
 more consideration nor are they better lodged than the 
 vilest of slaves. Their winter costume consists of the 
 skins of beasts ; their language is coarse. Were it not 
 for the long floating hair, and long cane which a priest 
 always carries, he would be taken for a moujik. The 
 members of the Russian clergy plough and sow their
 
 78 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 fields and gather in their crops themselves : they often 
 sacrifice to Bacchus, and seek in drunkenness to forget 
 their servitude and abject condition. 
 
 The official costume of a priest consists of a long 
 robe, either of linen or black or brown silk, according 
 to the rneans of the wearer, of an overcoat with wide 
 sleeves and cufis turned up with fur, and of a tall 
 cylindrical cap, ornamented at the bottom with a band 
 of long fur. He wears upon his breast a plated or cop- 
 per cross, suspended, by a chain of the same metal, and 
 carries a large Malacca cane, Avith a gold or ivory top, 
 like that of a drum-major. This said cane is not less 
 than four feet and a half long. 
 
 In addition to performing his sacerdotal duties, the 
 Russian priest exercises the trade of selling hogs. 
 These bogs are representations of the Virgin Mary, our 
 Saviour, and a certain number of the male and female 
 saints held in most respect by the members of the Greek 
 church. They are coarse paintings on pieces of wood 
 or thin plates of copper. The face and hands are alone 
 visible, the rest of the body being concealed beneath 
 an exceedingly thin tunic of gold or silver foil. The 
 logs in repute are let out, at a very high price, by the 
 week or month. This price varies, however, according 
 to the miracles the pictures have performed, either in 
 favour of women in childbed, or as preservatives against 
 the cholera, etc. If a person is contented with the hog 
 he has hired, he ornaments it, at his own cost, with 
 precious stones, according to his means, and over and 
 above the specified price. Such is the barbarous sun-
 
 THE CLERGY. 79 
 
 plicity of the people, that they hire these pictui*es for 
 the purpose of praying to them, night and day, to rid 
 them of their enemies or of some rich relation whose 
 pi'operty they hope to inherit, and who takes a long 
 time to die. 
 
 There are certain pictures of virgins which enjoy & 
 greater reputation than others ; such, for instance, are 
 those of the Virgin tvith three Hands, the Virgin of 
 Vladimir, the Bleeding Virgin, etc. Most of these are 
 believed by the people to have been- painted by the 
 angels or the Holy Ghost. 
 
 The Russians have a great respect for their bogs. 
 Whenever they enter a room, they bow three times, 
 almost to the ground, to these pictures, and make the 
 sign of the cross, before they offer their homage to the 
 lady of the house. 
 
 VI. 
 
 If the clergy is con'upt and ignorant, the monks 
 are absolutely gangrened. I should be obliged to write 
 an entire volume, if I were to narrate all their vile 
 acts. It is among them that Russian ignorance and 
 grossness flourish in all their primitive vigour. The 
 acts of austerity practised by the anchorites of olden 
 times, are things unknown. Continence, temperance, 
 and chastity, are words not found in the dictionary of 
 the Russian language. The monks are penned, rather 
 than lodged, in immense buildings, magnificent with- 
 out, and repulsively filthy within. According to the 
 national custom, they live, so to speak, animally, drhik-
 
 80 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 ing, eating, sleeping, and cliaunting prayers as drunk- 
 ^ ards sing bacchanalian songs, and without more respect 
 or awe for the sacred edifices. It is not the ordeals of 
 life, reverses, grief, pious exaltation, nor excess of 
 virtue, which induce Russians to devote themselves to 
 the service of religion ; it is indolence and voluptuous- 
 ness. The members of these convents are chosen only 
 from among the lowest individuals of the tchinn, 
 emancipated serfs, small tradesmen, and tutti quanti. 
 
 There are nor sisters of charity in Russia, for where, 
 indeed, should we ever hope to find, among this people 
 of slaves, the superhuman courage of the admirable 
 sisters of the order of Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint 
 Joseph, and Saint Maur, — women who end, in self- 
 mortification and penitence, a life already tried by so 
 many struggles and sacrifices, and withdraw from the 
 world to devote themselves to the alleviation of the 
 sufierings of the poor, the infirm, the sick, the old, 
 and the fatherless ! 
 
 The ser\ice of the hospitals is performed by male 
 attendants, who, in the most shameless manner, strip 
 the patients of the little money or other property they 
 had on entering the establishment, or convert into 
 cash the various articles left by those who die. These 
 men sell their attendance and help for ready money 
 only. The cause of this rapacity must be sought for as 
 much in the national character, as in the fact of their 
 receiving no salary, or at least so small a one that it is 
 impossible for them to live on it. 
 
 These attendants, moreover, are taken from the
 
 THli CLERGY. 81 
 
 most degraded classes ; many of tliem, for instance, 
 are old soldiers, who can serve no longer. Having 
 themselves suffered, for five-and-tweuty years, the 
 most horrible privations, they put into practice the 
 proverb which informs them that charity should always 
 begin at home, and appropriate to their own use the 
 rations destined for the sick. If you speak to them of 
 Christian zeal, devotion, and self-denial, they will ask 
 you, without a blush, whether these virtues CA'cr kept 
 those who practised them ! Venality has found its way 
 even into the sanctuary of God. In these holy cities 
 of the sick, this sore is so vast and so terrible, that 
 nine-tenths of the frightful mortality which reigns 
 there, is attributed to the privations and the want of 
 attention to which the patients are subjected, through 
 the embezzlements and frauds of the directors and 
 subordinate officers. The Russians generally have a 
 natural inclination for thieving ; the persons admitted 
 into the hospitals never leave them without stealing 
 something or other, no matter what it may be. The 
 attendants have robbed them, and, therefore, they will 
 rob the attendants or the establishment; they will carry 
 off the sheets or the coiinterpane, and they would carry 
 off even their beds if they could. To guard against 
 these acts of larceny, the convalescent patients are 
 conducted, under a good escort, to the door, which is 
 carefully closed upon them. 
 
 Having enumerated the shameful vices and most 
 shameful state of corruption by which the clergy is 
 distinguished, I should like to be able to note dowT» its
 
 82 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 good qualities and virtues ; but, as the Russians them- 
 selves confess, it is very indigent in this respect. 
 
 " But," the reader will ask me, " what is the good 
 of such a clergy, if it is really what you say it is ? 
 What is the good of it?" The explanation is easy : 
 the clergy is the most docile and most powerful instru- 
 ment possessed by the Russian government for main- 
 taining the people in the fear of the Czar, and of — God ! 
 It serves to keep alive in their breasts the most bar- 
 barous superstitions, the most monstrous prejudices, the 
 most odious fanaticism, the most passive obedience, and 
 the most dense ignorance ! 
 
 The Czar regards these as the best means of govern- 
 ing his people. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The functions of the priest are limited to baptizing, 
 marrying, and burying the population, and sapng the 
 smallest possible number of prayers. The Bible, as I 
 have said, is prohibited. The New Testament has been 
 translated expressly for the use of the people, and the 
 reader would be astonished to see how it has been 
 travestied. The catechism for children teaches and com- 
 mands them to love the Czar before God, and says that 
 it is a crime to love any one else. As for the prayers, 
 they are confined to the Pater and the Credo, with the 
 Czar's addition : " I believe in God in heaven and in 
 the Czar on earth . . . ." 
 
 A peasant who could read the Bible, or who was 
 discovered reading or explaining it to his family, his
 
 THE CLERGY. 83 
 
 friends, and his neighbours, would instantly be knouted, 
 whipped, and sent off to the deepest of the Siberian 
 mines. We can, of course, easily understand that it 
 would not do for the people to know that they are made 
 in the image of God, like their emperor, their lord, his 
 intendant, and the whole endless catalogue of indivi- 
 duals who plunder and oppress them all the year round. 
 If they ever discovered that they were formed of the 
 same clay as their oppressors, and that Christ preached 
 equality and liberty, what a revolution, what ruin, what 
 acts of vengeance, and what massacres, would the dis- 
 covery occasion ! 
 
 The clergy is not paid by the state. It draws its 
 means of livelihood directly from the people in the 
 villages, and from the tradesmen and the boyars in the 
 cities. Once every year, after the Easter festivals, the 
 priest, accompanied by his sacristan, goes round and 
 blesses the rooms, stables, warehouses, shops, work- 
 shops, and, in a word, every house, from top to bottom, 
 situated within the limits of his parish, at the same 
 time receiving the voluntary gifts of his parishioners. 
 The sum total of the presents, which are left to the 
 generosity of each individual, amounts to an exceed- 
 ingly small sum. The best parishes in Moscow and 
 St. Petersburg do not bring in £240. In the villages, 
 the priest does not collect more than is strictly neces- 
 sary for him to live ; and he fleeces the peasants, when 
 the lord of the estate does not provide sufficiently for 
 his wants and those of his family, which is frequently 
 very numerous.
 
 84 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 The result of this insufficient, and, above all, this 
 uncertain salary, is that the priest sells the mysteries 
 of religion. He traffics in absolution, confession, bap- 
 tism, marriage, and everything else, even in the sacra- 
 ment and the holy bread, just as he chooses. Nothing 
 is to be obtained from him, even for a sick person at 
 the point of death, unless the price has been discussed 
 and settled beforehand ! The relatives are obliged to 
 club together to pay for a prayer, while the dying man 
 is waiting ; and, most frequently, the latter passes into 
 eternity without receiving the rites he desired. 
 
 The Russians have four Lents. The first, which is 
 ours as well, precedes Easter; the second extends 
 from the day of Pentecost to St. Peter's day ; the third, 
 from the 1st to the 15th of August ; while the fourth 
 lasts for fifteen days before Christmas. The peasants, 
 lower classes, and tradesmen, observe the first with the 
 greatest austerity. During this period, their food is 
 entirely composed of vegetables, salted mushrooms, 
 bitter cabbage, cucumbers, and preserved pumpkins. 
 This regimen, which is anything but substantial under 
 a climate which requires, on the contrary, the use of 
 tonics, is jiartially the cause of the ravages invai-iablv 
 made by the cholera at the beginning of the year.
 
 THE CLERGY. S6 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The ecclesiastical hierarchy, consisting of arch- 
 bishops, bishops, popes, protopopes, deacons, sub- 
 deacons, etc., is nearly the same as in the Latin church. 
 The prelates cannot appoint persons to vacant benefices 
 •without the approval of the holy synod. The Em- 
 peror's will presides over the most trifling deeds and 
 actions of the clergy. Nothing is done without his 
 participatioh and consent, and the prescripts of the 
 ch\u-ch are signed by a cavalry general.* 
 
 There is no emulation, because there is no advance- 
 ment. The inferior clergy never rises to the prelacy, 
 because the bishops and archbishops can only be 
 chosen from among the superior members of the 
 monastic orders, such as the archimandrites, for in- 
 stance, who hold the same rank with respect to Rus- 
 sian convents as the Generals of the Orders do in Italy, 
 
 The clergy enjoys only one prerogative, which, 
 however, belongs to the feudal nobility as well : it 
 never suffers the knout or the whip. But the Russian 
 government knows very well how to suit the law to its 
 own purpose. When necessity requires it, it causes 
 the offending pope to be publicly degraded, and, after 
 
 * See the passages in the Introduction, page 22, treating of 
 the Emperor's influence on the constitution of the clergy.
 
 86 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 condemning him to the knout or the whip, has him 
 transported to Siberia. 
 
 Above the archbishops are the metropolitans, of 
 •whom there are only three in the empire. 
 
 The Greek church is what we should have expected 
 her to be when she separated from Rome. She wished 
 to become independent, and has fallen under the bru- 
 talising yoke of the sabre at Constantinople and Mos- 
 cow. For six centuries has she suffered the penalty of 
 her treason. In Russia, the patriarch Nicon wished to 
 raise and deliver her from this state of servitude, 
 but he perished in the attempt, Peter I. recollected 
 Nicon' s efforts, and reduced the Russian church to the 
 most complete state of servitude. 
 
 In spite of the hubbub made by the clergy, Peter 
 established liberty of conscience in his empire, not that 
 he was more tolerant than his subjects with regard to 
 his clergy, but because he wished to induce foreigners 
 to emigrate and settle in the country, to promote which, 
 the change he introduced was nothing more nor less 
 than a vital condition. After all, this spirit of tolera- 
 tion does not extend to any one save foreigners. For 
 the nation subjected to the sceptre of the Czars, it is 
 but a mere delusion. 
 
 It is not long since Russian subjects, whatever 
 they might be — members of the Greek church or 
 idolators, protestants or parsees — who became con- 
 verts to Catholicism, were shut up in a convent for 
 life. Their property was confiscated, and the priest 
 or minister who had effected their conversion was in-
 
 THF CLERGT. 87 
 
 eluded, by the vengeance of the holy synod, in their 
 punishment, while their godfathers and godmothers 
 were sent to end their days in Siberia. 
 
 At the present day, the law is quite as severe and 
 quite as brutal as it was twenty-five years ago. It 
 frees from the duty of obedience and from servitude 
 the peasants of every boyar who is converted. This 
 amounts to a confiscation of his estates, since their 
 value is proportioned to the number of slaves who 
 cultivate them. 
 
 Converts have only one method of escaping the 
 fury of the Russian clergy, and that is : before they are 
 baptised, to sell their property under some pretence 
 or other, to cause the proceeds to be sent secretly 
 abroad, — for in Russia a man has no greater right to 
 dispose freely of his fortune than of his person — and 
 then to leave for ever this land of tyranny and des- 
 potism. 
 
 There is not a creed of the old world which cannot 
 boast of having its sectaries and possessing its temple, 
 its church, its mosque, its synagogue, or its chapel, in 
 Russia. The Cossacks, the inhabitants of the Crimea, 
 the Tartars, the Mongols, and most of the nomade 
 tribes, conform to the tenets of Islamism ; while the 
 Courlanders, the Esthonians, and the Fins profess 
 Lutheranisra, In Georgia, Poland, and the govern- 
 ments of the west, the Roman ritual is predominant. 
 
 At Moscow, St. Petersburg, Astrakhan, and Odessa, 
 alone, there are Catholic churches or chapels, in which 
 service is performed by Polish Benedictines.
 
 88 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS, 
 
 Everywhere that the Tartar element is predominant, 
 Mohammedanism possesses its temples and public 
 schools. Government tolerates and respects the cus- 
 toms and usages of the people professing this faith, 
 and even permits polygamy. 
 
 There is a great number of Jews (several millions) 
 scattered over the Russian territory, but they possess 
 synagogues only in those places where they form the 
 principal portion of the population. They are for- 
 bidden, in the most absolute manner, to dwell in Mos- 
 cow or St. Petersburg. I am ignorant what is the 
 motive of the interdiction. Is it to be attributed to the 
 bustling and active spirit of this people ? Be that as it 
 may, however, it is very certain that no Jew can enter 
 or reside in either of the two capitals, unless he has 
 obtained a special permission, which is always sold by 
 the police at a very high price : even then he can only 
 make a stay of three days. Nor can the children of 
 Israel approach these two cities nearer than a certain 
 specified distance, either for the purposes of trade, or 
 for the sake of establishing manufactories. 
 
 IS. 
 
 In the skilful hands of the Czar, the Russian clergy 
 is the most precious instrimient of government. The 
 effects of Catholicism are, by its very nature, civilising, 
 and, for this reason, the Czar endeavours to crush and 
 annihilate it, as far as he can, by a thousand trammels, 
 and all kinds of vexatious proceedings. Russia doe«
 
 
 I 
 
 [ 
 
 
 J ' 
 
 / ^y
 
 THE CLERGY. 89 
 
 not hesitate adopting the most odious means, and pur- 
 suing a course of the most arbitrary action, with scarcely 
 the slightest attempt at disguise, in order to attain the 
 realisation of its daily dream, namely — religious unity, 
 
 Poles are only admitted to take part in the admin- 
 istration of the empire on condition of embracing the 
 Greek religion, or at least of bringing up their children 
 to it. If a man desires to please the Emperor, and his 
 police, and wishes never to be disturbed, hunted down, 
 or annoyed by the agents of the latter — if, in a word, 
 he would live quietly, he has no choice in the matter 
 of" his religion. He must not hesitate ; he must either 
 become a renegade and abandon the faith of his fathers, 
 or make up his mind to be subjected to every possible 
 kind of annoyance ; and the Russian police is very fer- 
 tile in expedients in all that regards this. Every day 
 he feels the effect of its hatred by a thousand outrages, 
 and, whatever precautions he may take in order to live 
 in peace with the police, it is sure to satisfy its ven- 
 geance on him somehow. If his neighbour's house is 
 burnt down, he will be accused of setting fire to it ; if 
 he himself is a landlord, and his tenants will not pay 
 their rent, justice will stop her ears ; if he attempts to 
 make a noise about the matter, he will be requested to 
 hold his tongue. I could give a great many more in- 
 stances, equally striking ; but I refrain. 
 
 The Russian police has made more proselytes to the 
 Greek church, than the missionaries and the popes. 
 This explains why, at the present day, half of Russian 
 Poland is converted. It was a question of life and death.
 
 90 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 The Polish Archbishop of Smolensk, having nothing 
 more to do in his diocese, which is almost entirely con- 
 verted, has been summoned to St. Petersburg, where 
 he now resides. 
 
 It has been said that, in matters of religion, there 
 never were any great quarrels in Russia, and that its 
 history did not offer the spectacle of those struggles 
 which bathed in blood so many other countries of 
 Europe. 
 
 Several causes have concurred to save Russia from 
 religious troubles. In the first place, it never pos- 
 sessed the resources which printing offered in every 
 other country, for the propagation of ideas and schisms. 
 The circulation of books, whether manuscript or printed, 
 is formally prohibited, and if any copyists were dis- 
 covered they would be subjected to the most atro- 
 cious punishments, while any one daring to write upon 
 the tenets of religion would be sentenced to death. 
 On the other hand, the Russian government does not 
 permit the publication of miracles and visions, except 
 when they are advantageous to its own policy. 
 
 In spite of all this, however, no country contains 
 within itself the germs of so many schisms. Europe 
 never knew all the sects which have shown themselves 
 in Russia, because immediately they threatened seri- 
 ously to strike deep root, all the dissenting communities 
 were transported in a lump to the banks of the Lena, 
 in the remotest region of Siberia. Houses are razed, 
 as well as heads shaved. This is what the Czar calls 
 cutting off the evil at the root. With such means
 
 THK CI-EKGY. 91 
 
 of repression and conversion, the spiritual power, as 
 the reader sees, never runs any risk of being shaken 
 or worried. 
 
 Sects existed at a period long anterior to the reign 
 of Peter I. Some of them arose under the patriarch 
 Nicon, whom I mentioned a few pages back, and whose 
 attempts at reform almost overthrew the empire, 
 troubling it for a considerable time ; while some sprang 
 up after these dissensions, but all before Peter I. Being 
 too numerous to be extirpated, they are tolerated ; but 
 they do not constitute regular bodies, nor have they 
 public temples : they meet in private houses. 
 
 One of the most celebrated of these sects is that of 
 the Mutilaters, the principal nucleus of which is dis- 
 seminated in the environs of the city of Toula. A 
 pretty large number of members reside, however, in 
 some of the great cities of the empire. 
 
 This sect allows and practises mutilation. These 
 Origenists of a new kind believe that they are performing 
 a meritorious act by mutilating themselves. Catherine 
 II. endeavoured to put down this fanaticism. After 
 her, the Emperor Alexander adopted the most severe 
 and energetic measures with the same ohjiect. He con- 
 demned these sectarians to be transported en masse, 
 and there was some talk of isolating them on the most 
 northern shores of Kamtschatka. They all prepared 
 in silence to undergo their exile and even to become 
 martyrs, when the Russian government, touched bj' a 
 sentiment of pity for these thousands of madmen, re- 
 nounced, of its own accord, carrying into etfeot th*»
 
 92 THE KNOUT AND THE KUSSIAN?. 
 
 measures with which it had threatened them, and shut 
 its eyes. Orders were issued that they should be 
 tolerated, provided they made no proselytes. The Em- 
 peror Nicholas causes all those who are convicted of 
 having practised, or aided in practising, their peculiar 
 kind of mutilation upon children or adults, to run the 
 gauntlet and undergo the punishment of the knout. 
 These sectarians follow only one calling, namely, that 
 of money-changers. I can confidently affirm that all 
 the money-changers of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nov- 
 gorod, Kief, Odessa, Kasan, and all the Russian towns 
 through which I ever passed, are mutilated. It is 
 easy to recognise them by their sad physiognomy, their 
 pale, greenish complexion, their leaden eyes, devoid of 
 all fire, their falsetto voice, and their withered and 
 wrinkled skin. 
 
 There is another sect called 3fartinists. The 
 members admire Swedenborg, Bohm, Ekarthausen, and 
 other mystic writers, who pass in their eyes for so 
 many holy prophets. These people collect magical, 
 cabalistic, hieroglyphical, and all other books of a 
 similar description, and, in a word, everything that re- 
 lates to the occult sciences. They follow pretty closely 
 the doctrines of the Swedish visionary, but, as they are 
 not sufficiently numerous to be dangerous, the govern- 
 ment does not trouble itself about them. 
 
 The most important sect, however, both by its
 
 THE CLERGY. 03 
 
 numbers, the purity of its morals, and the respect that 
 is paid it, is that of the Old Believers, the followers of 
 the orthodox faith, whom the Russians call Siarovierzt. 
 They all belong to the class of tradesmen. The 
 motives which caused t he in separate from the Rus- 
 sian church, are not more reasonable than those which 
 brought about the oriental schism. They look with 
 horror upon the use of tobacco, and will only say, 
 " Hallelujah " twice. It is a great piece of impiety to 
 repeat the word three times. They use in the celebra- 
 tion of mass seven little rolls, of the form and size of a 
 small bun, instead of five, marking them with an octa- 
 gonal cross instead of a square one. They make the 
 sign of the cross with the fore-fiuger and middle-finger 
 alone, and they believe that a sure method of attaining 
 happiness is to commit suicide for the love of God. 
 There is one peculiarity of their faith, which is a very 
 strange one in Russia : they look upon the au- 
 tocratic government which rules them as an abomina- 
 tion, and property, of whatever description it may be, 
 as a thing eminently anti-Christian. They profess 
 doctrines, as we see, in perfect accordance with those 
 of the French. Communists. 
 
 They are more behind their age, and more ignorant, 
 than any other class of Russians : but, for the sake of 
 truth, I anj bound to confess that they are remarkable 
 for their strict probity, and for being more polished in 
 their customs and more gentle in their manners than 
 the majorit)' of their fellow-citizens. They assort that 
 the Russian priests are not fit to baptize, confess,
 
 94 THE KNOTJT AND THE EUSSIANS. 
 
 marry, or administer the sacrament, because they are 
 incontinent, and get tipsy on wine and brandy. 
 
 XI. 
 
 "With the exception of some very trifling points in 
 which it differs, the Russo- Greek is the same as the 
 Latin church. Only the Russo-Greeks say that Rome 
 is schismatic. 
 
 The subjects of disagreement, which served as a 
 pretext for the separation of the two churches, are, 
 however, sufficiently numerous. I will only mention 
 four of them : — First, the Latin church made use of 
 unleavened bread in the celebration of the sacred 
 mysteries ; second, the members of the Latin church 
 eat cheese, eggs, milk-food, butter, and animal flesh 
 during Lent; third, they fasted on Saturdays, which 
 is essentially contrary to the commands of Holy Writ ; 
 and fourth, they did not chaunt the " Hallelujah " 
 during Lent, and, in addition to this, would not recog- 
 nise the primacy of the pope. 
 
 The fomejjtors of this deplorable schism, Photlus 
 first, and after him Michael Cerularius, availed them- 
 selves of these skilfully-combined pretexts, to render 
 the patriarchs of Constantinople masters of the East. 
 But, when the separation was once effected, the road 
 was traced out ; their successors followed it, and thus 
 paved the way for the downfall of the Greek empire 
 and the capture of Constantinople by Amurath and 
 Mahomet II.
 
 EXTERIOR OF A RUSSO-GREEK CHURCH THE CHURCH OF THE 
 
 ASSUMPTION AT MOSCOW.
 
 THE CLERGY. 95 
 
 Paganism, also, has numerous partisans in Russia, 
 such as Fetichist idolaters, the chamanes of the Kanits- 
 chadales, Parsees, and even whole tribes who adore 
 nothing at all, and live like brutes. 
 
 All travellers agree in one remark, which is, that 
 the savage tribes belonging to this vast empire, 
 which consists almost entirely of savages, are those 
 least addicted to robbery and libertinism. But, I repeat, 
 all the various creeds are only tolerated on condition 
 that those who profess them shall never attempt to 
 make" proselytes. 
 
 Except in the two capitals and some of the larger 
 cities of the empire, the boyars reside in palaces, and 
 the peasants in huts, while God is worshipped in barns. 
 In the cities, the churches are tolerably monumental, 
 although, as far as style is concerned, they are in very 
 bad taste, and of the greatest irregularity of composi- 
 tion. All the schoolsof architecture are jumbled together, 
 the Byzantine being awkwardly engrafted on the IMogul, 
 the Persian, the Greek, the Roman, and sometimes 
 even the Gothic. These edifices look like the patchwork 
 productions of several centuries. Their style is tor- 
 mented like the life of the people. In the interior, 
 they contain nothing save a few pictures of hogs, 
 covered with pearls and diamonds, to which the faith- 
 ful make fresh additions every day. The precious 
 stones which ornament some of the Madonnas are 
 worth more than £40,000. The eye rests on nothing 
 save naked walls, scarcely even white-washed. Organs 
 are prohibited, as are likewise sculptures and religioiw
 
 96 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 pictures : the church does not permit instrumental 
 music. 
 
 All the churches produced by Russian genius have 
 cupolas studded with stars upon an azure or green 
 ground, and surmounted by a double Greek cross. 
 Those which date from the introduction of foreigners 
 into the country, have a high square tower. 
 
 Religious ceremonies, in Russia, are stamped with 
 a character of strange whimsicality, which is to be 
 met with nowhere else. The ceremony of baptism, 
 for instance, is very ciu*ious. I remember that the 
 first time I was invited to witness it, I had the greatest 
 difficulty in restraining myself from indulging in a 
 Homeric fit of laughter. 
 
 In the case of poor people, it is performed in the 
 church, both during winter and summer. As I said 
 before, the priest never puts himself out of the way for 
 anything ; that is to say, he only does so, and adopts 
 precautionary measures, for those who pay him. This 
 accounts for the great number of children who die on 
 leaving the church after they have been baptized. In 
 the case of rich people, the ceremony takes place in the 
 room of the child's father or mother, but neither the 
 father nor the mother is present at the ceremony, both 
 being represented by their relations and friends, and 
 the godfither and godmother. A large silver basin, 
 or, more frequently, a copper one with the plating worn
 
 THE CLERGY. 97 
 
 oflP, and full of tepid water, is placed in the middle of 
 the apartment. The priest first blesses the water, and 
 then, at his request, the godfather and godmother re- 
 nounce, in the name of the little brat, the Devil and all 
 his pomps and works, spitting by the side of the vessel 
 containing the holy water, as if to drown Satan in their 
 contempt. The new-born child is now placed upon the 
 left arm of the godfather, whose left hand is already 
 fully occupied in grasping a wax taper of the length and 
 form of a rat's tail, while, with his right, he holds the 
 left hand of the godmother. The priest catches hold of 
 the two hands thus united, and, di-agging the owners 
 after them, makes them walk three times round the 
 aforesaid basin, while the deacon bellows like a bull, 
 and causes the window panes to rattle again by chaunt- 
 ing psalms in praise of the little creature who has just 
 made his appearance in the world, "Wlien this is over, 
 the priest takes the child, who is completely naked, and 
 plunges him three times into the water. The ceremony 
 ends with a copious libation of champagne, of which 
 the father and the mother take their share. It is ac- 
 counted a mark of exceeding good taste and exquisite 
 politeness, for the mother to drink a mouthful out of the 
 glass of each guest before presenting it to him. 
 
 The solemnisation of marriage affords another proof 
 that all the religious ceremonies of the Russians have 
 preserved some remains of Paganism. It is always pre- 
 ceded by a betrothal, which does not absolutely re- 
 quire the intervention of a priest, though, in the 
 majority of cases, the young couple cause two rings,
 
 98 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 which they interchange, to be blessed. From this 
 moment, all rivals are put on one side, or voluntarily re- 
 tire, and the betrothed' persons are at liberty to see each 
 other at any hour of the day, and to appear together at 
 plays, balls, etc., without the least restraint. The 
 period of betrothal lasts for a time agreed on by the 
 two families — a few weeks or a few months. In the 
 case of peasants, the boyar himself fixes its duration. 
 Although the obligation of betrothal is not irrevo- 
 cable, it has almost the force of a civil contract. 
 
 On the day appointed for the marriage, the future 
 husband and wife are conducted to the church by their 
 nearest relatives. The priest, richly apparelled, re- 
 ceives them at the entrance, and, preceded by the cru- 
 cifix and New Testament, leads them to a small table — 
 placed before the high altar — covered with very rich 
 brocade cloth, on which are placed the pyx and two 
 crowns shaped like a Byzantine cupola, and composed 
 of bands of gold or silver gilt, soldered together and 
 ornamented with enamelled representations of male and 
 female saints. The priest asks the future bride and 
 bridegroom whether they are related or connected even 
 in the most distant manner, and on their answering 
 in the negative, places a piece of wax candle in the 
 hand of each, reciting, as he does so, a few words 
 of prayer. He then pours into a gold or silver goblet 
 some wine, which he blesses, and of which he drinks a 
 part. The bridegroom swallows a goodly draught after 
 him, and the bride drinks up nearly all the rest. The 
 sacristan receives the cup in his tui'n, plimging into it
 
 THE CLEEGT. 90 
 
 an eye of covetoiisness which finds nothing left to look 
 at. A.fter this libation, the crowns are placed on the 
 heads of the bride and bridegroom ; the priest makes 
 them walk round the little table that serves as an altar, 
 and afterwards blesses the spectators. This ends the 
 ceremony. 
 
 On returning from church, the company dine. After 
 dinner, the new-married couple, followed by their 
 nearest relatives, and preceded by violins, pass into the 
 ball-room, the doors of which are shut upon them. In 
 a corner of the apartment is arranged a table, loaded 
 with glasses and bottles of champagne. A servant in 
 grand livery is stationed behind it, his mission being to 
 fill two glasses at the same time. At a signal pre- 
 viously agreed on, the musicians play a ritornello, on 
 which the bride and bridegroom go hand in hand, and 
 open the door, letting in only a couple of guests at a 
 time. Each of them receives from the hands of the 
 married pair a glass of champagne, to which both bride 
 and bridegroom have first put their lips. The same 
 ritornello is again played, and the same ceremony re- 
 peated for all the guests in succession. The ball then 
 commences with a full orchestra. At one o'clock in 
 the morning, supper is served up; the guests again 
 drink, and the bride retires into the nuptial chamber, 
 followed by one or two of her friends. 
 
 The ceremony is exactly the same at the marriages 
 of peasants, only that, instead of a piece of brocade, it 
 is a coarse linen cloth which covers the table ; instead 
 of crowns of gold, the crowns are made of copper or
 
 ÎOO THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 the bark of trees, and instead of wax candles, tallo-w ones 
 are used, while for the wine hydromel is substituted. 
 
 On occasions of this description, the bride is dressed 
 in a kind of long coat or dressing-gown, composed of 
 very coarse cloth, and reaching half-way down her legs, 
 a sort of dress which is met with in almost all the 
 governments of the empire ; she wears regular men's 
 boots, and a head-dress consisting of a cotton handker- 
 chief. There is not the slightest attempt at the pic- 
 turesque in the arrangement of this handkerchief; the 
 only ornament she has is a large bunch of artificial 
 flowers, stuck, without elegance or taste, on one side 
 of her head. As for the bridegroom, with the exception 
 of his hat, he is dressed like his wife. 
 
 On leaving the church, the newly-married couple 
 proceed to prostrate themselves before their mother, for 
 such is the name given by the Russian peasants to the 
 wife of their lord. They then kiss ber hand, and receive 
 in return from her a kiss upon the cheek or forehead ; 
 their friends imitate their example, and all in turn come 
 and kiss the hand of the wife of their proprietor. 
 
 After the ceremony of the kisses, the men retire, 
 and the women begin singing a plaintive monotonous 
 song, giving a history of a virtuous wife, and likewise 
 celebrating the praises of the nobleman and his family. 
 During this time, two women detach themselves from 
 the group and dance in the midst of the circle formed 
 by it. Their dance is nought by a perpetual avant- 
 deux. When the first dancers are tired out, two others 
 replace them, and so on for several hours. There is
 
 THE CLERGY. fîl 
 
 some resemblance between thi^ ...juce and that of the 
 peasants of Britanny, in France. 
 
 After this they once.more salute their lord and his 
 wife, and then return to keep up their rejoicings in the 
 dwelling of the bridegroom. 
 
 Easter is a national festival. It is the New Year's 
 Day of the Russians, more particularly of the lower classes. 
 
 During the whole week, people visit and congratu- 
 late one another reciprocally. It is a universal custom 
 throughout the country for persons to offer to and re- 
 ceive from one another, real eggs, painted all kinds of 
 colours, or eggs made of gilt porcelain, or even gold ; 
 the presents being accompanied by three kisses on 
 the mouth, and the words, Christos voscrès, (" Christ 
 is risen"): the answer being, Voistinoi voscrès 
 (" He is indeed risen "). 
 
 On the Saturday night preceding Easter-Sunday, 
 the churches are filled with a crowd of believers of 
 all ages, and of all ranks. The men stand on one side 
 of the church, and the Avomen on the other, every one 
 holding in his or her hand a small lighted wax -taper. 
 Suddenly, as the clock peals forth midnight, the voice of 
 the officiating priest pronounces the words, Christos vos- 
 crès, the strains of the Hallelujah resound through the 
 building, and every one embraces the person next 
 to him three times on the mouth, in memory of the 
 Holy Trinity. Even the Emperor and Empress form 
 no exception to this rule. On this pious and solemn 
 occasion, there is no majesty recognised save that of 
 the Almighty.
 
 102 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 For several succeeding days, wlien two friends or 
 acquaintances meet for the first time, they give each 
 other the Easter kiss, or kiss of peace, without dis- 
 tinction of rank or sex. During the week, too, suc- 
 ceeding Easter-Sunday, every day, at the hour of 
 chano-ing guard, detachments from the different cadet- 
 corps, and from all the regiments composing the gar- 
 rison of St. Petersburg, proceed, in succession, to the 
 square of the palace for the purpose of offering their 
 felicitations to the Emperor and the Imperial family, 
 and the Emperor, as well as the Grand-Duke, the heir 
 to the throne, goes from rank to rank, and gives the 
 kiss of peace to a certain number of the troops. 
 
 During the fortnight after Easter, every one 
 repairs his strength, which a long and rigorous 
 fast has previously reduced, by Pantagruelian feasts 
 and entertainments, and repasts fitted for ogres, in 
 which ham, butcher's meat, brandy, wine, and hy- 
 dromel, are not spared. During these festivities, all 
 the taverns echo with the most deafening cries, and 
 the police has no time for anything save to pick up 
 the revellers, who, in various stages of intoxication, are 
 to be seen rolling about the streets. 
 
 As long as these festivities last, it may truly be 
 asserted that all Russia is drunk and plunged in the 
 most barbarous and most disgusting orgies. If you 
 reproach a Russia with these excesses, he will reply 
 with the greatest simplicity : " It is all very natural, 
 or God Almighty does not rise every day."
 
 THE CZAU GIVING THE KISS OK PEACE.
 
 THE NAVY. 103 
 
 THE NAVY. 
 
 X. 
 
 The prodigious growth of Russia is not due to th.e 
 Avorkings of ambition merely, but also to those of ne- 
 cessity. Before the time of Peter I., Russia occupied a 
 territory which was, without doubt, vast, but, in spite 
 of this, very much confined. The empire wanted 
 water, and was obliged, in order not to die of suffo- 
 cation within its own boundaries, to run the risk of 
 every possible sacrifice for the sake of acq[uiring, by 
 conquest, a sea. 
 
 The country was intersected by bi'oad and deep 
 rivers, but the mouths of them were confiscated to the 
 use of redoubtable neighbours. 
 
 The conquest of the German provinces of the Gulf 
 of Finland, and, at a subsequent period, the annexa- 
 tion of Finland itself, rendered Russia mistress of the 
 Baltic and opened to her the streams of the Niémen, the 
 Dwina, the Narewa, and the Neva, while her occupa- 
 tion of the Crimea put her in possession of the whole 
 extent of the Volga, the Don, the Dnieper, the Bug, 
 and the Dniester. The Baltic ofiered her immense
 
 104 THE KNOUT AND THE EUSSIANS. 
 
 advantages, on account of its proximity to the centre 
 of Europe ; but the Black Sea afforded her outlets and 
 a prospect of political power which were far more im- 
 portant. 
 
 Immediately upon the acquisition of these two 
 seas, St. Petersbvu-g and Odessa were buQt, and 
 became the two grand outlets by which Russia was 
 enabled to spread its agricultural and natural produce 
 all over Europe. 
 
 Arriving late at a state of civilisation, which they 
 do not yet understand, but which they guess at, the 
 Russians have no time to lose. They are concentrat- 
 ing, with a marvellous amount of energy and sagacity, 
 on the points they have but just created, the strength 
 and wealth of the empire, their immediate object being 
 to annihilate all that surrounds them. In the Baltic, 
 Riga, Veral Helsingfors, and Abo, are already sacri- 
 ficed; while, in the Black Sea, Nicolaif-Tagvarog, 
 Kaffa-Akteas, and ten other cities, are in a state of 
 rapid decay. 
 
 On the death of Peter the Great, the Russian navy 
 was composed only of a few light vessels comjjletely 
 unseaworthy. His successors cared nothing about the 
 navy, and it remained m tne emoryo state in which this 
 great man had left it, imtil the time of Catherine II., 
 who, however, did not do much more than her prede- 
 cessors towards augmenting it. 
 
 The Emperor Nicholas is the only person who has 
 pursued Avith superhuman energy his ancestor's pro- 
 ject. The works for the construction of the forts,
 
 THE NAVY. 105 
 
 ports, and harbours, which are, at present, sufficient to 
 protect llussia from any sudden and successful attack 
 by sea, are due to his genius and iron ■vvill. He may 
 truly be called the founder of the Russian navy. 
 
 II. 
 
 At the present day, the Russian navy is formidable. 
 It consists of three fleets : — 
 
 The Blue ; the Red ; and the White. 
 
 The first of these is stationed in the Black Sea, at 
 Sebastopol ; the second in the Baltic, at Cronstadt ; and 
 the third at Archangel. Besides these, there is a 
 flotilla of small vessels, at Avatcha in Behring's Sea, 
 at the extremity of Kamtschatka. 
 
 Each of the two first-mentioned fleets has two divi- 
 sions, but the third has only one. Each division con- 
 sists of two vessels of the first class, and six of the 
 second, with six frigates, two corvettes, and several 
 large steamers, whose number is not limited. I do not 
 include in this list an infinite number of small craft, 
 which could only be employed for the defence of the 
 coast, if it happened to be attacked. The effective 
 force of the crews of the Black Sea fleet is always kept 
 up to its complement of twenty thousand men. 
 
 Were these difierent naval forces to be collected on 
 one point, they would form, at the least, an enormous 
 total of two hundred and forty vessels, carrying more 
 than, nine thousand guns, and more than eighty thousand 
 men. If it were but possible to draft into this forest of 
 
 n
 
 106 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 ships, skilful and experienced saiiors, like those of 
 England, France, or America, Russia, seconded by her 
 millions of soldiers, wonld be mistress of the world. 
 
 In the present state of the Russian empire, the 
 na^•y is incapable of action : it does not alarm us, it 
 merely makes an impression on our imagination. 
 
 The truth is, that Russia wants the first, and indeed 
 the only, vital element for a navy — seamen. The reason 
 of this is simple enough : she possesses no merchant 
 naxj. 
 
 The population of Finland, Courland, Livonia, and 
 Esthonia, does not amount to more than a million and 
 a half of inhabitants. That of the Black Sea provinces 
 does not exceed five hundred thousand . It is, therefore, 
 only from this limited number, most of Avhom, too, 
 devote themselves to agriculture, that Russia can raise 
 her levies. Even those who are sailors are engaged in 
 the coasting trade, which they follow in the day time 
 alone, sheltering themselves at night behind the girdle of 
 islands and eyots which line all the Russian coast. 
 
 To man its ships, the Russian government is obliged 
 to fall back on the inhabitants of the interior of the 
 country. In this way it has, up to the present time, 
 formed an army of sailors^ who are frightened at the 
 sea, which the majority of them never saw before. The 
 levies for the na\y, like those for the army, are com- 
 posed of the strangest and most heterogeneous ele- 
 ments ; and it is, therefore, a very difficult task to pre- 
 pare them for the rough calling for which they are 
 intended.
 
 THE NAVr. 10" 
 
 Any man who has not, from his tenderest childhood, 
 been familiar with scenes of sea-faring life, is unfitted 
 for service in the navy. "What use can possibly be 
 made of a peasant dragged from his plough and native 
 village, situated sometimes hundreds of leagues from 
 the coast, and transported suddenly on board a man-of- 
 war r Neither the whip nor the knout will ever be able 
 to bend the rebellious and antipathetic natiu-e of the 
 Hussiau to this kind of service. The cold and fanatical 
 indifference of the Russian soldier on land, before h\m- 
 dreds of cannons belching out death, abandons him 
 entirely on board a ship. 
 
 The Russian, in his tastes, his disposition, his man- 
 ners, and his indolence, is eminently Asiatic. Like the 
 Arab and the Persian, the Cossack and the Tartar, he 
 has a profound feeling of horror for the sea. Besides 
 this, he is destitute of vigour, idle, and without muscu- 
 lar strength, for the muscles beneath his flabby skin, so 
 often lacerated by the rod, are not capable of any great 
 exertion. An Englishman or Frenchman is two or three 
 times stronger and more active in his movements. A Rus- 
 sian ship, consequently, requires twice as many men as 
 one of our vessels does, to make up its full complement. 
 
 Again, it is not on board a number of pontoons, 
 imprisoned in the ice or laid up in dock for the greater 
 part of the year, that sailors are formed or crews receive 
 the practical instruction which it is necessary for them 
 to acquire. Every year, the Baltiq is blocked up by the 
 ice from the month of October to the end of April, at 
 least, and even the Black Sea is not always free from a 
 
 H 2
 
 108 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 similar state of things, while, during the summer, the 
 navigation of both seas is so dangerous and so difl&cult, 
 that there is a ukase punishing with degradation and 
 death every officer who has not returned with his ves- 
 sel before the equinoxes, or who happens to lose it from 
 stress of weather. In addition to all these considera- 
 tions, good sailors are formed only by long voyages ; 
 and, I repeat, the Russians of the Black Sea, as well as 
 those of the Baltic, are employed merely in the coasting 
 trade. 
 
 III. 
 
 It is all to no purpose that Russia prides herself on 
 her special schools ; up to the present day, they have 
 not produced anything very remarkable, or succeeded 
 in forming a single naval officer. The young men who 
 have been educated there have navigated the Neva for 
 a few weeks only, and inspire no confidence. The Czar, 
 who is always just and clear-sighted, has so plainly 
 perceived the inaptitude of his people for maritime pur- 
 suits, that he has been under the necessity of confiding 
 all the important posts to English and Swedish officers, 
 whom he has induced to enter his service. 
 
 After everything that has been done, however, let 
 Russia but suffer one reverse, let but her fleet in the 
 Black Sea be burnt, and all is ended ! 
 
 For his na^y, as for his army, the Czar has made 
 enormous sacrifices, far above his means. All the mines 
 of the Oural mountains have never been able to make 
 «p the deficiency in. the treasury. These sacrifices are
 
 THE NAVY. 109 
 
 the cause of tlie iusufficiency of salary which affects the 
 entire public ser-sdce, and engenders in it, as I have 
 already said, the most odious and the most detestable 
 venality. 
 
 On board the Russian men-of-war, the morals, the 
 pay, and the punishments, are the same as in the bar- 
 racks. On the one hand, we find there the same cor- 
 ruption and the same indifference for human life ; and, 
 on the other, the same wretched incapacity. Cronstadt, 
 at the extremity of the Baltic, and Sebastopol, at the 
 most southern point of the Crimea, are the only ports, the 
 only maritime arsenals of Russia. They are both bristUng 
 with formidable works, which would defy all the fleets 
 in the world. Archangel and Avatcha cannot be 
 counted, for, dm-ing ten months and a half every year, 
 they are either locked up in polar ice or buiied beneath 
 snow. 
 
 In addition to all these fleets, Russia possesses an 
 incalculable number of vessels of all sizes, which, for 
 want of sailors to man them, are rotting in the basins of 
 the Neva or of the Black Sea, arranged with the regu- 
 larity of a regiment of cavalry, and exactly in the same 
 state as when they left the stocks. At Rostoff and Cron- 
 stadt nothing is to be seen but a forest of whitened 
 trunks. Viewed from a certain distance, all these ves- 
 sels resemble a vast assemblage of centenary firs, cut off 
 symmetrically half-way up. 
 
 Russian ships are generally hea^y, massive, and 
 slow, but elegantly painted from the keel to the very 
 top of the masts. Like the palaces of Moscow, there is
 
 110 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 a luxury of cleanliness about their exterior which is 
 quite indescribable. 
 
 Some of the vessels were built in America, and 
 these it was that the Czar, a few years ago, caused to 
 be paraded in all the ports of the Mediterranean, the 
 German Ocean, and the Baltic. Even at the present 
 day, naval architects in Russia, are either Englishmen 
 or Americans. In 1838 or 1839, the Czar thought 
 that he might throw off this foreign yoke, and accord- 
 ingly confided to a Russian shipwright the task of 
 building a vessel of colossal size, which was to be 
 christened the Russia. The ceremony of laimching 
 took place with the greatest pomp. The constituted 
 bodies of the state, the co7-ps diplomatique, and all 
 the foreigners who happened to be passing through 
 St. Petersburg, were invited to be present. The signal 
 for knocking away the shores was given. This giant 
 of ships glided down the cradle and cleaved the waves ; 
 but, alas ! it realised so little the hopes entertained 
 of it, that it was found necessary to break it up and 
 take it to pieces. 
 
 In no nav}' in Europe does a ship last for so short a 
 time as in Russia ; we never meet with a Russian ship 
 that is more than seven, or at the most eight years, 
 old. This is owing to the wood used in building, 
 which is a kind of fi.r or soft oak, that the teredo navalis, 
 a phosphorescent M'orm which infests the Black Sea, 
 destroys very quickly. This, however, would not ne- 
 cessarily cause any inferiority on the part of Russia, if, 
 before doing anything else, she had been able to create
 
 THE NAVY. Ill 
 
 a inercliant navy ; but in this case, as in everything 
 else, she was in a hurry to enjoy, and began at the 
 wrong end- 
 
 IV. 
 
 Before the conquest of the Crimea by the Russians 
 in 1 782, Sebastopol did not exist. On the site occu- 
 pied by tbe city, which, at the present day, possesses a 
 population of forty thousand souls, there was, seventy 
 years ago, only a miserable village, the huts of which 
 were scattered along the beach, and overlooked 
 by a vast forest, since destroyed by the llussiaus. 
 There is a scarcity of wood and water in the city, the 
 aqueducts which conveyed the latter as far as Cherson, 
 from a spring above the village, having been destroyed 
 for the sake of the ix"on, lead, and stones, of which 
 they were composed. 
 
 The heights which shelter the town from the south 
 winds are covered with antique ruiiis that are fast dis- 
 appearing every day. From the summit of the old 
 Parthenian promontory, are still to be seen the ruins 
 of a temple of Diana, the stones of which have served 
 the inhabitants of the surrounding country to build 
 their cabins with. 
 
 The gulf on which the town, the harbom's, the 
 ai'senals, and all the naval establishments are situated, 
 is about five miles long. The depth of water varies 
 from ten to twelve fathoms. The mouth of the gulf is 
 about a mile and a quarter broad, but the channel is 
 extremely narrow, and defended by formidable works
 
 112 ÏHE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 and batteries. The only thing to be feared is the 
 west wind. Several large natural basins, on the right 
 of the bay, have been appropriated to various objects 
 connected with the navy. The largest vessels can en- 
 ter at full sail, and manoeuvre in these basins. The 
 arsenals and storehouses are cut out of the solid rock, 
 and run no dagger from fire. The east wind blows on 
 the coast until noon, and the west wind the remainder 
 of the day. 
 
 Sebastopol is certainly one of the finest, the most 
 convenient, and the best-defended ports in the whole 
 world. 
 
 Shut up in the limits of the Black Sea, which are 
 noAV too narrow for her, Russia is making the most 
 unheard-of efibrts to advance beyond them. This vast 
 sea is no longer sufiicient for her desires ; she covets 
 the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. It is by this 
 double canal that she wishes to find an outlet for her 
 riches, and that she meditates, perhaps, the ruin and 
 the pillage of the old world. 
 
 Proud of the share allotted to her at Navarino, she 
 no longer dissimulates her views of ambition. 
 
 For a long time past, she has been preparing the 
 way which is to lead her to Constantinople, that object 
 of her most ardent longings. The destruction of the 
 Turkish fleet at Navarino was planned, with consum- 
 mate skill, by her state-craft, and France and Englfwid 
 were her dupes. She cared but little about the inde- 
 pendence of Greece ; she saw and desired but one 
 thing, aud that was, the destruction of a rival navy.
 
 MAGISTRACY, JUSTICE, AND POLICE. 113 
 
 THE MAGISTRACY, JUSTICE, AND THE 
 POLICE. 
 
 I. 
 
 M. DE Segttk was right when he said : " Russia, with 
 the exception of the government, which has changed 
 its place of residence, and the national costume, which 
 was abolished by Peter I., has remained, in whatever 
 light we view her, exactly what she Avas under the 
 roughest of her reformers. Her morals are not im- 
 proved, while her language, which ought to have as- 
 sumed more literary forms, or become modified, her 
 national spirit, and, in a word, everything else, have 
 remained stationary." 
 
 As is the case with the religion of the country, the 
 legislation is still the same to-day that it was a century 
 and a half ago. The latter, especially, has resisted all 
 the more or less serious attempts of contemporary Czars 
 to remodel it. 
 
 Bacon has said, somewhere or other, that jurispru- 
 dence is the anchor of the law, just as the law is the 
 anchor of the state. The anchor of the state in Russia 
 is the Czar and the stick. 
 
 To govern such a people, sangumary and atrocious
 
 ÎÎ4 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 laws were necessary ; laws which enforced punish- 
 ments that would carry fear into the mind and inmost 
 soul of every one, and strike with terror both great 
 and small. 
 
 The morals of the country remaining the same, there 
 was no necessity for modifying the laws, which arc now 
 exactly what they were when first decreed by Ivan, 
 Basil, and Alexis. 
 
 The present code, which was laboriously knocked 
 together towards the end of the reign of Alexander, 
 and the commencement of that of the present Czar, 
 contains merely old ukases drawn up in a modern style. 
 It abrogates nothing, so that Russian justice can, 
 according to the degree of elasticity of the judges' 
 consciences, always refer to two different laws, and, if 
 it chooses, select that which awards the severer punish- 
 ment. 
 
 How many laws does the reader suppose have been 
 found necessary to govern this nation ? The autocrats 
 who have reigned, for two centuries and a half, over 
 these swamps and forests, have left behind them upwards 
 of forty thousand laws, neither more nor less. Each 
 ukase constitutes a separate law, and ukases are manu- 
 factm-ed on every occasion. The Emperor Paul issued 
 certain ones forbidding his subjects to wear round 
 hats, of the same form as that worn in his time by an 
 Englishman at St. Petersburg, which irritated his 
 nervous system. He also issued one against the waist- 
 coats denominated à la Jiohespterre, and I know not 
 how many more, for similar reasons.
 
 MAGISTRACY, JUSTICE, AND POLICE. 115 
 
 These forty thousand laws are divided into more 
 than two thousand chapters, containing innumerable 
 separate articles, and subdivided into paragraphs and 
 nota-henes, referring the reader to one another, each 
 one being directly contrary to all the rest. They are 
 contained in forty-five quarto volumes. 
 
 Jiu:isprudence is in llussia an unknown science, for 
 who would dare to comment on or interpret the law ? 
 Among all civilised nations, the law stands above the 
 sovereign, wh© is the first to set an example of re- 
 spect and obedience to it ; but, in this instance again, 
 among the Russians, the Czar is the impersonification 
 of everything. He is above the law ; or rather, he is 
 the law itself, the incarnate, living law. Ukases, de- 
 crees, decisions, judgments, sentences of death — in one 
 word, everything emanates from his will. On his lips 
 hangs everything, life as well as death. To him alone 
 belongs the right of commenting on and interpreting 
 the law, with the view of adapting it to the particular 
 degree of severity with which he desires to punish any 
 one. According to the necessity of the moment, accord- 
 ing to his whim, his good or bad hiunour, his desire for 
 vengeance, his rage, or his feeling of equity, ho rectifies, 
 modifies, confirms or quashes the judgments delivered 
 in his courts of justice. 
 
 The Emperor is above everything — the Emperor 
 Bways everything. "When the reigning prince happens 
 to be an honest, humane, and just man, the evil loses 
 half its horrors, for if he is powerless iu restraining 
 venality, he docs not, at least, authorise it. But ^vheu
 
 116 TUE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 the sovereign authority falls into the hands of a san- 
 guinary monster like Ivan the Terrible, or of a madman 
 like Paul I., the consequences may easily be con- 
 ceived. 
 
 As we see, there is no want of laws for the proper 
 administration of justice in Russia. What is wanting 
 for the men who are charged with administering it, is 
 honour, conscience, integrity, religion, disinterested- 
 ness, and, in a word, all the virtues necessary for a 
 judge to possess. In the hands of the senators of the 
 tchinn and of the feudal nobility, the law, instead of being 
 what it ought to be, the natural protector of the interest 
 of all men, is, on the contrary, a fearful weapon em- 
 ployed, as every one well knows, to menace the lives, 
 the fortunes, the honour, and the security of families. 
 The Russians have more to fear from the venality of the 
 magistracy than from the despotism of the Czar, 
 even if he be attacked with furious madness or san- 
 guinary monomania, like Paul I. 
 
 I have already said that the origin of the incurable 
 venality, which at present affects this great social body, 
 is the uncertainty of ofi&ce and the niggardly amount 
 of the salaries : no one is paid. The judges traffic, 
 therefore, as a matter of course, in justice : bribery is 
 not regarded as a crime, for every one lives by it, and 
 practises it as a right. The judges themselves settle 
 what they are to be paid for the causes they have 
 judged, and the loser pays withoiit any disturbance, 
 just as he would pay the expenses of a copy of a 
 writ. 
 
 I
 
 MAGISTRACY, JUSTICE, AND POLICE. 117 
 
 "V^Tiocvcr is rich and powerful can turn the balance 
 of a trial in his own favour, cither by bidding more 
 than his adversary, or by having I'ecourse to threats. 
 
 Gold is the pivot on which everything turns. 
 With gold the judges are easily suborned. The Czar 
 Nicholas groans under this disgraceful state of things, 
 and has often visited with fearful punishments, such as 
 degradation and transportation to Siberia, those men 
 who were notorious for receiving bribes ; but what has 
 been the result ? The evil is one which is so deeply 
 rooted, that these instances of pvmi-shment have not 
 deterred a single person from being guilty of the same 
 venality. 
 
 II. 
 
 Whoever wants justice must pay for it : this is 
 an elementary principle in Russia. As a natural con- 
 sequence, no llussian, at least as far as I know, ever 
 thinks of invoking any of the enactments contained in 
 the forty-five volumes of laws. 
 
 Let not the reader imagine that the courts are 
 always presided over by men of acknowledged attain- 
 ments. Matters remain, at the present day, in the 
 same state in which they were two centuries ago, 
 when the Czars used to go down into the street, and 
 judge, condemn, and execute their sentences them- 
 selves, with a blood-stained sabre in their hand. 
 
 The officials of justice, such as correspond to our 
 ushers of the court, barristers, attorneys, and advo- 
 cates, display the most monstrous avidity. AMien a
 
 118 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 man is sunk in debauchery, ruined, and everywhere 
 shunned, he turns barrister, that being the profession 
 of those who have none. The character of a barrister is 
 not, as with us, that of an honourable and educated man, 
 well versed in the study of the laws and the art of elo- 
 cution, who takes a pride in employing his talents for the 
 defence of the widow, and the protection of the orphan ; 
 he neither interprets the law, nor explains the plead- 
 ings. All his science consists in knowing how to ren- 
 der obscure the simplest and the clearest subjects, and 
 to make the art of chicanery as profitable as possible. 
 It is not his business to defend the interests of his clients, 
 but to come to an understanding with the barrister of 
 the opposite party, in order that they may both live upon 
 the cause confided to them. As may easily be im- 
 agined, the defence is not an oral one ; everything is 
 done by means of memorials upon stamped paper, the 
 importance of which varies in proportion to that of the 
 deeds themselves. The easier the circumstances of the 
 pleaders, the longer will be the pleadings. The suits 
 are interminable, and last as long as it pleases the 
 judges and the barristers ; if the suitors desire to see 
 the end of them, they must pay for so doing in hard 
 cash. The average duration of a simple trial in Russia 
 is from ten to fifteen years ; rarely less, and sometimes 
 even twenty or thirty. 
 
 Justice is prompt only when called upon to con- 
 demn a man to suffer the punishment of the knout, to 
 be whipt, or to be hanged, because such cases as these 
 do not bring in any fees.
 
 MAGISTRACY, JUSTICE, AND POLICE. 119 
 
 Can the reader guess liow, for the most part, in the 
 interior oi'the country, it is the fashion to cut through 
 the knot of difficulties which may arise between rela- 
 tions who fall out about the office of guardian, whose 
 duty it would be to administer the property of an or- 
 phan ? Why, by causing the child to disappear by 
 means of the cholera. I have had the proofs of a 
 hxmdred such cases in my hands. 
 
 Justice has several different systems ofVeights and 
 measui-es : she is vigilant, deaf, or troublesome, accord- 
 ing as a person is more or less important by reason of 
 the position he occupies in the aristocratic world, by 
 his rank, his titles, or his fortune. 
 
 The boyars have the privilege of residing in the 
 house of a merchant or tradesman, without the latter 
 being able to oblige them to pay rent, to turn them 
 out, or to seize their furniture. This privilege extends 
 likewise to all those who serve the crown. Both they 
 and their goods are inviolable and sacred. Even at 
 the present day, if any one desires to put an end to this 
 abuse of brute force, he has no remedy but to apply to 
 the Emperor, who takes care, however, that justice is 
 immediately done. 
 
 But if the law is a dead letter for the pompous 
 boyars, and, as a general rule, for all who serve the 
 state, it makes up for this by its roughness and intract- 
 ability whenever a foreigner has to be made to pay. 
 In such cases, the police and the magistrates employ 
 the n?c?t violent and most outrageous measm'es ; the 
 power of personal an est, for instance, is left entirely
 
 120 THE KNOTTT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 to the oDtion of the nadziratetl. who. without any form of 
 trial, throws the debtor into prison, and does not deign 
 to enter into any explanation until afterwards. No- 
 where else does the police execute its duty so odiously 
 and rigorously, and nowhere does it fleece a foreigner 
 with such audacity and impudence. If a foreigner 
 happens to be guilty of a slight infringement of the 
 law, — such, for instance, as smoking inadvertently the 
 end of a cigar in the street, — he is pursued by a series of 
 outrages for a period of several weeks. 
 
 III. 
 
 The laws are less to be feared than the police, 
 which inspires such terror that every one shrinks, as he 
 would from a pestilence, from receiving or assisting any- 
 body who is wounded, ill, or struck with apoplexy. The 
 dying person, whose head is resting on the threshold of 
 a barber's or apothecary's shop, may require only to be 
 bled or to have a glass of water given him in order to 
 be saved, but the barber, who can bleed him, and the 
 apothecary, who can staunch his blood, barricade them- 
 selves in their houses. All the people in the neigh- 
 bourhood shut their doors ; the place around the dying 
 wretch is deserted, as if he were infected with the 
 plague, and the surgeons take to flight. No one dares 
 to run for help or to assist the unhappy being who is 
 lying in the agonies of death ; the law expressly pro- 
 hibits such a thing before the agents of justice have 
 come and drawn up an official report of the accident.
 
 MAGISTRACY, JUSTTCK, AND POMCE. 121 
 
 Your neighbour is assassinated before your eyes, he 
 is dying, and cries out for help ; a horse runs away, 
 dragging along his rider, whose foot is cavight in the 
 stirrup ; what does that matter ? fly from the spot as 
 quickly as you can ; let the horse pass by you in his 
 mad career! Your friend, or your own father, is 
 drowning at two paces' distance from where you 
 stand ; he calls on you, he implores you to assist him, 
 for the current is on the point of carrying him away, 
 and swallowing him up for ever; you stretch out your 
 walking-stick, your umbrella, or whatever you may 
 happen to have in your hand, and save him ; this is a 
 heavy misfortune for you. Henceforward you belong 
 to the police-agents and the courts of justice ; you will 
 be exposed to every kind of vexation and moral tor- 
 ture ; you will be accommodated with a lodging in a 
 state prison, which is carpeted with a thick covering 
 of moss and toadstools, and tenanted by insects of all 
 descriptions. Here you will be allowed to rot imtil 
 such time as the authorities arc fully convinced, and 
 until it is most clearly proved, according to the judi- 
 cial forms observed in the country, that it was really 
 from a feeling of humanity that you assisted and saved 
 a fellow-crcatm-e from imminent danger ; the said judi- 
 cial forms consisting in a method of causing your purse 
 to pass fi-om yoiu- own pocket into that of the police- 
 agents. The better that purse is lined, the more easily 
 will all the difficulties of the case be overcome. 
 
 People are forbidden to be humane as they are for- 
 bidden to talk politics. Whoever puts into practice
 
 122 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 the principles of humanity is subjected to every species of 
 vexatious treatment, and sees the gates of Siberia loom- 
 ing for him in the distance. In order to live in the 
 midst of this population, a man must place his soul, his 
 heart, and all his noble sentiments, on a level with it. 
 As soon as he sets his foot upon Russian soil, he must 
 become another being, and leave at the frontier all his 
 individuality; generosity, charity, and frankness, are a 
 kind of coin vrhich is not current in the country, and 
 which will prove a source of numberless tribulations, 
 such as are to be met with there alone. Close your 
 purse, as you would steel your heart, against misery, in 
 whatever form it presents itself; take care of being 
 generous, or you will be taken for a propagandist ; do 
 not offer your assistance if a house is being burnt 
 down before your eyes ; do not protect any one's 
 life, for you would be taken for a robber or a rebel ; 
 allow even the Emperor himself to be drowned, for his 
 person is as inviolable and as sacred as an Indian idol. 
 The only method to save yourself from thirty million 
 different annoyances is to be, and always to remain, in- 
 different to everything. 
 
 I was under the necessity of conforming — not, how- 
 ever, without one or two mishaps — to this barbarous 
 code of manners, in order never to err, or, at least, to 
 err as slightly as possible, against the customs of the 
 coimtry. 
 
 But what can be the object, my readers Avill ask; of 
 these savage laws, which prohibit a man from afford- 
 iBg assistance to any one in want of it. The Russians
 
 MAGISTRACY, JUSTICE, AND rOLICE. 123 
 
 who are best informed about the matter, frankly avow 
 that the lower classes are generally impudent, sharp- 
 Hngered, and thievishly inclined, and that, under pre- 
 tence of assisting their fellow-creature, they would, 
 much more probably, lighten him of the contents of his 
 pocket and his fob, or even strip him of everything he 
 possessed. This is the true motive, and I do not seek for 
 any other, as it perfectly agrees with my own observa- 
 tions. As a natural consequence, the race of badauds is 
 unknown in Russia. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I have said that the law protects nothing. How- 
 ever monstrous this assertion may appear, it is strictly 
 true, and I maintain it. The law would afford protec- 
 tion if it were administered by honest hands, but the 
 falseness of its representatives is so notorious as to have 
 passed into a proverb in the Russian language. Allud- 
 ing to the exploits of the brigand Cartouche, we say in 
 France, " A person might fancy himself in the Forest 
 of Bondy ;" but in Russia they say, " A person might 
 fancy himself in the hands of a nadziratelir 
 
 When taking off or affixing the seals, the nadziratell 
 fraudulently appropriates those objects in the inventory 
 or inheritance which can most conveniently be carried 
 off; he lays his hands upon everything within his 
 reach; no matter what it may be, whether money, 
 jewelry, plate, or title deeds of annuities, he seizes on 
 it with the greatest effrontery, if you unluckily take 
 your eyes off him for a single instant. It is of no use 
 
 T O
 
 12-1 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 to prefer a complaint against him, for he will neutralise 
 }t by purchasing the silence of his superior. Cases of 
 this description are brought every day before the ma- 
 gistrates, who hush them up, and not only refuse to 
 punish the offender, but will not even oblige him to 
 restore what he has stolen. 
 
 These nadziratells, or commissaries of police, are 
 organised in all the cities pretty much as they are in 
 France ; only they are formed into regular regiments, 
 and dressed in a military costume something like that 
 of the French Sergents de Ville, with a three-cornered 
 cap, and a sword at their side. The pay which they 
 receive from the state is very insignificant, amounting 
 to twenty or twenty-four pounds a-year at the most. 
 Their sumptuous mode of living, and the magnificent 
 display they make, are mysteries to the Russians them- 
 selves. They have carriages, horses, servants, and 
 boxes at the theatres ; they are married, have families, 
 and keep preceptors for their children, while the only 
 resources they are known to possess is the pay which 
 I have mentioned. Had they inherited anything from 
 their parents, they would evidently have chosen some 
 other calling. What, then, are the sources from which 
 every one of them procures the sums necessary for 
 keeping up his establishment ? It is a sad thing to say, 
 but these sources consist in robbery, in rapine, in 
 swindling of every description, and in the most bare- 
 faced system of bribery, — always practised, by the way, 
 against those who possess neither influence nor social 
 position, and particularly against foreigners.
 
 MAGISTRACY, JUSTICE, AND POLICE. 125 
 
 For instance, your watch or your pelisse has been 
 stolen. The fact of the robbery reaches the ear of the 
 commissary of police, who immediately hastens to your 
 house. In his capacity of an agent of the law, it is his 
 duty to take measures for your security. He receives 
 from you the description of the stolen article, draws up an 
 official report, insolently demands six or seven shillings as 
 the price of what he has scribbled down, and withdraws, 
 promising you by all the saints of Paradise that the 
 thief shall be arrested and punished, and that whatever 
 you have lost shall be found ; but he does not say that 
 it shall be restored to you. The next day, in fact, he 
 re-appears, accompanied by an alguazil, who has got in 
 his pocket, or on his shoulder, a number of objects, 
 which are shown to you as having been found upon the 
 person of the thief, but which you, of course, do not 
 recognise, because they are not those which have been 
 stolen from you. Another official report is drawn up 
 to register this little incident, and you expend six or 
 seven shillings more, to which you add something for 
 luck for the alguazil, and think yourself fortunate, if, 
 for these twelve or fourteen shillings, you regain the 
 object whose loss you regret. 
 
 He repeats this little game a third, a fourth, and a 
 fifth time, presenting to you, on each occasion, various 
 objects which he very well knows are not those that 
 you have described. He fleeces you in this manner, 
 until, completely undeceived in your mistaken notions 
 of the worthy official's probity, you turn him out of 
 doors, together with his gaoler, and the watch and old
 
 12f. THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 coat, which will serve to make other dupes. A circum- 
 stance of this very kind, of which I myself was the victim, 
 and which occurred about an old pelisse that was stolen 
 from me at the theatre, is in itself a perfect summary of 
 the hundred and one other methods of swindling, by 
 means oi which these men extort money from foreigners, 
 and frequently from Russians themselves. 
 
 Some years ago, Count Benkendoi-ff was summoned 
 to the Emperor Nicholas, to receive a sum of £1,200 
 destined for Avorks of charity. The Count afterwards 
 returned to his own house, went into his study, where 
 he stayed several hours, and then ordered his carriage. 
 At the moment he was preparing to enter it, the minis- 
 ter perceived that he had not got his pocket-book ; he 
 ran precipitately up-stairs again, ransacked his study 
 and all the furnitm-e in it, but found nothing. Had he 
 lost the £1,200, he thought, or had they been stolen? 
 General Kakoschkinn, the prefect of police, was imme- 
 diately sent for, and commanded to find the thief and 
 the pocket-book by the next morning. The next morn- 
 ing, at the appointed hour, the prefect of police en- 
 tered the minister's study, and handed the minister 
 the £1,200, which, he said, had been found on the per- 
 son of the thief. As for the pocket-book and papers, 
 they had been thro^\^î, doubtless, into the Neva, be- 
 cause the criminal thought they might compromise 
 him. Count Benkendorff took the £1,200, but, in 
 thrusting his hand into his pocket, found, wonderful to 
 say ! the pocket-book, which he thought he had lost, 
 and in the pocket-book the money, intact, and just
 
 MAGISTRACY, JUSTICE, Aî;D POLICE. 127 
 
 as it had been given him the day previous by the 
 Emperor. 
 
 'l\he fact of the matter was simply this : General 
 Kakoschkinn, giving up in despair all idea of laying 
 his hand upon the sum which had either been lost or 
 stolen, thought it would be far more expeditious to 
 summon all his nadziratells, and make them pay down 
 the £1,200, which he had presented to the minister. 
 
 A man in Russia is looked upon as such an insignifi- 
 cant object, that no notice is ever taken of the absence 
 or disappearance of any one. It is even prohibited 
 to speak of these kinds of things, and the police never 
 institutes any search after the missing individual. Even 
 his family, unless it is very influential, does not dare to 
 adopt any measures for finding him : it prefers trusting 
 to Providence. Suppose, for instance, that the police, 
 in obedience to superior orders, had conducted the 
 absent person to Siberia ? You would be looked upon 
 as very curious if you endeavoured to find out whether 
 this was the case. In all instances of doubt, it is your 
 duty to abstain from inquiry. Besides, the police has 
 something far more important to do, than to waste its 
 time in finding persons who are dead or missing ! 
 
 A corpse floats along upon the water, coming no 
 one knows whence. In the course of eight, ten, or 
 perhaps fifteen days, a thousand diflfereut people have 
 Been it, but not one has ever thought of taking it up.
 
 128 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 giving it Christian burial, and seeking out its family. 
 Drifted by the wind, it has beaten against the sand of 
 the beach for days together, but every one has fled from 
 it, making the sign of the cross three times. It is stopped 
 by the bushes, the reeds, and the shrubs, which line the 
 banks, and either rots away, or is devoured by animals, 
 without a single person troubling his head about it. 
 If, as is sometimes the case, the agents of police deign 
 to take any notice of it, they come down to where it 
 lies, not to identify it, but to strip it of whatever it may 
 happen to have, and then to throw it, like a dead dog, into 
 a hole hastily dug on the shore, or in the forest, with- 
 out the least ceremony, or the slightest attempt at dis- 
 covering the cause of death. 
 
 The circumstance of individuals disappearing is one 
 of frequent occurrence. Are such cases to be attri- 
 buted to the mysterious justice of the Czar, or to the 
 vengeance of those possessed of power ? No one can 
 say. A man is assassinated, and his corpse is carried 
 a few paces out of the city into the immense marshy 
 forests which surround it, and into which no one ever 
 dares to venture, or else it is thrown into the water, and 
 there the matter ends. The authors of the crime are 
 never tracked out and punished. 
 
 There is only one thing about which the police in- 
 terests itself particularly : and that is, to find out what 
 takes place in the bosom of every family, what is said 
 there, what is done there, and what is thought there. 
 It busies itself more about the thoughts of each separ- 
 ate individual than about the secm-ity of the whole
 
 MAGISTRACY, JUSTICE, AND POLICE. 129 
 
 community. This body prick? ud its ears to listen 
 everywhere ; and in every place in which three persons 
 come together, as the Russians themselves say, there 
 are two spies. It is by this system of terror that the 
 Czar governs his people in peace. Such is the exacti- 
 tude of the accounts forwarded to him, that, one day, he 
 sent one of his aides-de-camp to a lady of the court, to 
 caution her not to receive her lover, for the future, ir 
 her bed-chamber at night, before her husband was 
 asleep. The husband was rather brutal in his disposi 
 tion, and would certainly have made a disturbance had 
 he discovered his conjugal misfortune. His Majesty 
 allows the greatest license, provided no scandal is occa- 
 sioned thereby. 
 
 Divorce is permitted in Russia by the civil law, and 
 the dogmas of the Greek church recognise and sanction 
 it. But people rarely have recourse to it, and gener- 
 ally only in the event of sterility, or when the husband 
 or wife is suffering from disease. The holy synod alone 
 is called upon to judge the merits of the cause alleged, 
 and alone has the power of annulling ill-assorted mar- 
 riages. As, however, corruption is a powerful lever in 
 all the courts of law, the person who stands best with 
 the judges of the cause, either from family influence or 
 fortune, causes the sentence to be pronounced in his or 
 her favour. 
 
 Truth, however, compels me to state that applica- 
 tions for divorce or separation are extremely rare, less 
 on account of the case with which persons can obtain 
 them, than from the inutility of such measures, M'hen
 
 130 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 every one can enjoy so complete a state of independence 
 in married life. 
 
 The wife receives her lovers -without disguise ; 
 the husband receives his mistress without constraint or 
 dissension ; and everything goes on quietly, without a 
 single reproach to trouble the peace of either party. 
 
 A woman who is a widow for the third time, can 
 only take as fourth husband a Jew, whom she has con- 
 verted to the Greek religion. If she becomes a widow 
 for the fourth time, she is not permitted to marry a 
 fifth time ; the same holds good for men. There are 
 no laws against rape, and it could not be otherwise in a 
 country where women are considered as of so little 
 importance. 
 
 ■VT. 
 
 The Russians are acquainted with every species of 
 torture and punishment. Impalement was practised 
 as late as the reign of Peter I. Elizabeth abolished 
 the punishment of death, but she herself soon infringed 
 the law to gratify her little projects of revenge. The 
 waters of the Neva remain, however, and those whom 
 the government does not dare to strangle it drowns ! 
 Criminals are not often sent to prison, for a prison is 
 looked upon as a place where crime, idleness, and 
 drunkenness, thrive most successfully. Besides, a Rus- 
 sian, who is naturally indolent and destitute of all 
 activity, does not regard imprisonment as a punish- 
 ment, as he is boarded and lodged, sleeps undisturbed, 
 and does nothing. He is merely deprived of liberty.
 
 MAGISTRACY, JUSTICE, AND POLICE. 131 
 
 and that is a thing which he never knew. What mat- 
 ters to him a little more or a little less space to move 
 about in ! Imprisonment, consequently, produces no 
 salutary effect on him. The bastinado, therefore, was 
 invented to supply its place. This is the most usual 
 kind of punishment. The slightest offences are pun- 
 ished with the stick, to which every one is subject, 
 both moujicks and nobles, with this difference, how- 
 ever, that the former are beaten publicly, in the face of 
 day, while the latter are chastised in private, despite of 
 the law which should protect them. 
 
 The celebrated poet, Pouschkinn, a few days before 
 being killed in a duel, was M'hipped in the rooms of the 
 prefect of police, by the command of the Czar, in order, 
 as he was told, to soften down the ardour of his caustic 
 humour. Not a week, not a day passes, without some 
 officers, some students, or some officials, suffering the 
 same kind of punishment, with their trousers down 
 and their shoulders bare, for the least intemperance of 
 language ; but always in the most rigorously private 
 manner. If the moujicks, or, in a word, the people, 
 were to learn that boyars and priests tingled beneath 
 the blows of the stick as well as themselves, what 
 would be the effect produced ? 
 
 The law contains no statutes against offences of the 
 press, and for the very simple reason, that there is no 
 press in the country. All the gazettes ])ublished, of 
 whatever nature they may be, literary or scientific, 
 agricultural or medical, are edited under the eyes of 
 the Emperor or his censors. AVoe to those officials
 
 132 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 wiio happen to let pass a line or an expression contrary 
 to the grand and sacred principles which govern the 
 country, for they themselves would be pitilessly whip- 
 ped as well as the authors and printers. 
 
 The members of this degraded population, deprived 
 of all natural sentiment by a system of the most fright- 
 ful despotism, suffer, every day, all kinds of outrages 
 without a murmur. Have they committed any offence 
 against the regulations of the police ? They buy its 
 silence with their hard-earned gold. Are they involved 
 in any trial ? they know that justice is knocked down 
 to the highest bidder, and take their measures accord- 
 ingly- 
 
 Persons are prohibited from making any complaint 
 directly to the Czar. They must write to him franco 
 through the post. The secretaries charged with open- 
 ing these petitions suppress the greater number of 
 them, only laying before the Emperor those which it 
 would be dangerous to conceal. I saw upon the coast 
 of Africa, in the interior of Guinea, at the coiirt of the 
 Negro king Domahé, a savage monarch, almost a 
 cannibal, Avho set out several times in the course of the 
 year, to travel through the provinces of his kingdom, 
 in order to facilitate the free access of his people to 
 him, to suppress all abuses of those in authority, and, 
 in this manner, to put a curb upon the arbitrary conduct 
 of his officers. But in Russia, on the confines of civil- 
 isation itself, the Czar travels for his own amusement 
 merely, and in nowise to enter into communication 
 with his people. He allows only his nobles to ap-
 
 MAGISTKACY, Jl'STICK, AND POLICE. 133 
 
 proach. him ; the people are rei^elled, and forbidden 
 even to speak to the Autocrat, under penalty of the 
 rattan, in wielding which, Russian justice cannot be 
 accused of remissness or negligence. 
 
 Among the savages of whom I have just spoken, 
 the head of the state is subject to the influence of 
 public opinion, and governs his people with paternal 
 nffection ; he knows how to cause his own prerogative 
 to be respected, in the same way that he himself 
 respects, and causes to be respected, the rights, the 
 property, and the lives of his people. But, in Russia, 
 the whole law might be summed up as the employment 
 of brute force alone. The acts of the Czar himself are 
 subject to no control, his authority is restricted by 
 nothing, while the authority of his boyars over the serfs 
 is unlimited, and extends even over life itself. 
 
 Arbitrariness pervades everything. It is true that 
 laws exist, but they are not immutable, and above 
 them is a class of men, who act in perfect unison 
 with one another, and who never respect the laws. 
 These persons do not even take the trouble to elude 
 or bend them with common decency. The courts 
 pursue a course of legal violence, if I may so express 
 myself. 
 
 Do not require or seek any guarantee either for 
 your person or your property, for you would never 
 obtain it, not even the most simple kind of guarantee 
 which the most savage nations voluntarily respect, 
 namely, that of property, or that of a man's right to his 
 free judgment. You bave not even the right of chang-
 
 134 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 ing your residence, cr moving out of one liouse into 
 another, without permission. 
 
 The first tribunal is that of the police. It is there 
 that causes are first examined, and afterwards judged 
 by a regular tribunal of inferior jurisdiction; lastly, 
 they are taken before a court of appeal, if the appel- 
 lants can succeed in getting so far. The prosecution 
 lasts a long time, the accused person being kept in 
 prison for several years before sentence is pronounced. 
 If, on the most indisputable evidence, he is acknow- 
 ledged to be innocent, and set at liberty, it is not be- 
 fore he has passed three or four years upon the straw 
 of a dungeon, in the midst of the most disgusting filth, 
 while waiting for justice to be done him. The courts 
 of law take plenty of time to become acquainted 
 with the merits of obscure cases. I have often 
 been informed that the Emperor, swayed by the live- 
 liest feelings of equity, never allowed any judgment to 
 be enforced until he had previously examined it him- 
 self. With every inclination to believe in his ardent 
 desire to act properly, I am at a loss to understand how 
 he can, in addition to his laborious occupations con- 
 nected with government, find leisure to examine some 
 hundreds of thousands of cases. We must not forget, 
 either, that before approving or disapproving, he must 
 consider, with regard to the judgment submitted to him, 
 the manners of the people to whom the person judged 
 belongs, and, in this vast empire, there are forty different 
 races, having no afl^ity with each other, either by their 
 language, their occupations, their manners, or their trada.
 
 MAGISTJIACY. JUSTICE. AND POLICE. IS^ 
 
 The Russian gazettes never report any crime ; and 
 yet crimes of all descriptions — murders, fires, scenes of 
 pillage, and instances of atrocious vengeance — are of 
 frequent occurrence. 
 
 Imprisonment for debt lasts five years, but here 
 again Russian law proves itself to be a cheat and a lie. 
 Every person whr» perves the state is inviolable and 
 sacred, as are also his moveables and real property ; 
 this holds good from the porter of a ministerial office, 
 a school of cadets, or a public institute, and from the 
 sexton of a church, up to the minister, the general, or 
 the bishop. On the otî«er hand, however, a foreigner, or 
 a Russian to whom money is owing, can oppose the 
 granting of a passport to his debtor, if the latter 
 contemplates making a journey out of the country. 
 
 The forty-five volumes of Russian laws which I have 
 mentioned, may in fact be summed up in a few lines, 
 or even a few words : arbitrariness, legal violence, de- 
 nial of justice, and passive obedience.
 
 ma THE KNOUT AND THE RC5S1AMS. 
 
 THE FINANCES. 
 
 Pkevious to 1789, Russia had, so to speak, no debt. 
 Her annual receipts did not, it is true, amount to eight 
 millions, but this was sufficient, not only for the ex- 
 penses of the state, but also for the prodigality of the 
 Czarinas, and the eccentric and ruinous whims of their 
 favourites. 
 
 The struggles in which the empire was obliged to 
 engage to defend Prussia and Austria, and afterwards 
 those in which she was involved on her own territory, 
 against the armies of Napoleon, as well as the recent 
 ones, when Poland rose up in insurrection, obliged her 
 to issue an enormous quantity of paper money. This she 
 has in vain attempted to supersede by means of loans 
 effected in Holland, and subsequently repeated in other 
 countries. 
 
 In spite of the subsidies granted her, at one time, by 
 England, to turn her arms against France, in spite of 
 the enormous contributions she levied by her troops on 
 Turkey and Persia, and likewise on the conquered 
 Poles, her financial condition has not changed ; now,
 
 THE FINANCES, 137 
 
 as heretofore, she is incapable of increasing her re- 
 ceipts in a manner proportionate to the prodigious and 
 daily increase of her liabilities. 
 
 However, without hoping, perhaps, ever to see her 
 expenses and receipts equally balanced, she might, at 
 least, see her finances in a much more prosperous con- 
 dition, if the officials appointed to receive the moneys 
 due to the state did not, with impunity, and in the 
 most audacious manner, practise every kind of fraud, 
 and appropriate for their own benefit a large portion of 
 the receipts.- Their audacity is so great, that, under the 
 very eyes of the Czar himself, the officers of the cus- 
 toms sell their silence to any one who will pay tliera 
 for it, in order to carry on smuggling in perfect se- 
 curity. 
 
 We find among the officials of the administration of 
 the empire all the abuses peculiar to the worst organ- 
 ised goA'ernments, besides a great many others which 
 belong exclusively to Russia. 
 
 The sources of the budget are not numerous. The 
 most obvious ones are those derived from the customs, 
 the salt monopoly, the mines, the imports, the poll-tax, 
 and from farming the sale of the brandy with Avhich 
 government poisons and brutalises the entire population. 
 There are, also, the taxes on the passports of the Rus- 
 sians themselves, which cost an enormous sum ; those 
 on the permits of residence, which subject all foreigners 
 who reside or merely travel in Russia, to an odious and 
 vexatious system of contribution, amoimting to more 
 than £1, 14s. a-year; also the dues for registering, and 
 
 J
 
 138 THE KXOTTT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 stamps. Tliese last two sources are not very fruitful, as 
 they depend entirely on transactions of the nobility, the 
 merchants, and the freemen, who are not at all numerous 
 in the empire. Lastly, there are the taxes on the guilds 
 and various patents, the amount being proportioned to 
 the capital which the tradesmen or merchants declare 
 that they employ in their business. 
 
 In order to obtain a total of from twenty-four to 
 thirty-two million pounds sterling, at which M'e may 
 estimate the revenues of Russia, it required all the 
 financial genius of Count de Cancrine, a Saxon subject, 
 summoned to St. Petersburg by the Czar Alexander, 
 to set in order this portion of the administration. 
 
 II. 
 
 It is a difficult thing to understand how, with such 
 slender resources, the government can meet the charges 
 of so vast an empire, which keeps up a permanent army 
 of more than a million of men, as well as provide for 
 the necessities and caprices of a most magnificent and 
 most numerous court, and for the expenses of all the 
 branches of a colossal administration. The question 
 naturally presents itself, Avhere would the Czar obtain 
 money when he finds himself engaged in a really serious 
 war? 
 
 Would he obtain it from the peasants ? They are 
 already bowed down by the poll-tax, the abrocks, and 
 the tyranny of all kinds practised on them by the boyars
 
 THE FINANCES. 139 
 
 and their agents. Besides, enervated by slaverj% as 
 much as by their habitual indolence, they only seek to 
 raise from the soil what is strictly necessary for their 
 existence. 
 
 Would he obtain it by doubling the land-tax ? The 
 taxes cannot be made to produce more than they do. 
 Besides, on what could they be raised ? On an ungrate- 
 ful soil which produces scarcely anything. The Russian 
 soil is nothing but an immense forest, intersected by 
 swamps, and lakes as large as seas, and by steppes which 
 are equal in size to deserts, where the land that is 
 in cultivation, or capable of cultivation, is merely an 
 accident. It is almost impossible to turn any of the 
 forests to account, for the same reason that renders the 
 labour of the peasant unproductive ; there are neither 
 roads nor highways. The outer covering of mould, too, 
 is so thin and poor, that trees cannot flourish in it ; on 
 attaining an average age of fifteen years, they become 
 stunted, shrivel up, and rot away. In four-fifths of the 
 whole extent of the empire, the corn does not yield 
 more than six or eight grains to the seed. 
 
 Would he obtain it from those in trade? They 
 possess only houses, and capital which can in no way 
 be got at. This class of men is not at all numerous, 
 and hardly counts at all in the state. Possessing no 
 kind of influence, it is molested and preyed upon 
 according to the good will of the nobility, and the 
 agents of all the branches of the imperial administra- 
 tion. 
 
 Would he obtain it from the nobility ? This body 
 
 j2
 
 140 TUE KNOUT AND THE KUSSIANS. 
 
 consists of, at the very most, a million individuals, nine- 
 tenths of whom, and more, are eaten up by debts, and 
 whose property is mortgaged in the banks of the em- 
 pire, while the other tenth is disputing for the best- 
 l)aid places at court. To impose upon these ruined 
 nobles a fresh tax, would evidently be simply causing it 
 to fall upon the peasants ; and were the latter taxed 
 beyond their capabilities, there Avould be every reason 
 to fear a general revolt. 
 
 Would he obtain it from the secular clergy ? They 
 are exempt from poll-tax and imposts, and are as poor 
 as the illustrious Idumœan patriarch himself. 
 
 Could he increase the custom duties? They are 
 already exorbitant, and equivalent to a continental 
 blockade in disguise. The duty on the majority of 
 articles imported, amounts to more than eighty or 
 ninety per cent, on their value. Badly distributed, 
 badly combined, and always exacted in the most vexa- 
 tious manner, in order to compel the merchants to be 
 generous, the duties repel rather than attract foreign 
 trade. It may be supposed that this prohibitory system 
 has powerfully conduced to assist the development 
 of the national industry, but such is in nowise the 
 case. 
 
 Up to the present time, the national industry has 
 made but little progress ; it has never produced, for 
 the consumption of the country, aught but clumsy 
 and imperfect piracies of foreign manufactures, although 
 the Russian government keeps in London and Paris a 
 number of agents charged with copying all the best
 
 THK FINANCES. J 41 
 
 articles of French and English manufacture, and sending 
 them to St. Petersburg and Moscow, Avhich have become, 
 as far as several branches of trade are concerned, ex- 
 actly what Brussels is for French books. The Russians 
 unscrupulously appropriate, likewise, all patented inven- 
 tions, without the least respect for the property of 
 others. 
 
 Both internal and foreign commerce is carried on 
 by foreign capitalists, who are easily alarmed. Take 
 aAvay, or frighten, the English, French, Dutch, and 
 German firms of Cronstadt, Odessa, Moscow, and St. 
 Petersburg, and the vast machine of government is 
 suddenly paralysed, and all Eussia starving. 
 
 An empire can never possess any material power, 
 except in perfect proportion to its own financial re- 
 sources, and the Czar only possesses such as are very 
 precarious and very uncertain, and which the slightest 
 perturbation in Europe would gravely compromise. 
 He has but very little ready money in his empire, so 
 that he would be deprived of the resource which the 
 Sultans used formerly to adopt in their distress, namely, 
 the debasing of the coin. He could not have recourse 
 to fresh foreign loans ; and the empire, already en- 
 cumbered with paper-money, would not support the 
 issue of any more, seeing that the Czar has already 
 been obliged actually to compel his wealthiest pro- 
 vinces to accept this kind of currency, which they 
 rejected, and which they still reject even at the i)re- 
 sent day. 
 
 The Russians believe that there are hundreds of
 
 142 THE KNOUT AND THE RITSSIANS. 
 
 millions of pounds sterling heaped up in the cellars of 
 the citadel. This fact appears to me quite beyond the 
 limits of probability. I cannot understand from what 
 sources, and to what end, the Czar Nicholas could ever 
 have accumulated such an amoimt of treasure.
 
 SLAVERY. 143 
 
 SLAVERY. 
 
 X. 
 
 The condition of the slave is still, at the present day, 
 •what it was under Peter I. In spite of the strenuous 
 efforts of the Emperor Nicholas to render the condition 
 of the peasant more happy, and more su})portable, it 
 has remained pretty much the same that it always was. 
 
 The inhabitants and the soil are enfeoffed to about 
 eixty thousand noble families, the head of each of 
 which represents a nomade Tartar, encamped pro- 
 visionally in the midst of his serfs, and cultivatinu; the 
 land until the moment that the Czar shall call upon 
 him to take up arms. The Russians have an idea 
 that they will one day subjugate the world, and that 
 the Sclavonic race is destined to refresh, with its 
 vigorous blood, the degenerated races of the south. 
 
 In this state of encampment, however, which has 
 lasted more than a century, the serf has gradually lost 
 his primitive character, his energy, his physical strength, 
 and that taste for an adventurous life generally inherent 
 in nomade races. Accustomed, by his continual inter- 
 course with those who compose the establishment of 
 his lord, to certain sweets of home, he gradually
 
 14i THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 acquires a liking for tlie domestic hearth, and thinks 
 more of the cabin which shelters him than the con- 
 quests which he is promised. Civilisation expires on 
 the frontiers of his native country. If it ever happens 
 that he should speak of liberty, it is as of an unknown 
 thing whose meaning or utility he does not perceive. 
 He understands nothing of the primitive equality of 
 men, or of the odious division of castes. 
 
 Cruelly disciplined under a state of atrocious servitude, 
 he is indifferent to all around him. The agent of his 
 lord may rob him, or his lord himself may carry off his 
 daughter to satisfy his brutal lust, and he will thank 
 him for the honour which he has done his family. 
 
 In all other parts of Europe, there are, between the 
 aristocracy and the people, an infinite number of inter- 
 mediate classes, by means of which one of the lower 
 classes may rise, according to his desire, his caprice, 
 or his interest, from his original station to a more 
 elevated one ; we find nothing similar to this in Russia. 
 The peasant cannot follow any manual calling, he 
 cannot change his occupation, and from an agricultural 
 labourer become a servant, without the consent of his 
 lord ; if the latter refuses it, the peasant has no appeal. 
 
 But the reader will say : In a Christian country it 
 is the duty of the law to protect the interest, the life, 
 the property, and the family of the peasant, as much as 
 that of the noble. The law of Russia protects the 
 interest of none, except indeed of those connected with 
 the government. For the serf, property is something 
 unknown ; the word no more exists in his language.
 
 PLAVKRY. 1-15 
 
 than the words citizen or liberty exist in the Russian 
 dictionary. 
 
 The most the law does is to protect the life and the 
 property of the boyars. The serf, being considered as 
 a mere farmmg machine, does not require laws. A 
 plough can very well be left out of doors all night, ex- 
 posed to the snow, the rain, or the frost ; and what is a 
 serf in Russia save a walking plough ? 
 
 The peasants are well aware from tradition, that 
 there exists a something Avhich is called the law, but 
 that this something Avas ci-eated to be employed against 
 them, and for the benefit of beings who do not resemble 
 them. Do the horses of a regiment understand the 
 laws of discipline ? They are made to obey them by 
 means of the whip and the spm% no more ; and in 
 Russia, as in the stables of cavalry barracks, the whip 
 is the surest means of setting matters right. 
 
 For the serf there are no laws, no courts of justice, 
 no regular mode of legal redress. For him the law is 
 his lord ; for him, the court of justice is also his lord ; 
 and the agent of the latter is, at the same time, his 
 tipstaff and his executioner. 
 
 Religion, God, the Pope, and the laws, are personi- 
 fied in the Emperor, just as the noble and the Empe- 
 ror are personified in a coarse, ignorant, and vindictive 
 agent, always present, with a whip in one hand and a 
 stick in the other, like a groom at the door of a stable ; 
 plying the whip on his right, and the stick on his left, 
 and always keeping watch with brutal severity to see 
 that no one oversteps the boundaries of his social
 
 146 THE KNOUT AND THE RITSSTANS. 
 
 position, or makes any effort to escape from tlie harsh- 
 ness of the rules and regulations to which he is 
 subjected. 
 
 Besides, as the serf never possessed either property 
 or rights, it was useless for the law to enter into any 
 long explanations on the subject. 
 
 The ukases are promulgated for the use and con- 
 venience of the nobles alone ; the people, or rather the 
 serfs, never know anything about them. Were the 
 serfs acquainted with the law, they would interpret it 
 in their own manner ; they would begin to reason, and 
 from discussion to enfranchisement there is but one 
 step. The people, therefore, do not know, and must 
 not know, that there is such a thing as right. 
 
 II. 
 
 Let us open one of the voluminous books of laws, 
 and take the chapter regulating serfdom. My finger 
 lights upon Article 948, of which the following is a 
 most faithful translation : " Besides being required to 
 yield passive obedience to their masters, slaves are 
 obliged, under the severest penalties, to uncover them- 
 selves whenever they are in their presence, to succour 
 them should they be attacked, or a fire break out in 
 their houses, or if any attempt should be made upon 
 the honour of their (the slaves') mistress." 
 
 The two following articles will give the reader a 
 still better idea of the monstrous character of these 
 laws:
 
 SLAVERY. 147 
 
 •* Article 949. Noblemen are prohibited from ob- 
 lijjing their serfs, male or female, to marry contrary to 
 their wishes, by selecting a husband for a female serf, 
 or a Avife for a male serf, if he or she has not chosen 
 the person selected." 
 
 " Article 954. Priests are expressly forbidden to 
 marry female serfs, or their daughters, to any person 
 ■whatever, ivithout the permission of the noblemen to 
 whom they belong." 
 
 At Article 964, I read as follows : " A nobleman has 
 the right of imposing on his serfs all kinds of work, and 
 pecuniary, personal, and other fines. He has the right of 
 making a serf change his condition as a servant for that 
 of an agricultural labourer, or that of an agricultural 
 labourer for that of a servant, or of putting him out to 
 service at a stranger's. 
 
 "He judges all differences without appeal. To 
 keep his slaves in a state of the most passive obedience, 
 he has the right of employing all means of correction, 
 and whatever unusual punishments he may judge 
 necessary : he can even send them to Siberia, accom- 
 panied by their wives and children, under six years for 
 the males and ten years for the females. 
 
 " He has the right of transporting the whole or part 
 of his slaves from one estate to another, that is to say, 
 from north to south, from east to west, and vice versa." 
 
 But for a removal of this description, the nobleman 
 is obliged to pay the Crown for a permit, just as if the 
 slave were a cartload of wood which its owner might 
 ■wish to transport through the city of Paris.
 
 148 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 Article 988 says : " Slaves may be sold vrith. or 
 without the estate, and consequently be transported 
 from one place to another, at the pleasure of the pur- 
 chaser, but the sale can only take place between mem- 
 bers of the feudal nobility." 
 
 As a matter of course, a person can sell or alienate 
 a part or the whole of a village, either to pay a gambling 
 debt, or for any other reason, just as a farmer sells a part 
 of his sheep to pay his rent. 
 
 From Article 950, I translate the following : " If a 
 serf, contrary to the obedience which he owes his lord, 
 takes the liberty of preferring against the latter a non- 
 authorised complaint, and especially, if he dares to make 
 it to the Emperor himself, he shall, as supplicant and 
 author of the complaint, be pvmished with the utmost 
 rigour of the laws." 
 
 It is forbidden, however, to sell slaves, male or 
 female, in fairs or public markets. 
 
 Article 452 prohibits the reception of any denun- 
 ciation made by slaves against their lords. 
 
 Let the reader, however, mark well Article 1088 : 
 *' A slave receives his own liberty and that of his family 
 for denouncing his master, in case the latter is con- 
 spiring against the state, or has attempted the life of 
 his sovereign, or been the accomplice of such an 
 attempt." 
 
 T have already said that slaves of both sexes are 
 under the necessity of rendering passive obedience to 
 their masters. But Article 1089 adds as a corrective: 
 " Serfs who shall, at the instigation of their masters.
 
 SLAVERY. 149 
 
 have ti'ansgresscd the laws of the empire, shall be 
 punished as their accomplices, with all the rigour of 
 the existing laws." 
 
 "Article 1071. An emancipated serf can never 
 again become a slave, but he may be compelled to serve 
 as a soldier all his life." 
 
 It would be too long and too fastidious a task to 
 point out, article by article, all the discrepancies heaped 
 together in this volume of laws, and I shall therefore con- 
 tent myself with citing some of the most curious cases. 
 
 As I have already said, the peasant is not at liberty 
 to leave the plough and enter into trade or exercise a 
 manual calling, without the permission of his master, 
 who never gives it except when the wretched serf can 
 pay for it handsomely in hard cash. 
 
 A serf can neither acquire nor possess any real pro- 
 perty, nor advance his money on a mortgage. If an 
 inheritance falls to him, the real property is sold for his 
 benefit, and the sum realised put in the bank — if the 
 nobleman or his agent has not swallowed it all up, 
 which sometimes happens. To whom can the serf 
 complain ? 
 
 A slave who is a merchant cannot borrow money, 
 nor take goods as security or on credit, without the 
 authorisation of his master or his worship the agent, 
 who causes himself to be well paid for it, as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 Nor can a slave be bail for any one. An exception, 
 however, is made by the law in favour of the serfs of 
 the government of Pultowa, who enjoy the privilege of
 
 150 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 becoming security to the amount of twenty-seven 
 shillings and fourpence. No one has ever been able to 
 explain to me the origin of this privilege. 
 
 A whole village is responsible for the imposts which 
 any one of the inhabitants is unable to pay. If the 
 noble proprietor refuses to pay the taxes which he owes 
 the Crown, or if it is notorious that he cannot pay them, 
 the serfs are obliged by law to indemnify the exchequer. 
 
 The boyar may mortgage his peasants, but he can- 
 not sell or remove any peasant from one estate to 
 another before himself paying for a permit. 
 
 When, in a quarrel, one of the combatants kills his 
 adversary, the owner of the victim has the right of de- 
 manding from the master of the murderer 600 roubles 
 of silver (about £96), which the latter makes good by 
 extorting a fine from all his serfs who witnessed the 
 quarrel. This is the Russian idea of justice. 
 
 One of the most odious laws regulating serfdom 
 is the following : " Noblemen are expressly inter- 
 dicted and prohibited from presenting to the senate the 
 defence of a slave who has been condemned by that body, 
 or of causing to be laid before it any document tending 
 to justify him, even if he is innocent.'''' 
 
 I have forgotten to state that a noble is not under 
 the necessity of rendering any one an account of his 
 motives for punishing his slave. He is at liberty to 
 knout him, to make a soldier of him, or to send him
 
 SLAVERY. 151 
 
 and all his family to Siberia, according to his own good 
 pleasure. 
 
 In spite of my desire to abridge as much as possible 
 this list of strange articles, which consecrate odious 
 principles that are an outrage to humanity, I must 
 mention the means employed by the government to 
 gain converts to the Russian church. 
 
 If any noble and his serfs do not profess the Greek 
 religion, those slaves who are converted become free on 
 the sole condition of paying their lord three and nine- 
 pence each, as an indemnity for his loss. The serfs 
 thus emancipated for coming over to the Greco-Russian 
 faith, are transported to villages peopled solely by con- 
 verts of this description. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The foregoing are not all the monstrosities conse- 
 crated by the fourteen volumes of laws ; there are others, 
 still more frightful, of which I will not speak at present. 
 
 To suit the necessity of the moment, a ukase is 
 issued exactly in the same manner as a regulation of 
 police. The aristocracy alone is acquainted with it. 
 The punishments set forth in this ukase are instantly 
 applicable. 
 
 Up to the year 1801, the Czars and the boyars had 
 preserved the barbarous custom of giving slaves — men, 
 women, and children — as presents. The nobles could 
 stake and lose, in the same evening, at lansquenet, the 
 head of a family, who was obliged to follow his new
 
 15Ô THE KNOUT AND THE KUSSIAN8. 
 
 master, while his wife and family — played for and lost 
 in the same way — became the property of some other 
 boyar, who took them away to his estate. The family 
 was disorganised and dispersed. The Emperor Alex- 
 ander abolished this odious traffic. Nevertheless, in 
 1825, the Russians still traded in Georgians and Kir- 
 ghees, whom they sent for sale to the ports of the Black 
 Sea and the Caspian — Orenbourg, on the Om-al, was the 
 place where these odious exchanges took place. At the 
 present day, this branch of trade is no longer openly 
 carried on, but the law is strained in such a manner 
 that the actual result is the same. The agents of the 
 Russian government allow their eyes to be closed with 
 silver roubles. 
 
 How is it possible to reconcile such a state of things 
 in this country, which is a phenomenon in Europe, with 
 the pretensions of its nobles, who assert that they are 
 the most refined, the most amiable, and (do not laugh, 
 reader) the most civilised body of men on the face of 
 the globe, and also wdth the adhesion of the govern- 
 ment to the treaty for the extinction of the slave- 
 trade ? 
 
 We must, however, in justice, say that the Emperor 
 Nicholas has done all he can to prevail on his nobility 
 to prepare the peasants, gradually and prudently, for 
 complete emancipation. He was the first to set an ex- 
 ample of disinterestedness, which has not found very 
 many imitators. The Czar possesses, at the present 
 day, about twenty millions of free peasants, whom he 
 causes to be governed and disciplined according to
 
 SLAVERT. 153 
 
 military rules, not to prevent the grave disorders which 
 might arise from so sudden a change in their social 
 condition, but to procure himself soldiers. Far from 
 constraining them, however, to confine themselves to 
 the cultivation of the soil, he encourages them to devote 
 their attention to trade and skilled labour. A few 
 nobles have imitated his example, and emancipated 
 their serfs ; but, in order to keep them in their villages, 
 have bound them down by farming leases. By right, they 
 are free, but in reality their condition is pretty much 
 what it was, and the agents still continue, as they 
 always did, to treat them like so many Negroes. 
 
 Although combining in himself three sources of 
 immense power — the temporal, spiritual, and auto- 
 cratic — the Emperor Nicholas is not always able to 
 follow the bent of his inclination and his own grand 
 ideas. We must allow him all credit for his excellent 
 intentions. The peasants love him like a father, and 
 he exercises over them a most extraordinary power. I 
 will here give one example out of a thousand. 
 
 In 1830, the cholera visited St. Petersburg. The 
 hospitals were crarnmed to overflowing with the sick, 
 and the cemeteries choked up with corpses. All of a 
 sudden, reports of persons being poisoned were circu- 
 lated through the city. The people rushed in crowds 
 to the hospital, forced their way into the wards, mas- 
 sacred the surgeons, the dispensers, and the attend-
 
 154 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 ants, and threw their mangled bodies out of windows. 
 More than sixty thousand moujicks, trembling with 
 rage and terror, were assembled upon the immense 
 square of Aboukoff ; the plague was decimating them ; 
 every instant some of their number fell down stricken by 
 the disease, and the fury of the immense multitude 
 continued to increase. The Emperor, informed of what 
 was going on, flew, at the utmost speed of his horses, 
 to the spot. Getting out of his carriage, he pene- 
 trated alone into the midst of the agitated crowd, that 
 the most insignificant trifle would have lashed up to 
 commit a general massacre. In a voice of thunder he 
 exclaimed : " Down on your knees ; down on your 
 knees, all of you ! Let us pray together ; let us pray 
 to God to save us from this» plague ! " In an instant, 
 the whole crowd was on their knees, and, with their 
 foreheads resting on the stones of the pavement, were 
 praying with their Emperor. 
 
 The Czar then arose, and said : " At present, retire 
 to yovir homes, and in twenty minutes do not let me 
 see a single person in the square." Twenty minutes 
 afterwards the square was deserted. The sixty thou- 
 sand moujicks had disappeared. 
 
 The serf hates his lord instinctively; the latter 
 possesses no other influence over him than that of the 
 stick. Even religion itself does not assist him. 
 
 Coming originally from beyond the Oural, the 
 Russian people are still wrapped up in the swaddling 
 clothes of the East ; they have nothing domestic about 
 them. The Russian female peasants possess no per-
 
 SLAVERY. 155 
 
 sonal value in the eyes of the men, who look upon 
 them merely in the light of an indispensable article 
 of furniture, which they occasionally find useful. 
 
 The character of the peasant is a profound abyss, to 
 the bottom of which no eye can pierce. Is he really 
 aware of the enormity of the ill-treatment under which 
 he is bowed down, and does he hoard up in his heart 
 projects of terrible vengeance, or does he simply feel 
 pain in the same manner as a mere animal ? This is a 
 question that I cannot answer. Like the Negro, he 
 entertains the greatest aversion for work ; like him, he 
 has the most sovereign contempt for death ; and, like 
 him, too, he practises the art of dissimulation to an 
 extent of which it is perfectly impossible to convey an 
 idea. This character, however, is common to all 
 nations bent beneath the degrading yoke of an auto- 
 cratic government, under which everything is subjected 
 to the arbitrariness and caprice of a despot. 
 
 Degraded by a yoke of iron, all intelligence has 
 disappeared, from this specimen of human nature, which 
 no longer possesses aught save the coarse instincts of 
 the ""brute. The boyars, and the government itself, 
 since 1848, take good care not to rescue these beings 
 fi-om the state of gross ignorance in which they now 
 wallow, for they might, perchance, become impatient 
 of their yoke. 
 
 The Russian catechisms speak of the obedience 
 which serfs owe their lords, and of the idolatrous love 
 which they ought to entertain for the Emperor. God 
 and the miracles of Jesus Christ are mentioned merely
 
 156 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 as a matter of form. It is, in fact, in the name of 
 God Himself, that these beings are fashioned to the 
 state of servitude in which they are kept. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The manners of the Russian peasant are those of a 
 peojjle still in their infancy. Everything which sur- 
 rounds him reveals a state of nature that is still almost 
 savage. 
 
 Along the highroad, his house has the form of a 
 cabin; in the interior of the country, at a distance 
 from the roads, it resembles a mere hovel. His tools, 
 agricultural instruments, utensils, furniture, and raiment 
 are gross and clumsy. The harness of his horse is 
 made up of bits of string, old rags, and the bark of trees, 
 plaited together. He is often surprised by the most 
 horrible famine, a description of Avhich would cause 
 that which Ireland suffered in the days of her greatest 
 distress to grow pale in comparison. 
 
 The musical faculties are but little developed in the 
 Russian peasant. His airs are sad, plaintive, and 
 snuffling, as is the case with all savage nations. His 
 musical instruments are of the rudest description, con- 
 sisting of a flute made of the rind of the birch, which 
 requires the lungs of a Titan to play it, a sort of guitar, 
 called the Lalaika, and a tambourine, ornamented with 
 small bells. All this is barbarous, but not at all tragic. 
 Whenever I hear a moujick sing, I fancy myself among 
 the Esquimaux or Samoiedi. In the song of the fellah.
 
 SLAVERY. 167 
 
 on the banks of the Nile, and in that of the Arab, there 
 is something poetical, passionate, and dramatic ; but in 
 that of the moujick, I repeat, there is nothing. 
 
 It has often been said that the Russian peasants do 
 not desire liberty, but feel happy in their state of 
 servitude. This is true up to a certain point. Their 
 present condition, however hard it may appear, strikes 
 me as preferable to a state of freedom, such as the 
 aristocracy would give them. The field which they 
 plough, the garden which they cultivate, and the house 
 which shelters them against the inclemency of the 
 weather, do not belong to them ; everything is the 
 property of their lord, in the same manner as the 
 Negro's hut is that of the planter. But if they 
 possess nothing, if they owe the sweat of their brow to 
 the boyar, the boyar owes them in return, grain 
 wherewith to sow their field, if the crop has failed ; 
 cattle, if distemper has spread death among the flocks 
 and herds of the province ; and a house, if their former 
 one has been consumed by the flames. Once free, the 
 peasants would become farmers ; they woidd cultivate 
 the land at their own risk and peril, and the noble 
 would no longer owe them anything. They manage, 
 therefore, better in this state of servitude, which frees 
 them from any feeling of anxiety for the future, than 
 they would in a state of liberty which would force 
 them to work. There is something of the Negro in 
 the nature of a Russian. 
 
 From the age of sixteen, both males and females are 
 made to labour, and every one is obliged to give three
 
 158 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 days' work a week to his or her lord. On the other 
 three days, the peasant cultivates just enough corn for 
 the sustenance of his family, and that of his cattle. 
 Agriculture, never being encouraged, is in a state of 
 infancy. The rudeness and imperfections of Russian 
 farming instruments carry a person back to the time 
 of the first ploughman, Triptolemus, As the soil is not 
 deep, a single cow suffices to draw the plough by 
 means of pieces of string and bits of rope. 
 
 VII. 
 
 In addition to all this, liberty does not present 
 itself to the minds of Russian serfs, as offering a happier 
 lot, or as being accompanied by any well-defined rights. 
 They feel instinctively that, whether they are free or 
 not, the stick would stiU remain the most energetic in- 
 strument of persuasion, and the sole argument of the 
 law, as well as the last resoui'ce of their lord. Very 
 few of them, except such as are engaged in trade, or 
 some branch of skilled labour, endeavour to purchase 
 their freedom. Besides, the conditions of the pur- 
 chase are settled by their proprietor, and, if he finds 
 it his interest to employ the services of any serf, who 
 is either a skilled workman or a tradesman, there is 
 no law in the code of forty-fi'^e volumes which can 
 force him to relinquish his property. As I have be- 
 fore said, men in Russia are regarded as merchan- 
 dise, which has its price just like a horse, an ox, or a 
 hogshead of brown sugar.
 
 SL.VVERY. 169 
 
 The nobles do not all superintend the cultivation of 
 their estates in person. Those "vvho reside at court 
 entrust the administration of them to cruel and rapacious 
 agents, or allow the peasants the privilege of cultivating 
 the land as they may think best, on condition of their 
 paying so many abrocks a-year, either in money, corn, 
 or forage. This abrock (revenue) is settled by the 
 nobleman or his agent, without appeal, at so much for 
 every man. It varies considerably, ranging from eight, 
 twelve, or sixteen shillings, up to as much as two pounds, 
 or even more. In a word, I am guilty of no exaggera- 
 tion in stating, that the boyar and his agent rival one 
 another in compelling the unfortunate peasants to 
 come doion with their money, and in extorting from them 
 their last farthing. 
 
 I said, a little above, that it was to the advantage 
 of the peasant to remain a serf, because in that con- 
 dition he was sure of not dying of starvation. The 
 Russian law is very explicit on this head ; it regulates 
 the rations of the serf, as well as the amount of brute 
 strength which may be extracted from him. But is 
 the law on these two points ever put into execution ? 
 In the neighbourhood of the two capitals, the boyai's 
 are, without doubt, constrained to observe these rules, 
 more or less exactly, by the relations established between 
 the peasants and the inhabitants of the city, to whom 
 they sell the produce of their harvest, their farm-yard, 
 or their garden. If an instance of starvation ever 
 reaches the ears of the Czar, woe betide the boyar ! 
 He is instantly exiled, and his estates placed under
 
 160 THE KKOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 sequestration, and administered by agents of the Crown. 
 Truth, however, obliges me to state that the unfortunate 
 peasants are not treated with any more humanity for 
 all this. They simply change their harness and driver, 
 and that is all. 
 
 But how can I describe the condition of those who are 
 far from the capital, far from the eyes, far from the ears 
 of the Emperor, and who have to do with masters that 
 are avaricious and gross, barbarous and even ferocious ! 
 They are beyond hope. To speak of humanity and 
 justice to these boyars, eaten up by debauchery, would 
 be of no more use than if you were to talk Hebrew to 
 them, or to preach temperance to a sot, gorged with 
 liquor and dead drunk. The peasants should invoke 
 the law, the reader may perchance say ! They would 
 be answered by the whip and all kinds of tortures ; 
 the knout woidd cut the shoulders of all who dared 
 to seek for shelter behind the law. The boyar does 
 not hesitate to assassinate or poison. Who is there 
 to acquaint the Czar with these instances of cruelty ? 
 Are there any practicable roads ? Besides, are not all 
 the nobles leagued with one another ? If the peasant 
 succeeds in escaping from his own proprietor, he is sure 
 to be brought back by the neighbouring one ; and, if he 
 is, oh, do not ask what punishment awaits him for 
 his desertion, for, were I to tell you, I should freeze 
 your blood ! 
 
 Besides being subjected to the numerous acts of a 
 system of barbarity unparalleled on the face of the 
 earth, the peasants are often exposed, as I have before
 
 SLAVERY. 161 
 
 said, to awful famines. There is more tlian one case 
 on record, in which the inhabitants of a whole province 
 have been under the necessity of having recourse to 
 straw and the bark of trees — principally of the birch — 
 which, after being pounded up together and converted 
 into an earthy and nauseous paste, served to deceive 
 their stomachs, torn by the pangs of hunger. Cattle, 
 poultry, and vermin had all been killed and eaten. In 
 1846 or 1847, people were not told at the cost of how 
 many tears and how much anguish, the Czar obtained 
 the forty or fifty millions of pounds sterling, vs'hich he 
 invested in the banks of England and France. He ex- 
 ported his corn at a time when a portion of his subjects 
 were dying of starvation. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 It is in the governments of the "West, between the 
 Ladoga and the Dwina, in the solitudes which are 
 scarcely peopled and without roads ; it is at Sim- 
 birsk, Perm, and the governments between Kasan and 
 Moscow, that we must study the condition of the 
 peasants, if we would obtain a true idea of it. There 
 it is that serfdom flourishes in its fullest extent, and in 
 all its severity ; there it is that men are driven and 
 treated like brutes ; there it is that such crimes and 
 tortures as make one's blood curdle to think of them, 
 are practised with impunity. 
 
 Whatever may be the sentiments of humanity which 
 animate the Emperor personally, the agents of the
 
 162 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 government are, with the greatest effrontery, the salaried 
 accomplices of the atrocious exactions of the boyars, and 
 their stewards. The Russian noble does not care as 
 much about a slave as a Virginian planter does. 
 
 In the governments situated at a distance from 
 the two capitals, the male peasant, from his dress, 
 his bearing, and his thick unkempt hair and beard, 
 resembles more an animal than an intelligent being. 
 His aspect is repulsive and nauseous, and, like those 
 animals who possess a little pouch filled with musk or 
 some other scent, he leaves behind him a disgusting 
 odour. He is the picture of human nature at the lowest 
 spoke of the social ladder. In such districts, there is 
 nothing to distinguish the boyars from the peasants, 
 save the usage which the former make of their sticks 
 wherever they go : externally, they are remarkable for 
 the same physical ugliness, the same dirtiness, and the 
 same coarseness of manners and forms. 
 
 The boyars' wives, in the interior of the country, 
 differ from the female peasants only by the greater rich- 
 ness of their dress, but their manners, their carriage, 
 and their language are the same. 
 
 I have said, in another place, that Russia is a vast 
 camp ; nothing can be more true : a Russian tillage 
 gives a person a complete idea of one. The uniformity 
 and monotony of the habitations are enough to drive 
 any person mad ; they are as melancholy a sight as 
 the tombs of a church-yard. All the cabins are of one 
 invariable shape and appearance. They do not form 
 distinct groups, but are scattered about, at hazard,
 
 SLAVERY. 163 
 
 in ever)' direction, offering a confused and irregular 
 assemblage of hovels, of which no words can ever con- 
 vey an idea. Such a thing as a street or a public square 
 is unknoN\'n. The spaces separating the cabins are 
 so many muddy cesspools, which are perfectly impass- 
 able in the rainy season, or on the occasion of a thaw. 
 You get to the huts as you best can, by small narrow 
 paths or lanes, which, in the dog-days, pour forth pu- 
 trid emanations, fever, and death. 
 
 These habitations are all built of fir-logs, scarcely 
 squared on the two sides, imevenly placed one upon 
 the other, and dovetailed at the two extremities. The 
 interstices are stuffed up with moss or coarse tow. 
 The peasant takes, just as he thinks fit, the wood 
 necessary for his cabin from the neighbouring forest, 
 without his lord offering any opposition to his so doing. 
 
 Nothing decorates the interior of these dwellings 
 Bave the undulation of a kind of vermin peculiar to the 
 country, which is propagated in countless myriads in 
 the seams of the resinous walls, and which, in the 
 silence of the night, you can hear as it moves about. 
 
 A clumsy table, a few stools and forms, most filthily 
 dirty, a broken patched-up miiTor, inclosed in a red 
 and blue frame ornamented with strange-looking un- 
 couth flowers, constitute pretty well all the furnitmre, 
 with the exception of a huge chest, in which the linen 
 and objects of value are put away. A few pictures of 
 saints, with the Virgin and Infant Jesus, occupy the 
 most eastern corner of the apartment ; these are the 
 family bogs; a Email lamp, in which stinking oil is
 
 164 THE KNOTTT AND THE UtTSSIANS. 
 
 burnt, lights them night and day. Save two or three 
 iron vases, of uncouth shape, the various pans and 
 saucepans are made of wood, covered with varnish of 
 great consistence, able to resist the action of boiling 
 water. They have but little crockery; the little they do 
 possess, which is used only on grand occasions, is of the 
 commonest description, and ornamented with strange 
 figui-es and designs. China is a myth. WTien a pea- 
 sant has succeeded in obtaining a vase or a cracked 
 cup, he places it in the most prominent part of his 
 cabin as a curiosity. In the house of a boyar of the 
 government of Simbii-sk, I once saw, under a patched- 
 up glass globe, a new cotton nightcap, which was pre- 
 served as something rare. 
 
 The ceilings of the cabins are roughly crossed by 
 fir-logs, scarcely stripped of their bark ; to these are 
 suspended, by trapezia formed of the branches of trees, 
 a few planks constituting the moveable sideboard of the 
 household, and very much resembling a hammock. A 
 large bench runs round the wall, to which it is fas- 
 tened, and serves, in summer, as a bed for all the inmates 
 of the house, who lie on it in a row. 
 
 The stove occupies the extremity of the room, near 
 the entrance. It is built of bricks covered with a glaze 
 formed of lime and a clayey kind of earth. Its form is 
 that of the oven of French coimtry bakers. The top 
 of it, which is covered with sheepskins, constitutes the 
 winter bed. The whole family, always completely 
 dressed, sleep on it, and live in a most deplorable state 
 of promiscuousness.
 
 SLAVERY. 165 
 
 IX. 
 
 The maimer in which the people are huddled to- 
 gether, and their impure and dirty habits, infect the 
 apartment, the air of which is scarcely ever renewed 
 all through the winter. The light of day finds its way 
 inside, through two or three cats' holes and oiled paper, 
 or a greenish glass full of bull's-eyes, and thick enough 
 to resist a bullet. In a great many places the glass is 
 replaced by fishskin prepared on purpose, or by plates 
 of mica. Two or three knotty planlcs, roughly hewn 
 with the axe, and held together by two cross-pieces, 
 act as a door ; wliUe two thick leather thongs serve 
 to attach it to the door-post and the wall. The use of 
 hinges, locks, and bolts, is very little known. Of 
 what use would locks be in this coimtrj'- ? T^Tiat 
 interest can a peasant have in bolting his door ? 
 Have not the boyar and his agents a right to enter 
 his dwelling at all hours of the day and night, 
 and take whatever they like ? Can they not caiTy ofi" 
 his wife and his daughters ? Who vrill raise a com- 
 plaint against the despot's freak ? Is a peasant's habi- 
 tation aught save a stable which shelters so many in- 
 struments of agricultural labour ? 
 
 The stables themselves and cow-houses, are scarcely 
 anything better than mere sheds open to eveiy wind ; 
 the cattle are only sheltered there during the night, 
 and, even then, simply against wild beasts.
 
 166 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 A small number of the houses are surrotmded by 
 little gardens, enclosed by hurdles made of the branches 
 of the fir-tree. In these gardens, the peasants cultivate 
 a few vegetables and pumpkins, and one or two kinds 
 of flowers that can bear the severity of the climate. 
 
 The Russian peasant never uses anything but small 
 branches of a resinous kind of wood instead of candles, 
 and heats his cabin with a degree of imprudence which 
 is frequently attended with fatal results. The heat is 
 intense enough to hatch chickens. It would be a 
 difficult task to resist the infected atmosphere more 
 than an hour without experiencing a sense of suffo- 
 cation. 
 
 The wooden houses are said to be more healthy 
 than the others, and I am inclined to think so myself, 
 for, in the sudden changes from cold to heat in the 
 temperature of the weather, I never remarked in 
 them that pecioliar exudation which covers all the 
 walls of the stone houses : but then, on the other 
 hand, it is absolutely impossible to destroy the vermin. 
 
 All the cabins are raised one or two feet above the 
 ground, and perched, at the four angles, on blocks of 
 gi'anite, the only stone found in Russia. The storms 
 and tempests, as well as the condensation of the soil, 
 on the occasion of a thaw, throws them on one side, 
 and completely disjoints the various parts. It is very 
 uncommon for them to hs perpendicular after they 
 have been built a year. "When they threaten to fall 
 down, they are propped up A\-ith trunks of trees hardly 
 cleared of their branches, and remain in this state, all
 
 SLAVERY. 167 
 
 leaning on one side, like so many ships tacking about, 
 until a fire consumes, or a storm turns them topsy- 
 turvy. 
 
 Externally as avcII as internally, these houses bear 
 certain marks of being the handiwork of savages. 
 They resemble the hut of the Negro, minus the art 
 which the latter employs in embellishing and de- 
 corating his habitation. A Russian village presents 
 the appearance of a multitude of tents, pitched by 
 chance, and in a hurry, during the night, or by blind 
 men. All the most simple laws of good sense and 
 health are set at nought. 
 
 Along the highroads everything is a lie. The 
 government obliges the nobles to see that the houses 
 are arranged in groups, and rigorously built in line. 
 I have seen some villages which were not less than 
 two and a half miles long, with the church at one end. 
 I have never been able to discover why it was not 
 placed in the centi-e. It is true that in Russia nothing 
 is done as it is anywhere else ; it seems as if the 
 authorities found a pleasure in taking both things and 
 men against the grain, like a glove turned inside out. 
 
 As is the case with the Negro, the Russian peasant 
 has an irresistible inclination for spirituous liquors. 
 He loves to drown his servitude in drunkenness. His 
 amusements, too, consist of singing, and dancing a 
 strange kind of dance, in which the measure is marked 
 by a chorus of young girls. 
 
 This dance, which is more frequently indulged in by 
 the female members of the community, takes place.
 
 168 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 during tlie summer months, in the open air. On fete 
 days, the belles of the village, dressed in their Sunday- 
 costume, their hair decked with \\Teaths of flowers, 
 and their feet enveloped in high leather boots, that 
 sadly interfere with their would-be graceful move- 
 ments, go through the monotonous figures of the 
 dance, without the slightest display of animation, while 
 the men, who are seated apart, engage themselves in the 
 more congenial amusements of smoking and diinking. 
 
 Winter is a season of repose, during which the 
 forced labour due to the nobles is suspended, for what 
 can be done when the earth is frozen several feet 
 deep? The peasant employs his time in making un- 
 couth ploughs, carts, and wooden articles, such as 
 boxes, basins, spoons, etc. ; or, when he is allowed, 
 in taking on a sledge, to the nearest town, some 
 trifling produce of the land. 
 
 The instruments he uses are as simple as Hs 
 manners. 
 
 An axe, a gimlet, and an auger, are almost the 
 only tools he has ; the saw he hardly ever employs, 
 his skill in using his axe enabling him to do without 
 it. He cuts a plank, and even the largest trees, with 
 as great neatness, and in less time than the most 
 skiKul carpenter, but he wastes a great deal of wood. 
 
 The nature of the Russian peasant is tame and 
 devoid of energy ; his muscidar strength is two or 
 three times less than that of men in southern climates. 
 He sets about his work like a person who has a fever, 
 or who is completely exhausted.
 
 \UUNG I'EASANr WOMAN MAKING THREA1>.
 
 SLAVERY. 169 
 
 X. 
 
 The women prepare flax and hemp ; thej'^ weave 
 cloth and coarse stuffs, out of which they make their 
 clothes. They also prepare the stock of provisions for 
 the year, such as mushrooms, bitter cabbage, and 
 myrtle berries, which they gather in the woods. They 
 likewise manufacture kvasse, of which the Russians 
 arc exceedingly fond. 
 
 In addition to this, they hoard up an ample stock 
 of simples in case of sickness. The villages are almost 
 destitute of everj'thing save brandy. The medical 
 men and druggists often reside forty leagues off", and, 
 for the most part, the inhabitants die without profes- 
 sional assistance, as they do without the last rites of 
 the chui'ch. 
 
 With the exception of the sense of sight, all 
 the senses are blunted. Is this the result of the se- 
 verity of the climate, or of punishment and bad treat- 
 ment ? I cannot say, but I can conscientiously assert 
 that a Russian peasant cannot distinguish the difference 
 between an omelette made with tallow, and a dish 
 cooked with butter or bacon. Buck-wheat pounded in 
 a mortar, milk in every stage of fermentation, chopped 
 vegetables, mushrooms, and di'icd fish, fonnhis principal 
 articles of food, in conjunction with black bread, sticky 
 and badly baked. 
 
 In spite of the insipidity and coarseness of such 
 food, however, the propensity of the people for pro-
 
 170 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 ducing children is very strong indeed, as, in defiance of 
 all the causes of destruction occasioned by the climate, 
 the indifference of the government, and the little care 
 Avith M'hich children are treated, the increase of the 
 population is enormous. 
 
 Extremes meet, says the proverb, and very fre- 
 quently nothing can be more true. I am not the first 
 who has made the remark, that there are certain most 
 striking points of resemblance, with regard to disposi- 
 tion and taste, between the Russians and the Neapo- 
 litans. Like the latter, the moujicks are noisy and ex- 
 pansive in their mirth. Their national dance is very- 
 like the Saltarella, minus the spirit and minus the 
 music. They are fond, like the Neapolitans, of bright 
 colours ; and like them, too, they have the same disor- 
 derly habits, the same dirtiness, the same immodesty, 
 and the same indolence. Like the Neapolitan, also, 
 the Russian is vindictive and cruel in his vengeance, 
 over which he will brood in his mind for years, if he 
 cannot cany it out before, so as to completely satisfy 
 his rage. In all the attempts at revolt which have been 
 recorded up to the present time, the Russian peasants 
 have taken the same view of liberty as Negroes, exter- 
 minating their masters, burning down the chateaux, 
 violating women, and massacring all those against whom 
 they had any cause of complaint. 
 
 The power of the noble on his estate is not limited 
 by any law ; he disposes not only of the lives and 
 sweat of his peasants, but also of their afiections, their 
 honour, and their property ; I mean that property which
 
 SLAVERY. 17 1 
 
 the tenth commandment of God forbids him to emy. 
 He abuses the married women and young girls with a 
 degree of brutahty Avhich it is impossible to describe. 
 When he has once pronounced the w'ords, " Such is 
 my will!" who is there, through the length and 
 breadth of his estate, who would dare to oppose his 
 desires ? Hesitation or refusal is in his eyes an instance 
 of insurrection, of revolt, punishable by everj' imagin- 
 able torture, and even with death, beneath the thongs 
 of the knout. 
 
 The Russian is reproached with practising dis- 
 simulation, but his position as a slave obliges him to do 
 so. Every indi^^dual who lives in perpetual fear of 
 terrible and unmerited punishment, at the caprice of 
 his master, learns the logic of falsehood and dissimula- 
 tion. What virtue and what energy can we expect 
 from a degraded being, accustomed to recognise no 
 authority save that of force, and the weight of the 
 stick upon his shoulders, and who has no respect, if I 
 may use the term, for anything but violence ? 
 
 XI. 
 
 The Kussian peasant is sad, grave, and sombre. 
 His long hair, cut square off at his shoulders, and his 
 long neglected beard, give him a savage appearance. 
 His physiognomy is without movement, and without 
 expression, while his face is branded with the marks of 
 precocious corruption. In the presence of his masters.
 
 172 THE KNOTJT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 his language is invariably supplicating and plaintive, 
 like that of a man bending beneath the knout. Nor is 
 his costume of a nature to impart to him any degree 
 of grace ; boots of thick greasy leather, reaching up to 
 the knees, cover the extremities of trousers, formed of 
 coarse cloth and di-awn in above the hips by a buclde ; 
 a paletot of sheepskin, buttoning tight, a party-coloured 
 woollen sash, with an axe stuck behind, large leather 
 gloves without fingers, and a stufied and wadded 
 cap, of an indescribable form, complete his winter 
 dress. 
 
 In summer, he is a little more stylish. His costume 
 then consists of a small hat, low in the crown, with 
 the brim slightly raised, ornamented with a large band 
 of black velvet, round which are rolled two peacock's 
 feathers ; trousers of velvet or blue or gray Hnen, the 
 bottoms of which are always stufied into the legs of 
 the boots, and, over aU the rest, a coloured shirt, button- 
 ing at the side, and fastened at the waist by a silk cord, 
 intertwined with gold or silver threads. 
 
 The costume of the women is more pleasing to the 
 eye. In summer, on festivals and Sundays, they wear 
 a plain corsage, scooped out at the neck, and drawn 
 tight above the breast ; a plain or striped petticoat, 
 which is occasionally garnished at the bottom with 
 several rows of gaudy-coloured lace, coloured stockings, 
 and red or yeUow morocco shoes, embroidered with 
 gold or silk. Their hair is generally separated in two 
 long plaits, and their forehead covered with a diadem 
 of card-board, spangled over with foil, and made fast
 
 FINLAND PEASANTS IN HOLIDAY COSTUME.
 
 ,--3 
 
 ESTHONIAN PEASANTS,
 
 SLAVERY. 178 
 
 behind by means of two ribbons, wbicb hang down 
 upon their shoulders. 
 
 In winter, they envelop themselves in a sheepskin 
 kasaveca, the wool of which is very white and very long. 
 
 It would be no easy thing to describe the working 
 costume of both sexes, and, therefore, I do not attempt 
 it. I must mention, however, that, in winter, and in 
 some districts even during the summer months, all the 
 women wear high leather boots, thick enough to bid 
 defiance to the jaw of a bull-dog. 
 
 The value of an estate depends less on the fertility 
 of the soil, than upon the number of peasants attached 
 to it. Elsewhere, when a person pui'chases a farm, he 
 asks how many ploughs it employs. In Russia, man 
 is the plough ; and it is he alone who serves as the 
 basis of all calculations as to the value of an estate, 
 because he represents personally a certain income. 
 
 George R.J»=>^'°":
 
 174 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 THE KNOUT, 
 
 Opposite the palace of the Czars, on an island in the 
 middle of the Neva, is the fortress on the glacis of which, 
 in 1825, were hanged the individuals most deeply com- 
 promised in the absurd attempt at a revolution of which. 
 I have spoken in a former portion of my work. 
 
 It was built by Peter the Great. His successors, 
 especially Catherine, after the triumphs of Gustavus, 
 King of Sweden, who had advanced with his army to 
 within a few leagues of St. Petersburg, made consider- 
 able additions to it. A church, consecrated to St. Peter 
 and St. Paul, occupies the middle of the building, and 
 receives the ashes of the Russian Emperors, and those 
 of all the members of their family; here, also, the flags 
 taken in war are deposited. 
 
 The tall, slender spire of the steeple is two hundred 
 and forty feet high ; it is formed of gilt copper, and 
 seems to point out to the prisoners confined in the cells 
 the way to Heaven, and to remind them of the verse of 
 Dante, — 
 
 " Lasciate ogni speranza." ^ 
 
 ^ "All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"
 
 THE KNOUT, 176 
 
 Under the sombre sky, obscured by black and gray 
 cloudsj the brick and granite walls of the fortress, 
 isolated in the midst of the water, present a sinister 
 appearance ; they speak to the imagination of foreigners, 
 as well as to that of Russians, a fearful language. The 
 red granite has something repulsive about it ; the colour 
 varied with different tints, is like the exudation of human 
 blood, rotting* the walls, and striking outwards to de- 
 nounce the tortures and punishments with which the 
 Czarinas have defiled themselves, or of which they have 
 been the accomplices, either to satiate their own ven- 
 geance, to smother some secret, or to please their favourites 
 and courtiers, who also had secrets which they wished to 
 bury in tombs of stone. How many crimes have been com- 
 mitted, how many sanguinary and terrible dramas have 
 been enacted, beneath the deep, humid, and black vaults of 
 this fortress, which has become the Bastile of the empire 
 of the Czars ! Oh ! if these walls could but relate all 
 the crimes and pangs of suffering that they have wit- 
 nessed ! 
 
 Opposite the fortress, on the other side of the water, 
 is the palace of the Czars, looking like some implacable 
 sentinel, who is keeping an eternal watch over this abyss 
 of blood. From their windows, the autocrats can allow 
 their eye to gloat over the victims whom their policy or 
 their vengeance is about to immolate. No one dares to 
 raise his glance on the gaping openings in this human 
 charnel-house, where, instead of cannons, are to be seen 
 corpses torn by the thongs of the knout.
 
 176 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS, 
 
 The icy cold, which causes these walls to crack, which 
 kills- the sentinels in their sentry-boxes, the coachmen on 
 their seats, the carters and the horses upon the high roads, 
 and the bears and wolves in their dens, kills also the 
 unhappy prisoners, when the season of ice comes round. 
 But whenever this refinement of barbarity, which the 
 Czars alone were capable of inventing, does not eifecfc its 
 end, the inundations of the river perform the task of 
 carrying out the sentence of death. 
 
 The floor of the dungeons is on a level with the Neva. 
 The windows look out upon the tjanals which wash the 
 walls, or upon the stream itself, and when, driven back 
 by the tempests from the north-west, the waters invade 
 the cells, no one replies to the cries of distress and rage 
 of the prisoners. Their groans are lost beneath these 
 vaults covered with slimy moss and fungi. Soon after- 
 wards, their corpses are floating upon the waters, and 
 dashing against the double gratings. All is over, for 
 death is discreet. Besides, who would dare to repeat 
 these groans'? Who would dare to say that he had seen 
 corpses floating upon the tide 1 The secrets which con- 
 cern the Czars or the state, are sealed as hermetically in 
 the hearts of all Russians as they would be in a tomb. 
 A single indiscreet word infallibly conducts the person 
 who has spoken it to these catacombs, where he is left 
 to perish by the cold or the inundations.
 
 THE KNOUT. 177 
 
 II. 
 
 The want of reflection on the part of the Russians is 
 evident at every step we take. Not content with having 
 their citadel under water, as well as the hut which its 
 founder caused to be constructed at a few paces' distance, 
 in order to superintend the works, they have built their 
 capital on the same level, although they had experience 
 to warn them against such a step. 
 
 During the great inundations of 1721, in which 
 Peter I. himself nearly perished, and that of 1777, the 
 Neva drowned the city under more than ten feet of 
 water. The last inundation of all, which covered the 
 capital with corpses, and filled it with desofation and 
 mourning, was that of 1824, during the night from the 
 6th to the 7th of November. 
 
 In this inundation, all the prisoners in the citadel 
 and the other prisons of the city perished."" The police 
 and magistrates had something else to do than to throw 
 open the doors to these poor wretches. 
 
 It is from this fortress that those prisoners issue who 
 are doomed to undergo a fatal ordeal— I use the expres- 
 sion advisedly. All the punishments invented by the 
 ferocious barbarity of this people do not necessarily 
 cause death. Capital punishment does not exist in 
 Russia. It has been abolished ; but, besides the waters 
 of the Neva, there are the knout, the rod, and the whip.
 
 178 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 Strangulation, imprisonment, the galleys, and de- 
 capitation, were punishments too mild — not sufficiently 
 frightful, and not sufficiently salutary for restraining so 
 many different races of all gradations of ferocity ; and the 
 legislators of the country invented, therefore, impale- 
 ment, the stick, the rod, the knout, and mutilation of 
 the face. There are, also, the eternal depths of the 
 Siberian mines, for those who do not sink beneath one 
 or other of these various kinds of punishment. In 
 sober truth, the legislators do not seem to have been 
 wrong, for the rod and the knout appear to act as a 
 salutary check. 
 
 The knout ! There is not in the language of any 
 civilised people, a word which conveys the idea of more 
 cruelties and more atrocious and superhuman suffering. 
 The knout ! On hearing this single word, a Russian 
 is seized with an icy shudder, he feels the cold invade his 
 heart, and the blood coagulate in his veins; the word 
 produces fever ; it confuses the senses, and fills the mind 
 with terror : this single word stupifies an entire nation 
 of 60,000,000 souls. Reader, do you know what the 
 knout is 1 You will answer, perhaps, that it is death. 
 No, it is not death ; it is something a thousand times 
 worse. For my own part, I am not sure that I should 
 not prefer the punishment which the Caribs used to in- 
 flict upon their enemies. 
 
 Russian law does not measure punishments by the 
 standard of physical pain. The chastisement is not 
 proportioned to the nature of the offence. A crime has
 
 THE KNOUT. 179 
 
 been committed, and the penalty prescribed by a san- 
 guinary code will be awarded, because the object of the 
 government is, above all things, to terrify. 
 
 III. 
 
 The following is the way of administering the knout. 
 Conceive, reader, a robust man, full of life and health. 
 This man is condemned to receive fifty or a hundred 
 blows of the knout. He is conducted, half naked, to the 
 place chosen for this kind of execution ; all that he has 
 on, is a pair of simple linen drawers round his extremities; 
 his hands are bound together, with the palms laid flat 
 against one another ; the cords are breaking his wrists, 
 but no one pays the slightest attention to that ! He is 
 laid flat upon his belly, on a frame inclined diagonally, 
 and at the extremities of which are fixed iron rings j 
 his hands are fastened to one end of the frame, and his 
 feet to the other ; he is then stretched in such a manner 
 that he cannot make a single movement, just as an eel's 
 skin is stretched in order to dry. This act of stretching 
 the victim, causes his bones to crack, and dislocates them 
 — what does that matter ! In a little time, his bones 
 will crack and be dislocated in a very different manner. 
 
 At a distance of five and twenty paces, stands another 
 man j it is the public executioner. He is dressed in 
 black velvet trousers, stuffed into his boots, and a 
 coloured cotton shirt, buttoning at the side. His sleeves 
 are tucked up, so that nothing may thwart or embarrass
 
 180 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 him in his movements. With both hands he grasps the 
 instrument of punishjaent — a knout. This knout con- 
 sists of a thong of thick leather, cut in a triangular 
 form, from four to five yards long, and an inch wide, 
 tapering oiF at one end, and broad at the other j the 
 small end is fastened to a little wooden handle, about 
 two feet long. 
 
 The signal is given ; no one ever takes the trouble 
 to read the sentence. The executioner advances a few 
 steps, with his body bent, holding the knout in both 
 hands, while the long thong drags along the ground 
 between his legs. On coming to about three or four 
 paces from the prisoner, he raises, by a vigorous move- 
 ment, the knout towards the top of his head, and then 
 instantly draws it down with rapidity towards his 
 knees. The thong flies and whistles through the air, 
 and descending on the body of the victim, twines round 
 it like a hoop of iron. In spite of his state of tension, 
 the poor wretch bounds as if he were submitted to the 
 powerful grasp of galvanism. The executioner retraces 
 his steps, and repeats the same operation, as many times 
 as there are blows to be inflicted. When the thong 
 envelops the body with its edges, the flesh and muscles 
 are literally cut into stripes as if with a razor, but when 
 it falls flat, then the bones crack ; the flesh, in that 
 case, is not cut, but crushed and ground, and the blood 
 spurts out in all directions. The sufi'erer becomes green 
 and blue, like a body in a state of decomposition. He 
 is now removed to the hospital, where every care is
 
 THE KNOUT. 181 
 
 taken of him, and is afterwards sent to Siberia, where 
 he disappears for ever in the bowels of the earth. 
 
 The knout is fatal, if the justice of the Czar or of the 
 executioner desires it to be so. If the autocrat's inten- 
 tion is to afford his people a sight worthy of their eyes 
 and their intelligence; if some powerful lord, or some 
 great lady, wishes to indulge in the pleasure of viewing 
 the sanguinary spectacle ; if they wish to behold the 
 victim, with his mouth covered with foam and blood, 
 writhe about and expire in frightful agony, the fatal 
 blow is given the very last. The executioner sells his 
 compassion and pity for hard gold, when the family of 
 the miserable sufferer desire to purchase the fatal blow. 
 In this case, he inflicts death at the very first stroke, as 
 surely as if it was an axe that he held in his hand. 
 
 In 1760, under the reign of the indolent and luxu- 
 rious Elizabeth, who had abolished capital punishment, 
 Madame Lapoukin, a woman of rare beauty, of which 
 the Czarina was envious, was condemned to the knout 
 and transportation, in spite of the privilege of the 
 nobility never to suffer the former punishment. She 
 had been feted, caressed, and run after at court, and had, 
 it was said, betrayed the secret of the Empress's liaison 
 with Prince Razoumowsky. She was conducted by the 
 executioners to the public square, where she was exposed 
 by one of them, who rolled up her chemise as far as her 
 waist ; he then placed her upon his shoulders, when 
 another arranged her, with his coarse dirty hands, in 
 the required position, obliging her to hold her head
 
 182 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 down, while a man of the lower classes, squatting at her 
 feet, kept her legs still. The executioner cut her flesh 
 into shreds by one hundred strokes of the knout, from 
 the shoulders to the lower portion of the loins. After 
 the infliction of the punishment, her tongue was torn 
 out, and, a short time subsequently, she was sent to 
 Siberia, whence she was recalled, in 1762, by Peter III. 
 
 IV. 
 
 After the knout comes the rod, or the punishment 
 known as that of " running the gauntlet " — a punishment 
 of another description, but still more barbarous, since it 
 is always, or, at least, in ninety-nine cases out of a 
 hundred, followed by death. In this instance, it is the 
 array that carries out the decrees of the justice of the 
 country, and the sentences of the autocrats. It is the 
 army that acts the part of executioner. 
 
 The number of soldiers employed is equal to the 
 number of blows to be given. Six thousand blows are not 
 the highest number which the law allows to be inflicted 
 on a prisoner, but they are the most common number. 
 Here again Russian legislation has given proof of in- 
 genuity. Less than a thousand blows are more than 
 sufficient to produce death ; with six thousand blows 
 death is six timos more certain. 
 
 It was my fate to be present once at this kind of 
 execution. The following is a summary description of 
 it.
 
 THE KNOUT. 183 
 
 It took place in 1841. The unhappy prisoner was 
 a gamekeeper, of Swedish extraction, in the flower of 
 his age. He was born in the neighbourhood of Viborg, 
 and consequently a freeman, by the same right as the 
 Swedes, who were the first people of Europe to live wider 
 a constitutional government. He had been for some 
 years in the service of a prince, who had discharged 
 him without paying his wages, — a tolerably common 
 custom, by-the-bye, of Russian boyars. He had a wife 
 and children, and demanded the payment of the sum due 
 to him. Winter was close at hand, and he was destitute 
 of everything, even of bread and wood. Very many 
 times he had gone on foot to St. Petersburg, to beg as a 
 favour what, in every other country, he could have claimed 
 as a right, with fewer forms, from his creditor, and on 
 each occasion he had related the misery which pressed 
 upon him and his family, and all the suiFering which he 
 endured in consequence. He entreated most humbly; 
 but a great nobleman, who possesses fifteen or twenty 
 thousand slaves, is not acquainted with misery like the 
 poor gamekeeper's ; he has never either feared or suffered 
 hunger and cold. The Swede was driven away with the 
 stick ; a pretty thing, forsooth, for a low, base-born 
 scoundrel to dare to annoy a lord ; to disturb the siesta 
 and the digestion of a nobleman nursed in the lap of 
 luxury ! Having no resource left, exasperated by the 
 unworthy treatment to which he had been subjected, 
 and driven half mad, the gamekeeper armed himself 
 with a pistol, and returned to the prince, who caused him
 
 184 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIA^'3. 
 
 to be beaten and turned out of doors. His senses left 
 him; he waited until the prince came out, and then shot 
 him dead upon the spot. 
 
 The formalities of a regular trial would have been 
 too long. The idea of a peasant killing a nobleman, 
 a boyar, a prince Such a thing had never been 
 known, and might prove a bad example for the people. 
 Besides, in any other country it would also have been 
 murder. It is not this which I would excuse. Brought 
 up, a few hours after his crime, which he did not deny, 
 before a council of war, that contented itself with merely 
 identifying him, he was condemned to six thousand 
 strokes of the rod, and, twenty-four hours afterwards, 
 six thousand men, drawn up in two parallel lines in a 
 plain outside the city, were awaiting, armed with rods of 
 green wood, of the thickness of the little finger, the hour 
 of execution. The criminal was conveyed in a cart 
 escorted by a few men ; no priest had administered 
 to him the consolations of religion. He was fettered, 
 and dressed in a pair of drawers, rolled up and fastened 
 by a cord above his hips. The rest of his body was 
 naked, or rather covered merely with a soldier's great- 
 coat, thrown over his shoulders. Having been made 
 to get out of the cart, his two hands were securely 
 fastened to the muzzles of two muskets, crossing one 
 another at the bottom of the bayonets with which they 
 were armed. In this position, his hands rested on the 
 barrels, and the bayonets on his breast. A roll of the 
 drum was now heard. All the officers retired within
 
 THE KNOUT. 185 
 
 the ranks, while two non-commissioned officers came and 
 took the muskets, which they held in the same position 
 as a soldier does when he advances or retires with his 
 bayonet at the charge. Here again we must admire the 
 barbarity and refined intelligence of this people. At a 
 given signal, the sufferer has to advance, with a slow step, 
 between the rows of soldiers, each of whom, in turn, 
 must apply a vigorous blow on his back ; the pain he en- 
 dures might perhaps suggest to him the idea of passing as 
 quickly as possible through the double row of executioners 
 in order to lessen the number and the force of the blows 
 which hack his flesh to pieces ; but he calculates without 
 Russian justice. The two non-commissioned officers re- 
 treat slowly, step by step, in order to afford every one 
 time to perform his task. They drag the unhappy 
 wretch forward, or push him back, by driving the points 
 of the bayonets into his breast. Every blow must tell, it 
 must enter his back and cause the blood to gush out. 
 No pity. Every one must do his duty. As I have said 
 in another part of this work, the Muscovite soldier is 
 a machine which is not allowed to possess any individual 
 eeling; and woe betide his own shoulders, if he manifests 
 the least hesitation, for he will, on the spot, receive from 
 twenty-five to a hundred blows, according to the caprice 
 of the general who has the honour of commanding the 
 six thousand executioners. The Kussian government is 
 scrupulous in the most trifling details. It insists on 
 everything being done with precision. But with such 
 men as it has at its disposal it cannot trust to chance, and
 
 186 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 therefore it has rehearsals to execute a human being just 
 as it exercises its troops previous to a review. A few hours 
 before the time appointed for the punishment, a truss of 
 hay or straw placed upon a chariot is driven along the 
 ranks. 
 
 The sufferer advanced up to the nine hundredth and 
 third stroke ; he did not utter a single cry, or prefer a 
 single complaint ; the only thing which betrayed his 
 agony, from time to time, was a convulsive shudder. 
 The foam then began to form upon his lips and the blood 
 to start from his nose. After fourteen hundred strokes, 
 his face, which had long before begun to turn blue, 
 assumed suddenly a greenish hue ; his eyes became 
 haggard and almost started out of their sockets, from 
 which large blood-coloured tears trickled down and 
 stained his cheeks. He was gasping and gradually sink- 
 ing. The officer who accompanied me ordered the ranks 
 to open, and I approached the body. The skin was 
 literally ploughed up, and had, so to say, disappeared. 
 The flesh was hacked to pieces and almost reduced to a 
 state of jelly; long stripes hung down the prisoner's 
 sides like so many thongs, while other pieces remained 
 fastened and glued to the sticks of the executioners. 
 The muscles, too, were torn to shreds. No mortal tongue 
 can ever convey a just idea of the sight. The com- 
 mandant caused the cart which had brought the prisoner 
 to be driven up. He was laid in it on his stomach, and 
 although he was completely insensible, the punishment 
 was continued upon the corpse, until the surgeon ap-
 
 THE KNOUT. 187 
 
 pointed by the government, who had followed the 
 execution step by step, gave orders for it to be suspended. 
 He did not do this, however, until there was hardly the 
 slightest breath of life left in the sufferer's body. 
 
 When the execution was stopt, two thousand six 
 hundred and nineteen strokes had cut the body to pieces. 
 
 But, in Russia, the fact of striking a corpse is not 
 cruel enough, and would not inspire a nation of slaves 
 with a sufficient amount of terror. A man must revive 
 before he undergoes the remainder of his punishment. 
 
 The unhappy wretch was taken to the hospital, 
 where, as is the custom in these cases, he was placed in 
 a bath of water saturated with salt, and then treated 
 with the greatest care and solicitude until a complete 
 cure was effected, so that he could bear the rest of 
 his sentence. In all instances, and at all times, the 
 penal laws of Russia are stamped with atrocious bar- 
 barity. It was seven months before he was cured and 
 his health re-established ; and, at the expiration of this 
 period, he was solemnly taken back to the place of 
 execution, and forced once more to run the gauntlet, 
 in order to receive his full amount of six thousand 
 strokes. He died at the commencement of this second 
 punishment. 
 
 When a prisoner sometimes escapes with his life— 
 which, however, is a very unusual circumstance — he i."»
 
 188 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 sent to end his days at tte bottom of the mines of 
 Siberia. 
 
 I will not dilate upon the other kinds of punish- 
 ment — the whip and the stick — which are the most com- 
 mon methods of redressing grievances. In both these 
 cases, two men alone are sufficient to execute the sen- 
 tence. The poor wretch condemned to smart beneath 
 the rattan or the lashes of the cat xoith seven tails is 
 laid, with his body bare, upon a bench. One of the 
 executioners seats himself astride upon the sufferer's 
 jegs, and the other upon his head, and both of them 
 strike him in turn with similar instruments, like two 
 blacksmiths belabouring an anvil, until the nobleman 
 or his wife judges the punishment sufficient. 
 
 In Russia, persons can escape more easily from the 
 punishments to which they are sentenced than in any 
 other country. When a peasant has the means of pay- 
 ing his executioners, the latter spare bis skin. 
 
 After the knout and the rod, comes Siberia. When 
 a Russian subject is condemned to exile, his beard is 
 shaved off, and his hair cut short in front in the 
 shape of a brush, like that of the soldiers, and quite 
 close behind. He is dressed in a pair of linen trousers, 
 a great- coat, of very coarse cloth, a round cap, like a 
 pancake, and enormous leather boots, without stockings 
 or socks. He is then despatched upon a sledge or a car, 
 in company with other exiles, under the escort of a few 
 Cossacks, as far as Irkoutsk, or beyond it. 
 
 These exiles are made to travel in all weathers ; no
 
 THE KNOUT. 189 
 
 matter how intense the cold may be, they must reach 
 their destination. More than half of them perish 
 on the road. During the journey, their movements are 
 free, and no precaution is taken to prevent their flight. 
 What could they do with liberty 1 They possess no 
 passport ; and in llussia it is impossible to travel for 
 twelve hours without papers. An inhabitant of Moscow 
 or St. Petersburg cannot enter or leave the city without 
 showing the soldiers stationed at the barriers either a 
 permit or a passport. The troops in French barracks 
 are more free than the population of Russia. 
 
 After all, Russia is only an immense barrack, in 
 which every one is in a state of arrest.
 
 190 THE KNOUT AND THE BUSSIANS. 
 
 THE CLBIATE. 
 
 I. 
 
 In the Russian climate there is no transition ; every 
 thing is abrupt. You emerge from one season to fall 
 suddenly into another. The change takes place in a 
 single day. Yesterday, there were fifty-two degrees of 
 teat ; this morning, there are twenty degrees of cold, 
 and ten inches of snow. Yesterday, you sailed in a 
 boat down the Neva ; and this morning, you drive over 
 it in a sledge. I will not compromise myself by assert- 
 ing that spring and autumn exist; winter begins, so^ 
 to speak, in the middle of August, and terminates in the 
 middle of May. Summer, consequently, lasts only 
 during June and July, in which time, however, there 
 are often falls of snow. In winter, the night is twenty 
 hours long ; day begins to break between nine and ten 
 o'clock in the morning, and ends at two o'clock in the 
 afternoon. In summer there is no night. It is a 
 change from suffocating heat, during which the air is 
 obscured by dense clouds of dust, to a penetrating 
 humidity, which paralyses the limbs. On an average, 
 at St. Petersburg and Moscow, the thermometer marks 
 more than twenty degrees of cold. On the severest days
 
 THE CLIMATE. 191 
 
 the mercury frequently descends to twenty and forty, 
 sometimes even sixty-six, degrees below freezing point. 
 
 Our ordinary experience would lead us to expect that 
 in this country the temperature would vary according to 
 the difference in the latitude and longitude, — for ex- 
 ample, like the temperature of European parallels : this, 
 however, is not the case. Astrakhan and Gourief on the 
 Caspian, and Odessa and Taganrog on the Black Sea, 
 are between the 43d and 44th degrees of latitude, like 
 Marseilles, Nice, Genoa, Florence, Ancona, and Con- 
 stantinople ; yet the ports of the Russian cities are 
 frozen and shut up from all navigation during several 
 months of the year. Owing to the proximity of St. 
 Petersburg to the Baltic Sea, the climate there is most 
 changeable, and the difference in the temperature ex- 
 treme. I have seen, in the month of January, rain in 
 the morning, with a complete thaw, and the streets 
 buried beneath a thick covering of mud, while, in the 
 evening, there were thirty-four degrees of cold. In 1798 
 the thermometer sunk to about seventy-four degrees of 
 Fahrenheit ; and, during thirty-five successive days, to 
 from forty-eight to fifty degrees. 
 
 We find, from the tables of the Observatory, that 
 on an average, in the course of ten years, during the 
 month of March, there were nine days of clear weather, 
 eleven days of fog, eleven days of snow, and two days of 
 rain ; that, in the month of September, there were only 
 seven days of clear weather ; that the mouth of May is 
 sometimes exceedingly cold and inclement ; and that,
 
 192 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 during the summer, there are frequent instances of hoar- 
 frost. We also learn, from the same authority, that in 
 the month of December, the days are only five hours 
 long ; that, in the month of November, there are only 
 three fine days, but eights days of fog, and twenty days 
 of snow ; and that the month of January is pretty 
 much the same : during neither is the day longer than 
 three hours. 
 
 One year, at Archangel, the glass fell down as low 
 as one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit of cold, and 
 the mercury was frozen into a solid mass as hard as iron. 
 At St. Petersburg and Moscow, there are, every 
 year, one hundred and twenty-three days of rain, and 
 eighty-seven fine days; during from one hundred and 
 ninety to two hundred days, there is a continual frost, 
 for ninety-two days of which period the snow falls to 
 the amount of twenty-three thousand cubic inches. The 
 greater portion of the time may therefore be called 
 winter. No person ventures out without being abso- 
 lutely compelled to do so : the snow creaks under your 
 foot ; the window-panes crack and disappear beneath a 
 thick covering of ice, the crystals of which assume all 
 kinds of strange and monstrous forms. The birds and 
 animals are frozen ; the crows, the pigeons, and the 
 sparrows, millions of which inhabit the city, creep into 
 holes — into the recesses of the cornices — into the win- 
 dows — indeed into every place where they can find a 
 shelter from the north wind, and never leave their retreats 
 unless pressed by hunger, or brutally driven out ; the
 
 THE CLIMATE. 193 
 
 moment they expand their wings they fall down frozen 
 on the ground. The sentinels are relieved every hour, 
 and, although muffled up in the thick furred skins of 
 bears or wolves, it frequently happens that some of 
 them perish. Whenever the Czar passes before a post, 
 all the platoon on duty turn out in full uniform, and 
 present arms, while the drums beat a salute. TV o cold 
 kills one or two men ; but that is a matter of no con- 
 sequence, since discipline requires it. The soldiers who 
 are scattered singly about the city stop and uncover 
 before the Emperor ; the cold cleaves their skulls, but 
 that, too, is a matter of no consequence ; discipline re- 
 serves some hundred blows with the stick for any one 
 who is deficient in politeness towards a superior. 
 
 II. 
 
 When the cold sinks below thirty-four degrees, the 
 theatres are shut and parties and balls put off. Who 
 would dare to brave such weather? Coachmen are frozen on 
 their boxes, and postilions in their saddles,from which they 
 are lifted stiff and icy. Every winter there are thousands 
 of accidents of this description ; they are so frequent 
 that no one pays any attention to them. The servants 
 who go out to procure provisions and the moujicks are 
 the only individuals to be met in the deserted streets. A 
 person might believe himself to be in a city of the dead, 
 or in one in a state of siege, or devastated by the most 
 terrible of plagues.
 
 194 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 The streets are buried beneatli a covering of ice, 
 several feet thick. The snow which covers it and over 
 which the sledges glide is as hard as gravel, muddy, and 
 of a blackish colour. If it were not for the dazzling 
 whiteness of that which remains upon the roofs, the 
 projections and the cornices of the windows, and the 
 cold which reminds you that you are not in the East, you 
 would suppose that the streets were strewed with gravel. 
 ^The atmosphere is murky, thick and spangled with 
 showers of little crystals, which circulate in the air 
 like atoms of dust. Every night, and, if necessary, 
 several times in the course of the day, the police com- 
 pels the porters of the different houses to sweep tbfi 
 snow and ice from the pavement. But for this precau- 
 tionary measure, it would be impossible to approach any 
 place. 
 
 The trees are completely enveloped with hoar-frost ; at 
 a distance, any one would suppose them to be crystalized. 
 The iron or wooden railings of the bridges and quays 
 are likewise coated with thick crystals. 
 
 Before being covered with ice, the Neva carries down 
 melted snow in its stream ; at fifteen degrees below freezing 
 point, ice begins to form on the river and canals. This 
 generally happens in the course of October. A few days 
 of tolerably sharp frost enables people to cross them in 
 sledges. Before there was an iron bridge, persons used 
 to cross the river in a kind of bracket-seat, formed of 
 boards bound together and nailed on stop-planks inde- 
 pendent of each other, so that if the ice happened to
 
 THE CLIMATE. 195 
 
 break beneath the weight of the passengers, the circum- 
 stance was not attended by any serious consequences 
 When the ice is three inches thick, it may be traversed 
 on foot ; when it is from four to five inches, it may be 
 crossed by sledges and horses ; when it is nine inches, by 
 wheeled carriages with several horses ; and, when it is 
 eleven inches, by artillery, cavalry, and the entire army 
 regiment by regiment. Even reviews of several hundred 
 thousand men may be held on it. \; 
 
 To facilitate the c:o;sing of the rivers, lakes, and 
 gulfs, the police causes direct roads to be traced out upon 
 the ice to abridge the distance. These roads and paths 
 are bordered by trunks of young fir-trees, with all their 
 branches on them, fifteen or twenty feet high, stuck 
 into the ice or snow, at a distance of about ten or twelve 
 yards from each other, exactly like trees planted on the 
 high road. This precaution is necessary for the passage 
 from St. Petersburg to Cronstadt, a distance of about a 
 mile and three quarters, and on the vast branches of the 
 delta formed by the Neva where it flows into the gulf. 
 Sudden squalls are extremely violent ; they heap up the 
 snow, and cause all traces of the roads to disappear in a 
 few minutes. These whirlwinds of snow bury both 
 men and beasts. The snow is so deep towards the end of 
 winter, that only the tops of the fir-trees are visible ; all 
 the rest of them is buried. 
 
 It sometimes happens that sudden and violent gales 
 from the north-west cause the water to rise and break 
 the ice. In such cases, all that is on it is swallowed up :
 
 196 THE KNOTJT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 men, animals, and vehicles, all perish. The tempest 
 ceases, and the blocks of ice, heaped up and driven against 
 each other, unite, and present a curious sight to the eyes 
 of travellers, namely, that of a river, a lake, or a sea, 
 whose waves and billows have been petrified in a single 
 instant. They exhibit precisely the same projections, 
 and the same undulations, and it is necessary to wait 
 until the snow has fallen and filled up their thousands 
 of valleys before venturing on them in a sledge. 
 
 The breaking up of the ice never takes place before 
 the middle of April, and sometimes later. When the 
 ice is once set in motion, the bridges of boats swing round 
 on their anchors, and remain on one side or the other of 
 the river. The ice, while undergoing the process of de- 
 composition, invariably obeys certain fixed rules. First 
 of all, the layer of snow which covers it melts, and is 
 succeeded by a layer of water ; this, being warmed by 
 the temperature, which becomes milder every day, even- 
 tually pierces the ice, that turns black and spongy, and 
 becomes disaggregated, when woe betide any one who is 
 imprudent enough to venture on it. 
 
 III. 
 
 A phenomenon, which was much talked of in 1740, 
 more than a century ago, and about which the Russians 
 still take a delight in speaking, was the palace of ice, 
 built by the orders of the Empress Anne. Constructed 
 of enormous blocks of ice, cut like stones, this palace
 
 THE CLIMATE. 197 
 
 was fifty feet long, sixteen deep, and three thick, and 
 covered with a roofing of snow upon a framework of 
 timber. Inside were tables, chairs, and beds, in fact, a 
 complete set of furniture. Before the edifice were placed 
 pyramids, equestrian statues, and animals formed of ice; 
 besides six cannons, capable of receiving balls of six 
 pounds, and two mortars of the same substance. One of 
 these cannons was discharged, and the ball, which was 
 likewise of ice, went through a plank two inches thick, at 
 a distance of sixty paces, without at all shaking the build- 
 ing. It would appear that, in the evening, when the 
 palace was lighted up, the efiect was most striking. 
 
 This magnificent palace proves only one thing : the 
 inclemency and severity of the cold and "the climate. 
 
 During all the winter, the cold is so intense, that, if 
 you chance to open one of the panes in your window 
 to let a little fresh air into your room, the warm vapooir 
 rushes out with the violence of a rocket. If you ven- 
 ture abroad, the cold instantly attacks and seizes you 
 in every part of your body. Your nose is drawn 
 up ; your mouth and throat become contracted, your 
 eyes seem to retreat to the very back of your skull, 
 while your ears are filled with a buzzing noise. You 
 can only breathe through the folds of a scarf or a silk 
 handkerchief. The hoar frost immediately envelops 
 your eyebrows, eyelashes, beard, and hair, and occasions 
 a thousand little pricking pains, which draw tears from 
 you. Some one has jokingly remarked, that a man's 
 words are frozen ; this is literally true up to a certain
 
 198 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 point, for the chest is so oppressed, irritated, and even 
 frozen, that the organs of respiration refuse to fulfil their 
 office. When a person is absolutely compelled to go 
 out, there is one precautionary measure which he must 
 take, and that is, to rub his face from time to time 
 with the fur cuff of his pelisse, in order, by this slight 
 friction, to revive the circulation of the blood under the 
 skin. 
 
 Every one is acquainted with the means of thawing 
 any of the limbs of his body which may have been 
 attacked by the cold. It is the employment of snow 
 and iced-water, previous to entering a warm room. During 
 one whole winter, I was in the practice, whenever I was 
 obliged to go out, of smearing all my face over with a 
 slight coating of pomatum. The cold has great difii- 
 culty in obtaining a hold upon fatty bodies, and I was 
 thus enabled to brave the severity of the climate for 
 several hours together, always resisting it much better 
 than my companions. The snow has the tenacity and 
 strength of ice ; it reflects the rays of the sun so vividly 
 that the eyes cannot bear its brilliancy. 
 
 Towards the end of winter, a tolerably long drive in 
 a sledge becomes fatiguing, while a regular journey is 
 almost impossible. The winds and sudden squalls, of 
 which I have already spoken, heap up the snow, and 
 render the surface of the roads undulating. A stone, or 
 the branch of a tree, is sufficient, when the wind is 
 blowing, to form a very large hillock. Unless a person 
 is accustomed to the shocks caused by such objects, he
 
 THE CLIMATE. 199 
 
 will find it a difficult thing to travel. It is one con- 
 tinued course of sudden and violent pitching and 
 tossing. A vessel which is raised in the air by the 
 waves of the sea, glides gently along in the deep valleys 
 furrowed out by the tempest, and is borne upwards 
 again in the same manner ; but a sledge is rudely 
 dashed against every obstacle, and falls like a stone to the 
 bottom of the ruts with which it meets, so that both 
 men and horses have great difficulty in supporting a 
 journey of any length. 
 
 One individual whose destiny it is to encounter all 
 these dangers and difficulties, and to whom, even during 
 the severest seasons, no respite is permitted, for he is 
 born to live or die either in his telerja or his sledge, is 
 Ûïefeldjagcr, or government courier. This living tele- 
 graph, who conveys the commands of the Czar to a 
 fellow-automaton, perhaps some thousand eagues distant, 
 to be by him again transmitted across a similar extent 
 of country, sooner or later pays the forfeit of his life to 
 the severities of the climate. Even during the summer 
 months, his duties are none of the most agreeable. Con- 
 demned to travel day and night until his journey is 
 completed, in a vehicle styled a telega — of all carriages 
 on wheels the most uncomfortable, consisting, as it docs, 
 of a little cart without springs or back, with two leather 
 seats, on the foremost of which sits the driver — the 
 feldjuger pursues his solitary way exposed to consider- 
 able danger. The Russian coachman is perfectly reck- 
 less when driving over rough mountain roads. At the
 
 200 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 commencement of a declivity, he will judiciously enough 
 restrain his horses j but, as he proceeds, he becomes tired 
 of his prudence, and at the most dangerous point of the 
 descent generally puts them into a smart gallop, when 
 the vehicle only escapes being overturned by his con- 
 fidence and skill, and the firmness of the legs of the 
 spirited but weak and tired animals, that he is urging 
 along on so reckless a course. 
 
 So great is the respect with which the feldjager is 
 regarded by the common people, that the peasants, 
 whether on foot or in vehicles, make haste to clear 
 the way before him. At his approach every obstruction 
 on the road vanishes like magic. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Sledge-driving in the city is not always unattended 
 with danger, even when the snow presents a surface as 
 flat as that of a lake. Not all horses can draw this 
 kind of vehicle, and, when you have to turn the corner 
 of a street, the light sledge will overturn and throw you 
 out to -a considerable distance, with your head against 
 the walls of the houses, or the other sledges which 
 happen to be passing. Ten times has this accident 
 occurred to myself, and I always got off with a few 
 scratches, but every one is not so lucky. 
 
 Winter is a boon to the inhabitants of the towns as 
 much as to those of the country. As soon as sledging 
 has commenced, the markets are actually encumbered 
 with provisions of every kind, which the peasant bring
 
 THE CLIMATE. 201 
 
 in from all quarters. Vegetables, meat, fish, game — 
 in a word, everything is frozen. Nothing can be more 
 grotesque to behold, than the markets peopled with 
 frozen pigs, sheep, calves, and oxen, standing on their 
 hind-legs, or placed upon all fours around the trades- 
 mens' stalls. A person would almost think that these 
 animals were going through the exercises of the learned 
 pig. When there is a deficiency of snow, the towns 
 suffer. Living becomes very dear ; and sometimes there 
 is a famine.' Navigation as well as sledging being sus- 
 pended, the^ provisions cannot be forwarded to their 
 destination, or, if they can, reach the town in a 
 damaged state, and are exorbitantly dear. Again, the 
 earth and the seed in it not being protected by a layer 
 of snow, the severe cold kills all the corn. 
 
 The transition from one season to the other occupies 
 only a few days. After a week at most of fine, icy rain, and 
 thick, hard sleet, the heat begins to be felt, and goes on 
 increasing every day. Vegetation progresses with pro- 
 digious rapidity ; in the space of a single day, especially- 
 after a warm rain, the trees bud and are covered with 
 green leaves. But it would be a piece of great impru- 
 dence to trust this apparently fine weather; storms 
 frequently are formed upon the Ladoga, whence they 
 come and break over the town in the shape of hail or 
 
 snow. 
 
 From the middle of February, the days begin to 
 grow longer ; towards the middle of April, the ice on all 
 the rivers commences breaking up ; towards the middle
 
 202 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 of May, the sun sets between ten and eleven o'clock, while 
 in June, and up to the middle of July, it never leaves 
 the horizon. People can read, write, and play all night 
 without the aid of any artificial light whatever. For 
 twenty minutes, at the most, does the sun seem to dis- 
 appear, but the sky remains perfectly lighted by large 
 clouds of warm red vapour, like those produced by a large 
 building on fire during the night. Shortly afterwards, the 
 sun re-appears with increased brilliancy. The shadows 
 caused by its rays are immense ; those of the trees and 
 public monuments are actually gigantic in their propor- 
 tions. On one occasion, as I was returning home, at 
 two o'clock in the morning, I had the curiosity to 
 measure my own shadow, and found it more than two 
 hundred and fifty paces long. 
 
 V. 
 
 Nothing strikes one's imagination so vividly as the 
 silence which reigns around from eleven o'clock at night 
 to five o'clock in the morning. The air possesses so high 
 a degree of sonority, that sounds are transmitted with 
 great distinctness very considerable distances. The 
 human voice, the noise of a horse's hoof, the barking of 
 dogs, the howling of wolves, the warbling of birds, the 
 footsteps of a man walking upon the gravelly shore, are 
 singularly audible. It has happened to me more than 
 thirty times, when I inhabited the islands during 
 summer, to pass the night upon my balcony, smoking and
 
 THE CLIMATE. 203 
 
 contemplating at my ease the strangeness of nature in 
 these parts. I used to hear very clearly, and follow, 
 without losing a single syllable, all the conversation of 
 the peasants and fishermen, who were at a distance of 
 nearly a mile and a quarter from me. I own that, at 
 such moments, Eussia struck mc as sublime. 
 
 Exposed to the influence of heat and light, both night 
 and day, the vegetation grows perceptibly to the eye.. 
 The story of the fairy Fine Oreille hearing and seeing 
 the grass grow, no longer appears to me a mere nursery 
 tale. What was yesterday, at the commencement of 
 May, covered with snow, has reached its full growth, is 
 ripe, is harvested, and is housed towards the end of July. 
 
 Every medal has its reverse. The summer is short. 
 As early as the 1st of August, the days have decreased 
 so rapidly, that it begins to grow dark at seven o'clock, 
 while, at eight, the lamps are lighted in the streets. 
 The quasi heat which the inhabitants found so agreeable 
 about the middle of July exists no longer, save in their 
 imagination ; they see the air serene, and the sun toler- 
 ably brilliant, and fancy, in consequence, that it is 
 still summer, and that the weather is still warm. At 
 this period, a person cannot well go out of doors with- 
 out enveloping himself in woollen clothing and taking 
 his cloak. In September, the fine icy rains and the 
 frosts recommence, and, in October, the ice and the snow 
 once again cover the entire surface of the country, from 
 north to south. 
 
 I repeat it : the climate is abrupt, rude, and vari-
 
 204 THK KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 able. In the month of July, the heat in the middle of 
 the day is suffocating, while the temperature in the 
 evening is icy-cold, and the atmosphere in the morning 
 obscured by thick, fetid, catarrhal fogs. Owing to these 
 sudden transitions, consumption, fever, pneumonia, apo- 
 plexy, and rheumatism, are very common. The acci- 
 dental suppression of perspiration is equivalent to an 
 almost immediate sentence of death. However, in 
 everything God has placed the remedy by the side of 
 the disease ; an infusion of dried wild strawberries, taken 
 as hot as possible, and sufficiently early, re-establishes 
 the perspiration in a few minutes, and saves the person 
 whose life is endangered. 
 
 The aspect of this immense country, buried under 
 several feet of snow, which levels everything — rivers, 
 lakes, swamps, and even the sea itself — beneath a solid 
 surface of ice, several feet thick, is very imposing, but 
 insurmountably melancholy ; and, whenever a storm raises 
 the snow and drives it like a swelling ocean before it, 
 many a drama and many a terrible accident follow. 
 
 When it begins to thaw, the water invades the whole 
 country, and transforms it into a marsh. The high- 
 ways, the roads, and the streets of the various towns, 
 even including those of the capital itself, are but so 
 many quagmires. As long as this state of things lasts 
 it is impossible to go anywhere, either in sledges, in 
 coaches, or on foot. 
 
 One thing struck me very forcibly, and that was, 
 the vigour and dark hue which distinguish the verdure
 
 THE CLIMATE. 206 
 
 of all the vegetables. This is a phenomenon which I 
 have always remarked in all countries where there is 
 much snow, and where the soil remains covered with it 
 for a considerable period of the year. 
 
 The climate of Russia is the most detestable one in 
 the world ; and St. Petersburg is built in a district 
 where the climate is more frightful than in any other 
 part of Russia. The Russians themselves acknowledge 
 this. Nothing thrives, nothing grows there ; there is 
 no kind of fruit save some wild berries, which are 
 scarcely sufficient for the bears, while in Sweden, in 
 the same, or even a higher degree of latitude, apple- 
 trees, pear-trees, all kinds of cherry-trees, " guigniers," 
 and currant-bushes, thrive admirably in the open air, 
 and produce fine and excellent fruit. Capital vege- 
 tables, with which the markets are well supplied, are 
 also grown there. But in Russia, if persons want cher- 
 ries they must have hot-houses : if they want asparagus 
 and green peas, they must pay two pounds ten a bundle 
 for the former, and a pound a pint for the latter. A 
 pear costs as much as six or eight shillings. To make 
 up for this, however, there are pumpkins, gherkins, 
 and mushrooms in abundance. 
 
 The winter amusements consist of sledge-driving, 
 theatres, concerts, balls, evening parties, and gambling ; 
 the stakes are tremendously high, and hundreds of thou- 
 sands of roubles are dropt upon the table. In addition 
 to this, there are the ice mountains, and the diversion of 
 hunting bears, elks, and wolves, and shooting black -fowl.
 
 206 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS, 
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 
 
 I. 
 
 St. Petersbueg is a city full of frightful contrasts 
 and ridiculous discrepancies. It is a market-place, on 
 ■which persons from all nations of the earth elbow one 
 another. In reality, there are only three classes there : 
 the military, the rich, and the poor. The military are 
 dressed up, decked out, befeathered, and beplumed ; the 
 poor are covered with the stinking skins of beasts ; and 
 the rich habited according to the most recent, and 
 oftentimes the most ridiculous, Parisian fashions. Gold 
 elbows the rags of the most abject misery ; the most 
 gorgeous Lyons silks, and beautiful furs, rub against the 
 greasy tatters of the peasant. A person might imagine 
 that he was viewing some monster exhibition of an ex- 
 traordinary people, whom thousands of individuals from 
 every nation under the sun had come to visit and con- 
 template. 
 
 Three distinct currents of population roll on and 
 circulate silently through this city, without ever being 
 confounded, or mingling with each other : these are the
 
 êW-:'M
 
 8T. PETERSBURG. 207 
 
 boyars, the moujicks, and the foreigners. I do not 
 speak of the class of tradesmen, which cannot be reckoned, 
 as far as numbers, consideration, and influence are con- 
 cerned ; covered with disdain and contempt by the 
 nobles, who are jealous of its wealth, and even by the 
 peasants, from whom it springs and whom it treats with 
 inhumanity, this class does not constitute anything like 
 what with us is termed the middle classes. In St. 
 Petersburg, there are, in fact, only plebeians and patri- 
 cians. 
 
 No people on the face of the globe possesses more 
 vanity, more pride, more ostentation, .ad more national 
 amour-propre, than the Russians. They push this defect 
 of their moral organisation to the most absurd lengths. 
 It is. however, a defect inherent to all nations who are 
 merely beginning thei" career, and who have no history 
 of their own, to play the bully and look upon themselves 
 as superior to all the world besides. 
 
 The aristocracy has no individuality ; it is, in turn, 
 English, German, French, or Turkish, according to the 
 fashion of the day or the caprice of the court, which it 
 exerts itself to copy : it would turn Chinese, Laplander, 
 or Hottentot, and would be tattooed like the New Zea- 
 landers, if the Czar but expressed a wish to that effect. 
 Vanity, more than the thirst after pleasure or the desire 
 of instruction, irresistibly impels the nobles to quit their 
 country, and repair to London, Vienna, Naples, Rome, 
 and Paris, or to visit the various watering-places for the 
 purpose of gambling. This aristocracy possesses nothing
 
 208 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 of its own ; it only wears what foreigners lend it ; it 
 dines, sups, dresses, dances, and bows like the French, 
 smokes like the Germans, drinks like the English, sings 
 like the Italians, and would chew opium and haschich 
 like the Turks, if, by so doing, it could please its 
 master. It has nothing belonging to itself individually ; 
 its members are still the Tartars of Tamerlane, white- 
 washed over with a coating of civilisation, which is 
 rubbed off every moment. Their Scythian and savage 
 nature can still be discerned palpitating under the 
 various borrowed disguises in which both men and 
 women are eternally showing off. These people are 
 harsh and rude in their politeness; it seems as if they 
 were only polite by accident, or from obedience to some 
 ukase, threatening them with the knout or the rod. 
 They are civilised on the surface alone ; not one of them 
 is radically changed. These nobles speak bad grammar, 
 and cannot even write their own language. If you 
 would praise any one, you say, " He does not under- 
 stand Russian ;" which is another manner of saying, 
 " That person is particularly well educated." But, on 
 the other hand, they speak all the languages of Europe. 
 They make a parade of generous sentiments, which do 
 not at all accord with their natures. You ask them 
 for nothing, and they offer to do you all kinds of good 
 services — they forget their promises when you require 
 their fulfilment. The majority are ruined ; but, in spite 
 of this, appear to be tolerably opulent. In public, 
 they make an ostentatious display of a state of affluence
 
 8T. PETERSBUKO. 209 
 
 which in reality does not exist. They have a box at the 
 opera and cue at the French plays, while, at home, they 
 feed like boors ; their wives are covered with diamonds, 
 and only change their linen when it is falling oflf their 
 backs. 
 
 II. 
 
 The pedestrians move about the streets, the markets, 
 and the public squares, in perfect silence ; it seems as 
 though you were in a country of deaf and dumb per- 
 sons ; everything wears a sombre and lugubrious aspect: 
 you feel that the people are not free, and that they are 
 constrained in their actions. It always appeared to me, 
 when I remarked the silence and anxious air of the 
 multitude, that they were returning from an execution, 
 or going to a funeral. 
 
 The Neva itself flows with great rapidity and with- 
 out noise ; its waters are deep, and of a sinister colour, 
 changing their hue like the eye of a serpent ; the 
 stream appears to be in a hurry to traverse a city that 
 is cursed, and pass as quickly as possible the walls of 
 the fortress, which are too frequently reeking with 
 human blood. It is a difficult task to find two or more 
 Russians walking together and indulging in the plea- 
 sure of a friendly and confidential conversation. They 
 look at one another and are ailent. It seems as if the 
 knout, like some invisible agent, were hovering in the 
 air, and that every one entertained fears for the .safety
 
 210 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 of his shoulders. You do not even hear, as is the case 
 everywhere else, the cries of the various itinerants who 
 sell things in the streets. Discipline is visible at every 
 step you take. All you hear are the coachmen shouting 
 to the foot-passengers to get on one side, like the 
 monotonous croaking of so many crows. This isolation 
 and silence in the midst of a city inhabited by four 
 hundred thousand souls, freeze the blood and fill the 
 mind with a sort of terror. 
 
 Every one is fashioned to a state of such odious 
 servility, that no one takes any kind of bodily exercise 
 save mechanically ; the legs cause the body to move, 
 but the head never thinks. People cannot even choose 
 their own residence. If you are uncomfortable in a 
 particular house, and desire to transport your Penates 
 somewhere else, you are obliged to give twenty-four 
 hours' information of the fact to the police, who must 
 know why you leave one quarter, and what motive makes 
 you choose another. You cannot proceed ten paces be- 
 yond the town without your passport ; even a foreigner 
 has no more power to escape this ambient tyranny than 
 a Russian subject. 
 
 At every step, you run up against soldiers, some of 
 whom are in grand costume, and others almost naked. 
 No officers of any grade ever quit their uniform ; they 
 always appear ready to pass a review or take the field ; 
 twenty times a-day have I asked myself, whether I was 
 not in a camp in disguise. 
 
 At the first glance, it is evident that the city was a
 
 ^iillliSiiBiiiiâi-:^^l/4^^ii c 
 
 ■.m Su. u
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 211 
 
 piece of folly on the part of a barbarian, who entertained 
 impossible projects, tyrannised over the elements as he 
 did over his subjects, and wished to change the character 
 of a desert, a solitude, a morass. The ostentatious 
 palaces, the wooden huts, the quays of red granite, the 
 streets that are tumbling down, the pasteboard houses, 
 ornamented with colonnades, peristyles and pediments, 
 and the Greek, Turkish, Persian, Lutheran, and Roman- 
 looking churches, all rear their forms like odious sou- 
 venirs of slavery — like an insult to humanity. There it 
 stands, this city without suburbs, isolated like a city 
 that is cursed, in which a whole population of slaves is 
 •writhing under the grasp of the terrible punishments of 
 an implacable will — a pestiferous marsh in which death 
 stalks about at his ease. I have on some occasions 
 endeavoured to leave it, and gone six or seven leagues 
 without meeting with a village, a hut, or anything save 
 scanty herbs and dwarfed brushwood. 
 
 Everything betrays the encamped tribe. Without 
 moving beyond the precincts of the city, a person may 
 easily convince himself that, wherever you like to take 
 a Russian, from Archangel to Odessa, from Kiew to the 
 furthest limits of Kamtschatka, his state of ignorance 
 and barbarism is everywhere exactly the same : every- 
 where do you meet with the same rough, coarse manners 
 and habits. I must except, however, the inhabitants 
 of the shores of the Baltic and of the Gulf of Finland, 
 who were formerly subject to Sweden. They are sober, 
 and not drunken like the Russians, with milder and
 
 212 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 more polished manners, and have preserved a portion 
 of their German habits. But the Russian spirit is every- 
 day obliterating the intelligence of these people of 
 Lithuanian or Saxon origin. 
 
 II. 
 
 The nobles, ruined by the gaming table, undergo 
 every kind of privation, and exist on sour cabbage, 
 cucumbers, mushrooms, salted or pickled fish, and milk 
 food, but they avail themselves of their right to have four 
 horses to their carriages. They have valets and other 
 domestics, whom they do not pay, whom they do not 
 keep, whom they do not clothe, and who are forced to 
 plunder in order to live. 
 
 The livery worn by this race of menials, has clothed 
 the shoulders of ten generations, and lost all trace of its 
 primitive colour from excessive use and endless repairs. 
 Beneath the livery, the servants have no linen, and 
 scarcely any other article of dress ; a piece of cotton 
 cloth rolled round their neck deceives the spectator into 
 the idea that they have a cravat ; their boots, like the 
 slippers of their mistresses, are all run down at heel, and 
 bear ill-concealed traces of numerous rents. A pocket 
 handkerchief is a thing which is completely unknown ; 
 they wipe their nose with their fingers or the cuff of their 
 coat. 
 
 There is one circumstance, however,which is remarkable 
 all over Russia, and that is, the air of easy comfort,
 
 ST. PETERSBURO. 213 
 
 coquetry, and cleanliness that all the houses possess ; but 
 they do so only outside, on the front which looks out 
 into the street. Their appearance is very deceptive ; 
 scarcely have you passed the threshold of a door ere you 
 might suppose that you were in a hovel. The stairs are 
 low and dark, and emit a most filthy smell. This unclean- 
 liness extends up as far as the vestibule, and even pene- 
 trates into the antechamber. It is by no means uncom- 
 mon or extraordinary to see a great lady get out of her 
 carriage and enter some alley or other to satisfy a 
 necessity of nature. In this respect the first-rate houses, 
 the houses of the richest people, and even of millionaires, 
 do not differ much from those of other persons. The 
 only exceptions are those, which are very limited in their 
 number compared to the rest, where the principal 
 entrance, the entrance of honour, is guarded by a porter, 
 with a gold-headed cane, a halbard, and a cocked hat. 
 To make up for this, however, the principal streets are 
 scrupulously clean. The police punishes very severely 
 all infractions of the regulations, which it looks upon as 
 crimes against public decency. 
 
 If we penetrate into the interior of these noble 
 mansions, we shall find that they are in perfect keeping 
 with the habits of their respective masters. As a general 
 rule, they present a compendium of all ages, of all styles, 
 and of all countries on the face of the globe : the inmates 
 appear to be lodged in the rooms of an inn, like travellers 
 who are merely passing through a place where they make 
 a stay of a week or two.
 
 214 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 In order to give an idea of tte actual state of things, 
 I will just draw a sketch, a mere rapid outline, of a 
 noble family in pinched circumstances. Families of 
 this description form the majority, and be sure, reader, 
 that when I have shown you one, you will have seen 
 almost all. 
 
 These people have no ideas, they do not know how to 
 invest poverty with the least appearance of poetry. We 
 have just seen what the stairs are like. The antecham- 
 ber serves as a cloak-room ; it is, also, the chamber of 
 the lackey, whose bed is concealed beneath a screen of 
 paper or green cloth ; it is the room in which he sleeps 
 away his drunkenness, and in which, every morning, he 
 cleans the shoes of the household. There is also a 
 stove, a row of hat-pegs, and a bench covered with some 
 stuff or other which the visitor suspects to have been 
 velvet, in the days when the town of Utrecht was famous 
 for that material, and in which all kinds of domestic 
 vermin thrive most marvellously. 
 
 All the other rooms resemble one another, as far as 
 the furniture is concerned. The walls are generally 
 coloured green, blue, or yellow, according to the taste 
 of the proprietor, but the tints chosen are always exces- 
 sively light. The ceiling is painted by means of a sten- 
 celling process, and is also surrounded by a border. 
 
 The furniture of the state-rooms is less than modest, 
 consisting of hay sofas, covered with printed calico, 
 glazed stuff, or sometimes cloth; chairs, settees, and 
 fauteuils of a similar character; consoles ofbeechwood
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 215 
 
 or mahogany, with glasses above them, a piano, which 
 is everywhere an indispensable article, and that is 
 all. 
 
 The bed-room is entirely taken up by a family bed- 
 stead, six feet square, without curtains, and of the 
 German form. This is a patriarchal piece of furniture, 
 intended for show. Like the beds of our ancient kings, 
 it is placed in the middle of the room, with the head 
 against the wall. On one side is a large round basket, 
 ornamented with taffetas, and three feet in height; 
 it contains the pillows in the day-time. In the recess 
 of the principal windows is a dressing-glass, surrounded 
 by gauze and rose-coloured, blue, and white muslin. 
 
 All the windows of the different rooms are without 
 curtains of any description. There is merely a simple 
 blind of coloured calico, which can be drawn up and 
 down at pleasure. There are neither pictures nor 
 drapery. A few pots of sickly flowers ornament the 
 window-sills. In one of the corners of every room hangs 
 the likeness of a male or female saint, most frequently 
 of the Virgin, before which is a little night lamp, that 
 is lighted on grand festivals. 
 
 Among the less wealthy classes, the most favourite 
 piece of furniture is the sofa. It serves two purposes. 
 All day, it stands in the room for show ; at night, it is 
 transformed into a bed. It may truly be said, that the 
 majority of Russians, with the exception of the peasants, 
 who lie upon the floor, live and die upon a sofa, behind 
 a screen.
 
 219 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 IV. 
 
 There still remains one part of the house for me to 
 describe — namely, the kitchen. Screw up your courage, 
 friend reader, and follow me into this smoky cavern. 
 Of what colour are the walls? To answer the ques- 
 tion we should have to coin a word. The whole place 
 smells of burnt kitchen stuff, and resembles the most 
 filthy hovel. On the black, greasy articles of furniture, 
 swarming with tarakans, are enormous joints of meat, 
 turned green by the infectious vapours which surround 
 them. Before the fire you perceive other joints, which 
 it would puzzle you to name; you ask yourself, in vain, 
 of what animal they formed a part ; all around you, you 
 behold provisions of every description lying huddled 
 together in hopeless confusion. In the midst of this 
 Capharnaum of battered and broken utensils, and repaired 
 black crockery, bearing all round its edges, and in every 
 furrow, marks of dirt solidified by time, and which a 
 scrubbing of several hours would not take out, the 
 table and the floor are inundated, not to say drowned, 
 by a brine formed of all kinds of nauseous filth — no 
 pork-butcher's slaughter-house ever presented such a 
 scene of disorder, or such a collection of disgusting 
 objects. 
 
 The divinity who presides over this horrible hole is 
 generally a woman. I will not attempt to draw her
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 217 
 
 portrait, for I should fear, even while remaining far 
 within the limits of truth, to be accused of exaggeration. 
 However, reader, if you should, any evening, enter Paul 
 Niquet's establishment, behind the Halles, at Paris, ^ 
 look around the counter and pick out the woman who is 
 more overcome by liquor than the others ; whose tattered 
 faded rags are the dirtiest ; whose face is swollen, 
 frayed, and actually shining with the dirt with which it 
 is covered ; whose hair is like a lump of horse-hair, 
 through which the comb has never passed, and where 
 countless vermin have firmly established themselves ; 
 whose feet are bare, or scarcely covered with shapeless 
 slippers ; whose hands are greasy : and you will have 
 discovered an individual something like a Russian cook, 
 whose normal state is one of titubation, which does not 
 always permit her to see her way, or the condition of 
 her saucepans and sauces. 
 
 The cei*lings, the walls, and the cupboards, are 
 covered with vermin, with which the stoves are swarm- 
 ing, on which you walk, on which you sit down, and 
 which you eat disguised in all the black sauces. The 
 iaralcans undulate about in every direction, with that 
 dry and almost strident movement which a swarm of 
 cock-chafers shut up in a box would make. It is 
 enough to turn your stomach ! 
 
 Let us pass on to the dining-room. It is garnished 
 with chairs. In the middle stands a round table. In 
 one corner is a little square table, on which the kaloua 
 
 * The favourite rendezvous ot the Parisian market-women. 
 
 K
 
 218 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 is served before dinner. The kaloua consists of such 
 articles as salt or pickled fish, caviar, butter, slices of very 
 strong cheese, radish, Russian brandy, etc. Each guest 
 goes up to this table, and helps himself as he stands. 
 Follow well what I say, reader; dinner is laid upon the 
 large table, on which is a glazed cover, or a cloth, that 
 was used, perhaps, in the last century ; you are presented 
 with a napkin which has already served some one before 
 you, and will serve others after you, until its colour has 
 totally disappeared beneath a coating of grease. A 
 spoon is placed to the right of the plate, and a fork to 
 the left, the knife being laid horizontally above it. A 
 slice of sticky black bread and a slice of white bread are 
 placed in the plate. There are several jugs full of 
 hvass on the table, as well as several kinds of wine, 
 which the Russians take the trouble to colour blue, 
 green, or bright yellow, by means of a mixture of harm- 
 less acids. The soup is brought up ; it is a very clear 
 and very thin kind of broth, without any addition of 
 bread or thickening. If you should happen to let it 
 get cold, and, while it is doing so, scrutinise it narrowly — 
 you will easily perceive swimming about in it, as I have 
 before said, a whole charnel-house of various insects. 
 After the soup, a joint of beef or veal is placed upon the 
 table, and garnished with potatoes boiled by themselves, 
 or flanked by some other description of vegetable, in a 
 a state of repulsive confusion, which causes you to suspect 
 the existence of very dirty habits in the kitchen. The 
 meat is not cut up in regular joints, as is the case with us.
 
 ST. PETERSBURG. 213 
 
 The reason of this is, that every peasant slaughters his 
 beast, cuts it up into four quarters, and then sells it. 
 In order to obtain a chop, a kidney, or a cutlet, you 
 must purchase a whole quarter of the animal, weighino- 
 ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds, and sometimes even more. 
 Salted cucumbers, pickled mushrooms, wild berries, and 
 sour cabbage, are indispensable hors-cTœuvre on every 
 table, and served out with the beef, the vegetables, the 
 fish, and the dessert, which invariably consists of cakes 
 that must have been baked in the reign of Peter I. Up 
 to 1840, there had never been a single pastry-cook in 
 St. Petersburg ; and, at the moment I am writing these 
 lines, there is still only one at St. Petersburg, and 
 one at Moscow : there are none to be found anywhere 
 else. On the other hand, however, the Russians have 
 borrowed from Germany and Switzerland, some very 
 skilful confectioners, who make excellent sweetmeats. 
 
 After dinner, you withdraw into the saloons, where 
 cofiee is handed round, followed, an hour or two after- 
 wards, by tea and sour-milk, and cakes or slices of 
 bread, dried in the oven, and covered with a thin layer 
 of caramel or honey. Tea supplies the place of coffee in 
 the morning, and serves as supper in the evening. 
 True Russians never put the sugar to melt in tea, coffee, 
 or any other beverage ; they nibble a lump of sugar as 
 they drink, and throw back what remains into the sugar- 
 basin. Almost all the men, and the Emperor him- 
 self, take their tea in glasses made to withstand boiling 
 water.
 
 220 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 V. 
 
 Every house possesses an ice-house ; this is absolutely 
 necessary for the preservation of the heaps of provisions 
 of all kinds which people are obliged to have. When 
 a fish or the quarter of an ox is once boiled or roasted, 
 the family live upon it until they come to the bones. 
 
 The picture which I have just drawn is only true 
 generally. There are certainly exceptions, but they are 
 not very numerous, and are only to be found in the 
 case of those who have travelled and resided for a 
 lengthened period abroad, or who possess a very large 
 fortune, which enables them to surround themselves with 
 every possible comfort. 
 
 In the great families, whose wealth is reckoned by 
 hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling, you meet 
 with luxurious apartments, with waxed and polished 
 floors, with tapestries, perfumes, elegant decorations and 
 ornaments, and with rich Aubusson carpets or velvet 
 hangings before the entrance, while mirrors of a pro- 
 digious size, master- pieces of Russian art, are let into 
 the walls, the doors, and the alcoves. 
 
 The furniture varies in style, richness, and origi- 
 nality, according to the taste of the master or mistress 
 of the house, or of the Czar. It is Chinese, Indian, 
 English, French, Turkish, Gothic, Renaissance, Rococo, 
 or anything else, according to the taste of the Czar, or
 
 ST. PETEESBURQ. 221 
 
 of the Czarina. Before thinking of himself, a person 
 thinks of flattering the Court. When the Grand-Duchess 
 Marie was married to the Prince of Leuchtenberg, every 
 one was seized with a passion for mineralogy, and col- 
 lected immense heaps of stones of all colours, because it 
 was known that the Prince was greatly distinguished 
 for his knowledge in this branch of science. The Rus- 
 sians do not live for themselves. 
 
 Turkey or Persian carpets cover the richly-inlaid 
 floors ; statues from Rome or Florence are exhibited in 
 the corners of the saloons, and surrounded by a parterre 
 of shrubs and green plants, in boxes or pots ; while 
 richly framed pictures ornament the walls. But, in tho 
 midst of all this brilliancy, luxury, and comfort, you can 
 always instinctively feel the existence of the national 
 uncleanliness and bad taste. The various articles I have 
 described are without doubt rich, but they do not agree 
 with each other, and are faded. On going close to all 
 these hangings and wood-work you see the marks of 
 dirty hands and filthy fingers, while the curtains of 
 embossed silk are disfigured by large stains. 
 
 The lackeys are supercilious, bold, and deficient in 
 politeness to foreigners. They measure their respect of 
 any one by the amount of gold or silver embroidery, or 
 the number of orders, which decorate his coat. They 
 cringe before embroidery and ribbons, and steal the 
 handkerchiefs, gloves, and other articles which they find 
 in the paletots confided to their care in the antecham- 
 bers.
 
 222 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 It is a difficult thing to convey an idea of the 
 national pride of the Russians; I do not know, in 
 the whole world, a nation with more pretensions^ 
 Masters, servants, and slaves, all agree most marvel- 
 lously in depreciating everything which is not Russian. 
 If you point out the absurdity of this by asking why 
 they buy English and French productions, and why 
 they eat like Englishmen or Frenchmen, they reply, 
 without the slightest embarrassment, that they do so 
 because fashion requires it. I have even met with some in- 
 dividuals, perfectly educated, who had travelled, and who, 
 putting all national amour-propre aside, could appre- 
 ciate, better than the rest of their countrymen, the people 
 and products of each particular nation ; I have, I will 
 add, met people w^ho bore celebrated names, and in both 
 cases found many who have actually asserted, with the 
 greatest sincerity and good faith, that the discourses and 
 sermons of our greatest preachers, such as Masillon and 
 others, were far better when translated into Russian than 
 they were in the original French, because thej had been 
 retouched by the translators !
 
 THE EMPEROU NICHOLAS I. 223 
 
 THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I 
 
 The Emperor Nicholas is assuredly the most honest 
 man in his empire, just as he is the handsomest, the 
 most just, the most humane, and the most intelligent. 
 He commands the respect and esteem of all who 
 surround him, or who have the honovu* to approach 
 him, less by the sacred character with which he is 
 invested, than by the rare and great qualities for which 
 he is distinguished. As a friend, as a father, and as 
 a husband, he is a j)erfect model of domestic virtue. 
 
 Exactly in the same degree that he is generous, in- 
 dulgent, and humane, with regard to the errors caused by 
 the wild impetuosity of youth, is he implacable to those 
 propagators of theories who expose the people to the 
 disorders and shocks which for the last four years have 
 kept all Europe in commotion. For such men he is 
 without mercy, and without pity ; he punishes with- 
 out holding out the slightest hope of pardon. 
 
 Among the boyars of his court, there are some few 
 friends of his childhood, whom he loves with the
 
 224 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 fanaticism of the warmest friendship, and by whom, in 
 turn, he is loved with the most unlimited devotion and 
 disinterestedness. When the man is transformed into 
 the Emperor, all bow and incline respectfully before him. 
 When he again changes into the man, he is, in the fullest 
 acceptation of the word, a gentleman, and invariably 
 kind friend. 
 
 Twice a-year, on New Year's Day and on the Fete- 
 day of the Empress, the doors of the imperial palace 
 are thrown open to such as have obtained beforehand 
 ticket? of admission, when soldiers, courtiers, merchants, 
 and moujicks, in their national dress, mingle together. 
 The aristocracy, the diplomatic body, the foreigners, 
 who have received invitations, and the common people 
 admitted to the fête, are introduced promiscuously in 
 the grand apartments, where all have to wait, pressed 
 upon by the crowd, for the appearance of the Emperor, 
 and of the imperial family. His commanding figure 
 is at length seen towering above the ocean of heads 
 that surround him — the crowd opens before him, 
 and he advances, followed by his noble retinue. He 
 walks freely, and even Avithout experiencing the slightest 
 inconvenience from the mass of people, through closely- 
 packed rooms, where an instant before one would not 
 have believed another person could have penetrated. 
 As soon as he disappears, the crowd of peasants closes 
 behind him, like the ripple on the water that follows 
 in the track of a ship. 
 
 He loves and reveres the companion of his life ; he 
 adores and idolises his children, and is never more
 
 ill Ml» "fi4 'i»i=Mfe-,, 
 
 V 
 
 ÏIJE CZAB AND THE CZARIX.^
 
 THE EMPEROK NICHOLAS L 225 
 
 happy than when in the midst of them, playing at all 
 sorts of innocent games with some, and teasing the 
 others with the most innocent jokes. 
 
 Endowed with robust health and iron energy, he is 
 indefatigable in his labours, and tires out his ministers 
 and secretaries with work. He is the first to rise, and 
 the last to retire to rest, and devotes his whole time and 
 solicitude to the administration of his vast empire. He 
 superintends everything — the army, the finances, the 
 navy, trade and agriculture — endeavouring to introduce 
 zeal and probity into every department, without ever 
 being successful. The disease of venality under which 
 the empire is sufiering is too far spread; there his 
 autocracy is vanquished. 
 
 Emperor and Czar, invested with triple power, he 
 looks upon himself as a man charged by Providence 
 with a divine mission, which he endeavours to fulfil 
 with remarkable intelligence, and with the energy of 
 an honest man who knows exactly the object he has 
 in view. 
 
 It would be as odious as unjust to refuse the 
 Emperor Nicholas the praise really due to him, be- 
 cause he dedicates all his energy towards extending 
 the political influence of his country. If he governs 
 his people with the roughness and severity which we 
 have described, and preserves in his empire a body of 
 laws and a state of things stamped with barbarism 
 and cruelty, it is because he knows that his people, 
 with whom he is better acquainted than any one else, 
 is incapable of living under a regimen more in harmony
 
 226 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 with the precepts of the Gospel. We have already 
 said in a former portion of our work, that the instant 
 Russian law ceases to strike and crush like the thun- 
 derbolt, the moment it ceases to inspire terror, Russia 
 will be covered with ruins and with blood. We saw, 
 ■when speaking of the military colonies of the Volkoff, 
 of what excesses the nation is capable. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Emperor has endeavoured to do, and has really 
 effected, all the good he could, but always with great 
 prudence. That the good is not more evident, we 
 must blame his aristocracy alone, who at all +imes 
 has offered the most violent opposition, and obliged him 
 to pursue a retrograde course. 
 
 The existence of this man of genius has, ever since 
 his accession to the throne, been nought save one con- 
 tinual struggle with the venality and corruption which 
 crush his empire, for his penetration had discerned the 
 evil long before it was pointed out to him. On one 
 occasion, he resolved to probe this evil with all the 
 energy of an honest heart. He charged two intelli- 
 gent men belonging to his staff of secretaries — two 
 Germans from Courland, in whom he placed implicit 
 confidence — to investigate most thoroughly all the 
 branches of the public administration ; to observe, to 
 see, to judge everything for themselves, and boldly to 
 take the soundings of this ocean of corruption, how- 
 ever deep it might be. The will of the Czar is law,
 
 THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 227 
 
 and is, I fearlessly assert, often attended with beneficial 
 results. The task was no easy one ; thousands of ob- 
 stacles were shattered to pieces and overcome. The 
 work was long ; and, contrary to his expectations, con- 
 scientious. It is true, that it would not have been 
 easy to disguise the evil. The portrait was not flattered. 
 Instances of bribery, shuffling and venality were pointed 
 out to the Czar without any respect for persons. Names 
 were written in full, and proofs were abundant. The 
 sore gaped as wide as a gulf. Punishment was out of the 
 question, for itwould have been necessary to let the knout 
 fall upon the noblest shoulders in his empire, and his 
 vengeance almost everywhere — to open the gates of 
 Siberia to the majority of those who surrounded him — 
 for, figuratively speaking, the very doors of his palace 
 threatened to fall, eaten away with corruption ! The 
 Czar shed a tear or two, and threw the report into the 
 fire. In a country of this kind, justice, before being 
 severe, must be prudent. 
 
 The very same evening, weighed down with grief, 
 he went, according to his usual custom, to the house 
 
 of one of his favourite ministers. Count . The 
 
 sombre, discontented air of the Autocrat, completely 
 stupified the mind of the favourite, who, in a stam- 
 mering voice, plucked up sufficient courage to ask his 
 august master what had occurred to afiect his mind to 
 such a degree, and stamp upon his face the marks of 
 such profound sadness. The Czar, with that sharp, 
 abrupt tone, for which he is celebrated, related to his 
 minister-general aU he had just learned, told him the
 
 228 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 revelations recently made, and exclaimed with con- 
 centrated indignation : — 
 
 " Everyone robs throughont the empire ! Every- 
 one around me robs ! In whatever direction I choose 
 to glance, I behold only pilferers and robbers ! There 
 is only one person, a single one, who can walk proudly 
 with head erect. Of this person, at least, I am sure," 
 he added, looking at his favourite very fixedly and 
 very strangely. 
 
 Count , imagining that the Emperor was allud- 
 ing to him, bowed and bent himself almost to the 
 ground, in order to thank his most august master for 
 having had the goodness to think him an honest 
 servant. 
 
 But the Czar, striking his breast, added the following 
 words : — 
 
 "And that person who does not rob is myself! 
 I am the only person throughout the empire who 
 does not steal ! " 
 
 This struggle of the good with the bad, always kept 
 up by the Emperor with a degree of ardour and cour- 
 age often amounting to temerity, has more than once 
 nearly cost him his life. We must not forget that, 
 when'a Czar becomes troublesome, he is either poisoned, 
 or killed by the cord or the sword, if not by means still 
 more atrocious, for Russian genius is very fertile in in- 
 ventions of this description. We have the example of 
 Paul's death to prove this.
 
 TUE EMPEKOR NICHOLAS I. 229 
 
 As we have before said, the revolution of February, 
 1848, was a stroke of fortune for the Czar. But for 
 that, it is highly probable that he would have fallen 
 under the blows of his malignant and perfidious aristo- 
 cracy, among whose number there are still, at the mo- 
 ment of our writing these lines, several of the mur- 
 derers of his father. lie owes his safety to the fear 
 which the socialist theories inspired, and still inspire. 
 Since 1839, the nobility has been endeavouring to get 
 rid of the Czar ; ten times, perhaps, has he been on the 
 point of being struck, and ten times have his audacity 
 and his sang-froid saved him. 
 
 Among the conspirators were, and still are, mem- 
 bers of his household, whom he was loading every day 
 with marks of his kindness. 
 
 To conspire at St. Petersburg, under the eyes of the 
 Czar, or even at Moscow, the refuge of all discontented 
 and offended spirits, would have been rather too dan- 
 gerous. The conspirators arranged their plans abroad, 
 in Italy, France, and Switzerland, but principally in 
 Germany, at a watering-place, where they agreed to 
 meet, ostensibly for the sake of their health. At this 
 period, travelling-permits and passports were easily 
 obtained, — in fiict, they were never refused. At the 
 watering-place in question, the conspirators could plot 
 freely, secure fi-om all danger. They arranged their 
 plans, and disposed of the lives of the Czar and his 
 young family with the same indifference as if they had 
 been projecting a party of pleasure. Among the most 
 active members of this strange band of conspirators.
 
 230 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 were persons occupying high offices in the state, supe- 
 rior officers of the army, equerries, chamberlains, and 
 senators, some being of pure Russian extraction, and 
 others Courlanders, Livonians, and Esthonians. In 
 order to speak more freely of the actions and conduct 
 of the Czar, without attracting anybody's attention, 
 they designated him by a nickname that was almost 
 ignoble, and all that had been said, done, and agreed 
 on, while they were taking the waters, was reported, 
 with the greatest exactitude, to the brethren and friends 
 who had remained in Russia. 
 
 Up to 1839, or 1840, at which period the feeling of 
 discontent began to grow very strong, it had never 
 been seriously resolved, at least as far as I am aware, 
 that the Czar should perish. The feudal aristocracy 
 felt neither sufficiently powerful nor sufficiently popu- 
 lar to risk such a measure, and already dreaded the 
 tchinn. They had allowed him to give himself the airs 
 of an autocrat, and it was too late to oblige him to quit 
 them (we are citing the very words which issued from 
 Russian lips). But they did not, on this account, 
 abandon their plans ; they speculated on the Czaro- 
 vitch's accession to the throne ; they knew that he 
 was a weak-minded person ; they discussed the gua- 
 rantees which they should insist on his granting, and 
 the probable results of an act obtained by force ; they 
 took into consideration every possible eventuality, and 
 without altogether renouncing all idea of committing a 
 crime, they were fatally impelled towards it. For, sup- 
 posing even that the Czarovitch had consented to sigu
 
 THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 231 
 
 an act of indemnity under the pressure of his boyars, 
 it is very improbable that, once master of the govern- 
 ment and the army, and seconded besides by his bro- 
 thers, especially the Grand-Duke Constantine, a man of 
 remarkable energy, he would not immediately have en- 
 deavoured to free himself from it. In such a case, 
 therefore, to avoid perishing in Siberia, or the Cau- 
 casus, on the scaffold, or in some other manner, the 
 nobility would inevitably be obliged to have recourse to 
 the three traditional methods of their country : poison, 
 the cord, or the pressure of a muscular hand — and in- 
 clude in one act of extermination all the members of 
 tlie imperial family. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In 1839, St. Petersburg, Moscow, and all the 
 lùx^e cities of the empire, were suddenly thrown into 
 a state of terrible anxiety. A strange rumour circu- 
 lated in every family, and people whispered to one 
 another that, in the silence of his study, the Emperor 
 was preparing the emancipation of all the serfs. The 
 aristocracy, taken unawares, trembled for its privileges, 
 its property, its riches, and even its life ; for, in Russia, 
 a liberal measure is almost always followed by a revolt, 
 and the nobles have so many sins upon their conscience 
 to answer for ! All of a sudden, a ukase appeared ! 
 It merely contained a clause authorising and rendering 
 mutually binding, every farming lease contracted volun- 
 tarily between a noble and his serf. This was a step
 
 233 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 towards liberty. The attempt was a bold one, how- 
 ever, for, up to that time, the peasant did not even 
 possess the right of disposing of his intelligence, being 
 debarred from entering into any contract whatever.^- 
 
 This measure, although marked with deep wisdom, 
 was not attended with the slightest success : not that it 
 was misunderstood by the serfs, but because, knowing 
 the value of the promises made them by their masters, 
 they did not relish the liberty offered, and flatly 
 refused it. In their eyes, it was but another form, iu 
 virtue of which the boyars might odiously use them 
 to their own advantage. Besides, in case of a dispute, 
 by whom and how would justice be awarded ? This 
 was something that the ukase did not tell them, and the 
 unhappy serfs were already too well acquainted with 
 the venality of their magistrates and of their country. 
 
 And yet this liberty of making an agreement granted 
 to these thirty or forty millions of slaves, was intended 
 to deliver them from the tyranny of the stewards, and 
 even of the nobles themselves, since, through it, instead 
 of being mere ploughs, they were transformed into 
 agriculturists. 
 
 This ukase, which had made so much noise, excited 
 so much rage, and, for a moment, shaken the whole 
 social system, sank back into nothingness. Fortu- 
 nately, the mountain had only brought forth a mouse. 
 But the blow had been given. Every malignant pas- 
 sion was strengthened, and, if its courage had not 
 
 1 See, in the chapter on " Slavery," p. 147, some of the articles 
 of the Russian code.
 
 THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 233 
 
 failed, the aristocracy would have exterminated the 
 imperial family. 
 
 V. 
 
 The marriage of the Grand-Duchess Marie, and the 
 Duke de Leuchtcnberg, was a fresh motive for dis- 
 content and hatred. There was not one of the osten- 
 tatious boyars, who did not look upon himself as of a 
 better family than a Prince de Beauharnais, and all of 
 them treasm*ed up a feeling of deep vengeance against 
 the Emperor for having proved himself the best of 
 fathers, and for having, in this alliance, consulted only 
 the heart and the happiness of his child. Did he 
 chance to have a palace built for his daughter ? They 
 vociferated loudly and perseveringly that he was ruining 
 Russia. Did he appoint his son-in-law to the colonelcy 
 of a regiment ? Their outcries became doubly violent, 
 and they went so far as to say that he was a sans-culotte, 
 making a pun upon the word. Even the children, 
 playing the part of echoes to their relations, never 
 spoke of the Prince but in an affected tone of contempt. 
 
 It was during this period, extending from 1839 to 
 1840, that the Emperor threw down the gauntlet » 
 hundred times to his nobility, and treated it with so 
 much disdain and haughtiness as would lead any one to 
 suppose that he was acquainted with its dark plots and 
 projects. It seemed as if he wished to drive it to ex- 
 tremities by various measures, each of which successively 
 narrowed its privileges. He wounded it in its pride, by
 
 234 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 opening tlie gates of the university, of the public schools, 
 and of all the branches of the administration of the 
 Empire, to every individual who presented himself, 
 whether the son of a tradesman or of an emancipated 
 serf. Mons. de Cu«tine's book was published, and met 
 with a brilliant reception ; the Emperor publicly pur- 
 chased a great number of copies, as much as to say to 
 his nobles : " See how well this writer has appreciated 
 and judged you ! " The revolution of February, I again 
 repeat, was an unexpected miracle of Providence, a 
 miracle which saved the Czar, and perhaps Russia as 
 weU, from a terrible catastrophe. 
 
 During these nine years, he was constantly in dan- 
 ger. All persons expected, nearly every day, to hear 
 that he had perished by a violent death, Avhich would, 
 inevitably, be followed by a revolt of the army. Two 
 parties would then have stood face to face : the Feudal 
 Nobility and the Tchinn. The first impulse of the 
 Russian peasant who has revolted, is to massacre the 
 nobles and the foreigners ; that of the soldier is to 
 kill and exterminate his officers and every one who is 
 German, under which name he confounds the natives of 
 almost every nation. The principal foreigners re- 
 siding at St. Petersburg, had, in expectation of some 
 event of the kind, taken measures for escaping and 
 gaining Finland. It is exactly from this epoch that we 
 date the introduction into Russia of decked boats, and 
 the foundation of boating clubs, the members of which, 
 under pretence of learning how to manage their craft, 
 used to go and make themselves acquainted with
 
 THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 236 
 
 the navigation about Cronstadt, in order, as I have just 
 said, to gain the islands with which the coast of Fin- 
 land is constellated, and whence they could reach 
 Sweden without the least danger. 
 
 Like Janus, the Czar has two faces, the one smiling 
 and gracious, and the other severe and harsh. The 
 first is kept for his home, his moujicks, who adore him, 
 and the artists and scholars that he is always pleased to 
 see and meet upon his way : the second is for his boyars, 
 his army, and especially for the persons employed in 
 the various branches of the administration of his em- 
 pire. He drives almost always alone, unless wheu 
 accompanied by one of his sons, in a carriage or a 
 sledge, through the streets of his capital, and nothing 
 can be more curious than to observe the play of his 
 features. If he answers, on his right, the salute of an 
 officer or a soldier, of a boyar or of a tradesman, his 
 face is severe and his look almost terrible ; but if his 
 attention is immediately afterwards attracted to his 
 left, by a group of foreigners or artists, the expres- 
 sion of his physiognomy is softened down, and instead 
 of placing his hand, in mditaiy fashion, on a level 
 with his hat, he waves it graciously. 
 
 His costume is invariable, being always that of a 
 superior officer. Nothing distinguishes him particu- 
 larly from the officers of his army, unless it is his tall
 
 236 THE KNOUT ANB THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 figure and handsome, manly face. He does not allow 
 any of his officers to dress in plain clothes, and only 
 assumes them himself when abroad. 
 
 The Emperor Nicholas has inherited the antipathy 
 and hatred of his ancestors for beards and long hair. 
 Except his coachmen, whom he chooses from among 
 the most blackly-bearded individuals in his empire, all 
 persons cormected with the ci'sdl administration are 
 obliged to shave off every particle of hair on their 
 faces. The army alone wears the moustache and im- 
 perial. The nobility and free citizens may wear 
 whiskers, but only as far as on a level with the bottom 
 of the ear. The Czar himself personally watches over, 
 besides causing others to do the same, the scrupulous 
 observance of these regulations. 
 
 He has an equal horror of those dandies, to be 
 found in every country, who think it the acme of 
 good taste to ape the manners, customs, absurdities, 
 and eccentricities of everj^ nation but theii- o-^vn. 
 
 One day, as he was passing along the Newski 
 Perspective, his glance happened to fall, by the merest 
 accident, on a young man whom he took to be an 
 Englishman of the first water. This individual's face 
 was covered by thick whiskers of an extraordinary 
 length, half curled, and a moustache twisted up at the 
 ends, like fish-hooks, while half his head was im- 
 prisoned in a prodigiously eccentric shirt collar. He 
 had got on a checked costume, peculiarly EngHsh, 
 with a plaid round his shoulders, and a Scotch bonnet 
 upon his head. At first, the Czar did not recognize
 
 THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 237 
 
 Mm, but, taking him for a tourist, passed on without 
 paying any more attention. The next day, this 
 strangely-costumed personage again came under his 
 observation, and the Czar thought he recognized one 
 of his boyars. He stopt his sledge and made a sign 
 for him to approach. As may be supposed, the young 
 boyar waited for the invitation to be repeated, for fear 
 he might have been mistaken. But, being directly 
 pointed out by the Czar's finger, he was imder the 
 necessity of answering the summons, and walked up 
 tremblingly to the Czar, who said drily, making room 
 for him: " Take a seat, sh'!" Every one, seeing the 
 Emperor pass with Count at his side, asked him- 
 self, how in the name of Heaven the latter had suc- 
 ceeded in placing himself on so intimate a footing with 
 the Czar. Never, till that day, had his Majesty 
 been seen driving out with a favom-ite. This de- 
 parture from courtly routine formed the subject of 
 every one's conversation, and of endless commentaries, 
 all the rest of the day. Could it be a tribute of 
 respect, which his Majesty thus publicly rendered to 
 the taste and manners of this young Muscovite, dis- 
 guised like an Englishman ? Such might be the case, 
 and as, in Russia, the courtiers are the slaves of the 
 sovereign's slightest caprices, they began making every 
 preparation for imitating the fashionable appearance 
 
 which Count had imported with such fortunate 
 
 residts. 
 
 At the expiration of an hour, the Emperor drove 
 back to the Danitschkoff Palace, where the imperial
 
 238 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 family have resided since the Winter Palace was burnt 
 down. He himself introduced the fashionable Musco- 
 vite into the saloons of the Empress, to whom he pre- 
 sented him, saying in the most easy and good-humoured 
 manner : 
 
 "Here, Madame Nicholas," for it is thus he names 
 the Empress in the intimacy of private life, " I present 
 to you one of our most faithful subjects. Look at him 
 closely. Do yovi not know him ? Well, there is 
 nothing astonishing in that. He has, for the last few 
 years, been travelling in France and England, and this 
 is the horrible condition in which he has returned 
 to us." 
 
 Then, turning towards Count , who was struck 
 
 dumb with terror and stupifaction, he said to him : 
 
 " You may retire, but let me beg of you to shave 
 and become a true Russian as formerly. Remember, 
 that it is more honourable to remain one of your 
 own country, than to ape the absurdities of foreign 
 nations." 
 
 The same evening, the adventure was known in all 
 the drawing-rooms of the capital, to the great amuse- 
 ment of everybody.
 
 ÏHE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 23& 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Emperor Nicholas is radically good, just, and 
 humane. More than one foreigner owes him his for- 
 tune, while more than one officer of his army owes him 
 his life, and, what is of still greater account, his honour. 
 
 As I have said in one of the preceding chapters, it 
 often happens that the contents of the strongbox of a 
 regiment are squandered away at some orgy or other. 
 The unfortunate wretch, who has thus forgotten his 
 duty, and possesses neither property of his own nor 
 relations to make up the deficiency, has no resource left 
 but the truly paternal goodness of the Czar. A young 
 officer, bearing one of the most illustrious names in 
 Russia, had lost all his patrimony in a gambling-house. 
 Impelled by his love of play, and, perhaps, by the hopes 
 of recovering his fortune, he had risked the money be- 
 longing to his regiment upon the green table, and once 
 a"-ain lost. There were four courses open to him: 
 suicide, degradation, Siberia, and the Emperor. He 
 proceeded to the palace, and confided to the aide-de- 
 camp in waiting the request he wished the latter to 
 convey to his Majesty. As soon as the Czar heard the 
 first few words pronounced by his aide-de-camp, he 
 hastily exclaimed: "Enough, enough, sir! do not pro- 
 nounce his name, for, if I knew it, I ought to punish 
 him"— then, opening a drawer in his bureau, and tak- 
 ing Out thirty thousand roubles, he added : " There,
 
 240 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIA!^ S. 
 
 give him that, and do not let the matter ever be men- 
 tioned to me aj^ain." 
 
 VIII. 
 
 A thousand similar traits are to be found in the life 
 of the Emperor Nicholas. His solicitude extends even 
 to the foreigners residing in his empire. Never was it 
 more evident, as far as Frenchmen are concerned, than 
 after the revolution of February, 1848. The French" 
 embassy no longer existed. The Chargé d'Affaires had 
 sent in his resignation and quitted Russia. Nothing re- 
 mained at St. Petersburg but a staff of subordinates in 
 a state of the greatest disorder. The Emperor gave 
 orders that all the principal French residents of the 
 capital should be requested to appear at the office of 
 the minister of police, where, after having informed 
 them of the events that were taking place in France, the 
 minister told them that his Majesty took them under 
 his especial protection, and that they might, without 
 any anxiety, pursue their various labours, trades, and 
 professions, as heretofore. He added that passports 
 would be delivered to those whose interests recalled 
 them to their native country. They were, also, re- 
 quested to abstain in public, or before Russians, from 
 all conversation of a political character, as every one in- 
 fringing this order would be immediately expelled the 
 country, without any hope of being allowed to return. 
 
 I regret being compelled to say, that they did not all 
 prove grateful for this act of kindness on the part of the
 
 THE EMPEROR MCIIOLAR I. 241 
 
 Emperor. Several of them stupidly endeavoured to 
 propagate their political opinions, and were conducted 
 to the frontiers. I know no persons more insupport- 
 able and arrogant than a certain class of my com- 
 patriots when abroad. Endowed ^vith an excessive 
 dose of pride and national amour-propre, they treat as 
 savages the nation with whom they live, and to whom 
 they have come for the purpose of forwarding their o^vn 
 interests. They arc always instituting comparisons 
 between their native country and that in which they 
 are hospitably welcomed. I have ir.et with some 
 Frenchmen, in Russia, who pushed their impertinence 
 so far as to think it extraordinary that all Russians did 
 not speak French. 
 
 On receiving intelligence of the revolutions at Paris, 
 Berlin, Vienna, Frankfort, etc., the Czar immediately 
 gave orders that all the frontiers of his empire, both by 
 land and sea, should bo hermetically closed. He 
 established a sanitary chain of Cossacks round Russia, 
 and isolated it more completely, perhaps, from the rest 
 of Europe, than China itself. The newspapers, how- 
 ever, were still allowed to enter ; but, before being 
 distributed, they passed under the scissors of the cen- 
 sors, who lacerated them without pity. The persons 
 intrusted with this task, trembled daily for their 
 liberty. A single line of politics overlooked was suffi- 
 cient to conduct them to Siberia. As a natural con- 
 sequence, they tolerated only the literary articles, the 
 price of stocks, the advertisements, and the miscellane- 
 ous news. One day, I happened to say to an official
 
 242 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 that it would be better to stop the papers altogether 
 than to mutilate them in such a manner. " That 
 would never do," he replied ; " we would rather reprint 
 them here." 
 
 IX. 
 
 Without entirely sharing the prejudices of his people, 
 the Emperor is, nevertheless, irresistibly swayed by the 
 idea of fatalism. The following anecdote is a proof of 
 this. Every morning, he causes all the franked letters 
 which have been sent by post (for he never receives 
 any personally) to be brought to him ; he has them 
 then read by his secretary, and classifies them all in his 
 prodigious memory. One day, while thus engaged, he 
 suddenly recollected a plan which had been forwarded 
 to him the evening previous, and which he had placed 
 in his bureau. Not being able to lay his hand upon it, 
 he commenced looking about with impatience. During 
 this time, the secretary continued reading, and, to each 
 of the letters, the Czar replied : " Refused.'' Some 
 dozen requests had met with this fate, when the Czar 
 found the plan. From that moment, to each of the 
 rest, he replied : " Granted.'" 
 
 ^Vhen the secretary had concluded his task, he 
 said: 
 
 " Would your Majesty allow me to make an obser- 
 vation? " 
 
 " Certainly ; speak," replied the Emperor. 
 
 *' Just now, Sire, your Majesty was searching for a
 
 THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 24S 
 
 plan. Under the influence of the vexation which your 
 Majesty appeared to experience at not finding it, you 
 refused some dozen requests — if your ^Majesty would 
 permit me to read them again, perhaps among the 
 number there might be some deserving of your kind- 
 ness." 
 
 " Ah ! true ! " replied the Czar, " you do well to 
 remind me of the circumstance ; " then suddenly cor- 
 recting himself, he added, with an inspired air, " But 
 no — no, I refused to grant them — it was the will of 
 God — it was fated to happen so ; I have, doubtless, 
 judged them rightly, and I maintain what I have 
 said." 
 
 Up to the present time, the Emperor Nicholas has 
 be^n visibly protected by Providence. He has enjoyed 
 the most complete domestic happiness that it ever fell 
 to the lot of a human being to know. Father of a 
 numerous family, he has had the rare good fortune of 
 seeing it grow up, and of keeping it near his own 
 person. He has been successful in the government of 
 his vast empire. This extraordinary man seems to be 
 beyond the reach of misfortune, But there is, however, 
 one black spot in his existence which exasperates him : 
 he cannot resist the effects of the sea ! What is most 
 extraordinary, too, is that he has never embarked in a 
 Riissian bark or ship, for a pleasure trip or a voyage, 
 without being assailed by the most horrible tempests.
 
 244 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 or winds violent enough to sink the strongest ship. 
 Tossed about, shattered, disfigured and almost broken 
 to pieces, the vessels on board of which he has been, 
 have, in spite of all this, succeeded in reaching port. 
 But does not this perseverance on the part of fate to 
 pursue him, this furious commotion of the ocean, 
 whenever he has had to traverse it, seem like an 
 energetic protestation on the part of Neptune against 
 the favourite whim of the Russian government to 
 create a navy ? 
 
 This fact is so well known to Russians, that none 
 of the members of his family or his household ever like 
 to accompany him ; they only do so with the greatest 
 reluctance. He knows the repugnance of his favourites 
 for a voyage or pleasure trip by sea, and takes a ma- 
 licious delight in ordering the attendance of those who 
 are the most timid. 
 
 Half his life may truly be said to have been spent 
 upon the high roads of his vast emjiire, and those of 
 Europe. He likes to travel fast. In Russia, when 
 sledging has once really commenced, he never goes at 
 a rate of less than four leagues an hour. This extra- 
 ordinary speed has caused him more than one fall, and 
 more than one accident. On one occasion, for instance, 
 between Moscow and Novgorod, his sledge, being run 
 away with by some fiery horses of the Steppes, capsized 
 in a deep ravine, and the Czar was taken up with a 
 broken clavicle.
 
 THE EMPEROR NICUOLAS I. 246 
 
 XI. 
 
 Whenever the Emperor Nicholas is called upon to 
 ndminister justice, his decisions are stamped with the 
 most religious impartiality. In one of the early years of 
 his reign, a young girl of illustrious family became 
 deeply enamoured of a young officer of the noble-guards. 
 As tlie consent which she solicited was refused with a 
 degree of obstinacy that was perfectly unjustifiable, she 
 fled from the paternal roof, and got secretly married. 
 She was a minor ; and her family, which was the most 
 important in the province, as much by the austerity of 
 its morals, as by its immense fortune, and the influence 
 derived from science, merit, and a high official position, 
 demanded the punishment of the seducer. It required 
 the most terrible chastisements — the knout, the whip, 
 the rod, or, at least, Siberia — in a word, nothing was 
 horrible enough in its eyes for so atrocious a case. 
 The Czar would not listen to all these complaints. A 
 scandalous offence had, it is true, been committed, but 
 it had been instantly atoned for. Besides, the young 
 man M'as of as good a family as his youthful bride, and 
 the Czar thought that they ought to be left alone. The 
 complaints and clamour of the family, however, in- 
 creased, until, at last, the Czar, whose patience was 
 completely exhausted, replied personally to the mother 
 of the young bride : — " Well then. Madam, be it so ; I 
 will punish them, I will make an example. The young
 
 246 THE KKOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 count shall go and find a certain death in the army of 
 the Caucasus, and your daughter shall be sent to end 
 her days in a convent." This menace, which he most 
 certainly did not intend to put into execution, had all 
 the success he expected, nor did he cease to exert 
 himself until he had prevailed upon the young lady's 
 family to pardon and forget her error. 
 
 XII. 
 
 The court frequently visits the theatre in winter. 
 .^w Emperor passes an hour or two there every even- 
 ^vig. He is particularly fond of the Italian opera and 
 the French plays, for which he makes enormous sacri- 
 fices. His great pleasure, between the acts, is to go 
 down upon, the stage and talk to the members of the 
 company, men cs well as women, always exquisitely 
 polite to the formsr, and amiably gallant to the latter. 
 Being himself naturally very simple in his taste and 
 demeanour, he desires that every one else should be 
 natural, without affectation. He likes to awe persons, 
 and is himself the first to laugh at the awkwardness and 
 constraint felt by strangers in his presence. For in- 
 stance, going one day unexpectedly on the stage of the 
 French theatre, he found all the actresses in groups, 
 mutually backbiting one another. Immediately they 
 perceived him, they fell into a line, like soldiers pre- 
 senting arms, and made a profound curtsey, which 
 struck him as so comical, that, to amuse himself a little 
 at their expense, he placed himself before them, and
 
 THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 247 
 
 takinpj hold of the two skirts of his uniform surtout, 
 returned their salute with a smile ; he then went up 
 and talked to them some time with the greatest kind- 
 ness. 
 
 All dramatic artists who leave Russia after a stay of 
 ten years, have a pension of eighty pounds each, out of 
 his own privy purse. More than one mediocre actor is 
 indebted to him for an easy and certain competency in 
 his old a":e. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 He speaks French admirably, and is thoroup:hly 
 acquainted with all the niceties of the language. 
 Formerly he used to take a plçasui-e in making bons- 
 mots and other kinds of jokes, but, although very 
 clever in this respect, his brother, the Gi-and-Duke 
 Michael, was far superior to him. He used to make 
 them on every possible occasion, even in the midst of 
 a serious conversation. There is not a single boyar 
 admitted to the court in 1839, who does not recollect 
 the famous pun that he made upon his own niece, the 
 Grand-Duchess Marie, the evening of the day on which 
 she was married to the Duke of Leuchtenberg. 
 
 The Empress is no whit inferior to the Emperor in 
 goodness of heart and elevation of soul. She jjossesses, 
 in the highest degree, every feminine virtue. As a 
 wife, she loves the Emperor beyond expression En- 
 dowed with profound good sense, and with a rare 
 spirit of penetration, she is, so to speak, a tutelary
 
 248 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 angel, around Mliora all who are unhappy collect, in 
 order to obtain favours, or a commutation of the severe 
 sentences of her husband. The Emperor is fond of 
 yielding to the gentle influence exercised over him by 
 his wife, and it is very seldom, unless in instances of 
 the most atrocious crime, that she does not obtain for- 
 getfulness of the past, or at least a mitigation of the 
 punishment. All the benefits that she has conferred, 
 and still confers, remain unknown ; she never profanes 
 them by publishing them to the world, and the un- 
 happy beings whom she saves, or whom she succours, 
 have not to blush at their misery or their misfortunes. 
 
 She accepts, and even eagerly seeks, the office of 
 patroness of all works of charity. She knows that good 
 deeds done by those in high stations, always meet with 
 numerous imitators. 
 
 In 1848, when the cholera was ravaging the city, 
 she displayed a far greater amount of courage than 
 is natural to her sex. Two or three thousand victims 
 fell every day struck down by the plague. Terror was 
 painted on every face, and despair planted in every 
 heart. The city was deserted, and all the public offices 
 abandoned. In less than four days applications were 
 made for more than eighty thousand passports. The 
 nobility had fled, and even the persons connected with 
 the court requested to leave. The streets were strewed 
 with corpses, and encumbered with dying persons. The 
 Czarina preserved all her courage and energy. She 
 was to be seen everywhere, accompanied by the prin- 
 cesses, restoring every one's courage by her own ex-
 
 THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS I. 249 
 
 ample. The Czar, on his side, used to traverse the 
 city on foot, accompanied by his sons, and followed by 
 some few aides-de-camp who had not dared to flee. 
 He visited all the hospitals and all the barracks, making 
 it a point to go into the quarters which had suffered 
 most, nor did he withdraw to his summer residence 
 the Palace of Czarsko-Selo, until the city was, so to 
 speak, almost abandoned. We can safely affirm that 
 not more than a hundred thousand souls, including the 
 garrison, were left within the walls. Three hundred 
 and fifty thousand had retired into the country. 
 
 For several years past, the Czarina has been in a 
 very delicate and unsettled state of health. More 
 than once have the medical men of the country de- 
 spaired of preserving her for her numerous and fine 
 family, whom she idolises, and all of whom — sons, 
 daughters-in-law, and grandchildren — assemble around 
 her every evening. The son-in-law, also, whom she has 
 just lost, and whom she used to love as much as her 
 own sons, was very assiduous in his attendance at 
 these meetings.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A. 
 
 The letters of all foreigners residing in Russia are inva- 
 riably opened, examined, and read, both on being sent oflf 
 and on being received, by the post-oflSce authorities. Any 
 one who is unfortunately so imprudent as to relate the im- 
 pressions produced upon him in the course of his travels 
 through the country, or who maintains with persons abroad 
 a correspondence which the Russian police look upon as 
 dangerous, is quickly conducted to the frontier, with all the 
 respect due to him according to the rank he holds in the 
 social hierarchy. 
 
 Some years ago, Mons. V., the brother of one of our 
 most valiant superior officers, happened to be at St. 
 Petersburg. He had been stopping there above a fortnight, 
 going about everywhere and observing everythin'j, when 
 one morning, a police officer entered his room and 
 asked if it was !Mons. V. to whom he had the honour of 
 speaking. On the latter answering in the affirmative, the 
 officer continued : 
 
 «• His Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, having
 
 252 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 learned indirectly that you keep up with your brother an 
 active correspondence, in which you give him your own 
 peculiar views of the affairs of this country, charges me to 
 inform you that, as your letters might be lost upon the 
 road, he thinks it would be mo.'e pcudent for you to take 
 them to Paris yourself. Here are your letters ; a carriage 
 and horses are waiting for you at the door. I have, also, a 
 passport, perfectly correct, to give you. In two hours 
 your trunks will be packed and we will set out." 
 
 This ironical manner of expelling people did not sur- 
 prise Mens, v., for he was aware that it was a custom 
 of the Kussian police, and he replied therefore in the same 
 tone to the officer : 
 
 " His INIajesty anticipates my wishes ; I was on the 
 point of leaving his dominions, but I had indulged in the 
 liope of not taking my departure until I had seen the Czar 
 of all the Eussias. I confess that I shall regret aji my 
 life not having time to do so." 
 
 " For the matter of that, sir," replied the police-officer, 
 I' while u-e are preparing your trunks, I will desjjatch some 
 one to learn his Majesty's orders." 
 
 Speaking thus, he wrote a few lines on a page ot his 
 note-book, and sent them off by a Cossack who had accom- 
 panied him, and who is the indispensable acolyte of every 
 officer charged with a mission of this description. Half an 
 hour afterwards, the Cossack returned with the same note, 
 at the bottom of which were two lines, traced by the hand 
 of the Emperor himself, to the following effect : " Granted. 
 I'o-mon-ow morning, at ten o'clock, in the Michael Riding- 
 school : the carriage mil follow you,"
 
 APPENDIX. 2ô3 
 
 The ofiRcer left Mons. V. to himself for the rest of 
 the day, and returned to fetch him the next morning at 
 half- past nine. In a moment, the baggage Avas stowed 
 away, and Mons. V. and his cicerone directed their 
 course towards the riding-school. The Emperor was 
 already there, inspecting a regiment of infantry. He 
 passed several times before Mons. V., who was stand- 
 ing in the midst of a group of general officers. "When the 
 review was over, Mons. V. and his companion got into 
 their carriage again, and drove off at a gallop, whirled 
 along by four little horses of the Steppes, harnessed abreast. 
 
 On their reaching the frontier, the portcullis was raised 
 to allow free passage to a carriage with the arms of the 
 Czar upon it, and, fifty paces further on, INIons. V. was set 
 down -with all his baggage before the Prussian barrier, in 
 the middle of the road, at one o'clock of a bitterly cold 
 morning in the month of November. The officer said 
 that his Majesty only undertook the responsibility of 
 such journeys as far as the frontiers of his dominions, and 
 that at present Mons. V. must look to the King of Prussia 
 for the means of pursuing his journey to France.
 
 254 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 B. 
 
 By the grace of God, we, Alexander THE First, 
 Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias, etc., etc., to all 
 our faithful subjects : 
 
 The whole world is acquainted with the disastrous events 
 occasioned by the avidity and ambition of the government 
 which at present weighs on France. It has covered Europe 
 with carnage, crimes, and ruins. We desired to put a limit 
 to this. We have employed every means of conciliation to 
 restore general tranquillity and secure the independence of 
 o\ir allies. But all our efforts, all our solicitude, has 
 remained without effect. 
 
 The common enemy, whose perfidy tramples under foot 
 the sacredness of treaties and the laws of nations, and 
 whose encroachments threaten to throw all Europe into 
 confusion, obliged us to have recourse to arms in order to 
 assist the Powers neighbouring on our empire. 
 
 Tlie misfortunes which have accumulated over Austria, 
 forced the court of Vienna to sign an onerous peace, dictated 
 by the urgent nature of the circumstances and the ambitious 
 views of the conqueror. 
 
 A short time afterwards, at the very moment that there 
 were hopes of putting an end to this plague, and, by 
 means of négociations, restoring repose to groaning hu- 
 manity, Prussia, falling a victim to the sacrifices she had 
 made in order to procure the friendship of France, and also 
 to her condescension towards this enemy of the whole 
 world, was not able to escape the dangers of war.
 
 APPENDIX. 255 
 
 The security which she enjoyed in the midst of a 
 deceptive peace, without foreseeing the results of it, and 
 the confidence which she never ceased to place in the per- 
 fidious friend who betrayed while he caressed, have dug the 
 abyss into which she has just been precipitated. 
 
 Before the forces of Prussia could be collected, the 
 rmies of Bonaparte, falling upon them, conquered and dis- 
 persed them. The capital of the kingdom, having been left 
 without defence, was subsequently taken possession of, and 
 the greater portion of the Prussian provinces fell into the 
 power of the French. 
 
 The moment this barrier, which covered our western 
 frontiers, was thus thrown down, we saw ourselves ina- 
 periously compelled to cause our armies to advance under 
 the orders of Field-Marshal Count Caminski, in order to 
 protect this side of oui- dominions, and, after having in- 
 voked the Almighty, by whose means, sooner or later, the 
 just cause must triumph, we have commanded our troops to 
 advance against the enemy, who, in audacious proclama- 
 tions, dares to threaten that he will march his armies into 
 the very heart of our empire. 
 
 As the advantages which Napoleon has gained over our 
 neighbours cause all the weight of this war to fall upon our 
 native land, one of our first duties was to redouble our 
 paternal cares for the maintenance of the tranquillity and 
 security of the state, by supporting our armies with all the 
 united strength of the brave, faithful, and generous people 
 the government of whom Providence has confided to our 
 care. 
 
 The disasters which, with such astonishing rapidity.
 
 256 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 have overwhelmed the neighbouring states, prove more 
 than ever how indispensable it is to unite all the resources 
 offered us by unflinching courage and the love of our 
 country and of glory. 
 
 It is only when the whole of a great people is inflamed 
 •with these noble sentiments that it can, by a general 
 arming, oppose an impenetrable barrier to its enemies, 
 whatever may be their number and strength. 
 
 The fact of not having taken up arms in this manner, 
 even in the hearts of the provinces, in order to repel the 
 chief of the French, whose power was augmented by 
 each fresh act of usurpation, was a fault which has been 
 attended with unfortunate results for Austria, and one which 
 has accelerated the downfall of Prussia. The loss of a 
 few battles has been suflicient to decide their fate. The 
 enemy, penetrating into their country without having any- 
 thing to fear from an unarmed population, have destroyed 
 the remains of the dispersed and routed troops, and, 
 carrying terror and desolation every where, have multiplied 
 their easy invasions and put the finishing stroke to their 
 acts of usurpation. 
 
 The valour and the triumphs of the Russian armies, the 
 intrepidity with which, dm'ing a century, they have over- 
 thrown their enemies in all quarters of the earth, the tro- 
 phies raised upon the frontiers, which they have never 
 ceased extending, and the recollection of so much glory, 
 all tend to assure us that, with the aid of the Supreme 
 Being, our enemies will fail in their ambitious designs, and 
 leave upon our soil no traces save their graves. 
 
 But the immense extent of country, over which our
 
 APPENDIX. 257 
 
 annies are called upon to act, presents great obstacles to 
 their mutually assisting one another in the defence of our 
 vast frontiers ; therefore, to prevent the dangers which might 
 result from this, especially if (which God forbid) the enemy 
 succeeded in efiecting a breach in them, we have deemed it 
 indispensable to take measures, for a time, for a general 
 arming of the population, and to create a militia which 
 will be always ready to proceed rapidly to every spot, and 
 to reinforce, or supply the place of, the regular armies, and, 
 in a word, be able to oppose each step of the French with the 
 insurmountable force of the faithful children of our native 
 country, united for the defence of all they hold most dear 
 and most precious. 
 
 Under these difficult circumstances, we address ourselves 
 with the most boundless confidence to the illustrious body 
 of the nobility of our empire, which by its constant fidelity, 
 by its numerous and important services on the field of 
 battle, and the generous sacrifice of its blood and fortune, 
 formerly laid the unshakeable foundation of the greatness 
 of Russia; that body whose heroic example has animated 
 and guided the other classes of the state, who by their 
 brilliant actions have, at all times, contributed to the de- 
 fence of their fatherland and the foundation of its glory. 
 
 The ever memorable proofs which the nobility has 
 always given of its devotion to its fatherland and of its 
 fidelity to the throne, in the earliest ages as well as at the pre- 
 sent day, its well known readiness to respond on all occasions 
 to the first summons of its sovereign' whenever its services 
 
 > Letters of Nobility, § 20.
 
 258 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 may prove useful, and to sacrifice its exertions and its life 
 to the necessities of the state, afford the convincing assur- 
 ances of the zeal, devotion, and perseverance with which 
 it will assist us in bringing to a successful termination, and 
 accelerating the aforesaid arming of the militia, required 
 by the necessities and for the safety of the empire, con- 
 forming itself, also, to the rules here following. 
 
 We ai'e persuaded that our faithful corporations of cities, 
 that the class of nobles and tradesmen, that the peasants of 
 the crown and the free husbandmen, will vie with each other 
 in uniting to share the honourable burden of rendering the 
 most important service to their fatherland, as well as defend- 
 ing the religion of their forefathers and the prosperity of 
 their families. 
 
 Let the ministers of the altars join with us and our 
 faithful subjects, in praying to the Almighty, who holds in 
 His hands the fate of empires, and in obtaining from Him 
 the protection and strength necessary to resist the danger, 
 to vanquish and exterminate the common enemy, and to 
 restore peace and repose to our people. 
 
 The organisation of the provincial armament or the 
 raising of the militia, which will only remain in force 
 during the present danger, will be conducted in the follow- 
 ing manner : — 
 
 I. FOKMATION AND ARMING OF THE MILITIA, 
 
 1. All the governments situated towards the frontiers 
 or in the interior of the empire, and which will be hereafter 
 epecified, will arm their respective populations, according
 
 APPENDIX. 259 
 
 to the number prescribed for the militia levies, agreeably 
 to the annexed regulations. 
 
 2. Several governments comprised in the list, and united 
 with one another, will form a general district, and the 
 forces raised by these governments will form the militia of 
 each such district. 
 
 3. The number of such armies will be seven. 
 
 4. The commanders-in-chief of the general districts will 
 be appointed and chosen by us, from among those persons 
 who have gained general confidence by their fidelity, their 
 services, and their personal qualities. 
 
 5. The commanders of the bodies of militia of the go- 
 vernments will be appointed by the nobility, who will 
 choose for the post such persons as have distinguished them- 
 selves by their military services, and who, as far as this is 
 possible, are domiciliated in the respective governments. 
 If the nobility does not elect them, they will be appointed 
 by the commander-in-chief of the goneral district. 
 
 6. The other officers of the militia of the governments, 
 such as the commandants of districts, of one thousand men, 
 of five hundred, and of less, will also be named by the 
 nobility of the government, who will appoint members of 
 its own class, and, as far as this is practicable, select them 
 from those who have served in the regular army ; in default 
 of this, it will select them from among those who have not
 
 260 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 served, or from among the other classes. The places not 
 filled up by the nobility will be at the disposal of the com- 
 mander of the government. 
 
 7. Immediately after the publication of these regula- 
 tions, the civil governors will draw up lists of all the in- 
 habitants of the government, including persons of every 
 class, and will, in conformity with their instructions, send 
 exact copies of these lists to the commander-in-chief of the 
 general district, as well as to the commandants of the 
 militia of such government. 
 
 II. OF THE RAISING, ARMING, AND PROVISIONING THE 
 MILITIA. 
 
 8. The civil governors and the marshals of the nobility 
 will fix, according to the above-mentioned lists, and the 
 number of inhabitants of each government, the number of 
 men to be raised, both from the middle classes and from 
 the crown peasants, and inform private individuals what 
 number they are required to furnish towards the contingent 
 of each government. 
 
 9. The assemblies of the nobility, as soon as the mar- 
 shals shall have demanded the number of men to be pro- 
 visionally armed for the service of their fatherland, will 
 arrange, by an exact and proportional distribution, the 
 contingent which each separate noble must furnish. "When 
 this distribution has been made, every proprietor of peasants
 
 APPENDIX. 261 
 
 will furnish, in the space of a fortnight, the number of 
 men of his contingent: he "will give them arms, and, to as 
 great an extent as he can, fire-arms, choosing in preference 
 persons accustomed to handle them, such as huntsmen, 
 sharpshooters, etc. He will clothe them in a manner suited 
 to the season, and give them three roubles, in ready-money, 
 and provisions for three months. 
 
 10. The commonalties and villages belonging to the 
 crown will also furnish, in the same space of time, their 
 respective contingents ; they will choose those persons who 
 are most capable of bearing arms, with which they will have 
 to supply them, as well as with provisions, clothing, and 
 money, as in the preceding article. 
 
 11. After the publication of these regulations, and the 
 receipt of the lists of the number of men to be raised in 
 each government, the corporations of the cities will fix, 
 without delay and with due consideration of the means and 
 zeal of the inhabitants, the amount each citizen must con- 
 tribute, either in money, provisions, or other articles, for the 
 equipment and arming of the militia. The list of these 
 patriotic offers will be forwarded to the civil governor, to 
 the commandants of the militia of the government, and to 
 the commander-in-chief, who will without delay forward 
 them to us for our information. 
 
 12. The assemblies of the nobility and the corporations 
 of the cities, respectively, will appoint trustworthy and in- 
 telligent persons, who will be charged with the safe-keeping
 
 262 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 of these offerings, and the commanders-in-chief, as well as 
 commandants of the governments, will select spots for the 
 establishment of depots. 
 
 13. Free persons of all classes, who, animated by a 
 desire to serve their country, shall wish voluntarily to take 
 up arms and participate in the temporary armaments, shall 
 be received by the commandants of governments. 
 
 14. All the inhabitants of the governments possessing 
 in their houses guns, swords, sabres, pikes, and other arms, 
 of whatever description they may be, exclusive of those 
 ■which they require for the arming of the militia and them- 
 selves, are invited to send them for the service of their 
 country — in the districts, to the marshals and commandants 
 of the districts, and, in the cities, to the town-hall or to 
 the prefect of police. Such offerings, for which a receipt 
 will be given, and which will be reported to the com- 
 mandant of the government, will be received with gratitude. 
 
 15. Whatever powder, cannons, bullets and other mu- 
 nitions of war, are wanting in the various governments, 
 will be delivered from the arsenals of the empire and the 
 magazines of the Crown. The commanders-in-chief, and 
 those of the governments, will take care, as far as possible, 
 to provide themselves with all that they may want, and the 
 local magistrates will lend them every assistance in carrying 
 out our wishes. 
 
 16. To reinforce and exercise the militia, a suflacient
 
 APPENDIX. 263 
 
 number of troops of the line will be detached and placed 
 under the orders of the commandants of the eovernment. 
 
 III. OF THE INTERNAL ORGANISATION OF THE MII.ITIA. 
 
 17. The commander-in-chief of each general district, 
 ■will see that all the measures relative to the common de- 
 fence are executed, agreeably to the instructions which will 
 be forwarded to him. His orders will be carried out with 
 the same promptitude and precision as if they emanated 
 from the supreme power. The commander will present us 
 those who distinguish themselves by their zeal, in order 
 that we may grant them the advancement and other re- 
 wards which they shall have merited. 
 
 18. In all that relates to the companies of the govern- 
 ment (the gendarmerie) the commandants of the govern- 
 ments, as well as the c^'vil governors, are under the orders 
 of the chief of the general district. 
 
 19. The marshals of the governments and of the dis- 
 stricts, will contribute, to the utmost of their power, to the 
 success of the measures adopted by the commandant of the 
 militia of the government. They are obliged to execute all 
 his orders, to which the city prefect, the district captains, 
 the magistrates, and the corporations, are also subjected, 
 in all that relates to the common defence. Lastly, the 
 commanders of the bodies of a thousand and of five hundred 
 men of the militia (regiment and battalion), and those ot 
 the inferior sections, are likewise subordinate to him.
 
 264 THE KNOUT AND TFIK RUSSIANS. 
 
 20. As the measures adoi)ted could never attain their 
 end -without the most absolute obedience, and the most 
 severe discipline, it is evident that the slightest instances 
 of disobedience to tlie orders of the chiefs would become 
 hurtful to the public good, if they -were not suppressed with 
 the utmost rigour of the law. Therefore, to prevent the 
 evil which might result, and which would be detrimental 
 to the happiness of the empire, full power is given and 
 conferred, by these presents, on the chiefs of general districts, 
 to arrest and bring before courts-mai-tial all those who 
 may be guilty of disobedience towards theh- chiefs, and 
 violate the faithful observance of the oaths, of which a 
 particular form for the use of the militia will be issued. 
 
 All the sentences of the military tribunals, even those 
 that condemn the guilty person to death, will be executed 
 without the slightest delay. 
 
 When the Almighty shall have blessed our efforts, and 
 those of our faithful subjects ; when the arms taken up for 
 the defence of our fatherland, and for the purpose of lower- 
 ing the insolence of the enemy, shall have obtained for us 
 the desired success ; when the stranger that menaces us shall 
 no longer exist, — then these troops, after having offered up 
 thanksgivings to that most Holy Providence which will 
 have guided their arms, will lay down their weapon?, and 
 return to the hearths which their coui-age will have pre- 
 served for them ; it is then that, in the bosom of his own 
 family, every one will enjoy the sweets of the peace, to 
 which he will so gloriously have contributed. 
 
 We promise solemnly, on our Imperial word of honour,
 
 APPENDIX. 265 
 
 and we impose upon ourselves the sacred duty of bestowing', 
 in the name of a grateful country, all kinds of favours and 
 recompenses on its worthy children, and of rewarding, by 
 honours and marks of distinction, all those who, under the 
 existing circumstances, shall sigiiaUse themselves by their 
 valour, the sacrifice of their personal interests to the public 
 good, and by any other services which they may render to 
 their country. 
 
 A grateful posterity will bless the names of its defen- 
 ders, and their glory will pass from generation to generation. 
 
 Given at St, Petersburg, the 30th November, in the 
 year of grace 1806, and of our reign the 6th. 
 
 The original is signed with his Imperial Majesty's own 
 hand, and countersigned by the Minister of the Interior, 
 Crunt Kotschoubey.
 
 266 THE KNOUT AND THE RUSSIANS. 
 
 c. 
 
 These two regiments, unique in Europe, are each com- 
 posed of two or three couples of men, chosen as specimens 
 from all the regiments of the army, and from the squadrons 
 of the Circassians, Caucasians, Georgians, Mingrelians, 
 Cossacks, and other races subject to Russia. Nothing can 
 be more sad or strange than to see these two corps defile, 
 especially the cavalry, on account of the decided and gaudy 
 colours of its uniforms. 
 
 Both of these corps resemble two regiments composed, 
 after the loss of a sanguinary battle, of all the fugitives of 
 an army. 
 
 To render the contrast more striking and more imsup- 
 portable, the men march pell-mell without any order. 
 Thus, a Cossack, with hie long lance and small, thin horse, 
 is the companion of a burly Cuirassier, mounted on a 
 colossal steed ; a Hussar rides by the side of an Artillery- 
 man ; a large Dragoon, by that of a Georgian, in his white 
 and gold tunic ; a Circassian, with his coat of mail and his 
 casque, like a lightning conductor, mounted upon a little 
 horse of the Steppes, which is always untamed and untame- 
 able, trots along, near a Grenadier, proportioned like a 
 giant; while the mournful Sapper, with his pavement- 
 coloured coat, marches with the sombre Caucasian, in his 
 black skirt, bordered with red lace. 
 
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