They embraced my feet, hugged me, kissed me, professed their affection and loyalty. I was profoundly stirred. My heart was filled with gratitude and love for these brave friends. They seemed like children to me, like my children, and I felt like a tender mother. If I had offended fifteen hundred unworthy members, I had won the deep devotion of these three hundred noble souls. They had tasted the rigours of military life but did not flinch. The others were cowards, masquerading their worthlessness under the cover of “democracy.” These sought no excuses. The prospect of complete self-sacrifice did not daunt them. The thought of three hundred Russian women, courageous of heart, pure of soul, ready for self-sacrifice, was one to comfort my aching heart.
“I wish that I could, but it is impossible for me to remain,” I replied to the pleadings of my women. “The orders from those in authority are to form a committee or to disband the Battalion. Since I flatly refused to do the former there remains nothing for me but to go home. Goodbye for the present: I am going to the Duchess of Lichtenberg for the afternoon.”
The Duchess was one of the circle of society women who had taken a deep interest in my work. She was a very simple and lovable soul, and I needed someone to whom I could pour out my heart. I was always sure that the Duchess would understand and be helpful.
“What ails you, Maria?” were the words with which she greeted me as soon as I appeared on the threshold of her house.
I could not restrain my sobs, and told her haltingly of the mutiny and the consequent collapse of the Battalion. It weighed heavily on me and I felt myself crushed by the disaster. She was shocked at the news and cried with me. The beautiful dream we had cherished was shattered. It was indeed a melancholy evening. I stayed with her for dinner.
About eight o’clock one of my women called and asked to see me and she was shown in. She had been sent from the barracks as a messenger to report to me the results of a visit they had paid to General Polovtzev. It appeared that my three hundred loyalists had armed themselves with their rifles and had gone to the Commander of the Military District, demanding that he should come out to see them. They were not in a mood for trifling and meant business. The General came out.
“What have you done to our Commander?” they demanded sternly.
“I haven’t done anything to her,” Polovtzev answered, amazed at this threatening demonstration.
“We want back our Commander!” my women shouted. “We want her back immediately. She is a saintly woman, her heart is bleeding for unhappy Russia. We will have nothing to do with those bad, unruly women, and we will not disband the Battalion. We are the Battalion. We want our Commander. We want strict discipline in accordance with our pledges to her, and we will not form any committees.”
It was reported to me that General Polovtzev was actually frightened, surrounded by the throng of angry and threatening women. He sent them back to the Institute, promising that he would not disband them and that he would come to the barracks at nine o’clock the following morning. I went with the messenger to the quarters and found everything in splendid order. The girls seemed anxious to comfort their leader and so kept calm and moved about noiselessly.
In the morning everything went as usual, the rising hour, prayers, breakfast and drilling. At nine I was informed that General Polovtzev, the adjutant of Kerensky, Captain Dementiev, and several of the women who took an interest in the Battalion, were at the gate. I quickly formed the Battalion. The General greeted us and we saluted. He then shook hands with me and gave orders that the women should be sent into the garden, for he wanted to talk things over with me.
I asked myself, as I led the group of distinguished visitors into the house, what it all meant. “If it means that they have come to persuade me to form a committee,” I thought, “then it will be very hard for me, but I shall resist all persuasion.”
My anticipation proved correct. The General had brought all these patronesses of mine to help him overcome my obstinacy. He immediately launched into an exposition of the necessity for complying with general regulations and introducing the committee system in the Battalion. He argued along the already familiar lines, but I would not yield. He gradually became angry.
“Are you a soldier?” he repeated the question put to me by Kerensky.
“Yes, General!”
“Then why don’t you obey orders?”
“Because they are against the interests of the country. The committees are a plague. They have destroyed our army,” I answered.
“But it is the law of the country,” he declared.
“Yes, and it is a ruinous law, designed to break up the front in time of war.”
“Now I ask you to do it as a matter of form,” he argued in a different tone altogether, perhaps himself realizing the truth of my words. “All the army committees are beginning to make inquiries about you. ‘Who is this Bochkareva?’ they ask, ‘and why is she allowed to command without a committee?’ Do it only for the sake of form. Your girls are so devoted to you that a committee elected by them would never seriously bother you. At the same time it would save trouble.”
Then my lady-visitors surrounded me and begged and coaxed me to give way. Some of them wept, others embraced me, all of them exasperated my nerves. Nothing was more calculated to enrage me than this wheedling. I grew impatient and completely lost self-control, abandoning myself to hysteria.
“You are rascals, all of you! You want
