Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

last gave him the permission, with even some money for the journey. M. Girard has a gentle countenance, which no doubt pleased the emperor. The unhappy prisoner, who had previously escaped death by a miracle, thus ended his ten years' captivity. He quitted the country of his tormentors and gaolers, loudly repeating the praises of the Russians, and protesting his gratitude for the hospitality he had received from them.

' You have not published any thing ? ' I said to him, after having attentively listened to his narration.

' It was my intention to have related all that I witnessed,' he answered ; ' but, not being known. I should have found neither publisher nor readers.'

' Truth will always eventually make its own way,' I replied. ' I do not like to say anything against that country,' continued M. Girard, ' the Emperor was so kind to me.'

' Yes; but remember it is very easy to appear kind in Russia.'

¦' On giving me my passport, they recommended to me discretion.'

Such is the influence of a ten years' residence in- that country upon the mind of a man born in France, brave, and true-hearted. After such an instance, it is easy to conceive what the moral sentiment must be which is transmitted among the native Russians from generation to generation.

In the montlTof February, 1842, I was at Milan, where I met iI. Grassini, who informed me that in 1812, while serving in the army of the Viceroy of Italy, he had been made prisoner during the retreat, in the neighbourhood of Smolensk. He afterwards passed two years in the interior of Russia. The following is our dialogue. I copy it with scrupulous exactness, for I took notes of it the same day.

358APPENDIX.

' You must,' I said, ' have greatly suffered in that country from the inhumanity of the inhabitants, and the rigour of the climate ? '

' From the cold I did,' he replied; ' but I cannot say that the Russians want humanity. 'We received in the interior of the country unhoped-for succours. The female peasants, and the ladies, sent us clothes to protect us from the cold, medicines to cure our sick, food, and even linen; nay, some of them braved the risk of contagion by coming to nurse us in our bivouacs, for our miseries had spread frightful maladies among us. To induce any one to approach us, there was required not merely a sentiment of common compassion, but a high courage, a lofty virtue; and I call this humanity.'

' I do not pretend to say that there are no exceptions to the general hardness of heart which I observed in Russia. 'Wherever there is woman, there is pity; the women of all countries sometimes become heroic in compassion: but it is not the less true that in Russia, the laws, the manners, the habits, the characters are impressed with a spirit of cruelty, from which our unhappy prisoners sufiered too greatly to allow of our saying much about the humanity of the inhabitants of that country.'

' I suffered among them like the others, and more than many others, for since returning to my own country I have continued nearly blind. For thirty years I have had recourse, without success, to every means of art, but my sight is almost lost: the influence of the night dews in Russia, even during the fine season, is pernicious to those who sleep in the open air.'

' You slept, then, beneath the open heavens ? '

' It was necessary during the military marches imposed upon us.'

' Thus, during frosts of twenty or thirty degrees, you were without shelter ? '

' Yes : but it is the inhumanity of the climate, not of the men, that must be accused of our sufferings during these unavoidable halts.'

' Did the men never add their unnecessary severities to those of nature ? '

' It is true I have witnessed acts of ferocity worthy of savages; but I banished the thoughts of these horrors by my love of life: I said to myself, if I indulge in any expressions of indignation,

APPENDIX.359

my keepers will kill me to avenge the honour of their country. Human self-love is so inconsistent, that men are capable of assassinating a fellow-being to prove to others that they are not inhuman.'

' You are perfectly right: but all that you tell me by no means causes me to change my opinion respecting the character of the Russians.'

' They obliged us to travel in companies. We slept near the villages, the entrance of which was refused us on account of the hospital fever that followed us. In the evening, we stretched ourselves on the ground, wrapped in our cloaks, between two large fires. In the morning, before recommencing our march, our guard counted the dead, and, instead of burying them, which would have cost too much time and trouble, on account of the hardness and depth of the ice and snow, they burnt them, thinking thus to stop the contagion ; body and clothes were burnt together: but, will you believe it ? more than once, men still alive were thrown into the flames ! Reanimated by pain, these wretched creatures concluded their lives with the screams and agonies of the stake! '

' What horrors ! '

' Many other atrocities were committed. Every night the rigour of the frost decimated our companies. Whenever any deserted dwelling could be found near the entrance of the towns, they obliged us to lodge there; but not being able to make fires except in certain parts of these buildings, the nights we passed there were no better than those passed in the open air with fires all around us. Many of our people consequently died in the rooms, for want of means to warm themselves.'

' But why did they make you journey during the winter ? '

' We might have communicated disease to the neighbourhood of Moscow. I have often seen the Russian soldiers dragging the dead, by cords fastened round their ancles, down from the second story of the edifices in which we were herded. Their heads followed, striking and resounding against every step, from the top of the house to the bottom. 'It is of no consequence,' they said, ' they are dead.''

' And you consider that humane ? '

' I only tell you what I have seen : sometimes even worse things happened; for I have seen an end made of the living by

360

APPENDIX.

this treatment; the blood of their wounded heads, left upon the stairs, has furnished hideous proofs of the ferocity of the Rus-`ian soldiers : I ought to observe also, that sometimes an officer was present at these brutal executions. Such things I and my companions saw daily without making any protest; so greatly does misery brutalise men ! It will be my fate to-morrow, I thought; and this community of danger put my conscience at rest, and favoured my inertia.'

' It appears to me still to continue, since you could be witness of all these facts, and remain silent for twenty-eight years.'

' I employed the two years of my captivity in carefully writing my memoirs. I completed two volumes of the most curious and extraordinary facts that have ever been printed on the subject; I described the arbitrary system of which we were the victims; the cruelty of the tyrannical noblemen who aggravated our miseries, and who surpassed in brutality the common people; and the consolations and relief we received from benevolent noblemen ; I showed chance and caprice disposing of the lives of prisoners as well as of natives: in short, I said everything.'

k' Well ? '

' 'Well! I burnt my narrative before passing the Russian frontier, when I was permitted to return to