LIBRARY 
 
 OP 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN
 
 PETERSBURG AND WARSAW: 
 
 SCENES WITNESSED 
 
 DUKING A RESIDENCE IN POLAND AND RUSSIA 
 IN 1863-4. 
 
 BY 
 
 AUGUSTIN P. O'BRIEN. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 EICHAKD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, 
 IJttbiisIjer m rbinarg to P 
 1864.
 
 LONDON; 
 
 PRINTED BY R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, 
 BREAD STREET HILL.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT AND THE POLES . 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 PRINCE WITTGENSTEIN'S LETTER 20 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WILNA 33 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GENERAL MOURAVIEFF 36 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PRISON-HOSPITALS 39 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WOUNDED INSURGENTS . , 46
 
 iv Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 POLITICAL PRISONEKS ............ 51 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 POLITICAL ASSASSINS ............ 61 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 COURTS-MARTIAL .............. 66 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PEASANT-DEPUTATIONS ............ 72 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 WERKEY ............... 76 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 THE HOUSE OF RADZOVILL .......... 80 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 THE BISONS ........... ... 83 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MEMORIES OF 1812 ............ 86 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 BAD OMENS .......... 89
 
 Contents. v 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 NAPOLEON'S WRITING-TABLE 91 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 FLIGHT FROM WILNA 97 
 
 CHAPTER XVm. 
 
 REPENTANT INSURGENTS 102 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 STATE OF LITHUANIA 108 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 WARSAW 117 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 THE CONSUL GENERAL 128 
 
 CHAPTER XXn. 
 
 COUNT DE BERG 134 
 
 CHAPTER XXm. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE PRESS 139 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE GRAND DUKE CONSTANTINE . .. * ', .... 141
 
 vi Contents, 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE GRAND DUCHESS 145 
 
 CHAPTER XXVL 
 
 ASSASSINATION AND THE CATHOLIC CHUECH 148 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIL 
 
 A SOIREE AT THE VICEREGAL COURT 150 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE CITADEL OP WARSAW 155 
 
 . CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE PRISON DIET 159 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 FEMALE PRISONERS 160 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE MALE PRISONERS 164 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 TORTURE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS 166 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 ATTEMPT TO MURDER COUNT DE BERG .... . 169
 
 Contents. vii 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE PANIC 172 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 THE MONASTERIES 176 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 THE CATHOLIC PRIESTHOOD AND THE POIGNARD .... 181 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 GENERAL TREPOIT 185 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 A MOTHER'S PRAYERS 191 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 THE CARBONARI 195 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 SENTENCED TO DEATH 201 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 TORTURE AT WARSAW 204 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 MANIFESTO OF THE -NATIONAL GOVERNMENT . . 210
 
 viii Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIIL 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE PRESS 214 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 FOREIGN JOURNALS 221 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 POLAND AND ITALY 227 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 ACTUAL STATE OF POLAND . . . 232
 
 PETERSBURG AND WARSAW, 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ENGLISH GOVERNMENT AND THE POLES. 
 
 AMONGST the discontented nationalities of 
 Europe, none has excited more sympathy than 
 Poland, though it must, at the same time, be 
 confessed that none has received less active 
 support. Without going back to the original 
 partition of the country amongst the three 
 great European Powers that now hold it; 
 without referring to that anterior period when 
 the seeds of dissension sown in the nature of 
 the monarchy, were perpetually bringing forth 
 their prickly produce; without pausing to 
 discuss that dream of a revived Poland enter- 
 tained by the Czar Alexander I., I shall content 
 myself with speaking of the Poland of the
 
 2 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 present day, and of how far she has been 
 aided or injured by her sympathizers. If 
 verbal sympathy could have healed the wounds 
 or redressed the wrongs of Sarmatia, enough 
 was said and written in England alone in the 
 beginning of the present century to accom- 
 plish the work. But Poland's land-bound 
 position, which cuts her off from any material 
 aid that her insular sympathizers might be 
 inclined to give her, prevents them in like 
 manner from testing the truth of accounts 
 they receive, and which are more frequently 
 prepared in accordance with the preconceived 
 notions of those by whom they are intended 
 to be read, than with a regard to truth. This 
 remark does not apply to gentlemen of the 
 press, nor to English gentlemen travelling 
 through Poland, who, touched by tales of 
 oppression related to them, take up their 
 pens, and, filled with virtuous indignation, 
 make the English people acquainted with 
 tales of horror, which the narrators firmly 
 believe, but whose origin may be traced to 
 the interested framers of such reports. And
 
 'The English Government and the Poles. 3 
 
 this spirit of exaggeration is a characteristic 
 that distinguishes the late disturbances in 
 Poland, from all previous outbursts of national 
 feeling in that country. It is not that the 
 Poles have become aliens to truth, or that 
 they wish the rest of Europe to believe their 
 position to be other than it is. On the con- 
 trary, great as is the sympathy felt for the 
 Poles in England, I can confidently aver that 
 they deserve still more commiseration than 
 they excite. And the grounds for this com- 
 miseration are that they have been doubly 
 deceived. They have been deceived by those 
 foreign emissaries under whose influence this 
 outburst of feeling has been excited; and 
 they have been deceived by the hopes -well- 
 grounded as they thought of foreign aid. 
 
 If the true history of the late insurrection 
 in Poland were thoroughly understood in 
 England, public opinion would soon undergo 
 a very great change. Not that sympathy for 
 Poland would become less, but indignation 
 would be directed against those who, to serve 
 their own ends, trafficked in the patriotism of 
 
 B2
 
 4 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 the Poles, and caused a profitless expenditure 
 of blood. 
 
 The spirit of anarchy unchained by the 
 French Revolution, and so often mistaken for 
 the spirit of freedom which at the same epoch 
 rose from a long slumber, has since then num- 
 bered her worshippers and her martyrs by 
 thousands throughout Europe. Anarchy so 
 often assumes the garb and name, and takes 
 the tone of freedom, that the blinded multi- 
 tude to whom a well-cooked feast is offered, 
 does not perceive that the voice of Jacob is 
 combined with the hand of Esau. Freedom ! 
 Liberty ! These, like many other of the best 
 gifts accorded to man, have been trafficked in, 
 and some of the noblest instincts from nature 
 made instrumental to the darkest crimes. 
 
 These truths have been brought vividly 
 before my eyes during my late residence in 
 Warsaw. I went to that city filled with 
 what I am inclined to call a hereditary English 
 indignation against oppression, and I found 
 but I must confess it was long before I dis- 
 covered the truth that the Poles had been
 
 'The English Government and the Poles. 5 
 
 misled; that their patriotic sentiments had 
 been made a matter of traffic ; that they had 
 fallen into the hands of men, revolutionists by 
 profession, who undertook to organize a revo- 
 lution in Poland. The Poles discovered their 
 mistake, but too late: thev could not draw 
 
 w 
 
 back, for the machinery of the National 
 Government was by that time in full opera- 
 tion, and the gendarmes pendeurs were always 
 ready for their work. 
 
 Nothing can be more unfortunate than the 
 position of Poland. I would wish to speak 
 loudly and energetically on the subject. The 
 English people at this moment misjudge the 
 conduct of their own government as much as 
 they misunderstand the position of the Poles. 
 A full and public discussion of the question 
 would reveal truths as astonishing to the well- 
 meaning English public as they were to me 
 and to some few others who learned the facts 
 on the scene of action. 
 
 The cosmopolitan revolutionists, whose head- 
 quarters are at London and Paris, having done 
 a considerable share of work in Italy, and
 
 6 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 having tickled a few of the minor nationali- 
 ties of Europe, turned their eyes to Poland. 
 Here they found materials ready to their use. 
 With the Poles, patriotism is their strength 
 and their weakness. There is no sacrifice that 
 a patriot Pole is not ready to make for his 
 country ; there is no folly, no act of rashness, 
 which he may not be induced to commit, if 
 presented to him shadowed over with the veil 
 of patriotism. The revolution-makers knew 
 this, and found little difficulty in exciting fer- 
 mentation in the elements present in Polish 
 society ; and the Poles, blinded by the vapours 
 rising from their own quickly -heated imagina- 
 tions, did not see, could not divine, the motives 
 of their advisers. They were dazzled by the 
 prospect of a thoroughly-organized revolution, 
 ramifying itself into France and England, 
 whence the roots should be supplied with 
 nutriment. It was not to be wondered at, 
 that many Polish noblemen and landowners 
 were seduced; it was not to be wondered 
 at, that old hopes, old visions, should again 
 revive. These gentlemen believed that the
 
 The English Government and the Poles, 7 
 
 emissaries of the revolutionists spoke the 
 sentiments of England and France. The 
 prospect was unfortunately too alluring. The 
 Polish nobility, who are for the most part 
 very rich, gave large sums of money freely, 
 and the revolution-makers, thus supplied with 
 what they most needed, set to work. These 
 men understood perfectly well how to perform 
 the task they had undertaken. The experience 
 they had had in other countries, they utilized 
 in Poland. They established what they called 
 the National Government, an institution so 
 effectually hidden from the eyes of the un- 
 initiated, that it may be deemed a myth, 
 were it not that its decrees were executed 
 with fatal punctuality. But the most power- 
 ful weapon in the hands of the revolution- 
 makers was the institution of the national 
 gendarmerie, now known as the "hanging 
 gendarmerie." This was a secret police, of 
 wonderfully perfect organization, distributed 
 over the country, in bands varying in number 
 from two and three to twenty and thirty, 
 according to the wants of the locality in
 
 8 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 which they were stationed. These men were 
 for the most part foreigners; those amongst 
 them who were Poles were the lowest of 
 society, such as are to be found in every 
 country; men who from their boyhood up- 
 wards have seldom had a stationary home, 
 except when in a public prison ; men familiar 
 with crime, and who can be easily induced to 
 " do murder for a meed." These elements 
 were compounded into a "national gendar- 
 merie," and trained to assume every species 
 of disguise, they went about the streets in 
 cities armed with concealed poignards, with 
 which as they passed a " marked man " they 
 stabbed him. In the commencement of the 
 revolution, it was almost impossible to detect 
 these assassins, their disguise was so complete, 
 and they chose their time so well. They com- 
 menced their work in the early dusk, before 
 the streets were quite deserted, so that they 
 could profit by the double advantages offered 
 by the presence of the passengers and the 
 advancing obscurity. 
 
 This system of stabbing in the streets is
 
 English Government and the Poles. 9 
 
 one of the most hideous treasons against 
 humanity that assassination ever invented. 
 It was done so quietly ; the victim fell, and 
 when the passers-by ran to his assistance, 
 they found him dying, or perhaps already 
 dead, of a stab in the heart. As the practice 
 of this crime spread, the terror of the inhabi- 
 tants in the different cities became intense. 
 No mother who blessed her son as he left 
 her house in the morning, could reckon upon 
 ever seeing him alive again. No wife who 
 embraced her husband as he left his home, 
 could be sure that before night his murdered 
 corpse might not be laid at her feet. 
 
 I must premise that before things had 
 reached this height in the cities, many of the 
 Polish noblemen and landowners who had, at 
 first, abetted the revolution, had discovered 
 their mistake. They found that they had 
 placed themselves in the hands of men who 
 were revolution-makers by profession, that a 
 wonderfully well -devised system of terror had 
 been brought into operation, and that instead 
 of becoming necessary to what they had hoped
 
 io Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 would be the regeneration of their country, 
 they found themselves instruments in the 
 hands of men who recognised no law but the 
 dagger or the gallows. Remonstrance was 
 vain, they could not free themselves from the 
 clasp of the spectre they had raised, and 
 nothing remained for them but to retire to 
 their homes, and, with barricaded doors and 
 windows, try to defend themselv.es from the 
 incursions of these national gendarmerie, who 
 went about extorting contributions for defray- 
 ing the expenses of the revolution. Refusal 
 to comply with these demands was attended 
 with the risk of assassination. 
 
 When the secret of the Polish revolution was 
 discovered, when numbers of the anti-Russian 
 Poles perceived that they had been deceived, 
 that they had unwittingly sold themselves to 
 a secret society, which as Kossuth expressed 
 it, saura se faire obeir, they would most 
 willingly have retired from the trap into which 
 they had fallen, but the issue was barred with 
 poignards. The exactions of the soi-disant 
 National Government were exorbitant. There
 
 The English Government and the Poles. 1 1 
 
 is scarcely a landed proprietor in the country 
 whose revenue has not become embarrassed 
 by the sums he has been obliged to pay to 
 the revolutionists. I have seen nobles and 
 large landed proprietors living in hourly terror 
 of assassination, barricaded in their own 
 houses, dreading the entrance of the " hang- 
 ing gendarmerie," to whose presence in the 
 country they might have been themselves in- 
 strumental, but who now kept them in per- 
 petual terror. 
 
 I saw a very sad instance of the effects 
 produced by this terrorism. I visited Count 
 Colonthai at his residence in Warsaw, where, 
 with his family and his father-in-law, he had 
 retired some months before. When the Count 
 saw the revolution in its true light, he was 
 desirous of immediately leaving the country 
 with his wife, his property being so circum- 
 stanced, that he could do so without loss. 
 But it was otherwise with his father-in-law. 
 He could not leave Poland at so short a notice 
 without great pecuniary loss. His son-in-law 
 consented to remain. In the house where I
 
 1 2 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 saw them they lived barricaded, and as in a 
 state of siege. It had been so for months. 
 The ladies of the family looked pale and 
 anxious ; I saw them sit at the dinner-table 
 without tasting food, and the lady of the 
 house told me that but in compliment to her 
 guests she would not have appeared at all. 
 Her anticipations of evil were founded upon 
 what she had already suffered and seen others 
 suffer. Her old father had not been able to 
 resist the effects that the hourly dread of 
 assassination wrought upon his mind. His 
 reason wandered. It was one amongst the 
 many calamities occasioned by the national 
 gendarmerie. 
 
 The National Government organized this 
 gendarmerie in the first instance, for the pur- 
 pose of intimidating the peasantry and those 
 inhabitants of the towns who were not inclined 
 to revolt ; for, I am sorry to be compelled to 
 say, that the worst enemy that the Polish 
 peasant ever knew was his Polish landlord. 
 When we speak of the " patriotic" Poles, 
 those who have at any time risen against their
 
 The English Government and the Poles. 13 
 
 foreign rulers, we must remember that these 
 " patriots " were all nobles and landowners ; 
 there were no peasants in these patriot bands. 
 I say it with a feeling of shame, because of 
 my hereditary admiration for the Poles, but 
 truth compels me to repeat that in Poland 
 little sympathy exists between tenant and 
 land-owner. Consequently, the peasantry 
 had no interest in revolutions, and it was to 
 intimidate that class that the national gen- 
 darmerie were first organized. It was on 
 the peasantry that these bands of hired assas- 
 sins, these off-scourings of every country in 
 Europe, first practised their barbarities ; and 
 when the Polish nobles, they who had abetted . 
 this revolution, discovered the great error they 
 had committed, and wished to retrace their 
 steps, they, in turn, became obnoxious to the 
 power they had themselves raised up in the 
 land, and were made to suffer in loss of pro- 
 perty, and too frequently in loss of life. 
 
 The plotters and framers of this revolution 
 were men who understood perfectly well the 
 work they had in hand, and in no instance
 
 14 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 did they show their skill more than in their 
 successful efforts to mislead the European 
 press. I speak especially with reference to 
 the press of France and England, those 
 countries where sympathy for the Poles has 
 been most strongly felt. "Our Correspon- 
 dents" on both sides of the Channel were 
 loud in their outcry against the enemies of 
 the Poles, but unfortunately they did not at 
 first know have they yet learned ? who were 
 the worst enemies of the Poles during the late 
 insurrection. 
 
 There is not, perhaps, a man in England 
 who was not deceived as to the character and 
 origin of the late insurrection in Poland. The 
 British Government were deceived, and when 
 they at first so warmly interfered in the affairs 
 of Poland, it was because they were then 
 under the impression that the movement in 
 Poland was a national one. Lord Napier, the 
 English Ambassador at St. Petersburg, first 
 discovered through reliable sources that the 
 British ministers had been misinformed, and 
 that the well-contrived and terribly executed
 
 'The English Government and the Poles. 1 5 
 
 revolution was not the work of the Poles, 
 except in so far as they had been instru- 
 ments in the hands of cosmopolitan revolu- 
 tionists. 
 
 It was very much to the honour of the 
 British Government that they hastened to ex- 
 postulate with Russia upon her treatment of 
 the Poles. It was a generous impulse be- 
 coming the Government of a free people, and 
 one for which the Polish nobility will always 
 feel grateful, but none know better than the 
 noble Poles themselves how much falsehood 
 was in the reports circulated with regard to 
 the late insurrection. When the British mini- 
 sters learned the facts of the case, and saw 
 that they had been misled, they felt that their 
 interference had been misplaced. They were 
 striding with a war pace towards a nation 
 whose exact relations with her dependencies 
 at that moment they did not understand. 
 They retraced their steps, and, for this move- 
 ment, which not alone policy but honesty 
 would have dictated, they are loudly blamed 
 by some. Nor were the British ministers
 
 1 6 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 ignorant of what little dependence could be 
 placed upon one of England's principal allies, 
 who, it was then discovered, had some months 
 before attempted secret negotiations with 
 Russia, inimical to the policy and interests of 
 this country. It behoved the ministers to act 
 with caution and promptitude, and they did so. 
 This is the history of the October despatch, 
 about which some persons think- there is so 
 much mystery. An undelivered despatch 
 cannot be considered a parliamentary docu- 
 ment, but were the disputed despatch made 
 public, it would only serve to convince the 
 English people that the ministry having acted 
 generously in the first instance, acted pru- 
 dently in the second. What would the feel- 
 ings of the English people be, if, pursuing 
 a well-intentioned but mistaken policy, the 
 Government had drifted them into war with 
 Russia ? What would they say if, at the 
 end of some months, after money and human 
 life had been uselessly squandered, we should 
 only then learn the truth, and discover that 
 we had not been fighting in the cause of op-
 
 The English Government and the Poles. 1 7 
 
 pressed Poland, but for the benefit of the cos- 
 mopolitan revolutionists ? As much has been 
 said about this recalled despatch, as if it were 
 an event unexampled in the annals of diplo- 
 macy, but diplomatists on both sides of the 
 House know that such is not the case, and 
 were the ministerial benches to become filled 
 by gentlemen opposed in politics to those who 
 now sit there, and should political combina- 
 tions, exactly similar to those now under dis- 
 cussion, arise, there can be no doubt but that 
 the new occupants of the ministerial benches, 
 actuated by a sense of duty to the country, 
 would behave in precisely the same way as 
 that in which the present ministry have 
 acted. 
 
 Another circumstance connected with the 
 Polish insurrection, which the English people 
 could scarcely divine, is that the getters-up 
 of that insurrection did the Czar of Russia 
 service of grave importance. The Czar had 
 emancipated the serfs, and by so doing had 
 wounded the prejudices of a large and power- 
 ful party in Russia men who did not wish to 
 c
 
 1 8 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 see the old system of things changed. It will 
 be remembered that the year before last, con- 
 flagrations broke out in different parts of 
 Russia, and a great deal of property was 
 destroyed. These fires were supposed to be 
 expressions of hostility directed against the 
 Czar and his advisers. The Russians, though 
 they regard the Czar with feelings little short 
 of worship, were not all quite pleased with 
 his proceedings towards the serfs. The revo- 
 lution-makers profited by these symptoms of 
 discontent in Russia, to hasten their negotia- 
 tions with the Poles. The insurrection broke 
 out. The two greatest nations in Europe 
 openly expressed sympathy for the Poles, and 
 the remonstrances addressed by their govern- 
 ments to the Czar sounded threateningly. The 
 patriotism of the fanatical Russians rose to a 
 terrible pitch. Their Czar was insulted, their 
 country threatened. They declared themselves 
 ready to die for both. Not since the commence- 
 ment of the Crimean war had the Muscovite 
 nation been so electrified. It was not the Czar, 
 it was not Prince Gortschakoff, who would have
 
 'The English Government and the Pot.es. 1 9 
 
 replied to a hostile despatch it was sixty 
 millions of combined and angry Russians. 
 
 A rupture between England and Russia 
 would not serve the cause of Poland, but it 
 would help to carry out the designs of the 
 re volution -makers, who have done the Poles 
 such heavy detriment. It would exactly coin- 
 cide with the object contemplated by the 
 organizers of the " hanging gendarmerie." 
 
 During a visit I made in the district of 
 Wlodslawek, of which Prince Emile de Sayn 
 Wittgenstein is governor, I asked the Prince 
 to give me a sketch of his experience during 
 the insurrection, and to say what he thought 
 of the organization of the " National Gendar- 
 merie." The Prince wrote me a long letter on 
 the subject. His account agreed with the 
 information I had already received and with 
 my own experience. As the Prince speaks 
 very freely both of the " hanging gendarmerie " 
 and of his own exertions in suppressing them, 
 I subjoin his letter. 
 
 c2
 
 2O Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PRENCE WITTGENSTEIN'S LETTER. 
 
 "THE institution of the national gendarmes, 
 which the people, with their characteristic 
 felicitousness of expression, have denominated 
 * the hanging gendarmes/ was originally de- 
 signed for the purpose of obtaining by force 
 and by systematic terrorism, what the revolu- 
 tionary party in Poland had not been able 
 to obtain either by patriotic speeches or by 
 promises, or even by the powerful influence 
 of the clergy, that is to say, the voluntary 
 co-operation of the agricultural classes and the 
 richest of the bourgeoisie in the Insurrection 
 of 1863. 
 
 "The first acts of cruelty on the part of these 
 national gendarmerie took place, as well as I
 
 Prince Wittgenstein's Letter. 11 
 
 can remember, about the end of May and the 
 beginning of June. Drawn without exception 
 from the dregs of the populace of the towns, 
 recruited amongst liberated malefactors and 
 vagabonds of every kind, that the revolution 
 has let loose upon this unfortunate country, 
 the ' National Gendarmerie ' rose suddenly 
 and simultaneously all over the country, and 
 inaugurated their advent by hangings en masse, 
 which for a time had the effect of completely 
 suspending the co-operation we were beginning 
 to receive from the peasantry, and which ulti- 
 mately contributed more than all the repressive 
 measures of the Government to recall the 
 great mass of the population to a correct view 
 of the state of the country, and made them 
 apprehend a future of inevitable ruin and car- 
 nage, should Poland be abandoned to the rule 
 of a party that employed such auxiliaries ; in 
 a word, the proceedings of the hanging gen- 
 darmerie effected a powerful reaction in favour 
 of order and of the established Government, 
 a reaction which still operates in all classes of 
 society and in all parts of the kingdom.
 
 22 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 "Established in detachments of three or four 
 in every village, and upon every large estate, 
 these Thugs of modern civilization spread like 
 a net-work over the whole country, obeying 
 district officers, who in turn obeyed the com- 
 mands of provincial chiefs, who received their 
 orders direct from Warsaw. 
 
 " The mission of these men was to collect by 
 threats of assassination the levies called national 
 taxes, to point out the recalcitrant peasants and 
 oblige them by force to join the revolutionary 
 bands, and, as I have said, by incessant cruelty, 
 by accumulated assassinations, to compel that 
 co-operation which terror alone could procure 
 them. Concealing themselves by day and 
 doing their work of terror by night, they often 
 acted as guides to bodies of troops sent to 
 track them ; and the very peasants that they 
 oppressed, hid them or protected their flight, 
 knowing that if they did otherwise the gallows 
 and flaming villages would follow quickly the 
 slightest suspicion of connivance with the Rus- 
 sian Government. It has often happened that 
 words dropped from the lips of a child, of a
 
 Prince Wittgenstein's Letter. 23 
 
 drunken person, or a village gossip, that the 
 delay in the execution of an order, a passing 
 rumour, a refusal to go to the forest, or like 
 trifling causes, have sufficed to bring ruin and 
 death on entire families. A delay in sending 
 provisions or the means of transport that had 
 been demanded, a want of money to pay 
 these contributions, denominated ' voluntary/ 
 was invariably followed by cruel retaliations, 
 most frequently by death ; and if the person 
 threatened succeeded in eluding his execu- 
 tioners, his family were obliged to pay his 
 debt to ' the vengeance of his country/ 
 
 "It was under such circumstances that a 
 patrouitte that T sent into the neighbourhood 
 of Wincenti, in the government of Angustowo, 
 found a family hanged because the father, who 
 had refused to join a revolutionary band, had 
 taken flight. The members of this family 
 who were hanged consisted of the man's wife 
 and his five children, the youngest between 
 two and three years of age. 
 
 " In a military excursion that I made through 
 the same government in the month of July, I
 
 24 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 met at Rajgroed an old half-pay Russian offi- 
 cer, Captain Nitschaeff, who had lived in that 
 town a great many years, and who had become 
 suspected by the district commander of the 
 * National Gendarmerie,' and against whom 
 sentence of death was recorded. Warned in 
 time by his friends he escaped. The execu- 
 tioners not finding him seized his wife, the 
 mother of four children ; and s the unhappy 
 man appealed to me to assist him in his search 
 for her. Two days later I received a report 
 from the military commander of the district of 
 Angustowo, saying that the body of Madame 
 Nitschaeff had been found hanging on a tree in 
 the forest of Lipsk. Her eyes had been plucked 
 out, and her tongue and breasts cut off. 
 
 " An elderly lady, owner of an estate in the 
 neighbourhood of Sopockin, received about the 
 same time 100 lashes, because she had not 
 prepared at the appointed time a number of 
 vehicles required by a certain band of revolu- 
 tionists. 
 
 " It was after this fashion that the apostles 
 of the national Polish cause preached to the
 
 Prince Wittgenstein's Letter. 25 
 
 masses of the population the emancipation and 
 regeneration of their country. 
 
 " But this is not all. There were bands like 
 that of Bonsza, for example, in the government 
 of Plock, that traversed the country, hanging 
 at random in every village through which they 
 passed one or more peasants, merely to keep 
 up a feeling of terror in some, and to secure 
 the silence and co-operation of others. This 
 Bonsza, I must observe, was originally a ser- 
 vant, and was dismissed his employment for 
 theft. He commenced his political career by 
 hanging his master. The peasantry became 
 so depressed, so brutified, by these continual 
 threats of death, tiiat they at length sunk into 
 dejection, allowing themselves to be slaugh- 
 tered like sheep. 
 
 " The following circumstance occurred whilst 
 I was at Suwalki. In a large village, of more 
 than a hundred families, situate, if I remember 
 correctly, in the neighbourhood of Segny, a 
 national gendarme appeared one day. He 
 was armed with two revolvers. He assembled 
 all the inhabitants in the open air, and made
 
 26 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 them a long speech, reproaching them with 
 their want of patriotism. He chose at random 
 four, and hanged them in the presence of the 
 villagers, without a man of that multitude 
 making an effort to save them. 
 
 " I shall relate you another fact that occurred 
 fifteen days since at Gombin, the district at 
 present under my jurisdiction ; a district in 
 which, thank Heaven ! owing to the activity 
 of my leaders of columns, and the good dispo- 
 sitions of the peasantry, a like circumstance 
 had not occurred for two months previously. 
 A German colonist, named Bohme, who some 
 time before had informed the authorities that 
 one of these cut-throats was hidden in the 
 village, received a citation, I know not under 
 what pretext, to appear before the tribunal of 
 the city of Gombin. Having arrived at Gom- 
 bin he was seized in the middle of the street 
 by three unarmed men, who rushed out of an 
 inn, and in presence of a number of bystanders 
 tied his hands behind his back, threw him into 
 a cart, and drove out of the town. They made 
 a long detour through the environs, torturing
 
 Prince Wittgenstein's Letter. 27 
 
 their prisoner the whole time in the most cruel 
 manner. They cut away the inside of his 
 nostrils, fleed his back, and flogged him inces- 
 santly with whips. The victim suffered so 
 that the imprint of his teeth was found in the 
 wood of the blood-stained cart. Having 
 arrived at the house of a proprietor, whom I 
 shall not name, the executioners halted, and 
 ordered some brandy. Whilst they were en- 
 joying themselves their victim profited by the 
 opportunity, and, all bleeding as he was, fled 
 and hid in the garden. The executioners, 
 aided by the servants of the nobleman, pursued 
 him, whilst the daughter of the house looked 
 on from the window. The pursuers overtook 
 the fugitive, carried him a little further still, 
 flogging him until he became insensible. They 
 then flung him into a yard, where he expired 
 of cold and pain. The torturers returned 
 again, and in mockery hung the dead body in 
 a Protestant cemetery a few versts beyond. 
 
 " On learning these horrible details I resolved 
 to make a terrible example, convinced that by 
 doing so I should save the lives of many. I,
 
 28 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 therefore, imposed a fine of 3,000 roubles on 
 the city of Gombin, and ordered the house 
 which had been the theatre of the crime to be 
 sacked from top to bottom, leaving the owners 
 only their personal effects. The effect of this 
 example was, that within three days, the three 
 assassins were delivered up by the peasants 
 themselves, who certainly, if I had acted with 
 less severity, would have hesitated to take such 
 an initiative. One of these assassins was a 
 German named Miiller. I ordered the three to 
 be hanged at Gombin. 
 
 " It is a remarkable fact with regard to the 
 national gendarmes, whose number I must 
 say diminishes daily, thanks to our incessant 
 pursuit, and thanks above all to the spirit of 
 conservation which for some time past has 
 awaked in the peasantry and land-owners, and 
 which stimulates them to track these cut- 
 throats themselves, and deliver them up to 
 justice, it is, I must say, remarkable that a 
 third, at least, of these gendarmes are foreign- 
 ers, for the most part Prussians. One was lately 
 brought before me who was a Schleswiger.
 
 Prince Wittgenstein's Letter. 29 
 
 This man was caught at the very moment 
 when he was about to hang a woman. He had 
 come from his own country to advance the 
 Polish propaganda by means of the patriotic 
 cord. 
 
 " This class of wretches will have soon dis- 
 appeared, thanks to the activity with which 
 the people join the troops in freeing the coun- 
 try from them. Their great stronghold at 
 present is Warsaw, whose vast rabble quickly 
 fills the gaps made by those who 'meurent 
 pour la patrie.' But the energy of Count de 
 Berg, supported by that of General Trepoff, 
 will soon suppress these. 
 
 " Such are the ' martyrs' of the Polish cause 
 whom Russian barbarity, to the great scandal 
 of the foreign press, punishes with death. 
 
 " I shall mention a few whom I have myself 
 got hanged, and who would have deserved 
 death in any other country, even in liberal 
 England. I do not speak of regenerated Italy, 
 that now incessantly pours forth upon us her 
 civilizing phrases and her superabundance of 
 patriotic vagabonds. She has proved iii the
 
 3<D Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 city of Naples that she did not hesitate to 
 shoot down by hundreds those whom she 
 called brigands. The Italians did not look 
 very closely to examine whether amongst the 
 slain there were women and children. Ob- 
 serve that during the entire time that the revo- 
 lution lasted in Poland not one woman was 
 executed. 
 
 "I shall now speak of the martyrs I have 
 made : 
 
 " Panlinsky, head of the ' National Gendar- 
 merie' in the district of Gostynin, for having 
 put to death more than thirty peasants; of 
 whom twelve were shot at one time in a row. 
 He hanged a woman who was enceinte, and 
 whose child was born at the moment that the 
 mother was strangled. The infant was nailed 
 to a tree close by. 
 
 " Corfini, chief of the ' National Gendarme- 
 rie' of the district of Wlodslawek ; convicted 
 of having assassinated twenty-nine persons, 
 amongst whom were two women whom he got 
 flogged to death. 
 
 " Bliachowski, successor to Panlinsky ; who
 
 Prince Wittgensteins Letter. 31 
 
 had assassinated an unknown number of per- 
 sons. 
 
 "Kopczinsky; he had flogged a woman 
 to death, stoned one man, and shot two 
 others. 
 
 " I could mention some others of the same 
 calibre, but I am at present pressed for time. 
 I merely give you this sketch in order that on 
 your return to England, where people know 
 how to distinguish between truth and false- 
 hood, you may take our part against system- 
 atic calumny and charlatanism, and may open 
 the eyes of those amongst your compatriots 
 who are willing to see. 
 
 " 1 shall add a piece of intelligence which I 
 have just learned from a letter that has been 
 seized at Warsaw. It is from one of the chiefs 
 of the ' National Gendarmerie' of the govern- 
 ment of Plock ; who, finding political assassina- 
 tion by the poignard and pistol too dangerous 
 for the executors, proposes to replace this 
 system by poison, a means which he praises 
 highly, as superior to the poignard in facility 
 and secrecy with the additional advantage of
 
 32 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 being capable of being administered by women, 
 who certainly will not refuse thus to concur in 
 the great patriotic work. 
 
 " I wish you a pleasant journey, and hope 
 to see you soon. 
 
 " PRINCE EMILE DE SAYN WITTGENSTEIN. 
 
 " WLODSLATTEK, 
 
 28M January, 1864."
 
 Lithuania. 33 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WILNA. 
 
 IN the August of last year I left Peters- 
 burg for Poland. Since the breaking out 
 of the Insurrection in the latter country, 
 every traveller before he can obtain his rail- 
 way ticket must show his passport to a police 
 officer at the station. My passport being 
 in order, I at once obtained a permis de 
 depart, and took my place in a first-class 
 carriage for Wilna. We left Petersburg at 
 10 o'clock, P.M. and did not arrive at the 
 capital of Lithuania till between 7 and 8 
 o'clock next evening. The distance, how- 
 ever, is not more than about 300 English 
 miles. My fare was 3 3s. ; and for my bag- 
 gage, consisting of a portmanteau and travel- 
 D
 
 34 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 ling bag, I paid about 8s. The charges, it 
 will thus be seen, are higher than on any rail- 
 way in Europe, and yet the Warsaw line, as 
 far as regards the interests of the shareholders, 
 has been a ruinous undertaking. The accom- 
 modation at all the stations was very bad, and 
 the prices for refreshment absurdly high. 
 
 On arriving at the Wilna station, I found it 
 as free from police restrictions as the station 
 at Windsor. A commissionaire took charge 
 of my baggage, and I drove in a very comfort- 
 able carriage, infinitely superior to the public 
 conveyances to be found at the railway stations 
 of Petersburg, to the Hotel de T Europe. 
 
 This hotel is kept by a German who was 
 many years resident in England, and who 
 speaks our language fluently. There is a 
 degree of comfort, cleanliness, and order in 
 this establishment not to be found in any 
 of the hotels of Petersburg, with the single 
 exception of Miss Benson's, on the English 
 Quay. The charges are exceedingly moderate, 
 when it is remembered that the town is at 
 present crowded with military. You can dine
 
 Lithuania. 35 
 
 at the table d'hote for about 2$., and have a 
 comfortable room for 3s. a night. These 
 details may seem trivial ; but, as many of my 
 countrymen will in all possibility go over the 
 same road as myself, to visit places which have 
 now attained a melancholy celebrity, I have 
 determined to give them all the information 
 I can with regard to pecuniary expenses and 
 personal comfort. 
 
 D 2
 
 3 6 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GENERAL MOURAVIEFF. 
 
 THE next day I went to the chateau, which 
 was formerly a palace belonging to the Kings 
 of Poland. I was kindly received by General 
 Mouravieff, to whom I presented the letters 
 of recommendation which I had brought 
 with me from Petersburg. The general told 
 me that he had received instructions from 
 his Government to show me the prisons and 
 hospitals, the courts of justice, and any 
 other public institutions that I might wish to 
 inspect. " Here," General Mouravieff said, 
 " there is no mystery, there is no concealment ; 
 everything is done openly and in the face of 
 day." I remarked that I was very glad that 
 his Excellency was so willing to facilitate my
 
 Lithuania. 37 
 
 inquiries. I had come determined, I told him, 
 to believe nothing that I did not see with my 
 own eyes, and the truth of which I had not 
 submitted to the severest tests. Reports of 
 cruelties practised by the Russian authorities 
 in Lithuania, I said, had reached the Go- 
 vernments of Western Europe, and had caused 
 remonstrances to be addressed to the Govern- 
 ment at Petersburg. "I do not acknow- 
 ledge," the general said, very sternly, " the 
 right of any foreign Government to interfere 
 in the internal administration of the Russian 
 Empire. What Prince Gortschakoff's mode 
 of treating this question is I do not know, 
 but this I will say, that I have here an army of 
 120,000 men, and that I am ready to hold my 
 own against any foreign Power whatsoever. 
 The entire district under my command is now 
 perfectly quiet, and you are safer from insult 
 and annoyance in the streets of Wilna than 
 in the streets of Petersburg. This army of 
 120,000 men was not necessary for the paci- 
 fication of the province ; all that was required 
 was a good administration. When I arrived
 
 38 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 here I found a number of Poles in Government 
 employment. I dismissed them all, and placed 
 Russians in their stead. My army is now idle ; 
 there is nothing for them to do. I sent some 
 of my troops the other day into the Kingdom, 
 to assist in suppressing the insurrection in a 
 part close to my Government. The Grand 
 Duke, que le bon Dieu le benisse! has ideas 
 different from mine about the way to restore 
 order. However, that is not my business ; you 
 will be able to judge for yourself when you go to 
 Warsaw." The general then offered to allow 
 any officer of his staff that I chose to accompany 
 me in my visits to the places I wished to see. 
 I had had the good fortune of being intro- 
 duced to Colonel de Lebedeff, Director of the 
 Committee of Prisons of Petersburg. The 
 Colonel had not long before been in England, 
 collecting information about our penal system, 
 and was on intimate terms with the late Sir 
 Joshua Jebb. I mentioned Colonel deLebedeff's 
 name, and was very much pleased when General 
 Mouravieff said he would give him instructions 
 to accompany me in my visits of inspection.
 
 Lithuania. 39 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 PRISON-HOSPITALS. 
 
 THE next morning Colonel de Lebedeff called 
 upon me, and we drove together to the monas- 
 tery of St. Jacob, which is situated at a short 
 distance outside the town, in the midst of 
 most picturesque and fertile scenery. This 
 monastery has, under the direction of Colonel 
 de Lebedeff, been converted into a commo- 
 dious, clean, and well-ordered hospital for the 
 sick and wounded insurgents. It has been 
 modelled, as nearly as the difficulties of the 
 case would allow, upon the plan of our English 
 hospitals. Every ward, and every cell where 
 the patient was in solitary confinement, was 
 provided with all the requisites for cleanliness. 
 In one part of the building, on the ground-
 
 4O Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 floor, were vapour baths, something like the 
 so-called Turkish baths in London, together 
 with the ordinary hot and cold water baths. 
 Attached to the hospital was an ice-house ; for 
 ice is largely used by Russian medical men, 
 with excellent effect, for the suppression of 
 inflammation in case of wounds, fractures, 
 amputations, &c. When the application of ice 
 is necessary, an iron rod of a semicircular form 
 is placed across the bed of the patient, forming 
 an arch immediately over the part inflamed. 
 From this arch are suspended waterproof oil- 
 cloth bags, filled with ice, which touch the 
 wound just sufficiently to keep it cool, without 
 causing any painful pressure. 
 
 In the first room which we visited were 
 five men; the oldest appeared to be sixty 
 years of age, the youngest thirty. They were 
 all labouring under mental derangement, 
 caused either by fear at having fallen into the 
 hands of the Russians, or by the scenes of 
 desolation and death of which they had lately 
 been witness. One man took me by the hand, 
 and told me that he was the king of Poland,
 
 Lithuania. 41 
 
 and that he knew me to be the Emperor of 
 the French, and that he hoped I would speak 
 to the Czar in his favour. There was a keeper 
 with these poor creatures, and there are sen- 
 tries constantly outside the door, to prevent 
 any accidents occurring. 
 
 We then visited the room in which was 
 Chaplinsky, the young student who, in obe- 
 dience to the orders of the National Govern- 
 ment, conducted Bankowsky and Marchewscky 
 to the house of M. Domeiko, the Marshal of 
 the Nobility of the government of Wilna. The 
 secret tribunal of the National Government 
 had sentenced the marshal to death, and Ban- 
 kowsky, an assistant surgeon, was appointed 
 to execute the sentence, with the aid of 
 Marchewsky. As both these young men were 
 strangers in Wilna, Chaplinsky was ordered to 
 be their guide. It will be remembered that 
 all three were taken separately. Chaplinsky 
 at first denied all knowledge of the crime ; but, 
 when he was confronted with the two others, 
 he fell senseless on the ground, and the shock 
 to his system was so great that he was taken
 
 42 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 to the hospital and placed under medical care. 
 When we entered the room he was lying in 
 his bed in a state of lethargy. His cheeks 
 were pale and sunken, and he had the emaci- 
 ated look of one in the last stages of decline. 
 When he spoke, his voice was weak and plain- 
 tive ; and, as it evidently distressed him to talk, 
 we left him, having first assured ourselves that 
 he was properly cared for by his attendant. 
 
 We then visited a large ward, some fifty 
 feet long by fourteen in width. There were 
 twenty beds, ranged in two lines in the centre 
 of the room, and at the head of each bed was 
 a board on which was painted the name of the 
 patient, together with the nature of the wound 
 or illness from which he was suffering. Each 
 patient, not only in this ward, but throughout 
 the hospital, was furnished by the authorities 
 with clothing, consisting of a shirt, white 
 canvass trousers, slippers, and a loose dressing- 
 gown of coarse striped linen. In this, and in 
 a corresponding ward of the same size, I found, 
 amongst the other patients, six youths, of ages 
 varying between fifteen and eighteen years.
 
 Lithuania. 43 
 
 They were students, who had run away from 
 college and joined in the insurrection, and 
 were taken on the field of battle. They were 
 mild-looking, gentlemanly lads, but their cap- 
 tors reported them as having fought with the 
 most desperate courage. One of them, sixteen 
 years of age, had received no less than seven- 
 teen bayonet stabs ! He was then convalescent, 
 which fact I looked upon as a proof that the 
 medical treatment in the hospital was exceed- 
 ingly good. Another youth of the same age 
 had his left hand, which had been shattered 
 by a musket ball, amputated. He also was 
 convalescent. Both were quite cheerful, and 
 readily answered my questions. I told them, 
 as 1 had made it a rule to tell all the captured 
 Poles with whom I came in contact, that I 
 was an Englishman, and that if they had any 
 request to make, that I was ready to assist 
 them to the best of my power. They told me, 
 in reply to my questions, that their food was 
 good and abundant, and that they were treated 
 kindly by the officers of the hospital. As it 
 was near the dinner-hour, I waited till that
 
 44 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 meal was brought into the ward. Each con- 
 valescent patient received a tureen of very 
 palatable soup, a dish of roast or boiled meat, 
 and a loaf of bread. Those who were still 
 suffering had a diet prescribed by the doctors. 
 In the latter category was a youth of eighteen, 
 whose entrails had been frightfully torn by a 
 gun-shot wound. He tried to look cheerful, 
 and smiled feebly when I approached his bed. 
 He said his sufferings were great, but that 
 the doctors assured him he would recover. 
 He whispered to me that I could do him a 
 great favour. There was a person, he said, that 
 he knew was unhappy about him and here 
 for an instant a hectic flush came into his pale 
 face, and his eyes filled with tears he knew 
 she was in Wilna, he faltered out, and would I 
 find her, and tell her that he was alive and 
 would recover ? He told me her name and the 
 locality where her father's house was situated. 
 I promised to do as he wished, and to come 
 and see him again. He pressed my hand in 
 both of his, and then hid his face in the pillow. 
 Not far off lay a boy of fifteen years old. A
 
 Lithuania. 45 
 
 Russian soldier had, in the charge, stabbed him 
 in the breast with his bayonet, and the weapon 
 had gone through and through his frail body. 
 When I stooped down to speak to him his 
 cheeks were wet with tears. He said it was 
 not the pain of his wound that made him 
 cry, but that he was thinking of his two little 
 sisters and of his mother, who loved him so 
 much.
 
 46 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 WOUNDED INSURGENTS. 
 
 THAT evening I dined with General Moura- 
 vieff, and, as I sat beside him on a bench in 
 the garden of the palace, I told him of those 
 poor lads who lay wounded in the hospital. 
 The general is an old man, he is a father, he 
 has known what it is to suffer. His heart was 
 touched by what I said, and he promised that 
 all these boys should be released as soon as 
 they were well, and be handed over to their 
 families. Three days after, I returned to the 
 hospital with a tolerably light heart, for I had 
 good news for some of the inmates. The 
 kind Russian officer who had accompanied me 
 had, in his pocket-book, two or three lines 
 full of a simple, childlike love, written by the
 
 Lithuania. 47 
 
 trembling hand of a young girl. When we 
 entered the ward where the poor wounded 
 youth lay that had asked me to let that same 
 young lady know that he was alive and would 
 recover, his face lit up with hope. We gave 
 him the pocket-book, open at the place where 
 the lines were written, and walked away whilst 
 he read them. It was his best medicine. 
 How bright and happy he looked when we 
 turned back to speak to him ! My friend, the 
 father himself of boys and girls, gave him a 
 pencil and told him he might write an answer 
 on the same leaf. Hurriedly he wrote, but it 
 was on another page, for that on which the 
 young girl had written was blistered with his 
 tears. 
 
 I then turned to look for the boy who had 
 been wounded in the breast, to tell him he 
 would soon be well and happy in his own 
 home, with his mother and his little sisters 
 who loved him so much. He was not in the 
 ward ; his bed was empty. I found him alone, 
 in a room in another part of the building. 
 He was lying on his back j his long fair hair
 
 48 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 was combed away from his pale young face, 
 which looked more placid than when I had 
 seen it last. A crucifix lay upon the coverlet 
 of his bed, and his hands were crossed meekly 
 upon his breast, as if he were praying. 
 When I came nearer I saw that his sorrows 
 and his sufferings were ended for ever he 
 was dead ! 
 
 He was buried according to thorites of the 
 Catholic Church, in the cemetery of Wilna. 
 A pious hand placed a small wooden cross at 
 the head of his narrow grave, and a kind- 
 hearted Russian soldier planted a few flowers 
 in the freshly-turned earth of the boy-patriot's 
 last resting-place. But long before the flowers 
 wither in the cold of the coming winter, his 
 young life so ruthlessly closed, his lonely 
 death-bed and his silent tears, will all be for- 
 gotten, save by the sisters he loved so well, and 
 by the widowed mother, who mourns in her 
 desolate home the loss of her only son. 
 
 In the same hospital was a prisoner named 
 Albert. He was a civil engineer; he had 
 resided many years in Paris, and spoke French
 
 Lithuania. 
 
 49 
 
 remarkably well. He was taken prisoner not 
 long before on the defeat of a band, of which 
 he, from his superior intelligence, was supposed 
 to have been the chief. He said that, as a 
 Pole, he was naturally anxious that his country 
 should be free, but that he knew the insurrec- 
 tion could not succeed without the aid of 
 France and England. "Then," I said, " why 
 did you not wait for an armed intervention on 
 the part of the Western Powers?" He was 
 forced into the movement, he replied, in oppo- 
 sition to his better judgment. His health was 
 bad, he continued, and he obtained leave from 
 the chief of the works where he was employed 
 to come for change of air to Wilna, where he 
 had a cousin who was a curate. When he 
 called at his cousin's residence he was from 
 home, and he determined to take a walk in 
 the neighbourhood whilst waiting his return. 
 During his walk in the suburbs of the town 
 he met some young men, with whom he entered 
 into conversation. They told him that a 
 national rising was intended, and that every 
 Pole ought to join in the insurrection. They 
 E
 
 50 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 said they belonged to a band which was sta- 
 tioned at a short distance, and that he had 
 better become a member. He objected, upon 
 which they showed him that they were armed, 
 and swore they would kill him if he did not 
 join them, for that he was then in possession 
 of their secret, and that for their own safety 
 they could not allow him to return back into 
 the town. Seeing there was no other alterna- 
 tive, he went with them, and after walking 
 some miles they found the band bivouacked in 
 a wood. He then took the oath of fidelity to 
 the national cause, and stuck to his comrades 
 through good and evil fortune till they were 
 beaten by the Russians and he was made 
 prisoner.
 
 Lithuania. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 POLITICAL PRISONERS. 
 
 THE day following ray first visit to the Hos- 
 pital of St. Jacob we went to see the Convent 
 of the " Missionaries," which had been fitted up 
 as a prison for three hundred men and sixty 
 women. As a general rule, when the accusa- 
 tion is of a serious nature, the prisoner is kept 
 in solitary confinement till after trial. The 
 convent cells are appropriated to this purpose, 
 and the large rooms are inhabited in common 
 by those who have already been tried and 
 are waiting the execution of their sentence, 
 and also by those against whom there is no 
 charge of an aggravated nature. We first went 
 into a room where there were twenty women 
 of the humbler class, all lodged apart from 
 E 2
 
 52 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 the other female prisoners, who were ladies 
 of rank. I asked, on entering, if any of the 
 women spoke French, when a rather well- 
 dressed young person hurried towards me, 
 and, in a very excited way and in excellent 
 French, exclaimed, that she felt she would die 
 if she were kept much longer in prison ; that 
 she was innocent, that she had taken no part 
 whatever in the insurrection, and that she was 
 separated from her baby, who she knew must 
 perish without her care. The gaoler told us 
 she was subject to fits of great excitement, 
 that her mind wandered strangely at times, 
 and that the doctor said she was suffering 
 from a form of milk fever. Her baby about 
 whom she was then crying so bitterly was 
 dead. All the female prisoners in the Con- 
 vent of the Missionaries were accused of 
 being members of a committee for nursing 
 the sick and wounded insurgents, of holding 
 seditious meetings in their houses, and of 
 distributing the proclamations of the National 
 Government. In solitary confinement, in one 
 of the cells, I found a girl of between nineteen
 
 Lithuania. 53 
 
 and twenty. She was accused of having 
 secretly received insurgents in her house, 
 where the oath of fidelity to the national cause 
 was administered to them by a Catholic priest. 
 The priest and some of the men to whom 
 he had administered the oath were arrested, 
 and all admitted the truth of the accusation 
 made against them. But the girl, when con- 
 fronted with them, denied that they had ever 
 been to her house, or that she had ever seen 
 them before in her life, and refused to answer 
 any of the questions addressed to her by the 
 court. It was evidently from a determination 
 not to incriminate others that she persisted in 
 her denial. She had been three weeks in 
 solitary confinement ; she had no books to read, 
 no companions to talk to, nothing to divert 
 her mind from her own sad thoughts. She 
 had no other fare than the rough prison diet, 
 she saw no other faces than those of her gaolers, 
 and was addressed by no other human voices 
 than those of her judges. Yet her determina- 
 tion to give no information as to the part she 
 had taken in the insurrection seemed as deter-
 
 54 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 mined as ever. From her cell I went to that 
 of the priest who was her accomplice. Nothing 
 could be more remarkable than the contrast 
 between the two. The moral force displayed 
 by the girl seemed to be totally wanting in the 
 man. He had already avowed all, and admitted 
 his complicity with the young woman. He 
 was an elderly, heavy-looking person, with a 
 countenance in which there was a strange 
 want of either dignity or intelligence. He 
 closed the breviary he was reading when we 
 entered, and stood before us with a crouching, 
 broken-spirited look. He told his story over 
 again without reservation. He then seized 
 the hand of my friend, the colonel, and, in a 
 voice broken with sobs, implored him to say 
 if there were any danger of his being put to 
 death. The colonel assured him there was 
 not, for which information he showed a servile 
 gratitude. We then entered a room where 
 seven Catholic clergymen were confined. They 
 all stood up when we appeared, and returned 
 our salute in silence. They were grave, digni- 
 fied-looking men. The oldest appeared to be
 
 Lithuania. 55 
 
 about sixty, with white hair and a form pre- 
 maturely bent. He, however, showed in the 
 ascetic lines of his wan face the same passion- 
 less serenity as his younger and stronger 
 fellow-prisoners. They were all accused of 
 inciting their flocks to take part in the insur- 
 rection. From thence we went to a very large 
 room, which had formerly been the refectory 
 of the convent. Here were imprisoned more 
 than thirty ladies of different ages, from 
 seventeen to forty. Amongst the younger, 
 some were very pretty, delicate-looking girls. 
 But even the prettiest and most delicate 
 amongst them when first spoken to assumed 
 a defiant and rather fierce expression, which 
 contrasted strangely with the soft outlines and 
 gentle voice of youth. Their beauty, however, 
 was not disfigured ; it was merely changed by 
 the expression. They looked like young fal- 
 cons that had just been caged, with eyes as 
 proud and courage as undaunted. It was 
 their hour for dinner. It was Friday, a day 
 of abstinence in the Catholic Church. The 
 food was therefore not very palatable. It
 
 56 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 consisted of vegetable soup, bread, and salt 
 fish. It requires an appetite sharpened by 
 active exercise in the open air to eat such a 
 repast with pleasure. Very few of the por- 
 tions served out were consequently eaten, and 
 some were left almost untouched. 
 
 In reply to my inquiries, those ladies who 
 stood near me said, that in general the food 
 given them, though plain, was good and whole- 
 some in quality, and always more than suf- 
 ficient in quantity. Some of the young girls, 
 however, objected to being obliged to eat with 
 a horn spoon and a pewter fork. They 
 all spoke with more boldness and abandon 
 than the male prisoners. None of them 
 offered an excuse for having taken part in the 
 insurrectionary movement, but, on the con- 
 trary, seemed proud of what they had done, 
 and regretted that they had not been able to 
 give more efficient aid to the " national cause." 
 I went apart with some of the oldest, who 
 were all married women. We were out of 
 hearing of the officers of the prison, whose 
 proximity, I was afraid, might prevent them
 
 Lithuania. 57 
 
 from speaking freely oil a subject which 
 had been reported to the English and French 
 Governments, and had caused a great deal of 
 indignation. I asked these ladies to tell me 
 with the same frankness that they had already 
 shown in speaking on other subjects, if any of 
 those who then heard me, or any of their 
 friends or aquaintances, had been struck or 
 beaten, or in any way outraged, by the Russian 
 authorities. They all, with one voice, answered 
 " No," and seemed surprised that I should have 
 asked the question. They complained of the 
 suddenness with which they had been hurried 
 to prison, without being allowed to make 
 sufficient preparation, of the bad accommoda- 
 tion, and of their not being permitted to take 
 exercise ; but with regard to insult or outrage, 
 they persisted in saying there was no ground 
 for such a charge. 
 
 We then visited a room in which six young 
 men were confined. These prisoners, as well 
 as many others that I subsequently saw, 
 amused themselves, or rather sought a diversion 
 from their thoughts, by moulding different
 
 58 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 figures in bread. Some of these productions 
 showed a great deal of art. I have several 
 now in my possession. One is an obelisk, 
 surrounded by a railing, and all the details, 
 even to the bas-reliefs on the plinth and the 
 tracery on the iron-work, are represented ; 
 another is a pretty equestrian statue ; and a 
 third is that of an old man with a long 
 beard, who is leaning on a stick* All these 
 figures are coloured either black or light 
 brown, the materials being supplied by the 
 prison authorities. One of the six young 
 fellows to whom I have alluded made me a 
 present of the figure of the old man with the 
 long beard. It was so nicely executed, that I 
 sent it as a curiosity to General Mouravieff. 
 The artist had been an officer in the Russian 
 army, but, on the breaking out of the insur- 
 surrection, he joined a party of his fellow- 
 Poles who had taken up arms against the 
 Imperial Government, and, after many adven- 
 tures, he was captured and sent a prisoner to 
 Wilna. He looked in bad health, yet he 
 assured us he was quite well, but that the
 
 Lithuania. 59 
 
 sudden change from an active open-air life to 
 the atmosphere of a prison did not improve 
 his appearance. He thanked me for my visit 
 to himself and his companions, and begged 
 me to accept the statuette that I have men- 
 tioned. I did not see him again till two days 
 later. He was no longer breathing the atmo- 
 sphere of a prison ; he was in the open air 
 outside Wilna. He cast a glance of recogni- 
 tion upon my friend and myself, who stood 
 amongst the crowd, and then, whilst calmly 
 offering his last prayer to Heaven, the signal 
 was given, the soldiers fired, arid he lay still and 
 dead before us the first ball had gone through 
 his heart. This was Macovetzky, who was 
 shot on the 29th of last August, in accordance 
 with the sentence of a court-martial. Sen- 
 tence had been pronounced, and the day fixed 
 for his execution, when he gave me the 
 statuette, but he knew nothing of his intended 
 fate till he was led out to be shot. In the 
 evening, when I was leaving General Moura- 
 vieff's study, he said suddenly, "Ah, I had 
 almost forgotten it ; here is something which
 
 60 Petersburg and Warsaw, 
 
 belongs to you ; " and he took from his table 
 and placed in my hand the statuette which 
 had been given me by Macovetzky. I received 
 it with a strange sensation : it seemed to me 
 like a present from the dead.
 
 Lithuania. 6 1 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 POLITICAL ASSASSINS. 
 
 I ALSO visited the Dominican Convent, which 
 had been fitted up as a prison. Here 
 twenty-eight persons were confined, five of 
 whom were accused of acts entailing the 
 punishment of death. In the first cell which 
 I entered was Bankowsky, the assistant sur- 
 geon who had attempted to murder M. 
 Domeiko. He was not alone. In the same 
 room was a youth who seemed to belong to 
 the humbler classes of society. He, because 
 he had not received the entire sum promised 
 him as an accomplice, " turned King's evi- 
 dence," as it is termed in England, and assisted 
 the police in capturing Benkowsky and his 
 companion. The would-be murderer was
 
 62 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 quite ignorant of the real character of his 
 neighbour, and looked upon him as a friend 
 and fellow-unfortunate. The daring duplicity 
 of the other was most extraordinary. Night 
 and day he remained within a few feet of an 
 assassin who had avowed his crime, and was 
 awaiting his execution from hour to hour, and 
 for whom there was no hope of pardon in this 
 world. That doomed man he had helped to 
 deliver into the hands of justice, and he was 
 with him now as a spy upon his words and 
 actions. It did not seem to occur to him 
 that Benkowsky might, by some accident, 
 discover his real character, and strangle him 
 whilst he slept. 
 
 The Poles, as a general rule, are a good- 
 looking people, but Benkowsky had an ill- 
 favoured, sinister look. His hair was of a 
 black colour; he told us it was naturally 
 fair, but that he had it dyed as a means of 
 disguise. Being a surgeon, it was thought 
 that he would be less sensible to human suf- 
 fering than another, and that, moreover, his 
 anatomical skill would enable him to use the
 
 Lithuania. 63 
 
 poignard with more deadly effect. He was, 
 therefore, enrolled amongst the band emplyoed 
 by the " National Government " to assassinate 
 those who were obnoxious to that body. He 
 was chosen, in company with Marcefsky, to 
 murder M. Domeiko, for which he was pro- 
 mised a sum of money, the whole of which, 
 however, he did not receive, for the money 
 advanced for the expenses of his journey and 
 of his stay in Wilna had been deducted. 
 After the crime, he dressed himself in woman's 
 clothes, and hid for some days outside the 
 town in the cemetery. When he was captured 
 at the railway station, he had with him a 
 number of roubles which had been sent him 
 by the " National Government." 
 
 We then went to see Marcefsky. He 
 seemed about the same age as Benkowsky, 
 namely, twenty-six or seven. He was little 
 more than five feet in height, with broad 
 shoulders and a very massive head, in which 
 what phrenologists call the organ of firmness 
 was strongly developed. We then entered a 
 large room in which were eleven prisoners.
 
 64 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 They, as well as all the accused that I saw in the 
 Dominican Convent, looked at us in an anxious, 
 feverish manner, as if they expected that we 
 had brought with us some evil tidings. The 
 reason, I subsequently learned, was, that seve- 
 ral had only left the prison to be hanged or 
 shot, and that it was considered by those 
 confined there to be something like the Con- 
 ciergerie at Paris at the time -of the first 
 revolution, and that the prisoner left hope 
 behind him on entering its gates. One of 
 those who looked most anxiously at us was a 
 well-dressed youth, whose brother had been 
 executed a few days before. There were also 
 a father and son. The father was an elderly, 
 feeble-looking man, the son was tall and strong, 
 and in the flower of youth. The father's eyes 
 were blood-shot, and his face sallow and hag- 
 gard. He sat on the side of his bed in an 
 attitude of mute despair. They were both 
 apothecaries in Wilna, and were accused of 
 having supplied poison for anointing the dag- 
 ger of Benkowsky. When I spoke to the son, 
 he said that his father and himself were inca-
 
 Lithuania. 65 
 
 pable of committing so infamous a crime. Yet 
 he said he was willing to bear the ignominy of 
 the accusation and to remain in prison till the 
 case was cleared up ; " but oh, sir," he said, 
 "beg of them, for God's sake, to have pity 
 upon my poor old father. He is weak, his 
 health is breaking fast. The shame of having 
 such a crime imputed to him, whose whole 
 life has been blameless, has had a more fatal 
 effect upon him than the imprisonment or the 
 fear of punishment. I implore you to get 
 my father set at liberty, and they may act 
 with me as they please." He then covered 
 his face with his hands and burst into tears. 
 A few hours later their case was laid before 
 General Mouravieff, and, as the accusation 
 turned out to be unfounded, both father and 
 son were set at liberty.
 
 66 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 COURTS-MARTIAL. 
 
 THE Military Court, in which all political 
 cases are tried, holds its sittings in one of the 
 houses in the suburbs. The President of the 
 tribunal is Lieutenant -General Wesselitzky, 
 who was well known to several of our officers 
 on the cessation of hostilities at Sebastopol. 
 This court sits with closed doors, and no 
 stranger is admitted without a special permis- 
 sion from General Mouravieff. Not only had 
 I this permission, but the President, General 
 Wesselitzky, gave orders to the door-keepers 
 to admit me whenever I chose to coine. On 
 my first visit I found in the ante-room of 
 the court a young Catholic priest, awaiting his 
 turn to be tried by the court-martial which
 
 Lithuania. 67 
 
 was sitting within. Into this ante-room the 
 prisoners are admitted one by one, when an 
 officer, who is stationed there for the purpose, 
 hands them a paper divided into two columns. 
 One contains a series of printed questions, 
 opposite to which, in the adjoining column, 
 the prisoner is directed to write his answers. 
 The questions are the names, age, place of 
 birth, religion, and profession of the prisoner, 
 and, lastly, a demand for a statement of the 
 crime of which he is accused. The prisoner 
 is not told by the court, as is the case in 
 England, of the charge upon which he has 
 been arrested ; he is left to say what he thinks 
 it is, according to his conscience. 
 
 The President, having politely offered me a 
 seat at his table, handed me a list of the 
 prisoners who were to be examined that day, 
 and told me that I might choose from amongst 
 them any that I wished to be tried in my 
 presence. I requested that the Catholic priest 
 I had seen in the ante-room should be placed 
 at the bar. He was at once called in, and 
 directed to sit down close to the table at which 
 
 F2
 
 68 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 I was seated, so that I might without difficulty 
 ask him any questions I pleased. He, as well 
 as all the prisoners I saw brought before that 
 court, displayed the same feverish, anxious 
 manner that I had observed amongst the per- 
 sons confined in the Dominican convent. 
 
 In reply to my question, put through the 
 court, the prisoner said he was arrested be- 
 cause arms and ammunition had been found 
 concealed in his house. The arms and ammu- 
 nition were there without his knowledge, and 
 had been placed in his house solely, he 
 said, for the purpose of bringing him into 
 trouble. He stated, that for some time before 
 his arrest he had been preaching in favour of 
 temperance, and met with so much success 
 that the consumption of spirituous liquors 
 amongst his parishioners had considerably di- 
 minished. The Jews, who are the persons 
 engaged in the commerce of vodka, or native 
 brandy, in Wilna, were exasperated at the 
 injury done to their trade. They annoyed 
 him at times when he passed through the 
 streets, and on one occasion they gathered in
 
 Lithuania. 69 
 
 a crowd before his house, and broke the 
 windows. The chief rioters were punished 
 by the police, and, he said, that it was in 
 revenge for this, as well as for his having 
 preached against the use of ardent spirits, 
 that some of the Jews hid the arms and am- 
 munition in his house, and then laid informa- 
 tions against him as one in league with the 
 insurgents. His house was consequently 
 searched, the arms and ammunition found, 
 and he was imprisoned. 
 
 Nearly opposite to the door by which I had 
 entered the apartment where the court sat, 
 was another door, opening into a corridor 
 which led to the back of the building. In 
 the upper panels of this door were bored two 
 holes, of about half an inch in diameter. I 
 observed that a human eye glittered through 
 them occasionally, and then disappeared. Pre- 
 vious to the coming of the priest into court, I 
 asked the president for what these holes were 
 used. He explained that when it was neces- 
 sary to identify a prisoner, the witness who 
 undertook to do so, peeped at the person on
 
 70 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 trial through one of these apertures, and then 
 made his statement in the usual form to 
 an officer of the tribunal by whom he was 
 accompanied. The eyes which glared through 
 these "judas" upon the apostle of tem- 
 perance had not, I am happy to say, a 
 baneful effect, for by order of General Moura- 
 vieff he was set at liberty on the following 
 day. 
 
 A country lad who could neither read nor 
 write was also put upon his trial. When told 
 to sit down, he thought it was done in mockery, 
 and refused. He explained that when a peasant 
 sat down in the presence of gentlemen in his 
 part of the country the peasant was always 
 beaten. The prisoner had been taken after a 
 conflict between the troops and the band to 
 which he belonged. He stated that he was a 
 shepherd, and that one night some of the in- 
 surgent gendarmes, came to the hut in which 
 he lived amongst his flocks, and told him they 
 would hang him if he did not join their band. 
 He joined them because he was afraid, he 
 said, and because, moreover, they carried off
 
 Lithuania. 7 1 
 
 several sheep, for which his master would be 
 sure to bring him to account. 
 
 To this statement, which was written down 
 by a clerk, he put his mark in the same way 
 as it is done in England by a person who does 
 not know how to write. I had very little 
 anxiety about his fate, for, as a general rule, 
 all the peasants of Lithuania who were sent to 
 prison for being implicated in the insurrection 
 were, after a short detention, set at liberty.
 
 72 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PEASANT-DEPUTATIONS. 
 
 ONE morning that I called at the castle upon 
 General Mouravieff, I found assembled in one 
 of the ante-rooms, twenty-five Polish farmers, 
 each one the deputy elected by his fellows to 
 represent his parish. They were all tall, well- 
 made, good-looking men ; they wore long 
 surtouts of rough cloth, jack-boots, and wide 
 breeches, and each had round his neck a brass 
 chain, from which a medal of the same material 
 was suspended. This was his badge of office 
 as head man of the parish. When General 
 Mouravieff came into the room, followed by a 
 numerous staff, all in gorgeous uniforms, the 
 generals wearing their stars and " cordons," 
 the sturdy farmers, not in the least abashed by
 
 Lithuania. 73 
 
 the presence of the redoubtable governor, or 
 the splendour by which he was surrounded, 
 bowed respectfully, but not servilely. At their 
 head stood the clerk of the peace for the 
 district, whom they had brought with them to 
 read an address of thanks to the Emperor for 
 having given them General Mouravieff for a 
 governor, who, by his energy, had delivered 
 them from the imposts and cruelties of the 
 insurgents. 
 
 The General took the address, which he 
 promised to send to 'the Emperor, and thanked 
 them for the sentiments which they had ex- 
 pressed towards himself. He asked them if 
 there were still any insurgents in their part of 
 the country. " Thank God," they said, " at 
 present there are none, and we can now live 
 quietly and happily." "No people in the 
 world," said the oldest man amongst them, 
 "could support two Governments without being 
 ruined. We are obliged to pay taxes to the 
 Emperor, and the gendarmes of the National 
 Government took from us money and provi- 
 sions as they thought proper, and threatened
 
 74 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 us with death if we complained. They were 
 the stronger, and we were obliged to submit. 
 But since you, General, have come amongst 
 us, our properties are protected from plunder, 
 and our families from outrage. We are very 
 happy to live under the Emperor, who is the 
 father and friend of the peasants, whereas the 
 insurgents have in every way acted towards 
 us as enemies." 
 
 " If you catch any insurgents," said General 
 , Mouravieff, " bring them to me, and they shall 
 be punished. But you must not take the law 
 into your own hands, and punish them your- 
 selves. You must also remember your duties 
 towards your landlords, for I will suffer no in- 
 fraction of the law under that head ; landlord 
 and tenant, noble and peasant, are all alike the 
 children of the Emperor, whose wish is that 
 you shall all live happily and contentedly to- 
 gether." The General then wished them a 
 pleasant journey back to their homes, and 
 they withdrew. 
 
 What struck me as remarkable in these 
 peasants, as well as in the others that I sub-
 
 Lithuania. 75 
 
 sequeutly saw at the castle, where they had 
 come with addresses to the Emperor, was, that 
 they spoke out as calmly and boldly in the pre- 
 sence of the terrible Mouravieff and his staff 
 of generals and court chamberlains, as a mem- 
 ber of parliament would address the ministerial 
 benches. Each seemed fully impressed with 
 the importance of his position as a popular 
 representative, chosen by the free voices of 
 his fellow -citizens, to express their wishes to 
 the governing powers. 
 
 Amongst the members of one of the deputa- 
 tions which arrived at the castle, whilst I was 
 at Wilna, were twelve peasants who lived upon 
 the crown lands. They wore the same form 
 of costume as their companions, but it was of 
 darker colour, and was bound with gold lace. 
 With their low-crowned hats, ornamented with 
 a peacock's feather, open shirt-collar, loose 
 caftan, and long boots, they were exactly like 
 the figures seen in a Polish ballet at Her 
 Majesty's Theatre.
 
 76 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 WERKEY. 
 
 AT about five miles from Wilna is the 
 country seat of Prince Seyne Wittgenstein, at 
 present military agent for the Russian Govern- 
 ment at Paris. Werkey is the name of the 
 place. Every stranger who stops for any 
 time at Wilna is expected to visit Werkey. 
 I, consequently, determined to go thither, if 
 I could get an escort to protect me from any 
 disagreeable mistakes on the part of either 
 Cossack or insurgent along the road. The 
 landlord of the hotel, however, assured me 
 that for leagues round Wilna the country 
 was quiet and orderly. The coachman, 
 he said, knew the road ; and he gave me 
 a note for his friend, the Prince's game-
 
 Lithuania. 77 
 
 keeper, who would show me the house and 
 grounds. 
 
 We drove past the church of St. John, and 
 by the public garden, across the open space in 
 front of the cathedral, and in a few minutes 
 more crossed the long, low, wooden bridge 
 which spans the river. The ground, which 
 rises rather abruptly on the other side, is 
 crowned by a church, in front of which, and 
 overlooking the road by which we ascended, is 
 a gigantic figure of Our Saviour carrying the 
 cross, which is held in particular veneration 
 by the Catholics of Wilna. When we reached 
 the table-land above the church, the view we 
 obtained of the city and its environs was 
 picturesquely beautiful. Wilna is built upon 
 undulating ground ; on each eminence is seen 
 the sharply pointed red-tiled roof of some 
 monastery, with its quaint belfry, blackened 
 by time, rising solemnly behind, or an old 
 clock tower, with its high pyramidal roof 
 surmounted by its vane and cross. Here and 
 there, in breaks amongst the houses, are seen 
 waving acacias and slender poplars, their
 
 7 8 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 green contrasting pleasantly with whitened 
 wall, red-tiled roof, and sombre tower. 
 
 Below, on the level ground, flows the Villa, 
 a bright limpid river, now hidden by a rising 
 ground or clump of trees, now flashing like 
 burnished silver in the warm autumnal sun. 
 On the bank of this river, opposite the town, 
 is a hill which rises sharply high in the 
 air, and on its summit is the citadel. Seen 
 from the road to Werkey it stands apart, like 
 a Greek acropolis ; but the soft verdure, the 
 terraced walks, and the mediaeval outline of 
 the fort itself, give it more the appearance of 
 the stronghold of some feudal margrave. 
 
 After stopping for some time to admire the 
 view which I have attempted to describe, we 
 proceeded towards Werkey. At little more 
 than half-way, we passed the residence of 
 the Greek Archbishop of Wilna. It is a 
 handsome pile of building, composed of the 
 archiepiscopal palace, and a church, to which 
 recent additions give something of a Byzantine 
 character. This edifice, I believe, formerly 
 belonged to the Catholics. It is beautifully
 
 Lithuania. 79 
 
 situated in the midst of handsome gardens, 
 backed by a hill covered to the summit with 
 trees. On the front side, the land falls in a 
 gentle slope about a hundred yards to the 
 river which here flows on, broad, and calm, 
 and deep. Barges and rafts were gliding 
 slowly along its surface, and on the opposite 
 side were wide pastures dotted with cattle, 
 and, beyond, a fringe of woodland fading away 
 into the blue distance. After passing the 
 Archbishop's residence, the road lies through 
 dense woods for a mile or so, and then winds 
 up the side of a steep hill, on the broad 
 summit of which stands the chateau of 
 Werkey. The well macadamised road, with 
 a strong wooden pailing on one side separating 
 it from a dark ravine, through which, hidden 
 by tangled brushwood, tumbles a noisy 
 stream, the handsome gateway, the lodge, the 
 gravelled avenue, the velvet lawn, and the 
 white walls of the mansion peeping out from 
 amongst the trees, made me for a moment 
 fancy that I was in the grounds of one of our 
 English noblemen.
 
 8o Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF RADZOVILL. 
 
 THE Princes of Seyne Wittgenstein are of 
 German origin. The first of the family es- 
 tablished in Russia was the celebrated Field- 
 Marshal, so often mentioned in the des- 
 patches of Napoleon I., during the memorable 
 campaign of 1812. A son of the Marshal 
 married the Princess Radzovill, heiress in her 
 own right to the chateau and lands of Werkey, 
 and the other possessions belonging to that 
 branch of the great Lithuanian family. The 
 present prince is the offspring of this marriage. 
 In the dining-hall of the chateau is a well- 
 painted full-length portrait of the Marshal, 
 and in the same room is another picture which 
 does not possess so much artistic merit, repre-
 
 Lithuania,. 8 1 
 
 senting the late prince and princess as a 
 knight and lady of the middle ages on a 
 hawking expedition, and the present prince 
 appears as a little page holding a greyhound 
 in a leash. Here is also a rudely-executed 
 portrait of the beautiful Barbara Radzovill, 
 who was married secretly to Sigismond 
 Augustus, King of Poland, after the death 
 of his first wife, an Archduchess of Austria. 
 When Sigismond proclaimed to the nation 
 his marriage with Barbara, the nobles, urged 
 on by Sigismond's mother, demanded that the 
 marriage should be annulled. But Sigismond 
 loved his beautiful wife too dearly to act 
 traitorously towards her, either for the frowns 
 of his mother, or the threats of his nobles. 
 " How can you expect your king to be faithful 
 to you, if he is not faithful to his wife ? " 
 exclaimed Sigismond, addressing the nobles. 
 He was willing to resign the crown, he said, 
 but he would never abandon his beloved 
 Barbara. Sigismond's chivalrous determination 
 prevailed ; the nobles acknowledged Barbara as 
 their queen, vied with each other in showing 
 
 6
 
 82 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 her their devotion, and even her mother-in-law 
 became her friend. But poor Barbara's whole 
 being was wrapped up in her love for Sigis- 
 mond, and the attempt to tear him from 
 her so affected her health that she pined away, 
 and died six months after her mother-in-law 
 and the nobles had demanded her divorce. 
 More than three hundred years have gone by 
 since Queen Barbara's death, but stories of 
 her loveliness and worth, her sufferings and 
 her early death, are still heard in the long 
 winter evenings, round the stove of the 
 Lithuanian peasant. 
 
 On the oaken panelling of the dining-hall 
 are grouped trophies of antique arms, and 
 standing around are suits of mail, with helm 
 and lance and closed vizor, the grim iron 
 .shells of departed knights of the house of 
 Radzovill. 
 
 In the other rooms are one or two paintings 
 of merit, and there is a very good copy of 
 Correggio's " Christ arguing with the doctors," 
 the original of which is in the National Caller * 
 in London.
 
 Lithuania. 83 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE BISONS. 
 
 WE visited the preserves at Werkey, which 
 are swarming with game, the grounds not 
 having been shot over for a considerable time. 
 Since the breaking out of the insurrection the 
 prince's gamekeepers have not been allowed 
 to carry guns. 
 
 In one part of the park where a clearing 
 had been made in the centre of a plantation 
 of fir-trees a cock was tied by a long string 
 to a peg driven into the ground. Upon four 
 upright posts a strong net was loosely hung, 
 forming a square of about six feet about the 
 place where the cock was attached. This net 
 was for catching eagles and other birds of 
 prey. Attracted by the crowing of the cock 
 
 G2
 
 84 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 they perch upon the branch of some neigh- 
 bouring tree, and making a sudden swoop 
 upon their intended victim, they are caught 
 in the meshes of the net. The gamekeeper 
 told me that several eagles, hawks, and vul- 
 tures, had been captured in this manner. 
 They were all found entangled close to the 
 ground, none having ever darted vertically 
 downwards, when they would have- been sure 
 of their prey, for the net is entirely open at 
 the top. 
 
 In another part of the grounds were several 
 hundred head of deer, who came trooping out 
 from their leafy hiding-places at the call of the 
 gamekeeper. But the most remarkable sight 
 in the park was a family of bisons, consisting 
 of a male and female and a young one. They 
 were confined in a field surrounded by a high 
 paling. They had a wooden shed in which 
 to sleep, and their food was passed to them 
 through a small door in the inclosure. They 
 seemed very savage and irritable. They had 
 been brought from a forest at several miles 
 distant, where the bison is found wild. It is a
 
 Lithuania. 8 5 
 
 strange fact in natural history that, throughout 
 the entire Russian empire, it is only within 
 the precincts of this forest that the bisons live 
 healthily, and continue to multiply. When 
 removed, even to a little distance from their 
 native haunts, they sicken and die in a short 
 time. Several attempts have been made to 
 acclimatize them at Werkey, but all without 
 success. Those that I saw, though the food 
 they were supposed to like best was given 
 them in abundance, were unhealthy and 
 suffering, the gamekeeper told me, and would 
 evidently end as their predecessors had ended. 
 In their native woods they are shy and timid, 
 and fly at, the approach of a passenger, but 
 when shut up as they were at Werkey, they 
 become fierce and dangerous.
 
 86 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 MEMORIES OF 1812. 
 
 IT was late in the evening when I again 
 found myself on the height above the wooden 
 bridge which crosses the Vilia, at the entrance 
 to Wilna. In the closing shades of evening 
 I could no longer distinguish those features in 
 the landscape which had excited my admira- 
 tion some hours before. The town was wrapped 
 in the sober livery of twilight, the busy hum 
 of its population was growing gradually fainter, 
 and the impatient rush of the river broke 
 more distinctly upon the ear. It was the same 
 Vilia upon the bank of which Napoleon I. 
 had stood, at the head of a countless host, 
 fifty-one years before. He was then in the 
 neighbourhood of Kovno. The Cossacks had
 
 Lithuania. 87 
 
 destroyed the bridge, and prevented the pas- 
 sage of Oudinot's corps. Napoleon, in a moment 
 of irritation, ordered a squadron of his Polish 
 body-guard to ford the river. Obedient to the 
 order, they at once plunged in, but the waters 
 were deep and the current strong. They tried 
 to swim their horses to the opposite bank, but 
 in vain. Horses and men sunk and rose in a 
 frightful struggle with death, and, when all 
 hope was over and the Polish horsemen saw 
 their fate inevitable, they turned their eyes 
 towards Napoleon, who stood calm and motion- 
 less upon the bank, and, shouting with their 
 remaining strength " Vive I'Empereur!" sunk 
 to rise no more. The whole squadron perished. 
 The French soldiers upon the bank, unable to 
 render assistance, were struck with horror and 
 admiration. The superstitious amongst them 
 looked upon the incident as a bad omen, as 
 they had already pronounced it to be an 
 ominous warning when on the bank of the 
 Niemen, not very many hours before, the 
 horse of the emperor stumbled and fell, rolling 
 his imperial rider in the dust. It was on the
 
 88 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 day succeeding that latter accident that the 
 first of the invading army stood upon the soil 
 of Russia. On the evening of the 24th of 
 June a party of sappers crossed the Niemen 
 in a small boat. Arrived on the opposite bank, 
 they were surprised to find themselves in com- 
 plete solitude. After a time a Cossack officer, 
 at the head of a few of his men, emerged 
 from a neighbouring wood, and, riding towards 
 the sappers, asked them who they were and 
 what brought them to Russia. "We are 
 Frenchmen," answered a sapper, "we have 
 come to fight the Russian army, to take Wilna, 
 and to deliver Poland ; " upon which the Cos- 
 sacks rode away, but as they were disappearing 
 through the wood they were fired at by three 
 of the sappers. Those were the first shots 
 fired by the invading army in Russia.
 
 Lithuania. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 BAD OMENS. 
 
 IF bad omens could have influenced the 
 conduct of Napoleon I. when he appeared on 
 the Russian frontier at the head of more than 
 half a million of men, he would have hesitated 
 before he embarked in that disastrous cam- 
 paign. Napoleon advanced from Kovno to 
 the neighbourhood of Wilna, hoping that the 
 Russian army would have defended the capital 
 of Lithuania. But such were not the tactics 
 of the Czar. The Russian generals had deter- 
 mined to adopt the old Scythian system of 
 drawing the invaders as far as possible into 
 the interior of the country, and then leaving 
 the chief work to be done by their best ally 
 the terrible northern winter.
 
 90 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 The gates of Wilna were open wide, and 
 Napoleon rode through its streets at the head 
 of his Polish guard amidst enthusiastic shouts 
 of welcome from the Lithuanian population. 
 But he was insensible to the ovation ; this 
 absence of all resistance fell upon his mind as 
 the first dark shadow of the coming disasters 
 of the campaign. The Russian army had 
 retired in the direction of Drissa: Napoleon 
 ordered Murat and his cavalry to follow in 
 their track, and Ney to move on his left to the 
 support of Oudinot, who had that day come 
 up with Wittgenstein and driven him with 
 loss from Develtovo to Wilkomir. It was 
 amongst his advanced posts to which he had 
 ridden from Wilna, that he gave these orders. 
 He then returned back into the town and took 
 up his quarters in the palace, which had just 
 been vacated by the Emperor Alexander, and 
 which is at present occupied by General 
 Mouravieff.
 
 Lithuania. 91 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 NAPOLEON'S WRITING-TABLE. 
 
 IN the boudoir of Madame Mouravieff is a 
 writing-table of moderate size. The frame is 
 of rosewood, the centre is covered with green 
 cloth, the edges of the table are bordered with 
 gilt brass, and a light railing of the same 
 material, of three inches high, runs along the 
 back and comes half way down on each side. 
 It was at this table that Napoleon I. wrote 
 his despatches directing the operations of his 
 generals for the conquest of Russia, and at this 
 table he wrote his instructions to his ministers 
 at Paris with regard to the policy to be pursued 
 throughout Europe, of whose fate he then con- 
 sidered himself the sovereign arbitrator. A 
 few days before taking up his quarters in
 
 92 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 Wilna, he issued the following proclamation to 
 his army : 
 
 " Soldiers ! The second Polish war has 
 commenced. The first ended at Friedland 
 and Tilsit. At Tilsit, Russia swore to maintain 
 an eternal alliance with France, and to wage 
 war with England. She has violated hef oaths 
 and refuses to give any explanation of her 
 strange conduct, until the French eagles have 
 re-passed the Rhine and left our allies at her 
 mercy. Russia is hurried along by fate her 
 destiny will be fulfilled. Does she think us 
 degenerated? Are we not the same soldiers 
 that fought at Austerlitz ? She has placed us 
 between dishonour and war. There can be no 
 doubt as to our choice. Let us, then, advance ; 
 let us pass the Niemen, and carry the war 
 into her territory. The second Polish war 
 will be glorious for the French arms, as was 
 the first ; but the peace which we shall con- 
 clude will carry with it its guarantee : it will 
 put an end to the fatal influence which Russia 
 for fifty years has exercised upon the affairs of 
 Europe."
 
 Lithuania. 93 
 
 At the same time Alexander also issued an 
 address to his army, and a French historian 
 says, that in these two productions might have 
 been seen the characters of the two emperors, 
 and of the two peoples over which they ruled. 
 The Russian proclamation was a defence ; the 
 French was an accusation. The first was sim- 
 ple and moderate, the other defiant and in a 
 tone prophetic of victory. Alexander invoked 
 the aid of heaven ; Napoleon spoke only of 
 fate. The former appealed to the love of home 
 and country ; the latter to the love of glory 
 and the pleasures of conquest. But neither 
 one nor the other spoke of the independence of 
 Poland, which Napoleon had, however, pre- 
 viously stated to be the real object of the 
 war. 
 
 One of the Emperor Napoleon's despatches, 
 dated Wilna, July 9th, 1812, is written with 
 that certitude of success which it was natural 
 should be felt by the master of an army of 
 600,000 men. Its tone contrasts strangely 
 with a despatch written from the same town, 
 and in the same palace, five months later.
 
 94 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 Napoleon, writing from Wilna, 9th July, 
 says : 
 
 " Cousin, consider the last letter I wrote to 
 you for the Duke of Tarento as non-avenue, 
 and substitute for it the following : 
 
 "The Duke de Reggio has received orders 
 to advance upon Solok, the Duke d'Elchingen 
 upon Kozatschizna ; the King of Naples is at 
 Widzy. The enemy appears to- concentrate at 
 Dunaburg. The Prince d'Echmulh has arrived 
 at Minsk. The Hetman Platoff with his 
 Cossacks, and the corps of Bragation who 
 thought to move upon that town, have been 
 cut off, and have gone towards Bobrmsk. 
 They are pursued by the King of Westphalia ; 
 they were yesterday at Mir. The Viceroy is 
 marching towards the Duna ; the Guard and 
 the head-quarters ought to leave this in a few 
 days. The Emperor intends to march upon 
 Moscow and St. Petersburg, and from thence 
 force the army which is at Dunaburg to return 
 up, and he will liberate the whole of Courland 
 and Livonia. 
 
 " The garrison of Riga, commanded by
 
 Lithuania. 95 
 
 General Esseii, whose army has been dismem- 
 bered, is composed of thirty-three battalions, 
 each consisting of two or three hundred men. 
 They are all recruits of this year, and are not 
 worthy of attention. It is possible that as soon 
 as the place is threatened, a division from 
 Diinaburg will march there, for, according to 
 the information we have received, the present 
 garrison is not sufficient for its defence," &c. 
 &c. 
 
 Five months later the following order, dated 
 Wilna, December 9th, was sent to Comte 
 Daru : 
 
 " The King has removed his head-quarters 
 to the barrier of Kovno. The Duke d'Elchiri- 
 gen conducts the retreat, and will leave to- 
 morrow as late as he can. Send off the trea- 
 sure during the night. I have ordered Gene- 
 ral Eble to give the horses of the artillery if 
 it is necessary. Everything must be done to 
 save it. Let it be brought to-night to the 
 head-quarters at the barrier of Kovno, where 
 we will have it escorted. 
 
 " Distribute, without anv slow official forms,
 
 96 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 and in abundance, provisions and clothing to 
 all those who ask for them, as the position of 
 the enemy forbids the hope of being able to 
 hold out all day to-morrow at Wilna. Join 
 the head-quarters to-night, and set everything 
 going to evacuate upon Kovno, if that seems 
 possible."
 
 Flight from Wilna. 97 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 FLIGHT FROM WILNA. 
 
 IT was on that same 9th of December that a 
 portion of the wreck of the mighty army, 
 which Napoleon had assembled for the con- 
 quest of Russia, arrived half dead with cold 
 and hunger in the streets of Wilna. There 
 were in that town stores of flour, bread, and 
 meat, sufficient to feed 100,000 men for more 
 than a month; but such was the confusion 
 and helplessness which existed, even amongst 
 the chiefs, that no one thought of distributing 
 these provisions amongst the unfortunate 
 beings who had struggled on as far as Wilna, 
 in the hope of there finding shelter and food. 
 Some had crawled to the hospitals, and died 
 upon the stairs and in the passages. The
 
 98 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 doors of the barracks were blocked up with 
 dead bodies heaped one upon the other. Thou- 
 sands, weak from hunger and fatigue, sunk in 
 the streets and were frozen to death. At 
 length, after ten hours' delay, some relief was 
 given to the survivors. 
 
 The Lithuanians from pity, and the Jews 
 on payment, received them into their houses. 
 But scarcely had they begun to feel the un- 
 wonted pleasure of heat and food, than the 
 roar of the Russian artillery was heard at the 
 gates of Wilna. 
 
 Again all was confusion. The drums beat 
 to arms, but none, not even the soldiers of 
 the Old Guard, answered the appeal. A cry 
 had risen "the Cossacks are coming!" and 
 all, veteran and recruit, officer and private, 
 all who had strength, fled through the streets 
 in wild disorder. 
 
 Murat himself, in the midst of the confusion, 
 lost his presence of mind. He hurried out of 
 the palace on foot, and was borne along by the 
 reeling crowd till he reached the extremity of 
 the suburbs on the road to Kovno. There he
 
 Flight from Wilna. 99 
 
 stopped, till he found means of communicating 
 with Ney. The marshal, who had volunteered 
 to take charge of the rear-guard, retired from 
 Wilna not many hours after, and a cloud of 
 Cossacks under Platoff immediately swept 
 down upon the town. 
 
 The treasure, consisting of 10,000,000 of 
 francs in gold and silver, and the Emperor's 
 baggage, had been pushed on in front of the 
 3,000 men with whom Ney tried to protect 
 the retreat. But at about a league from 
 Wilna all attempt at order was abandoned; 
 and the flying crowd, seeing themselves closely 
 pressed by the enemy, determined to anti- 
 cipate the capture of the carriages bearing 
 the treasure, by plundering them themselves. 
 Not only the men of the escort, but those of 
 the rear-guard, as they came up, threw down 
 their arms, to join in the terrible and even 
 sanguinary struggle which took place between 
 French soldiers for the possession of a portion 
 of the treasure or of the valuable effects of 
 their Emperor. So absorbed were they by 
 the thirst of plunder, that they took no heed 
 H 2
 
 ioo Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 of the Cossacks, bodies of whom had already 
 come up with the French. But they, too, 
 at the sight of the gold and silver and the 
 Emperor's costly baggage, forgot their work of 
 slaughter in a desire for pillage. 
 
 Such was one of the last terrible episodes 
 in the campaign of 1812, of which the neigh- 
 bourhood of Wilna was the scene. Nearly 
 20,000 French, unable or unwilling to move 
 unable from their wounds, or unwilling in the 
 reckless apathy of despair were left behind in 
 the capital of Lithuania, which was then little 
 better than a vast charnel-house. Amongst the 
 living men thus abandoned were 300 officers 
 and seven generals. 
 
 As the above passages in the history of the 
 terrible Russian campaign of 1812 recurred to 
 my memory, I drove slowly across the bridge 
 which crosses the Vilia, and through the silent 
 streets of the town to my hotel. There were 
 still the same houses from which the wounded 
 French had been flung to be trampled under 
 the hoofs of the charging Cossacks ; there were 
 the same streets that had been the scene of the
 
 Flight from Wilna. 101 
 
 triumphant entry of the great Emperor, and 
 that, a few months later, flowed with the blood 
 of the panic-stricken wreck of his mighty army. 
 Nearly a whole generation has passed away 
 since then, but the dark pages of the world's 
 history which record that dreadful war are still 
 read, and will be read to the end of all time, 
 with the same wonder and admiration, and the 
 same shuddering horror, as when they were first 
 written. And Napoleon himself, whose legions 
 were commanded by kings and sovereign 
 princes, whose relatives and whose favourites 
 sat upon half the thrones of Europe, and who 
 for a time seemed to hold in his hands the 
 destinies of the world, died a helpless, broken- 
 hearted exile on a rock in the midst of the 
 ocean, with half the globe between him and 
 the scenes of his glory.
 
 IO2 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 REPENTANT INSURGENTS. 
 
 DURING my stay in Wilna, I was witness on 
 several occasions to a solemn act of submis- 
 sion made by repentant insurgents. They 
 were all Catholics, and gentlemen by birth. 
 The ceremony on each occasion that I was 
 present took place in the church of St. John. 
 The ex-insurgents, on entering, went in a body 
 within the railing which separates . the great 
 altar from the aisle. Here they knelt and 
 joined in the prayers which were offered up 
 by the officiating clergyman. The prayers 
 over, the clergyman turned to a reading desk 
 in the centre of the enclosure, on which stood 
 a copy of the Holy Testament, open at the 
 passage containing the words of our Saviour,
 
 , Repentant Insurgents. 103 
 
 " Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and 
 give to God what belongs to God." 
 
 Upon this text the clergyman preached in 
 the following sense : 
 
 He said that the Catholic Church had at 
 all times exhorted the faithful, in countries 
 where civil strife existed, to remember the 
 words of our Divine Lord, which he had 
 quoted. "We are bound," he continued, "to 
 obey those who rule over us, and to pray for 
 their welfare, that we may lead a happy and 
 peaceable life. It was said at the beginning 
 of the insurrection, that it was, in a great 
 measure, a struggle between the Catholic and 
 the Greek faith. That assertion was made 
 for the purpose of gaming the sympathies of 
 a large party among the Poles, and also of 
 the faithful in foreign countries. But, after a 
 time, it was seen that the chief promoters of 
 the insurrection were men without faith, and 
 whose aim was, not only a war against the 
 Emperor, but against all divine and social 
 laws." 
 
 "If the Church," he continued, "con-
 
 IO4 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 demned open rebellion, how much more 
 strongly must it condemn the dreadful crime 
 of murder, which, during the insurrection, had 
 been so often perpetrated by the agents of 
 the so-called ' National Government/ It was 
 murder of the foulest and darkest kind, 
 effected by paid assassins. This crime was 
 committed, always in the name of their 
 country, and often in the name of Heaven. 
 The men who instigated others to the perpe- 
 tration of these atrocities did not hesitate to 
 brand with the foul and indelible stigma of 
 assassin, the Polish name; and, in their impious 
 daring, they invoked the name of Heaven as 
 if Heaven were an accomplice of their wicked- 
 ness. Horrors such as these are sufficient 
 to bring down upon a people the anger of 
 the Almighty/' 
 
 " The Church," he said, " has at all times 
 condemned secret societies ; for it is crime 
 which hides in darkness and secrecy, whilst 
 what is pure and good fears not the light of 
 day. No form of secret society is tolerated 
 by the Catholic Church, and they who belong
 
 Repentant Insurgents. 105 
 
 to such societies have, by that act, brought 
 upon themselves the penalty of excommuni- 
 cation." 
 
 " Let us humbly beseech the Almighty, that 
 in His mercy he will turn aside his wrath 
 from us and from our brethren." 
 
 " May your example be followed by all who 
 are still openly, or covertly, opposed to the 
 Government which has been set over us by 
 Heaven. May your protest against violence 
 and bloodshed, falsehood and assassination, be 
 shared in by the entire Polish people, so that 
 the Emperor may be able to put into execution 
 his benevolent intentions towards our unfor- 
 tunate nation. Let us humbly pray that all the 
 horrors of this fratricidal strife may speedily 
 come to an end, and that peace and good- will 
 may again prevail in the land ; and that the 
 entire Polish people may feel that their only 
 true friend here below is the Emperor Alex- 
 ander ; and that once, when they have entered 
 into the path of duty, as you have done, that 
 his Majesty, in the benevolence of his heart, 
 will forget the past, and that he will then
 
 io6 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 bestow upon his Polish subjects those laws 
 and institutions which will enable them to 
 become contented, prosperous and happy." 
 
 The oath of allegiance to the Czar was then 
 slowly read by the clergyman, and repeated, 
 word for word, by the Polish gentlemen. Each 
 of them then came forward in his turn, and 
 kissed the Holy Testament at the place where 
 the words of our Saviour, which I have quoted 
 above, were printed, after which, they all set 
 their names beneath the written copy of the 
 oath which they had taken. 
 
 The organ of the church, which is a very 
 splendid one, and celebrated throughout the 
 country, then pealed forth a triumphant hymn. 
 It imitates with wonderful effect a complete 
 orchestra, with drums, loud twanging trum- 
 pets, and clashing cymbals. At the first 
 harmonious outburst, I fancied that a large 
 band of musicians was stationed in the choir, 
 till I looked, and saw that the great resound- 
 ing melody was the work of the solitary 
 organist. 
 
 The crowd then began to stream slowly
 
 Repentant Insurgents. 107 
 
 through the aisles, and the Polish gentlemen 
 who had subscribed to the oath of allegiance, 
 having descended the steps of the altar, were 
 embraced with tears of joy by their relatives 
 and friends.
 
 io8 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 STATE OF LITHUANIA. 
 
 I HAVE remarked at the beginning of these 
 pages, that when I arrived from St. Petersburg 
 at the Wilna station I found it as free from 
 police regulations as the station at Windsor. 
 On several occasions I rode alone and unat- 
 tended over miles of country in the Wilna 
 district. In my excursions I met with neither 
 gendarme, nor soldier, nor Polish insurgent, 
 and the inhabitants that I encountered in the 
 villages or along the road were civil, and even 
 kind whenever I had occasion to ask them for 
 information about the way, or the places where 
 I could obtain refreshment. On holidays and 
 Sundays, I remarked that itinerant musicians
 
 State of Lithuania. 109 
 
 plied their trade, and that the peasantry danced 
 and sang, and that there were all the other 
 outward signs of rejoicing that mark the feast 
 days in Russian villages. 
 
 On the St. Petersburg line, for several 
 leagues before reaching Wilna, the stations 
 were guarded by armed peasants, who had 
 volunteered to perform that duty. Their 
 offer was readily accepted by the local govern- 
 ment, who supplied them with muskets and 
 ammunition. 
 
 In the streets of Wilna, barrel organs and 
 mountebanks were met with as in the streets 
 of St. Petersburg, and the population were 
 free to move about at every hour of the 
 twenty-four. For the convenience of travellers 
 arriving or starting by the different trains, 
 the hotels were open all night, and carriages 
 plied for hire between sunset and sunrise 
 for the same charges, and with the same 
 freedom, as during the day. 
 
 Deputations were constantly arriving at the 
 " Chateau, " with addresses to the Emperor 
 Alexander, and solemn acts of submission in
 
 1 10 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 the principal churches, by the Polish gentry 
 who had taken part in the insurrection, were 
 of equally frequent occurrence. The Catholic 
 clergy preached in the pulpit against the revolt, 
 and some of the dignitaries amongst them 
 issued mandates to their flocks in favour of 
 peace and order, and exhorting obedience to 
 the law r s of the Imperial Government. 
 
 The terrorism which the " National Govern- 
 ment " attempted to exercise by means of 
 assassination had entirely failed ; and, whilst 
 the news arrived from Warsaw by nearly every 
 train, that murders were perpetrated in open 
 day in the streets of that city, a passenger in the 
 capital of Lithuania enjoyed the same security 
 as if he traversed the streets of St. Petersburg. 
 Persons who did not think proper, or to whom 
 it was inconvenient, to comply with the childish 
 edict of the <c National Government," for 
 adopting a sort of masquerading costume, were 
 not insulted when they went abroad, and no 
 threats were used against those Poles, lay or 
 clerical, who openly protested against the in- 
 surrection, or who gave in their adhesion to
 
 State of Lithuania. 1 1 1 
 
 the Imperial Government. Lithuania, as far 
 as I could see, was not only pacified, but a 
 complete revulsion had taken place in the 
 feelings of those who, either from religion, or 
 race, or political feeling, had taken part in the 
 insurrection. 
 
 I have reason to believe that this compara- 
 tively sudden change, from the wild excesses 
 of civil war to the calm of ordinary life, was 
 not entirely owing to the rigorous measures 
 adopted by General Mouravieff. History 
 shows us that no system of severity, short 
 of a general extermination, can produce that 
 result, where the rising is of an entire and 
 united people. Armed resistance may be 
 put down by superior force ; the flames of 
 rebellion may be extinguished ; but, beneath 
 the embers, the fire will still smoulder, to break 
 out again with the same fury when fanned 
 by the first breath of revolution. 
 
 It was not an army of 120,000 men, said 
 General Mouravieff, that was necessary for the 
 suppression of the insurrection, but a good 
 administration. " It will be found on exami-
 
 1 1 2 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 nation," he remarked to ine on another oc- 
 casion, "that less blood has been shed in 
 Lithuania in restoring order, than has been 
 shed in the kingdom of Poland up to the 
 present time. My edicts," he continued, 
 " were sternly worded, and it was known that I 
 would act up to them if necessary ; but, in the 
 Kingdom, the conciliatory tone of the Govern- 
 ment was looked upon as a sign of weakness, 
 which, encouraging the revolt, made the ne- 
 cessity for exemplary punishment more fre- 
 quent. It was similar to a man caressing 
 with one hand whilst he struck with the other." 
 It is probable that if the blood-stained 
 columns were summed up, the result would 
 prove that General Mouravieff s calculation 
 was correct. But it is more than probable 
 that it was not entirely the iron will of the 
 Governor-General of Wilna, nor the excellence 
 of his administrative powers, which brought 
 the revolt in Lithuania to so speedy a ter- 
 mination ; it was rather this simple fact that 
 the insurrection had never taken any deep root 
 in that province.
 
 State of Lithuania. 1 13 
 
 It will be seen by statistical returns, that 
 the great mass of the inhabitants of Lithuania 
 are of the Eastern Church, and they are, 
 consequently, by education and sentiment, as 
 thoroughly Russian as the people of Moscow 
 or Novogorod, especially the inhabitants of 
 the eastern part of the province ; whilst those 
 who, from race, religion, or sympathy, enter- 
 tained the idea of a Polish nationality, are in 
 a minority, composed of some of the landed 
 proprietors, the small gentry, and a portion 
 of the tradespeople in the large towns. 
 
 The insurrection in Lithuania was, compared 
 to that in the kingdom of Poland, merely super- 
 ficial; it had no hold on the popular mind, 
 and its only effect has been to weld that pro- 
 vince more closely than ever with the Russian 
 Empire, and to render, for the future, all hope 
 of exciting revolt, in favour of a Polish national 
 cause, in that part of the Czar's dominions, 
 utterly desperate. 
 
 As an Englishman, living under a consti- 
 tutional government, my sympathies would 
 naturally be enlisted on the side of a people 
 i
 
 1 14 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 struggling for their natural rights. But I 
 saw from the beginning that the cause of the 
 Polish nation was helpless, that it was an use- 
 less effusion of blood, a wanton courting of 
 suffering and ruin. I knew that Poland had 
 nothing to hope from foreign intervention. I 
 knew from the best source that one of the 
 Great Powers, upon whose aid she most 
 fondly reckoned, had only the year before 
 entered into negotiations with the Russian 
 Government for the formation of an alliance, 
 by which that Power offered to bind itself to 
 aid the Czar in his domestic and foreign 
 policy, provided the Emperor Alexander con- 
 nived at certain projects of aggrandizement on 
 the part of his ally. The same doubt which 
 induced Russia to decline the proffered alli- 
 ance subsequently cast its shadow over the 
 cabinets of London and Vienna, and finally 
 awakened something like fear in the minds of 
 statesmen at Berlin. I knew that England 
 would not, that France could not, and that 
 Austria dare not give material assistance to 
 Poland. To whom, then, were the Poles to
 
 State of Lithuania. 115 
 
 / 
 
 turn for help ? They had nothing to expect 
 from without, and they were too weak to carry 
 on the struggle alone. Amidst the slaughter 
 of insurgent bands, amidst the hangings and 
 the shootings, not a single arm was stretched 
 out in their defence. Sharp despatches, slash- 
 ing articles, and eloquent harangues were 
 made in their favour, and the effect of this 
 was to awaken false hopes which encouraged 
 them to resistance, and which widened the 
 dark field of ruin and despair. 
 
 It is evident, then, that there is no earthly 
 chance of safety for the Poles, but to give up 
 the struggle and trust to the promises of the 
 Emperor Alexander. It is not to be supposed 
 that the sovereign could act ungenerously, 
 who has given freedom to millions of his 
 fellow-men, not as we gave freedom to our 
 negro slaves when we released them from their 
 owners, and then abandoned them to their 
 own resources, but who, when he emancipated 
 the serfs, gave them the means of living in 
 comfort and independence. History offers no 
 example of an action so noble, and it is 
 12
 
 1 1 6 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 against reason to suppose that the sovereign, 
 who has so acted, can look otherwise than 
 with sorrow upon the sufferings which the 
 Poles have, in a great measure, brought upon 
 themselves ; or that he can entertain any other 
 wish than to see temperate laws, order, and 
 contentment, take the place of military rule, 
 and the horrors of civil war. 
 
 In quoting the above facts, -I wished to 
 show that there was no other alternative left to 
 the Poles than to submit, and then trust to 
 the generosity of the Emperor ; and I hope in 
 God, that by the time this work comes before 
 the public, that the Polish nation will have 
 seen that the advice is a sound one, and that 
 their future prosperity, happiness, and free- 
 dom, will be best secured by placing faith in 
 the words of the Czar.
 
 Warsaw. \ \ y 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 WARSAW. 
 
 ON the third of September, at half-past 
 four o'clock in the morning, I left Wilna for 
 Warsaw. At the different stations along the 
 line guards of soldiers were drawn up, and 
 officers of every grade from general to ensign, 
 all in full uniform, were standing about. Rail- 
 way officials displayed an exuberance of zeal, 
 and their badges of block-tin were unusually 
 resplendent. Some wonderful Frenchman, con- 
 nected with the mysterious company that had 
 originally received the concession for this de- 
 lectable line of railway, rushed madly up and 
 down whenever the train stopped, shouting out 
 hoarse words of command to the guards and 
 engine-drivers; and, when they had worked
 
 1 1 8 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 themselves into a perspiration, they jumped 
 into their waggon, from which they emerged 
 again at the next station to go through the 
 same ceremony. Like all Frenchmen of their 
 class now-a-days, they affected a military bear- 
 ing and looked quite proud and happy as 
 they hurried about, evidently under the im- 
 pression that the spectators regarded them as 
 great captains who were kindly showing the 
 barbarous Russians how to manage a railway. 
 Nothing inclines me more to a pleasant train 
 of kindly thoughts than the contemplation of 
 a Frenchman under such circumstances. His 
 vanity is so harmless, and it makes the poor 
 fellow so happy, that it would be a positive sin 
 to do anything which could spoil his illusions. 
 The cause of all this holiday display and 
 feverish excitement I did not learn till I 
 reached the Warsaw station. There we were 
 all hurried out of the train as quickly as 
 possible and directed to enter the waiting- 
 room, the doors of which were immediately 
 locked. Our train at once moved on, and 
 was soon succeeded by another, a special
 
 Warsaw. 1 1 9 
 
 one, in which were the Grand Duke Con- 
 stantine and his suite. 
 
 The Grand Duke had been on a short visit 
 to his brother, the Emperor Alexander, at St. 
 Petersburg, for the purpose, it was said, of 
 tendering his resignation as Viceroy of Poland. 
 Through a window of the waiting-room I saw 
 the Grand Duke descend from his carriage, 
 and at the same moment the Grand Duchess 
 with her children hurried forward to welcome 
 him on his return. The platform was crowded 
 with general officers in brilliant uniforms, who 
 offered their respectful greetings to his Imperial 
 Highness. 
 
 When the Grand Duke Constantine, the 
 Grand Duchess and their children, had driven 
 away surrounded by their escort, and the mili- 
 tary crowd on the platform had dispersed, the 
 railway officials turned their attention to myself 
 and fellow-travellers. 
 
 At the door of the station I had given up 
 my passport to a police officer, and I was 
 now directed to proceed to a little office in 
 the waiting-room to get a receipt for that
 
 1 20 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 document. I mentioned who I was to the 
 clerk, and he handed me a bit of litho- 
 graphed paper, about two inches long and 
 an inch wide, in which he had filled up in 
 writing two vacant spaces, one with my name, 
 the other with the date of my arrival. My 
 baggage was then minutely searched, not for 
 contraband goods, as I had last come from 
 Wilna, but for incendiary documents, fire- 
 arms, and infernal machines. Nothing of a pro- 
 hibited nature was found, and I was allowed 
 to re-arrange my effects as well as I could, 
 and lock my portmanteau and travelling-bag. 
 
 I then sent a porter for a carriage to take me 
 to the hotel, and, during his absence, which 
 lasted about half an hour, a police officer that 
 I had not seen before came and asked me if 
 I had in my pockets any forbidden documents 
 or any weapons. I answered in the negative ; 
 but he seemed to doubt what I said, for he 
 proceeded to search me, but he found nothing 
 to excite his attention except an old cigar case, 
 which he regarded with a good deal of curi- 
 osity. It had been given to me, filled with 
 
 *
 
 Warsaw. lit 
 
 good Havaima cigars, as long ago as 1851, by 
 one of the chiefs of the great organ of the 
 Press at the close of a tete-a-tete dinner at his 
 club. I had kept it through all these years as a 
 memento of that pleasant dinner and of many 
 agreeable hours which I had passed in the 
 company of the donor. It was a good deal 
 worn and weather-beaten. It had been with 
 me all through Italy and Greece, on the 
 Danube, and in the Crimea, and its contents 
 had helped to solace me in many a weary 
 ride through the wilds of Asia Minor, of 
 Palestine, and Egypt, but it had never before 
 excited the attention of a policeman. 
 
 " Why do you carry about with you so old 
 a cigar case ?" he asked. I answered that it 
 was more valuable in my eyes than a new one, 
 because it was a souvenir. He looked per- 
 plexed. He took out, one by one, the cigars 
 which it contained, examined them, and then 
 put them slowly back in their places. At 
 length he returned me the cigar case, but with 
 evident suspicions of its being an object suffi- 
 ciently doubtful to deserve confiscation.
 
 122 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 "What countryman are you?" he then asked. 
 
 " I am an Englishman," I answered. 
 
 " Are you quite sure," he inquired, " that 
 you are not a Frenchman?" 
 
 " I am perfectly sure," I replied, " that I 
 am not a Frenchman." Here the porter came 
 up to say that the carriage I had asked for 
 was arrived. I gave him my baggage, and 
 was proceeding to follow him out, when a 
 police officer at the door asked to see the 
 receipt which had been given me for my pass- 
 port. After he had looked at it for some 
 time, he said it was not in order, and that I 
 must go back and have it changed. I did as 
 I was told ; and when the clerk who had given 
 me " the bit of paper " heard that it was not 
 in order he smiled pleasantly, seemed to make 
 some alterations with his pen, and handed it 
 me back. But again the cautious Cerberus at 
 the door found an error in the document, and 
 said it must be rectified. I again appealed to 
 my friend the clerk, who this time seemed 
 thoroughly amused. He took the receipt 
 between his finger and thumb, touched it with
 
 Warsaw. 1 23 
 
 his pen, and then told me, with a confident 
 air, that it was quite correct. The man at the 
 door again carefully scrutinized this wonderful 
 receipt, which in all contained but three written 
 words. This time, luckily, he seemed satisfied, 
 and allowed me to pass out. 
 
 Near the carriage I found the police officer 
 who had taken such an interest in my cigar case. 
 I asked him if he were a Russian ? he said no, 
 that he was a Pole. " And are the other police 
 officers," I said, " with whom I have spoken, 
 Poles?" He replied that they were. It was 
 for that very reason, possibly, I thought, that 
 they were afflicted with the defect, so ob- 
 noxious to Talleyrand, of " trop de zele" 
 
 I drove from the station to the wooden 
 pontoon-bridge which crosses the Vistula from 
 the suburb of Praga to the town of Warsaw. 
 As we proceeded across at a moderate pace, 
 I had an opportunity of admiring the appear- 
 ance of the city from that point of view, which 
 is, perhaps, one of the best. The most 
 striking object was a huge pile of building 
 crowning an eminence on my right hand.
 
 1 24 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 The walls were covered with stucco, painted 
 of a dull yellow colour, and entirely devoid of 
 architectural beauty of any kind. Its massive 
 dimensions, however, and its position on a 
 height which rises perpendicularly from the 
 level of the river, give it an imposing appear- 
 ance. This was the zamek, or Royal Palace. 
 By a winding road we ascended slowly from 
 the river's banks till we came to the open 
 place in front of the Vice-regal residence, on 
 one side of which stands a very thin column of 
 about fifty feet high, with an enormous capital 
 of the composite order, on which is the statue 
 of the Polish king, Sigismund III. So entirely 
 out of proportion is the diameter of the shaft 
 of the column with the size of the super- 
 structure, that, at a distance, you might take 
 the statue for an acrobat balancing himself on 
 the end of a pole. 
 
 We turned to the right out of this open 
 place, and drove along the " Regent Street " 
 of Warsaw, which is called in French "the 
 Faubourg de Cracovie." I was agreeably 
 surprised at the animation of the scene. The
 
 Warsaw. 125 
 
 footpaths were thronged with pedestrians, and 
 the. carriage-way crowded with vehicles of every 
 description. There was nothing to indicate to 
 a superficial observer that the town was in a 
 state of siege. The number of military was 
 .not greater than in the "Nefskoi Prospekt" 
 at St. Petersburg, and the only feature which 
 corresponded with what I had read of Warsaw 
 in the newspapers, was that the men all wore 
 caps or wide-awake hats, arid that the women 
 were dressed in black. About ten minutes' 
 driving from the zamek brought me to the 
 Hotel de Europe. 
 
 It was a large, oblong block, four stories 
 high, with two entrances, one through a 
 courtyard in the "Faubourg de Cracovie," 
 and the other, and principal one in the im- 
 mense platz, which runs from the latter street 
 to the Saxon Gardens. This hotel was built 
 by subscription, and is conducted something 
 on the principle of the Hotel du Louvre 
 at Paris, each floor being a sort of separate 
 establishment under the care of a superinten- 
 dent. The prices were moderate, but the
 
 126 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 rent of the apartments was arranged in what 
 seemed to me an original manner. 
 
 The sleeping-rooms on the first floor con- 
 tained each two or more beds, and you were 
 charged in the bill according to the number. 
 The waiter assured me that no person of 
 condition ever thought of sleeping in anything 
 under a double-bedded room at least, and 
 that a traveller's social position was known 
 by the number of beds in his apartment, just 
 as the rank of a mandarin is known by his 
 buttons. Not being ambitious, I fixed upon 
 a room with two beds, agreeing to pay for 
 both, as if I had been, not " two single gentle- 
 men rolled into one," but like Mrs. Malaprop's 
 Cerberus, " two gentlemen at once." 
 
 " You have an English lord for a neigh- 
 bour," said the waiter. 
 
 " And how many beds does he pay for? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " He pays for seven," said the waiter, with 
 a look of pride, " a British peer could not pay 
 for less. He is a great man," continued the 
 waiter, " he has promised the Polish patriots
 
 Warsaw. 127 
 
 to send an English army to their assistance if 
 they will only hold out against the Russians a 
 little longer. He is brave, too : he would not 
 salute the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess 
 when they drove past him in the street the 
 other dav."
 
 128 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 THE CONSUL-GENERAL. 
 
 EARLY the next morning I received a visit 
 from Colonel Annenkoff, aide-de-camp to the 
 Emperor, and employed on special service in 
 Poland. Though aide-de-camp to His Imperial 
 Majesty, and a colonel, M. Anneukoff is little 
 more than twenty-seven years of age. He owes 
 his rapid advancement, however, entirely to 
 his own merit. Though heir to a handsome 
 fortune, he worked as hard, when a pupil in the 
 Ecole des pages, as if he were to be entirely 
 dependent upon his profession, and carried off 
 the first prize at his examination. Though 
 young and wealthy, he resisted the temptation 
 of joining one of those brilliant cavalry regi- 
 ments always quartered in the neighbourhood 
 of the court, and preferred entering amongst
 
 'The Consul-General. 129 
 
 the hard-working officers of the Russian staff, 
 of which he is one of the most promising mem- 
 bers. He speaks English fluently, has been a 
 good deal in London, and is honorary member 
 of one of our military clubs. 
 
 He told me that he was directed by Count 
 de Berg to let me know that his Excellency 
 received the letters which I had sent him the 
 evening before, and that he would be glad to 
 see me if I called at the palace that afternoon. 
 
 After speaking to me for some time in that 
 frank, honest, and ingenuous way on the Polish 
 question, which I have always remarked in 
 him, Colonel Annenkoff took his leave, pro- 
 mising to return and accompany me to Count 
 Berg at the hour appointed for my reception. 
 
 Shortly after his departure, Colonel Stanton, 
 the British Consul-General, at whose house I 
 had left, the night before, a letter, addressed to 
 him by Lord Napier, called and invited me to 
 dine with him on the following day. On hear- 
 ing that I was going to see Count Berg, he bid 
 me tell his Excellency that he would be happy 
 to present me to the Grand Duke Constantine. 
 K
 
 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 Colonel Stanton is an officer of engineers, 
 He has been through the Crimean war, and 
 was one of the Commissioners appointed by 
 the British Government to determine the line 
 of frontier at Bolgrad in Bessarabia about 
 which a misunderstanding had arisen after 
 the congress of Paris. His manner and ap- 
 pearance are exceedingly good, and when in 
 uniform, as I had the pleasure of seeing him 
 a few days afterwards at a levee at the palace, 
 he looked in every way a worthy representative 
 of the officers of the British army. 
 
 He told me that the Polish society of War- 
 saw was very much irritated against me, 
 because they fancied that I was the author 
 of some letters, dated from Wilna, which had 
 appeared in The Morning Herald. 
 
 I gave him my word that I was not the 
 author of the letters he mentioned, and that I 
 had never written a word in TJie Morning 
 Herald, or in any other newspaper, on the 
 Polish question. I did this, not that I sup- 
 posed for an instant that Colonel Stantou 
 shared in the idea of his Polish friends with
 
 'The Consul-General. 131 
 
 regard to ine, but simply that he might be in 
 a position to contradict the statement if again 
 made in his presence. The author of the letters, 
 I said, I believed to be a person who had been 
 in Wilna at the same time as myself, and who 
 subsequently went back to St. Petersburg. 
 
 I have never seen these letters, and, there- 
 fore, can form no judgment upon their merits, 
 except from the reports of others. But 
 whether they be good or bad, abusive, or in 
 praise of England, provoking to bloodshed, or 
 exhorting to peace, I positively object to 
 having thrust upon me the responsibility of 
 writings to which I am a total stranger. 
 
 These writings attracted no public attention 
 in England, for the reason, possibly, that they 
 bore the mark, as all such writings do, of 
 being written to order, and not according to 
 matured judgment and honest conviction. 
 With regard to the effect which such pro- 
 ductions have upon the public mind, they 
 may take literary rank with the advertise- 
 ments of cheap tailors, like Moses and Son. 
 
 It is strange that since the breaking out of 
 K 2
 
 132 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 the Insurrection in Poland, every Englishman 
 who visited the country was supposed to be 
 the correspondent of London newspapers. I 
 lay under the suspicion of the general 
 public for several weeks of being the corre- 
 spondent of one or other of the great London 
 journals. 
 
 It is not a pleasant thing to be thought 
 a newspaper correspondent in a' town in a 
 state of siege. People, wherever you happen 
 to go, scowl or look pleasant, are friendly 
 or ferocious, according as their views coincide 
 with, or differ from, those of the paper by 
 which you are supposed to be employed. 
 In any assembly that you enter, all confi- 
 dential conversation amongst those present 
 ceases at once, as if you were a member of 
 the secret police, come to report the words 
 and actions of the company. Every one with 
 whom you come into contact plays a part. 
 There is either an exaggerated cordiality or a 
 stern reserve ; a wish to cajole you into good 
 nature, or to make you ashamed of the 
 iniquity of our ways.
 
 The Consul-General . 
 
 The newspaper correspondent in most 
 countries is looked upon as a literary de- 
 tective, who is thought to be very useful 
 by some, or very disagreeable by others, but 
 whose occupation is not considered by any 
 to be quite as venerable as that of a bishop, 
 or as distinguished as that of a Lord High 
 Chancellor. 
 
 In Warsaw the correspondent was in this 
 peculiar position, that if suspected of abetting 
 the Insurrection, he was ordered out of the 
 country by the police, and if he wrote against 
 the National Government, he ran the risk of 
 being murdered. A writer in a London 
 journal left the kingdom of Poland by direc- 
 tion of the Russian authorities, and joined 
 his family in Moscow. A writer in the 
 Komunaly* was murdered by order of the 
 National Government, and sent into eternity. 
 The first still continues his arguments in 
 favour of the Insurrection from a distance 
 the latter is silenced for ever. 
 
 * Miniszewski.
 
 134 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 COUNT DE BERG. 
 
 I FOUND Count de Berg lodged in the 
 Royal Palace, in apartments adjoining those 
 of the Grand Duke Con stan tine. The con- 
 trast between General Moravieff and Count 
 de Berg in appearance and manner is most 
 striking. The Governor- General of Lithuania 
 is inclined to obesity, is short of stature, 
 and is lame from a wound received in the 
 leg when a youth at the battle of Borodino. 
 His features coincide with the popular idea in 
 the west of Europe of a Russian face high 
 cheek bones, a nez retrousse, and small sharp 
 eyes. The expression of his face is stern, his 
 voice is deep-toned and dissonant, and his 
 manner is trenchant and abrupt, like that of
 
 Count de Berg. 135 
 
 a man accustomed to command and to be 
 obeyed. 
 
 Count de Berg is seventy-three years of age, 
 but looks twenty years younger. He is tall 
 and slight, and full of nervous activity. His 
 features are regular, and when a young man 
 he must have been remarkably good-looking. 
 His voice is soft and sympathetic, and his 
 general tone and bearing have all the well- 
 bred animation and graceful cheerfulness of 
 the grand seigneurs of the old school a 
 type now rarely met with except in some of 
 the aristocratic saloons of the Faubourg St. 
 Germain. 
 
 His career has been most eventful as well 
 as unceasingly active. When a youth he 
 was present at the different battles which took 
 place between the troops of Napoleon I. and 
 the Russian army in the retreat from Moscow. 
 He entered Paris with the allied armies, and 
 was employed in several important missions 
 during the occupation. After the peace he 
 was sent on a scientific expedition to the 
 wild country bordering the Caspian Sea, to
 
 136 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 discover if a safe communication could be 
 opened between that part of the Russian 
 Empire and India. He was for some years 
 employed in the diplomatic service in Italy, 
 and was afterwards attached to the Russian 
 Embassy at Constantinople as military agent. 
 In 1831, during the period of the Polish 
 Revolution, he was chief of the staff of the 
 Russian army, and was employed to negotiate 
 with the Polish generals during the siege of 
 Warsaw. Subsequently, during ten years, he 
 occupied a high command in Poland. 
 
 On the breaking out of the Crimean war 
 he was appointed by the Emperor Nicholas 
 Governor General of Finland, with a large 
 army under his orders for its protection from 
 invasion. During his vice-royalty in Finland, 
 he did much for the improvement of that 
 province. He drained lakes, cut canals, con- 
 structed roads, protected commerce, and was 
 untiring in his efforts to improve the con- 
 dition of the labouring classes. 
 
 About a twelve-month since, he was sent 
 to Warsaw to act conjointly with the Grand
 
 Count de Berg. 137 
 
 Duke Constantino in the government of the 
 Polish kingdom, and when his Imperial High- 
 ness retired from his post in last September, 
 Count de Berg was appointed by the Emperor 
 to be the Grand Duke's successor. 
 
 Count de Berg is a Protestant, but his 
 wife, who is an Italian of a noble Lombard 
 house, is a Catholic. Count de Berg has 
 been, during his life, a good deal in England, 
 for which country he has a strong partiality. 
 His daughter he placed for her education 
 in a Catholic convent at Roehampton, near 
 London. 
 
 During several months I saw a great deal 
 of Count de Berg, and had ample oppor- 
 tunities of judging of his character. He is 
 eminently religious religious after the man- 
 ner of the knights of old, who feared God 
 and honoured the sovereign, and with whom 
 fidelity to the crown was an article of faith. 
 His private life is as pure and almost as 
 austere as that of an anchorite. All day long 
 and the greater part of the night he is 
 unceasingly busy with the never-ending toil
 
 138 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 of his office. He does not go to bed till long 
 after midnight, and rises at six in the morning. 
 
 Though unbounded in his hospitality, he 
 himself takes but one hurried meal in the day, 
 and is as abstemious with regard to wine as 
 if he were a disciple of Father Mathew. It is, 
 perhaps, owing to this abstemious life which 
 he has led for years, that he owes the youthful 
 freshness of his character, and that marvellous 
 intellectual and physical energy which would 
 be remarkable even in the prime of manhood. 
 
 It may be easily supposed that the Viceroy 
 of Poland does not lie upon a bed of roses. 
 For him there is no hour of quiet cheerfulness. 
 From his rising to his lying down he hears of 
 nothing but courts-martial, inquiries, execu- 
 tions, assassinations, murders, sorrow, and ruin. 
 And in the midst of this are the rival am- 
 bitions, the jealousies, the intrigues, and the 
 treasons to be found in every court, great and 
 small.
 
 The Spirit of the Press. 139 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF THE PRESS. 
 
 IT has been an old custom at the Viceregal 
 court of Warsaw, that a secretary or the 
 aide-de-camp on duty should each night read 
 to the lieutenant of the Emperor extracts 
 from the principal papers of Europe, com- 
 menting on the affairs of Poland. I have been 
 present at some of these readings, which, in 
 general, consisted of the most savage abuse of 
 Count de Berg himself, and that often in a style 
 of Billingsgate which would make even a trans- 
 atlantic journalist hide his diminished head. 
 Then there were astounding recitals of events 
 said to have taken place at our own doors 
 of women dishonoured, others beaten with 
 the knout, of churches desecrated, of lawless
 
 140 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 bloodshed and revolting tortures all asserted 
 to have been perpetrated by order of Count 
 de Berg. At first I listened with terror whilst 
 these falsehoods and that wild abuse were 
 being read to the lieutenant of the Emperor, 
 lest his anger should be excited and prompt 
 him to acts of needless severity. But he lis- 
 tened throughout with the calm of a well- 
 disciplined mind, which made 'me inwardly 
 thank Heaven that it was he, and not some 
 violent and headstrong man that had been 
 sent to govern unhappy Poland.
 
 The Grand Duke Const antine. 141 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 THE GRAND DUKE CONSTANTINE. 
 
 IT was at his Sunday morning levee that I 
 had the honour of being presented to the 
 Grand Duke Constantine. His Imperial High- 
 ness shook hands with me and invited me to 
 follow him into his private study. When the 
 door was closed he sat down at a small table 
 in the centre of the room, and told me to 
 take a chair near him. 
 
 The Grand Duke Constantine is in the 
 prime of life, is of middle stature, with a well- 
 formed head and delicate and expressive fea- 
 tures. He speaks English fluently and with 
 a certain elegance, and has the staid and quiet 
 manner of a high-bred gentleman. With 
 remarkable lucidity and a certain eloquence,
 
 142 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 he sketched the most remarkable events in the 
 history of Poland, from the time of the annex- 
 ation of that country to Russia, down to his 
 appointment as Viceroy of the kingdom. 
 
 " I came here," the Grand Duke said, " to 
 try if, by ample concessions and a kind and 
 conciliatory policy, I could not establish order 
 and quiet in Poland. I had full powers to carry 
 into effect my plans for reforming whatever 
 abuses existed in the country, and for con- 
 vincing the Poles by acts that our sole desire 
 was to see the country prosperous and happy. 
 We wished to secure a good local government 
 to the Poles, to place in their own hands the 
 administration of laws framed by themselves, 
 to place natives of the kingdom in every post 
 of trust and honour, to establish civil and reli- 
 gious liberty, to make all men equal before the 
 law, and to deal out impartial and even-handed 
 justice to all classes of the community. The 
 Emperor thought that in sending me, his 
 brother, to carry his benevolent intentions 
 into effect, he was giving a pledge to the Poles 
 of the sincerity of his wishes for their welfare.
 
 'The Grand Duke Const antine. 143 
 
 That I came as the representative of concilia- 
 tion with the power and with the firm intention 
 to redress every real grievance of which the 
 Poles complained, and to grant every legitimate 
 demand which they had addressed to the Rus- 
 sian Government, was known to the whole 
 world. 1 arrived here with my wife and chil- 
 dren, full of confidence in the good sense, the 
 loyalty, and the honour of a Christian and 
 civilized people. Strong in these sentiments, 
 I went, not very many hours after my arrival, 
 to the theatre. On coming out a man advanced 
 towards me, and, thinking he had some request 
 to make, I bent down to listen. He had placed 
 the muzzle of a revolver against my breast, 
 but through my bending forwards the weapon 
 glanced upwards, and, when he fired, the ball 
 instead of entering my heart wounded me in 
 the shoulder. 
 
 " Here," continued the Grand Duke, " are 
 the clothes which I wore on that night, and 
 here is the revolver with which the assassin 
 fired, and here is a dagger with which he was 
 also armed."
 
 144 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 The Grand Duke's valet, an old man, had 
 brought in the clothes ; the revolver and dagger 
 were lying on a side table. 
 
 There, true enough, was the uniform coat, 
 the breast just over the heart pierced by the 
 ball and burnt by the flame, and there was the 
 epaulette rent and blackened by the shot. The 
 shirt, too, which he wore was there it was 
 torn by the bullet and stained with blood. 
 The revolver was of the largest size, and the 
 dagger was of the same kind as those now 
 familiar to Europe as the daggers of the Polish 
 assassins.
 
 'The Grand Duchess. 145 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 THE GRAND DtlCHESS. 
 
 WHILST I was looking with horror at the 
 objects before me, the Grand Duchess entered 
 the room. Her Imperial Highness is general!}' 
 considered as one of the most beautiful women 
 in Europe, and she fully deserves the title. 
 Her figure is tall, lithe, and graceful. Her 
 complexion is of transparent fairness, with a 
 faint changing blush on the rounded cheek. 
 Her eyes are large, dark, and luminous, the 
 nose slightly aquiline, sufficiently so to give 
 an air of command when the features are in 
 repose. But there is an expression of settled 
 melancholy in the lines of the mouth, as if the 
 full and slightly parted lips had long been 
 unused to smile.
 
 146 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 After Her Imperial Highness had honoured 
 me by saying that she was glad to see me in 
 Warsaw, she sat down beside the Grand Duke, 
 by whom I was invited to resume my chair. 
 
 " Had I known," said the Grand Duchess, 
 "that my husband ran any danger in going 
 to the theatre I would have gone with him, 
 and sheltered him from the assassin. But 
 who could suppose that there were people in 
 the world so wicked as to wish to murder one 
 who not only had never done them any harm, 
 but who had come amongst them to do them 
 good? On the day of our arrival from St. 
 Petersburg the assassin was waiting at the 
 station to murder my husband, but he de- 
 ferred making the attempt because I and 
 the children were present. Since then I am 
 never happy when the Grand Duke goes abroad 
 without me, who would shield him from 
 danger." 
 
 " Yes," said the Grand Duke with emotion, 
 " she is a brave and devoted wife." 
 
 The Grand Duchess turned away her head, 
 but I saw that she was weeping.
 
 The Grand Duchess. 147 
 
 " I am now going away from Poland," said 
 the Grand Duke, " because my presence here 
 would be an anomaly. I came to Warsaw as 
 the representative of a conciliatory policy ; that 
 policy has signally failed, another system is 
 about to be introduced, and it must naturally 
 be put into execution under another chief." 
 
 L 2
 
 148 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 ASSASSINATION AND THE CATHOLIC 
 CHURCH. 
 
 THAT evening I dined with Colonel Stan ton. 
 Befofe dinner was announced, I spoke privately 
 to the Consul- General of the coming events in 
 Poland, and I told him of the measures which 
 the Russian Government intended to adopt, 
 and I begged of him, in the name of humanity, 
 to do what he could to avert the coming storm. 
 I asked him, as he had a cypher, to telegraph 
 to Lord Russell, so that his lordship might let 
 those chiefs of the Polish Insurrection who 
 resided in London know how hopeless was 
 their cause, and how terrible were the cala- 
 mities which they were bringing upon their 
 unfortunate country.
 
 Assassination and the Catholic Church. 149 
 
 During dinner the conversation turned 
 upon assassination. The Vice-Consul was sur- 
 prised to find that I looked upon assassination 
 as a crime. He said that he was a Catholic, 
 and that lie knew that the Catholic clergy at 
 home approved of assassination under certain 
 circumstances ; and that in Ireland they 
 preached it openly to their flocks. I made 
 no reply, as I presumed that the Consul- 
 General and the Vice-Consul had official in- 
 formation on the subject. It is for Cardinal 
 Wiseman and Archbishop Cullen to admit or 
 to deny the assertion made, uncoutradicted, 
 at the table of Her Britannic Majesty's repre- 
 sentative in Warsaw. 
 
 I was not aware till then that there was 
 any known religion which sanctified murder, 
 with the exception of that of the Thugs of 
 India, but I hope that I may safely assert 
 that the Catholic Church does not authorize 
 its clergy to preach murder in any country, 
 even in Poland.
 
 1 50 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 A SOIREE AT THE VICEREGAL COURT. 
 
 AFTER dinner I went to a soiree given by the 
 Grand Duchess. The state apartments were 
 filled by a brilliant crowd, but all looked more 
 or less sad and thoughtful. The Grand Duke 
 and Grand Duchess had announced their de- 
 parture for the Tuesday following, and this had 
 thrown a gloom over the company. 
 
 When the Grand Duchess was retiring she 
 told me not to forget that I was to call upon 
 her next morning. 
 
 When I came at the hour appointed, Her 
 Imperial Highness was at luncheon with her 
 children. 
 
 I have seen few things more touching than 
 the love which unites all the members of this
 
 A Soiree at the Viceregal Court. 151 
 
 family together a love evidently made all the 
 deeper and the more binding by the terrible 
 scenes amidst which for many a weary month 
 they had been living. 
 
 " You will be surprised when I tell you," 
 the Grand Duchess said, "that I leave this 
 place with the greatest regret. It is a general 
 idea that we are only attached to places where 
 we have been happy, but yet this palace is 
 dear to me, though it is here that I have first 
 known real sorrow. It was here, in this room, 
 that I received my wounded husband the night 
 the attempt was made upon his life. He had 
 changed his dress and mastered the pain of 
 his wound, and also his weakness from loss of 
 blood, so that I might not be alarmed ; for the 
 doctor thought that in my then state of health 
 any violent shock might have a fatal effect. 
 
 "After the Grand Duke had gone to the 
 theatre and I sat here alone, I felt a sudden 
 presentiment that I was threatened with some 
 terrible calamity. When he returned and 
 entered this room, my joy was unbounded. I 
 asked him if nothing had happened to him
 
 152 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 whilst he was away. He tried to re-assure 
 me by evading an answer; but I knew by 
 the paleness of his face that he had been 
 wounded. 
 
 " It was here, in this room, that he told me 
 of the assassin's attempt and his miraculous 
 escape. It was here, often and often when 
 the Grand Duke was absent, that, my children 
 kneeling by me, I prayed to God to save their 
 father's life. God heard the prayers that came 
 from those little innocent hearts. 
 
 "Every object around me is associated in 
 my mind with some bitter sorrow, or some 
 deceptive gleam of joy. And yet my affections 
 cling to them, just as bright sunny plants 
 grow nfllir graves and twine themselves fondly 
 round some memorial of grief. 
 
 " My old nurse," continued the Grand 
 Duchess, " has never left me since I was born. 
 She came with me to Russia from our quiet 
 home in Germany. She watches over me as if 
 I were her life. Sometimes, when I am alone 
 and unhappy, she tries to comfort me by talk- 
 ing as she used to talk to me long ago, as if
 
 A Soiree at the Viceregal Court. 1 53 
 
 I were still a little child. At the time that an 
 attempt was made to poison the Marquis Wil- 
 lopolsky, she came to me and said, " You must 
 not eat any of that cake which has been sent 
 up with your tea, it does not look nice, it 
 may make you ill." 
 
 Her Imperial Highness was struck by the 
 words of her nurse, as on that very day the 
 Grand Duke had received information from 
 the police, that a man known to them as an 
 agent of the National Government was em- 
 ployed in the viceregal kitchen. The nurse 
 was not aware of this ; her warning was the 
 result of affection for her foster-child ; but the 
 Grand Duchess, conscious that there might be 
 danger, took the necessary precautions that no 
 one should eat of the cake. This is one of the 
 almost hourly-recurring incidents of torturing 
 anxiety for the safety of her husband and chil- 
 dren which the Grand Duchess had to suffer 
 during her residence at Warsaw. 
 
 At the close of my audience, the Grand 
 Duchess said " 1 am superstitious. Look at 
 me and tell me if you feel that you shall soon
 
 154 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 see me again." 1 said I hoped that I should. 
 It does not seem very probable, however, that 
 I shall again see her Imperial Highness in 
 this world. The sufferings she went through 
 in Warsaw have gradually undermined her 
 health, and whilst I write she is dying of 
 a lingering consumption. Her little court 
 at Warsaw was broken up at her departure, 
 and its members went their different ways 
 through the world; but there will be aching 
 hearts among them when they hear that the 
 earth is about to close for ever over her that 
 they loved so well.
 
 The Citadel of Warsaw. 1 5 5 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 THE CITADEL OF WARSAW. 
 
 I HAVE visited the prisons and hospitals of 
 Warsaw, where political offenders are confined. 
 On my first visit to the citadel I went round 
 the ramparts, accompanied by the Governor, 
 who is an old veteran general officer. This 
 fortress covers a large extent of ground. With- 
 in the walls, there is quite a good-sized town. 
 The ground on which the citadel is built is on 
 a level with the street called the Faubourg de 
 Cracovie. The position is not a commanding 
 one, except from the approaches by the river. 
 
 The style of the fortifications is the ordinary 
 one of drawbridges, double moats, curtains 
 and casemates, earthen bastions, &c.; the whole 
 kept perfectly clean and in good repair. The
 
 156 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 cannon and mortars are almost medieval in the 
 primitiveness of their construction, and would 
 be utterly useless in presence of our new 
 artillery. 
 
 A most beautiful view of the town and 
 river is to be had from one of the angles of 
 the fortification. 
 
 The first prison which I visited within the 
 walls of the fortress was that devoted to the 
 poorer class of insurgents. Most of them had 
 been captured with arms in their hands, when 
 forming the rank and file of the Polish bands. 
 Some of them to whom I spoke told me that 
 when taken they were in the most abject 
 misery nearly dead from hunger and with 
 their clothes in rags. The clothes which they 
 had on when I spoke to them were coarse but 
 comfortable. They had been given to them, 
 the prisoners told me, by the Russian author- 
 ities. I asked them if they were supplied 
 with good and sufficient food. They answered 
 that they generally got more than they could 
 eat ; and, in proof of what they said, several 
 showed me the remains of their last meal,
 
 The Citadel of Warsaw. 157 
 
 which they had put aside. The rooms in 
 which they were confined were of large size 
 and might more properly be called halls than 
 rooms. The beds were laid on the floor round 
 the^ walls. They were rolled up in the day- 
 time, and spread out at night by the prisoners 
 themselves. 
 
 It must be remembered that all these 
 prisoners belonged to the labouring classes, 
 though, in general, they claimed to be " noble- 
 men." One youth to whom I spoke told 
 me that he was " noble." His father, he 
 said, was a hackney coachman, but he also 
 Avas noble by descent, and enjoyed the privi- 
 leges accorded by the law to his rank. None 
 of these prisoners were either ragged or dirty, 
 thanks to the Russian officials, who supplied 
 them with the necessary raiment and who 
 enforced habits of cleanliness.
 
 158 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 THE PRISON DIET. 
 
 I VISITED the kitchen where the food is pre- 
 pared for these prisoners. It was spacious and 
 well kept. It was close to the hour for dinner, 
 and pots and saucepans were simmering mer- 
 rily over the fire. I asked to taste the contents 
 of some which I pointed out, and found them 
 very good and palatable. Soup, meat, and 
 vegetables were supplied to each prisoner. My 
 friend, who was with me, felt hungry after his 
 walk round the ramparts, and had, at my re- 
 quest, a full ration supplied to him, in one of 
 the rooms adjoining the kitchen. Had we 
 been at our hotel, he would have asked for the 
 daintiest dishes that the chef-de-cuisine could 
 furnish ; he, however, consumed with evident
 
 The Prison Diet. 159 
 
 satisfaction to his inward man, the whole of 
 his . ration of soup, meat, vegetables, and 
 bread. 
 
 A part of the citadel, known as the Sixth 
 Pavilion, is of a dark and terrible interest to 
 the people of Warsaw. Numberless are the 
 stories told in frightened whispers of the 
 sombre dramas which have been enacted within 
 its walls in former times. It was with the 
 same awe that I crossed its threshold, as I had 
 felt in Venice when crossing the Ponte Sos- 
 piri. I felt my blood chilled as I walked 
 through its long silent corridors, till I reached 
 the point from which I intended commencing 
 my visits to the different cells.
 
 160 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 FEMALE PRISONERS. 
 
 THE first into which I entered 1 found in- 
 habited by a lady of perhaps twenty-six or 
 twenty-seven years of age. She was pretty, 
 and was very neatly dressed in mourning. 
 Her auburn-coloured hair was as carefully 
 arranged a la Marie Stuart as if she were 
 seated in her own drawing-room expecting 
 some morning calls. On a chair was lying 
 open a morocco dressing-bag, evidently of 
 English manufacture, filled with the usual 
 silver-mounted articles. 
 
 I apologized to her for presuming to come 
 into her room. I said that I did not do so 
 from simple curiosity, but from a desire of
 
 Female Prisoners. 161 
 
 being of service to her in any way that I 
 could. 
 
 In reply to a question of mine, she said 
 that she had entered Poland with written com- 
 munications for some of the insurgent chiefs, 
 sewed in the lining of her dress. She was sus- 
 pected, was searched, the correspondence was 
 found, and she was sent a prisoner to Warsaw. 
 
 We had hitherto been conversing in French, 
 when I suddenly saw several Tauchnitz 
 editions of English books lying on her 
 table. One which was open, as if she had 
 just laid it down, was "Aurora Floyd." I 
 then spoke to her in English, at which she 
 seemed surprised and displeased. I pointed 
 to her books which were all English, and I 
 said it was that which made me suppose either 
 that she was an Englishwoman, or that she 
 spoke our language. 
 
 She told me her story. May Heaven help 
 her, and all of her sex in whom sentiment is 
 stronger than reason 1 At the present time I 
 know that she is well, and I hope that she is 
 happy. 
 
 M
 
 1 62 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 The next cell into which I entered was of 
 a larger size, and, it seemed to me, more 
 sparingly furnished. The light came through 
 a square strongly -barred window, fixed high 
 in the wall, and the rays of the sun fell aslant 
 the room, leaving that side where was the 
 window in shadow. At first I thought the 
 place uninhabited, and looked with astonish- 
 ment at a series of cartoons . which covered 
 the walls from floor to ceiling. They were 
 done in charcoal, but it was evident that they 
 had been executed by the hand of a master. 
 The subjects were strange and fantastic, and 
 might have served to illustrate some wild 
 Teutonic legend. 
 
 Whilst lost in surprise at the style of the 
 drawings on the walls, I heard a low sigh 
 close behind me. I turned, and saw, in the 
 shadowed side of the room, a young girl 
 standing beside a bed. As I moved towards 
 her, to ask pardon for my intrusion, T observed 
 that she became red and pale by turns, and 
 trembled violently as if she were in great fear. 
 She was a murderess ! Incited to the crime
 
 Female Prisoners. 163 
 
 by others, she thought herself a second Judith, 
 with beauty to win and courage to strike, and 
 that the act was sanctioned by Heaven, as was 
 that of the Jewish girl. 
 
 M 2
 
 164 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 THE MALE PRISONERS. 
 
 THERE is a large room in that Sixth Pavilion 
 in which I found some fifty prisoners. They 
 were all gentlemen, and several of them were 
 rich landed proprietors. 
 
 They told me that the food supplied to 
 them was good, and more than abundant, and 
 that, moreover, those who pleased were allowed 
 to purchase wines, brandy, tobacco, and any 
 luxury in eating or drinking they thought 
 proper. 
 
 They were, moreover, free to receive any 
 number of books they wished, provided they 
 contained nothing of an incendiary nature re- 
 lating to the Polish question. One of the 
 books which I found in the hands of a young
 
 Male Prisoners. 165 
 
 gentleman was Guizot's Life of Cromwell. I 
 mention this to show that there was a fair 
 latitude allowed with regard to works of a 
 politico-historical nature. 
 
 I visited all the prisoners in solitary con- 
 finement, as well as those who were two or 
 three together in each cell. Where a prisoner 
 had one or more companions, he always looked 
 calm if not cheerful, but those who were 
 alone had generally a vague, anxious look, but 
 not that indescribable expression seen in those 
 wretched beings condemned to solitary con- 
 finement in some of the gaols in England. 
 This I attribute chiefly to the free supply of 
 entertaining and instructive books allowed in 
 the political prisons in Poland.
 
 1 66 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 TORTURE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS. 
 
 DURING the entire time that I remained in 
 Poland, I resorted to every means within 
 my reach to discover if there were any truth 
 in the stories which have appeared in almost 
 every paper in England, from the Times down 
 to the Halfpenny Journal, of political prisoners 
 having been tortured by the Russians. 
 
 I here protest solemnly that no case of the 
 kind has ever come to my knowledge. Several 
 gentlemen, whose acquaintance I made in the 
 political prisons in Poland, and chiefly in the 
 citadel of Warsaw, are now free, and are will- 
 ing to declare, if called upon, that not only 
 have they never been tortured in any way 
 themselves, but that they did not know of a
 
 Torture of Political Prisoners, 167 
 
 single one of their friends or acquaintances 
 having so suffered. The persons to whom 
 I allude are men of title and fortune, to 
 whom the happiness of Poland is as dear 
 as it is to Prince Czartorisky or any of his 
 companions in the National Government, but 
 who protest against the name of Pole be- 
 coming synonymous with that of liar and 
 assassin. 
 
 Nearly all these gentlemen have written to 
 me on the subject of the treatment which 
 they received from the Russian officials during 
 their imprisonment, and these letters have 
 been shown to those whose duty it is to 
 obtain truthful information of what is passing 
 in Poland. 
 
 In the hospitals for the wounded and sick 
 Polish prisoners in this country, the order 
 and cleanliness were excellent, and the medical 
 attendance unexceptional ; the pharmaceutical 
 laboratory in the citadel of Warsaw is well 
 worthy the visit of scientific men. The director 
 is a German professor of distinguished ability. 
 The retorts, the crucibles, and all the multi-
 
 1 68 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 farious apparatus, are of the most improved 
 kind, and are kept in a state of delicate neat- 
 ness, which would delight the heart of the 
 most scrupulous analyser.
 
 Attempt to Murder Count de Berg. 169 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 ATTEMPT TO MURDER COUNT DE BERG. 
 
 A FEW days after the departure of the Grand 
 Duke Constantine I was dining in company 
 with the brother-in-law of the Marquis Willo- 
 polsky, and some other Polish gentlemen, when 
 the news was brought to us that an attempt 
 had been made on the life of Count de Berg. 
 I had been then but a very short time in 
 Warsaw, and refused to give credit to such 
 extraordinary intelligence. Not so my com- 
 panions. They knew what they call the " red 
 party," namely, that of the National Govern- 
 ment, better. 
 
 The landed proprietors, as they have often 
 since told me, were aware that the idea of the 
 foreign revolutionists, once that they had esta-
 
 170 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 blished their influence in Poland, was to keep 
 perpetually renewed a barrier of blood between 
 Poles and Russians. Their hope was that the 
 latter would be thus maddened into frenzy, 
 and driven into sanguinary excesses like those 
 of the Turks in Scio and Damascus, and the 
 Sepoys in India. Poland was to be sacrificed ; 
 and they, the landed proprietors, who had 
 everything to lose, would naturally be the first 
 victims. Burning, pillage, and massacre were 
 hoped for, even the extermination of an entire 
 people, if it could only bring about a general 
 war in which it was thought the anti-religious 
 and anti-social element would be sure to gain 
 the ascendant. It was this knowledge which 
 caused the panic amongst my companions. 
 
 General Luders, whilst walking in the Saxon 
 garden, was attacked by assassins, and carried 
 home it was thought mortally wounded. He 
 was succeeded as Viceroy of Poland by the 
 Grand Duke Constantine, whose murder, as I 
 have already related, was attempted not many 
 hours after his arrival in Warsaw. And the 
 life of Count de Berg, the present lieutenant
 
 Attempt to Murder Count de Berg. 171 
 
 of the Emperor, was only saved by a sort 
 of miracle from the assassins of the National 
 Government. 
 
 The intervals between these events were 
 filled up by almost daily murders in the 
 streets, the cafes, and the hotels and private 
 houses of Warsaw, as well as in the towns 
 and villages throughout the kingdom. 
 
 It was supposed by Czartorisky, Mazzini, 
 Kossuth, &c. that the murder of Count de 
 Berg would cause the cup to overflow, and that 
 at length the long wished-for massacre of the 
 Poles by the Russian soldiery would take place, 
 and that the indignant "peoples" of Europe 
 would rise at the call of their natural leaders, 
 and that the war of democracy against kings, 
 priests, and statesmen, would rage from the 
 Nile to the Neva, and from the remote east 
 to tjie shores of Ireland, for the Emerald Isle 
 had an important part allotted to her in the 
 projected drama.
 
 172 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE PANIC. 
 
 As I have already said, my companions on the 
 day of the attack on the life of Count de Berg 
 were seized with a panic, and fled. It was a 
 little after 5 o'clock, on a beautiful autumn 
 evening. Surprised and bewildered I went out 
 into the streets. At that hour and at that 
 season they are generally thronged with people. 
 Every door and window was closed, and the 
 streets and squares through which I passed 
 were as silent and deserted as if the city were 
 stricken with the plague. 
 
 Unable to obtain any details, but seeing 
 from the appearance of the town that it must 
 be true that Count de Berg had been attacked 
 by the assassins of the National Government, I
 
 The Panic. 173 
 
 hurried away to the royal palace. There was 
 the usual guard on the staircase, but there was 
 no one in the ante-room where the aides-de- 
 camp wait. My heart sunk within me ; I was 
 afraid the Count had been killed. I heard voices 
 in the next room, and forgetting all etiquette I 
 pulled open the door, and to my great delight 
 beheld his Excellency, looking hale and unin- 
 jured, seated at dinner surrounded by his staff. 
 
 The meal was soon over, and we all accom- 
 panied Count de Berg to his study, where coffee 
 is usually served. 
 
 We had scarcely entered, when news was 
 brought that the soldiers who had been di- 
 rected to take possession of Zamoyski House 
 had begun to throw the furniture out of the 
 windows. Count de Berg was, as it may be 
 supposed, exceedingly angry when he received 
 this intelligence, and at once despatched Colonel 
 Annenkoff to prevent any further destruction 
 of property, and to order that the severest 
 military discipline should be observed amongst 
 the soldiers occupying the house where the 
 attempted assassination had taken place.
 
 174 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 Count de Berg knew well what were the 
 ulterior hopes of the revolutionary party in 
 ordering an attempt to be made upon his life, 
 and therefore it was that he was so grieved 
 that anything which could be made to look 
 like a disposition to lawless retribution should 
 have been shown by the soldiery. 
 
 Later that night, I went with Colonel An- 
 nenkoff to Zamoyski House. .The orders of 
 Count de Berg had been obeyed, and a noise- 
 less quiet reigned throughout the vast building. 
 We passed the sentries and moved along 
 amongst the sleeping soldiers, stretched on 
 the floors in the corridors and saloons. Almost 
 all the windows in the front of the house were 
 broken j and here and there in the rooms was 
 to be seen the wreck of what had once been 
 a handsome piece of furniture. The remains 
 of the articles which had been flung through 
 the windows were, before our arrival, collected 
 in a heap near the statue of Copernicus and 
 burnt. The panic amongst the upper classes, 
 caused by the attack on the life of Count de 
 Berg, continued for several days, and did not
 
 The Panic. 
 
 '75 
 
 entirely cease till they were convinced by 
 experience that the line of conduct which 
 his Excellency intended to pursue was one of 
 impartial justice, but always, when occasion 
 offered, tempered by mercy.
 
 176 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 THE MONASTERIES. 
 
 WHEN the cold weather came on, the Russian 
 soldiers, who during the summer had lived 
 chiefly under canvas, were ordered into bar- 
 racks. As there was not sufficient accommo- 
 dation in the Government buildings for the 
 unusually large force stationed in Poland, it was 
 determined to quarter some of the men in the 
 monasteries, which, in Warsaw especially, are 
 very numerous and of enormous dimensions. 
 
 On the evening of the very first day that 
 troops had been placed in the different convents 
 in Warsaw, I went to see in what manner 
 they were lodged, and if their behaviour was 
 as orderly and quiet as it ought to be within 
 the walls of an edifice dedicated to the worship
 
 'The Monasteries. 177 
 
 of God. I found that the soldiers had been 
 invariably quartered in the cells, refectories, 
 and dormitories on the ground floor, or in a 
 detached wing, whilst the upper stories were 
 entirely left to the members of the religious 
 orders residing in the convent. I observed 
 that there was a strong guard at the principal 
 gates, and that sentries were posted at short 
 intervals round the building. 
 
 Up to this time, the monasteries and convents 
 in Warsaw had not been visited by the Russian 
 police, and their precincts were, by order of 
 the Viceroy, to be considered as sacred, and 
 the inmates were not in any way to be inter- 
 fered with, lest the Poles should be shocked 
 in their religious prejudices. The consequence 
 was, that as far as the Russian Government 
 was concerned, these edifices, and all that 
 took place therein, were enveloped in an im- 
 penetrable veil of mystery. 
 
 The indications that the coming winter 
 promised to be one of unusual severity pro- 
 duced an increased anxiety in the mind of 
 Count de Berg for the comfort of the troops, 
 
 N
 
 178 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 and he determined to follow the example given 
 him by the Sovereign Pontiff himself, and 
 quarter the soldiers who were without barracks 
 in the unoccupied portions of the monasteries. 
 
 In Rome the French troops are quartered 
 in the religious establishments, and many of 
 the officers are lodged even in the churches, 
 where apartments were fitted up for them, as 
 at Santa Maria Maggiore. 
 
 Scarcely had the Russian soldiers taken up 
 their residence in the monasteries of Warsaw, 
 than the press of Western Europe teemed with 
 the most harrowing details of the atrocities 
 committed by them in the churches, monas- 
 teries, and convents in Poland. The frightful 
 sacrilege, the impious crimes of lust and 
 plunder, the robbery of sacred vessels, the 
 desecration of graves amidst the wild blasphe- 
 mous ravings of a drunken soldiery, which 
 history attributes to the French army in Spain, 
 were scarcely to be compared to the crimes 
 said by some organs of the press to have been 
 perpetuated by Russians in the churches and 
 monasteries of Warsaw, No wonder that a
 
 'The Monasteries. 179 
 
 shudder of horror ran through the civilized 
 world when such events were told with graphic 
 minuteness by some of the leading newspapers 
 in Europe. 
 
 When these terrible recitals were sent to 
 me, to inquire into their truth, I was perfectly 
 bewildered. There, in great London journals, 
 and in excellent English, were all the minute 
 details of the most astounding horrors said to 
 have occurred under my own eyes. 
 
 I hurried off at once to the places where 
 these sacrilegious crimes were said to have 
 occurred. I was not accompanied by Russian 
 aides-de-camp, or by Government officials, but 
 by two Polish gentlemen, both ardent lovers 
 of their country, and who had abetted with 
 money and influence the insurrection at its 
 outbreak. We questioned everybody who 
 could give us the slightest information on the 
 subject, and I found, to my great relief, that 
 those terrible recitals, which had so startled 
 Europe, were pure fabrications. 
 
 Some of the clergymen, inmates of the 
 monasteries where these horrors were said to 
 
 N2
 
 1 80 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 have occurred, were evidently grieved to see 
 that their unhappy country must bear the 
 stain of such unblushing falsehoods. Three 
 of these clergymen drew up in writing a solemn 
 protest against the statements in the press of 
 the sacrilegious conduct of the Russian soldiers, 
 against whom, on the contrary, they asserted 
 that they had no cause of complaint. They 
 signed this paper in the evening, and on the 
 following morning all three were found, in 
 their cells, apparently at the point of death. 
 The best medical aid was promptly called in, 
 and two of the sufferers were saved,, but the 
 third died in great agony. 
 
 These were anointed priests, ministers in 
 the Church of Christ, exhorting by word and 
 example, according to the commands of their 
 Divine Master, to a love of truth and brotherly 
 union. But their sacred calling was no pro- 
 tection to them in the eyes of the " National 
 Government," by whom, for having signed the 
 document mentioned above, they were con- 
 demned to death.
 
 The Catholic Priesthood. 181 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 THE CATHOLIC PRIESTHOOD AND THE 
 POIGNARD. 
 
 As stated in the preceding chapter, the monas- 
 teries and convents were, under the rule of 
 the Grand Duke, considered as sacred edifices, 
 devoted to the worship of God. The police, 
 therefore, had orders never to enter their pre- 
 cincts for the purpose of making a perquisition, 
 or in any way to interfere with the personal 
 freedom of the inmates. The consequence 
 was, that these places became sanctuaries for 
 the agents of the "National Government," 
 who, safe from the eyes of the police in these 
 " deep solitudes and awful cells," carried on 
 the direction of assassination, of forced con- 
 tributions, and of correspondence with the
 
 1 82 Petersburg and Warsaw 
 
 heads of the insurgent bands, and with the 
 chiefs of the movement in London and Paris. 
 Shortly, however, after the soldiers were 
 quartered in these religious houses, discoveries 
 of the most extraordinary nature were gradually 
 made by the Russian police. Daggers for 
 arming the assassins were found buried in the 
 gardens ; arms and uniforms for the insurgent 
 bands were hid away in the Cells, together 
 with all the materials for printing incendiary 
 proclamations, flying sheets of news, and 
 pamphlets. Finding daggers for the assassins 
 hidden within the walls of the monasteries, 
 coupled with some other circumstances, led 
 many to suppose that the Catholic clergy in 
 Poland approved of assassination. It was 
 believed at the time, from the assertions made 
 by some of " the hanging gendarmerie " who 
 had been captured, that their poignards were 
 blessed by the priests before going to perform 
 their work of blood. I cannot believe in so 
 frightful an accusation as that the anointed 
 priests of a Christian Church could be abettors 
 of murder. I am rather inclined to think
 
 'The Catholic Priesthood. 183 
 
 that the idea was propagated by the revolu- 
 tionary committees in London and Paris, for 
 the purpose of leading ignorant Catholics to 
 suppose that, in the cause of "oppressed 
 nationalities," the Church of Rome did permit 
 assassination. 
 
 It was certainly a most deplorable circum- 
 stance that at the very time assassinations of 
 the most horrible kind were rifest in Poland, 
 a solemn mass should have been offered up in 
 the Eternal City, asking the aid of Heaven for 
 the Poles, and that the avowed representative 
 of the " National Government " was, in his 
 official capacity, invited to be present at the 
 ceremony. 
 
 I can, however, positively state, from my 
 own personal knowledge, that many of the 
 Catholic priests in Warsaw stood as much in 
 awe of the assassins of the National Govern- 
 ment as any simple layman. 
 
 When the astounding fabrications were 
 circulated by the press of Western Europe, 
 of the sacrilegious conduct of the Russian sol- 
 diers in the religious houses in Warsaw, there
 
 1 84 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 were other Catholic priests besides the three 
 mentioned in the preceding chapter who drew 
 up and signed a document in which it was 
 stated that the allegations made against the 
 troops were utterly false. The document was 
 already in my hands, when I was earnestly 
 implored to restore it to the writers ; for the 
 priests said, if were it to become known to the 
 " National Government " that they had dared 
 to tell the truth in such a case, they were 
 sure to be either poisoned or poignarded.
 
 General Trepojf. 185 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 GENERAL TREPOFE. 
 
 SHORTLY after the appointment of Count de 
 Berg as Viceroy of Poland, it was determined 
 to place an officer of rank at the head of the 
 gendarmerie of the kingdom. General Trepoff 
 was accordingly named by the Emperor to 
 that important post. At the time of his nomi- 
 nation he was living quietly with his wife and 
 numerous family of young children. He was 
 possessed of an independent fortune ; he was 
 no longer young, and had earned honours and 
 rank by long years of arduous service. Had 
 he consulted his own inclinations, he would 
 have passed the remainder of his days in un- 
 obtrusive retirement, devoting himself to his 
 domestic cares, to the education of his chil-
 
 i86 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 dren, and to watching over the failing health 
 of his wife. But he was a soldier, and at the 
 call of duty he determined to repair at once 
 to the post to which he had been named. 
 
 The frightful assassinations which were of 
 daily occurrence in Warsaw had filled with 
 horror the public mind in Russia, and the 
 husband and father who had repaired to that 
 ill-fated city, upon which seemed to have 
 fallen the curse of Heaven, had to go through 
 a heart-breaking parting from those he was 
 forced to leave behind. 
 
 I met General Trepoff at dinner at the 
 Viceroy's table, on the day of his arrival in 
 Warsaw. That evening we spoke long and 
 intimately, and I was happy to think that a 
 man so humane and upright, and so free from 
 prejudice, should have been chosen to fill a 
 post in which so much could be done in the 
 cause of Christian pity. 
 
 So great was the affection existing between 
 General Trepoff and his wife, that the latter 
 could not bear the pain of separation ; and the 
 doctors, fearing for the result in one so delicate ;
 
 General T'repoff. 187 
 
 at length consented that she should undertake 
 
 o 
 
 the long and weary journey which was to 
 bring her to her husband. 
 
 Attended by her eldest daughter, a child of 
 fourteen, and a waiting-maid, she started on 
 her way, and after a fortnight's travelling 
 reached Warsaw. 
 
 The joy of meeting between husband and 
 wife was not, however, of long duration. The 
 dark stories which had reached her in her 
 retirement of the stealthy murders and myste- 
 rious deaths of which Warsaw was the scene 
 fell short, she soon learned to know, of the 
 terrible reality. Her love exaggerated the 
 perils which her husband ran in a city swarm- 
 ing with assassins, and her anxiety for his 
 safety, joined to the fatigues of her long jour- 
 ney, were too much for her feeble health, and 
 she died. Her last words were a prayer to 
 Heaven to watch over her husband and her 
 child in that place of terrors. 
 
 I will not attempt to describe the grief of 
 the widower and of his little girl, or the pity 
 that all who had hearts felt for their sufferings.
 
 1 88 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 General Trepoff is a pious man, and in the 
 church where the dead body of his wife was 
 laid during the solemn funereal rites, he asked 
 that prayers should be offered up each day for 
 the repose of her soul. 
 
 From that sad day, every morning the sor- 
 rowing widower, with his little girl, in her 
 mourning dress, walked from the Palais Briihl, 
 where they lived, to the church, and kneeling 
 humbly on the steps of the altar, they joined 
 the officiating priest in prayers for her they 
 had lost. 
 
 Thus day after day they went and came 
 on their mournful mission, till the " National 
 Government" heard that a Russian general 
 walked slowly each morning in the streets of 
 Warsaw, so absorbed in grief for the death of 
 his wife that he took no heed of what was 
 going on around, and that he had no com- 
 panion but his little daughter. The National 
 Government thought it too good an occasion 
 to lose, and they ordered that General Tre- 
 poff should be 'assassinated when on his way 
 to church.
 
 General Trepoff. 189 
 
 Possibly the men of blood who direct these 
 crimes chuckled that night, in their safe re- 
 treats in Paris and London, at the thought 
 that with one blow they would kill the father 
 and break the daughter's heart. 
 
 One morning, bowed down with sorrow 
 his eyes fixed upon the ground, the General 
 walked slowly from the church where he had 
 been praying towards his home, with his 
 little daughter clinging to his arm. Swiftly 
 and noiselessly the assassins glided behind 
 them one seized the child and another, 
 lifting an axe sharp as a razor, aimed a 
 blow at the old man's head. 
 
 But Heaven had heard the dying prayer of 
 his wife ; the axe turned slightly in the hand 
 of the murderer, and instead of cleaving the 
 head of the General 4 , it cut his ear and wounded 
 him in the shoulder. 
 
 Though stunned by the blow, he turned 
 quick as lightning upon his assailant; and 
 seizing him by the throat, he wrenched the 
 hatchet from his grasp, and held him till some 
 Russian soldiers ran to his assistance. He
 
 190 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 then turned to his little daughter, who was 
 lying senseless on the ground, and taking her 
 in his arms he carried her to the nearest shop, 
 where she soon recovered sufficiently to be 
 able to continue her way home. The assassin 
 by whom she had been seized, seeing that the 
 blow struck at the General had failed, had 
 dashed her to the ground and fled.
 
 A Mother's Prayers. 191 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 A MOTHER'S PRAYERS. 
 
 EVERY day during my stay in Lithuania and 
 in the kingdom of Poland, I tried, with all the 
 very limited means within my power, to stop 
 the effusion of blood, and to save from the 
 severities of the law the unhappy beings who 
 had taken part in the insurrection and fallen 
 into the power of the Russian authorities. 
 
 If facts, drawn from the highest and most 
 .reliable sources, could have given additional 
 weight to my words, then powerful I should 
 have been for the attainment of my object. 
 But I met with opposition in places where it 
 was least of all to be expected. The opposi- 
 tion did not come from the Russians or from 
 the Poles, but from persons who, like myself,
 
 192 .Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 were strangers in the country,, and who, 
 having committed themselves to certain views, 
 were determined to support these views at 
 any cost rather than submit to what they 
 considered the humiliation of abandoning their 
 error. Such an attitude would, under ordi- 
 nary circumstances, have been of little conse- 
 quence, but here it tended to perpetuate and 
 increase the horrors of civil war.. To attempt 
 entering into communication with the Poles 
 through such a medium was of course hope- 
 less, and that everything would be done to 
 prejudice the Poles against me was quite natu- 
 ral to expect. The attempt to prejudice the 
 natives against me succeeded to admiration, 
 and for some days after my arrival in Warsaw 
 I found myself as isolated with regard to 
 Polish society as if I had taken up my abode 
 in Novogorod. 
 
 As the sole object of my mission was one of 
 humanity, my first duty was naturally to visit 
 the prisons and hospitals. 
 
 In one of the rooms of the citadel which I 
 entered on the day of my first visit, was con-
 
 A Mother's Prayers. 1 93 
 
 fined as a prisoner a young gentleman named 
 Blumer. 
 
 In answer to my usual questions, he 
 answered frankly that he had nothing to com- 
 plain of with regard to his treatment ; that the 
 food given him was wholesome and abundant ; 
 that he had books to read, which he showed 
 me ; and that his bed was good and his room 
 clean and airy. 
 
 I asked him if I could serve him in any 
 way. He said there was only one thing he 
 desired in the world, and that was that he 
 should be permitted to see and converse with 
 his mother. " She is old," he said, " and I 
 am her only child, and I know that the thought 
 that I am in prison will break her heart ; for 
 she will think that I am perhaps in a dungeon 
 and treated cruelly. I only ask to see her and 
 to assure her that I am well. For myself 
 I do not care ; I am resigned to my fate ; but 
 the thought that my poor mother suffers on 
 my account almost drives me mad." 
 
 His eyes were filled with tears as he 
 spoke. I was greatly touched by that filial 
 o
 
 194 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 love which was stronger than all thoughts 
 of self. 
 
 An hour later I told this young gentleman's 
 story to Count de Berg. The Count was as 
 much affected as I had been, and he promised 
 that my prayer should be granted. 
 
 The old lady went to the citadel, was ad- 
 mitted, and weeping she embraced her son. 
 They were happy tears, for mother and son 
 left the prison together and returned to their 
 home. 
 
 This young gentleman called on me, in 
 company with others of his countrymen whose 
 acquaintance I had made in the citadel, and 
 who then, like him, were free. 
 
 These were my first Polish friends in War- 
 saw, but I gradually came to know others ; and 
 as time wore on, and they saw that all I told 
 them came out true, they shut their ears to 
 those counsels which could only lead to ruin. 
 
 Many a Polish mother promised to remem- 
 ber me in her prayers, and I had then, as I 
 shall ever have, a humble faith that such 
 prayers are acceptable to heaven.
 
 The Carbonari. 195 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 THE CARBONARI. 
 
 DEATH by the poignard of the assassin and by 
 poison, and where the poignard and the poison 
 could not reach by defamation of character 
 by cunningly fabricated lies, and the ruin of 
 opponents compassed by subtle intrigue, are 
 vices which we have all from our childhood 
 learned to look upon as peculiar to the Italian 
 soil. How our young bloods grew chill as we 
 devoured the novel from the Minerva Press 
 which described so graphically some terrible 
 tale of Italian villany, and with what breath- 
 less interest we watched from our place in a 
 crammed theatre the sanguinary career of the 
 bravo with his corked eyebrows and his hoarse 
 voice. 
 
 In the hurry and bustle of after-life, these 
 o 2
 
 1 96 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 first impressions of childhood wear gradually 
 away, holding the same dim place in the 
 memory with our old nurse's fairy tales, and 
 would be blotted out altogether were we not 
 startled from time to time by revelations 
 coming to us from beyond the Alps more 
 dark and horrible than any romance-writer 
 or dramatist had imagined. 
 
 How strange that a land so favoured by 
 nature, with lovely and varied scenes, with 
 genial skies, a teeming soil, and possessing 
 more of the graceful and the beautiful in art 
 than all the rest of the world besides, should 
 be doomed to suffer by the hands of her own 
 children ! 
 
 After the fall of Murat, and the establish- 
 ment of peace throughout Europe, Sir Richard 
 Church, with the consent of the British Go- 
 vernment, went to Naples to organize the 
 army of the restored King of the Two Sicilies. 
 The stronghold of the Carbonari at that time 
 was in the province of Apulia, where they com- 
 mitted the most frightful atrocities under the 
 name of patriotism.
 
 'The Carbonari. 197 
 
 The King appointed General Church his 
 Alter Ego. He endowed him with despotic 
 and irresponsible power, and his mission 
 was to extirpate the Carbonari and restore 
 order to that part of the fair kingdom of 
 Naples. 
 
 Nothing could surpass the terror which Sir 
 Richard Church found that the assassins of 
 the Carbonari had established amongst all 
 classes in Apulia. No one was safe from the 
 dagger or the poison, the instruments of death 
 mainly employed by these ardent patriots. 
 Sir Richard, who has often spoken to me on 
 the subject, showed me many of the docu- 
 ments, emanating from this secret society, 
 which had fallen into his hands. 
 
 The sentences of death issued by this " Na- 
 tional Government " against individuals were 
 signed with blood, and their proclamations 
 and edicts were surmounted by devices of an 
 inverted mitre, an inverted cross, and an in- 
 verted crown. 
 
 Were Sir Richard Church to publish his 
 memoirs of this period of his life, they would
 
 198 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 reveal some terrible features in the secret poli- 
 tical societies of Italy. 
 
 The English general restored order in the 
 province, and amidst the blessings of the 
 entire population returned to Naples to re- 
 ceive the praises of the King and the approval 
 of his own Government. 
 
 Though the Carbonari for a time seemed to 
 have disappeared, the principles -of their orga- 
 nization still lived. 
 
 The doctrine that murder and falsehood are 
 virtues when they are employed in the name of 
 liberty, cannot be propagated with impunity 
 amongst a people. Such instruments cannot 
 be thrown away at will and then forgotten. 
 The nation is familiarised with blood, and 
 crime and virtue are confounded together in 
 the popular mind. The assassin who has been 
 paid to strike in the name of freedom will not 
 hesitate to murder in any other cause for a like 
 recompense. The ex-carbonaro was in his 
 hours of leisure a bravo or a bandit, till the 
 sacred cause of liberty should again require his 
 services.
 
 The Carbonari. 199 
 
 He had not long to wait, for under new and 
 abler chiefs, and under another name, the poli- 
 tical assassin began to ply his dreadful trade 
 in Italy. 
 
 Victor Hugo makes Marie Tudor to say, 
 "Mon pere me disait toujours qu'on ne re- 
 tirait jamais autre chose de la bouche d'un 
 Italien qu'un mensonge ni autre chose de sa 
 poche qu'un poignard." 
 
 I had lived in Italy, and have known 
 amongst Italians some of the noblest and 
 purest of human beings. I have met with 
 many who commanded the respect of all with 
 whom they came into contact, by the stern 
 rectitude of their sentiments and by their pure 
 and spotless lives. And that I believe to be 
 the character of the great majority of the 
 Italian nation. It is for these, then, to show 
 that they are jealous of the fair fame of their 
 country, and that they protest against the 
 name of Italy being associated with the vilest 
 and most atrocious crimes. 
 
 Amidst all the nations of Christendom, Italy 
 stood alone with that dark blot upon her name ;
 
 2OO Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 but now she has a rival in her bacl eminence, 
 and that rival is Poland. But assassination 
 and falsehood are not natural to the country 
 of John Sobieski ; they have been brought 
 thither from the land of Borgia and Machia- 
 velli.
 
 Sentenced to Death. 201 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 SENTENCED TO DEATH. 
 
 ONE evening General Trepoff, who had now 
 been appointed Minister of Police, spoke to 
 me in the following terras : 
 
 " When you first came here, in contradic- 
 tion to what was asserted by others, you told 
 the Poles that they had no material assistance 
 to expect from England, and that France 
 could not act without the concurrence of 
 the British Government. Your words were 
 said to be false. But as time' went on and 
 neither England nor France sent the expected 
 aid, the Poles began to think that it was you 
 that had spoken the truth, and not their soi- 
 disant friends. Then, when a telegram arrived, 
 announcing that the Emperor Napoleon had
 
 2O2 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 proposed a Congress to settle the affairs of 
 Poland, it was shown triumphantly about 
 Warsaw, but you on that very day told every 
 Pole that you met that they must not do 
 anything rash, or allow themselves to be 
 buoyed up with false hopes, because that 
 England would never consent to such a Con- 
 gress, and that consequently it could not 
 possibly take place. 
 
 " When events showed that all that you had 
 said was correct, the Poles would no longer 
 listen to those who had deceived them by false 
 promises, and who had done nothing but lead 
 them deeper and deeper into trouble. In you, 
 however, they have now implicit confidence. 
 
 " The ' National Government ' was so dis- 
 pleased at all this, that they sent an order 
 here that you should be assassinated. Fortu- 
 nately, one of the men designated to murder 
 you revealed the circumstance to us, and I at 
 once took every precaution for your safety. 
 
 " I did not intend to shock you by commu- 
 nicating to you so horrible a circumstance, but 
 fearing that you might not keep sufficiently
 
 Sentenced to Death. 203 
 
 out of the way of danger, I thought it better 
 to put you on your guard. 
 
 " I know that you often sup at the Hotel 
 d'Angleterre, and as you run great risk in 
 so doing, I have ordered additional sentries 
 to be posted near there, and I have also 
 ordered some policemen in plain clothes and 
 well armed to be stationed in the interior of 
 the house." 
 
 From thenceforth I never went out after 
 sunset, unless accompanied by an armed police- 
 man.
 
 2O4 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 TORTURE AT WARSAW. 
 
 As I have already observed, I visited Warsaw 
 filled with sympathy for the Poles, and dis- 
 posed to view their rulers with no friendly eye. 
 So strongly had I prejudged their case, that I 
 must confess that facts had largely accumu- 
 lated within the sphere of my observation before 
 I ventured to draw a conclusion. I associated 
 with Polish families of high social rank, and I 
 found them more afraid of the secret agents 
 of the National Government than of Russian 
 officials. I have met in society Polish ladies 
 whose names I had seen figuring in the co- 
 lumns of newspapers as martyrs in the cause 
 of national freedom ladies, some of whom 
 were described as having been outraged and
 
 Torture at Warsaw. 205 
 
 tortured ; others, who were said to have been 
 insulted for wearing mourning, or made the 
 victims of some other atrocity. At the early 
 period of my acquaintance with these ladies, I 
 felt a kind of shame-faced awe in their pre- 
 sence. Whatever honour they may deserve as 
 martyrs in the cause of their country, it was 
 impossible not to feel that, as women, they 
 had suffered in their social relations. This 
 impression weighed so heavily on my mind 
 that I could never feel or act towards these 
 ladies as I should have done had they not at- 
 tained so painful a notoriety. It seemed as 
 though they ought not to appear in public, 
 as though they ought to shut themselves up 
 and shun a stranger's gaze. I had been some 
 months at Warsaw, when, having dined one 
 day at the house of a Polish nobleman, where 
 a large company was assembled, I, in the 
 course of the evening, said something to Count 
 Gurondsky about the tortures and insults to 
 which some had been subjected. The Count 
 looked astonished, and assured me that the 
 histories I was narrating would sound very
 
 206 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 strangely in the ears of the ladies whom I 
 named, nor would their families be pleased to 
 learn the notoriety that their wives and sisters 
 and daughters had acquired. I was able to 
 adduce certain European journals as my au- 
 thority. The Count opposed his personal 
 knowledge. The next morning I received the 
 following note : 
 
 " MONSIEUR, 
 
 " After you left us yesterday evening, I went 
 round amongst the ladies of my acquaintance, 
 and I was unanimously assured, that neither 
 during the time that they wore mourning, nor 
 since they left it off, have they been arrested 
 or insulted by the police or soldiers. 
 
 "Accept, Monsieur, the assurance of my 
 distinguished sentiments, 
 
 "N. GURONDSKT." 
 
 The subject of female martyrdom being 
 once broached, I had no longer any difficulty 
 in speaking on the subject. The indignation 
 of the ladies to whom I talked of these mat-
 
 'Torture at Warsaw. 207 
 
 ters was always vehement. I remember on 
 one occasion how a number of them railed 
 against Mirochawlski and the red republicans, 
 and said that these men and their agents 
 dared to trade in the names of respectable 
 persons, and outrage them by falsehoods in- 
 serted in foreign journals, whilst the truth was, 
 that they were living in hourly terror lest some 
 member of their family might meet his death 
 at the hands of the national gendarmerie. 
 
 Whilst the agtens of the National Govern- 
 ment were lawlessly striking down with a dag- 
 ger, or suspending on the gibbet, those who, 
 having discovered their error, wished to with- 
 draw from all association with the insurgents, 
 or those who refused to pay the imposts levied 
 in the name of the " National Government," 
 they were not less zealous in propagating re- 
 ports of the cruelty of the Russians, who, it was 
 commonly believed in Prance and England, 
 tortured their prisoners. The horrors of civil 
 war and the reprisals it entails are quite terri- 
 ble enough in themselves, and need no artifi- 
 cial darkening. Wishing to know the exact
 
 20 8 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 truth, I made inquiries in quarters where I 
 was most likely to learn it, and the following 
 letter is one of the many assurances I received 
 that the charge of torture made against the 
 Russian Government is a fabrication. The 
 writer was confined in the citadel at Warsaw, 
 and in the same room with Count Zamoyski. 
 Both said they were well treated during their 
 captivity, and, were it otherwise, the writer of 
 the following letter, with whose family I was 
 intimate, would certainly have told me so in 
 confidence. He writes frankly : 
 
 " MONSIEUR, 
 
 " You have done me so many acts of kind- 
 ness, that I am sure you will be glad to learn 
 that I was set at liberty yesterday. I know 
 that it is to you I am indebted for my freedom. 
 Allow me to offer you again my sincere thanks. 
 
 " During the four weeks that I was detained 
 in the citadel and at Pavia Street, not only had 
 I ho cause to complain of the treatment I and 
 my companions received, but on the contrary, 
 I must say, we experienced all the considera-
 
 'Torture at Warsaw. 209 
 
 tion compatible with imprisonment. Nor have 
 I ever heard that anybody whomsoever has 
 been subjected to torture. 
 
 " As everything depends on His Excellency 
 the Count de Berg, allow me, Sir, through 
 you, to thank him for the benevolence and 
 clemency he has exhibited in my regard. 
 
 "Accept, Monsieur, the assurance of the 
 profound respect of 
 
 " Your very humble servant, 
 
 " VINCENT PRADRTNSKI." 
 
 Were I not convinced that the worst period 
 of the Polish Revolution is passed, and that 
 the National Government and the hanging 
 gendarmerie will soon cease to be, I would 
 not venture to introduce Pradrynski's name 
 into these pages. It would have been to ex- 
 pose him to the action of the dagger or the 
 gallows. He would have been marked as a 
 renegade, when in truth he was only one of 
 the many Polish gentlemen who mistook the 
 qualities of the instruments with which they 
 hoped to realize their fondest dreams.
 
 2io Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 MANIFESTO OF THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT. 
 
 THE designs of the National Government, and 
 their mode of putting them into execution, 
 may be deduced from one of their manifestos, 
 of which the following is a copy : 
 
 " The National Government, 
 " Taking into consideration that the execu- 
 tive authorities of the invasion condemn to 
 death, without a legal trial, the members of 
 the national organization arrested by them 
 for the commissions of inquiry, and the courts- 
 martial, which outrage all notions of right, 
 cannot be looked on as legal tribunals the 
 National Government, in order effectually to 
 defend the safety of the members of the national 
 organization, have, acting upon the suggestion
 
 Manifesto. an 
 
 of the heads of the police department, decreed 
 as follows : 
 
 " 1st. That the commissions of inquiry, 
 established to examine into so-called poli- 
 tical crimes, the courts-martial, the gen- 
 darmerie employed in political inquiries 
 and in espionage, the military heads of 
 governments, districts, and departments, 
 as well as their civil assistants, the execu- 
 tive police at Warsaw, with the exception 
 of the administrative sections, are all ex- 
 cluded from the protection of the law. 
 
 "2d. The execution of the present decree 
 is confided to the civil and military au- 
 thorities. 
 
 "Decreed at the sitting of the National 
 Government. 
 
 " Warsaw, 25th August, 1863." 
 
 This edict of the National Government, to 
 which the official seal is attached, is a conden- 
 sation of their policy, which, in fact, may be ex- 
 pressed in one word " dagger." That Italian 
 weapon has become the symbol of the Polish
 
 212 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 insurrection, and plainly reveals its origin and 
 the character of its organizers. The Polish 
 nobles who at first took part in the movement 
 were, I repeat, deceived. They believed that 
 their cherished dream of Polish independence 
 was about to be realized, and when they dis- 
 covered their error, they found that they had 
 not alone compromised themselves with the 
 Russian Government, but had given themselves 
 over to the power of men to whom the in- 
 terests of Poland were nothing, but who found 
 in the chronic restlessness of the Poles, and in 
 their high susceptibility, those elements which, 
 properly fermented, might produce in Poland a 
 result similar to that which had already been 
 obtained in Italy. Besides, amongst the Polish 
 nobility there were men of great wealth, who 
 were only too happy to place their riches at 
 the disposal of those who undertook to carry 
 out all the details of the insurrection, and put 
 the revolution-making machinery into opera- 
 tion. The Poles were bade to look at Italy. 
 They could see there what had been done in 
 the cause of freedom by the " moral aid " of
 
 Manifesto. 213 
 
 England and the material assistance of France. 
 Their country, too, should be freed, and should 
 again become a nation. 
 
 A. fact not to be lost sight of is, that the 
 national gendarmerie were for the most part 
 foreigners. Prince Emile Willgenstein says, 
 that in his Government they were mostly Prus- 
 sians. What conclusion can we draw from 
 this ? It is not to be supposed that these men 
 volunteered to hang and stab, and were wil- 
 ling to expose themselves to the consequent 
 risk, without what is called a " handsome con- 
 sideration." The plain truth is, these men 
 were hired assassins, and the subscriptions of 
 numbers of honest-minded people in England 
 and France helped to furnish their pay.
 
 214 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 THE PRESS. 
 
 BUT for the press, the National Government 
 of Poland would have been little known to the 
 rest of Europe, and silence would have been 
 fatal to the interests of the revolution-makers. 
 It was necessary that their views should be 
 propagated throughout Europe, and it was 
 equally necessary that they should supply the 
 source whence such information was to circu- 
 late. Opinion is, in the present day, under 
 certain conditions, as powerful as the sword ; 
 it is the " moral aid " of which so much has 
 of late been said, and the press is the exponent 
 of opinion. Amongst belligerents, therefore, 
 the party that secures the advocacy of the 
 press receives that moral aid which, in the
 
 The Press. 215 
 
 eyes of the majority, throws a halo of justifi- 
 cation round its proceedings. This advocacy 
 the National Government was able to secure, 
 and the " foreign correspondence " of English 
 and French journals often served the cause of 
 the revolutionists abroad as much as the dagger 
 did at home. 
 
 Men of great talent, members of some 
 secret society, often sent a " correspondence " 
 to some journal of Western Europe, detailing 
 events often wholly fabricated, or so highly 
 coloured, as to be scarcely recognisable by 
 those who knew the truth. Whether the news- 
 paper correspondent was the framer of the in- 
 telligence, or whether the information was 
 furnished by others upon whose word he 
 relied, but who practised on his credulity and 
 prejudices, I cannot take upon me to say ; but 
 this I can confidently affirm, that whilst stay- 
 ing in Poland, I have read " foreign corre- 
 spondence " in English and French papers, 
 purporting to narrate circumstances said to 
 have occurred in the town where I was re- 
 siding, and of these narrations, I must say
 
 2i6 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 that they were baseless as an air-vision. A 
 popular horror once set afloat circulates 
 rapidly ; it is not always easy to discover the 
 source ; and many journals copied in good faith 
 tales of Russian barbarity that had no other 
 foundation than the author's imagination. It 
 was in this way that some of the leading 
 journals of Europe unwittingly misled their 
 readers. 
 
 Everybody must remember the sensation 
 produced by Mr. Grant Duff's letter, published 
 in the Times of the 14th of last January. 
 That gentleman had gone to Wilna and to 
 Warsaw. He had seen and judged for him- 
 self. He visited the prisons and the hospitals ; 
 he found the inmates properly cared for : 
 there was no want of food or of rational 
 recreation ; there were no traces of torture. 
 " I am happy to say," says Mr. Grant Duff, 
 " that the impression left upon my mind, by 
 a visit to these establishments, is one highly 
 favourable to the humanity of the Russian 
 Government." 
 
 The Times the great organ of public
 
 The Press. 217 
 
 opinion published Mr. Grant Duff's letter, 
 and the English public for the first time heard 
 at least a portion of the truth with regard to 
 the Russo-Polish question. I must say that 
 my experience coincides with that of Mr. 
 Grant Duff. Public opinion, led by the press, 
 may yet experience a reaction. What has 
 been exalted may be condemned, and even- 
 handed justice declare the truth. 
 
 The part that many honest and independent 
 journals have had in misrepresenting the real 
 facts of the Polish insurrection is much to be 
 deplored ; but if, instead of trusting to "foreign 
 correspondents," some of the proprietors or 
 editors of these journals had themselves 
 travelled into Poland, public opinion in Eng- 
 land would long since have taken a different 
 tone. The doubly-deceived Polish nobles who 
 took part in the insurrection would have had 
 their eyes opened, and the real promoters of 
 the insurrection would have been unmasked. 
 
 No one honours the press more than I. It 
 is not alone one of our greatest institutions, 
 but it is in itself the concentrated expression
 
 2 1 8 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 of the power of our other great constitutional 
 bulwarks, of which we may say that it is at 
 the same time the offspring and the crowning 
 defence. It is in England that the press 
 realizes our ideal of freedom of thought and 
 speech. In other countries, the press is only 
 an exotic a slip, so to speak, of our English 
 plant and away from its native soil it does 
 not grow healthily. Under the too careful 
 supervision of a more Southern cliine, it loses 
 its hardy vigour ; in the colder North, it dies 
 for want of sustenance ; and amongst our Trans- 
 atlantic brethren, the once hardy plant, im- 
 bibing the rankness of the soil, degenerates 
 into a noxious weed. The press of England 
 is not alone the organ of British nationality ; 
 it has become the voice of the universe, and is 
 equally ready to uphold an oppressed nation- 
 ality against a crowned despot, or to inquire 
 into the conduct of a workhouse official who 
 refuses relief, or doles it out ungraciously, to 
 a craving mendicant. The press is a faith 
 with the British nation. The English are a 
 hard-working, commercial people. The Eng-
 
 The Press. 219 
 
 lishman rises in the morning, and recommences 
 his daily pursuits as merchant, banker, or 
 tradesman, and during the intervals of busi- 
 ness, or at the close of the day, he reads his 
 favourite journal and he believes. His belief 
 is more in the honesty of the journalist than 
 in the truth of what he reads ; for whilst he 
 peruses a " leading article," or the letter of 
 a foreign correspondent, he retains the secret 
 though perhaps unacknowledged conviction, 
 that should what he reads contain an erroneous 
 statement, it will certainly, upon discovery, be 
 corrected. The Englishman regards the na- 
 tional press as a free-spoken, fearless spirit 
 always ready to declare the unvarnished truth, 
 ever ready to point out a grievance, especially 
 where the mighty seek to oppress the weak. 
 Never does an Englishman feel so satisfied 
 that the great organs of public opinion are 
 doing their duty as when they attack some 
 foreign potentate, or plead for some struggling 
 nationality. It is one of our popular weak- 
 nesses. It is a remnant of an old creed that 
 taught the Englishman that everything conti-
 
 22O Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 nental was bad. In this, as in other cases, if 
 we wish to ascertain the truth, we must see 
 with our own eyes, or else rectify our opinions 
 by the testimony of credible witnesses.
 
 Foreign Journals. 221 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 FOREIGN JOURNALS. 
 
 I DO not write in the interest of any party ; I 
 merely state what I have seen ; and I am very 
 sure that were a few gentlemen, as liberal and 
 as unprejudiced as Mr. Grant Duff, to go to 
 Wilna and to Warsaw, their impressions would 
 coincide with his and mine. It is most impor- 
 tant to the Poles that the English people should 
 learn the truth, and it is very certain that they 
 cannot learn it from foreign journals. I have 
 seen documents proving that an offer had been 
 made to the Russian Government by a certain 
 continental journal, to advocate the Russian 
 cause upon arranged conditions. It was there 
 stated that the National Committee had 
 offered 150,000 francs to secure the like ser-
 
 222 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 vices. The Russian Government refused, and 
 the journal became one of the most important 
 advocates of the insurrection. 
 
 The National Government had its own 
 official organ at Cracow, and the fabricated 
 accounts that appeared in its columns of out- 
 rages, floggings, and tortures, were copied in 
 good faith by many newspapers on the Conti- 
 nent and in England. Illustrated journals 
 gave engravings representing battles gained 
 by the Poles over the Russians, battles which 
 had never taken place, but these representa- 
 tions had the effect of raising still higher the 
 enthusiasm of the Philo-Poles of England and 
 France, who were far from suspecting the 
 truth. 
 
 Falsehoods of this nature must ultimately 
 harm even the most righteous cause, but false 
 reports propagated through the press are part 
 of the system introduced into Poland. It has 
 been, and is still, employed with a certain 
 effect, and for a time misled, not alone the 
 public of Western Europe, but even the Govern- 
 ments of England and France.
 
 Foreign Journals. 113 
 
 I am far from pretending to assert that pain- 
 ful and distressing scenes did not occur in 
 Poland, or that the Russian Government did 
 not strictly enforce military law ; I only assert 
 that the stories of torture, flogging of women, 
 and such like atrocities, were not practised. 
 It was painful to see young lads schoolboys 
 as many of the insurgents were lying wounded 
 in the hospitals, or immured in the prisons. 
 I have often, moved by a mother's tears, 
 pleaded for some such foolish lad, and have 
 frequently succeeded in obtaining my request. 
 Count de Berg once said to me, " No one can 
 regret more than I being obliged to punish. 
 But what would you have me do ? The laws 
 must be enforced ; order must be maintained. 
 I am only the exponent of the law/' 
 
 Those writers who advocated in foreign jour- 
 nals the general principles of revolution were 
 unquestionably men of great talent, and under- 
 stood perfectly well how to colour the events 
 they described according to the opinions of the 
 persons by whom they were to be read. For 
 Catholic Rome, Liberal France, and Protestant
 
 224 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 England, the story was painted to suit the oc- 
 casion. At Rome it was believed ; and through 
 Rome, the inhabitants of the Faubourg St. 
 Germain, and the Catholics of England and 
 Ireland, believed that the Poles were perse- 
 cuted on account of their religion, that the 
 seclusion of convents was violated, priests and 
 nuns tortured and outraged, churches dese- 
 crated, and the rites of religion forbidden to 
 be administered. To the free-thinking public 
 of France and the Protestant people of Eng- 
 land, the insurrection was described as the 
 heroic struggle of a people galled by a hateful 
 yoke, anxious for constitutional freedom and 
 enlightened institutions. To all the appeal 
 was made, in the name of philanthropy, of 
 charity, and humanity. It is, perhaps, credita- 
 ble to human nature that such pleas are every- 
 where listened to. The Catholic and the 
 Protestant heart alike responded to the call. 
 The Pope feU into the snare in which he had 
 been before entangled. Sums of money were 
 contributed by the fine ladies of the Faubourg 
 St. Germain and by gentle Englishwomen, for
 
 Foreign Journals. 225 
 
 on this point they were united; pity made 
 them akin ; and the Catholic clergy in these 
 islands, and chiefly in Ireland, expressed the 
 profoundest sympathy with the insurgents. It 
 did not seem to strike these gentlemen at the 
 time as an ominous fact, that the most active 
 coadjutor in the cause was Gavazzi. 
 
 The apostles of revolution understood well 
 how to practise on the passions and prejudices 
 of the masses ; they knew even how to make 
 the best feelings of communities subservient to 
 their designs. In Poland, assassination was 
 done in the name of Catholicity ; in Italy, it 
 was anti-papal ; and yet neither the partizans 
 of the Poles nor the partizans of the Italians 
 seemed to perceive that it was the same spirit 
 that directed the secret committees in both 
 countries. The ultramontane party in France 
 and England supported, in the press and in 
 the senate, the " National Government " of 
 Poland, which was based upon the most atro- 
 cious system of assassination the world had 
 ever seen, whilst they denounced the same 
 system when carried into operation against 
 Q
 
 226 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 papal Rome. The Duke of Florence prayed 
 Heaven to save him from his friends. The 
 Catholic Church in these islands may well offer 
 up the like petition. Her friends did her 
 questionable service whilst they upheld as 
 " Catholic " the Polish National Government, 
 whose agents accomplish their mission by 
 means of the dagger.
 
 Poland and Italy. 227 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 POLAND AND ITALY. 
 
 ITALY, the birthplace of the cosmopolitan re- 
 volutionists, was the country where they first 
 had an opportunity of carrying their principles 
 into operation. Some seventeen or eighteen 
 years ago that extraordinary movement com- 
 menced in Rome whose oscillations have since 
 been felt throughout Italy. At first, reforms 
 were talked of, the most philanthropic senti- 
 ments found utterance, and a profound respect 
 for the Pope and religion was expressed. 
 Pious IX., philanthropic and confiding, was 
 pleased at the prospect held out, and thinking 
 to do his people much good, he not only 
 joined the movement, but put himself at its 
 head. Gradually the revolutionists extended
 
 228 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 their toils ; little by little, as in Poland, they 
 rose in influence, until at last their true objects 
 became revealed. The Pope, alarmed, tried, 
 when he learned the truth, to draw back ; but 
 it was too late. The evil had taken root, and 
 Rossi, the Pope's minister, was stabbed on the 
 staircase of the pontifical palace. Whether the 
 dagger-thrust was a means taken to silence a 
 too vigilant observer, or whether the servant 
 was slain as a warning to the master, it mat- 
 ters not now to inquire. The Pope saw that 
 the demon of revolution was unchained, and 
 fled in terror to Gaeta, and the Eternal City 
 was abandoned to the revolutionists. 
 
 The revolutionary movement in Rome was 
 not an outburst against the Catholic religion, 
 as many persons supposed; it was a demon- 
 stration against authority of every kind, more 
 especially that represented by crowned heads. 
 That it was so considered by the Sovereigns 
 of Europe was manifest from the manner in 
 which they behaved to the Pope. The Queen 
 of England wrote a letter of condolence to the 
 Sovereign Pontiff ; the Emperor of Russia, the
 
 Poland and Italy . 229 
 
 head of the Orthodox Greek Church, did the 
 like ; nor was the King of Prussia wanting in 
 expressions of sympathy. It was very evident 
 that the sovereigns did not view the disturb- 
 ances in Rome as a heterodox manifestation of 
 disaffection to a particular form of religion ; 
 they saw in the subversion of the Pope's 
 authority the operations of a spirit which, in 
 that instance successful against a weak sove- 
 reign, might on a future occasion be suffi- 
 ciently strong to shake the stability of more 
 powerful thrones. Louis Napoleon, then Presi- 
 dent of the Republic, took a bolder step. He 
 ordered his legions to Rome, and French bayo- 
 nets have since formed a rampart round the 
 papal throne. 
 
 Anybody who attentively traces the progress 
 of the Polish insurrection will observe a 
 striking similarity between the mode in which 
 it was conducted and that followed by the 
 revolutionists in Italy. The movement began 
 amongst the upper classes ; the National Com- 
 mittee was a hidden power whose symbol was 
 the dagger.
 
 2jo Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 How strangely inconsistent seems the con- 
 duct of those men who advocate in Poland 
 what they condemn in Rome ! To judge the 
 conduct of any man or any body of men dis- 
 passionately, we must make allowance for the 
 influence of party spirit and national and social 
 prejudices. It is under such influences that 
 the facts of contemporary history are ignored ; 
 and some historian, a few generations later, will 
 win for himself some literary fame by proving 
 to our descendants that we. have been alike 
 extravagant in our praise and in our censure. 
 Distance in space acts with regard to our 
 knowledge of events with as obscuring an 
 effect as distance in time. We frequently 
 entertain as erroneous opinions of the conduct 
 and character of our foreign contemporaries 
 and of their surroundings, as of the founders 
 of empires that lived centuries before the Chris- 
 tian era. Our prejudices must become 
 mellowed by age before we can recognise our 
 error. We angelize or demonize our contem- 
 poraries. Even Mr. Grant Duff could not 
 name Count de Berg and General Mouravieff
 
 Poland and Italy. 23 1 
 
 in the House of Commons without exciting a 
 mocking laugh ; but if some of the members of 
 the British Senate had witnessed what I have 
 seen in Warsaw, they would have listened with 
 different feelings to Mr. Grant Duff's state- 
 ment of the numbers whose lives had been 
 terminated by the dagger or gibbet of the 
 National Gendarmerie.
 
 23 2 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 ACTUAL STATE OF POLAND. 
 
 THE following official documents give a clear 
 and correct view of the actual state of Poland. 
 In these pages, a comparison is drawn between 
 the aspect presented by affairs in Poland in 
 the spring of 1863 and the spring of the pre- 
 sent year. This comparison is worthy the 
 attentive consideration of the English people. 
 It will be seen there that one of the great 
 incitements to insurrection, and one of the 
 delusive hopes that enabled the Poles to main- 
 tain the contest, was the expectation of foreign 
 interference. To hold out hopes that we do 
 not intend to fulfil is a cruel deception. As 
 Count Osten Sacken shrewdly remarks : " The 
 insurrection, left to its own resources, will 
 gradually die out."
 
 Actual State of Poland. 233 
 
 What are now the sentiments of the different 
 classes of the Poles with regard to the insur- 
 rection? The peasantry, who never revolted, 
 and who, it must be confessed, had no interest 
 in common with their landlords, are becoming 
 every day bolder in resisting the " National 
 Gendarmerie ; " bands of villagers, acting as a 
 local police, assist the authorities in bringing 
 these men to justice. The landed proprietors, 
 who now see that all hope of foreign assistance 
 is vain, " have," we are told, " modified their 
 opinions." Nay, more, they " secretly " give 
 information to the Russian authorities, and 
 point out the lurking-places of the brigands. 
 The clergy, too, have yielded to pressure 
 acting from so many points, and withdrawn, 
 with one exception, the symbols of national 
 mourning from the churches. These are indi- 
 cations of peace, though not unaccompanied 
 by certain movements not calculated to raise 
 the actors in our estimation. The secret in- 
 former, or the public denunciator, is not a dig- 
 nified character in the page of history. His 
 trade is one which presents humanity in an
 
 234 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 unfavourable point of view, but which the 
 abnormal condition of revolution brings into 
 operation. Count Osten-Sacken says that 
 assassination no longer goes unpunished. This 
 is the best proof that the cosmopolitan revolu- 
 tionists are losing their hold of Poland. 
 
 No. 28, Annex 1. Warsaw, 
 
 17/29 February, 1864. 
 
 " MONSIEUR L'AMBASSADEUR, 
 
 " I profit by the departure of a courier 
 for Berlin, to transmit to your Excellency the 
 annexed notification. 
 
 " It is a plain statement of some considera- 
 tions about the probable renewal of the in- 
 trigues of the Polish revolution during the 
 approaching spring. 
 
 " Your Excellency will deign to observe, in 
 glancing over this document, that I have not 
 ventured in any way to prejudge the result of 
 the present insurrection only in as far as the 
 insurrection should be left to its own re- 
 sources. 
 
 " This statement is moreover, Monsieur le
 
 Actual State of Poland. 235 
 
 Baron, only a logical deduction drawn from a 
 comparison between the general aspect pre- 
 , sented by events in Poland at the commence- 
 ment of 1863, and that which marks the 
 opening of the year upon which we have just 
 entered. 
 
 "In making a succint resume of the data 
 contained in the communications that Mr. 
 Tegoborski and I have had the honour of 
 transmitting to your Excellency, I hoped to 
 bring into stronger relief the actual state of 
 things. 
 
 " I have the honour to be, with the most 
 profound consideration, Monsieur 1'Ambassa- 
 deur, 
 
 " Your Excellency's very humble, and 
 very obedient servant, 
 
 " OSTEN SACKEN. 
 
 " To His Excellency Baron Brunnow."
 
 236 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 . Annex to No. 28. Warsaw, 
 
 7/19 February, 1864. 
 
 " The more nearly the spring draws nigh, 
 the more frequently are we tempted to ask 
 what turn events will take after the disappear- 
 ance of the cold weather, which had served as 
 a material obstacle to the formation of large 
 bands of insurgents ; for if, on the one hand, 
 thanks to the energetic measures of the admi- 
 nistration, and to the incessant activity of our 
 columns, the beaten and scattered insurgent 
 bands experience considerable difficulty in 
 rallying in the different suburbs and villages 
 of the kingdom, on the other hand, it becomes 
 impossible for them to rally in the forests on 
 account of the severity of the weather. 
 
 " When the winter shall have passed, this 
 latter obstacle will disappear. 
 
 " We have every reason to believe that with 
 the return of spring the conspirators will 
 endeavour to reassemble some bands. The 
 small groups of brigands that now make their 
 appearance, sometimes in one locality, some-
 
 Actual State of Poland. 237 
 
 times in another, may combine and form 
 nuclei round which will cluster those insur- 
 gents who have escaped the vigilance of the 
 local police and the pursuit of our detachments 
 that traverse the country in every direction. 
 
 " Already the diminished cold of the month 
 of January has occasioned the concentration 
 of some bands numbering about one hundred 
 men each. 
 
 "Prom information received from many 
 quarters, we foresee fresh incursions from 
 Galicia and Posnania. 
 
 " Some of the advices we have received tell 
 us at the same time of increased excesses on 
 the part of the ' reds ' and of the partizans of 
 Mieroslawski. 
 
 " All that we have heard makes it our duty 
 to consider seriously what may be the result 
 of the intrigues which will probably be renewed 
 by the conspirators during the coming spring. 
 
 " We shall proceed to reason by compari- 
 son. 
 
 " It is, in fact, the real difference which exists 
 between the state of things that characterized
 
 238 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 the political situation of the spring of 1863 
 and that which marks the present time, that 
 can serve as a basis for provisions as to future 
 probabilities. 
 
 "At the beginning of the year 1863, the 
 insurrection first openly declared itself. The 
 insurrection sprang forth, replete with all the 
 resources of a carefully-prepared organization, 
 and which had not been yet weakened by use. 
 The effect which the system of terrorism intro- 
 duced by the conspirators exercised over the 
 minds of the population was, for the latter, a 
 new sensation. The mysterious dread of a 
 secret association whose vengeance overtook 
 its victims even in the bosom of their families 
 was experienced with the force that a sentiment 
 wholly new inspires. 
 
 " Moreover, the revolutionary enthusiasm at 
 that time existed in its full force, and created 
 a belief in the most improbable results, because 
 it had not yet been brought into contact with 
 realities. 
 
 " The agricultural population, who took no 
 part in the movement, were stupified by the
 
 Actual State of Poland. 239 
 
 audacity of the insurgents, who committed 
 excesses upon so vast a scale. 
 
 " The nobility still flattered themselves that 
 they would be able to guide the movement. 
 
 " Partly of their own free choice, and partly 
 overruled by others, the nobility were far from 
 foreseeing the evils that awaited them, and the 
 disastrous effects that the ascendancy of the 
 ' reds ' would bring upon them. 
 
 " The defection of the government employes, 
 for the most part kept secret, retarded the 
 administration of the laws. 
 
 " The police, consisting almost exclusively 
 of Poles, was not yet reformed, and often 
 afforded impunity to criminals, either through 
 want of activity or through the treason of 
 subalterns. 
 
 " Lastly, foreign intervention put a climax 
 to the difficulties of the situation. 
 
 " The hope of success which this intervention 
 inspired doubled the strength of the insurrec- 
 tion, and induced the majority of the upper 
 and middle classes to make immense sacrifices 
 to prolong the existing confusion, hoping for a
 
 24 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 foreign intervention of a definite and decided 
 character. 
 
 " Such was the position of affairs in the 
 spring of 1863. 
 
 "The characteristics of the present spring 
 are essentially different. 
 
 "Disorder still prevails. Small bands of 
 brigands commit revolting excesses in localities 
 where they do not expect to meet the regular 
 troops. 
 
 " But the insurrection has been worn out in 
 a struggle that exhausted its means of supply, 
 at the same time that public feeling has ex- 
 perienced sensible modifications, the result of 
 last year's experience. 
 
 " In fact, the first outburst of enthusiasm 
 having passed away, all that remained to the 
 insurgents was the hope of foreign assistance, 
 confidence in a system of terrorism, and 
 money. 
 
 " The brilliant diplomatic career which the 
 Imperial Cabinet has conducted, with an ability 
 that has won the admiration of its antagonists 
 and the gratitude of the country, has annihi-
 
 Actual State of Poland. 241 
 
 lated the malevolent project of the Powers that 
 were combined against us, and crushed that 
 last hope of the Polish revolutionists. 
 
 " The majority of those became greatly dis- 
 pirited who had combined with the promoters 
 of the movement in the hope that foreign in- 
 tervention would come to the aid of the Poles, 
 and with the unavowed hope, that the question 
 once openly discussed, they would succeed in 
 supplanting the 'reds,' for the advantage of 
 their own party. 
 
 "Meanwhile, the energetic and sustained 
 measures of the Government had weakened 
 the sense of terror which the secret committee 
 had inspired, and had replaced it by that salu- 
 tary fear which criminals experience in the face 
 of a strong administration, which will inevita- 
 bly overtake crime. 
 
 "The numerous arrests and banishments 
 which the insurrection has entailed have weak- 
 ened the influence of the secret committee. 
 
 " Dissension amongst the promoters of the 
 insurrection, numerous defections, and the 
 want of pecuniary means, are facts which the
 
 242 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 revolutionists regard with alarm, as is proved 
 by many authentic documents that have fallen 
 into our hands. 
 
 " The contributions levied upon the different 
 classes that had directly or indirectly favoured 
 the insurrection, as well as the pecuniary fines 
 imposed in special cases upon persons who 
 might have prevented partial crimes, have 
 aroused a portion of the population, and in- 
 duced them to exercise a surveillance, without 
 which the operations of the Government would 
 have been insufficient. On the other hand, 
 the excesses committed by the insurrectionists 
 during more than a year have turned the 
 greater portion of the population against them. 
 
 '"Emboldened by the energy displayed by 
 the administration, this sentiment has increased 
 amongst the people, and resolved itself into 
 facts. 
 
 " The peasantry look with great satisfaction 
 upon the activity gradually displayed by the 
 Government. Reposing with confidence upon 
 the well-timed operations of the legal autho- 
 rity, they have become themselves more active
 
 Actual State of Poland. 243 
 
 and more enterprising against the agents of 
 the revolution. 
 
 " The enrolment of village guards, and seve- 
 ral local facts, give evidence of the spirit that 
 animates the peasantry. 
 
 " The landed proprietors, on their side, have 
 in general considerably modified their opinions. 
 . " Depressed by the conviction of the hope- 
 lessness of foreign aid, threatened with the 
 complete destruction of their properties, en- 
 tailed by the insurrection, great numbers have 
 sought the good graces and support of our 
 authority, whose operations they sometimes 
 secretly aid by private information, and by 
 pointing out on their estates the abode of soli- 
 tary insurgents, or small bands of brigands. 
 
 " The so-called national taxes are very badly 
 paid ; for the most part, they are refused. 
 
 "Under the pressure of the contributions 
 imposed by the Government, the clergy this 
 powerful auxiliary of the Polish revolution 
 have already begun in certain localities to 
 change their tone : the black drapery is re- 
 moved from all the churches in the kingdom,
 
 244 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 with the exception of the archdiocese of 
 Warsaw. 
 
 " The numberless denunciations enregistered 
 by the courts-martial prove, on the one hand, 
 the gradual diminution of the influence of the 
 revolutionary terrorism, and, on the other, 
 despair as to the success of the insurrection. 
 
 " In short, the efforts of a remodelled and 
 active police are gradually producing results 
 which induce us to augur ultimate success. 
 
 "Assassination no longer remains unpun- 
 ished ; the law overtakes the crime and the 
 criminal. 
 
 " Such are the results obtained during the 
 past months, and the principal characteristics 
 which mark the situation of affairs now, at the 
 beginning of the year 1864. 
 
 " This simple statement justifies us in draw- 
 ing the following conclusions : 
 
 " Making allowance for unforeseen circum- 
 stances which often play so important a part 
 in the history of the events, and in the grave 
 complications that sometimes arise in Europe, 
 we may say, with some degree of confidence,
 
 Actual State of Poland. 245 
 
 that the Polish insurrection, left to its own 
 resources and deprived of external assistance, 
 has small prospect of lasting much longer. 
 
 " The exhaustion consequent upon a violent 
 struggle is such, that it would be difficult to 
 believe that a factitious reproduction of the 
 insurrectionary movement could be anything 
 more than isolated outbursts arising in certain 
 localities, and of whose repression there could 
 be no doubt. 
 
 " The disorganization of the revolutionary 
 association, and the modifications which have 
 taken place in public opinion, are symptoms 
 which do not permit us to doubt that the 
 Polish insurrection will gradually fade away 
 along that descending scale down which it has 
 been gliding during the past months. 
 
 "Let it be thoroughly well understood, that 
 the incursions of bands from Galicia and Pos- 
 nania must be prevented at any cost. 
 
 "The moral influence resulting from the 
 entrance of these bands may be productive of 
 more evil than the excesses by which they 
 might mark their passage."
 
 246 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 No. 33. Warsaw, 
 
 17/29 February, 1864. 
 
 "MONSIEUR L'AMBASSADEUR, 
 
 " I have but little t6 add to the general in- 
 formation which I had the honour to transmit 
 to your Excellency in my last communications. 
 
 "The reports lately received by the Lieu- 
 tenant of the Emperor state, that the detach- 
 ments which incessantly traverse the kingdom 
 rarely meet any insurgent bands. 
 
 "Detachments have been sent in various 
 directions in pursuit of fugitives, and already 
 three hundred insurgents have been sent pri- 
 soners to Kelce. 
 
 " The only meetings of insurgents mentioned 
 in these reports are those which have taken 
 place in the south-eastern part of the govern- 
 ment of Radom. 
 
 "In fact, the passage of some bands from 
 Galicia has been facilitated by the ice which 
 covered the Vistula. These bands seem to 
 have attracted to their ranks the marauders 
 and vagrants who, in the government of Ra-
 
 Actual State of Poland. 247 
 
 dom, had succeeded in escaping the vigilance 
 of our authorities, and who must have found 
 their way singly into the south-eastern part of 
 this government. 
 
 " The military arrondissement of Radom is 
 consequently entirely freed of this class of 
 persons. 
 
 " As I have already had the honour to in- 
 form your Excellency by a telegram this day, 
 a band of insurgents had formed the intention 
 of making a coup de main against the town of 
 Opatow. 
 
 " Repulsed by our troops, this band was 
 soon put to flight by General Tchiengeri, 
 who having captured their chief bearing the 
 pseudo-name of Topor had him hanged in 
 the market-place of the above-named city. 
 
 "The re-establishment of order and tran- 
 quillity, which I had the honour of notifying 
 to your Excellency in my preceding communi- 
 cations, continues to progress gradually. 
 
 " Captain Baron Brunning. who was sent 
 upon official business into the districts of 
 Olkersz and of Miechow, and who has re-
 
 248 Petersburg and Warsaw. 
 
 turned this evening to Warsaw, has traversed 
 these districts without an escort. 
 
 " Your Excellency is aware that these two 
 districts, situated on the frontiers of Galicia 
 and of the Duchy of Cracow, were, during the 
 period of the insurrection, incessantly infested 
 by bands of insurgents. 
 
 "I have the honour to be, with the most 
 profound respect, Monsieur 1'Ambassadeur, 
 your Excellency's 
 
 "Very humble and obedient servant, 
 " OSTEN-SACKEN." 
 
 " To His Excellency Baron Brunnow." 
 
 THE END. 
 
 R. CLAY, SON, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.
 
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