“ And this is for your brother, from his nurse Anna,” another peasant would say, handing me a similar bundle. “©¢Poor boy,’ she says, ‘he can never have enough at school.’ ” Blushing and not knowing what to say, 1 would mur- mur at last, “Tell Vasilisa that I kiss her, and Anna too, for my brother.” At which all faces would become still more radiant.
“Yes, I will, to be sure.”
Then Kirila, who kept watch at father’s door, would whisper suddenly, “ Run quickly upstairs; your father may STARTING FOR THE COUNTRY HOUSE 39 come out ina moment. Don’t forget the kerchief; they want to take it back.”
As I carefully folded the worn kerchief, I most pas- sionately desired to ‘send Vasilisa something. But I had nothing to send, not even a toy, and we never had pocket- money.
Our best time, of course, was in the country. As soon as Haster and Whitsuntide had passed, all our thoughts were directed toward Nikdlskoye. However, time went on, —the lilacs must be past blooming at Nikdlskoye, — and father had still thousands of affairs to keep him in town. At last, five or six peasant-carts entered our yard: they came to take all sorts of things which had to be sent to the country-house. The great old coach and the other coaches in which we were going to make the journey were taken out and inspected once more. The boxes began to be packed. Our lessons made slow progress; at every mo- ment we interrupted our teachers, asking whether this or that book should be taken with us, and long before all others we began packing our books, our slates, and the toys that we ourselves had made.
Everything was ready: the peasant-carts stood heavily loaded with furniture for the country-house, boxes contain- ing the kitchen utensils, and almost countless empty glass jars which were to be brought back in the autumn filled with all kinds of preserves. The peasants waited every morning for hours in the hall; but the order for leaving didnot come. Father continued to write all the morning in his room, and disappeared at night. Finally, our stepmother interfered, her maid having ventured to report that the peas- ants were very anxious to return, as haymaking was near.
Next afternoon, Frol, the major-domo, and Mikhael Aléeff, the first violin, were called into father’s room. A sack containing the “food money ” — that is, a few cops 40 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST pers a day — for each of the forty or fifty souls who were to accompany the household to Nikdlskoye, was handed to Frol, with a list. All were enumerated in that list: the band in full; then the cooks and the under-cooks, the laun- dresses, the under-laundress who was blessed with a family of six mites, “ Polka Squinting,” ‘“Domna the Big One,” ‘Domna the Small One,” and the rest of them.
The first violin received an ‘‘ order of march.” I knew it well, because father, seeing that he never would be ready, had called me to copy it into the book in which he used to copy all “ outgoing papers: ’? — “To my house servant, Mikhael Aléeff, from Prince Alexdi Petrdévich Kropétkin, Colonel and Commander.
‘Thou art ordered, on May 29th, at six A. M., to march out with my loads, from the city of Moscow, for my estate, situated in the government of Kaluga, district of Meschévsk, on the river Siréna, representing a distance of one hundred and sixty miles from this house; to look after the good conduct of the men entrusted to thee, and if any one of them proves to be guilty of misconduct or of drunk- enness or of insubordination, to bring the said man before the commander of the garrison detachment of the separate corps of the interior garrisons, with the inclosed circular.
letter, and to ask that he may be punished by flogging [the first violin knew who was meant], as an example to the others.
“Thou art ordered, moreover, to look especially after the integrity of the goods entrusted to thy care, and to — march according to the following order: First day, stop at village So and So, to feed the horses; second day, spend the night at the town of Poddlsk;” and so on for all the seven or eight days that the journey would last.
Next day, at ten instead of at six, — punctuality is not a Russian virtue (‘Thank God, we are not Germans,” true Russians used to say), — the carts left the house. The A SUMMER MIGRATION 41 servants had to make the journey on foot; only the chil. dren were accommodated with a seat in a bath-tub or basket, on the top of a loaded cart, and some of the women might find an occasional resting-place on the rim of a cart. The others had to walk all the hundred and sixty miles, As long as they were marching through Moscow, discipline was maintained: it was peremptorily forbidden to wear top-boots, or to pass a belt over the coat. But when they were on the road, and we overtook them a couple of days later, and especially when it was known that: father would stay a few days longer at Moscow, the men and the women — dressed in all sorts of impossible coats, belted with cot- ton handkerchiefs, burned by the sun or dripping under the rain, and helping themselves along with sticks cut in the woods -— certainly looked more like a wandering band of gypsies than the household of a wealthy landowner. Simi- lar peregrinations were made by every household in those times, and when we saw a file of servants marching along one of our streets, we at once knew that the Apukhtins or the Pryanishnikoffs were migrating.
The carts were gone, yet the family did not move. All of us were sick of waiting; but father still continued to write interminable orders to the managers of his estates, and I copied them diligently into the big “ outgoing book.” At last the order to start was given. We were called downstairs. My father read aloud the order of march, addressed to “the Princess Kropétkin, wife of Prince Alexéi Petrdévich Kropétkin, Colonel and Commander,’ in which the halting-places during the five days’ journey were duly enumerated. True, the order was written for May 30, and the departure was fixed for nine A. m.,though May was gone, and the departure took place in the after- noon: this upset all calculations. But, as is usual in mili- tary marching-orders, this circumstance had been foreseen, and was provided for in the following paragraph: — 42 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST ‘¢ Tf, however, contrary to expectation, the departure of your highness does not take place at the said day and hour, you are requested to act according to the best of your under- standing, in order to bring the said journey to its best issue.”
Then, all present, the family and the servants, sat down for a moment, signed themselves with the cross, and bade my father good-by. “I entreat you, Alexis, don’t go to the club,” our stepmother whispered to him. The great coach, drawn by four horses, with a postilion, stood at the door, with its little folding ladder to facilitate climbing 1n; the other coaches also were there. Our seats were enumer- ated in the marching-orders, but our stepmother had to exer- cise “the best of her understanding” even at that early stage of the proceedings, and we started to the great satis- faction of all.
The journey was an inexhaustible source of enjoyment for us children. The stages were short, and we stopped twice a day to feed the horses. As the ladies screamed at the slightest declivity of the road, it was found more convenient to alight each time the road went up or down hill, | which it did continually, and we took advantage of this to have a peep into the woods by the roadside, or a run along © some crystal brook. The beautifully kept highroad from » Moscow to Warsaw, which we followed for some distance, - was covered, moreover, with a variety of interesting objects: files of loaded carts, groups of pilgrims, and all sorts of | people. Twice a day we stopped in big, animated villages,: and after a good deal of bargaining about the prices to be | charged for hay and oats, as well as for the samovars, we dismounted at the gates of an inn. Cook Andréi bought a chicken and made the soup, while we ran in the meantime | to the next wood, or examined the yard of the great inn. | At MAloyaroslavetz, where a battle was fought in 18123} when the Russian army vainly attempted to stop Napoleon) en ON THE OLD KALUGA ROUTE 43 in his retreat from Moscow, we usually spent the night. M. Poulain, who had been wounded in the Spanish cam- paign, knew, or pretended to know, everything about the battle at Maloyarosldvetz. He took us to the battlefield, and explained how the Russians tried to check N apoleon’s advance, and how the Grande Armée crushed them and made its way through the Russian lines. He explained it as well as if he himself had taken part in the battle. Here the Cossacks attempted un mouvement tournant, but Davoust, or some other marshal, routed them and pursued them just beyond these hills on the right. There the left wing of Napoleon crushed the Russian infantry, and here Napoleon himself, at the head of the Old Guard, charged Kutuzoff’s centre, and covered himself and his Guard with undying glory.
We once took the old Kalviga route, and stopped at Tart- tino; but here Poulain was much less eloquent. For it was at this place that Napoleon, who intended to retreat by a southern route, was compelled, after a bloody battle, to abandon that plan, and was forced to follow the Smolénsk route, which his army had laid waste during its march on Moscow. But still —so it appeared in Poulain’s narrative — Napoleon was deceived by his marshals; otherwise he would have marched straight upon Kieff and Odéssa, and his eagles would have floated over the Black Sea, Beyond Kaltiga we had to cross for a stretch of five miles a beautiful pine forest, which remains connected in my memory with some of the happiest reminiscences of my childhood. The sand in that forest was as deep as in an African desert, and we went all the way on foot, while the horses, stopping every moment, slowly dragged the carriages in the sand. When I was in my teens, it was my delight to leave the family behind, and to walk the whole distance by myself. Immense red pines, centuries old, rose on every side, and not a sound reached the ear except the voices of the lofty trees. In a small ravine a fre sh erystal spring murmured, and a passer-by had left in it, for the use of those who should come after him, a small funnel-shaped ladle, made of birch bark, with a split stick for a handle. Noiselessly a squirrel ran up a tree, and the underwood was as full of mysteries as were the trees. In that forest my first love of nature and my first dim perception of its incessant life were born.
Beyond the forest, and past the ferry which took us over the Ugra, we left the highroad and entered narrow country lanes, where green ears of rye bent toward the coach, and the horses managed to bite mouthfuls of grass on either side of the way, as they ran, closely pressed to one another in the narrow, trenchlike road. At last we caught sight of the willows which marked the approach to our village, and all of a sudden we saw the elegant pale yellow bell tower of the Nikdélskoye church.
For the quiet life of the landlords of those times Nikdl- skoye was admirably suited. There was nothing in it of the luxury which is seen in richer estates; but an artistic hand was visible in the planning of the buildings and gar- dens, and in the general arrangement of things. Besides the main house, which father had recently built, there were, round a spacious and well-kept yard, several smaller houses, which, while they gave a greater degree of independence to their inhabitants, did not destroy the close intercourse of the family life. An immense ‘“ upper garden ” was devoted to fruit trees, and through it the church was reached; the southern slope of the land, which led to the river, was entirely given up to a pleasure garden, where flower-beds were intermingled with alleys of lime- trees, lilacs, and acacias. From the balcony of the main house there was a beautiful view of the river, with the ruins ol an old earthen fortress where the Russians offered a stub LIFE AT NIKOLSKOYE 45 born resistance during the Mongol invasion, and further on a great area of yellow grain-fields bordered on the horizon by woods, In the early years of my childhood we occupied with M. Poulain one of the separate houses entirely by ourselves; and after his method of education was softened by the intervention of our sister Héléne, we were on the best pos- sible terms with him. Father was invariably absent from home in the summer, which he spent in military inspec tions, and our stepmother did not pay much attention to us, especially after her own child, Pauline, was born. We were thus always with M- Poulain, who thoroughly enjoyed the stay in the country, and let us enjoy it. The woods; the walks along the river; the climbing over the hills to the old fortress, which Poulain made alive for us as he told how it was defended by the Russians, and how it was captured by the Tartars; the little adventures, in one of which Poulain became our hero by saving Alexander from drowning; an occasional encounter with wolves, — there was no end of new and delightful impressions.
Large parties were organized, also, in which all the family took part, sometimes picking mushrooms in the woods, and afterward having tea in the midst of the forest, where a man a hundred years old lived alone with his little grandson, taking care of bees. At other times we went to one of father’s villages where a big pond had been dug, in which golden carp were caught by the thousand, — part of _ them being taken for the landlord and the remainder being distributed among all the peasants. My former nurse lived in that village. Her family was one of the poorest; besides her husband, she had only a small boy to help her, and a girl, my foster-sister, who became later on a preacher and a “virgin” in the Nonconformist sect to which they belonged. There was no bound to her joy when I came ‘to see her. Cream, eggs, apples, and honey were all that jee 46 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST she could offer; but the way in which she offered them, in bright wooden plates, after having covered the table with a fine snow-white linen tablecloth of her own make (with the Russian Nonconformists absolute cleanliness is a matter of religion), and the fond words with which she addressed me, treating me as her own son, left the warmest feelings in my heart. I must say the same of the nurses of my elder brothers, Nicholas and Alexander, who belonged to prominent families of two other Nonconformist sects in Nikélskoye. Few know what treasuries of goodness can be found in the hearts of Russian peasants, even after centu- ries of the most cruel oppression, which might well have embittered them.
On stormy days M. Poulain had an abundance of tales to tell us, especially about the campaign in Spain. Over and over again we induced him to tell us how he was wounded in a battle, and every time he came to the point when he felt warm blood streaming into his boot, we jumped to kiss him and gave him all sorts of pet names.
Everything seemed to prepare us for the military career: the predilection of our father (the only toys that I remem- ber his having bought for us were a rifle and a real sentry- box); the war tales of M. Poulain; nay, even the library which we had at our disposal. This library, which had once belonged to General Repninsky, our mother’s grand- father, a learned military man of the eighteenth century, consisted exclusively of books on military warfare, adorned with rich plates and beautifully bound in leather. It was our chief recreation, on wet days, to look over the plates of these books, representing the weapons of warfare since — the times of the Hebrews, and giving plans of all the bat-: tles that had been fought since Alexander of Macedonia. | These heavy books also offered excellent material for build- _ ing out of them strong fortresses which would stand for: some time the blows of a battering-ram, and the projectiles | REPUBLICAN TENDENCIES 47 of an Archimedean catapult (which, however, persisted in sending stones into the windows, and was soon prohibited). Yet neither Alexander nor I became a military man. The literature of the sixties wiped out the teachings of our childhood.
M. Poulain’s opinions about revolutions were those of the Orleanist ‘ Tllustration Frangaise,’? of which he received back numbers, and of which we knew all the woodcuts. For a long time I could not imagine a revolution otherwise than in the shape of Death riding on a horse, the red flag in one hand and a scythe in the other, mowing down men right and left. So it was pictured in the “ Illustration.” But I now think that M. Poulain’s dislike was limited to the uprising of 1848, for one of his tales about the Revolu- tion of 1789 deeply impressed my mind.
The title of prince was used in our house with and with- out occasion. M. Poulain must have been shocked by it, for he began once to tell us what he knew of the great Revolution. I cannot now recall what he said, but one thing I remember, namely, that Count Mirabeau and other nobles one day renounced their titles, and that Count Mira- beau, to show his contempt for aristocratic pretensions, opened a shop decorated with a signboard which bore the inscription, ‘ Mirabeau, tailor.’ (I tell the story as I had it from M. Poulain.) For a long time after that I worried myself thinking what trade I should take up soas to write, “ Kropétkin, such and such a handicraft man.” Later on, my Russian teacher, Nikoléi PdAvlovich Smirndff, and the general republican tone of Russian literature influenced me in the same way; and when I began to write novels — that is, in my twelfth year —I adopted the signature P. Kro- potkin, which I never have departed from, notwithstanding the remonstrances of my chiefs when I was in the military service, Viti Viti In the autumn of 1852 my brother Alexander was sent to the corps of cadets, and from that time we saw each other only during the holidays and occasionally on Sundays. The corps of cadets was five miles from our house, and although we had a dozen horses, it always happened that when the time came to send a sledge to the corps there was no horse free for that purpose. My eldest brother, Nicholas, came home very seldom. The relative freedom which Alexander found at school, and especially the influ- ence of two of his teachers in literature, developed his intellect rapidly, and later on I shall have ample occasion to speak of the beneficial influence that he exercised upon my own development. It is a great privilege to have had a loving, intelligent elder brother.
In the meantime I remained at home. I had to wait till my turn to enter the corps of pages should come, and that did not happen until I was nearly fifteen years of age. M. Poulain was dismissed, and a German tutor was engaged instead. He was one of those idealistic men who are not uncommon among Germans, but I remember him chiefly on account of the enthusiastic way in which he used to recite Schiller’s poetry, accompanying it by a most naive kind of | acting that delighted me. He stayed with us only one winter.
The next winter I was sent to attend the classes at a | Moscow gymnasium; and finally I remained with our Rus- sian teacher, Smirnéff. We soon became friends, especially after my father took both of us for a journey to his Ryazan | estate. During this journey we indulged in all sorts of fun, - SERFDOM 49 and we used to invent humorous stories in connection with the men and the things that we saw; while the impres- sion produced upon me by the hilly tracts we crossed added some new and fine touches to my growing love of nature. Under the impulse given me by Smirndff, my literary tastes also began to grow, and during the years from 1854 to 1857 I had full opportunity to develop them. My teacher, who had by this time finished his studies at the university, obtained a small clerkship in a law court, and spent his mornings there. I was thus left to myself till dinner-time, and after having prepared my lessons and taken a walk, I had plenty of time to read, and especially to write. In the autumn, when my teacher returned to his office at Moscow, while we remained in the country, I was left again to myself, and though in continual intercourse with the family, and spending a good deal of time in playing with my little sister Pauline, I could in fact dispose of my time as I liked for reading and writing.
Serfdom was then in the last years of its existence. It is recent history, —it seems to be only of yesterday; and -yet, even in Russia, few realize what serfdom was in reality. {There is a dim conception that the conditions which it created were very bad; but those conditions, as they affected (human beings bodily and mentally, are not generally under- ‘stood. It is amazing, indeed, to see how quickly an insti- ‘tution and its social consequences are forgotten when the institution has ceased to exist, and with what rapidity men jand things change. I will try to recall the conditions of ‘serfdom by telling, not what I heard, but what I saw. _ Uliana, the housekeeper, stands in the passage leading to father’s room, and crosses herself; she dares neither to ‘advance nor to retreat. At last, after having recited a prayer, she enters the room, and reports, in a hardly audible Voice, that the store of tea is nearly at an end, that there D0 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST wre only twenty pounds of sugar left, and that the other provisions will soon be exhausted.
“Thieves, robbers!”” shouts my father. “And you, you” are in league with them!” His voice thunders through- out the house. Our stepmother leaves Uliana to face the storm. But father cries, “ Frol, call the princess! Where is she?”? And when she enters, he receives her with the same reproaches., ‘¢ You also are in league with this progeny of Ham; you are standing up for them;” and so on, for half an shee or more.
Then he commences to verify the accounts. At the same time, he thinks about the hay. Fol is sent to weigh what is left of that, and our stepmother is sent to be present dur- ing the weighing, while father calculates how much of it ought to be in the barn. A considerable quantity of hay appears to be missing, and Ulidna cannot account for several pounds of such and such ee Father’s voice becomes” more and more menacing; Ulidna is trembling; but it is the coachman who now se the room, and is stormed at by his master. Father springs at him, strikes him, but he keeps repeating, “‘ Your highness must have made a mistake.”
Father repeats his calculations, and this time it appears that there is more hay in the barn than there ought to be. | The shouting continues; he now reproaches the coachman | with not’ having given the horses their daily rations in full; | but the coachman calls on all the saints to witness that he gave the animals their due, and Frol invokes the Virgin | confirm the coachman’s appeal. | But father will not be appeased. He calls in Makér, the piano-tuner and sub-butler, and reminds him of all his recent, sins. He was drunk last week, and must have been drunk yesterday, for he broke half a dozen plates. In fact, the breaking of these plates was the real cause of all the disturb.
ance: our stepmother had reported the fact to father in the iM FLOGGING SERFS 51 morning, and that was why Uliana was received with more scolding than was usually the case, why the verification of the hay was undertaken, and why father now continues to shout that “this progeny of Ham” deserve all the punish- ments on earth.
Of a sudden there is a lull in the storm. My father takes his seat at the table and writes a note. “Take Makar with = this note to the police station, and let a hundred lashes with / the birch rod be given to him.” aa Terror and absolute muteness reign in the house.
The clock strikes four, and we all go down to dinner; but no one has any appetite, and the soup remains in the plates untouched. We are ten at table, and behind each of us a violinist or a trombone-player stands, with a clean plate in his left hand; but Makér is not among them.
“Where is Makar?” our stepmother asks. “(all him in,” Makar does not appear, and the order is repeated. He enters at last, pale, with a distorted face, ashamed, his eyes cast down. Father looks into his plate, while our step- ‘mother, seeing that no one has touched the soup, tries to encourage us.
“Don’t you find, children,” she says, ‘that the soup is delicious? ” ' Tears suffocate me, and immediately after dinner is over T run out, catch Makér in a dark passage, and try to kiss his hand; but he tears it away, and says, either as a re- proach or as a question, “ Let me alone 3 you, too, when you are grown up, will you not be just the same? ” ‘No, no, never!”
Yet father was not among the worst of landowners. On she contrary, the servants and the peasants considered him me of the best. What we saw in our house was going on *verywhere, often in much more cruel forms. The flogging f the serfs was a regular part of the duties of the police ind of the fire brigade.
JNIVERSITY OF iLLUNOIS LIBRARY 2 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST A landowner once made the remark to another, “ Why is it that the number of souls on your estate increases so slowly? You probably do not look after their marriages.”
A few days later the general returned to his estate. He had a list of all the inhabitants of his village brought him, and picked out from it the names of the boys who had at- tained the age of eighteen, and the girls just past sixteen, — these are the legal ages for marriage in Russia. Then he wrote, “John to marry Anna, Paul to marry Pardshka,” and so on with five couples. ‘The five weddings,” he added, ‘‘must take place in ten days, the next Sunday but one.”
A general cry of despair rose from the village. Women, young and old, wept in every house. Anna had hoped to marry Gregory; Paul’s parents had already had a talk with the Feddtoffs about their girl, who would soon be of age. Moreover, it was the season for ploughing, not for weddings; and what wedding can be prepared in ten days? Dozens of peasants came to see the landowner; peasant women stood in groups at the back entrance of the estate, with pieces of fine linen for the landowner’s spouse, to secure her intervention. Allin vain. The master had said that the weddings should take place at such a date, and so it must be.
At the appointed time, the nuptial processions, in this case more like burial processions, went to the church. The: women cried with loud voices, as they are wont to ery dur- ing burials. One of the house valets was sent to the church, to report to the master as soon as the wedding ceremonies were over; but soon he came running back, cap in hand, pale and distressed. 4 ‘‘Pardshka,” he said, “ makes a stand; she refuses to be married to Paul. Father’’ (that is, the priest) ‘asked her, ‘Do you agree?’ but she replied in a loud voice, ‘No, I don’t. 29) “al The landowner grew furious. “Go and tell that long- maned drunkard ”’ (meaning the. priest; the Russian clergy MARRIAGE AMONG THE SERFS 53 wear their hair long) ‘that if Pardshka is not married at once, I will report him as a drunkard to the archbishop. How dares he, clerical dirt, disobey me? Tell him he shall be sent to rot in a monastery, and I shall exile Pardshka’s family to the steppes.”
The valet transmitted the message. Pardshka’s relatives and the priest surrounded the girl; her mother, weeping, fell on her knees before her, entreating her not to ruin the whole family. The girl continued to say ‘‘I won’t,” but in a weaker and weaker voice, then in a whisper, until at last she stood silent. The nuptial crown was put on her head; she made no resistance, and the valet ran full speed to the mansion to announce, ‘‘ They are married.”
Half an hour later, the small bells of the nuptial pro- cessions resounded at the gate of the mansion. The five couples alighted from the cars, crossed the yard, and entered the hall. The landlord received them, offering them glasses of wine, while the parents, standing behind the crying daughters, ordered them to bow to the earth before their lord.
Marriages by order were so common that amongst our servants, each time a young couple foresaw that they might be ordered to marry, although they had no mutual inclina- tion for each other, they took the precaution of standing together as godfather and godmother at the christening of a child in one of the peasant families. This rendered mar- riage impossible, according to Russian Church law. The ‘stratagem was usually successful, but once it ended in a tragedy. Andréi, the tailor, fell in love with a girl belong- ‘ing to one of our neighbors. He hoped that my father would permit him to go free, as a tailor, in exchange for a certain yearly payment, and that by working hard at his trade he could manage to lay aside some money and to buy ‘freedom for the girl. Otherwise, in marrying one of my father’s serfs she would have become the serf of her hus 54 MEMOIRS OF A REVOLUTIONIST band’s master. However, as Andréi and one of the maids of our household foresaw that they might be ordered to marry, they agreed to unite as god-parents in the christening of a child. What they had feared happened: one day they were called to the master, and the dreaded order was given.
‘We are always obedient to your will,” they replied, “but a few weeks ago we acted as godfather and godmother at a christening.” Andréi also explained his wishes and intentions. The result was that he was sent to the recruit- ing board to become a soldier.
Under Nicholas I. there was no obligatory military ser- vice for all, such as now exists. Nobles and merchants were exempt, and when a new levy of recruits was ordered, the landowners had to supply a certain number of men from their serfs. As a rule, the peasants, within their village communities, kept a roll amongst themselves; but the house servants were entirely at the mercy of their lord, and if he was dissatisfied with one of them, he sent him to the recruit- ing board and took a recruit acquittance, which had a con- siderable money value, as it could be sold to any one whose — turn it was to become a soldier.
Military service in those times was terrible. A man was required to serve twenty-five years under the colors, and the life of a soldier was hard in the extreme. To become a soldier meant to be torn away forever from one’s native village and surroundings, and to be at the mercy of officers — like Timoféeff, whom I have already mentioned. Blows from the officers, flogging with birch rods and with sticks, — for the slightest fault, were normal affairs. The cruelty that was displayed surpasses all imagination. Even in the: corps of cadets, where only noblemen’s sons were educated, — a thousand blows with birch rods were sometimes adminis-_ tered, in the presence of all the corps, for a cigarette, — the doctor standing by the tortured boy, and ordering the pun-_ ishment to end only when he ascertained that the pulse was | MILITARY SERVICE UNDER NICHOLAS I a0 about to stop beating. The bleeding victim was carried away unconscious to the hospital. The commander of the military schools, the Grand Duke Mikhael, would quickly have removed the director of a corps who had not had one or two such cases every year. ‘‘ No discipline,’ he would have said.
With common soldiers it was far worse. When one of them appeared before a court-martial, the sentence was that a thousand men should be placed in two ranks facing each other, every soldier armed with a stick of the thickness of the little finger (these sticks were known under their German name of Spitzruthen), and that the condemned man should be dragged three, four, five, and seven times between these two rows, each soldier administering a blow. Ser- geants followed to see that full force was used. After one or two thousand blows had been given, the victim, spitting blood, was taken to the hospital and attended to, in order that the punishment might be finished as soon as he had more or less recovered from the effects of the first part of it. ‘If he died under the torture, the execution of the sentence was completed upon the corpse. Nicholas I. and his brother ‘Mikhael were pitiless; no remittance of the punishment was ‘ever possible. “I will send you through the ranks; you shall be skinned under the sticks,’ were threats which made part of the current language.