ALEXANDER II. AND EMANCIPATION.
“Though watery deserts hold apart The worlds of East and West, Still beats the self-same human heart In each proud nation’s breast.
Our floating turret tempts the main And dares the howling blast, To clasp more close the golden chain That long has bound them fast.
In vain the gales of ocean sweep, In vain the billows roar, That chain the wild and stormy steep Of storied Elsinore.
She comes! She comes! Her banner dips In Neva’s flashing tide, With greetings on her cannon’s lips The storm-god’s iron bride.
· · · · ·
No prairies heaped their garnered store To fill her sunless hold. Not rich Nevada’s gleaming ore Its hidden caves enfold.
But lightly as the sea bird swings She floats the depth above; A breath of flame to lend her wings— Her freight, a people’s love.
When darkness hid the stormy skies In war’s long winter night, One ray still cheered our straining eyes, The far off northern light.
And now the friendly rays return From lights that glow afar, Those clustered lamps of heaven that burn Around the western star.
A nation’s love in tears and smiles We bear across the sea: O! Neva of the banded isles, We moor our hearts to thee.”
—_Oliver Wendell Holmes on Fox’s Mission to Russia_, 1866.
ALEXANDER II., 1866 ]
THE TERRITORY OF RUSSIA.
Forty-two years have passed since in Novgorod, the oldest town, Russia celebrated the one thousandth anniversary of its birth, and erected a monument consisting of an enormous globe, in the midst of emblematic and historical figures. The original Russia was a republic. It occupied a small district near the sources of the Dneiper and Western Dvina, and the site of the future city of Novgorod. Its name was derived from Rūs the patronymic of three brothers of a Variag tribe belonging to the settlement. The oldest brother was called Rurik.
More than six hundred years had passed, when in the South, Ivan III. united the independent principalities of Moscow, and, in 1505, cast off the Tartar yoke from these states, whose rulers proclaimed themselves Tsars, and which were accidentally discovered in 1553, on the White Sea, by an English navigator seeking for a short route to China and India. A commercial acquaintance was formed which has been intermittently sustained ever since with England.
In 1570, was inaugurated the Russian principle of expansion, by conquering the republic of the North and annexing it to Moscow. In this process it is said 60,000 human beings were sacrificed. In a circular recently issued by the Ministry of Public Instruction through the curators of the several educational districts, instructing the directors of secondary schools to instil into the minds of their pupils a correct theory of the war of the present year (1904) emphasis is given to the method of treatment of the Russian colonies compared with that received by those pertaining to other countries.
It says:—“The western European states draw from their colonies an immense income, they live on them. Russia expends on her periphery a very considerable sum annually, and receives nothing from them in return. The Russian periphery flourishes at the expense of the centre.”
This periphery embraces the colonies of Finland, the Caucasus, the Central Asiatic possessions and Manchuria.
During the reign of Alexander I. the Grand Duchy of Finland, which stretches from the Gulf of Finland to the Polar Sea, by the peace of Friederichshamm was ceded to Russia by Sweden in 1809, and Poland was acquired in 1814. In 1867, Russia possessed about 106,951 Russian square miles in Europe and the Caucasus, 248,470 in Asia, and 24,210 square miles which were ceded to the United States in that year. Now behold a great empire with a territory stretching from the Baltic to the Northern Pacific, and from the Polar Sea to the frontiers of Turkey, Persia, Afghanistan and China, crossed by systematically extended lines of railway, and divided as in the United States of America, into two portions, whose sources of development, difference in soil, character of colonization and products, call for constant reference to the distinctive titles of “the North” and “the South.” Moscow, the commercial and industrial capital of the empire, which has remained the home of passive conservatism and an asylum for the discontented, preserves the tombs of the Grand Princes, and the palace in which the Tsars of Muscovy lived and other monuments made sacred by tradition, six centuries of historical associations surrounding the Kremlin.
St. Petersburg, a cosmopolitan city was built on a European design especially favoring French models, with the purpose frankly avowed by Peter the Great of having “a window by which the Russians might look into civilized Europe.” Like Odessa it has more of a foreign than a Russian character, but not more than one tenth of the population are dwellers in the city, while the agricultural element is ever expanding.
THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.
The historical development of Russia has been peculiar, and her social and political organization differs radically from that of the countries of western Europe. Its autocracy is founded on the unbounded hereditary devotion of the people,—peasantry and nobles alike. The entire government of the vast empire is administered from St. Petersburg, on the principle that the people are incapable of understanding the methods of governing their local affairs, and from that or from other reasons, are not to be trusted with them, so that the local self government is anomalous. Created by autocratic power through a commission appointed for the purpose of “conferring more unity and independence on the local economic administration,” it has not grown into an institution from popular wants publicly declared, petitioned for and advocated, but derives its main motive power and maintenance from the Central Government which controls it. Peter the Great (1682–1725) introduced uniformity and symmetry into the administration of public affairs. After the death of Patriarch Adrian of the Greek Church, and an interregnum of twenty years, Peter supplied his place by an ecclesiastical council a synod which still remains the highest ecclesiastical authority, in which as a contemporary observed “the mainspring was Peter’s power, and the pendulum his understanding.”
The members of the Synod are appointed by the Tsar who is accountable to no one. Next to him in temporal power come the Council of State, the Committee of Ministers, and the Senate, which is the sole Court of Revision for the Justice of Peace Courts and for the Regular Tribunals, and is the regulator of the whole judicial system of the empire. Below these are ten ministries, viz., the Ministries of the Interior, Public Works, State Demesnes, Finance, Justice, Public Instruction, War, Navy, Foreign Affairs, and the Imperial Court.
The territorial administration is divided into provinces, and each province into districts, all varying greatly in size. Over each province is a governor, vice-governor, and council. The governor is the local representative of the Ministry of the Interior and each of the other ministries have their bureaus and representatives in the provinces drawn chiefly from the nobility and the clergy. Every province and each of the ten districts into which it is divided, has an assembly of deputies and an executive bureau elected by the assembly from among its members, but the president of the assembly is a Marshal of the Noblesse, and a limit is placed to the taxation of trade and industry. The deputies are elected by the landed proprietors of the rural communes, composed of peasants, and the municipal corporations. The members of the Assembly for the provinces are elected by the District Assemblies. The system of government for the towns differs essentially from that of the country, the towns receiving the advantage of the development of trade and industry, the establishment of schools, etc. They are of three kinds, “Government towns,” “District towns,” and supernumerary, each divided into merchants, nondescript, and artisans, the artisans being partly made up from the population of the agricultural districts. The towns have a mayor and council.
THE SERFS.
Moscow has been described as the centre from which serfage radiated, decreasing toward the north, east, and south.
According to the documents of the several periods and the statements of travellers, the rural population of Russia was composed originally of three classes, viz., slaves who were made so by various causes—some prisoners of war, others freemen who had sold themselves as slaves, others insolvent debtors and convicts. One grade higher were the free farm hands who wandered from place to place, wherever they could find work, and then the peasants or small farmers, a distinct class by themselves, who were highest in the social scale, and who were possessors of land and of their personal liberty. But in the eighteenth century these distinctions gradually became obliterated on account of the disproportion between the small number of laborers and the large amount of irreclaimable land, systematized immigration being impossible, and all the classes were rolled into one under the name of “serfs,” who were owned by the great landed proprietors or by the state, and being held as property were bought and sold in families and singly, and were deprived of legal protection by the Government according to the ukazes of October 13, 1675, and June 25, 1682, which sanctioned the practice of selling peasants and the exaction of the payment to the Government of dues on the sales of slaves. Free peasants were often kidnapped from weaker by more powerful proprietors and made serfs, while the same class although nominally free were so valuable to those who possessed their services that they were not allowed to leave their borders, so by this means, and often by reason of debts contracted to the proprietor a large number became practically serfs before serfage was established by law, _i.e._ before the Tsars discharged their obligations to the nobles by bestowing upon them a certain amount of land with a certain number of laborers attached, thus legalizing serfage and the return of fugitive slaves. A small proportion of the nobles who lived on their estates held the peasants as slaves.
Under Peter the Great (1682–1725) and his immediate successor every man was compelled to serve the state, and every proprietor paid the poll tax of his serfs, who were thus reckoned as taxable property, and every unattached laborer was arrested as a vagrant. In 1766, by imperial ukaze, the proprietors or masters had a right to transport unruly serfs to Siberia for life without trial. In 1767 and 1781, it was ordered that those who entered complaints against their masters, should be punished with the knout or sent to the mines, or, what they feared most, made to join the Army as recruits. In extreme cases of the cruelty of proprietors, the authorities interfered by direction of the Tsar, who happened to be informed of it. In 1792, the serfs were bought and sold, and given away as part of the masters’ working capital, in large and small numbers, with and without the land, but they were not allowed to be sold by auction, nor to be offered for sale at the time of the conscriptions. From 1792 to 1861, the estimate of a noble’s fortune was based on the number of serfs he owned.
The Emperor Paul toward the close of the 18th century (1796–1801) desiring to limit the authority of the proprietors, issued an ukaze that the serfs should not be forced to work for their masters more than three days in the week, but many paid no attention to it, and the serfs still had no legal standing in court in order to make a complaint. There were indeed enlightened, humane proprietors who protected those for whom they were responsible from outside interference, and under whose management the life of the serf was much easier than that of agricultural laborers in some countries who are free, but serfage generally, was the reverse of this type. The worst suffering was from the hands of speculators who bought up the land in order to make money in the shortest possible time, and parted with the land and the families on it indiscriminately.
Even among uncivilized tribes the Russian peasant is good natured, easily conciliated, and patient under extreme hardship. He readily adapts himself to circumstances.
In the ordinary relations which existed between the serf and the proprietor the manor land and the communal land were kept separate. From the laborers on the rural commune land or village system,—the rural commune contains five-sixths of the population,—where a share of land was distributed to each serf, labor dues, a certain number of days’ labor per week, were exacted, also, dues consisting of the products of the farm and the spinning wheel, in the case of the absence of the serfs who were at work in the cities or larger towns but retaining, whether they desired it or not, their membership in the commune. A large proportion of the serfs could read and write and were enterprising, self-reliant, and independent.
EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS.
The Russian proverb, “A story is soon told but a thing is not soon done,” may be consistently applied to their great reform, one of the most interesting events of modern history,—the Emancipation of the Serfs. An effort was made for freedom in 1762, by an insurrection led by a Cossack with a scheme for creating a peasant empire, but he soon met with defeat and his plan failed.
In 1801, Alexander I. attempted to ameliorate the condition of the serfs, and entertained several projects for a general emancipation, and Nicholas encouraged the consideration of the question by permitting six committees to be formed for the purpose. The result was that some thousands of serfs were emancipated, the custom of giving grants of land with peasants was abolished, a number of the worst masters were removed from their estates, and some, convicted of murder, were sent to Siberia. Yet, when a general emancipation was really inaugurated, the leading organs of the press acknowledged indebtedness to the Crimean War for opening the eyes of the country to the dark side of their political and social organization. It produced an intellectual movement and a moral revival which led to gigantic results. Their foes in the Crimea, said a Russian writer of the time, whose manuscript was widely circulated but never printed, were “British statesmen,” “the crowned conspirator of France,” “treacherous Austria,” and “Western Europe generally.” Militia regiments were everywhere raised throughout the country, and many landed proprietors spent large sums in equipping volunteer corps, but unscrupulous members of the commissary department enriched themselves at the expense of these patriotic efforts, and the deficiency of the country in regard to the resources necessary for a prolonged conflict, were soon manifest. “Another year of war,” wrote an eye witness in 1855, “and the whole of Southern Russia will be ruined.”
In this conflict it was the aim of the Tsar Nicholas to realize the grand idea of Catherine II., consort of Peter III. who succeeded to his throne, of driving the Turks out of Europe, but the Allies were victorious, and even the despised Turks made a successful stand on the line of the Danube, and when he, the “Iron Tsar,” the sworn enemy of liberalism, died in a soldier’s humble quarters in the Crimea, the system he created,—which through the sacrifice of the intelligence of the people to the increase of military power proved the chief cause it was claimed of the national disasters,—died with him, and as soon as peace had been concluded Alexander II. accepting the responsibility of the dying words of Nicholas, “my successor may do as he pleases, but I cannot change,” began a reign by which the public administration of affairs was to be improved, in the words of his manifesto “by the combined efforts of the Government and the people,” not secretly by the Administration as had been the custom in making slight changes.
In March, 1856, soon after the close of the Crimean War Alexander II. addressed to the Marshals of the Noblesse of Moscow the following words:—
“For the removal of certain unfounded reports I consider it necessary to declare to you that I have not at present the intention of annihilating serfage, but, certainly, as you yourselves know, the existing manner of possessing serfs cannot remain unchanged. It is better to abolish serfage from above, than to await the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below. I request you, gentlemen, to consider how this can be put into execution, and to submit my words to the noblesse for their consideration.”
These enunciations were received with indifference, and further action was indefinitely postponed, to the great disappointment of the Tsar, who at once instituted a committee called “Chief Committee of Peasant Affairs,” composed of high officers of the state, and great land owners, among them the Grand Duke Constantine, who should privately work for these ends, and who would make a study of the subject for six months, and on the assumption that the Lithuanian provinces where the serfs were in a miserable condition desired it, “The Rescript of Nazimof” was prepared, empowering the proprietors to form committees for the study of this project with a view to definite results in effecting the gradual abolition of serfage, and four days later a circular was sent by direction of the Tsar, to the Governors and Marshals of Noblesse all over Russia, informing them of the action relative to the Lithuanian Provinces, and a copy of the rescript was furnished them in case they were disposed to follow suit. This circular produced an immense sensation. Its meaning was unmistakable, and convincing to loyal subjects of the Tsar, for a few weeks later he made public announcement of his wish that, with the help of God, and the co-operation of the Noblesse, the great work would be accomplished. The public press most enthusiastically sustained this liberal movement for the amelioration of the condition of so large a proportion of the population and welcomed the dawn of a glorious epoch for the nation in which this obstacle to moral progress, a relic of barbarism, should be removed, and Russia be placed on equality with the nations of the West, and with these advocates were joined a majority of the noblesse, among whom were numerous educated young enthusiasts, while some still clung to serfage as an indispensable source of revenue not to be obtained except under the rigid rule of the master, and a part of the land was to be let go to the peasants. These considerations formed an adverse current which was felt throughout the country, but no open opposition to the will of the Tsar was allowed to manifest itself, because of its utter futility. Still, when in 1857, it became evident that the emancipation of the serfs was really at hand the prospect raised terrible forebodings in the minds of masters, stewards, and employers of serfs. By law, it appeared that the peasants would receive the land which they occupied on sufferance, comprising half of the entire arable land of some estates, but no pasturage, and it was feared that the emancipated peasants would be content to live by the cultivation of their own land, and would not consent on any terms to work for their former masters.
During the year 1858, committees were formed for the purposes of emancipation in every province where serfage existed, the projects which they proposed being always subject to revision and approval or rejection by the Government. The fundamental principles of the movement were intended to accomplish the work of emancipation by allowing the serfs to remain for a time on the land subject to the authority of the proprietors, and during this time they should become possessors, by many payments or by labor, of their houses and gardens, and have the temporary use of a certain quantity of land sufficient for their own support, and their taxes to the proprietors and the State. The limit of this transition period does not seem to have been prescribed. The next move was the appointment of an “Elaboration Commission,” composed of officials and landed proprietors named by the Tsar, which formulated a new plan, approved by the Tsar, in which the idea of gradual emancipation was eliminated, and its place was supplied by a general law for the complete abolition of the authority of the proprietor over the serf. Thus the serfs were to be transformed into small proprietors of a commune or village, possessing a house and garden and a section of communal land. The serf was to be declared personally free, and a price was to be fixed by Government for the rent of the land. As to the amount, that was limited to the land actually enjoyed by the peasants. Before the project became a law, deputies from the Provincial Committees were summoned to St. Petersburg for consultation in matters of detail before the commission, but this was a mere formality and added nothing to the influence of the Provincial Committees, or to future results. The autocratic power remained supreme. In the opinion of the Tsar, “The autocratic power created serfage, and the autocratic power ought to abolish it.”
In 1861, as the time drew nearer there was great excitement all over Russia. An actor in one of the St. Petersburg theatres shouted from the stage,—“Let us proclaim throughout all Russia that the time has come for tearing up evil by the roots!” And the audience responded with frantic demonstrations of enthusiasm. Speech was free, open, and unrestrained by police or press censors, and public attention was absorbed by the great practical issues of the day. The Crimean war had shown the necessity of constructing railroads, improving roads, and steamboat communication on the rivers, of developing the natural resources, and had taught them the lesson that even an efficient army could not be produced from an ignorant population. Accordingly in current speech and in the public press different methods of education were discussed, and reforms in all the branches of the civil service, and as a result of all this they expected an increase of military power and the consequent respect of Western nations.
For the furtherance of these reforming projects, for the reason that twenty millions of the people, one third of the population, were in a state of bondage, precedence was given to the question of the condition of the serfs. There were 100,247 landed proprietors, and of these more than 41,000 were possessors of less than twenty-one male serfs. A proprietor who was owner of 500 serfs was not considered very rich, and there were only 3,803 of these. There were a few whose possessions were enormous. One of the nobles possessed more than 150,000 male serfs, more than 300,000 souls; the latter estimate naturally including females, though the Russians have a popular saying that “Women have no souls at all, but only a vapor.” Another noble owned more than half a million of acres of land, another extensive mines, but there were few very rich families. By far the greater part of the territory belonged to the state, and one-half of the rural population were state peasants whose condition differed from the other serfs in that they had more land and more liberty, and their position was not so precarious.
Agriculture and the industries languished for the lack of free labor, and upon the nation’s honor was the stigma of slavery.
The emancipation law which was signed February 19, 1861, Old Style, or March 3d as we reckon time, liberated twenty millions of serfs. The manifesto with which the peasantry is said to have been disappointed, was read in all the churches and contained these fundamental principles, to wit:—
“1. That the serfs should at once receive the civil rights of the free rural classes, and that the authority of the proprietors should be replaced by communal self-government.
2. That the rural communes should as far as possible retain the land they actually held, and should in return pay to the proprietor certain yearly dues in money or labor.
3. That the Government should by means of credit, assist the communes to redeem these dues, or, in other words, to purchase the lands ceded to them in usufruct.”
The domestic serfs should continue to serve their masters two years, and thereafter they should be completely free, but would have no claim on the land. The disappointment in the minds of the peasants was in the disposition of the land. Many desired that all the land should be given to the Communes, making the emancipation in accordance with traditional right and their material advantage, instead of which they were still to pay dues on land they believed to be their own by right. The Noblesse were well pleased with the manifesto.
After a delay of three months, “Arbiters of the Peace” were appointed, to regulate the future relations between the proprietors and peasantry and in the interval cases of insubordination were frequent, and even riots, when order was preserved by the calling out of the troops. The “Arbiters of the Peace” when organized restored order and regulated the land question, issued charters, etc. between the proprietors and serfs, legalizing the new agreements, with or without their consent. In this reconstruction many differences were to be reconciled owing to the distrust of the freed serfs, but gradually they came to know the situation better and to help in the progress of the work, which has advanced slowly but surely, notwithstanding the complaints in some instances of the Noblesse, through the wonderful tact of the conscientious “Arbiters of the Peace.”
The law relating to the dues was as follows:—The dues were capitalised at six per cent and the Government paid at once to the proprietors four-fifths of the whole sum. The peasants were to pay to the proprietor the remaining fifth, either at once or in installments, and to the Government six per cent, for forty-nine years, on the sum advanced. This arrangement was willingly acceded to by the proprietors but the peasants were so backward in their payments, that in most cases their fifth had to be remitted.
Of this gigantic, though gradual, reform the Tsar Alexander II. is acknowledged by all to be the chief and most energetic and judicious promoter. He was ably assisted by his brother the Grand Duke Constantine and the Grand Duchess Helena, a German Princess, aided by the Noblesse and the landed proprietors, who when assured that emancipation was inevitable joined enthusiastically in its execution, and also by the peasantry of the better sort as soon as they comprehended the advantages of the law which gave them back their original status in the social scale, and made them once more personally free.
AFTER EMANCIPATION.
It was so-called freedom in 1861, but they had to serve as they had done for two years longer, for the law had a provision enjoining them to obey and work as hard as of old until some new arrangement should be made. On appealing to the authorities the field work was executed, after a fashion, but the harvest suffered for a few years, until the peasants began to realize the burden of the taxes they were obliged to pay on the land, as well as support themselves, and consented to work in the fields of their former owners for a moderate compensation, taking advantage of the scarcity of labor, and taking their leave on a word or two too much from their employers, who are dependent upon them. Previous to emancipation it was said that the Russians had little or no practical acquaintance with pauperism, but now some became fugitives, and made it a permanent condition of life, wandering through the cities and villages as professing pilgrims or beggars, and were supported by the alms giving of the merchants, the public generally and the monasteries.
THE RURAL COMMUNES.
The government of the Rural Commune or Mir, as established by the Act of Emancipation, is by a Village Assembly and a Village Elder, but the Elder’s authority is limited by the heads of households, all having a common responsibility and paying a fixed sum into the common treasury; even the time of planting, mowing and harvesting, being regulated by the Assembly, and all the households are equally responsible for the taxes and dues. The consent of the Assembly must be obtained if a peasant desires to work in the larger towns, for his liabilities must be made secure.
Every year the Village has to pay a certain sum into the Imperial Treasury, according to the number of male peasants; each Village distributing the land, according to its own judgment, with taxes and dues in proportion to the land, sometimes according to the working power of the families, which may change every few years, males and females alike working on the land.
In the meetings of the assemblies the majority rules, and is decided by a Court of the members, composed of heads of households of both sexes, standing in groups out of doors.
The office of Village Elder is sometimes elective, at others he is appointed by the landed proprietor. The office is not sought for, the duties being troublesome and annoying, and the pay small. In the allotment of the land the number of shares of which may or may not be of advantage, according to the peculiar circumstances of each, the decision of the Commune is accepted without demur. Some of these divisions take place annually, others at irregular intervals. The system compels the peasant to possess land whether he or she desires it or not. Every peasant, by the simple fact of his birth, possesses an inalienable right to a share of the land.
All that is necessary for their existence, their houses, land, agricultural implements etc., are exempt from sequestration, and cannot be taken for debt. The peasants on the land belonging to the state, have no masters, but are not allowed to change their official domicile. They pay taxes and dues. Many of them have left the villages and have amassed fortunes in the cities, still retaining their hold on the land by paying the taxes. The remaining land belongs to rich nobles, who rarely visit their estates, and the condition of the peasants is much the same as that of the state peasants, while others live on their estates.
Now, forty-three of the forty-nine years have passed, and in January, 1904, the Tsar Nicholas II. grandson of Alexander II., in response to calls for legislation relative to a new draft of the present code, with complaints of arbitrary conduct by the administrative machinery from the highest assemblies to the local committees, stipulates that changes on three points shall be reserved from discussion, namely, that the peasant class must remain entirely separate, legally, from the other classes; that the Commune is to remain untouched by legislation, and that the peasant lands are to remain inalienable. The autocratic power still remains supreme. March 3, 1904, for the first time since the Emancipation of the serfs the anniversary was officially observed throughout the empire as a general holiday and with special services in the churches. Thousands stood in the open air, uncovered, in the great central market of St. Petersburg chanting a Te Deum.
DEATH OF ALEXANDER II.
I was returning to my room in Paris, late one Sunday night in March, 1881, having passed an agreeable evening, first dining at my old classmate’s, E. D. Boit’s, then listening to some music and meeting some pleasant people at the house of another artist Mr. G. P. A. Healy, and last calling with Wad Longfellow upon the Kings, when I heard a newsman on the boulevard crying out something exciting though I could not catch what it was. I bought his extra, “le Soir,” took it to my room, and found that the news was nothing less than this time the successful assassination on the 13th of the Emperor of Russia.
It made quite an impression upon me as I thought it over, not only because I had met the Tsar two or three times, but also from the interest I felt he had taken in the cause of the Union during our civil war; that he among the crowned heads of the world had been, if not our only, at least our out-spoken friend and sympathizer.
How much in common there was both in the life and death of Alexander II. and Abraham Lincoln! Each of these men in his own land had been the originator and bold champion of a plan of emancipation, and each of them had at length fallen by the hand of an assassin!
Prince Kropotkin in 1899, gave to the _Atlantic Monthly_ the following account of the death of the Tsar:—
“A bomb was thrown under the Tsar’s iron-clad carriage. Several Circassians of the escort were wounded. Rysakoff, who flung the bomb, was arrested on the spot. Then, although the coachman of the Tsar earnestly advised him not to get out, saying that he could drive him still in the slightly damaged carriage, he stepped out. He felt that his military dignity required him to see the wounded Circassians, to condole with them, as he had done with the wounded during the Turkish war, when a mad storming of Plevna, doomed to end in terrible disaster, was made on the day of his fête.
He approached Rysakoff and asked him something, and as he passed close by another young man, Grinevetsky, the latter threw his bomb at their feet, between himself and Alexander II., so that both of them should be killed by the terrible engine. They lived but a few hours.
There Alexander II. lay upon the snow, profusely bleeding, abandoned by every one of his followers! All had disappeared. It was cadets, returning from the parade, who lifted the bleeding Tsar from the snow, and put him in a sledge, covering his shivering body with a cadet mantle, and his bare head with a cadet cap. And it was one of the Terrorists, Emelianoff, with a bomb wrapped in a paper under his arm, who, at the risk of being arrested on the spot and hanged, rushed with the cadets to help the wounded man! Human nature is full of these contrasts.”
It was at the canal bridge near the Nevski Prospect that the bomb which shattered the body of the Tsar below the waist was thrown, and he died within an hour at his rooms in the Winter Palace. It is said that these rooms and their contents have never been disturbed in the least since the murdered Tsar left them for his drive. The hands of the clock on the mantel still point to 33 minutes past 3, the moment the Tsar expired.
MONUMENT AT MOSCOW.
August 28, 1898, a monument to Tsar Alexander II. was unveiled at Moscow. His grandson, the present Tsar, Nicholas II. issued a ukase referring to the event and eulogizing the deeds of the deceased, notably the liberation of the peasants from bondage, which earned him the title of “The Deliverer,” in the mouth of a grateful people. The closing words were as follows:—
MEDALS MADE HEREDITARY.
“Wishing to seal more firmly the memory of this historical deed, we have resolved to make hereditary the wearing and possession of the medals he conferred upon his co-operators, as a sign of his gracious acknowledgment of their labors.”
The Tsar also sent to M. Constantin Pobiedonostseff, Procurator General of the Holy Synod, the decoration of the Order of St. Andrew, together with an imperial rescript reminding him that he, of all the close co-operators with the deceased monarch, alone remained in possession of the chiefship of the administrative department then intrusted to him.
The monument was unveiled by Emperor Nicholas II. at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, in the presence of the Czarina, the Queen of the Hellenes, the Cabinet, the German and Austrian Ambassadors, deputations from all the land and naval forces of Russia and the Austrian Uhlans Regiment.
The entire audience knelt while the clergy recited a prayer in memory of the deceased.
At the moment of the unveiling the troops presented arms, and a salute of 320 guns was fired. Then the troops, with the Emperor at the head, marched past the monument amid the enthusiastic cheers of the people.
ODESSA, 1899. ]