A. M. JAMENT related to me, at Nizhny, that a German, a new lord of the village, a great agriculturist and a propagator of modes of husbandry still unused in this country, has just been assassinated on his own domains, contiguous to those of a M. Merline, another foreigner, through whom the fact has come to our knowledge.
Two men presented themselves to this German lord, under the pretext of purchasing horses of him; and in the evening, they entered his chamber and murdered him. It was, I am assured, a blow aimed by the peasants of the foreigner in revenge for the innovations which he sought to make in the culture of their lands.
The people of this country have an aversion for everything that is not Russian. I often hear it repeated, that they will someday rise from one end of the empire to the other upon the men without a beard, and destroy them all. It is by the beard that the Russians know each other. In the eyes of the peasants, a Russian with a shaved chin is a traitor, who has sold himself to foreigners, and who deserves to share their fate. But what will be the punishment inflicted by the survivors upon the authors of these Muscovite Vespers? All Russia cannot be sent to Siberia. Villages may be transported, but it would be difficult to exile provinces. It is worthy of remark, that this kind of punishment strikes the peasants without hurting them. A Russian recognizes his country wherever long winters reign: snow has always the same aspect; the winding-sheet of the earth is everywhere equally white, whether its thickness be six inches or six feet; so that, if they only allow him to reconstruct his cabin and his sledge, the Russian finds himself at home to whatever spot he may be exiled. In the deserts of the North it costs little to make a country. To the man who has never seen anything but icy plains scattered with stunted trees, every cold and desert land represents his native soil. Besides, the inhabitants of these latitudes are always inclined to quit the place of their birth.
Scenes of disorder are multiplying in the country: every day I hear of some new crime: but, by the time it is made public, it has already become ancient, which tends to weaken its impressiveness, especially as from so many isolated atrocities nothing results to disturb the general repose of the country. As I have already said, tranquillity is maintained among this people by the length and difficulties of communication, and by the secrecy of the government, which perpetuates the evil through fear of disclosing it. To these causes, I may add the blind obedience of the troops, and, above all, the complete ignorance of the country people themselves. But, singular conjunction of facts!—the latter remedy is, at the same time, the first cause of the evil: it is, therefore, difficult to see how the nation will get out of the dangerous circle in which circumstances have involved it. Hitherto, the good and the evil, the danger and the safety, have come to it from the same source.
The reader can form no conception of the manner in which a lord, when taking possession of some newly acquired domain, is received by his peasants. They exhibit a servility which would appear incredible to the people of our country: men, women, and children, all fall on their knees before their new master—all kiss the hands, and sometimes the feet, of the landholder; and, O! miserable profanation of faith!—those who are old enough to err, voluntarily confess to him their sins—he being to them the image and the envoy of God, representing both the King of Heaven and the emperor! Such fanaticism in servitude must end in casting an illusion over the mind of him who is its object, especially if he has not long attained the rank which he possesses: the change of fortune thus marked, must so dazzle him as to persuade him that he is not of the same race as those prostrate at his feet— those whom he suddenly finds himself empowered to command. It is no paradox which I put forward, when I maintain that the aristocracy of birth could alone ameliorate the condition of the serfs, and enable them to profit by emancipation through gentle and gradual transitions. Their slavery becomes unbearable under the new men of wealth. Under the old ones, it is hard enough: but these are at least born above them, and also among them, which is a consolation; besides, the habit of authority is as natural to the one party as that of slavery is to the other; and habit mitigates everything, mollifying the injustice of the strong, and lightening the yoke of the feeble. But the change of fortunes and conditions produces frightful results in a country subjected to a system of servitude: and yet, it is this very change which maintains the duration of the present order of things in Russia, because it conciliates the men who know how to benefit by it—a second example of the remedy being drawn from the source of the evil. Terrible circle, round which revolve all the populations of a vast empire! This lord, this new deity—what title has he to be adored? He is adored because he has had enough money and capacity for intrigue to be able to buy the land to which are attached all the men prostrate before him. An upstart appears to me a monster, in a country where the life of the poor depends upon the rich, and where man is the fortune of man; the onward progress of industrious enterprise, and the fixed state of serfdom, combined in the same society, produce results that are revolting: but the despot loves the upstart— he is his creature! The position of a new lord is this: yesterday his slave was his equal: today, his industry more or less honest, his flatteries more or less mean, have put it into his power to purchase a certain number of his comrades. To become the beast of burden of an equal is an intolerable evil. It is, however, a result which an impious alliance of arbitrary customs and liberal, or, to speak more justly, unstable institutions, can bring upon a people. Nowhere else does the man who makes a fortune have his feet kissed by his vanquished rivals. The most shocking incoherence has become the basis of the Russian constitution.
M. Guibal—everytime that I am authorized to cite a name, I use the permission—M. Guibal, the son of a schoolmaster, was exiled without cause, or at least without explanation, and without being able to guess his crime, into a Siberian village in the environs of Orenburg. A song, which he composed to beguile his sorrow was listened to by an inspector, who put it before the eyes of the governor; it attracted the attention of that august personage, who sent his aide-de-camp to the exile to inform himself regarding the circumstances of his situation and his conduct, and to judge if he was good for anything. The unfortunate man succeeded in interesting the aide-de-camp, who, on his return, made a very favorable report, in consequence of which he was immediately recalled. He has never known the real cause of his misfortune: perhaps it was another song.
Such are the circumstances on which depends the fate of a man in Russia!
The following story is of a different character.
A Russian, immensely rich, but who ought to have been enlightened as regards the miseries and infirmities of wealth and power—for the fortune of his family had been established for two generations—was traveling in Germany. He fell sick in a small town, and called in the chief physician of the place: at first he submitted to everything that was ordered; but not finding himself at the end of a few days any better, he grew weary of obedience, rose up angrily, and throwing off the veil of civilization in which he had deemed it advisable to muffle himself, he called the landlord, and, while rapidly marching up and down his chamber, thus addressed him: “I do not understand the manner in which I am treated: here I have taken medicine for three days without being in the least benefited: what kind of a doctor have you sent me? he cannot know who I am!”
Whimsical sentiments of every species abound in Russia among the higher classes, because hearts and minds are the prey of exhaustion and satiety. A lady of high rank in Petersburg has been married several times: she passes the summers in a magnificent country house, some leagues from the city, and her garden is filled with the tombs of all her husbands, whom she begins to love passionately so soon as they are dead. She raises for them mausolea and chapels, weeps over their ashes, and covers their tombs with sentimental epitaphs; in short, she renders to the dead an honor offensive to the living. The pleasure grounds of this lady have thus become a real Père-Lachaise, with quite a little gloom about them for whoever has not, like the noble widow, a love of tombs and deceased husbands.
Nothing need surprise us in the way of false sensitiveness among a people who study elegance with the same precise minuteness that others learn the art of war or of government. The following is an example of the grave interest the Russians take in the most puerile matters whenever they affect them personally.
A descendant of ancient boyars, who was rich and elderly, lived in the country, not far from Moscow. A detachment of hussars was, with its officers, quartered in his house. It was the season of Easter, which the Russians celebrate with peculiar solemnity. All the members of a family unite with their friends and neighbors, to attend the mass, which, on this festival, is offered precisely at midnight.
The proprietor of whom I speak, being the most considerable person of the neighborhood, expected a large assembly of guests on Easter Eve, more especially as he had, that year, restored and greatly beautified his parish church.
Two or three days before the feast, he was awakened by a procession of horses and carriages passing over a pier that led to his residence. This castle is, according to the usual custom, situated close upon the edge of a small sheet of water; the church rises on the opposite side, just at the end of the pier, which serves as a road from the castle to the village.
Astonished to hear so unusual a noise in the middle of the night, the master of the house rose, and, to his great surprise, saw from the window, by the light of numerous torches, a beautiful calèche drawn by four horses and attended by outriders.
He quickly recognized this new equipage, as well as the man to whom it belonged: he was one of the hussar officers lodged in his house, an individual who had been recently enriched by an inheritance, and had just purchased a carriage and horses, which had been brought to the castle. The old lord, upon seeing him parading in his open calèche, all alone, by night, in the midst of a deserted and silent country, imagined that he had become mad: he followed with his eyes the elegant procession, and saw it advance in good order towards the church, and stop before the door; where the owner gravely descended from the carriage, aided by his people, who crowded round to support the young officer, although he, appearing quite as nimble as they, might have easily dispensed with their assistance.
Scarcely had he touched the ground, when, slowly and majestically, he re-entered his coach, took another turn on the pier, and came back again to the church, where he and his people recommenced the previous ceremony. This game was renewed until daybreak. At the last repetition, the officer gave orders to return to the castle without noise. A few minutes after, all were in their beds.
In the morning, the first question that the wondering owner of the house put to his guest, the captain of hussars, was as to the meaning of his nocturnal ride, and of the evolutions of his people around his person. “O! nothing!” replied the officer, without the least embarrassment: “my servants are novices; you will have much company at Easter; people are coming here from every quarter; I therefore merely thought it best to make a rehearsal of my entrée into church.”
I must now give an account of my departure from Nizhny, which it will be seen was less brilliant than the nocturnal ride of the captain of hussars.
On the evening that I accompanied the governor to the empty Russian theater, I met, after leaving him, an acquaintance who took me to the café of the Gypsies, situated in the most lively part of the fair: it was nearly midnight, but this house was still full of people, noise, and light. The women struck me as being very handsome; their costume, although in appearance the same as that of other Russian females, takes a foreign character when worn by them: there is magic in their glances, and their features and attitudes are graceful, and at the same time imposing. In short, they resemble the sibyls of Michelangelo.
Their singing is about the same as that of the Gypsies at Moscow, but, if anything, I thought it yet more expressive, forcible, and varied. I am assured that they have much pride of character, that they have warm passions, yet are neither light nor mercenary, and that they often repel, with disdain, very advantageous offers.
The night was far advanced when we left the Gypsies; stormy clouds, which swept over the plain, had suddenly changed the temperature. The long, deserted streets of the fair were filled with ponds of water, through which our horses dashed without relaxing their speed; fresh squalls, bringing over black clouds, announced more rain, and drove the water, splashed aside by the horses, in our faces. “Summer is gone,” said my cicerone. “I feel you are only too right,” I answered; “I am as cold as if it were winter.” I had no cloak: in the morning we had been suffocated with the heat; on returning to my room, I was freezing. I sat down to write for two hours, and then retired to rest in the icy fit of fever. In the morning, when I wished to get up, a vertigo seized me, and I fell again on my couch, unable to dress myself.
This annoyance was the more disagreeable, as I had intended leaving on that very day for Kazan: I wished at least to set my foot in Asia; and with this view had engaged a boat to descend the Volga, whilst my Feldjäger had been directed to bring my carriage empty to Kazan, to convey me back to Nizhny by land. However, my zeal had a little cooled after the governor of Nizhny had proudly displayed to me plans and drawings of Kazan. It is still the same city from one end of Russia to another: the great square, the broad streets, bordered with diminutive houses, the house of the governor, with ornamented pillars and a pediment; decorations even yet more out of place in a Tartar than in a Russian town; barracks, cathedrals in the style of temples; nothing, in short, was wanting; and I felt that the whole tiresome architectural repetition was not worth the trouble of prolonging my journey two hundred leagues in order to visit. But the frontiers of Siberia and the recollections of the siege still tempted me. It became necessary, however, to renounce the journey, and to keep quiet for four days.
The governor very politely came to see me in my humble bed. At last, on the fourth day, feeling my indisposition increase, I determined to call in a doctor. This individual said to me,—
“You have no fever, you are not yet ill, but you will be seriously so if you remain three days longer at Nizhny. I know the influence of this air upon certain temperaments; leave it; you will not have traveled ten leagues without finding yourself better, and the day after, you will be well again.”
“But I can neither eat, sleep, walk, nor even move without feeling severe pains in my head: what will become of me if I am obliged to stop on the road?”
“Cause yourself to be carried into your coach: the autumn rains have commenced: I repeat, that I cannot answer for your recovery if you remain at Nizhny.”
This doctor is scientific and experienced: he has passed several years at Paris, after having previously studied in Germany. His look inspired me with confidence; and the day after I received his advice I entered my carriage, in the midst of a beating rain accompanied by an icy wind. It was unpleasant enough to discourage the strongest traveler: nevertheless, at the second stage, the prediction of the doctor was fulfilled; I began to breathe more freely, though fatigue so overpowered me that I was obliged to stop and pass the night in a miserable lodging: the next day I was again in health.
During the time spent in my bed at Nizhny, my guardian spy grew tired of our prolonged stay at the fair, and of his consequent inaction. One morning he came to my valet de chambre, and said to him, in German, “When do we leave?”
“I cannot tell; monsieur is ill.”
“Is he ill?”
“Do you suppose that it is to please himself that he keeps his bed in such a room as you found for him here?”
“What is the matter with him?”
“I do not know at all.”
“Why is he ill?”
“Good heavens! you had better go and ask him.”
This why appears to me worthy of being noted.
The man has never forgiven me the scene in the coach. Since that day, his manners and his countenance have changed, which proves to me that there always remains some corner for the natural disposition, and for sincerity in even the most profoundly dissimulating characters. I therefore think all the better of him for his rancor: I had believed him incapable of any primitive sentiment.
The Russians, like all newcomers in the civilized world, are excessively susceptible; they cannot understand generalities; they view everything as applied personally: nowhere is France so ill understood. The liberty of thinking and speaking is more incomprehensible than anything else to these people. Those who pretend to judge our country, say to me, that they do not really believe our king abstains from punishing the writers who daily abuse him in Paris.
“Nevertheless,” I answer them, “the fact is there to convince you.”
“Yes, yes, you talk of toleration,” they reply, with a knowing air; “it is all very well for the multitude and for foreigners: but your government punishes secretly the too audacious journalists.”
When I repeat that everything is public in France, they smile, politely abstain from further comment; but they do not believe me.
The city of Vladimir is often mentioned in history: its aspect is like all the other Russian cities—that eternal type with which the reader is only too familiar. The country, also, that I have traveled over from Nizhny resembles the rest of Russia—a forest without trees, interrupted by towns without life—barracks, raised sometimes upon heaths, sometimes upon marshes, and the spirit of a regiment to animate them. When I tell the Russians that their woods are badly managed, and that their country will in time be without fuel, they laugh in my face. It has been calculated how many thousands of years it will require to consume the wood which covers the soil of an immense portion of the empire; and this calculation satisfies everybody. It is written in the estimates sent in by each provincial governor, that each province contains so many acres of forests. Upon these data the statistical department goes to work; but before performing their purely arithmetical labor of adding sums to make a total, the calculators do not think of visiting these forests upon paper. If they did, they would in most cases find only a few thickets of brush-wood, amid plains of fern and rushes. But with their written satisfactory reports, the Russians trouble themselves very little about the real scarcity of the only riches proper to their soil. Their woods are immense in the bureau of the minister, and this is sufficient for them. The day may be foreseen when, as a consequence of this administrative supineness and security, the people will warm themselves by the fires made of the old dusty papers accumulated in the public offices: these riches increase daily.
My words may appear bold and even revolting; for the sensitive self-love of the Russians imposes upon foreigners duties of delicacy and propriety to which I do not submit. My sincerity will render me culpable in the eyes of the men of this country. What ingratitude! the minister gives me a Feldjäger; the presence of his uniform spares me all the difficulties of the journey, and therefore am I bound, in the opinion of the Russians, to approve of everything with them. That foreigner, they think, would outrage all the laws of hospitality if he permitted himself to criticize a country where so much regard has been shown towards him. Notwithstanding all this, I hold myself free to describe what I see, and to pass my opinion upon it.
To appreciate, as I ought to do, the favor accorded me by the director-general of the posts in furnishing me with a courier, it will at least be right to state the discomforts which his obliging civility has spared me. Had I set out for Nizhny with a common servant only, we should, however well he might have spoken Russian, have been delayed by the tricks and frauds of the post-masters at nearly every stage. They would at first have refused us horses, and then have showed us empty stables to convince us there were none. After an hour’s parley, they would have found us a set that they would pretend belonged to some peasant, who would condescend to spare them for twice or thrice the charge established by the Imperial post-regulations. We might at first have refused; the horses would have been taken away; till at last, tired of the war, we should have concluded by humbly imploring the return of the animals, and by complying with every demand. The same scene would have been renewed at each out-of-the-way post. This is the manner in which inexperienced and unprotected foreigners here travel.
The Russians are always on their guard against truth, which they dread; but I, who belong to a community where everything is transacted openly, why should I embarrass myself with the scruples of these men, who say nothing, or merely darkly whisper unmeaning phrases, and beg their neighbors to keep them a secret? Every open and clearly defined statement causes a stir in a country where not only the expression of opinions, but also the recital of the most undoubted facts, is forbidden. A Frenchman cannot imitate this absurdity; but he ought to note it.
Russia is governed; God knows when she will be civilized.
Putting no faith in persuasion, the monarch draws everything to himself, under pretext that a rigorous system of centralization is indispensable to the government of an empire so prodigiously extended as Russia. That system is perhaps necessary to the principle of blind obedience: but enlightened obedience is opposed to the false idea of simplification which has for more than a century influenced the successors of the Czar Peter, and their successors also. Simplification, carried to this excess, is not power, it is death. Absolute authority ceases to be real, it becomes a phantom, when it has only the images of men to exercise itself upon.
Russia will never really become a nation until the day when its prince shall voluntarily repair the evil committed by Peter I. But will there ever be found, in such a country, a sovereign courageous enough to admit that he is only a man?
It is necessary to see Russia, to appreciate all the difficulty of this political reformation, and to understand the energy of character that is necessary to work it.
I am now writing at a post-house between Vladimir and Moscow.
Among all the chances and accidents by which a traveler is in danger of losing his life on a Russian highway, the imagination of the reader would be at fault to single out the one by which my life has been just menaced. The danger was so great, that without the address, the strength, and the presence of mind of my Italian servant, I should not be the writer of the following account:—
It was necessary that the shah of Persia should have an object in conciliating the friendship of the emperor of Russia, and that with this view, building his expectations upon bulky presents, he should send to the czar one of the most enormous black elephants of Asia, clothed with superb hangings, which served as a caparison for the colossus, escorted by a cortege of horsemen, resembling a cloud of grasshoppers, followed by a file of camels, which appeared no larger than donkeys by the side of this elephant, the most enormous that I have ever beheld, and surmounted by a man with olive complexion and Oriental costume, carrying a parasol, and sitting cross-legged upon the back of the monster; it was further necessary, that whilst this living monument was thus forced to journey on foot towards Petersburg, where the climate will soon transfer him to the collection of the mammoths and the mastodons, I should be traveling post by the same route; and that my departure from Vladimir should so coincide with that of the Persians, that, at a certain part of the deserted road, the gallop of my Russian horses should bring me behind them, and make it necessary to pass by the side of the giant; —it required nothing less, I say, than these combined circumstances to explain the danger caused by the terror that seized my four horses, on seeing before them an animated pyramid, moving as if by magic in the midst of a crowd of strange-looking men and beasts.
Their astonishment as they approached the walking tower was at first shown by a general start aside, by extraordinary neighings and snortings, and by refusing to proceed. But the words and the whip of the coachman at length so far mastered them as to compel them to pass the fantastic object of their terror. They submitted trembling, their manes stood erect, and scarcely were they alongside of the monster when, reproaching themselves as it were for a courage, which was nothing more than fear of another object, they yielded to their panic, and the voice and reins of the driver became useless. The man was conquered at the moment when he thought himself the conqueror: scarcely had the horses felt that the elephant was behind them, when they dashed off at full speed, heedless as to where their blind frenzy might carry them. This furious course had very nearly cost us our lives: the coachman, bewildered and powerless, remained immovable on his seat, and slackened the reins; the Feldjäger, placed beside him, partook of his stupefaction and helplessness. Antonio and I, seated within the calèche, which was closed on account of the weather and my ailment, remained pale and mute: our species of tarantasse has no doors; it is a boat, over the sides of which we have to step to get in and out. On a sudden, the maddened horses swerved from the road, and dashed at an almost perpendicular bank, about ten feet high: one of the small fore wheels was already buried in the bankside; two of the horses had reached the top without breaking their traces; I saw their feet on a level with our heads; one strain more, and the coach would have followed, but certainly not upon its wheels. I thought that it was all over with us. The Cossacks who escorted the powerful cause of this peril, seeing our critical position, had the prudence to avoid following us, for fear of further exciting our horses: I, without even thinking of springing from the carriage, had commended my soul to God, when, suddenly, Antonio disappeared. I thought he was killed: the head and leather curtains of the calèche partly concealed the scene from me; but at the same moment I felt the horses stop. “We are saved!” cried Antonio. This we touched me, for he himself was beyond all danger, after having succeeded in getting out of the calèche without accident. His rare presence of mind had indicated to him the moment favorable to springing out with the least risk: afterwards, with that agility which strong emotions impart, but which they cannot explain, he found himself, without knowing how, upon the top of the bank, at the heads of the two horses which had scaled it, and the desperate efforts of which threatened to destroy us all. The carriage was just about to overturn; but Antonio’s activity gave time to the others to follow his example; the coachman was in a moment at the heads of the two other horses, while the courier propped up the coach. At the same moment, the Cossack guard of the elephant, who had put their horses to a gallop, arrived to our assistance; they made me alight, and helped my people to hold the still trembling horses. Never was an accident more nearly being disastrous, and never was one repaired at less cost. Not a screw of the coach was disturbed, and scarcely a strap of harness broken.
In a quarter of an hour, Antonio was seated quietly by my side in the calèche; in another ten minutes he was as fast asleep as if he had not been the means of saving all our lives.
While they put the harness in order, I approached the cause of all this mischief. The groom of the elephant had prudently led him into the wood adjoining one of the side alleys of the road. The formidable beast appeared to me yet larger after the peril to which he had exposed me. His trunk, busy in the top of the birch trees, reminded me of a boa twisted among the palms. I began to make excuses for my horses, and left him, giving thanks to God for having escaped a death which at one moment appeared to me inevitable.
I am now again at Moscow. An excessive heat has not ceased to reign there for several months; I find the same temperature that I left: the summer is indeed quite extraordinary. The draft sends up into the air, above the most populous quarters of the city, a reddish dust, which, towards evening, produces effects as fantastical as the Bengal lights. This evening, at sunset, I contemplated the spectacle from the Kremlin, the survey of which I have made with as much admiration, and almost as much surprise, as I did at first.
The city of men was separated from the palace of giants, by a glory like one of Correggio’s: the whole was a sublime union of the marvels of painting and poetry.
The Kremlin, as the loftiest point in the picture, received on its breast the last streaks of day, while the mists of night had already enveloped the rest of the city. The white and irregular masses of the palace reflected unequally the obliquely borne beams of a flickering twilight. This variety of shades was the effect of the different degrees of inclination of different walls, and of the projections and recesses which constitute the beauty of the barbaric architecture, whose bold caprices, if they do not charm the taste, speak impressively to the imagination. It was so astonishing, so beautiful, that I have not been able to resist once more naming the Kremlin.
But let not the reader be alarmed—this is an adieu.
The plaintive song of some workmen, echoing from vault to vault, from battlement to battlement, from precipice to precipice—precipices built by man—penetrated to my heart, which was absorbed in inexpressible melancholy. Wandering lights appeared in the depths of the royal edifice; and along the deserted galleries and empty barbicans, came the voice of man, which I was astonished to hear at that hour among these solitary palaces; as was likewise the bird of night, who, disturbed in his mysterious loves, fled from the light of the torches, and, seeking refuge among the highest steeples and towers, there spread the news of the unusual disorder.
That disorder was the consequence of the works commanded by the emperor to welcome his own approaching arrival: he fêtes himself, and illuminates his Kremlin when he comes to Moscow. Meantime, as the darkness increased, the city brightened: its illuminated streets, shops, coffeehouses, and theaters, rose out of the dark like magic. The day was also the anniversary of the emperor’s coronation—another motive for illuminating. The Russians have so many joyful days to celebrate, that, were I in their place, I should never put out my lamps.
The approach of the magician has already begun to be felt. Three weeks ago Moscow was only inhabited by merchants, who proceeded about their business in droshkies: now, noble coursers, splendid equipages, gilded uniforms, great lords, and numerous valets, enliven the streets and obstruct the porticoes. “The emperor is thirty leagues off: who knows if he will not be here tomorrow, or perhaps tonight? It is said he was here yesterday, incognito: who can prove that he is not here now?” And this doubt, this hope, animates all hearts; it changes the face and language of all persons, and the aspect of everything. Moscow, the merchant city, is now as much troubled and agitated as a tradesman’s wife expecting the visit of a great nobleman. Deserted palaces and gardens are reopened; flowers and torches vie with each other in brilliancy; flattering speeches begin to murmur through the crowd: I fear lest I myself should catch the influence of the illusion, if not through selfish motives, at least from a love of the marvelous.
An emperor of Russia at Moscow, is a king of Assyria in Babylon.
His presence is at this moment, they say, working miracles at Borodino. An entire city is there created—a city just sprung out of the desert, and destined to endure for a week: even gardens have been planted there round a palace; the trees, destined soon to die, have been brought from a distance at great expense, and are so placed as to represent antique shades. The Russians, though they have no past, are, like all enlightened parvenus, who well know what is thought of their sudden fortunes, more particularly fond of imitating the effects of time. In this scene of fairy work, all that speaks of duration is imitated by things the most ephemeral. Several theaters are also raised on the plain of Borodino; and the drama serves as an interlude between the warlike pantomimes.
The program of the fête is the exact repetition of the battle which we called Moscow, and which the Russians have christened Borodino. Wishing to approach as nearly as possible to the reality, they have convoked from the most distant parts of the empire, all the surviving veterans of 1812 who were in the action. The reader may imagine the astonishment and distress of these brave men, suddenly torn from their repose, and obliged to repair from the extremities of Siberia, Kamchatka, Lapland, the Caspian, or the Caucasus, to a theater which they are told was the theater of their glory —not their fortune, but their renown, a miserable recompense for a superhuman devotion. Why revive these questions and recollections? Why this bold evocation of so many mute and forgotten specters? It is the last judgment of the conscripts of 1812. If they wished to make a satire upon military life, they could not take a better course: it was thus that Holbein, in his Dance of Death, caricatured human life. Numbers of these men, awakened out of their sleep on the brink of their graves, have not mounted a horse for many years; and here they are obliged, in order to please a master whom they have never seen, again to play over their long-forgotten parts. They have so much dread of not satisfying the expectations of the capricious sovereign who thus troubles their old age, that they say the representation of the battle is more terrible to them than was the reality. This useless ceremony, this fanciful war, will make an end of the soldiers whom the real event spared: it is a cruel pleasure, worthy of one of the successors of the czar who caused living bears to be introduced in the masquerade that he gave on the nuptials of his buffoon: that czar was Peter the Great. All these diversions have their source in the same feeling— contempt for human life.
The emperor had permitted me—which means to say that he commanded me—to be present at Borodino. It is a favor of which I feel myself to have become unworthy. I did not at the time reflect upon the extreme difficulty of the part a Frenchman would have to perform in this historical drama: and I also had not seen the monstrous work of the Kremlin, which he would expect me to praise; above all, I was then ignorant of the history of the Princess Troubetzkoy, which I have the greater difficulty in banishing from my mind, because I may not speak of it. These reasons united have induced me to decide upon remaining in oblivion. It is an easy resolve; for the contrary would give me trouble, if I may judge by the useless efforts of a crowd of Frenchmen and foreigners of all countries, who in vain solicit permission to be present at Borodino.
All at once the police of the camp has assumed extreme severity; these new precautions are attributed to unpleasant revelations that have been recently made. The sparks of revolt are everywhere feeding under the ashes of liberty. I do not know even whether, under actual circumstances, it would be possible for me to avail myself of the invitation the emperor gave me, both at Petersburg and, afterwards when I took leave of him, at Peterhof. “I shall be very glad if you will attend the ceremony at Borodino, where we lay the first stone of a monument in honor of General Bagration.” These were his last words.[2]
I see here persons who were invited, yet are not able to approach the camp. Permissions are refused to everybody except a few privileged Englishmen and some members of the diplomatic corps. All the rest, young and old, military men and diplomatists, foreigners and Russians, have returned to Moscow, mortified by their unavailing efforts. I have written to a person connected with the emperor’s household, regretting my inability to avail myself of the favor His Majesty had accorded in permitting me to witness the maneuvers, and pleading as an excuse the state of my eyes, which are not yet cured. The dust of the camp is, I am told, unbearable to everybody; to me it might cost the loss of sight.
The Duke of Leuchtenberg must be endowed with an unusual quantum of indifference to be able coolly to witness the spectacle prepared for him. They assure me that, in the representation of the battle, the emperor will command the corps of Prince Eugene, father of the young duke.
I should regret not seeing a spectacle so curious in its moral aspect, if I could be present as a disinterested spectator; but, without having the renown of a father to maintain, I am a son of France, and I feel it is not for me to find any pleasure in witnessing a representation of war, made at great cost, solely with the view of exalting the national pride of the Russians, on the occasion of our disasters. As to the sight itself, I can picture it very easily; I have seen plenty of straight lines in Russia. Besides, in reviews and mock fights, the eye never gets beyond a great cloud of dust.
The Russians have reason to pride themselves on the issue of the campaign of 1812; but the general who laid its plan, he who first advised the gradual retreat of the Russian army towards the center of the empire, with the view of enticing the exhausted French after it,—the man, in fact, to whose genius Russia owed her deliverance—Prince Wittgenstein, is not represented in this grand repetition; because, unfortunately for him, he is yet living, half disgraced: he resides on his estates; his name will not be pronounced at Borodino, though an eternal monument is to be raised to the glory of General Bagration, who fell on the field of battle.
Under despotic governments, dead warriors are great favorites: here, behold one decreed to be the hero of a campaign in which he bravely fell, but which he never directed.
This absence of historical probity, this abuse of the will of one man, who imposes his views upon all, who dictates to the people whatever they are to think on events of national interest, appears to me the most revolting of all the impieties of arbitrary government. Strike, torture bodies, but do not crush minds: let man judge of things according to the intimations of Providence, according to his conscience and his reason. The people must be called impious who devoutly submit to this continual violation of the respect due to all that is most holy in the sight of God and man,—the sanctity of truth.
Without waiting for the solemn entry of the emperor into Moscow, I shall leave in two days’ time for Petersburg.
Here end the chapters that were written by the traveler in the form of letters to his friends: the relation which follows completes his recollections; it was written at various places, commencing at Petersburg, in 1839, and afterwards continued in Germany, and more recently at Paris.
[1]Written at Vladimir, between Nizhny and Moscow, the 2d of September.
[2]I learnt afterwards, at Petersburg, that orders had been given to permit my reaching Borodino, where I was expected.