Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

His distinguishing badge once strapped round his upper arm--he had repudiated with a shriek of horror the dreadful brass plate such as street-corner messengers now wear that was first served out to him--the well-seen correspondent stood, or moved, chartered to do pretty much anything he pleased. It may seem a paradox; but the Russians are simply the most democratic people in Europe, and for a Russian to be _borné_ would be a contradiction in terms. Every officer was the correspondent’s comrade. Prince Schahofskoy, the ill-conditioned general who made such a mess of the July Plevna attack, was the only exception I ever knew. If the samovar was in service, the officer shared his tea with the correspondent; in the middle of a battle, if the officer had a couple of sandwiches he would offer one of them to the correspondent. From the highest to the lowest, in regard to military information, the Russians were incredibly frank; the correspondent never required to ask questions as to situation, dispositions, or intentions--information in regard to those matters was volunteered to him. The only secret they ever had--and I must own they kept it well--was in regard to the point at which the crossing of the Danube was to be made. Skobeleff “had not the faintest idea,” although a couple of hours previously he had been reconnoitring the approaches. Prince Tzeretleff “really had not the remotest conception.” Still, even in regard to the crossing of the Danube, the friendly Russians were not inexorable. I could not be told the locality of the crossing, but I should be escorted betimes to the headquarters of the general commanding the division which was to take the lead in the operations. It was rather an amusing experience. The guide sent to escort me was in the uniform of a private soldier--a tall handsome man, riding a fine gray horse. He spoke English fluently and without a trace of accent. As we rode along together and talked, the tone of this private soldier’s conversation bewildered me. He knew his Europe as if it had been his native parish. He had what Americans call “the inside track” in regard to English affairs, social, political, and financial. He spoke of country-houses of which he had been the guest, and commented on the merits of a piece of statuary in the drawing-room at Sandringham. At last I asked his name. He was of one of Russia’s oldest princely families, and belonged to the diplomatic corps, but when the war began had volunteered for military service, and, not being qualified to be an officer, had fallen into line as a private soldier. As we rode along I asked him where we were bound for, not imagining that a destination to which we were actually travelling could be any longer a secret. But he looked upon it still in this light, no doubt in accordance with his instructions, and of course I had no more to say for the time being. By and by we reached a point whence radiated four cross-roads. It became obvious to me that my guide was himself at fault. I took no heed while he led me first along one road a little way, then along another, each time returning puzzled to the cross-roads. At last he had to confess, “It seems to me that I’ve lost my way.” “Sorry I cannot be of any service,” was my remark, “since I do not know where it is you want to go to. I have been all over this region and know where each of these roads leads.” My prince-private-soldier-diplomatist burst into a laugh, and then mentioned our destination. “Then this way,” said I, “about an hour’s ride.”

After the crossing of the Danube in the last days of June the Russian army spread out into the adjacent Bulgarian country like a fan. Krüdener went west to subdue Nicopolis, and later to come to grief at Plevna. Gourko rode away over the Balkans, through the Hankioj Pass, on that adventurous expedition which sanguine people expected to end at Adrianople. The Twelfth Corps forged away slowly in the easterly direction, toward the Danubian fortress of Rustchuk, the keypoint of the Turkish quadrilateral in Bulgaria, and its advance I accompanied over the low rolling country, towards the Jantra, and later athwart the more broken terrain between the Jantra and the Lom. It was a sort of holiday stroll for Driesen’s cavalry division, which leisurely pioneered the way for the force that later came to be known as “the Army of the Cesarewitch.” We were received with offerings of corn, oil, and wine by the Conscript Fathers of Biela, and tarried in that pleasant _rus in urbe_ for a couple of days. Then after a while we dawdled on, past the copses of Monastir and the grain-clad slopes of Obertenik, until well on into July we pitched camp on a long swell falling down to the Danube at Pirgos, with Rustchuk away in front of us, some ten miles off. We were far enough forward, pending the coming up of supports; so we threw out pickets to the front and flanks, and made ourselves as comfortable as might be in the bright sunshine tempered by cool breezes blowing down from the Balkans.

Baron Driesen was an active man, and made work for himself. He was always leading reconnaissances into the country along and across the Lom, in the course of which he had the occasional amusement of a skirmish. I used to accompany him on those expeditions, just to keep myself and my horses in exercise; they were quite unimportant from my professional point of view, and a dozen of them would not have been worth the cost of a five-line telegram. My comrade Villiers preferred to go sketching in the glens with dear old General Arnoldi, one of the brigade commanders, the simplest, quaintest, most lovable of old gentlemen, and I should think the worst cavalry brigade commander to be found even in the Russian Army. The other brigade chief, Staël von Holstein, read and wrote all day in the shade under the wide fly of his pretty striped tent, coming over to us in the evening to smoke a cigarette, drink a tumbler of tea, and relieve our _ennui_ with his pleasant gossip about men, women, and things.

It was not my affair, but I confess I did not greatly relish the position we occupied. The division, with its batteries of horse artillery, was out here all by itself, with no infantry within several miles, both its flanks bare, overlapped by the Turks on its right, its left utterly in the air, and its line of retreat by no means safe. But while the Russians treated those conditions with a fine indifference, the Turks did not display any enterprise. A few weeks later they woke up, it is true; and then the Russians had to fall back out of the unsafe angle, with considerable losses, and not without confusion; but by that time I was elsewhere, and in watching the abortive efforts to drive Osman Pasha out of Plevna had ceased to feel a vivid interest in the fortunes of the Army of the Lom.

I must go a little more into detail as to the position of Driesen’s cavalry division in those July days of 1877, and as to the country in its vicinity, because I wish to describe a risky little experience that happened to me then, to follow the narrative of which this minuteness is requisite.

I have already mentioned that our camp was on a long swell running inland at about right angles from the Danube. Before us, as we looked out from the front of the camp in the direction of Rustchuk, there ran parallel to our position a long valley--deep, but with smooth bottom and sides--on which were fields of grain that had been cut and set up into stooks. Over against us, on the farther side of this valley, rose a ridge very similar in formation to our own, but having its crest clothed with woods, and on its slope facing us were clumps of trees interspersed among the corn-fields. The valley between the two ridges was for the time neutral ground. The Turks held the wooded ridge confronting us, and our fore-post line ran along in our front about half-way down the slope of our ridge as it trended down into the intervening valley.

One bright warm afternoon our friends the enemy brought forward a couple of batteries of field-guns, and from a position in front of the wood which crested their ridge opened fire against our camp. The range was a long one, but the Turks had Krupp guns, and their shells came lobbing across the valley and occasionally pitched among the tents. The Russians, who have a great propensity to lazy idleness when the weather is warm, apparently could not be bothered to reply to this fire for quite a while; but at length, about four o’clock, I saw their gunners busy among the field-guns that were ranged in position along the front of the camp.

Just then I met Baron Driesen, who told me that he had remained quiet thus long because of a little scheme he had adopted to surprise and perhaps to cut off the Turkish guns opposite us there. Some two hours earlier, when he first noticed the guns being brought up into position, he had sent off Holstein with the light cavalry regiment of his brigade--the “Gray Hussars” we used to call them, from the colour of their horses--away to our right, with orders, if practicable, to cross the valley higher up out of sight of the Turks, and, getting on to the slope of their ridge, work northward through the clumps of trees, till, if they had the luck to get so far, within charging distance of the left flank of the Turkish batteries, when the Russian troopers were to do their best to capture the guns.

I am an old cavalry-man, and was naturally always eager to be with the mounted arm on any duty assigned to it; and I rather made a grievance of it to the Baron that he had not let me know of the despatch of Holstein and his Grays, that I might have gone along with them. Driesen was the best-tempered man in the world. “Why,” said he, “standing here, you’ve got the whole panorama under your eye, and if they have the luck to get up and do anything you can see their work a great deal better, and, what is more, a great deal more safely, than if you were over there with them, blinded by dust and smoke.” But, nevertheless, I was only half-content.

The Russian guns opened presently, and then there was an hour or two of reprisal at long bowls, and nothing else. The Russians lost a horse or two, and one unfortunate fellow was cut in two back in the camp, but the futile powder-burning was getting very tedious. All at once, however, I noticed some horsemen showing little glimpses of themselves out of a long clump of trees a few hundred yards below, and on the left of the Turkish batteries.

“Look, Baron!” cried I, “there are Holstein’s cavalry fellows, sure enough. They’ve worked round beautifully--quite artistically--and now they are gathering in that clump, getting ready for their dash at the guns!”

Driesen was not an enthusiastic man, and he rather drawled in his speech. “You may be right,” he said, “but I, for my part, have a shrewd suspicion these horsemen are Turkish Tcherkesses, prowling about there just to cover that left flank of the batteries which I gave Holstein as his objective.”

“Why,” I exclaimed, “look at the gray horses. There can be no mistake!”

“_Mon Dieu!_” retorted the Baron, “can’t a Turkish Tcherkess ride a gray horse as well as a Russian Hussar?”

“Well,” said I--for Driesen’s apathy made me the more stubborn in my own opinion--“I’m positive they are our fellows; and I am going across the valley to watch closely how they make their rush.”

“Don’t be a fool!” said the Baron genially. “Even if they are our fellows, you are much better here; and if you cross, and they are not, why then----” and he shrugged his broad shoulders.

But I was obstinate; Driesen was sufficiently conversant with our language to quote the proverb about “a wilful man”; and so away I rode to the front out beyond the Russian guns, down the slope, and through the outpost line, crouching behind the corn-stooks about half-way down. I cantered briskly across the bottom of the valley, which I found to be a deeper trough than I had imagined; and then at a slower pace began to ascend the slope of the Turkish ridge, heading for the clump of trees about which I had seen the horsemen.

I had got nearly half-way up. I could hear the shrill scream of the shells speeding from ridge to ridge high over my head, as I plodded on upward, leaning well forward over my saddle, with a grip of my horse’s mane in one hand. Just as I entered a corn-field, crack, crack, whizz, whizz, came a couple of bullets close by me from behind a corn-stook just in front of me. I halted involuntarily dazed with surprise, and took a hurried survey of the situation. It was not difficult to comprehend it at a glance. Moving in an easy careless way I had ridden right up against the Turkish outpost line, which, just as was the Russian line on the opposite side of the valley, was drawn athwart the slope behind the cut grain. So close was I that I could actually see the Paynim rascals grinning at my attitude of scare.

Shot followed shot, and each one served to quicken my realisation of the fact that it was extremely injudicious to remain there longer than was quite convenient. So I wheeled sharply in my tracks and galloped headlong down the steep slope, stretched along my horse’s neck. I did not wait to exchange any civilities of leave-taking with the humorous gentlemen squatting behind the corn-stooks.

In a twinkling, long before I had reached the bottom, the Russian outpost line had opened fire on the Turkish outliers who were persecuting me, and this friendly act drew off from me the attention of the latter. Quite a general, although desultory, musketry skirmish ensued, the bullets of both sides whistling over my head, down in the bottom of the valley as I was by this time. But though I had ceased to be a target I did not feel in the least comfortable. I could not get home among the Russians while they kept up this abominable shooting of theirs--that was too clear--unless I was prepared to take an equal risk to that from which I had just been mercifully preserved. If you are shot it makes no perceptible difference to you whether it is friend or foe who performs the deed. The Turkish side, again, was renewing its inhospitable demonstrations; and it was not at all nice to remain quiescent down in the bottom of the valley, since every now and then a malignant Turk, disregarding his natural enemies the Russians over against him up there, would take a shot by way of variety at the inoffensive neutral prowling down below in the middle distance.

In my perplexity I resolved to follow up the trough of the valley till I should reach a section of the Russian front where quietude might be reigning, and where, therefore, I would have the chance to get back inside the friendly lines and out of my embarrassing predicament.

But as I moved along I carried strife and the fire along with me. The Russians, out in front of whom I had originally ridden down into the valley, had known at least that I had come from their camp, and had let me alone as being a friend. But as I moved out of their ken I found myself the pariah of both sides, the Ishmaelite against whom was every man’s hand. Neither side had any good feeling toward me, and both took occasional shots at me, which came a great deal too near to be pleasant. Then, having fired at me, nothing would content them but that they should set about firing at each other, and so I was like a fox with a firebrand tied to its tail, spreading conflagration whithersoever I went. By and by I came on a bend in the valley, and this gave me hope; but as I moved along I thought I should never get to where the two hostile outpost lines ceased to confront each other. And then all of a sudden the valley began to disappear altogether and merge into the uplands, a change in the ground which bade fair to deprive me of what little cover the valley had been affording.

Suddenly, from an adjacent clump on the Turkish side of the shallowing valley, three horsemen came dashing down on me at a gallop. The alternatives were so clear that he who ran might read, and I was moving at a walk. Either the Turks would make a prisoner of me (if, indeed, they did not kill me on the spot), or I must, if I would make an effort to escape this fate, take my chance of the Russian fire as I galloped for the shelter of the Russian outpost line.

“Of two evils choose the less,” says the wise proverb. I had made up my mind, much more quickly than I can write the words down, to ride in upon the Russians; and so I gave my horse the spur and fled from my Turkish pursuers. It was pretty clear that the Russians had no sort of comprehension of the situation, but they judged that the simplest course, pending an explanation, was to try to kill somebody; so they opened fire with zeal.

For me it was like charging a square. I actually all but rode over a man who was confronting me kneeling, with his (presumably empty) rifle held like a pike; and when I was pulled up abruptly inside the Russian straggling line by a strong jerk on my horse’s bit that threw him back on his haunches, I found myself surrounded by the _chevaux de frise_ of bayonet-points projecting from rifles held by angry, vociferating, and unintelligible persons of Sclavonic extraction.

I never knew very much practicable Russian, and at that time three words were the sum of my acquaintance with that euphonious tongue. None of the three was at all applicable to the conditions of the moment, but I emitted them all in succession, making the best of my scanty stock-in-trade. They availed me nothing. Neither the officer nor any of his men knew a word of English, French, or German. In vain I looked for the Polish Jew who forms an occasional item in most Russian regiments, and who has always a smattering of abominable low German. Failing to make my captors understand anything concerning me, I was dismounted with considerable vigour, and promptly taken prisoner, one armed man on either side of me, and a third in a strategic position in the rear. As for my Turkish pursuers, two of them had turned when within a few yards of the Russian post; the third left his horse dead on the ground and himself limped back wounded.

For the only time save one, while I was with the Russian Army, did I now produce my formal “pass”--my captors refused to give any heed to the badge on my arm, and probably had no conception what it meant. Now the “pass” consisted of a photograph of the correspondent, with a dab of red wax on his chest, on which was impressed the headquarter seal, while on the back were written certain cabalistic figures, which, I had been given to understand, instructed all and sundry to whom “these presents” might come to recognise the bearer and assist him by all means in their power. It happened that I had removed my beard since the photograph was taken which constituted my authentication; my captors failed to recognise any resemblance between my shaven countenance and the hairy face of the photograph, and there was thus an added element of suspicion. At length it was resolved to send me up to the camp, to be dealt with there by superior authority.

A sergeant and two men shortly marched me off in the direction of the headquarters, while a third led my horse. It was a long tramp, and I was not allowed to choose my own pace. At length, on the plateau before the camp, the divisional flag was seen. The artillery firing was over, and Baron Driesen and his staff were standing behind the still hot guns.

My appearance was greeted with a simultaneous roar of laughter, in which I tried to join, I confess rather ruefully.

“Well,” said Drieson drily, “can you believe now that Turkish Tcherkesses can ride gray horses as well as can Russian Hussars?”

But as we walked back together to drink tea in his tent, there was genuine feeling in the quiet heartiness with which he congratulated me on my escape from this outpost adventure.

THE DIVINE FIGURE FROM THE NORTH

The Romanoffs have always been a soldierly race. Peter the Great did a good deal of miscellaneous fighting in Finland and elsewhere, and commanded at the battle of Pultowa. Alexander I. marched across Europe to participate on French soil in the desperate fighting of Napoleon’s most brilliant campaign in the early months of 1814. Nicolas, lad as he was in years, was already a veteran in war when Mortier and Marmont threw up the sponge on the heights of Montmartre, and the Imperial father and son rode along the Champs Elysées at the head of the triumphal entry into Paris of the allied armies. Alexander II. crossed the Danube in 1877, with the march of invasion of Turkey, that ended only at the gates of Constantinople. Peter commanded in fact as well as in name; he was perhaps a better shipwright than a general. Alexander I. was at least the nominal head of the Russian contingent in the great composite host of which Schwarzenberg was actually the Commander-in-Chief. But, in a strict military sense, Alexander II. had no definite position of any kind in the field. Head of the armies of Russia as he was, in virtue of his position as Czar, he was nevertheless not the Commander-in-Chief, even nominally, of the great hosts which his behest had drawn from the enthusiastic masses of his devoted subjects. That onerous duty and dignity he had assigned to his brother, the Grand Duke Nicolas. The Emperor, in a military sense, made the campaign simply as an august spectator, for whom as monarch and as Russian the operations presented an engrossing interest, and whose presence in the field further inspired the nation with added fervour. Solomon’s adage that in the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom does not apply to war. “Councils of war never fight” has passed into a proverb; if the proverb did not hold as regards the Russo-Turkish war, it must be owned that the battles directed by the councils were not always judicious. The American historian of that war, commenting on the lack of unity in the command of the Russo-Roumanian armies which attempted unsuccessfully to carry Osman’s lines around Plevna, in September 1877, thus alludes to the military effects of the Emperor’s presence: “Finally, the Emperor was present, with the Minister of War and a large staff. The Emperor came merely as a spectator, to encourage his troops by his presence, and in the hope of witnessing their victory. But the Emperor of Russia is regarded by every Russian soldier, from the highest to the lowest grade, with a feeling which it is difficult to explain in other countries; _at all_ times his will is law, and his wish a command, and it is not possible for him to be a mere spectator. He took no part, however, in the command, although every report and order was instantly communicated to him, until after the assault of the 11th and 12th of September.”

Alexander’s life on campaign was a life of extreme simplicity, of great seclusion, always of deep concern, and at times of intense anguish. He was not strictly in the field until he had crossed the Danube; but, for more than a fortnight before doing so, he lived a sort of campaign life in a little country-house a few rods to the westward of the miserable Roumanian village of Simnitza, overhanging the bed of the great river. He himself had accommodation here under a roof, but most of his numerous _entourage_ dwelt in tents among the trees of the little park, and in the adjoining paddocks. He sat at meals with the suite in a great marquee on the lawn; but the repasts served there partook rather too much of the Duke Humphrey sort of fare to accord with the tastes of the dainty aristocrats who, in their various capacities, or in no capacity at all, were in attendance on their sovereign; and they were lavish patrons, occasionally neglecting to pay their bills, of the temporary restaurant which Brofft, the Bucharest hotel-keeper, had set up close to the gate of the boyard’s château in which the Emperor quartered. Under the canvas roof of the hostelry where Müller, Herr Brofft’s head man, served dubious champagne at twelve roubles a bottle, members of the Imperial family and the nobles and generals of the suite made very merry, no matter how things were going on the farther side of the river. But the Emperor himself was scarcely seen outside the gates of his own habitation, save to visit the hospitals in which lay the wounded of the crossing, or to drive to a point commanding some long stretch of the great river and the undulating Bulgarian region beyond its swift brown current. He always travelled on wheels. I do not remember to have seen him oftener than twice on horseback during the whole campaign. The Russians, indeed, are not an equestrian people--that is, they are not addicted to riding because of a love for the saddle. A Russian, if he has the choice, will always sooner drive than ride; and even on campaign it was nothing uncommon to see a general at the head of his division on the march, snugly ensconced in a comfortable carriage.

The day after Dragomiroff had carried the passage of the Danube opposite Simnitza, the Czar crossed the river for the purpose of visiting Sistova, the Bulgarian town on the Turkish side, and of thanking in person the gallant division which had so valiantly fought its way across the great river, and carried the heights on the other side. There was no formal review; the troops were already too widely dispersed for that. Yolchine’s brigade, the one which had crossed first, had got under arms as the Emperor came up from the river’s brink; and Generals Dragomiroff and Yolchine stood in front of it, along with the young General Skobeleff, who had shown brilliant valour and all his rare gift of leadership in the action of the previous day. The troops replied to the Emperor’s greeting in accents which were eloquent of an emotion of absolute adoration; the simple private men gazed on their Czar with entranced eyes of childlike love and awe.

His aspect on that day, when as yet anxiety and ill-health had not broken him down, was singularly imposing. It was Charles Brackenbury who applied to him the term which I have placed at the head of this article; but he did not invent it. It was the exact translation of the phrase in which the Bulgarians of Sistova hailed the potentate who on that afternoon, when first his foot touched their soil, shone before their eyes as the more than mortal being who was to be their Saviour, their Redeemer from the rule of the heathen. At that moment they would have worshipped him. They cooled in their adoration presently, and before the campaign was over there were among them those who openly said that since they were seemingly to be a subject race, they preferred to be subject to the Turk rather than to the Russian.

The glamour of the hour stirred to idealisation the stolid, self-centred Bulgarians; but the most indifferent spectator could not but realise the nobility of Alexander’s presence, as he returned the greeting of his victorious soldiers. A man not far off sixty, he then looked exceptionally young for his age; the long dark moustache showed hardly a streak of gray, and the majestic figure was as straight as a pine. He looked a very king of men, as with soldierly gait he strode up to Dragomiroff, shook him cordially by the hand, and arrested his attempt at obeisance by clasping him in a hearty embrace. Tough old Yolchine was similarly honoured, but the Czar turned away from young Skobeleff with a frown, for that brilliant officer had returned from Central Asia under a cloud of baseless accusation, and the opportunity for vindication had not yet been permitted.

Gourko dashed across the Balkans on that promising but abortive raid of his, and the advance-guard of the “Army of the Lom,” to the command of which the Czarewitch was appointed, pushed slowly eastward till it came within sight of the earthworks which the Turks were throwing up as an outer circle of defence to the fortress of Rustchuk. The Emperor and his suite had meantime crossed the Danube, and, following in the track of the eastward advance, had taken up quarters in a great farmyard near the village of Pavlo, a position fairly central for receiving intelligence from both lines of advance, and also within easy reach of the bridge across the river at Simnitza. Some ten days later the Imperial headquarters moved farther eastward, into the little town of Biela, in the direct rear of the Czarewitch’s command. At Biela the headquarters were for several weeks in the enclosed yard of a dismantled Turkish house, which the Bulgarians had quitted when its occupants fled. A high wattled fence surrounded this yard, in which grew a few willow-trees that afforded some shade. The bureaux were in the battered Turkish house. The Emperor lived in two officer’s tents, communicating with each other by a canvas-screened alley, up in a corner of the yard under the willow-trees. In the centre of the yard was the large dining marquee in which the Emperor joined at meals the officers of his suite, and such of the foreign military attachés as were not in the headquarters of the Commander-in-Chief. He was wont to breakfast alone in his own tent, where he worked all the morning with Milutin the Minister of War, Ignatieff the Diplomatist, Adlerberg the Chamberlain of the Palace and the Emperor’s foster-brother, and other high officials who solicited interviews. It must be remembered that from his camp far away in Bulgaria, the Emperor was administering the affairs of a huge empire whose capital was many hundred miles distant.

At noon luncheon was served in the great marquee, and all the suite were wont to gather in the yard for conversation a short time in advance. The Emperor came out from his own private tent, shaking hands with the nearest members of the suite, greeting always the foreign attachés, as he passed into the marquee. His seat was in the centre of the right-hand side of the table, usually with General Suwaroff on one side of him and General Milutin on the other, the foreign attachés sitting opposite. The greatest simplicity prevailed in the fare served at the Imperial table; three courses were the rule at dinner, and champagne was given only on exceptional occasions. When the time for coffee came, the Emperor gave the signal for smoking, and immediately the marquee was filled with a cloud of cigarette smoke. He was wont to talk freely at table, directing most of his conversation to the foreign officers opposite to him, and occasionally, especially when addressing Colonel Wellesley, the British representative, his tone was that of grave badinage.

No elaborate precautions were to outward seeming taken for the Emperor’s safety, living here as he was in the midst of a curiously-mixed population of wretched Bulgarians and prowling Turks--for all the Turks had not fled from Biela. His only escort consisted of a handful of the Cossacks of the Imperial guard on duty at the entrance of the yard in which he lived. He drove out every day, attended by an escort of a dozen of these; and he would make the round on foot of the hospitals in the environs of the little town, accompanied by a single companion, a Cossack following a little distance behind. He spent many an hour in talking with the poor ailing fellows in the wretched hospitals, to whom his kindly presence did more good than all the efforts of the surgeons. Once during a drive his eye fell upon a miserable company of Turkish fugitives, among whom were many women and children, lurking in a wood. He at once alighted and went among them, and by assurances of protection he succeeded in prevailing on them to return to their homes in Biela, where he had them supplied with rations until they were able to do something for themselves.

After the disaster met with by Krüdener and Shahofskoy in front of Plevna on the 30th of July, and Gourko’s enforced retirement to the northern side of the Balkans, the Imperial headquarters were moved westward to a village called Gorni Studen, about equidistant from Plevna, Sistova, and Tirnova. Biela had become poisonous by reason of an utter disregard of all sanitary precautions, and the Emperor had been ailing from low fever, rheumatism, and asthma, the last his chronic ailment. At Gorni Studen he abandoned tent-life, and only occasionally came to the general table in the mess marquee. A dismantled Turkish house was fitted up for him after a fashion, and his bedroom was a tiny chamber with mud walls and a mud floor. It was in the balcony of this house where I had an interview with him in August, when I had ridden in from the Shipka with the unexpected good news that Radetski was holding his own stoutly in the St. Nicholas position among the Shipka rocks, against the fierce assaults of Mehemet Ali’s Turks.

I had a difficulty in recognising him, so changed was he from the early days at Simnitza. He had shrunken visibly, he stooped, his head had gone down between his shoulders, and his voice was broken and tremulous. He was gaunt, worn, and haggard, his nervous system seemed quite shattered. There was a hunted expression in his eye, and he gasped for breath in the spasms of the asthma that afflicted him. I left him with the vivid apprehension that he was not to break the spell that was said to condemn every Romanoff to the grave before the age of sixty.

The spell of course was nonsense, yet it is the fact that Czar Alexander’s father, and the four male Romanoffs of the generation preceding Nicolas, the sons of the mentally affected Emperor Paul, died before the attainment of this age, and of disease affecting the brain. Alexander I., who was Napoleon’s enemy, his friend, and then again his bitter and successful enemy, died at the age of forty-eight in a deep, brooding melancholy, which Metternich described as a “weariness of life.” His elder brother, the Grand Duke Constantine, had the good sense to know that his mental condition rendered him unfit to rule. If he had been a private person, he would probably have spent most of his life in an asylum. He died in his fifty-second year of congestion of the brain. The Grand Duke Michael ended his life by falling from his horse in a fit at the age of forty-eight, and had shown before his death so much morbid irritability that his physician did not hesitate to treat him as insane. If the Western Powers had temporised for a year with the imperious Nicolas, his death would have occurred, and there would have been no Crimean War. And it is the fact that the professional assurance had been communicated to the English Government so early as 1853, that Nicolas had at most only two years to live; he died four months before the two years were up. A well-known English physician, Dr. A. B. Granville, had detected in Nicolas the symptoms of the hereditary disease of his family, from which he predicted his death within the term mentioned. He communicated his prognosis to Lord Palmerston, as a strong argument for the maintenance of a temporising policy until death should have delivered Russia and Europe from a Czar whose mental balance was disturbed. The authenticity of this letter, which was published in the _Times_ in 1855, was vouched for to Count Vitzthum on the day of its publication by Lord Palmerston himself, who added that the English Government could be guided only by facts, and could not allow their policy to be influenced by the opinion of a physician. Alexander outlived the fated period by three years, and then it was by a violent death that he perished; but his younger brother, the late Grand Duke Nicolas, died recently before completing his sixtieth year.

As epilepsy is the domestic curse of the Hapsburgs, so hypochondria is the family malady of the Romanoffs. Alexander was a prey to it in the Gorni Studen hovel. But it had not full sway over him. There was something wonderfully pathetic in the eagerness with which he grasped at the expressed belief of an unprofessional neutral like myself, in the face of the apprehensions to the contrary of all about him, that Radetski would be able to make good the tenure of his position on the top of the Shipka.

The Czar was present in the field during the six days’ struggle around Plevna, in the September of the war. The sappers had constructed for him on a little eminence, out of the usual line of hostile fire, a sort of look-out place from which was visible a great sweep of the scene of action. Behind it was a marquee in which was a long table continually spread with food and wine, where the suite supported nature jovially while men were dying hard by in their thousands. As for the Czar himself, after the first two days he neither ate nor drank. Anxiety visibly devoured him. He could not be restrained from leaving the observatory and going around among the gunners. I watched him on the little balcony of the look-out place, late on the afternoon of the fifth day of the struggle--it was his fête-day, save the mark!--as he stood there in the sullen autumn weather, gazing out with haggard straining eyes at the efforts to storm the great Grivitza redoubt. Assault after assault had been delivered; assault after assault had failed; now the final desperate struggle was being made, the forlorn hope of the day. The Turkish fire crushed down his Russians as they battled their way up the slope, slippery already with Roumanian blood: the pale face on the balcony quivered, and the tall figure winced and cowered. As he stood there bearing his cross in solitary anguish, he was a spectacle of majestic misery that could never be forgotten.

After Plevna had fallen in December, the Emperor returned to St. Petersburg, there to be greeted with a reception the like of which for pure enthusiasm I have never witnessed. From the railway station he drove straight to the Kasan Cathedral, in accordance with the custom which prescribes to Russian Emperors that in setting out for or returning from any enterprise, they shall kiss the glittering image of the Holy Virgin of Kasan which the Cathedral enshrines. Its interior was a wonderful spectacle. People had spent the night sleeping on the marble floor, that they might be sure of a place in the morning. There had been no respect of persons in the admissions. The mujik in his skins stood next the soldier-noble whose bosom glittered with decorations. The peasant woman and the princess knelt together at the same shrine. At the tinkle of a bell the great doors were thrown wide open and on the surge of cold air was borne a great throbbing volume of sounds, the roar of the cheering of vast multitudes, the booming of artillery, the clash of the pealing joy-bells. In stately procession the Emperor reached the altar, bent his head, and his lips touched the sacred image. When he turned to leave the building, the wildest confusion of enthusiasm laid hold of the throng. His people closed in about the Czar till he had no power to move. The great struggle was but to touch him, and the chaos of policemen, officers, shrieking women, and enthusiastic peasants swayed and heaved to and fro; the Emperor in the centre, pale, his lips trembling with emotion, just as I had seen him when his troops were cheering him on the battlefield; struggling for the bare possibility to stand or move forward, for he was lifted by the pressure clean off his feet, and whirled about helplessly. At length, extricated by a wedge of officers, he reached his carriage, only to experience almost as wonderful an ovation when he reached the raised portico of the Winter Palace. As for the Czarevna, the lady who is now Empress of Russia, her experiences at the Winter Palace were unique. As her carriage, following that of the Emperor, approached the terrace, the populace utilised it as a point whence to see and cheer the Emperor. Men scrambled on to the horses, the box, the roof, the wheels; progress became utterly impossible. A group of cadets and students, who lined the base of the terrace, were equal to the occasion. They dragged open the carriage door by dint of immense exertion: they lifted out the bright little lady, who clearly was greatly enjoying the fun, and they passed her from hand to hand above their heads, till the Emperor caught her, lifted her over the balustrades, and set her down by his side on the terrace.

The fall of Plevna, and the welcome of his capital, had restored the Czar to apparent health and spirits. I watched him as he moved around the great salon of the Winter Palace, greeting his guests at the home-coming reception. He strode the inlaid floor a very emperor, upright of figure, proud of gait, arrayed in a brilliant uniform, and covered with decorations. A glittering court and suite thronged about the stately man with enthusiastically respectful homage; the dazzling splendour of the Winter Palace formed the setting of the sumptuous picture; and as I gazed on the magnificent scene, I could hardly realise that the central figure of it, in the pomp of his Imperial state, was of a verity the self-same man in whose presence I had stood in the squalid Bulgarian hovel, the same worn, anxious, shabby, wistful man who, with spasmodic utterance and the expression in his eyes as of a hunted deer, had asked me breathless questions as to the episodes and issue of the fighting.

In many respects the monarch whom the Nihilists slew was a grand man. He was absolutely free from that corruption which is the blackest curse of Russia, and whose taint is among the nearest relatives of the Great White Czar. He had the purest aspirations to do his loyal duty toward the huge empire over which he ruled, and never did he spare himself in toilsome work. He took few pleasures; the melancholy of his position made sombre his features, and darkened for him all the brightness of life. For he had the bitterest consciousness of the abuses that were alienating the subjects who had been wont in their hearts, as on their lips, to couple the names of “God and the Czar.” He knew how the great nation writhed and groaned; and he, absolute despot though he was, writhed and groaned no less in the realisation of his impotency to ameliorate the evils. For although he was honest and sincerely well intentioned, there was a fatal weakness in the nature of Alexander II. True, he began his reign with an assertion of masterfulness; but then, unworthy favourites gained his ear; his family compassed him about; the whole huge _vis inertiæ_ of immemorial rottenness and obstructive officialism lay doggedly athwart the hard path of reform. Alexander’s aspirations were powerless to pierce the dense, solid obstacle; and the consciousness of his impotency, with the no less disquieting consciousness that it behoved him to cleanse the Augean stable of the State, embittered his whole later life.

A YARN OF THE “PRESIDENT” FRIGATE

Concerning the history of the subjoined curious narrative, the original manuscript of which, written in now faded ink on the rough dingy paper of sixty years ago, was placed in my hands in the course of a recent visit to America, only a few words are necessary. The narrative is addressed to “Mrs. Rodgers and sister,” and bears to have been written at the request of the former lady, after its author’s return from sea on the termination of his service as surgeon of the _President_ frigate, the famous fighting cruiser of the American Republic in the war with England of 1812-14. Commodore Rodgers, who commanded the _President_ during the war, and who was the husband of the lady for whom the account was written, gave to Dr. Turk’s narrative his endorsement of its perfect accuracy. Of the authenticity of the document there can be no possibility of doubt.

NARRATIVE

“Although the events now for the first time recorded occurred
ten years since, they are still fresh in my recollection, and
have made so strong an impression on my mind that time can never
obliterate them. They partake so much of the marvellous that I
would not dare to commit them to paper were there not so many
living witnesses to the truth of the facts narrated, some of them
of the greatest respectability, even sanctioned by Commodore
Rodgers. The story is considered by all who have heard it too
interesting to be lost; I therefore proceed to the task while those
are in existence who can confirm it. Living in an enlightened age
and country, when bigotry and superstition have nearly lost their
influence over the minds of men, particularly among the citizens
of this republic, where knowledge is so universally diffused, I
have often been deterred from relating circumstances so wonderful
as to stagger the belief of the most credulous. But facts are
stubborn things, and the weight of testimony in this case cannot
be resisted. Unable for want of time and room to enter so far
into particulars as I should wish, I will give, to the best of my
recollection, the most prominent and striking occurrences, in the
order in which they took place, without comment or embellishment.

“Some time in the latter part of December 1813, a man by the name
of William Kemble, aged about twenty-three (a seaman on board of
the U.S. Frigate _President_, commanded by Commodore John Rodgers,
on a cruise, then near the Western Islands), was brought to me from
one of the tops, in which he was stationed, having burst a vessel
in his lungs, being at the time in great danger of instant death,
the blood gushing with great violence from his mouth and nostrils.
With much difficulty I succeeded in stopping the discharge, and he
was put upon the use of remedies suited to his case. I visited him
often, and had the best of opportunity of becoming acquainted with
his temper, habits, and intellectual attainments; and under all
circumstances, during his illness, found his language and behaviour
such as stamped him the rough, profane, and illiterate sailor. It
is my belief, although I cannot positively assert it, that he could
not either read or write. It is certain that his conversation never
differed in the least from that of the most ignorant and abandoned
of his associates, constantly mixed with oaths and the lowest
vulgarity. Had he possessed talents, or learning, he must have
betrayed it to me during his long confinement.

“In the early part of January (1814), a vessel bore down upon us,
with every appearance of being an English frigate. All hands were
called to quarters, and after a short and animated address by the
Commodore to the crew, all prepared to do their duty. Before I
descended to the cockpit, well knowing Kemble’s spirit and how
anxious he would be to partake in the glory of the victory (defeat
never entered our thoughts), I thought it best to visit him. After
stating to him the peculiar situation he was in, and the great
danger he would be exposed to by the least emotion, I entreated him
and ordered him not to stir during the action, which he promised
to observe. We were soon obliged to fire. At the sound of the
first gun he could restrain himself no longer, but, regardless
of my admonitions and of his own danger, he rushed upon deck and
flew to his gun, laying hold to help run her out. A fresh and
tremendous discharge from his lungs was the consequence, and he was
brought down to me again in a most deplorable state. I apprehended
immediate death, but by the application of the proper remedies, I
succeeded once more in stopping the hæmorrhage, by which he was
reduced to a state of the most extreme debility. Being near the
equator, and suffering much from heat, his hammock was slung on
the gun deck between the ports, affording the best circulation of
air. He continued for some time free from hæmorrhage, but was under
the constant use of medicine, and was confined to a particular
diet. This made him fretful, and he would frequently charge my
mates with starving him, at the same time damning them in the true
sailor fashion. After some time, the crew being again called to
quarters at night, he was necessarily removed below to the sick
berth (commonly called bay). This was followed by another discharge
of blood from his lungs, which was renewed at intervals until his
death.