by Leo Tolstoy
The case was as follows: A young man who had twice failed in his examinations was being examined a third time, and when the examiner again would not pass him, the young man whose nerves were deranged, considering this to be an injustice, seized a pen-knife from the table in a paroxysm of fury, and rushing at the professor inflicted on him several trifling wounds.
‘What’s his name?’ asked Nicholas.
‘Bzhezóvski.’
‘A Pole?’
‘Of Polish descent and a Roman Catholic,’ answered Chernyshóv.
Nicholas frowned. He had done much evil to the Poles. To justify that evil he had to feel certain that all Poles were rascals, and he considered them to be such and hated them in proportion to the evil he had done them.
‘Wait a little,’ he said, closing his eyes and bowing his head.
Chernyshóv, having more than once heard Nicholas say so, knew that when the Emperor had to take a decision it was only necessary for him to concentrate his attention for a few moments and the spirit moved him, and the best possible decision presented itself as though an inner voice had told him what to do. He was now thinking how most fully to satisfy the feeling of hatred against the Poles which this incident had stirred up within him, and the inner voice suggested the following decision. He took the report and in his large handwriting wrote on its margin with three orthographical mistakes:
‘Diserves deth, but, thank God, we have no capitle punishment, and it is not for me to introduce it. Make him run the gauntlet of a thousand men twelve times. – Nicholas.’
He signed, adding his unnaturally huge flourish.
Nicholas knew that twelve thousand strokes with the regulation rods were not only certain death with torture, but were a superfluous cruelty, for five thousand strokes were sufficient to kill the strongest man. But it pleased him to be ruthlessly cruel and it also pleased him to think that we have abolished capital punishment in Russia.
Having written his decision about the student, he pushed it across to Chernyshóv.
‘There,’ he said, ‘read it.’
Chernyshóv read it, and bowed his head as a sign of respectful amazement at the wisdom of the decision.
‘Yes, and let all the students be present on the drill-ground at the punishment,’ added Nicholas.
‘It will do them good! I will abolish this revolutionary spirit and will tear it up by the roots!’ he thought.
‘It shall be done,’ replied Chernyshóv; and after a short pause he straightened the tuft on his forehead and returned to the Caucasian report.
‘What do you command me to write in reply to Prince Vorontsov’s dispatch?’
‘To keep firmly to my system of destroying the dwellings and food supplies in Chechnya and to harass them by raids,’ answered Nicholas.
‘And what are your Majesty’s commands with reference to Hadji Murád?’ asked Chernyshóv.
‘Why, Vorontsóv writes that he wants to make use of him in the Caucasus.’
‘Is it not dangerous?’ said Chernyshóv, avoiding Nicholas’s gaze. ‘Prince Vorontsóv is too confiding, I am afraid.’
‘And you – what do you think?’ asked Nicholas sharply, detecting Chernyshóv’s intention of presenting Vorontsóv’s decision in an unfavourable light.
‘Well, I should have thought it would be safer to deport him to Central Russia.’
‘You would have thought!’ said Nicholas ironically. ‘But I don’t think so, and agree with Vorontsóv. Write to him accordingly.’
‘It shall be done,’ said Chernyshóv, rising and bowing himself out.
Dolgorúky also bowed himself out, having during the whole audience only uttered a few words (in reply to a question from Nicholas) about the movement of the army.
After Chernyshóv, Nicholas received Bíbikov, General-Governor of the Western Provinces. Having expressed his approval of the measures taken by Bíbikov against the mutinous peasants who did not wish to accept the Orthodox Faith, he ordered him to have all those who did not submit tried by court-martial. That was equivalent to sentencing them to run the gauntlet. He also ordered the editor of a newspaper to be sent to serve in the ranks of the army for publishing information about the transfer of several thousand State peasants to the Imperial estates.
‘I do this because I consider it necessary,’ said Nicholas, ‘and I will not allow it to be discussed.’
Bíbikov saw the cruelty of the order concerning the Uniate20 peasants and the injustice of transferring State peasants (the only free peasants in Russia in those days) to the Crown, which meant making them serfs of the Imperial family. But it was impossible to express dissent. Not to agree with Nicholas’s decisions would have meant the loss of that brilliant position which it had cost Bíbikov forty years to attain and which he now enjoyed; and he therefore submissively bowed his dark head (already touched with grey) to indicate his submission and his readiness to fulfil the cruel, insensate, and dishonest supreme will.
Having dismissed Bíbikov, Nicholas stretched himself, with a sense of duty well fulfilled, glanced at the clock, and went to get ready to go out. Having put on a uniform with epaulettes, orders, and a ribbon, he went out into the reception hall where more than a hundred persons – men in uniforms and women in elegant low-necked dresses, all standing in the places assigned to them – awaited his arrival with agitation.
He came out to them with a lifeless look in his eyes, his chest expanded, his stomach bulging out above and below its bandages, and feeling everybody’s gaze tremulously and obsequiously fixed upon him he assumed an even more triumphant air. When his eyes met those of people he knew, remembering who was who, he stopped and addressed a few words to them sometimes in Russian and sometimes in French, and transfixing them with his cold glassy eye listened to what they said.
Having received all the New Year congratulations he passed on to church, where God, through His servants the priests, greeted and praised Nicholas just as worldly people did; and weary as he was of these greetings and praises Nicholas duly accepted them. All this was as it should be, because the welfare and happiness of the whole world depended on him, and wearied though he was he would still not refuse the universe his assistance.
When at the end of the service the magnificently arrayed deacon, his long hair crimped and carefully combed, began the chant Many Years, which was heartily caught up by the splendid choir, Nicholas looked round and noticed Nelídova, with her fine shoulders, standing by a window, and he decided the comparison with yesterday’s girl in her favour.
After Mass he went to the Empress and spent a few minutes in the bosom of his family, joking with the children and his wife. Then passing through the Hermitage,21 he visited the Minister of the Court, Volkonski, and among other things ordered him to pay out of a special fund a yearly pension to the mother of yesterday’s girl. From there he went for his customary drive.
Dinner that day was served in the Pompeian Hall. Besides the younger sons of Nicholas and Michael there were also invited Baron Lieven, Count Rzhévski, Dolgorúky, the Prussian Ambassador, and the King of Prussia’s aide-de-camp.
While waiting for the appearance of the Emperor and Empress an interesting conversation took place between Baron Lieven and the Prussian Ambassador concerning the disquieting news from Poland.
‘La Pologne et le Caucase, ce sont les deux cautères de la Russie,’ said Lieven. ‘Il nous faut cent mille hommes à peu près, dans chacun de ces deux pays.”22
The Ambassador expressed a fictitious surprise that it should be so.
‘Vous dites, la Pologne —’ began the Ambassador.
‘Oh, oui, c’était un coup de maître de Metternich de nous en avoir laissé l’embarras.…’23
At this point the Empress, with her trembling head and fixed smile, entered followed by Nicholas.
At dinner Nicholas spoke of Hadji Murád’s surrender and said that the war in the Caucasus must now soon come to an end in consequence of the measures he was taking to limit the scope of the mountaine
ers by felling their forests and by his system of erecting a series of small forts.
The Ambassador, having exchanged a rapid glance with the aide-de-camp – to whom he had only that morning spoken about Nicholas’s unfortunate weakness for considering himself a great strategist – warmly praised this plan which once more demonstrated Nicholas’s great strategic ability.
After dinner Nicholas drove to the ballet where hundreds of women marched round in tights and scanty clothing. One of them specially attracted him, and he had the German ballet-master sent for and gave orders that a diamond ring should be presented to him.
The next day when Chernyshóv came with his report, Nicholas again confirmed his order to Vorontsóv – that now that Hadji Murád had surrendered, the Chechens should be more actively harassed than ever and the cordon round them tightened.
Chernyshóv wrote in that sense to Vorontsóv; and another courier, overdriving more horses and bruising the faces of more drivers, galloped to Tiflis.
XVI
IN obedience to this command of Nicholas a raid was immediately made in Chechnya that same month, January 1852.
The detachment ordered for the raid consisted of four infantry battalions, two companies of Cossacks, and eight guns. The column marched along the road; and on both sides of it in a continuous line, now mounting, now descending, marched Jägers in high boots, sheepskin coats, and tall caps, with rifles on their shoulders and cartridges in their belts.
As usual when marching through a hostile country, silence was observed as far as possible. Only occasionally the guns jingled jolting across a ditch, or an artillery horse snorted or neighed, not understanding that silence was ordered, or an angry commander shouted in a hoarse subdued voice to his subordinates that the line was spreading out too much or marching too near or too far from the column. Only once was the silence broken, when from a bramble patch between the line and the column a gazelle with a white breast and grey back jumped out followed by a buck of the same colour with small backward-curving horns. Doubling up their forelegs at each big bound they took, the beautiful timid creatures came so close to the column that some of the soldiers rushed after them laughing and shouting, intending to bayonet them, but the gazelles turned back, slipped through the line of Jâgers, and pursued by a few horsemen and the company’s dogs, fled like birds to the mountains.
It was still winter, but towards noon, when the column (which had started early in the morning) had gone three miles, the sun had risen high enough and was powerful enough to make the men quite hot, and its rays were so bright that it was painful to look at the shining steel of the bayonets or at the reflections – like little suns – on the brass of the cannons.
The clear and rapid stream the detachment had just crossed lay behind, and in front were tilled fields and meadows in shallow valleys. Farther in front were the dark mysterious forest-clad hills with crags rising beyond them, and farther still on the lofty horizon were the ever-beautiful ever-changing snowy peaks that played with the light like diamonds.
At the head of the 5th Company, Butler, a tall handsome officer who had recently exchanged from the Guards, marched along in a black coat and tall cap, shouldering his sword. He was filled with a buoyant sense of the joy of living, the danger of death, a wish for action, and the consciousness of being part of an immense whole directed by a single will. This was his second time of going into action and he thought how in a moment they would be fired at, and he would not only not stoop when the shells flew overhead, or heed the whistle of the bullets, but would carry his head even more erect than before and would look round at his comrades and the soldiers with smiling eyes, and begin to talk in a perfectly calm voice about quite other matters.
The detachment turned off the good road onto a little-used one that crossed a stubbly maize field, and they were drawing near the forest when, with an ominous whistle, a shell flew past amid the baggage wagons – they could not see whence – and tore up the ground in the field by the roadside.
‘It’s beginning,’ said Butler with a bright smile to a comrade who was walking beside him.
And so it was. After the shell a thick crowd of mounted Chechens appeared with their banners from under the shelter of the forest. In the midst of the crowd could be seen a large green banner, and an old and very far-sighted sergeant-major informed the short-sighted Butler that Shamil himself must be there. The horsemen came down the hill and appeared to the right, at the highest part of the valley nearest the detachment, and began to descend. A little general in a thick black coat and tall cap rode up to Butler’s company on his ambler, and ordered him to the right to encounter the descending horsemen. Butler quickly led his company in the direction indicated, but before he reached the valley he heard two cannon shots behind him. He looked round: two clouds of grey smoke had risen above two cannon and were spreading along the valley. The mountaineers’ horsemen – who had evidently not expected to meet artillery – retired. Butler’s company began firing at them and the whole ravine was filled with the smoke of powder. Only higher up above the ravine could the mountaineers be seen hurriedly retreating, though still firing back at the Cossacks who pursued them. The company followed the mountaineers farther, and on the slope of a second ravine came in view of an aoul.
Following the Cossacks, Butler and his company entered the aoul at a run, to find it deserted. The soldiers were ordered to burn the corn and the hay as well as the sáklyas, and the whole aoul was soon filled with pungent smoke amid which the soldiers rushed about dragging out of the sáklyas what they could find, and above all catching and shooting the fowls the mountaineers had not been able to take away with them.
The officers sat down at some distance beyond the smoke, and lunched and drank. The sergeant-major brought them some honeycombs on a board. There was no sign of any Chechens and early in the afternoon the order was given to retreat. The companies formed into a column behind the aoul and Butler happened to be in the rear-guard. As soon as they started Chechens appeared, following and firing at the detachment, but they ceased this pursuit as soon as they came out into an open space.
Not one of Butler’s company had been wounded, and he returned in a most happy and energetic mood. When after fording the same stream it had crossed in the morning, the detachment spread over the maize fields and the meadows, the singers24 of each company came forward and songs filled the air.
‘Very diff’rent, very diff’rent, Jägers are, Jägers are!’ sang Butler’s singers, and his horse stepped merrily to the music. Trezórka, the shaggy grey dog belonging to the company, ran in front, with his tail curled up with an air of responsibility like a commander. Butler felt buoyant, calm, and joyful. War presented itself to him as consisting only in his exposing himself to danger and to possible death, thereby gaining rewards and the respect of his comrades here, as well as of his friends in Russia. Strange to say, his imagination never pictured the other aspect of war: the death and wounds of the soldiers, officers, and mountaineers. To retain his poetic conception he even unconsciously avoided looking at the dead and wounded. So that day when we had three dead and twelve wounded, he passed by a corpse lying on its back and did not stop to look, seeing only with one eye the strange position of the waxen hand and a dark red spot on the head. The hillsmen appeared to him only as mounted dzhigíts from whom he had to defend himself.
‘You see, my dear sir,’ said his major in an interval between two songs, ‘it’s not as it is with you in Petersburg – “Eyes right! Eyes left!” Here we have done our job, and now we go home and Máha will set a pie and some nice cabbage soup before us. That’s life – don’t you think so? – Now then! As the Dawn was Breaking!’ He called for his favourite song.
There was no wind, the air was fresh and clear and so transparent that the snow hills nearly a hundred miles away seemed quite near, and in the intervals between the songs the regular sound of the footsteps and the jingle of the guns was heard as a background on which each song began and ended. The song that was being s
ung in Butler’s company was composed by a cadet in honour of the regiment, and went to a dance tune. The chorus was: ‘Very diff’rent, very diff’rent, Jägers are, Jägers are!’
Butler rode beside the officer next in rank above him, Major Petróv, with whom he lived, and he felt he could not be thankful enough to have exchanged from the Guards and come to the Caucasus. His chief reason for exchanging was that he had lost all he had at cards and was afraid that if he remained there he would be unable to resist playing though he had nothing more to lose. Now all that was over, his life was quite changed and was such a pleasant and brave one! He forgot that he was ruined, and forgot his unpaid debts. The Caucasus, the war, the soldiers, the officers – those tipsy, brave, good-natured fellows – and Major Petróv himself, all seemed so delightful that sometimes it appeared too good to be true that he was not in Petersburg – in a room filled with tobacco-smoke, turning down the corners of cards25 and gambling, hating the holder of the bank and feeling a dull pain in his head – but was really here in this glorious region among these brave Caucasians.
The major and the daughter of a surgeon’s orderly, formerly known as Másha, but now generally called by the more respectful name of Márya Dmítrievna, lived together as man and wife. Márya Dmítrievna was a handsome, fair-haired, very freckled, childless woman of thirty. Whatever her past may have been she was now the major’s faithful companion and looked after him like a nurse – a very necessary matter, since he often drank himself into oblivion.
When they reached the fort everything happened as the major had foreseen. Márya Dmítrievna gave him and Butler, and two other officers of the detachment who had been invited, a nourishing and tasty dinner, and the major ate and drank till he was unable to speak, and then went off to his room to sleep.