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VIII. 1826.

CHAP. resistance. Reduced by this defection to six companies, that regiment was unable to commence any offensive operations. Mouravieff remained two days in a state of uncertainty, sending in vain in every direction in quest of succour. Meanwhile, the generals of the army were accumulating forces round them in every direction; and though numbers were secretly engaged in the conspiracy, and in their hearts wished it success, yet as intelligence had been received of its suppression at St Petersburg, none ventured to join it openly. The rebels, obliged to leave Belain-Tzerskof, where they had passed the night, were overtaken, on the morning of the 15th, on the heights of Ostinofska. Mouravieff, nothing daunted, formed his men into a square, and ordered them to march, with their arms still shouldered, straight on the guns pointed at them. He was in hopes the gunners would declare for them; but he was soon undeceived. A pointblank discharge of grape was let fly, which killed great numbers. A charge of cavalry quickly succeeded, which completed their defeat. Seven hundred were made prisoners, among whom were Matthew and Hippolyte Mouravieff, and the chief leaders of the revolt; and a conspiracy, which pervaded the whole army, and threatened to shake the Rapport empire to its foundation, was defeated by the overthrow of six companies and fifty men killed and wounded. The unhappy Mouravieff, father of the rebels, saw himself p. 84, 130; deprived of his three sons at one fell swoop. "Nothing remained," he said, "but for him to shroud his head under their ashes."1

1

Officiel, May 30, 1826, 84,

130; Ann.

Hist. 1826,

Schnitzler,

ii. 30, 34.

137.

on the con

The commission which had been appointed to try the Sentences insurgents at St Petersburg extended its labours to the spirators. conspiracy over the whole empire, and traced its ramifications in their whole extent. It cannot be said that their proceedings were stained with unnecessary cruelty; for of so great a number of conspirators actually taken in arms against the Government, or whose guilt was established beyond a doubt, five only, viz., Colonel Pestel,

VIII.

1826.

Ryleif, Colonel Serge Mouravieff, Bestougif-Rumine, CHAP. and Kakhofski, were sentenced to death. While thirtyone others, originally sentenced to death, had their sentences commuted to exile, accompanied with hard labour, for life or for long periods, in Siberia. They formed a melancholy list; for among them were to be found several men of the highest rank and noblest feelings in Russia, the victims of mistaken zeal and deluded patriotism. Among them were Prince Troubetzkoi, Colonel Matthew Mouravieff-Apostol, Colonel Davidof, General Prince Serge Volkonsky, Captain Prince Stchpine Boslowsky, Jugement, and Nicholas Tourgunoff, councillor of state. One hun- 1826; Ann. dred and thirty others were sentenced to imprisonment 112, 113. and lesser penalties.1

July 14,

Hist. viii.

duct on the

The conspirators who were selected for execution met 138. their fate in a worthy spirit. They faced death on the Their conscaffold with the same courage that they would have done eve of death. in the field. Their original sentence was to be broken on the wheel; but the humanity of the emperor led him to commute that frightful punishment, and they were sentenced to be hanged. This mode of death, unusual in Russia, was keenly felt as a degradation by men who expected to meet the death of soldiers. Ryleif, the real head of the conspiracy, and the most intellectual of all its members, acknowledged that his sentence was just, according to the existing laws of Russia; but he added, that, having been deceived by the ardour of his patriotism, and being conscious only of pure intentions, he met death without apprehension. "My fate," said he, "will be an expiation due to society." He then wrote a beautiful letter to his young wife, in which he conjured her not to abandon herself to despair, and to submit, as a good Christian, to the will of Providence, and the justice of the emperor. He charged her to give his confessor one of his golden snuff-boxes, and to receive from him his own last blessing from the scaffold.2 Nothing ii. 303, 305. shook Pestel's courage; he maintained to the last his

2 Schnitzler,

CHAP. principles and the purity of his intentions. All received and derived consolation from the succours of religion.

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1826. 139.

cution.

July 25.

There had been no capital sentence carried into execuTheir exe- tion in St Petersburg for eighty years; and in all Russia but few scaffolds had been erected for death since the reign of the Empress Elizabeth, a century before. The knowledge that five criminals, all of eminent station, were about to be executed, excited the utmost consternation in all classes; and Government wisely kept secret the exact time when the sentence was to be carried into effect. At two in the morning of the 25th July, however, a mournful sound was heard in every quarter of the city, which presaged the tragedy which was approaching it was the signal for every regiment in the capital to send a company to assist at the melancholy spectacle. Few spectators, save the military, were present, when, on the edge of the rampart of the citadel, was seen dimly through the twilight which preceded the morning, a huge gallows, which froze every heart with horror. The rolling of drums was soon heard, which announced the approach of the thirty-one criminals condemned to death, but whose lives had been spared, who were led out, and on their knees heard their sentence of death read out. When it was finished, their epaulettes were torn off, their uniform taken off their backs, their swords broken over their heads, and, dressed in the rude garb of convicts, they were led away to undergo their sentence in the wilds of Siberia. Next came the five criminals who were to be executed they mounted the scaffold with firm steps, and in a few minutes the preparations were adjusted, and the fatal signal was given. Pestel and Kakhofski died immediately; but a frightful accident occurred in regard to the other three. The ropes broke, and they were precipitated, while yet alive, from a great height into the ditch beneath. The unhappy men, though severely bruised by their fall, reascended the scaffold with a firm step. The spectators hoped they were about to be pardoned; but

"Can

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1826.

this was not so, for the emperor was absent at Tsariko- CHAP. Velo, and no one else ventured to give a respite. nothing, then, succeed in this country," said Ryleif—“ not even death?" "Woe to the country," exclaimed Serge Mouravieff, "where they can neither conspire, nor judge, nor hang!" Bestoujif-Rumine was so bruised that he had to be carried up to the scaffold; but he, too, evinced no symptoms of trepidation. This time fortunately the rope 1 Schnitzler, held good, and in five minutes a loud rolling of drums Custine, ii. Lettres, 14, announced that justice was satisfied, and the insurrection 29, 31." terminated.1

ii. 304, 307;

on this

It is impossible to recount these details without the 140. most melancholy feelings-feelings which will be shared Reflections to the end of the world by all the generous and humane, event. who reflect on capital executions for political offences. The peculiar and harrowing circumstance in such cases is, that the persons upon whom the extreme punishment of the law is thus inflicted are sometimes of noble character -men actuated by the purest patriotism, who, in a heroic spirit, sacrifice themselves for their country, and, as they conceive, the good of mankind. Even when, as in this, as in most other instances, such conspiracy could terminate only in disaster, and its suppression was a blessing to humanity, and a step in the march of real freedom, it is impossible to avoid feeling respect for the motives, however mistaken, of the persons engaged in it, and admiration for the courage with which they met their fate. The ends of justice, the cause of order, is more advanced by the humanity which, in purely political offences, remits or softens punishment, than by the rigour which exacts its full measure. The state criminal of one age often becomes the martyr of the next, the hero of a third; and the ultimate interests of society are never so effectually secured as when, by depriving treason of the halo of martyrdom, it is allowed to stand forth to the memory of futurity in its real colours.*

* Ryleif, who was a man of fine genius, in his remarkable poem, entitled

СНАР.
VIII.

1826.

141.

Noble con

duct of the

Princess

Troubetz

koi and the

other wives

of the con

victs.

But if the fate of these gallant though deluded men must ever excite very mixed feelings in every generous bosom, there is one subject connected with their companions in suffering, which must ever awaken the most unbounded interest and admiration. The convicts who were banished to Siberia were for the most part of high rank and noble family; many of them were married, and their wives, of equal station in society, had moved in the very first circles in St Petersburg. The conduct of these ladies, on this terrible crisis, was worthy of eternal admiration. When their husbands set off on their long and painful journey of three thousand miles into the interior of Siberia, seated on wooden chariots without springs, and often exposed to the insults and assaults of the populace, they did not go alone. These noble women, who were themselves entirely innocent, and were offered the protection of the emperor, and all the luxuries of the elevated circles in which they had been born and lived, if they would remain behind, unanimously refused the offer, and insisted upon accompanying their husbands into exile. They bore without repining, even with joy, the mortal fatigues of the long and dreary journey in open carts, and all the insults of the populace in the villages through which they passed, and arrived safe, supported by their heroic courage. To accustom themselves to the hardships they were to undergo, they voluntarily laid aside in their palaces at St Petersburg, some weeks before their departure, the splendid dresses to which they had been accustomed, put on instead the most humble garments, and inured their delicate hands to the work of peasants and

Voinarofski, expressed his firm confidence in the irresistible march of freedom in these words, which he put into the mouth of an Ataman of the Cossacks: "That which in our dream seemed a dream of heaven, was not recorded on high. Patience! Let us await till the colossus has for some time accumulated its wrongs—till, in hastening its increase, it has weakened itself in striving to embrace the half of the earth. Allow it: the heart swollen with pride, parades its vanity in the rays of the sun. Patience the justice of Heaven will end by reducing it to the dust. In history, God is retribution: He does not permit the seed of sin to pass without its harvest."-SCHNITZLER, ii. 309.

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