The four arms of the cross-road were all blocked with double or even treble barricades, about ten yards apart. As far as I could see along the curve of the Sadovaya on both sides, barricade succeeded barricade, and the whole road was covered with telegraph wire, some of it lying loose, some tied across like netting. The barricades enclosing the centre of the cross-road like a fort were careful constructions of telegraph poles or the iron supports to the overhead wires of electric trams, closely covered over with doors, railings, and advertisement boards, and lashed together with wire. Here and there a carriage or tramcar was built in, to give stability, and from the top of every barricade waved the little red flag. A similar fort had been built at the intersection of the Sadovaya with the Tverskaya, only a short distance to the right, and the whole of the road between was thronged with excited people, who hastened backwards and forwards, stood in eager groups at all the corners, and kept peering down the Tverskaya to discover if the guns were yet in sight. But the troops were advancing slowly, if at all. At intervals the guns fired—generally two in rapid succession—and we could hear the crash of the shells as they plunged into the houses or brought the brickwork rattling down. Every now and then came a quick outburst of rifle-shots—perhaps of revolver-shots—and a bullet or two went humming overhead. Each barricade was being assaulted separately, the guns firing first, and then the soldiers creeping up with rifles.
BARRICADES ON THE SADOVAYA.
But it was not from the barricades themselves that the real opposition came. From first to last no barricade was “fought,” in the old sense of the word. To be sure, we afterwards saw photographs of enthusiastic revolutionists standing on the very summit of the barriers, clear against the sky, and waving red flags or presenting revolvers at space. But no such things happened, and the photographs were a simple kind of “fake.” The barricades were never intended to be “fought.” The only tactics of the revolutionists were ambush and surprise. Afterwards I heard stories of them lying down across the street in front of the advancing troops, and meeting case-shot and rifles with revolvers that cannot be trusted over twenty yards. Such stories are too ludicrous to be denied. The revolutionary methods were far more terrible and effective. By the side-street barricades and wire entanglements, they had rid themselves of the fear of cavalry. By the barricades across the main streets, they rendered the approach of troops necessarily slow. To the soldiers, the horrible part of the street fighting was that they could never see the real enemy. On coming near a barricade or the entrance to a side street, a few scouts would be advanced a short distance before the guns. As they crept forward, firing, as they always did, into the empty barricade in front, they might suddenly find themselves exposed to a terrible revolver-fire at about fifteen paces range from both sides of the street. It was useless to reply, for there was nothing visible to aim at. All they could do was to fire blindly in almost any direction, and perhaps the bullets killed some mother carrying home the family potatoes half a mile away. Then the revolver-firing would suddenly cease, the guns would trundle up and wreck the houses on both sides. Windows fell crashing on the pavement, case-shot burst in the bedrooms, and solid shell made round holes through three or four walls. It was bad for furniture, but the revolutionists had long ago escaped through a labyrinth of courts at the back, and were already preparing a similar attack in another street.
Among all those excited groups it was quite impossible to distinguish the sympathetic spectator or even the spy from the fighting revolutionist. It all seemed to me like an Aldershot field-day, in which the regulars on one side were fighting with ball cartridge against the usual crowd of onlookers, some of whom were secretly armed.
Leaving the central forts, I went for half a mile further along the continuation of the Dmitrovka, which here takes the name of Dolgoroukovskaya, and from end to end I found it crowded with work-people of the better class, all intensely excited and alert, and apparently all enthusiastic for the movement. But even when a man tried to work up trouble because I looked foreign and fairly well-dressed, I could not distinguish for certain which were the real revolutionists among them. The whole long street had been admirably barricaded, and as it runs out towards the Petrovsky Park and the open country, it seemed likely that it had been specially prepared as a line of retreat in case of disaster. Barricades were erected every thirty yards, and in one place the whole of the electric train had been drawn at right angles across the road in three lines, making far the largest barricade then existing in the world. Naturally the revolutionists were proud of it as a triumph of engineering art. Four red flags flew from its summit, and upon the largest flag some girl had stitched the white letters, “For Freedom.” But there was another barricade which seemed to me simpler and finer in conception. Some revolutionists, probably boys, had piled a great wall of snow across the road, and then by pouring buckets of water upon it under the freezing sky, had converted it into an almost solid rampart of ice, which I doubt if any bullet could have penetrated. That was the barricade of genius.
When I returned to the central forts on the Sadovaya, the firing of the big guns had slackened, and I found out the reason afterwards. At the time I thought it was because the early dusk of mid-winter was falling, and having waited for a while to watch some revolutionary Red Cross parties set out in different directions, I made a short cut for home by way of the Flower Boulevard (Tsvietnoi). But as I was going along its valley towards the Ermitage, four big flashes in front, looking very orange in the twilight, warned me that guns had been brought down there to demolish the series of little barricades running across, the gardens where I was. I think the troops were afraid of a flank attack on their right if they advanced further without clearing this ground, and, indeed, the barricades throughout the quarter were still rapidly increasing. Men and girls were throwing them up with devoted zeal, sawing through telegraph-poles, wrenching ironwork from its sockets, and dragging out the planks from builders’ yards. I could still find no directing spirit—no general or staff to give orders for the whole army, as it were. But there must have been some sort of agreement in actions like this, and probably, if I had been able to converse like the rest, I should not have remained ignorant. But the foreigner, however well disposed, is inevitably suspected, and even offers of help in carrying and building are very coldly received, or rejected with threats. Yet I was much less likely than a Russian to be a spy, and no one could suffer greater mortification than being thus excluded from the party of revolt.
When I reached the hill where my hotel stood, I found that even in our own insignificant street, two barricades were being erected—one very conveniently placed just below my window—and the side streets leading down into the Petrovka were similarly blocked. The soldiers had evidently fired up these streets whilst the building was going on, for a bullet passing through a hotel window and wall and ceiling had left a memorial which the inhabitants continued to contemplate with pleasurable awe. The hotel cook also, having a moment of leisure in his kitchen, had run out into the yard to enjoy the battle, and leaning forward round a corner to gain the best possible view, had received a bullet through the heart. Now stretched in the stable, he cooked no more.
Late at night a strange figure appeared in the hall and stood thawing in front of the fire. It was dressed like a peasant, but surely no peasant since Adam’s fall ever looked quite so comfortable and self-satisfied, and no peasant’s clothes were quite so clean since Adam’s first day in hides. After warming himself and peering about for a little while with twinkling eyes, he took off the peasant’s raiment bit by bit, and stood before us in full uniform, a police-officer revealed. He had not come as an avenger, but with wrath restrained he only demanded figures regarding the dead, and he even stooped to take a special interest in the cook. There is a peculiar quality about the Russian official—a kind of friendliness in brutality, a brotherliness in slaughter—which springs from the sense of human kinship. Presently the hired assassin showed himself quite benign and communicative. He displayed revolutionary leanings. He informed us that if only the insurgents could maintain the fight for three days longer, the soldiers would be overcome. Already they were worn out with constant watching and harassing marches hither and thither without relief. The news, if true, could only mean that a large part of the garrison could not be relied upon by the Government, for otherwise there were plenty of troops in the city to supply reliefs. I believe the garrison then numbered eight infantry regiments (much undermanned, it is true), two Cossack regiments, one and a half of dragoons, and two brigades of guns. In all, the numbers were then estimated at eighteen thousand—not very many, it is true, but surely enough to hold a city against ill-armed insurgents. Something must evidently be strange in the temper of the men. So that peasant police-officer discoursed, and the hearts of his hearers were full of hope or dismay according to their inborn quality.
Towards midnight there was a sudden outburst of rifle-fire outside my window. A party of soldiers were assaulting the little barricade, which I had already come to regard with a sense of personal property. They poured bullet after bullet into it, but still it held out as long as it could, and only surrendered at last because it had no defenders. Bringing up copies of some suppressed organ of liberty as kindling, the soldiers then set it on fire, and it burnt slowly till dawn.