But to return to Blagovèstshensk. There is no doubt that the drowning of the Chinese took place not only with the foreknowledge[foreknowledge], but by the express order—though possibly only verbal—of General Gribsky, military governor of the town. To avert suspicion of the fact, however, and in order to have a justification of himself ready if need should arise, he issued a proclamation some days after the massacre, saying that “reports had reached” him “of the rough handling and even murder of unarmed Chinese in and about the town.” “These crimes,” he proceeded, “have been committed by inhabitants of the town, peasants of the villages around, or Cossacks; and although these deeds were provoked by the treachery of the Chinese, who had first commenced hostilities against the Russians, any further instances of violence towards unarmed persons will be punished severely.” But, together with this proclamation, after the taking of Saghalien by the Russians, General Gribsky issued another, in which—as head of the Cossack forces—he ordered the Cossacks to go across to the Chinese shore and there “annihilate all the Chinese bands.” In other words, he told the Cossacks to massacre the helpless Chinese who were left in the place after the flight of the troops; for when once Saghalien had fallen, no armed bands were left on the right bank of the Amur.
General Gribsky carried his hypocrisy so far as to appoint a commission to inquire into “the cases of violence towards peaceful Chinese.” But as this commission would have had to report that the drowning and murder of peaceful Chinese had been carried out under his own instructions, naturally its findings could not be published. So, after the lapse of several months, General Gribsky declared that from the report made to him by the commission it was evident that the cause of the unfortunate events which had occurred had been a want of unity among the officials to whom he had entrusted the arrangement of affairs. This declaration repeats almost word for word the pronouncement of the present Tsar, Nicholas II., after the death of thousands on the plain of Hodinsky at the time of his coronation; the cause of which the Tsar also found to have been a lack of unity in the arrangements. General Gribsky evidently wished to suggest that if on an occasion of holiday-making, wholesale deaths had occurred in this way, nobody could really be held responsible for the killing of Chinese during the bombardment of Blagovèstshensk. And nobody was ever brought to book; General Gribsky and all his subordinates remained on at Blagovèstshensk in their divers positions.
It came to light eventually that various authorities throughout the province had sent direct written instructions to put the Chinese to death; and that killing the unfortunate people singly and wholesale had been carried out in many villages by the peasants, and in Cossack settlements by the Cossacks. Several officials won notoriety by their instructions to their subordinates on this head—Volkovinsky (the colonel of Cossacks), Captain Tusslukov, and the stanovoi prìstav (commissary of rural police) Volkov, among others.
Obedient to the will of their superiors, the Russian peasants and Cossacks armed themselves as they could, and began the work of destruction. I cannot undertake to describe what went on in the Manchurian territory on the Seya—a strip of land not far from Blagovèstshensk, the inhabitants of which, though living on Russian soil, were Chinese subjects and (by a diplomatic arrangement) paid taxes to China. Enough to say that altogether sixty-eight villages were burnt to the ground, that of their inhabitants, some were drowned, some barbarously murdered, that property was looted, and cattle were driven off by the Russians. In perpetrating these and other brutalities—either on their own initiative or following out instructions—our peasants thoroughly believed that they were fulfilling their duty as loyal subjects. “That is how we ought to serve our Tsar and country,” one stalwart hero concluded his narrative. Persons who in time of peace were merciful even to dumb animals were changed by those days of horror into stark barbarians. Here is an example: In one Russian village an old Chinaman had lived for years in the service of a shepherd, and all the peasants were most friendly with him. The report reached them that “all Chinese must be killed.” They therefore called a village council and consulted as to what should be done with the one Chinaman in the place; and although everyone agreed that he was a good and honest old man, it was decided that he must be put to death. When the people with whom he lived broke the news to him he humbly submitted to the decree, only begging that they would accompany him to the place where he was to die.
“I am a lonely old man,” he said. “I have neither kith nor kin. Do you replace my family and go with me to the grave, as is the custom of my people.”
The shepherd and his wife acceded to his request, and went with him to the outskirts of the village, where the peasants then slew the unresisting old man.
After a fortnight or so of these massacres, when the thirst for blood began to be appeased, and the authorities ceased to spur the people on to deeds of violence, they began to collect together and bring into the town the few Chinese who remained alive, half-dead with hunger and mad with terror. These poor wretches, scarcely able to move for exhaustion, and those of the Chinese townspeople who for one reason or another had been allowed to survive—some few dozen persons—were all that remained of the many thousand Chinese who had dwelt in Blagovèstshensk and the neighbourhood.
It was not difficult to foresee what character the war would assume when our soldiers and Cossacks passed over into Chinese territory. Scarcely had they crossed the Amur on August 3rd and taken possession of Saghalien (from which place the inhabitants had fled betimes to the interior of the country), when they set everything on fire. During the two following nights the flames illuminated the river for a long distance; and in place of a prosperous community which supplied Blagovèstshenk with foodstuffs at very moderate rates, nothing was to be seen on the Chinese bank but blackened posts and crumbling ruins.
The entry of our army into Manchuria was not merely signalised by flaming dwellings; nothing and nobody was spared. Women, children, and the aged were pitilessly slaughtered, young girls violated and then slain. Such were the deeds of our “heroes,” as General Grodekov in his despatches called these warriors, for whose “brave deeds” he “could not find words to express his admiration”! But even some of his officers themselves told with a shudder of the bloodthirsty instincts developed by these “heroes” in a war against unarmed men, women, and children on Chinese soil. A rich and thickly-populated land was reduced in a few months to a barren desert, where charred ruins were visible here and there, and corpses were left to the wolves and vultures.
When indignation is expressed at these atrocities it is customary to meet with the excuse, “Read the accounts of the cruelties practised by Germans, French, and English in China. If more civilised races behave so, what can be expected from us less cultivated Russians?” It is hard to answer this. The white races did indeed prove during that terrible war with “barbaric China,” as they contemptuously say, the full worth of their boasted civilisation. On the threshold of the twentieth century average Europeans showed themselves scarcely less barbarous than the hordes of Tamerlane and Tchengis-Khan.