Of the many heavy days which had succeeded each other, the morning of October 15th was perhaps the saddest that ever dawned. From an early hour the populace had crowded into the churches, to take part in the funeral services which invoked and hallowed the memory of Kosciusko. The troops, employed in the military occupation of the town, offered no hindrance to the faithful at the doors of the sacred edifices; and it was not till the churches were filled, that the army had orders to surround them. From some of the buildings escape would have been easy, and these were the last to be encircled. The cathedral of St. John and the church of the Bernardines had the honour of being really besieged; while at the same time hordes of Cossacks, spread all over Warsaw, committed every sort of excess, and spared neither the women nor the strangers within the gates. An Englishman (Mr. George Mitchell) was a sufferer and an eye-witness of this day’s work, and he wrote, ‘troops of infuriated Cossacks and Circassians swept the streets, and they cut down men and women without any distinction whatever. They entered into the dwellings, they maltreated the inhabitants, and they sacked the houses.’
When the order was given to surround the churches, it had most certainly not been anticipated that the crowd would embrace the strange resolution of refusing to quit them as long as the troops were on the ground, and that it would be necessary to drive them out. Thus, one rash and ill-considered resolution led, a little later, to the most disastrous consequences. During the whole day things continued on this wise; the crowd was in the churches, breathless, excited, hungry, but unalterable; and still the soldiers camped before the doors. At eight o’clock in the evening, a General appeared, and he offered pardon to the crowd, if they would surrender at the mercy of the Lieutenant of the Kingdom. The reply was, that the people knew what mercy meant, and that as long as the troops were not withdrawn they should not stir. Tapers were now lit round the catafalque which had been reared the night before for the late archbishop, and hymns were chanted from time to time.
At two o’clock in the morning a new envoy came to parley with the multitude, who answered as before, that they did not ask for pardon. Two long mortal hours now passed away, when at seven o’clock, that is to say, after a siege of seventeen hours, the soldiers were ordered to force their way into the churches and to drive out the occupants. More than two thousand persons were seized, and carried to the citadel. But this was not all; and here again appears that fatality which I have said attended upon the Russian officials. Count Lambert, it would appear, had in no way anticipated or intended either this invasion of the churches or these wholesale arrests. Both had been executed in obedience to the commands of General Gerstenzweig, the Chief of the state of siege, and thence arose an altercation between the two generals, which was tragical enough in its close. Count Lambert vehemently reproached Gerstenzweig for all the horrors of the day, and Gerstenzweig retorted with equal violence. What next? It seems a fact no longer to be doubted, that General Gerstenzweig then took a pistol, and blew out his brains, while Count Lambert quitted Warsaw without any warning.
The results of the scene which was played out on the 15th of October were soon felt. The administrator of the diocese ordered all the churches in Warsaw to be closed, and the leaders of the other religious bodies soon followed his example; for the same thing was done by the grand rabbi, and by the head of the Protestant Church. For the last year, every school in Poland had been locked, and the theatres were in a like case; and it was now the turn of the churches to be shut.
Thus and then did Russia inaugurate a new period of reaction, which has not yet come to an end (April 1862).
Of a drama which has lasted for a whole year, we behold the sad and eventful epilogue. And yet all that happened on the 15th of October, bad as it was, was simply a revision of all that had gone before—of all the punishments which, since February 1861, had been indiscriminately applied by martial law to all classes, all religions, and all professions. Let us see, whom do we find, among this crowd of men, punished, deported, or confined in prisons?
There is M. Szlenker, the Provost of the Merchants of Warsaw, himself the richest and the most honourable merchant of the kingdom.
There is M. Hiszpanski, the head of the Shoemakers’ Guild (the grandson of that Kilinski who was so loved and influential in Warsaw), a member of the delegation formed in 1861, and elected, in September of that same year, a member of the Municipal Council.
Poles who, by reason of the amnesty, had returned from Siberia have since been sent back, ‘by way of precaution’—so run the terms of their sentence; and of this number is M. Ehrenberg, the celebrated poet, and M. Krajewski, one of our most eminent critics, the most moderate and sensible of writers, the author of the translation of ‘Faust.’
An immense number of students and artizans have been sent to the Caucasus and to Orenbourg. The Grand-Rabbi Meiselz, and the Rabbis Kramstuk and Jastrow have been expelled; and Otho, the Evangelical pastor, has been sentenced to deportation. The Chapter of Warsaw alone has lost ten of its members, among whom the most conspicuous were M. Stecki and the Canon Wyszinski, from whom General Lambert once asked for memoranda. Last and worst, have we not seen M. Bialobozeski, the very Administrator of the diocese of Warsaw, an old man of eighty years of age, condemned to death because, after the 15th of October, he ordered all the churches to be shut. By way of favour, his sentence was commuted to imprisonment in a fortress, where he languished, and where his character was aspersed by the publication of a retractation. If we can ever suppose it to have been made by the victim himself, it only renders his sentence of death more inexplicable than it had been before.