The Alhambra and the Kremlin: The South and the North of Europe

by Samuel Irenæus Prime

“In 1812, Russia was invaded by an army numbering 700,000 men. The army recrossed the frontier, numbering 70,000.”

When Napoleon entered Wilna on his fatal march to Moscow, he occupied the same rooms in the episcopal palace that the Emperor Alexander had hastily vacated the day before. We shall not have the same apartments, but we are here at the same season of the year; it was June 28, 1812, when the French army took possession of Wilna, the Russians having evacuated it in the night.

We had been riding eleven hours steadily, yet the cars were so comfortable, the road so smooth, and the motion so easy and gentle, that we had suffered little fatigue. The scenery had been improving. The country was more uneven, rolling, and actually rising sometimes to the dignity of hills, until we were able and obliged to pass through a tunnel, being our first experience of the kind in some days, so level had been the regions through which we had travelled. Wilna is surrounded by hills, and enjoys a river flowing out of the valley, and the ravines are filled with birch and larches, giving something of the life and beauty of verdure, which is quite inspiring in this latitude. In the fourteenth century the people here were pagans, and a fire was kept burning day and night at the foot of one of the castle-crowned hills. The ruins of the castle, which was reared in 1323, are still visible on the summit. What a history of war, famine, and fire these intervening centuries have seen. Thirty thousand inhabitants were destroyed by famine in one year, 1710, and five years afterwards nearly the whole town was burned. The people are still impatient of the Russian yoke. They are always ready for an outbreak. In 1831, they tried and failed; and in 1862 they made a desperate effort, and the leaders of the movement were summarily hung or shot.

The beauties of travel in Russia begin to be seen even in the dark. We are in the station, in the midst of a crowd of people, who seem to be talking all the languages of Babel; such a jargon does the Russian, Polish, and German make, when all are spoken at the same time by an impatient multitude. We are to wait an hour for the train to leave, and that will bring it near to midnight. If we spend the night here, there is no train until to-morrow night at the same hour, and we shall therefore be as badly off when it comes. It is better to go on and make a night of it. Twelve hours will bring us to St. Petersburg, and then we can rest. There are no sleeping cars. We must sit up or lounge the best way we can. It is now eleven o’clock and is getting to be dark. But we are so far north that the days are long, and the night will be very short. At midnight we curl up in the corner of the seat, and the train starts as we go to sleep. At two o’clock in the morning we awake, and it is broad daylight! At three we enter Dunaberg, a large town of small houses; 27,000 inhabitants: the most of the buildings are of wood, and only one story high, like the little farm-houses scattered over the country. It is well fortified, though it is hardly worth fighting about. John the Terrible captured Dunaberg in 1577, and the Swedes took it in 1600. The railroad station-house towers above the dwellings, that look like ant-hills scattered around. We stop a few minutes only, and push on through vast quantities of charcoal and railroad fuel collected here, and pine forest succeed, and white birch-trees, and over a flat, uninteresting country. The sun rose between four and five o’clock, and at a wayside station we were refreshed with a cup of coffee. The night was over, and the shortest I ever spent with my clothes on. We now pass tilled fields, and at one time we counted twenty villages of low, small houses in sight at one time, as we rushed along. The grain is well up, and with a warm summer will come to maturity. Wide tracts of land are destitute of vegetation; and with the evidences of want of agricultural knowledge, and the brevity of the summer, it is easy to see that these crowded villages may be pinched for want of food in a bad season. These famines have sometimes reached the cities, and the sufferings of Moscow in 1600 were not exceeded by the horrors of Jerusalem besieged by Titus. One hundred and twenty-seven thousand dead bodies remained for some days unburied in the streets, and 500,000 perished.

The peasants are astir in the early morning at their work in the fields. They are decently clad, and have the appearance of being “comfortable;” they and their houses indicating that they have time and inclination to take care of themselves. They are no longer serfs. This term is not the same as slave. The serf was sold with the land on which he worked, not away from it, or without it. So long ago as 1597, a decree was issued forbidding peasants to leave the lands on which they were at that time employed. This made every working-man a fixture on the land of the landholder. At a date even earlier than this, they were forbidden to leave except at stated periods, but the complete attachment by statute of the husbandmen to the soil did not take place until the sixteenth century. This continued to be the established order of things until the accession of Alexander II. to the throne in 1856. The serfdom of Russia was not absolute slavery. It did not subject the man to the unrestricted will of the master. The peasant remained the tiller of the same soil, and changed his master only when the soil changed owners. But the grievance was inexpressibly great. In some cases it worked extraordinary results. The serf sometimes by energy and ability became a man of wealth and power. But he was under a social ban that kept him down as color depresses the black man. The reign of the present Emperor has been marked by the introduction of great and beneficent reforms. Railways were begun, and a new impulse given to trade at home and foreign commerce. The manumission of the serfs had long been discussed, but an opposition from the nobility had been too formidable to make it safe. In 1838, some of the nobles petitioned for the abolition. In 1859, the nobles of Lithuania offered to free their serfs. A general plan was then devised for the whole empire, and by a decree of March 3, 1861, about twenty-three millions of people were raised to the enjoyment of civil rights. A certain amount of land, varying in different districts from two and a half to ten acres, was allotted to each peasant. He is allowed to acquire more land by purchase. A board of arbitrators, in different parts of the country, regulate the price and terms of payment to the original owners. The government advances the purchase-money to the peasant in the form of a five per cent bond, and this the proprietor receives for his land, and the government takes the payment of the peasant by instalments, through a series of years. The districts, or towns, being made responsible for this repayment to the government, a wholesome restraint is put upon the inhabitants, by which they are kept within bounds until this debt is paid. Thus the entire population is made interested in the accomplishment of the great work. The nobles who were the proprietors of the soil, receive government bonds bearing interest, and thus derive a fixed income, while each peasant becomes an independent landed proprietor. The change has been effected with no convulsion, and is gradually becoming a settled and peaceful state of things. A few outbreaks occurred at the time, chiefly from want of understanding the plan, and on the whole it has worked well.

This beneficent reform has been effected without passion, and with the intelligent approbation of the masters who were by a single decree deprived of 23,000,000 of bondmen. The original owners of the soil are not reduced to poverty by the emancipation of their men. The men are not turned loose upon the world without means to earn their living, and without incentives to industry. The government is not made to bear the expense of supporting them, or of finding work for them to do. The emancipated man is at once put into a position to earn his living where he has always lived. The master is left with a large surplus of soil, which he may cultivate with hired labor, which must be abundant, when the peasants have but small farms of their own, which are easily and chiefly tilled by the women. And this work has been accomplished with so much moderation, wisdom, and justice, as to compel the approbation of every enlightened judgment and conscience. It is in most aspects of the case a model plan of emancipation.

It seems strange to me that this rapid travel is hurrying me on to St. Petersburg! The cathedral and churches of Pskof are before us, and we stop for breakfast. We enter the breakfast-room and find the dishes laid; each one helps himself to whatever he wishes, and pays for what he takes; not a word being necessary, except to learn the price of the food.

A lady and gentleman were walking up and down on the platform, both smoking. We are coming to a city where smoking in the streets is prohibited by law. The peculiar garb of the rustic Russian is seen on the men around the station. They wear long woollen coats, reaching nearly to the ground. A girdle is about the middle. The hat is a low-crowned beaver, and rapidly expanding toward the top.

CHAPTER XXIV
ST. PETERSBURG.

WE were in Russia, at Warsaw. At that point in the journey we were put through a searching process, and the result having satisfied the officials that we were not of the dangerous classes, and had no designs upon the life of the Emperor, or the emancipation of Poland, we had been allowed to enter. And now that we had come to St. Petersburg, there was no need of overhauling us again, for we had been certified to already. We were as free on arriving at the capital as if we had come to New York.