The Emperor, notwithstanding the late unfortunate attempt, still wished to make one last endeavor to bring back the revolted, but while he was issuing orders to that effect, the Grand-duke Michael seized the match: "Fire," cried he, "fire upon the assassins." At that moment four cannons opened upon the rebels, and paid with usury the deaths they had sent into the loyal ranks of the imperialists. Before the voice of the Emperor could stop the slaughter, a second discharge followed the first. The effect of these volleys within reach of pistol-shot was terrible. More than sixty men of the grenadier corps of the Regiment of Moscow and the Marine guards fell; the rebel troops fled, some by the street Galernain, some by the English quay or by the bridge Isaac, others across the frozen waters of the Neva, then a plain of ice, but all were hotly pursued by the Chevalier guards at full gallop.
That evening Count Milarodowich, who was struggling with the agonies of death, expressed a wish to see the bullet which had given him his mortal wound. The chirurgeon, who had successfully traced and extracted the ball, put it into his patient's hand. The expiring warrior carefully examined the missive, its weight, and form, and found it deficient in calibre. "I am satisfied," said he, "that ball was aimed by no soldier." Five minutes after these words, he breathed his last. He then paid the debt of nature, the only debt he ever paid in his life. Handsome, valiant, the finest horseman in the army, and the idol of his own soldiers, the Russian Murat lost his life by the hand of a Russian, but not of a Russian soldier. The rival of the cidevant King of Naples loved display in every shape; but the field of battle, at the head of his cavalry, was the theatre on which he best loved to exhibit his martial form, splendid horsemanship, and daring courage. The gaming-table found him as reckless of his fortune as the field of his life, and the bravest cavalry general in the Russian service was a ruined gamester, loaded with debts which his death acquitted by leaving him insolvent. In paying the debt of nature Count Milarodowich surrendered his only personal possession.
The next day, at nine o'clock in the morning, while the population of his capital was yet uncertain whether the rebellion was effectually crushed, Nicholas, Emperor of Russia, gave his hand to the Empress to assist her into a droski which stood before the gates of the winter-palace, and drove through the streets of St. Petersburg. He stopped before the barracks as if to offer his bold bosom to the bullet or the steel of the assassin. The sight of his fine countenance, shadowed by the floating plumes of his military hat, far from exciting treasonable demonstrations, awakened lively expressions of loyalty and devotion to his person, and cries of "Long live Nicholas!" greeted his fortunate rashness. The Russian people knew and recognized in him a brave man and great sovereign.
The trial of the chief conspirators took place under the shadow of night and secrecy; they were brought from all parts of the empire to St. Petersburg. The sentence, but not the examination of the guilty, alone was made public; eighty persons were condemned to death, or life-long exile in Siberia. The most powerful, according to the custom of Russia, increased the population of Siberia; among these we find the name of Prince T.: his wife, with rare devotion, petitioned and obtained from the Emperor permission to accompany her husband to that dreary land of woe and crime. The decimation of the disloyal but seduced regiments was an act of severe military justice that astonished Europe, but secured the tranquillity of Russia. The son of the Emperor Paul, whose life and death had been the stake of the military contest of December, 1825, might be better excused than any other man for that tremendous sentence. He had been fired upon by his own soldiers while unarmed and confiding his person to their generosity; his brother, and his plenipotentiary, Count Milarodowich, had been aimed at by assassins, and the Count had died of his wound.
A flash of magnanimity enlightened this cloud of severity. In the list of conspirators the Emperor remarked the name of Suwarrow, a name dear to Russia and associated with her victories. He chose to examine this young man, the grandson of the great field-marshal, himself. His countenance and manner, unusually gentle, seemed to inspire confidence. The questions he asked this lieutenant only required a simple affirmative or denial, and they were not of a nature to elicit a confession of guilt. "Gentlemen, you see and hear," remarked the Emperor to his council, "it is as I have told you, a Suwarrow cannot be a rebel," and he acquitted the prisoner, and gave him a captain's commission and sent him back to his regiment; but unfortunately for the conspirators, this lieutenant was the only person who bore that favored name. All were not Suwarrows.
It was remarked that those who were executed uttered these words as their last legacy to posterity, "Live Russia! Live Liberty! our avengers are at hand!" Their war-cry of "Live Constantine!" false to their hearts, was not repeated by lips which the presence of death had rendered then the echo of truth.
The funeral pomp of the widowed Empress Elizabeth, whose remains were brought for interment to St. Petersburg in this same month of December, turned the thoughts of its inhabitants from these scenes of civil strife and the executions that followed them, to a Princess, whom for twenty-four years they had regarded as a link between the human and angelic natures. The memory of these events seemed buried in that sepulchre, which the tears of a grateful people had consecrated to the remembrance of the consort of the deceased Emperor Alexander.
From Nimrod's Bacchanalia Memorabilia.
DRINKING EXPERIENCES.
The pleasure imparted by wine to me is great, but very short-lived: it appears to mount, as it were, to a crisis; after which it somewhat rapidly declines. In fact, it does not enliven me beyond a certain pitch. It then ceases its charms; doubtless, because my stomach, the centre of all sympathy, feels oppressed by it. I grow dull, my head aches, I am inclined for sleep, and wish for bed.—But it does not rob me of self-possession, nor incline me to wrangle or quarrel. On the contrary, it excites my love, not my hatred, and greatly expands my heart. I have granted many a favor, and promised many more, by the inspiration of the jolly god. I have shaken hands with, sworn eternal friendship for, many a man, and made love to many a woman, for whom, vulgarly speaking, I cared not a rush. In short, I have a hundred times made a fool of myself by talking, boasting—not lying, for I have ever held that low vice in abhorrence—and occasionally laid wagers, and matched horses, without a chance of winning. But, as I have already stated, I never was so overcome by wine as not to know where I was, and what I said. In fact, it never had the power to make me forget that I was born a gentleman; and I am happy in the reflection, that I have travelled thus far through life without having been once called upon to make an apology for an insult given, either when drunk or sober; nor to demand but two, and those were the result of excess in wine. One was tendered to me on the first dawn of returning reason; the other, I am sorry to say, at the pistol's mouth. But the events I am alluding to occurred many years back, when, as a well-known sporting old earl of the last century said of himself, "the devil was very strong in me."