Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

for their taking rest; and it was still with blows that they were received there, without being suffered to approach persons, or even to enter houses. Some were seen redueed to such a state, that, in their furious despair, they fell upon each other with stones, logs of wood and their own hands ; and those who came alive

out of the conflict devoured the limbs of the dead ! !!

To these horrible excesses did the inhumanity of the Eussians drive our countrymen.

It has not been forgotten that at the very same time, Germany gave a different example to the Christian world. The Protestants of Frankfort still remember the devoted charity of the Bishop of Mayenee, and the Italian Catholies reeolleet with gratitude the succour they received among the Protestants of Saxony.

At night, in the bivouaes, the men who felt themselves about to die rose in terror to struggle, standing, against the death agony ; surprised whilst in its contortions by the frost, they remained supported against the walls, stiff and frozen. The last sweat turned to iee over their emaeiated limbs; and they were found in the morning, their eyes open, and their bodies fixed and eongealed in convulsive attitudes, from which they were snatched only to be burnt. The foot then eame away from the anele more easily than it is, when living, lifted from the soil. When daylight appeared, their comrades, on raising their heads, beheld themselves under the~guard of a circle of yet scarcely lifeless statues, who appeared posted round the eamp like sentinels of another world. The horror of these awakings cannot be described.

Every morning, before the departure of the column, the Ptussians burnt the dead; and — shall I say it — they sometimes burnt the dying!

All this M. Girard has seen ; these are the sufferings he has shai`ed, and, favoured by youth, survived. Frightful as the facts are, they do not appear to me more so than a multitude of other reeitals attested by historians : but what I consider as inexplicable, and almost incredible, is the silenee of a Frenchman escaped from this inhuman land, and again in his own eountry.

M. Girard would never publish the aeeount of his sufferings, through respect, he says, for the memory of the Emperor Alexander, who retained him nearly ten years in Russia, and employed him as French master in the Imperial schools. How