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

324IVAN EESmiES HIS CKOWN.

he promised to continue to decimate them; he re-assumed his power without any concessions, — on the contrary, with absurd conditions, all in advantage of his pride and fury, although they were to be accepted as favours by this people, as enthusiastic in slavery as others arc fanatical in liberty, — this people, imbrued in its own blood, and which wished to be killed in order to amuse its master, who grew uneasy and trembled whenever he ceased to murder.

From this period may be dated the organisation of a tyranny so methodical and yet so violent, that the annals of the human race present nothing that can be compared to it; seeing that there was as much insanity in submitting to it as in exercising it. Prince and nation at this moment were smitten with frenzy, and the effects of the fit continue yet to operate.

The mighty Kremlin, with all its associations, its iron gates, its mysterious subterranean passages, its inaccessible ramparts soaring into heaven, appeared too weak a refuge to the insensate monarch, who sought to destroy the half of his people that he might govern the other half in security. In his horrid heart an inexplicable terror — for it had no apparent motive—united itself to an atrocity without object; the most disgraceful fear pleaded for the most blind ferocity. A new Nebuchadnezzar — the king changed into a cowardly tiger.

He first retired into a strong palace near the Kremlin, and afterwards into л solitude — the Slobode Alexandrowsky. This place became his habitual residence. It was there that, from among the most debauched and utterly abandoned of his slaves, he