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

APPENDIX.359

my keepers will kill me to avenge the honour of their country. Human self-love is so inconsistent, that men are capable of assassinating a fellow-being to prove to others that they are not inhuman."

" You are perfectly right: but all that you tell me by no means causes me to change my opinion respecting the character of the Russians."

" They obliged us to travel in companies. We slept near the villages, the entrance of which was refused us on account of the hospital fever that followed us. In the evening, we stretched ourselves on the ground, wrapped in our cloaks, between two large fires. In the morning, before recommencing our march, our guard counted the dead, and, instead of burying them, which would have cost too much time and trouble, on account of the hardness and depth of the ice and snow, they burnt them, thinking thus to stop the contagion ; body and clothes were burnt together: but, will you believe it ? more than once, men still alive were thrown into the flames ! Reanimated by pain, these wretched creatures concluded their lives with the screams and agonies of the stake! "

" What horrors ! "

" Many other atrocities were committed. Every night the rigour of the frost decimated our companies. Whenever any deserted dwelling could be found near the entrance of the towns, they obliged us to lodge there; but not being able to make fires except in certain parts of these buildings, the nights we passed there were no better than those passed in the open air with fires all around us. Many of our people consequently died in the rooms, for want of means to warm themselves."

" But why did they make you journey during the winter ? "

" We might have communicated disease to the neighbourhood of Moscow. I have often seen the Russian soldiers dragging the dead, by cords fastened round their ancles, down from the second story of the edifices in which we were herded. Their heads followed, striking and resounding against every step, from the top of the house to the bottom. 'It is of no consequence,' they said, ' they are dead.'"

" And you consider that humane ? "

" I only tell you what I have seen : sometimes even worse things happened; for I have seen an end made of the living by