Historical Tales Volume Viii Part 22

This was the celebrated position of Buyak-Tchek-medje, a defensive line twenty-five miles from Constantinople and of remarkable military strength. The peninsula between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora is at this point only twenty miles wide, and twelve of these miles are occupied by broad lakes which extend inland from either sh.o.r.e. Of the remaining distance, about half is made up of swamps which are almost or quite impa.s.sable, while dense and difficult thickets occupy the rest of the line. Behind this stretch of lake, swamp, and thicket there extends from sea to sea a ridge from four hundred to seven hundred feet in height, the whole forming a most admirable position for defence. This ridge had been fortified by the Turks with redoubts, trenches, and rifle-pits, which, fully garrisoned and mounted with guns, might have proved impregnable to the strongest force. The thirty thousand men within them could have given great trouble to the whole Russian army, and double that number might have completely arrested its march. Yet this great natural stronghold was given up without a blow, signed away with a stroke of the pen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WALLS OF CONSTANTINOPLE.]

On January 31 an armistice was signed, one of whose terms was that this formidable defensive line should be evacuated by the Turks, who were to retire to an inner line, while the Russians were to occupy a position about ten miles distant. It was no consideration for Turkey that now kept the Russians outside the great capital, but dread of the powers of Europe, which jealously distrusted an increase of the power of Russia, and were bent on saving Turkey from the hands of the czar.

On February 12 an event took place that threatened ominous results. The British fleet forced the pa.s.sage of the Dardanelles and moved upon Constantinople, on the pretence of protecting the lives of British subjects in that city. As soon as news of this movement reached St.

Petersburg the emperor telegraphed to the Grand Duke Nicholas, giving him authority to march a part of his army into Constantinople, on the same plea that the British had made. In response the grand duke demanded of the sultan the right to occupy a part of the environs of his capital with Russian soldiers, the negotiations ending with the permission to occupy the village of San Stefano, on the Sea of Marmora, about six miles from the walls of the threatened city.

What would be the end of it all was difficult to foresee. On the waters of the city floated the English iron-clads, with their mute threat of war; around the walls Turkish troops were rapidly throwing up earthworks; leading officers in the Russian army chafed at the thought of stopping so near their longed-for goal, and burned with the desire to make a final end of the empire of the Turks and add Constantinople to the dominions of the czar. Yet though thus, as it were, on the edge of a volcano, their ordinary policy of delay and hesitation was shown by the Turkish diplomats, and the treaty of peace was not concluded and signed until the 3d of March. The Russians had used their controlling position with effect, and the treaty largely put an end to Turkish dominion in Europe.

The news of the signing was received with cheers of enthusiasm by the Russian army, drawn up on the sh.o.r.es of the inland sea, the Preobrajensky, the famous regiment of Peter the Great, holding the post of honor. Scarce a rifle-shot distant, crowding in groups the crests of the neighboring hills, and deeply interested spectators of the scene, appeared numbers of their late opponents. The news received, the cheering battalions wheeled into column, and past the grand duke went the army in rapid review, the march still continuing after darkness had descended on the scene.

And thus ended the war, with the Russians within sight of the walls of that city which for so many centuries they had longed and struggled to possess. Only for the threatening aspect of the powers of Europe the Ottoman empire would have ended then and there, and the Turk, "encamped in Europe," would have ended forever his rule over Christian realms.

_THE NIHILISTS AND THEIR WORK._

In 1861 Alexander II., Emperor of Russia, signed a proclamation for the emanc.i.p.ation of the Russian serfs, giving freedom by a stroke of the pen to over fifty millions of human beings. In 1881, twenty years afterwards, when, as there is some reason to believe, he was about to grant a const.i.tution and summon a parliament for the political emanc.i.p.ation of the Russian people, he fell victim to a band of revolutionists, and the thought of granting liberty to his people perished with him.

This a.s.sa.s.sination was the work of the secret society known as the Nihilists. To say that their a.s.sociation was secret is equivalent to saying that we know nothing of their purposes other than their name and their deeds indicate. Nihilism signifies _nothingness_. It comes from the same root as _annihilate_, and annihilation of despots appears to have been the Nihilist theory of obtaining political rights. This society reached its culmination in the reign of Alexander II., and, despite the fact that he proved himself one of the mildest and most public-spirited of the czars, he was chosen as the victim of the theory of obtaining political regeneration by terror.

Threats preceded deeds. The final years of the emperor's life were made wretched through fear and anxiety. His ministers were killed by the revolutionists. Some of the guards placed about his person became victims of the secret band. Letters bordered with black and threatening the emperor's life were found among his papers or his clothes. An explosive powder placed in his handkerchief injured his sight for a time; a box of asthma pills sent him proved to contain a small but dangerous infernal machine. He grew haggard through this constant peril; his hair whitened, his form shrank, his nerves were unstrung.

In February, 1879, Prince Krapotkin, governor-general of Kharkoff, was killed by a pistol-shot fired into his carriage window. In April a Nihilist fired five pistol-shots at the czar. In June the Nihilists resolved to use dynamite with the purpose of destroying the governors-general of several provinces and the czar and heir-apparent.

Among their victims was the chief of police, while two of his successors barely escaped death.

The first attempt to kill the czar by dynamite took the form of excavating mines under three railroads on one of which he was expected to travel. Of these mines only one was exploded. A house on the Moscow railroad, not far from that city, was purchased by the conspirators, and an underground pa.s.sage excavated from its cellar to the roadway. Here auger-holes were bored upward in which were inserted iron pipes communicating with dynamite stored below. On the day when the emperor was expected to pa.s.s, a woman Nihilist named Sophia Perovskya stood within view of the track, with instructions to wave her handkerchief to the conspirators in the house at the proper moment. The pilot train which always preceded the imperial train was allowed to pa.s.s. The other train drew up to take water, and was wrecked by the explosion of the mine. Fortunately for the emperor, he was in the pilot train and out of danger.

Some of the partic.i.p.ants in this affair were arrested, but their chief, a German named Hartmann, escaped. Despite the utmost efforts of the police, he made his way safely out of Russia, aided by Nihilists at every step, sometimes travelling on foot, at other times in peasants'

carts, finally crossing the frontier and reaching the nest of conspirators at Geneva. Here he is supposed to have taken part with others in devising a new and what proved a fatal plot. Meanwhile a fresh attempt was made on the life of the czar.

On February 5, 1880, Alexander II. was to entertain at dinner in the Winter Palace a royal visitor, Prince Alexander of Hesse. Fortunately, the czar was detained for a short time, and the hour fixed for the dinner had pa.s.sed when the party proceeded along the corridor to the dining-hall. The brief delay probably saved their lives, for at that moment a tremendous explosion took place, wrecking the dining-hall and completely demolishing the guard-room, which was filled with dead and dying victims, sixty-seven in all. It proved that a Nihilist had obtained employment among some carpenters engaged in repairs within the palace, and had succeeded in storing dynamite in a tool-chest in his room. He escaped, and was never seen in St. Petersburg again. Two days later the corpse of a murdered policeman was found on the frozen surface of the Neva, a paper pinned to his breast threatening with death every governor-general except Melikoff, the successor of the murdered Krapotkin.

Their failures had proved so nearly successes that the Nihilists were rather encouraged than depressed. New plans followed the failure of old ones. It was proposed to poison the emperor and his son, the murder to be followed by a revolt of the disaffected in Moscow and St. Petersburg, the seizure of the palaces, and the establishment of a const.i.tutional government. This plan, however, was given up as not likely to have the "_great moral effect_" which the Nihilists hoped to produce.

A Nihilist student in St. Petersburg had sent to the Paris committee of the society a recipe for a formidable explosive of his invention. A quant.i.ty of this dangerous substance was manufactured in France and secretly conveyed to St. Petersburg, where bombs to contain it had been prepared. The plans of the conspirators were now very carefully laid.

They did not propose to fail again, if care could insure success. A cheesemonger's shop was opened on a street leading to the palace, under which a mine was laid to the centre of the carriage-way, it being proposed to kill the czar when out driving. If his carriage should take another route and follow the street leading from the Catharine Ca.n.a.l, it was arranged to wreck it with bombs flung by hand. The death of the czar was the sole thing in view. The conspirators seemed willing freely to sacrifice their own lives to that object. As regards the mine, it was so heavily charged with dynamite that its explosion would have wrecked a great part of the Anitchkoff Palace while killing the czar.

How the explosive material was conveyed from Paris to Russia is a mystery which was never successfully traced by the police. The utmost care was taken at the frontiers to prevent the entrance of any suspicious substance. For a year or two even the tea that came on the backs of camels from China was carefully searched, while all travellers were closely examined, and all articles coming from Western Europe were almost pulled to pieces in the minuteness of the scrutiny. The explosive is said to have looked like golden syrup, and to have been sweet to the taste, though acrid in its after-effects. A drop or two let fall on a hot stove flashed up in a brilliant sheet of flame, though without smell or noise.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ARREST OF A NIHILIST.]

Among the conspirators, one of the most useful was Sophia Perovskya, the woman already named. She was young, of n.o.ble family, handsome, educated, and fascinating in manner. Her beauty and high connections gave her opportunities which none of her fellow-conspirators enjoyed, and by her influence over men of rank and position she was enabled to learn many of the secrets of the court and to become familiar with all the precautions taken by the police to insure the safety of the czar. There was another woman in the plot, a Jewish girl named Hesse Helfman. Eight men const.i.tuted the remainder of the party.

The fatal day came in March, 1881. On the morning of the 12th Melikoff, minister of the interior, told the czar that a man connected with the railroad explosion had just been arrested, on whose person were found papers indicating a new plot. He earnestly entreated Alexander to avoid exposing himself. On the next morning the czar went early to ma.s.s, and subsequently accompanied his brother, the Grand Duke Michael, to inspect his body-guard. Sophia Perovskya had been apprised of these intended movements, and informed the chief conspirators, who at once determined that the deed should be done that day. The lover of Hesse Helfman had been arrested and had at once shot himself. Papers of an incriminating character had been found in her house, and it was feared that further delay might frustrate the plot, so that the purpose of waiting until the czar and his son might be slain together was abandoned. It was not known which street the czar would take. If he took the one, the mine was to be exploded; if the other, the bombs were to be thrown.

Two men, Resikoff and Elnikoff, the latter a young man completely under Sophia's influence, were to throw the bombs. She took a position from which she might signal the approach of the carriage. As it proved, the Catharine Ca.n.a.l route was taken. The carriage approached. Everything wore its usual aspect. There was nothing to excite suspicion. Suddenly a dark object was hurled from the sidewalk through the air and a tremendous report was heard. Resikoff had flung his bomb. A baker's boy and the Cossack footman of the czar were instantly killed, but the intended victim was unhurt and the horses were only slightly wounded.

The coachman, who had escaped injury, wished to drive onward at speed out of the quickly gathering crowd, but Alexander, who had seen his footman fall, insisted on getting out of the carriage to a.s.sist him. It was a fatal resolve. As his feet touched the ground, Elnikoff flung his bomb. It exploded at the feet of the czar with such force as to throw men many yards distant to the ground, but proved fatal to only two, Elnikoff, who was instantly killed, and Alexander, who was mortally wounded, his lower limbs and the lower part of his body being frightfully shattered. He survived for a few hours in dreadful pain.

Terrible as was the crime, it was worse than useless. The proposed rising did not take place. A new czar immediately succeeded the dead one. The hoped-for const.i.tution perished with him upon whom it depended.

The Nihilists, instead of gaining liberal inst.i.tutions, had set back the clock of reform for a generation, and perhaps much longer. Of the conspirators, one of the men was killed, one shot himself, and two escaped; the other four were executed. Of the women, Sophia was executed. She knew too much, and those who had betrayed to her the secrets of the court, fearing that she might implicate them, privately urged the new czar to sign her death-warrant. She held her peace, and died without a word.

_THE ADVANCE OF RUSSIA IN ASIA._

The Emperor of Russia, lord of his people, absolute autocrat over some one hundred and twenty-five millions of the human race, to-day stands master not only of half the soil of Europe but of more than a third of the far greater continent of Asia. To gain some definite idea of the total extent of this vast empire it may suffice to say that it is considerably more than double the size of Europe, and nearly as large as the whole of North America. The tales already given will serve to show how the European empire of Russia gradually spread outward from its early home in the city and state of Novgorod until it covered half the continent. How Russia made its way into Asia has been described in part in the story of the conquest of Siberia. The remainder needs to be told.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOWAGER CZARINA OF RUSSIA.]

It is now more than three hundred years since the Cossack robber Yermak invaded Siberia, and more than two centuries since that vast section of Northern Asia was added to the Russian empire. The great river Amur, flowing far through Eastern Siberia to the Pacific, was discovered in 1643 by a party of Cossack hunters, who launched their boats on this magnificent stream and sailed down it to the sea. It was Chinese soil through which it ran, its waters flowing through the province of Manchuria, the native land of the emperors of China.

But to this the Russian pioneers paid little heed. They invaded Chinese soil, built forts on the Amur, and for forty years war went on. In the end they were driven out, and China came to her own again.

Thus matters stood until the year 1854. Six years before, an officer with four Cossacks had been sent down the river to spy out the land.

They never returned, and not a word could be had from China as to their fate. In the year named the Russians explored the river in force. China protested, but did not act, and the whole vast territory north of the stream was proclaimed as Russian soil. Forts were built to make good the claim, and China helplessly yielded to the gigantic steal. Since then Russia has laid hands on an extensive slice of Chinese territory which lies on the Pacific coast far to the south of the Amur, and has forcibly taken possession of the j.a.panese island of Saghalien. Her avaricious eyes are fixed on the kingdom of Corea, and the whole of Manchuria may yet become Russian soil.

Siberia is by no means the inhospitable land of ice which the name suggests to our minds. That designation applies well to its northern half, but not to the Siberia of the south. Here are vast fertile plains, prolific in grain, which need only the coming railroad facilities to make this region the granary of the Russian empire. The great rivers and the numerous lakes of the country abound in valuable fish; large forests of useful timber are everywhere found; fur-bearing animals yield a rich harvest in the icy regions of the north; the mineral wealth is immense, including iron, gold, silver, platinum, copper, and lead; precious stones are widely found, among them the diamond, emerald, topaz, and amethyst; and of ornamental stones may be named malachite, jasper, and porphyry, from which magnificent vases, tables, and other articles of ornament are made. The region on the Amur and its tributaries is particularly valuable and rich, and a great population is destined in the future to find an abiding-place in this vast domain.

South of Siberia lies another immense extent of territory, stretching across the continent, and comprising the great upland plain known as the steppes. On this broad expanse rain rarely falls, and its surface is half a desert, unfit for agriculture, but yielding pasturage to vast herds of cattle, horses, and sheep, the property of wandering tribes.

Here is the great home of the nomad, and from these broad plains conquering hordes have poured again and again over the civilized world.

From here came the Huns, who devastated Europe in Roman days; the Turks, who later overthrew the Eastern Empire; and the Mongols, who, led by Genghis and Tamerlane, committed frightful ravages in Asia and for centuries lorded it over Russia.

To-day the greater part of this vast territory belongs to China. But westward from Chinese Mongolia extends a broad region of the steppes, bordering upon Europe on the west, and traversed by numerous wandering tribes known by the name of the Kirghis hordes. For many years Russia, the great annexer, has been quietly extending her power over the domain of the hordes, until her rule has become supreme in the land of the Kirghis, which in all maps of Europe is now given as part of Siberia.

One by one military posts have been established in this semi-desert realm, the wandering tribes being at first cajoled and in the end defied. The glove of silk has been at first extended to the tribes, but within it the hand of iron has always held fast its grasp. The simple-minded chiefs have easily been brought over to the Russian schemes. Some of them have been won by money and soft words; others by some mark of distinction, such as a medal, a handsome sabre, a c.o.c.ked hat or a gold-laced coat. Rather than give these up some of them would have sold half the steppes. They have signed papers of which they did not understand a word, and given away rights of whose value they were utterly ignorant.

Thus insidiously has the power of the emperor made its way into the steppes, fort after fort being built, those in the rear being abandoned as the country became subdued and new forts arose in the south. Cities have risen around some of these forts, of which may be mentioned Kopal and Vernoje, which to-day have thousands of inhabitants.

"Russia is thus surrounding the Kirgheez hordes with civilization," says the traveller Atkinson, "which will ultimately bring about a moral revolution in this country. Agriculture and other branches of industry will be introduced by the Russian peasant, than whom no man can better adapt himself to circ.u.mstances."

Michie, another traveller, gives in brief the general method of the Russian advance. It will be seen to be similar to that by which the Indian lands of the western United States were gained. "The Cossacks at Russian stations make raids on their own account on the Kirgheez, and subject them to rough treatment. An outbreak occurs which it requires a military force to subdue. An expedition for this purpose is sent every year to the Kirgheez steppes. The Russian outposts are pushed farther and farther south, more disturbances occur, and so the front is year by year extended, on pretence of keeping peace. This has been the system pursued by the Russian government in all its aggressions in Asia."

But this does not tell the whole story of the Russian advance in Asia.

South of the Kirghis steppes lies another great and important territory, known as Central Asia, or Turkestan. Much of this region is absolute desert, wide expanses of sand, waterless and lifeless, on which to halt is to court death. Only swift-moving troops of hors.e.m.e.n, or caravans carrying their own supplies, dare venture upon these arid plains. But within this realm of sand lie a number of oases whose soil is well watered and of the highest fertility. Two mighty rivers traverse these lands, the Amu-Daria--once known as the Oxus--and the Syr-Daria--formerly the Jaxartes,--both of which flow into the Sea of Aral. It is to the waters of these streams that the fertility of _the_ oases is due, they being diverted from their course to irrigate the land.

Three of the oases are of large size. Of these Khiva has the Caspian Sea as its western boundary, Bokhara lies more to the east, while northeast of the latter extends Khokand. The deserts surrounding these oases have long been the lurking-places of the Turkoman nomads, a race of wild and warlike hors.e.m.e.n, to whom plunder is as the breath of life, and who for centuries kept Persia in alarm, carrying off hosts of captives to be sold as slaves.

The religion of Arabia long since made its way into this land, whose people are fanatical Mohammedans. Its leading cities, Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand, have for many centuries been centres of bigotry. For ages Turkestan remained a land of mystery. No European was sure for a moment of life if he ventured to cross its borders. Vambery, the traveller, penetrated it disguised as a dervish, after years of study of the language and habits of the Mohammedans, yet he barely escaped with life.

It is pleasant to be able to say that this state of affairs has ceased.

Russia has curbed the violence of the fanatics and the nomads, and the once silent and mysterious land is now traversed by the iron horse.

The first step of Russian invasion in this quarter was made in 1602. In that year a Russian force captured the city of Khiva, but was not able to hold its prize. In 1703, during the reign of Peter the Great, the Khan of Khiva placed his dominions under Russian rule, and during the century Khiva continued friendly, but after the opening of the nineteenth century it became bitterly hostile.