Selections from

The Knout and the Russians,

by Germain de Langy, 1854

Note: the following was written by a man who had obviously lived for several years in and around St. Petersburg, and didn't enjoy the experience. Nor did he like the place. Nor did he admire anything he found there.

. . . Easter is a national festival. It is the New Year's Day of the Russians, more particularly of the lower classes.

During the whole week, people visit and congratulate one another reciprocally. It is a universal custom throughout the country for persons to offer to and receive from one another, real eggs, painted all kinds of colours, or eggs made of gilt porcelain, or even gold; the presents being accompanied by three kisses on the mouth, and the words, Christos voscrés, ("Christ is risen"): the answer being, Voistinoï voscrés ("He is indeed risen ").

On the Saturday night preceding Easter-Sunday, the churches are filled with a crowd of believers of all ages, and of all ranks. The men stand on one side of the church, and the women on the other, every one holding in his or her hand a small lighted wax-taper. Suddenly, as the clock peals forth midnight, the voice of the officiating priest pronounces the words, Christos voscrés, the strains of the Hallelujah resound through the building, and every, one embraces the person next to him three times on the mouth, in memory of the Holy Trinity. Even the Emperor and Empress form no exception to this rule. On this pious and solemn occasion, there is no majesty recognised save that of the Almighty.

. . . In the governments situated at a distance from the two capitals, the male peasant, from his dress, his bearing, and his thick unkempt hair and beard, resembles more an animal than an intelligent being. His aspect is repulsive and nauseous, and, like those animals who possess a little pouch filled with musk or some other scent, he leaves behind him a disgusting odour. He is the picture of human nature at the lowest spoke of the social ladder. In such districts, there is nothing to distinguish the boyars from the peasants, save the usage which the former make of their sticks wherever they go: externally, they are remarkable for the same physical ugliness, the same dirtiness, and the same coarseness of manners and forms.

The boyars' wives, in the interior of the country, differ from the female peasants only by the greater richness of their dress, but their manners, their carriage, and their language are the same.

I have said, in another place, that Russia is a vast camp; nothing can be more true: a Russian village gives a person a complete idea of one. The uniformity and monotony of the habitations are enough to drive any person mad; they are as melancholy a sight as the tombs of a churchyard. All the cabins are of one invariable shape and appearance. They do not form distinct groups, but are scattered about, at hazard, in every direction, offering a confused and irregular assemblage of hovels, of which no words can ever convey an idea. Such a thing as a street or a public square is unknown. The spaces separating the cabins are so many muddy cesspools, which are perfectly impassable in the rainy season, or on the occasion of a thaw. You get to the huts as you best can, by small narrow paths or lanes, which, in the dog-days, pour forth putrid emanations, fever, and death.

These habitations are all built of fir-logs, scarcely squared on the two sides, unevenly placed one upon the other, and dovetailed at the two extremities. The interstices are stuffed up with moss or coarse tow. The peasant takes, just as he thinks fit, the wood necessary for his cabin from the neighbouring forest, without his lord offering any opposition to his so doing.

Nothing decorates the interior of these dwellings save the undulation of a kind of vermin peculiar to the country, which is propagated in countless myriads in the seams of the resinous walls, and which, in the silence of the night, you can hear as it moves about.

A clumsy table, a few stools and forms, most filthily dirty, a broken patched-up mirror, inclosed in a red and blue frame ornamented with strange-looking uncouth flowers, constitute pretty well all the furniture, with the exception of a huge chest, in which the linen and objects of value are put away. A few pictures of saints, with the Virgin and Infant Jesus, occupy the most eastern corner of the apartment ; these are the family bogs; a small lamp, in which stinking oil is burnt, lights them night and day. Save two or three iron vases, of uncouth shape, the various pans and saucepans are made of wood, covered with varnish of great consistence, able to resist the action of boiling water. They have but little crockery; the little they do possess, which is used only on grand occasions, is of the commonest description, and ornamented with strange figures and designs. China is a myth. When a peasant has succeeded in obtaining a vase or a cracked cup, he places it in the most prominent part of his cabin as a curiosity. In the house of a boyar of the government of Simbirsk, I once saw, under a patched-up glass globe, a new cotton nightcap, which was preserved as something rare.

The ceilings of the cabins are roughly crossed by fir-logs, scarcely stripped of their bark; to these are suspended, by trapezia formed of the branches of trees, a few planks constituting the moveable sideboard of the household, and very much resembling a hammock. A large bench runs round the wall, to which it is fastened, and serves, in summer, as a bed for all the inmates of the house, who lie on it in a row.

The stove occupies the extremity of the room, near the entrance. It is built of bricks covered with a glaze formed of lime and a clayey kind of earth. Its form is that of the oven of French country bakers. The top of it, which is covered with sheepskins, constitutes the winter bed. The whole family, always completely dressed, sleep on it, and live in a most deplorable state of promiscuousness.

The manner in which the people are huddled together, and their impure and dirty habits, infect the apartment, the air of which is scarcely ever renewed all through the winter. The light of day finds its way inside, through two or three cats' holes and oiled paper, or a greenish glass full of bull's-eyes, and thick enough to resist a bullet. In a great many places the glass is replaced by fishskin prepared on purpose, or by plates of mica. Two or three knotty planks, roughly hewn with the axe, and held together by two cross-pieces, act as a door; while two thick leather thongs serve to attach it to the door-post and the wall. The use of hinges, locks, and bolts, is very little known. Of what use would locks be in this country? What interest can a peasant have in bolting his door? Have not the boyar and his agents a right to enter his dwelling at all hours of the day and night, and take whatever they like ? Can they not carry out his wife and his daughters? Who will raise a complaint against the despot's freak ? Is a peasant's habitation aught save a stable which shelters so many instruments of agricultural labour?

The stables themselves and cow-houses, are scarcely anything better than mere sheds open to every wind; the cattle are only sheltered there during the night, and, even then, simply against wild beasts.

A small number of the houses are surrounded by little gardens, enclosed by hurdles made of the branches of the fir-tree. In these gardens, the peasants cultivate a few vegetables and pumpkins, and one or two kinds of flowers that can bear the severity of the climate.

The Russian peasant never uses anything but small branches of a resinous kind of wood instead of candles, and heats his cabin with a degree of imprudence which is frequently attended with fatal results. The heat is intense enough to hatch chickens. It would be a difficult task to resist the infected atmosphere more than an hour without experiencing a sense of suffocation.

The wooden houses are said to be more healthy than the others, and I am inclined to think so myself, for, in the sudden changes from cold to heat in the temperature of the weather, I never remarked in them that peculiar exudation which covers all the walls of the stone houses : but then, on the other hand, it is absolutely impossible to destroy the vermin.

All the cabins are raised one or two feet above the ground, and perched, at the four angles, on blocks of granite, the only stone found in Russia. The storms and tempests, as well as the condensation of the soil, on the occasion of a thaw, throws them on one side, and completely disjoints the various parts. It is very uncommon for them to be perpendicular after they have been built a year. When they threaten to fall down, they are propped up with trunks of trees hardly cleared of their branches, and remain in this state, all leaning on one side, like so many ships tacking about, until a fire consumes, or a storm turns them topsy-turvy.

Externally as well as internally, these houses bear certain marks of being the handiwork of savages. They resemble the hut of the Negro, minus the art which the latter employs in embellishing and decorating his habitation. A Russian village presents the appearance of a multitude of tents, pitched by chance, and in a hurry, during the night, or by blind men. All the most simple laws of good sense and health are set at sought.

Along the highroads everything is a lie. The government obliges the nobles to see that the houses are arranged in groups, and rigorously built in line. I have seen some villages which were not less than two and a half miles long, with the church at one end. I have never been able to discover why it was not placed in the centre. It is true that in Russia nothing is done as it is anywhere else; it seems as if the authorities found a pleasure in taking both things and men against the grain, like a glove turned inside out.

As is the case with the Negro, the Russian peasant has an irresistible inclination for spirituous liquors. He loves to drown his servitude in drunkenness. His amusements, too, consist of singing, and dancing a strange kind of dance, in which the measure is marked by a chorus of young girls.

This dance, which is more frequently indulged in by the female members of the community, takes place, during the summer months, in the open air. On fete days, the belles of the village, dressed in their Sunday costume, their hair decked with wreaths of flowers, and their feet enveloped in high leather boots, that sadly interfere with their would-be graceful movements, go through the monotonous figures of the dance, without the slightest display of animation, while the men, who are seated apart, engage themselves in the more congenial amusements of smoking and drinking.

Winter is a season of repose, during which the forced labour due to the nobles is suspended, for what can be done when the earth is frozen several feet deep? The peasant employs his time in making uncouth ploughs, carts, and wooden articles, such as boxes, basins, spoons, etc. ; or, when he is allowed, in taking on a sledge, to the nearest town, some trifling produce of the land.

The instruments he uses are as simple as his manners. An axe, a gimlet, and an auger, are almost the only tools he has ; the saw he hardly ever employs, his skill in using his axe enabling him to do without it. He cuts a plank, and even the largest trees, with as great neatness, and in less time than the most skilful carpenter, but he wastes a great deal of wood.

The nature of the Russian peasant is tame and devoid of energy; his muscular strength is two or three times less than that of men in southern climates. He sets about his work like a person who has a fever, or who is completely exhausted.

The women prepare flax and hemp; they weave cloth and coarse stuffs, out of which they make their clothes. They also prepare the stock of provisions for the year, such as mushrooms, bitter cabbage, and myrtle berries, which they gather in the woods. They likewise manufacture kvasse, of which the Russians are exceedingly fond.

In addition to this, they hoard up an ample stock of simples in case of sickness. The villages are almost destitute of everything save brandy. The medical men and druggists often reside forty leagues off, and, for the most part, the inhabitants die without professional assistance, as they do without the last rites of the church.

With the exception of the sense of sight, all the senses are blunted. Is this the result of the severity of the climate, or of punishment and bad treatment? I cannot say, but I can conscientiously assert that a Russian peasant cannot distinguish the difference between an omelette made with tallow, and a dish cooked with butter or bacon. Buck-wheat pounded in a mortar, milk in every stage of fermentation, chopped vegetables, mushrooms, and dried fish, form his principal articles of food, in conjunction with black bread, sticky and badly baked.

The Russian peasant is sad, grave, and sombre. His long hair, cut square off at his shoulders, and his long neglected beard, give him a savage appearance. His physiognomy is without movement, and without expression, while his face is branded with the marks of precocious corruption. In the presence of his masters his language is invariably supplicating and plaintive, like that of a man bending beneath the knout. Nor is his costume of a nature to impart to him any degree of grace ; boots of thick greasy leather, reaching up to the knees, cover the extremities of trousers, formed of coarse cloth and drawn in above the hips by a buckle; a paletot of sheepskin, buttoning tight, a party-coloured woollen sash, with an axe stuck behind, large leather gloves without fingers, and a stuffed and wadded cap, of an indescribable form, complete his winter dress.

In summer, he is a little more stylish. His costume then consists of a small hat, low in the crown, with the brim slightly raised, ornamented with a large band of black velvet, round which are rolled two peacock's feathers; trousers of velvet or blue or gray linen, the bottoms of which are always stuffed into the legs of the boots, and, over all the rest, a coloured shirt, buttoning at the side, and fastened at the waist by a silk cord, intertwined with gold or silver threads.

The costume of the women is more pleasing to the eye. In summer, on festivals and Sundays, they wear a plain corsage, scooped out at the neck, and drawn tight above the breast; a plain or striped petticoat, which is occasionally garnished at the bottom with several rows of gaudy-coloured lace, coloured stockings, and red or yellow morocco shoes, embroidered with gold or silk. Their hair is generally separated in two long plaits, and their forehead covered with a diadem of card-board, spangled over with foil, and made fast behind by means of two ribbons, which hang down upon their shoulders.

In winter, they envelop themselves in a sheepskin kasaveca, the wool of which is very white and very long.

It would be no easy thing, to describe the working costume of both sexes, and, therefore, I do not attempt it. I must mention, however, that, in winter, and in some districts even during the summer months, all the women wear high leather boots, thick enough to bid defiance to the jaw of a bull-dog.

The value of an estate depends less on the fertility of the soil, than upon the number of peasants attached to it. Elsewhere, when a person purchases a farm, he asks how many ploughs it employs. In Russia, man is the plough; and it is he alone who serves as the basis of all calculations as to the value of an estate, because he represents personally a certain income.

THE KNOUT

OPPOSITE the palace of the Czars, on an island in the middle of the Neva, is the fortress on the glacis of which, in 1825, were hanged the individuals most deeply compromised in the absurd attempt at a revolution of which 1 have spoken in a former portion of my work.

It was built by Peter the Great. His successors, especially Catherine, after the triumphs of Gustavus, King of Sweden, who had advanced with his army to within a few leagues of St. Petersburg, made considerable additions to it. A church, consecrated to St. Peter and St. Paul, occupies the middle of the building, and receives the ashes of the Russian Emperors, and those of all the members of their family; here, also, the flags taken in war are deposited.

The tall, slender spire of the steeple is two hundred and forty feet high; it is formed of gilt copper. and seems to point out to the prisoners confined in the cells the way to Heaven, and to remind them of the verse of Dante,-

"Lasciate ogni speranza."

"All hope abandon, ye who enter here!"

Under the sombre sky, obscured by black and gray clouds, the brick and granite walls of the fortress, isolated in the midst of the water, present a sinister appearance ; they speak to the imagination of foreigners, as well as to that of Russians, a fearful language. The red granite has something repulsive about it ; the colour, .varied with different tints, is like the exudation of human blood, rotting the walls, and striking outwards to denounce the tortures and punishments with which the Czarinas have defiled themselves, or of which they have been the accomplices, either to satiate their own vengeance, to smother some secret, or to please their favourites and courtiers, who also had secrets which they wished to bury in tombs of stone. How many crimes have been committed, how many sanguinary and terrible dramas have been enacted, beneath the deep, humid, and black vaults of this fortress, which has become the Bastile of the empire of the Czars ! Oh ! if these walls could but relate all the crimes and pangs of suffering that they have witnessed !

Opposite the fortress, on the other side of the water, is the palace of the Czars, looking like some implacable sentinel, who is keeping an eternal watch over this abyss of blood. From their windows, the autocrats can allow their eye to gloat over the victims whom their policy or their vengeance is about to immolate. No one dares to raise his glance on the gaping openings in this human charnel-house, where, instead of cannons, are to be seen corpses torn by the thongs of the knout.

The icy cold, which causes these walls to crack, which kills the sentinels in their sentry-boxes, the coachmen on their seats, the carters and the horses upon the high roads, and the bears and wolves in their dens, kills also the unhappy prisoners, when the season of ice comes round. But whenever this refinement of barbarity, which the Czars alone were capable of inventing, does not effect its end, the inundations of the river perform the task of carrying out the sentence of death.

The floor of the dungeons is on a level with the Neva. The windows look out upon the canals which wash the walls, or upon the stream itself, and when, driven back by the tempests from the northwest, the waters invade the cells, no one replies to the cries of distress and rage of the prisoners. Their groans are lost beneath these vaults covered with slimy moss and fungi.. Soon, afterwards, their corpses are floating upon the waters, and dashing against the double gratings. All is over, for death is discreet. Besides, who would dare to repeat these groans ? Who would dare to say that he had seen corpses floating upon the tide ? The secrets which concern the Czars or the state, are sealed as hermetically in the hearts of all Russians as they would be in a tomb. A single indiscreet word infallibly conducts the person who has spoken it to these catacombs, where he is left to perish by the cold or the inundations.

The want of reflection on the part of the Russians is evident at every step we take. Not content with having their citadel under water, as well as the hut which its founded caused to be constructed at a few paces' distance, in order to superintend the works, they have built their capital on the sae level, although they had experience to warn them against such a step.

During the great inundations of 1721, in which Peter I. himself nearly perished, and that of 1777, the Neva drowned the city under more than ten feet of water. The last inundation of all, which covered the capital with corpses, and filled it with desolation and mourning, was that of 1824, during the night from the 6^th to the 7^th of November.

In this inundation, all the prisoners in the citadel and the other prisons of the city perished. The police and magistrates had something else to do than to throw open the doors to these poor wretches . . .

The following is the way of administering the knout. Conceive, reader, a robust man, full of life and health. This man is condemned to receive fifty or a hundred blows of the knout. He is conducted, half naked, to the place chosen for this kind of execution ; all that he has on, is a pair of simple linen drawers round his extremities; his hands are bound together, with the palms laid flat against one another ; the cords are breaking his wrists, but no one pays the slightest attention to that ! He is laid flat upon his belly, on a frame inclined diagonally, and at the extremities of which are fixed iron rides; his hands are fastened to one end of the frame, and his feet to the other; he is then stretched in such a manner that he cannot make a single movement, just as an eel's skin is stretched in order to dry. This act of stretching the victim, causes his bones to crack, and dislocates them - what does that matter ! In a little time, his bones will crack and be dislocated in a very different manner.

At a distance of five and twenty paces, stands another man; it is the public executioner. He is dressed in black velvet trousers, stuffed into his boots, and a coloured cotton shirt, buttoning at the side. His sleeves are tucked up, so that nothing may thwart or embarrass him in his movements. With both hands he grasps the instrument of punishment - a knout. This knout consists of a thong of thick leather, cut in a triangular form, from four to five yards long, and an inch wide, tapering off at one end, and broad at the other ; the small end is fastened to a little wooden handle, about two feet long.

The signal is given ; no one ever takes the trouble to read the sentence. The executioner advances a few steps, with his body bent, holding the knout in both hands, while the long thong drags along the ground between his legs. On coming to about three or four paces from the prisoner, he raises, by a vigorous movement, the knout towards the top of his head, and then instantly draws it down with rapidity towards his knees. The thong flies and whistles through the air, and descending on the body of the victim, twines round it like a hoop of iron. In spite of his state of tension, the poor wretch bounds as if he were submitted to the powerful grasp of galvanism. The executioner retraces his steps, and repeats the same operation, as many times as there are blows to be, inflicted. When the thong envelops the body with its edges, the flesh and muscles are literally cut into stripes as if with a razor, but when it falls flat, then the bones crack the flesh, in that case, is not cut, but crushed and ground, and the blood spurts out in all directions. The sufferer becomes green and blue, like a body in a state of decomposition. He is now moved to the hospital, where every care is taken of him, and is afterwards sent to Siberia, where he disappears for ever in the bowels of the earth.

The knout is fatal, if the justice of the Czar or of the executioner desires it to be so. If the autocrat's intention is to afford his people a sight worthy of their eyes and their intelligence; if some powerful lord, or some great lady, wishes to indulge in the pleasure of viewing the sanguinary spectacle; if they wish to behold the victim, with his mouth covered with foam and blood, writhe about and expire in frightful agony, the fatal blow is given the very last. The executioner sells his compassion and pity for hard gold, when the family of the miserable sufferer desire to purchase the fatal blow. In this case, he inflicts death at the very first stroke, as surely as if it was an axe that he held in his hand.

In 1760, under the reign of the indolent and 1uxurious Elizabeth, who had abolished capital punishment, Madame Lapoukin, a woman of rare beauty, of which the Czarina was envious, was condemned to the knout and transportation, in spite of the privilege of the nobility never to suffer the former punishment. She had been feted, caressed, and run after at court, and had, it was said, betrayed the secret of the Empress's liaison ,with Prince Razoumowsky. She was conducted by the executioners to the public square, where she was exposed by one of them, who rolled up her chemise as far as her waist; he then placed her upon his shoulders, when another arranged her, with his coarse dirty hands, in the required position, obliging her to hold her head down, while a man of the lower classes, squatting at her feet, kept her legs still. The executioner cut her flesh into shreds by one hundred strokes of the knout, from the shoulders to the lower portion of the loins. After the infliction of the punishment, her tongue was torn out, and, a short time subsequently, she was sent to Siberia, whence she was recalled, in 1762, by Peter III.

After the knout comes the rod, or the punishment known as that of " running the gauntlet " - a punishment of another description, but still more barbarous, since it is always, or, at least, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, followed by death. In this instance, it is the army that carries out the decrees of the justice of the country, and the sentences of the autocrats. It is the army that acts the part of executioner.

The number of soldiers employed is equal to the number of blows to be given. Six thousand blows are not the highest number which the law allows to be inflicted on a prisoner, but they are the most common Dumber. Here again Russian legislation has given proof of ingenuity. Less than a thousand blows are more than sufficient to produce death ; with six thousand blows death is six times more certain.

It was my fate to be present once at this kind of execution. The following is a summary description of it.

It took place in 1811. The unhappy prisoner was a gamekeeper, of Swedish extraction, in the flower of his age. He was born in the neighbourhood of Viborg, and consequently a freeman, by the same right as the Swedes, who were the first people of Europe to live under a constitutional government. He had been for some years in the service of a prince, who had discharged him without paying his wages, - a tolerably common custom, by-the-bye, of Russian boyars. He had a wife and children, and demanded the payment of the sum due to him. Winter was close at hand, and he was destitute of everything, even of bread and wood. Very many times he had gone on foot to St. Petersburg, to beg as a favour what in every other country, he could have claimed as a right, with fewer forms, from his creditor, and on each occasion he had related the misery which pressed upon him and his family, and all the suffering which he endured in consequence. He entreated most humbly; but a great nobleman, who possesses fifteen or twenty thousand slaves, is not acquainted with misery like the poor gamekeeper's ; he has never either feared or suffered hunger and cold. The Swede was driven away with the stick ; a pretty thing, forsooth, for a low, base-born scoundrel to dare to annoy a lord ; to disturb the siesta and the digestion of a nobleman nursed in the lap of luxury ! Having no resource left, exasperated by the unworthy treatment to which he had been subjected, and driven half mad, the gamekeeper armed himself with a pistol, and returned to the prince, who caused him to be beaten and turned out of doors. His senses left him; he waited until the prince came out, and then shot him dead upon the spot.

The formalities of a regular trial would have been too long. The idea of a peasant killing a nobleman, a boyar, a prince ! Such a thing had never been known, and might prove a bad example for the people.

Besides, in any other country it would also have been murder. It is not this which I would excuse. Brought up, a few hours after his crime, which he did not deny, before a council of war, that contented itself with merely identifying him, he was condemned to six thousand strokes of the rod, and, twenty-four hours afterwards, six thousand men, drawn up in two parallel lines in a plain outside the city, were awaiting, armed with rods of green wood, of the thickness of the little finger, the hour of execution. The criminal was conveyed in a cart escorted by a few men ; no priest had administered to him the consolations of religion. He was fettered, and dressed in a pair of drawers, rolled up and fastened by a cord above his hips. The rest of his body was naked, or rather covered merely with a soldier's great coat, thrown over his shoulders, having been made to get out of the cart, his two hands were securely fastened to the muzzles of two muskets, crossing one another at the bottom of the bayonets with which they were armed. In this position, his hands rested on the barrels, and the bayonets on his breast. A roll of the drum was now heard. All the officers retired within the ranks, while two non-commissioned officers came and took the muskets, which they held in the same position as a soldier does when he advances or retires with his bayonet at the charge. Here again we must admire the barbarity and refined intelligence of this people. At a given signal, the sufferer has to advance, with a slow step, between the rows of soldiers, each of whom, in turn, must apply a vigorous blow on his back ; the pain he endures might perhaps suggest to him the idea of passing as quickly as possible through the double row of executioners in order to lessen the number and the force of the blows which hack his flesh to pieces ; but he calculates without Russian justice. The two non-commissioned officers retreat slowly, step by step, in order to afford every one time to perform his task. They drag the unhappy wretch forward, or push him back, by driving the points of the bayonets into his breast. Every blow must tell, it must enter his back and cause the blood to gush out. No pity. Every one must do his duty. As I have said in another part of this work, the Muscovite soldier is a machine which is not allowed to possess any individual feeling; and woe betide his own shoulders, if he manifests the least hesitation, for he will, on the spot, receive from twenty-five to a hundred blows, according to the caprice of the general who has the honour of commanding the six thousand executioners. The Russian government is scrupulous in the most trifling details. It insists on everything being done with precision. But with such men as it has at its disposal it cannot trust to chance, and therefore it has rehearsals to execute a human being just as it exercises its troops previous to a review. A few hours before the time appointed for the punishment, a truss of hay or straw placed upon a chariot is driven along the ranks.

The sufferer advanced up to the nine hundredth and third stroke ; he did not utter a single cry, or prefer a single complaint ; the only thing which betrayed his agony, from time to time, was a convulsive shudder. The foam then began to form upon his lips and the blood to start from his nose. After fourteen hundred strokes, his face, which had long before begun to turn blue, assumed suddenly a greenish hue; his eyes became haggard and almost started out of their sockets, from which large blood-coloured tears trickled down and stained his cheeks. He was gasping and gradually sinking. The officer who accompanied me ordered the ranks to open, and I approached the body. The skin was literally ploughed up, and had, so to say, disappeared. The flesh was hacked to pieces and almost reduced to a state of jelly; long stripes hung down the prisoner's sides like so many thongs, while other pieces remained fastened and glued to the sticks of the executioners. The muscles, too, were torn to shreds. No mortal tongue can ever convey a just idea of the sight. The commandant caused the cart which had brought the prisoner to be driven up. He was laid in it on his stomach, and although he was completely insensible, the punishment was continued upon the corpse, until the surgeon appointed by the government, who had followed the execution step by step, gave orders for it to be suspended. He did not do this, however, until there was hardly the slightest breath of life left in the sufferer's body.

When the execution was stopt, two thousand six hundred and nineteen strokes had cut the body to pieces.

But, in Russia, the fact of striking a corpse is not cruel enough, and would not inspire a nation of slaves with a sufficient amount of terror. A man must revive before he undergoes the remainder of his punishment.

The unhappy wretch was taken to the hospital, where, as is the custom in these cases, he was placed in a bath of water saturated with salt, and then treated with the greatest care and solicitude until a complete cure was effected, so that he could bear the rest of his sentence. In all instance, and at all times, the penal laws of Russia are stamped with atrocious barbarism. It was seven months before he was cured and his health re-established; and, at the expiration of this period, he was solemnly taken back to the place of execution, and forced once more to run the gauntlet, in order to receive his full amount of six thousand strokes. He died at the commencement of this second punishment.

When a prisoner sometimes escapes with his life - which, however, is a very unusual circumstance - he is sent to end his days at the bottom of the mines of Siberia.

I will not dilate upon the other kinds of punishment-the whip and the stick-which are the most common methods of redressing grievances. In both these cases, two men alone are sufficient to execute the sentence. The poor wretch condemned to smart beneath the rattan or the lashes of the cat with seven tails is laid, with his body bare, upon a bench. One of the executioners seats himself astride upon the sufferer's legs, and the other upon his head, and both of them strike him in turn with similar instruments, like two blacksmiths belabouring an anvil, until the nobleman or his wife judges the punishment sufficient.

In Russia, persons can escape more easily from the punishments to which they are sentenced than in any other country. When a peasant has the means of paying his executioners, the latter spare his skin.

After the knout and the rod, comes Siberia. When a Russian subject is condemned to exile, his beard is shaved off, and his hair cut short in front in the shape of a brush, like that of the soldiers, and quite close behind. He is dressed in a pair of linen trousers, a great-coat, of very coarse cloth, a round cap, like a pancake, and enormous leather boots, without stockings or socks. He is then despatched upon a sledge or a car, in company with other exiles, under the escort of a few Cossacks, as far as Irkoutsk, or beyond it.

These exiles are made to travel in all weathers; no matter how intense the cold may be, they must reach their destination. More than half of them perish on the road. During the journey, their movements are free, and no precaution is taken to prevent their flight. What could they do with liberty? They possess no passport ; and in Russia it is impossible to travel for twelve hours without papers. An inhabitant of Moscow or St. Petersburg cannot enter or leave the city without showing the soldiers stationed at the barriers either a permit or a passport. The troops in French barracks are more free than the population of Russia.

After all, Russia is only an immense barrack, in which every one is in a state of arrest.

THE CLIMATE

IN the Russian climate there is no transition ; every thing is abrupt. You emerge from one season to fall suddenly into another. The change takes place in a single day. Yesterday, there were fifty-two degrees of heat; this morning, there are twenty degrees of cold, and ten inches of snow. Yesterday, you sailed in a boat down the Neva ; and this morning, you drive over it in a sledge. I will not compromise myself by asserting that spring and autumn exist; winter begins, so to speak, in the middle of August, and terminates in the middle of May. Summer, consequently, lasts only during June and July, in which time, however, there are often falls of snow. In winter, the night is twenty hours long; day begins to break between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, and ends at two o'clock in the afternoon. In summer there is no night. It is a change from suffocating heat, during which the air is obscured by dense clouds of dust, to a penetrating humidity, which paralyses the limbs. On an average, at St. Petersburg and Moscow, the thermometer marks more than twenty degrees of cold. On the severest days the mercury frequently descends to twenty and forty, sometimes even sixty-six, degrees below freezing point.

Our ordinary experience would lead us to expect that in this country the temperature would vary according to the difference in the latitude and longitude, for example, like the temperature of European parallels : this, however, is not the case. Astrakhan and Gourief on the Caspian, and Odessa and Tacanrog on the Black Sea, are between the 43rd and 44th degrees of latitude, like Marseilles, Nice, Genoa, Florence, Ancona, and Constantinople ; yet the ports of the Russian cities are frozen and shut up from all navigation during several months of the year. Owing to the proximity of St. Petersburg to the Baltic Sea, the climate there is most changeable, and the difference in the temperature extreme. I have seen, in the month of January, rain in the morning with a complete thaw, and the streets buried beneath a thick covering of mud, while, in the evening, there were thirty-four degrees of cold. In 1 7 9 8 the thermometer sunk to about seventy-four degrees of Fahrenheit and, during thirty-five successive days, to from forty-eight to fifty decrees.

We find, from the tables of the Observatory, that on an average, in the course of ten years, during the month of March, there were nine days of clear weather, eleven days of fog, eleven days of snow, and two days of rain; that, in the month of September, there were only seven days of clear weather ; that the month of May is sometimes exceedingly cold and inclement ; and that, during the summer, there are frequent instances of hoarfrost. We also learn, from the same authority, that in the month of December, the days are only five hours long ; that, in the month of November, there are only three fine days, but eights days of fog, and twenty days of snow ; and that the month of January is pretty much the same : during neither is the day longer than three hours.

One year, at Archangel, the glass fell down as low as one hundred and ten degrees Fahrenheit of cold, and the mercury was frozen into a solid mass as hard as iron.

At St. Petersburg and Moscow, there are, every year, one hundred and twenty-three days of rain, and eighty-seven fine days; during from one hundred and ninety to two hundred days, there is a continual frost, for ninety-two days of which period the snow falls to the amount of twenty-three thousand cubic inches. The greater portion of the time may therefore be called winter. No person ventures out without being absolutely compelled to do so : the snow creaks under your foot ; the window-panes crack and disappear beneath a thick covering of ice, the crystals of which assume all kinds of strange and monstrous forms. The birds and animals are frozen; the crows, the pigeons, and the sparrows, millions of which inhabit the city, creep into holes-into the recesses of the cornices-into the windows-indeed into every place where they can find a shelter from the north wind, and never leave their retreats unless pressed by hunger, or brutally driven out; the moment they expand their wings they fall down frozen on the ground. The sentinels are relieved every hour, and, although muffled up in the thick furred skins of bears or wolves, it frequently happens that some of them perish. Whenever the Czar passes before a post, all the platoon on duty turn out in full uniform, and present arms, while the drums beat a salute. The cold kills one or two men ; but that is a matter of no consequence, since discipline requires it. The soldiers who are scattered singly about the city stop and uncover before the Emperor ; the cold cleaves their skulls, but that, too, is a matter of no consequence ; discipline reserves some hundred blows with the stick for any one who is deficient in politeness towards a superior.

When the cold sinks below thirty-four degrees, the theatres are shut and parties and balls put off. Who would dare to brave such weather? Coachmen are frozen on their boxes, and postilions in their saddles, from which they are lifted stiff and icy. Every winter there are thousands of accidents of this description; they are so frequent that no one pays any attention to them. The servants who go out to procure provisions and the moujicks are the only individuals to be met in the deserted streets. A person might believe himself to be in a city of the dead, or in one in a state of siege, or devastated by the most terrible of plagues.

The streets are buried beneath a covering of ice, several feet thick. The snow which covers it and over which the sledges glide is as hard as gravel, muddy, and of a blackish colour. If it were not for the dazzling whiteness of that which remains upon the roofs, the projections and the cornices of the windows, and the cold which reminds you that you are not in the East, you would suppose that the streets were strewed with gravel. The atmosphere is murky, thick and spangled with showers of little crystals, which circulate in the air like atoms of dust. Every night, and, if necessary, several times in the course of the day, the police compels the porters of the different houses to sweep the snow and ice from the pavement. But for this precautionary measure, it would be impossible to approach any place.

The trees are completely enveloped with hoarfrost; at a distance, any one would suppose them to be crystalized. The iron or wooden railings of the bridges and quays are likewise coated with thick crystals.

Before being covered with ice, the Neva carries down melted snow in its stream; at fifteen degrees below freezing point, ice begins to form on the river and canals. This generally happens in the course of October. A few days of tolerably sharp frost enables people to cross them in sledges. Before there was an iron bridge, persons used to cross the river in a kind of bracket-seat, formed of boards bound together and mailed on stop-planks independent of each other, so that if the ice happened to break beneath the weight of the passengers, the circumstance was not attended by any serious consequences When the ice is three inches thick, it may be traversed on foot ; when it is from four to five inches, it may be crossed by sledges and horses ; when it is nine inches, by wheeled carriages with several horses ; and, when it is eleven inches, by artillery, cavalry, and the entire army, regiment by regiment. Even reviews of several hundred thousand men may be held on it.

To facilitate the closing of the rivers, lakes, and gulfs, the police causes direct roads to be traced out upon the ice to abridge the distance. These roads and paths are bordered by trunks of young fir-trees, with all their branches on them, fifteen or twenty feet high, stuck into the ice or snow, at a distance of about ten or twelve yards from each other, exactly like trees planted on the high road. This precaution is necessary for the passage from St. Petersburg to Cronstadt, a distance of about a mile and three quarters, and on the vast branches of the delta formed by the Neva where it flows into the gulf Sudden squalls are extremely violent ; they heap up the snow, and cause all traces of the roads to disappear in a few minutes. These whirlwinds of snow bury both men and beasts. The snow is so deep towards the end of winter, that only the tops of the fir-trees are visible ; all the rest of them is buried.

It sometimes happens that sudden and violent gales from the north-west cause the water to rise and break the ice. In such cases. all that is on it is swallowed up : men, animals, and vehicles, all perish. The tempest ceases, and the blocks of ice, heaped up and driven against each other, unite, and present a curious sight to the eyes of travellers, namely, that of a river, a lake, or a sea, whose waves and billows have been petrified in a single instant. They exhibit precisely the same projections, and the same undulations, and it is necessary to wait until the snow has fallen and filled up their thousands of valleys before venturing on them in a sledge.

The breaking up of the ice never takes place before the middle of April, and sometimes later. When the ice is once set in motion, the bridges of boats swing round on their anchors, and remain on one side or the other of the river. The ice, while undergoing the process of decomposition, invariably obeys certain fixed rules. First of all, the layer of snow which covers it melts, and is succeeded by a layer of water ; this, being warmed by the temperature, which becomes milder every day, eventually pierces the ice, that turns black and spongy, and becomes disaggregated, when woe betide any one who is imprudent enough to venture on it.

A phenomenon, which was much talked of in 1740, more than a century ago, and about which the Russians still take a delight in speaking, was the palace of ice, built by the orders of the Empress Anne. Constructed of enormous blocks of ice, cut like stones, this palace was fifty feet long, sixteen deep, and three thick, and covered with a roofing of snow upon a framework of timber. Inside were tables, chairs, and beds, in fact, a complete set of furniture. Before the edifice were placed pyramids, equestrian statues, and animals formed of ice; besides six cannons, capable of receiving balls of six pounds, and two mortars of the same substance. One of these cannons was discharged, and the ball, which was likewise of ice, went through a plank two inches thick, at a distance of sixty paces, without at all shaking the building. It would appear that, in the evenings, when the palace was lighted up, the effect was most striking.

This magnificent palace proves only one thing : the inclemency and severity of the cold and the climate.

During all the winter, the cold is so intense, that, if you chance to open one of the panes in your window to let a little fresh air into your room, the warm vapour rushes out with the violence of a rocket. If you venture abroad, the cold instantly attacks and seizes you in every part of your body. Your nose is drawn up; your mouth and throat become contracted, your eyes seem to retreat to the very back of your skull, while your ears are filled with a buzzing noise. You can only breathe through the folds of a scarf or a silk handkerchief. The hoar frost immediately envelops your eyebrows, eyelashes, beard, and hair, and occasions a thousand little pricking pains, which draw tears from you. Some one has jokingly remarked, that a man's words are frozen ; this is literally true up to a certain point, for the chest is so oppressed, irritated, and even frozen, that the organs of respiration refuse to fulfil their office. When a person is absolutely compelled to go out, there is one precautionary measure which he must take, and that is, to rub his face from time to time with the fur cuff of his pelisse, in order, by this slight friction, to revive the circulation of the blood under the skin.

Every one is acquainted with the means of thawing any of the limbs of his body which may have been attacked by the cold. It is the employment of snow and iced-water, previous to entering a warm room. During one whole winter, I was in the practice, whenever I was obliged to go out, of smearing all my face over with a slight coating of pomatum. The cold has great difficulty in obtaining a hold upon fatty bodies, and I was thus enabled to brave the severity of the climate for several hours together, always resisting it much better than my companions. The snow has the tenacity and strength of ice ; it reflects the rays of the sun so vividly that the eyes cannot bear its brilliancy.

Towards the end of winter, a tolerably long drive in a sledge becomes fatiguing, while a regular journey is almost impossible . . .

Sledge-driving in the city is not always unattended with danger, even when the snow presents a surface as flat as that of a lake. Not all horses can draw this kind of vehicle, and, when you have to turn the corner of a street, the light sledge will overturn and throw you out to a considerable distance, with your head against the walls of the house, or the other sledges which happen to be passing. Ten times has this accident occurred to myself, and I always got off with a few scratches, but every one is not so lucky.

Winter is a boon to the inhabitants of the towns as much as to those of the country. As soon as sledging has commenced, the markets are actually encumbered with provisions of every kind, which the peasant bring in from all quarters. Vegetables, meat, fish, game - in a word, everything is frozen. Nothing can be more grotesque to behold, than the markets peopled with frozen pigs, sheep, calves, and oxen, standing on their hind-legs, or placed upon all fours around the tradesmen's stalls. A person would almost think that these animals were going through the exercises of the learned pig. When there is a deficiency of snow, the towns suffer. Living becomes very dear; and sometimes there is a famine. Navigation as well as sledging being suspended, the provisions cannot be forwarded to their destination, or, if they can, reach the town in a damaged state, and are exorbitantly dear. Again, the earth and the seed in it not being protected by a layer of snow, the severe cold kills all the corn.

The transition from one season to the other occupies only a few days. After a week at most of fine, icy rain, and thick, hard sleet, the heat begins to be felt, and goes on increasing every day. Vegetation progresses with prodigious rapidity; in the space of a single day, especially after a warm rain, the trees bud and are covered with green leaves . . .

From the middle of February, the days begin to grow longer; towards the middle of April, the ice on all the rivers commences breaking up; towards the middle of May, the sun sets between ten and eleven o'clock, while in June, and up to the middle of July, it never leaves the horizon. People can read, write and play all night without the aid of any artificial light whatever. For twenty minutes, at the most, does the sun seem to disappear, but the sky remains perfectly lighted by large clouds of warm red vapour, like those produced by a large building on fire during the night. Shortly afterwards, the sun re-appears with increased brilliancy. The shadows caused by its waves are immense; those of the trees and public monuments are actually gigantic in their proportions. On one occasion, as I was returning home, at two o'clock in the morning, I had the curiosity to measure my own shadow, and found it more than two hundred and fifty paces long.

Nothing strikes one's imagination so vividly as the silence which reigns around from eleven o'clock at night to five o'clock in the morning. The air possesses so high a degree of sonority, that sounds are transmitted with great distinctness very considerable distances. The human voice, the noise of a horse's hoof, the barking of dogs, the howling of wolves, the warbling of birds, the footsteps of a man walking upon the gravelly shore, are singularly audible. It has happened to me more than thirty times, when I inhabited the islands during summer, to pass the night upon my balcony, smoking and contemplating at my ease the strangeness of nature in these parts. I used to hear very clearly, and follow, without losing a single syllable, all the conversation of the peasants and fishermen, who were at a distance of nearly a mile and a quarter from me. I own that, at such moments, Russia struck me as sublime.

. . . In the month of July, the heat in the middle of the day is suffocating, while the temperature in the evening is icy-cold, and the atmosphere in the morning obscured by thick, fetid, catarrhal fogs. Owning to those sudden transitions, consumption, fever, pneumonia, apoplexy, and rheumatism, are very common. The accidental suppression of perspiration is equivalent to an almost immediate sentence of death. However, in everything God has placed the remedy by the side of the disease; an infusion of dried wild strawberries, taken as hot as possible, and sufficiently early, re-establishing the perspiration in a few minutes, and saves the person whose life is endangered.

. . . When it begins to thaw, the water invades the whole country, and transforms it into a marsh. The highways, the roads, and the streets of the various towns, even including those of the capital itself, are but so many quagmires. As long as this state of things last it is impossible to go anywhere, either in sledges, in coaches, or on foot.

One thing struck me very forcibly, and that was, the vigour and dark hue which distinguishes the verdure of all the vegetables. This is a phenomenon which I have always remarked in all countries where there is much snow, and where the soil remains covered with it for a considerable period of the year.

There still remains one part of the house for me to describe-namely, the kitchen. Screw up your courage, friend reader, and follow me into this smoky cavern. Of what. colour are the walls? To answer the question we should have to coin a word. The whole place smells of burnt kitchen stuff, and resembles the most filthy hovel. On the black, greasy articles of furniture, swarming with tarakans, are enormous joints of meat, turned green by the infectious vapours which surround them. Before the fire you perceive other joints, which it would puzzle you to name; you ask yourself, in vain of what animal they formed a part; all around you, you behold provisions of every description lying huddled together in hopeless confusion. In the midst of this Capharnaum of battered and broken utensils, and repaired black crockery, bearing all round its edges, and in every furrow, marks of dirt solidified by time, and which a scrubbing of several hours would not take out, the table and the floor are inundated, not to say drowned, by a brine formed of all kinds of nauseous filth - no pork-butcher's slaughter-house ever presented. such a scene of disorder, or such a collection of disgusting objects.

The divinity who presides over this horrible hole is generally a woman. I will not attempt to draw her portrait, for I should fear, even while remaining far within the limits of truth, to be accused of exaggeration. However, reader, if you should, any evening, enter Paul Niquet's establishment, behind the Halles, at Paris, <The favourite rendezvous of the Parisian market-women.> look around the counter and pick out the woman who is more overcome by liquor than the others; whose tattered faded rags are the dirtiest ; whose face is swollen, frayed, and actually shining with the dirt with which it is covered ; whose hair is like a lump of horse-hair, through which the comb has never passed, and where countless vermin have firmly established themselves whose feet are bare, or scarcely covered with shapeless slippers ; whose hands are greasy : and you will have discovered an individual something like a Russian cook, whose normal state is one of titubation, which does not always permit her to see her way, or the condition of her saucepans and sauces.

The ceilings, the walls, and the cupboards, are covered with vermin, with which the stoves are swarming, on which you walk, on which you sit down, and which you eat disguised in all the black sauces. The tarakans undulate about in every direction, with that dry and almost strident movement which a swarm of cock-chafers shut up in a box would make. It is enough to turn your stomach.

Let us pass on to the dining room. It is garnished with chairs. In the middle stands a round table. In one corner is a little square table, on which the kaloua is served before dinner. The kaloua consists of such articles as salt or pickled fish, caviar, butter, slices of very strong cheese, radish, Russian brandy, etc. Each guest goes up to this table, and helps himself as he stands. Follow well what I say, reader; dinner is laid upon the large table, on which is a glazed cover, or a cloth, that was used, perhaps, in the last century ; you are presented with a napkin which has already served some one before you, and will serve others after you, until its colour has totally disappeared beneath a coating of grease. A spoon is placed to the right of the plate, and a fork to the left, the knife being laid horizontally above it. A slice of sticky black bread and a slice of white bread are placed in the plate. There are several jugs full of kwass on the table, as well as several kinds of wine, which the Russians take the trouble to colour blue, green, or bright yellow, by means of a mixture of harmless acids. The soup is brought up ; it is a very clear and very thin kind of broth, without any addition of bread or thickening. If you should happen to let it grow cold, and, while it is doing so, scrutinise it narrowly you will easily perceive swimming about in it, as I have before said, a whole charnel-house of various insects. After the soup, a joint of beef or veil is placed upon the table, and garnished with potatoes boiled by themselves, or flanked by some other description of vegetable, in a state of repulsive confusion, which causes you to suspect the existence of very dirty habits in the kitchen. The meat is not cut up in regular joints, as is the case with us. The reason of this is, that every peasant slaughters his beast, cuts it up into four quarters, and then sells it. In order to obtain a chop, a kidney, or a cutlet, you must purchase a whole quarter of the animal, weighing ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds, and sometimes even more. Salted cucumbers, pickled mushrooms, wild berries, and sour cabbage, are indispensable hors-d'oeuvre on every table, and served out with the beef, the vegetables, the fish, and the dessert, which invariably consists of cakes that must have been baked in the reign of Peter 1. Up to 1840, there had never been a single pastry-cook in St. Petersburg and, at the moment I am writing these lines, there is still only one at St. Petersburg, and one at Moscow there are none to be found anywhere else. On the other hand, However, the Russians have borrowed from Germany and Switzerland, some very skilful confectioners, who make excellent sweetmeats.

After dinner, you withdraw into the saloons, where coffee is handed round, followed, an hour or two afterwards, by tea and sour-milk, and cakes or slices of bread, dried in the oven, and covered with a thin layer of caramel or honey. Tea supplies the place of coffee in the morning, and serves as supper in the evening. True Russians never put the sugar to melt in tea, coffee, or any other beverage ; they nibble a lump of sugar as they drink, and throw back what remains into the sugarbasin. Almost all the men, and the Emperor himself, take their tea in glasses made to withstand boiling water.

Every house possesses an ice-house ; this is absolutely necessary for the preservation of the heaps of provisions of all kinds which people are obliged to have. When a fish or the quarter of an ox is once boiled or roasted, the family live upon it until they come to the bones.

The picture which I have just drawn is only true generally. There are certainly exceptions, but they are not very numerous, and are only to be found in. the case of those who have travelled and resided for a lengthened period abroad, or who possess a very large fortune, which enables them to surround themselves with every possible comfort.

In the great families, whose wealth is reckoned by hundreds of thousands of pounds sterling, you meet with luxurious apartments, with waxed and polished floors, with tapestries, perfumes, elegant decorations and ornaments, and with rich Aubusson carpets or velvet hangings before the entrance, while mirrors of a prodigious size, master-pieces of Russian art, are let into the walls, the doors, and the alcoves.

The furniture varies in style, richness, and originality, according to the taste of the master or mistress of the house, or of the Czar. It is Chinese, Indian, English, French, Turkish, Gothic, Renaissance, Rococo, or anything else, according to the taste of the Czar, or of the Czarina. Before thinking of himself, a person thinks of flattering the Court. When the Grand-Duchess Marie was married to the Prince of Leuchtenberg, every one was seized with a passion for mineralogy, and collected immense heaps of stones of all colours, because it was known that the Prince was greatly distinguished for his knowledge in this branch of science. The Russians do not live for themselves.

Turkey or Persian carpets cover the richly-inlaid floors ; statues from Rome or Florence are exhibited in the corners of the saloons, and surrounded by a parterre of shrubs and green plants, in boxes or pots ; while richly framed pictures ornament the walls. But, in the midst of all this brilliancy, luxury, and comfort, you can always instinctively feel the existence of the national uncleanliness and bad taste. The various articles I have described are without doubt rich, but they do not agree with each other, and are faded. On going close to all these hangings and wood-work you see the marks of dirty hands and filthy fingers, while the curtains of embossed silk are disfigured by large stains.

The lackeys are supercilious, bold, and deficient in politeness to foreigners. They measure their respect of any one by the amount of gold or silver embroidery, or the number of orders, which decorate his coat. They cringe before embroidery and ribbons, and steal the handkerchiefs, gloves, and other articles which they find in the paletots confided to their care in the antechambers.

It is a difficult thing to convey an idea of the national pride of the Russians; I do not know in the whole world, a nation with more pretensions. Masters, servants, and slaves, all agree most marvellously in depreciating everything which is not Russian. If you point out the absurdity of this by asking why they buy English and French productions, and why they eat like Englishmen or Frenchmen, they reply, without the slightest embarrassment, that they do so because fashion requires it. I have even met with some individuals, perfectly educated, who had travelled, and who, putting all national amour propre aside, could appreciate, better than the rest of their countrymen, the people and products of each particular nation. I have, I will add, met people who bore celebrated names, and in both cases found many who have actually asserted, with the greatest sincerity and good faith, that the discourses and sermons of our greatest preachers, such as Masillon and others, were far better when translated into Russian than they were in the original French, because they had been retouched by the translators.

Posted August 24 2002, by Sylvia

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