UNDER ARMS.
An army is in every state, whether bond or free, a thing of privilege
and tradition; and in giving a new spirit to his Government, it is
essential that the Emperor should bring his army into some closer
relation to the country he is making free.
The first thing is to raise the profession of arms to a higher grade,
by giving to every soldier in the ranks the old privilege of a prince
and boyar--his immunity from blows and stripes. A soldier can not now
be flogged. Before the present reign, the army was in theory an open
school of merit, and occasionally a man like General Skobeleff rose
from the rank of peasant to the highest posts. But Skobeleff was a man
of genius--a good writer, as well as a splendid soldier; and his
nomination as commander of St. Petersburg took no one by surprise.
Such cases of advancement are extremely rare; rare as in the Austrian
service, and in our own. But the reforms now introduced into the army
are making this opening for talent wide enough to give every one a
chance. The soldiers are better taught, better clothed, and better
lodged. In distant provinces they are not yet equal to the show-troops
seen on a summer day at Tsarskoe Seloe; but they are lodged and
treated, even in these far-off stations, with a care to which
aforetime they were never used. Every man has a pair of strong boots,
a good overcoat, a bashlik for his head. His rations are much
improved; good beef is weighed to him; and he is not compelled to
fast. The brutal punishment of running the ranks has been put down.
A man who served in the army, just before the Crimean war broke out,
put the difference between the old system and the new in a luminous
way.
"God bless the Emperor," he said "he gave me life, and all that I can
give him in return is his."
"You were a prisoner, then?"
"I was a soldier, young and hot. Some Kozak blood was in my veins;
unlike the serfs, I could not bear a blow, and broke my duty as a
soldier to escape an act of shame."
"For what were you degraded?"
"Well! I was a fool. A fool? I was in love; and staked my liberty for
a pretty girl. I kissed her, and was lost."
"That is what the greatest conquerors have done. You lost yourself for
a rosy lip?"
"Well--yes; and--no," said Michael. "You see, I was a youngster then. A
man is not a graybeard when he counts his nineteen summers; and a pair
of bright eyes, backed by a saucy tongue, is more than a lad of spirit
can pass without a singe. Katinka's eyes were bright as her words were
arch. You see, in those days we were all young troops on the road;
going down from Yaroslav into the South, to fight for the Holy Cross
and the Golden Keys. The Frank and Turk were coming up into our towns,
to mock our religion and to steal our wives; and after a great festa
in the Church, when the golden icon was brought round the ranks, and
every man kissed it in his turn, we marched out of Yaroslav with
rolling drums, and pious hymns, and blessings on our arms. The town
soon dropped behind us, and with the steppe in front, we turned back
more than once to look at the shining domes and towers, which few of
us could hope to see again. For three days we kept well on; the fourth
day some of our lads were missing; for the roads were heavy, the wells
were almost dry, and the regiment was badly shod. Many were sick; but
some were feigning; and the punishment for shamming is the rod. Our
colonel, a tall, gaunt fellow, stiff as a pike and tight as a cord,
whom no fatigue could touch, began to flog the stragglers; and as
every man in the ranks had to take his turn in whipping his fellows,
the temper of the whole regiment became morose and savage. In those
old times--some eighteen years ago--we had a rough-and-ready sort of
punishment, called running the ranks."
"Running the ranks?"
"It is done so: if a lad has either fallen asleep on his post, or
vexed his officer, or stolen his comrade's pipe, or failed to answer
at the roll, he is called to the parade-ground of his company, told to
give up his gun, and strip himself naked to the waist. A soldier
grounds the musket, to which the culprit's two hands are now tied fast
near the muzzle; the bayonet is then fixed, and the butt-end lifted
from the ground so as to bring the point of the bayonet close to the
culprit's heart. The company is then drawn up in two long lines, in
open order; and into every man's hand is given a rod newly cut and
steeped for a night in water to make it hard. The offender is led
between these lines; led by the butt-end of his gun, the slightest
motion of which he must obey, on pain of being pricked to death; and
the troops lay on his naked back, with a will or not, as their mood
may chance to be. The pain is always great, and the sufferer dares not
shrink before the rod; as in doing so he would fall on the
bayonet-point. But the shame of running the ranks was greater than the
pain. Some fellows learned to bear it; but these were men who had lost
all sense of shame. For my own part, I think it was worse than death
and hell."
"You have not borne it?"
"Never! I will tell you. We had marched about a thousand versts
towards the South. Our companies were greatly thinned; for every
second man who had left Yaroslav with beating heart and singing his
joyous psalm, was left behind us, either in the sick-ward or on the
steppe--most of them on the steppe. Many of the men had run away; some
because they did not want to fight, and others because they had vexed
their officers by petty faults. We had a fortnight yet to march before
reaching those lines of Perikop, where the Tartars used to fight us;
and our stiff colonel cried out daily down our squads, that if we
skulked on the march the Turks would be in Moscow, not the Russians at
Stamboul."
"Yes!"
"We had a fortnight yet to march; but the men were so spent and sore
that we halted in a roadside village three days to mend our shoes and
recruit our strength. That halt unmade me. What with her laughing eyes
and her merry tricks, the girl who served out whisky and halibut to
our company won my heart. Her father kept the inn and posting-house of
the village; he had to find us quarters, and supply us with meat and
drink. The girl was about the sheds in which we lay from early morning
until late at night. I don't say she cared for me, though I was
thought a handsome lad; but she was like a wild kitten, and would purr
and play about you till your blood was all on fire; and into the
stable or the straw-shed, screaming with laughter, and daring you to
chase and capture her--with a kiss, of course. It was rare good sport;
but some of the men, too broken to engage in making love, were jealous
of the fun, and said it would end in trouble. Well, when the drum
tapped for our companies to fall in, my cloak was missing, and I began
to hunt through the shed in which we had slept the last three nights.
The cloak could not be found. While running up and down, upsetting
stools and scattering sheaves of straw, I caught Katinka's laughing
face at the window of the shed, and at the very same instant heard the
word of command to march. I had no intention to quit the ranks; but I
wanted my cloak, the loss of which would have been visited upon me by
the anger of my captain and by the wintry frosts. I ran after Katinka,
who darted round the sheds with the cloak on her arm, crowing with
delight as she slipped through the stakes and past the corners, until
she bounded into the straw-yard, panting and spent. To get the cloak
from her was the work of a second; but to smother her red mouth with
kisses was a task which must have taken me some time; for just as I
was getting free from her, two men of my company came up and took me
prisoner. Graybeards of twenty-five, who had seen what they call the
world, these fellows cared no more for a pretty girl than for a holy
saint. They told the colonel lies; they said I meant to straggle and
desert; and the colonel sentenced me to run the ranks."
"You escaped the shame?"
"By taking my chance of death. The colonel stood before me, bolt
upright, his hand upon the shoulder of his horse. Too well I knew how
to merit death in a time of war; and striding up to him, by a rapid
motion, ere any one could pull me back, I struck that officer with my
open palm across his cheek. A minute later I was pinioned, thrown into
a cart, and placed under a double guard. At Perikop I was brought
before commissioners and condemned to die; but the Franks were now
coming up the Bosphorus in ships, and the prince commanding in the
Crimea, being anxious to make the war popular, was in a tender mood;
and finding that my record in the regiment was good, he changed my
sentence of death into one of imprisonment in a fortress during life.
My comrades thought I should be pardoned in a few weeks and placed in
some other company for service; but my crime was too black to be
forgiven in that iron reign."
"Iron reign?"
"The reign of Nicolas was the iron reign. I was sent to a fortress,
where I lay, a prisoner, until Nicolas went to heaven."
"You lived two years in jail?"
"Lived! No; you do not live in prison, you die. But when the saints
are cross you take a very long time to die."
"You wished to die?"
"Well, no; you only wish to sleep, to forget your pain, to escape from
the watcher's eyes. When the rings are soldered round your ankles, and
the cuffs are fastened round your wrists, you feel that you have
ceased to be a man. Cold, passive, cruel in your temper, you are now a
savage beast, without the savage freedom of the wolf and bear. Your
legs swell out, and the bones grow gritty, and like to snap."
"Which are the worse to bear--the leg-rings or the cuffs?"
"The cuffs. When they are taken off, a man goes all but mad. He clasps
and claps his hands for joy; he can lift his palms in prayer, besides
being able to chase the spiders and kill the fleas. Worst of all to
the prisoner are the eyelets in his door, through which the sentinel
watches him from dawn to dusk. Though lonely, he is never alone. Do
what he may, the passionless holes are open, and a freezing glance may
be fixed upon him. In his sleeping and in his waking hour those eyes
are on him, and he gladly waits for darkness to come down, that he may
feel secure from that maddening watch. Sometimes a man goes boldly to
the door, spits through the holes, yells like a wild beast, and forces
the sentinel to retire in shame."
"You gained your freedom in the general amnesty?"
"Yes; when the young prince came to his throne he opened our
prison-doors and set us free. Were you ever a prisoner? No! Then you
can never know what it is to be free. You walk out of darkness into
light; you wake out of misery into joy. The air you breathe makes you
strong like a draught of wine. You feel that you belong to God."
Under Nicolas the soldiers were so dressed and drilled that they were
always falling sick. A third of the army was in hospital the whole
year round, and little more than half the men could ever be returned
as fit to march. Being badly clothed and poorly fed, they flew to
drink. They died in heaps, and rather like sheep than men.
The case is different now; for the soldier is better clothed and fed
than persons of his class in ordinary life. The men are allowed to
stand and walk in their natural way; and, having more bread to eat,
they show less craving after drink. A school is opened in every
barrack, and pressure is put on the men to make them learn. Many of
the soldiers can read, and some can write. Gazettes and papers are
taken in; libraries are being formed; and the Russian army promises to
become as bright as that of Germany or France. The change is great;
and every one finds the root of this reform in that abolition of the
Tartar stick, which comes, like other great reforms, from the Crimean
war.