THE OLD ORDER
St. Nicholas’ Day of December 19th had long been awaited with
expectation, both of triumph and fear. It was the Tsar’s christening
day--one of the four festivals which were given to St. Nicholas every
year, because, on his way to see Christ, he stopped to help a peasant’s
cart out of the mud and made his clothes all dirty. It had been
rumoured with confidence that the work of the great Manifesto would
then be completed--that the Tsar himself would come to Moscow, and from
the very shrine of the Empire issue the charter of a free Constitution,
and, like a generous father, distribute the Crown lands among the
peasants. It was a splendid opportunity for heroic concession--such
concession as would have gathered nearly the whole mass of the people
round its author in enthusiastic devotion. But there was nothing
heroic about the poor little Tsar--“Homunculus,” as the satirists
called him--and the mood of concession had passed away. It was a time
for reaction now, the imprisonment of labour leaders, the arrest of
editors, the closure of meetings, the incitement to murder.
For a week past the day had been looked forward to with terror by most
Progressives, and especially by the Jews. Christians had been preparing
for themselves large crosses of wood, iron, or even cardboard, which
they hung round their necks, so that when the religious mob attacked
them, they might fling open their furs and reveal their Christianity
visible upon their waistcoats.
But the children of darkness were a-tiptoe for the slaughter. Only
the day before the festival, the patriotic organization of the Black
Hundred, called the Hooligans or the Order of the Men of Russia
according to sympathy, had issued a manifesto inciting to the final
extermination of all Jews and foreigners in the city. Their common duty
to God and the Tsar commanded all true men to unite in clearing Holy
Russia of the accursed stranger. At the same time, the more moderate of
the priesthood, mindful of an accepted distinction between religion and
murder, wrote a letter to the papers, appealing to the faithful to act
like Christians and not to kill the Jews. But such advice was a mere
bewilderment to the simple man. To kill Jews is to act like Christians.
Why complicate matters by raising the doubt? Ages of history had proved
it.
So the Jews and many of the foreigners fortified their houses and hid
themselves. All Moscow, indeed, was fortified in a manner, for new
shutters and hoardings now protected doors and windows of all shops and
many houses which were left open before. In the evening I went through
the streets, and all was gloom and silence and fear. In one place on
the Boulevard a slightly drunken soldier, who had been boasting of
his revolutionary convictions, was surrounded by a little knot of
loyalists, beguiled down a side court, and quietly slaughtered. At the
door of a little restaurant in my own street I found a shouting mob.
They had set upon a student and beaten him senseless. The restaurant
people had dragged his body, almost naked, into the house and laid it
across two chairs in a cellar. Through holes in the shutter you could
see it lying there, in a shirt that oozed blood, while a girl student,
who had been with him, knelt with her arms round his neck and cried
aloud. At the sound of her crying, the mob yelled with exultation, and
fought for a place at the shutter.
Morning came, intensely cold, but clear and bright. Before nine o’clock
large crowds had begun to gather on the Kremlin--that triangular
citadel of old cathedrals and palaces in the centre of Moscow,
surrounded by an ancient crenellated wall, looking steeply down over
the river on the south side. The priesthood had asked leave for a
special ceremony of prayer on account of Russia’s troubles, and the
new Governor-General, Admiral Dubásoff, who had arrived only two days
before, could not decently refuse a prayer meeting to the patriotic
ministers of peace, especially at a time when the Government was only
longing for disturbances as an excuse for military assassination.
The prayer meeting was fixed for the great open space called the Red or
Splendid Square (Krasnaya) lying between the Kremlin proper and the Old
Town, which is surrounded by a similar wall. But the church services
for the saint’s day had first to be held in the cathedrals, and by ten
o’clock the sacred banners from all the great shrines of Moscow began
to assemble on the height where the three cathedrals, the bell tower,
and the great palace stand. A sacred banner is a metal plate, generally
about three feet square, hanging out sideways from a pool like a flag,
except that it is quite stiff. The people like to think of it as gold,
but that would not prevent it being brass. The plate itself is fretted
in various designs, and at the centre is an icon, a representation
of some saint or religious scene--St. George with his dragon, the
Resurrection, or the Ascension--sometimes painted on board, sometimes
worked in silver and other metals. The banner is further adorned with
rich enamels, and rattles a fringe of metal tassels. I counted nearly
a hundred of them glittering in the frosty sun, as they entered the
Kremlin gates in groups and passed the piled-up lines of guns which
Napoleon left behind him, and the new white palings round the little
shrine where the Grand Duke Sergius met his end.
It was impossible to estimate the number of people who swarmed on
every open space and crowded the steps of all the churches. There
were many thousands, and all were bowing and crossing themselves or
kneeling in the snow with adoration before every shrine and at every
saint that passed. All classes were there, and sometimes a lady, deep
in furs, would signal to her servant to put down a cushion or piece of
mackintosh on the particular spot where she wished to worship. But, as
is natural in a religious ceremony, on the whole it was a crowd of the
poor. Many peasants had come in from the country, conspicuous for their
wild hair and leather coats. But the greater part were simply the poor
of Moscow--the pious, the patriotic, the criminal poor--all who are
the natural enemies of change. They went from shrine to shrine, they
crowded round the Great Bell, they climbed the brass-domed tower for
the view, they filled the cathedrals till it was impossible to stir
inside, and from the outside we could only listen to the deep chantings
that boomed through the open doors. And all the time the crossings and
bowings and prostrations in the snow never ceased.
The Governor-General and other great officials and soldiers had a
specially short service, in accordance with their dignity, in some
chapel up the Lion staircase, where no unhallowed or ununiformed foot
is fit to tread. But by eleven all the services were over, and with
infinite effort the holy banners were drawn up in two lines beside the
Great Bell. Their main poles being supported by four smaller poles,
they began to move slowly and with difficulty towards the gate into
the Red Square. It is the Holy Gate of the Saviour, under which every
Russian takes off his cap, so sacred for centuries has been the picture
above the arch.
Small bodies of Cossacks, and of infantry with fixed bayonets, were
stationed along the route or accompanied the procession, to protect
the heavenly powers. When at last the glittering banners had staggered
by, there came a group of priests in robes stiff with gold and
many-coloured embroideries, thrown over their ordinary fur coats, and
helping to make them warm as well as beautiful. And behind them came a
party of earthly saints in apparel still more marvellous. I think they
were bishops, but they may have been archimandrites. They wore hats of
brass or gold, shaped like Byzantine domes, and sprinkled with gleaming
glass or precious stones. Some of the saints had hair hanging far down
their chests and backs; others were less devout in shagginess.
Last of all, supported by an extra strong detachment of Cossacks, came
the banners of the most sacred shrine in Moscow, accompanying the
picture of the Iberian Virgin herself, which had been brought out for
the occasion in its wooden case from its own rich chapel at the Iberian
gate. As she passed--this famous virgin, copied from the Virgin of
Mount Athos centuries ago--the crowds on each side bowed before her
like corn when the wind blows.
So the procession moved under the Gate of the Saviour, and gathered
on the round stone platform where Ivan the Cruel used to enjoy the
executions. It stands in front of Ivan’s many-coloured church, built
by the Italian whose eyes (as the old myth says) were put out that he
might never design another so gay. The service of special prayer was
there performed, and as the clocks struck twelve and the guns began
to fire a salute, the religious part of the day came to an end. The
banners went back into the Kremlin; the Iberian Virgin was carried in a
four-wheeler to her shrine; the bishops and archimandrites drove away
to lunch in huge coaches drawn by four black horses abreast.
Then the moment came which all had awaited--the moment for which the
prayers to God had only been the excuse. Now or never was the time for
slaughter and enrichment. A fervid orator sprang on the balustrade
of the stone platform, and with athletic gesticulations and rousing
appeals to heaven and the Tsar, strove to lash the crowd to the
proposed heat of fury. Other patriots were busy extolling the beauty
of domestic virtue, and distributing photographs of the Tsar with his
baby-boy upon his knee. The people cheered and shouted, and began to
rush up and down, like caged wolves just before feeding-time. Then
raising the Russian hymn, the orator, still threatening the bright
infinity of space with his fists, set off to march up the whole
length of the square. The crowd swarmed after him, thousands strong.
They trickled through the two little arches of the Iberian gate, and
gathering together again, swept in one great tide up the main street
called the Tverskaya.
They were going to slaughter the Jews, and exterminate the students,
and purify the city. No end to the horrors they were going to perform.
But they reached the square in front of the Government House, and
there they stopped to make speeches, calling again upon heaven and
the Tsar, and urging the Governor-General to take vengeance upon all
revolutionaries and other enemies of the country.
The Governor-General appeared in uniform upon the balcony--tall and
pale, white haired, with long white moustache, and a narrow, pointed
beard. It was Admiral Dubásoff, hitherto only known as Russia’s
representative in the inquiry about the Baltic Fleet’s victory off
Hull; afterwards to be better known as the Butcher or the Admiral of
the Street. In a loud voice he addressed the crowd, telling them how
delighted he was to see so many Russian citizens still on the Tsar’s
side, and promising to telegraph to the Tsar with what confidence his
Majesty could rely upon the unshaken loyalty and unflinching courage of
ancient Moscow.
It was a little unfortunate that just at that moment, before the cheers
could even begin, some one at the corner of the square near me raised
the cry, “The students are coming! The students! The students!” Like a
wind, terror swept over the crowd, the sledges dashed away in flight,
and, plunging, falling, and crashing into each other, the people rushed
down any street and hid round any corner for their lives. I have seen
many fine panics, from the Greek war downwards, but never anything
quite so ludicrous as that stampede of bloody-minded patriots. For
nothing whatever had happened, and when at last the terrified loyalists
took heart to look behind them, they saw the square peaceful, silent,
and almost empty. One by one they crept back into courage. They even
tried to rekindle their patriotic zeal and resume their murderous
aspect. But it was no good. The Governor-General had gone indoors to
dispatch his telegram in praise of their courage. That unhappy run had
spoilt the whole massacre, and gradually the orators ceased to rage,
and every one went home for dinner.