THE DAYS OF MOSCOW--II
The next day was our Christmas Eve--a Sunday. I had stayed the night,
as I said, in the west of the disturbed district, and in the early
morning some revolutionists came into the house, and reported large
numbers of killed--rooms crowded with people all blown to pieces by
the shells, walls bespattered with blood, and other horrors, which one
always hears in war, and which are sometimes true. They also said they
had just taken part in an assault upon a body of unmounted dragoons,
who were cautiously approaching a barricade when the revolutionists
opened fire upon them with revolvers from the houses on both sides, and
killed ten. The men themselves were worn with sleepless excitement.
They remained muffled up in their overcoats, and kept one hand
fingering at the revolvers in their pockets.
Soon after daylight, the church bells began to ring for Divine service,
and the big guns sounded again from the Tverskaya. Finding that
sentries were still driving back every one who approached that part of
the town, I went round by the University and reached the great Theatre
Square in front of the Hotel Métropole. The battery of eight guns,
which had been hidden inside the hotel, was now fully displayed across
the square, apparently in readiness to bombard the Opera House. But,
in fact, the guns were placed there only for reinforcement and to keep
up a panic among the crowd, who came out now and then and watched them
with interest from the opposite side, and then rushed away in sudden
terror. Crossing the square in front of the battery, I was going up the
street at the side of the hotel when I found a party of dustmen and
police loading a cart with some bodies that lay upon the street. The
things hardly looked human, they were so small and still and shapeless.
Their faces were burnt away; their clothes black, and so charred that
they crumbled into cinders like burnt paper as the body was heaved into
the cart.
I then saw that in the side of the hotel a vast black space had been
blown out, like the entrance to a smoky cavern. It was the site of a
gun-shop, which I had often examined with some curiosity and wonder;
for a gunmaker’s is a dangerous trade in revolution. From a man who
lived exactly opposite, I heard the story afterwards. Late on the
Saturday evening a party of revolutionists went boldly across the
street, and broke into the shop with hammers and axes. Other people
appeared, and a small crowd had gathered, when a detachment of
soldiers came round from the hotel and fired into the middle of them.
They ran; but the soldiers went back, and the crowd gathered again.
This happened twice, and then the soldiers, being evidently terrified
themselves, left the place alone. The revolutionists appear to have
departed with their plunder, but a number of people remained searching
about for what they could get, lighting matches and using long rolls
of paper as candles. Just at midnight there was an immense explosion,
and all that was left of the shop, together with the people in it, was
blown into the street. The eye-witness described the ground as littered
with dead, many of them in flames. Those were the charred bodies I saw
being removed; the others, who were killed and wounded by the soldiers,
had already gone. But it seemed to me probable that the explosion was
purposely caused by the revolutionaries, either to create terror, or to
destroy the powder they could not use. What arms were actually obtained
I cannot say. Many sporting guns had been in the window, but I had
never seen any rifles or revolvers, though I had looked carefully, with
this probability in view.
My own little hotel was close by, and after calling there, I went on
to the nearest point of the circular Boulevard, only a hundred yards
beyond. Here there was a clear view over the valley by the Ermitage
and up the opposite hill to the Pushkin statue. A good many people
had taken cover behind the trees, and were watching and listening, but
the terror had much increased and there remained none of the sporting
spirit of the day before. Death was too near and obvious now. Almost
every instant a bullet came whizzing over the valley and was heard
cutting through the trees or falling with a tiny hiss in the snow.
At the corner of my street, close to a white monastery with a great
classic tower, they had opened a back yard as a refuge for the wounded,
though it did not fly the red cross, I think because it was privately
managed by the revolutionists for their own people. The line of wounded
who were hurried into it, dazed and groaning, was almost continuous,
and all were received, whether revolutionists or not. Under an open
shed inside I found a pitiful row of the dead lying on the stones, some
terribly shattered by shell-fire, some killed by the rifle, so merciful
when it strikes the brain or heart. We had helped in a man who was
streaming blood from a shot in the neck, and we had hardly laid him
down when a poor red-bearded peasant, all shaggy and caked from the
fields, was dragged inside, his face dull white except at a great hole
by his nose. But he was already dead and was put beside the others.
Between the stones of that yard for the first time I saw men’s blood
trickling as in a gutter.
Hitherto many of the wounded and dying had been galloped up to the
ambulance yards in sledges, but now I saw a driver who was hailed for
a wounded girl turn sharp round and dash out of sight.
Another sledge was seized, but this driver also lashed his horse and
tried to get away. He was dragged out of the sledge, and his arms were
bound with his own whip, while two men, supporting the girl between
them, brought her up the hill to the yard. Soon afterwards the sledges
disappeared altogether, and for some days none could be had. It was
said the drivers were afraid of having them taken for barricades; more
probably they were only afraid of being shot, and in any case it was
not profitable to carry the wounded. I believe the Government also
forbade them running lest they should help revolutionists to escape.
Leaving the yard, I went down the hill and along the Petrovka, where
the guns had battered two or three houses to pieces because a revolver
had been fired from the windows. I had hoped to get into the Tverskaya
by a little lane at the back of the Opera House, but the pickets were
still keeping up a random fire down all those cross streets, and many
passers-by were struck. One soldier deliberately aimed at an oldish
man who was going along the Petrovka like myself. The man fell into a
pile of snow by the edge of the road and kept on struggling to rise.
But each time, when he had nearly got up, he lurched heavily forward
again and fell on his face like a drunken man. The soldier who had hit
him came up with another soldier and looked at his wound. Then they
shouted to an ambulance cart that was passing the end of the street,
and lifting the man carefully on to it, they sent him off to the Hotel
Métropole, at the back of which, I think, the Zemstvo were establishing
their main ambulance depôt for soldiers and civilians alike. It is
not often that a man who has done his utmost to kill another can so
speedily do his utmost to keep him alive.
Unable to reach the guns from that side, I then determined to get in
front of them and try to discover again what the revolutionists really
intended. So I turned back and after some difficulty reached the
main street of the Dmitrovka (Bolchaya Dmitrovka) which runs closely
parallel to the Tverskaya. There I found a woman stooping over a body
which lay on the curb-stone. It was a boy of about fifteen, dressed in
the school uniform of a little blue cap and long grey overcoat. He had
come out to see a battle--a real battle with men shooting bullets and
slashing with swords. His little boots were close together, pointing
upwards; his white-gloved hands thrown out upon the snow like a cross;
and through his mouth was the dark red hole where the bullet had struck
him. The woman had seen him fall and had come from her house. Two or
three others now gathered round, and she brought out a red and white
table-cloth in which we wrapt him. So we carried him to an ambulance
room in a lane beside an ancient red-brick church close by. But he was
dead before we reached the door.
When I came to the Boulevard again, I was close to the Pushkin statue,
so often mentioned because hitherto it had been the advance position
of the guns. But now they had been taken forward further along the
Tverskaya, and the square was empty but for a few sentries. The
sharpshooters had also been removed from the Strestnoi bell-tower, but
the Russian common people will long remember the impiety which placed
them there, and a fine satiric cartoon represents them as they fired
upon the crowd below, with the inscription, “God with us!” The Mala
Dmitrovka, where the clerk had fallen in front of me the day before,
was absolutely empty now, and I passed right along it without any
interruption except for the wire entanglements. It brought me out, as
I had hoped, upon the Sadovaya, or Garden Boulevard, which forms the
outer circle round Moscow, as I described before, and reaching the
point of intersection I saw at once that I had come to the very centre
of the revolutionist position.
The four arms of the cross-road were all blocked with double or even
treble barricades, about ten yards apart. As far as I could see
along the curve of the Sadovaya on both sides, barricade succeeded
barricade, and the whole road was covered with telegraph wire, some of
it lying loose, some tied across like netting. The barricades enclosing
the centre of the cross-road like a fort were careful constructions of
telegraph poles or the iron supports to the overhead wires of electric
trams, closely covered over with doors, railings, and advertisement
boards, and lashed together with wire. Here and there a carriage or
tramcar was built in, to give stability, and from the top of every
barricade waved the little red flag. A similar fort had been built
at the intersection of the Sadovaya with the Tverskaya, only a short
distance to the right, and the whole of the road between was thronged
with excited people, who hastened backwards and forwards, stood in
eager groups at all the corners, and kept peering down the Tverskaya
to discover if the guns were yet in sight. But the troops were
advancing slowly, if at all. At intervals the guns fired--generally
two in rapid succession--and we could hear the crash of the shells as
they plunged into the houses or brought the brickwork rattling down.
Every now and then came a quick outburst of rifle-shots--perhaps
of revolver-shots--and a bullet or two went humming overhead. Each
barricade was being assaulted separately, the guns firing first, and
then the soldiers creeping up with rifles.
[Illustration: BARRICADES ON THE SADOVAYA.]
But it was not from the barricades themselves that the real opposition
came. From first to last no barricade was “fought,” in the old sense
of the word. To be sure, we afterwards saw photographs of enthusiastic
revolutionists standing on the very summit of the barriers, clear
against the sky, and waving red flags or presenting revolvers at space.
But no such things happened, and the photographs were a simple kind of
“fake.” The barricades were never intended to be “fought.” The only
tactics of the revolutionists were ambush and surprise. Afterwards I
heard stories of them lying down across the street in front of the
advancing troops, and meeting case-shot and rifles with revolvers that
cannot be trusted over twenty yards. Such stories are too ludicrous
to be denied. The revolutionary methods were far more terrible and
effective. By the side-street barricades and wire entanglements, they
had rid themselves of the fear of cavalry. By the barricades across
the main streets, they rendered the approach of troops necessarily
slow. To the soldiers, the horrible part of the street fighting was
that they could never see the real enemy. On coming near a barricade
or the entrance to a side street, a few scouts would be advanced a
short distance before the guns. As they crept forward, firing, as they
always did, into the empty barricade in front, they might suddenly
find themselves exposed to a terrible revolver-fire at about fifteen
paces range from both sides of the street. It was useless to reply,
for there was nothing visible to aim at. All they could do was to
fire blindly in almost any direction, and perhaps the bullets killed
some mother carrying home the family potatoes half a mile away. Then
the revolver-firing would suddenly cease, the guns would trundle up
and wreck the houses on both sides. Windows fell crashing on the
pavement, case-shot burst in the bedrooms, and solid shell made round
holes through three or four walls. It was bad for furniture, but the
revolutionists had long ago escaped through a labyrinth of courts at
the back, and were already preparing a similar attack in another street.
Among all those excited groups it was quite impossible to distinguish
the sympathetic spectator or even the spy from the fighting
revolutionist. It all seemed to me like an Aldershot field-day, in
which the regulars on one side were fighting with ball cartridge
against the usual crowd of onlookers, some of whom were secretly armed.
Leaving the central forts, I went for half a mile further along
the continuation of the Dmitrovka, which here takes the name of
Dolgoroukovskaya, and from end to end I found it crowded with
work-people of the better class, all intensely excited and alert, and
apparently all enthusiastic for the movement. But even when a man tried
to work up trouble because I looked foreign and fairly well-dressed, I
could not distinguish for certain which were the real revolutionists
among them. The whole long street had been admirably barricaded, and
as it runs out towards the Petrovsky Park and the open country, it
seemed likely that it had been specially prepared as a line of retreat
in case of disaster. Barricades were erected every thirty yards, and
in one place the whole of the electric train had been drawn at right
angles across the road in three lines, making far the largest barricade
then existing in the world. Naturally the revolutionists were proud
of it as a triumph of engineering art. Four red flags flew from its
summit, and upon the largest flag some girl had stitched the white
letters, “For Freedom.” But there was another barricade which seemed to
me simpler and finer in conception. Some revolutionists, probably boys,
had piled a great wall of snow across the road, and then by pouring
buckets of water upon it under the freezing sky, had converted it into
an almost solid rampart of ice, which I doubt if any bullet could have
penetrated. That was the barricade of genius.
When I returned to the central forts on the Sadovaya, the firing of the
big guns had slackened, and I found out the reason afterwards. At the
time I thought it was because the early dusk of mid-winter was falling,
and having waited for a while to watch some revolutionary Red Cross
parties set out in different directions, I made a short cut for home
by way of the Flower Boulevard (Tsvietnoi). But as I was going along
its valley towards the Ermitage, four big flashes in front, looking
very orange in the twilight, warned me that guns had been brought down
there to demolish the series of little barricades running across, the
gardens where I was. I think the troops were afraid of a flank attack
on their right if they advanced further without clearing this ground,
and, indeed, the barricades throughout the quarter were still rapidly
increasing. Men and girls were throwing them up with devoted zeal,
sawing through telegraph-poles, wrenching ironwork from its sockets,
and dragging out the planks from builders’ yards. I could still find
no directing spirit--no general or staff to give orders for the whole
army, as it were. But there must have been some sort of agreement in
actions like this, and probably, if I had been able to converse like
the rest, I should not have remained ignorant. But the foreigner,
however well disposed, is inevitably suspected, and even offers of help
in carrying and building are very coldly received, or rejected with
threats. Yet I was much less likely than a Russian to be a spy, and no
one could suffer greater mortification than being thus excluded from
the party of revolt.
When I reached the hill where my hotel stood, I found that even in
our own insignificant street, two barricades were being erected--one
very conveniently placed just below my window--and the side streets
leading down into the Petrovka were similarly blocked. The soldiers had
evidently fired up these streets whilst the building was going on,
for a bullet passing through a hotel window and wall and ceiling had
left a memorial which the inhabitants continued to contemplate with
pleasurable awe. The hotel cook also, having a moment of leisure in his
kitchen, had run out into the yard to enjoy the battle, and leaning
forward round a corner to gain the best possible view, had received a
bullet through the heart. Now stretched in the stable, he cooked no
more.
Late at night a strange figure appeared in the hall and stood thawing
in front of the fire. It was dressed like a peasant, but surely
no peasant since Adam’s fall ever looked quite so comfortable and
self-satisfied, and no peasant’s clothes were quite so clean since
Adam’s first day in hides. After warming himself and peering about for
a little while with twinkling eyes, he took off the peasant’s raiment
bit by bit, and stood before us in full uniform, a police-officer
revealed. He had not come as an avenger, but with wrath restrained he
only demanded figures regarding the dead, and he even stooped to take
a special interest in the cook. There is a peculiar quality about the
Russian official--a kind of friendliness in brutality, a brotherliness
in slaughter--which springs from the sense of human kinship. Presently
the hired assassin showed himself quite benign and communicative.
He displayed revolutionary leanings. He informed us that if only
the insurgents could maintain the fight for three days longer, the
soldiers would be overcome. Already they were worn out with constant
watching and harassing marches hither and thither without relief. The
news, if true, could only mean that a large part of the garrison could
not be relied upon by the Government, for otherwise there were plenty
of troops in the city to supply reliefs. I believe the garrison then
numbered eight infantry regiments (much undermanned, it is true), two
Cossack regiments, one and a half of dragoons, and two brigades of
guns. In all, the numbers were then estimated at eighteen thousand--not
very many, it is true, but surely enough to hold a city against
ill-armed insurgents. Something must evidently be strange in the temper
of the men. So that peasant police-officer discoursed, and the hearts
of his hearers were full of hope or dismay according to their inborn
quality.
Towards midnight there was a sudden outburst of rifle-fire outside my
window. A party of soldiers were assaulting the little barricade, which
I had already come to regard with a sense of personal property. They
poured bullet after bullet into it, but still it held out as long as
it could, and only surrendered at last because it had no defenders.
Bringing up copies of some suppressed organ of liberty as kindling, the
soldiers then set it on fire, and it burnt slowly till dawn.