The Story of a Siberian Exile ... Followed by a narrative of recent events in Poland. Translated from the French

Preface

. TT has not been thought advisable to give these papers to the public without a few words of explanation to those readers who see them for the first time in an English dress. It may seem that the three parts of which the book is composed have little connection with each other, but this is not the case. Along with the .story of a Polish Exile in Siberia will be found two chapters on the political aspects of Poland. The first of these contains an account of those measures and events by which the dismemberment of ancient Poland was effected. But the Poles contend that the wrongdone to their country has not stopped there ; and that she has been not only dismembered, but denationalised. On referring to the Treaty of Vienna they find that this loss of nationality was not contemplated by the European powers, and that it is contrary both to the tkanslatok's

PREFACE.

. VI letter and to the spirit of the Treaties of 1815. By degrees, however, whether rightly or wrongly, Russian supremacy has asserted itself, and the story of M. Rufin Pietrowski is intended to demonstrate what are the amenities of that regime. The Poles will not submit to a government in which they are not allowed to par ticipate ; and they are engaged in ceaseless attempts to elude its vigilance, and to defy its power. They wish to organise themselves ; and the executive, obliged to act both on the defensive and the offensive towards them, has recourse to cruel and arbitrary methods of repression. The narrative of the Siberian Exile is a strange one, but there is no reason to believe that his tale is otherwise than authentic. The candour and moderation with which he speaks of the Russian officials is highly creditable, and it deserves to be noticed, that it is the system, rather than the men, which he attacks.

The last paper in this book will be found, without doubt, to be the most interesting. A moment's reflec tion will convince its readers that there is np European country in which so great a change is being effected, and of which they hear so little, as Russian Poland. Yet the events which have recently agitated Poland translator's preface. VII are events of historical interest, and they are not in themselves unimportant to Western Europe. An out line of their nature and extent is given here. This history of ' twelve months of agitation ' makes us spec tators of a struggle which the Poles have maintained against the Czar, and in which they have proved them selves to be still full of that high, haughty, and stub born spirit of liberty which Edmund Burke discerned in them of yore. Their recent efforts towards civiliza tion and self-improvement will not fail to ensure for them the sympathy of all who can discern in its energy and its self-control the true greatness of a nation.

Sketches of some of the leading men of Poland will be found here : and, at this crisis, it has been thought that an account of the career of Count Andrew Zamoyski could hardly fail of being acceptable. If the destiny of Poland, as a nation, be eventful and yet obscure, the destiny of individuals has often proved under the Muscovite rule to be more tragic and even more obscure. The Polish party in emigration, who now welcome Count Zamoyski, have great cause to con gratulate themselves that their ' civic hero ' — the best and worthiest of their patriots — has not been sent to expiate a life devoted to his country's good in the translator's preface. fortress of Akatouia, or in some of the desolate wastes of the Russian Empire in the East. The translator is in no wise responsible for any of the sentiments to be found in this book.

His task has been simply that of rendering into English the thoughts and words of other men. In the story of M. Rufin Pietrowski he has felt the disadvantages that attend upon the translation of a translation; but he has striven to preserve the integrity of the narrative, even in the smallest particulars. It is with a view to this end that he has adopted all those Russian and Polish phrases, idioms, and words which occur in the text of M. Klackso. London : November 1862. CONTENTS.

Introduction

. Siberia — Advent-ires of Beniowski — Madame Felinska — M. Rufin Pietrowski Page 1-9

Chapter I. Of

A MISSION INTO POLAND. A passport — The journey — The Russian frontier — Kaminiec — A teacher of languages — Annoyances of disguise — M. Abaza — Suspicions of the Police 10 — 24

Chapter II. Of Mt Arrest And Imprisonment At

BRACLAW*. Arrest — Examination — Major Poloutkovski — Journey to Bracjlaw — An accident — The prison — A Russian scene — Kiow . 25 — 40 CHAPTER m. OF MY IMPRISONMENT AT KIOW, AND MY DEPARTURE FOR SIBERIA. The fortress at Kiow — Prince Bibikov — Examination — A Commission of Inquiry — A Bible — Fellow-prisoners — The maniac — Preparations for ' Deportation ' — The Sentence .... 41 — X contents.

Chapter IV. Of Deportation, And The Life Of An Exile In Siberia

The knout and the pUte — Running the gauntlet — Gangs of exiles — Grand-Duchess Marie — The journey — Russian alms — A ' pope '— The Russian soldier — Omsk — Prince Gortchakov — Ekaterinski- Zavod Page 60—81

Chapter V. The Katorga

Companions in exile — The katorga — A murderer — The felons — Kantier — Pay and punishments — The counting-house . 82 — 102

Chapter VI. Siberia

Siberia — Hardships of deportation — Breaking the ban — The Abbe Sierocinski — His conspiracy and execution . . . 103 — 114

Chapter VII. The Flight

An attempt — My route — My funds — My dress — A sledge A Russian theft, — The journey — Irbite — On foot — A night's lodging — Danger — Cold and famine — Paouda — The izbouchka — The crest of the Ourals — Lost in the forest — Sleep — Alms — Veliki- Oustiong . 115—152

Chapter VIII. The Pilgrim And The Pilgrimage

Pilgrimages — The Bohomolets — Manners and customs in V.liki- Oustiong — On the Dvina — Archangel — The devotions of the pilgrims — Difficulties — Hope deferred .... 153 CONTENTS. XI

Chapter IX. The White Sea

The monastery of Solovetsk — The prisoner of Solovetsk — Heterodoxy and orthodoxy — The promontory — A further journey — Onega — St. Petersburg Page 170—194

Chapter X. The Return To Paris

The moujik's passage — Lithuania — The Prussian frontier — Konigsberg — Arrest and captivity — M. Kamke — Bail — Flight — Arrival in Paris - The end 195 208 POLAND A CENTURY AFTER ITS DIVISION : AND THE LATE AGITATION IN WARSAW. A century — 1772 — Battle of Macejowiee and Kosciusko — Treaty of 1815 — Opinion of M. de Talleyrand, — Cracow — Treaty of Vienna, Article 6 — Policy of Alexander — Policy of Prussia — Policy of the Emperor of Austria — Nicholas the Tzar — Violent assimilation of Poland with Russia — Posen — Cracow — The last thirty years — Massacre in Galicia — 1848 — Crimean war — The Polish question — Efforts for internal reform — Temperance league — The Agricultural Society — Count Andrew Zamoyski — Krasinski — 'Aurora' — Amnesty of Alexander II. — Conference at Warsaw — Position of Russia 211—263 CONTENTS.

XII A YEAR OF AGITATION IN POLAND. Solution of the Polish question — War in the Crimea — Congress in Paris — Allocution of the Czar — 1856 —'No dreams '— 1860 — February 25, 1861 — Count Andrew Zamoyski — Prince Gortchakof — His death — General Souchozanett — The Marquis Wielopolski — Vacillating policy of Russia — 7th and 8th of April, 1861 — A contested nationality — Horoldo — The procession — The Polish eagle — The elections — State of siege — 15th and 16th of October — General Lambert — Exiles — Catholicism in Poland — The Welicorus — Poland and Russia . . . . . Page 267—321 THE STORY OF A SIBERIAN EXILE.

INTRODUCTION.

. SIBERIA — ADVENT-TEES OF BENIOWSKI — MADAME FEEINSKA — M. ETJF1U PIOTRO-WSKI. rpHERE is an expression in use in Poland which -*■ surpasses all that human eloquence has ever em ployed to give intensity to despair ; it consists of the words ' we never meet again : ' and thus it is that any political exile, when about to depart for Siberia, takes leave of his family and of his friends ; ' we never meet again! ' for the only way in which an exile could find himself once more among those whom he loves would be for him to meet them in the same place of torment. The conviction is deep that they who are once transported to those regions of pain can quit them no more ; that Siberia never relinquishes her prey. For nearly a century she has torn from Poland her most devoted women, her most generous sons. Back to those realms of snow and of blood fly the thoughts of every Pole who inquires into the past fortunes of his B

INTRODUCTION.

. family ; and when the poet dreams for his country a future which is all liberty and bliss, it is again Siberia which rears herself before his eyes, ready after victory itself still to demand her victims. It is a mysterious and dismal land ! — a land ' from which one returns no more,' as the Polish peasants say, or, as Hamlet speaks of that other region which Siberia so fatally resembles, it is an ' undiscovered country from whose bourne no tra veller returns.' And yet now and then some one does come back. Sometimes at the accession of a Czar to the throne, an amnesty (which, however incomplete it may be, receives no less the surname of general) sends back to heart-broken families some of those who have not wholly succumbed to pain. At least, this did happen twice in one century ; at the accession of Paul I. and of Alexander II. : the Emperor Nicholas never felt a similar weakness.

In other cases, very rare ones, and therefore not hard to enumerate, entreaties and prayers backed by some distinguished protection have, after years of persevering efforts, obtained the return of the condemned exile. Finally, we have even seen, re appearing in the light, and among the living, those who, neither waiting nor hoping for an amnesty, whether general or particular, have found, in their own courage and in their own despair, a way of extricating them selves from their horrible fate ; but such a phenomenon as this is not to be met with twice in any hundred years. Several of those who have thus returned, like ghosts ADVENTURES OF BENIOWSKI. 3 from the tomb, have afterwards written an account of their sojourn in these desolate places ; others again left notes on the spot, which were afterwards to be piously collected ; and thus it happens that the literature of Poland possesses a complete collection of the writings of Sibe rian exiles, a collection already sufficiently large, and which, in spite ofthe monotony ofthe subject, certainly is not lacking in interest.

Very strange in truth are the adventures of Beniowski, a soldier of Bar, deported to Kamtschatka, organising there among its indigenous savages a vast conspiracy, administering to them an oath of fideHty to the con federation of Bar, passing Behring's Straits, conquering Madagascar, and coming to offer the sovereignty of it to the French king. A very different fate awaited General Kopec, who was banished some years later to the same district. Submissive, patient, almost serene, during the time of his exile, his mind became clouded at the moment when he was told that the hour of his deliverance had come. Joy was too great for his soul, and he took back to his native country only the rem nants of his reason. He had some sane and lucid inter vals, and these he employed in dictating a few pages of a history of his past sufferings, in a style at once sweet and subdued.

During thirty years did poor Adolphus Januszkiewicz, for the use of an aged mother, who still lived in Lithuania, note down day by day the events of a life which flowed away among the Kirghis b

INTRODUCTION.

. of the Steppes ; and a brother's hand has lately disco vered to us how much filial piety and indomitable courage filled that exile's breast. We omit many other names ; but how can we avoid recalling Madame Eva Felinska and her book — that noble lady and noble Christian, whom the severity of Nicholas sent to be a dweller in Berezov, in the middle of the Yakoutes and the Ostiaks, and whose son has recently (April 1862) been promoted to the archbishopric of Warsaw ? What constitutes the sensible charm of Madame Felinska's work is not only the absence of all recrimination (the annals of the Siberian exiles being in general free from all bitterness), but it is the feminine modesty with which she instinctively conceals her personal misfortunes. One might imagine while reading her pages that they were the remarks of some enquiring person, who sojourned among unreclaimed tribes out of pure eccentricity of mind, did not the cries of a mother who asks for her poor little children undeceive us, and make us only too often aware that the choice rested not in that mother's will.

One day at Berezov,* while digging a well, there was discovered a corpse, which (thanks to the * We use here the Latin v as the best equivalent for the b (viedi) of the Russian alphabet, although the letters / and w in Russian have nearly the same sound. To be consistent, it is necessary to write not only Moskova, Iainbov, Berezov, but Orlov, Menstehikov, etc. : as for the name of Kiow, we adopt the orthography of the inhabitants of this town (Little Ruthenes) ; the Russians alone write it Eaew, pronouncing it always as Kiow. MADAME FELINSKA. 5 glacial nature of the soil) seemed by its preservation, and the state of the brilliant uniform and orders, to have been but a thing of yesterday. By dint of enquiries and recollections, they succeeded, however, in proving that it was the body of Prince Menstchikov, who more than a century ago had died an exile on this very spot, after having lived the minister and the favourite of Czars.

Madame Felinska in recording the event contents her self with exclaiming, ' What a strange chance ! ' She leaves to the mind of the reader the task of filling in the outlines of this touching picture, where a Polish woman, in this same land of banishment, finds herself face to face with the man who first dared with impunity to trample on the Sarmatian soil. One of the most recent and remarkable publications in this the literature of the deported (for so it is called in Poland to distinguish it from the literature of the emigrated) is that which has just been given to us by M. Rufin Piotrowski.* His book recommends itself not only by the richness of its detail and the breadth with which it is composed, but also, and chiefly, because the author of it is an escaped ' Siberian.' In him, since the case of Beniowski, we have the only example of a deported person who has attempted such an enter prise, and who has also succeeded in it. It is the more extraordinary because M. Piotrowski was also condemned * Pamietniki Rufina Piotrowskiego, 3 vols. in 8vo. Posen 1861.

INTRODUCTION.

. to hard labour in the public works. Beniowski, as we have seen, had much assistance and many accomplices. A comparatively narrow tract alone separated him from the land of freedom, whereas our cotemporary had no one to rely on but himself, and without map or succours, almost without money, he had to traverse Siberia in its entire length, and a great part of Russia in Europe in addition. On foot he made the long and perilous journey from beyond Omsk in Western Siberia, penetrating the Oural mountains to Archangel, Petersburg, Riga, even into Prussia, never imparting to a living soul his fatal secret, in order not to involve any one in his own pro bable and terrible' fate. If the narrative of M. Pio trowski has not all that romantic brilliancy which the story of the confederate of Bar can afford, it reveals to us greater dangers and a perseverance of will far superior in every way.

Nor is the marvellous element wanting to this strange Odyssey, albeit its hero is no mythological being ; he exists, nay, he lives among us, and we rub shoulders with him every day. This escaped convict and exile from the banks of Irtiche, this former unhcqjpy one (for thus do the natives of Siberia call the deported Poles), is now a modest pro fessor in that excellent Polish school of the Batignolles, for which the emigrated sons of Poland are partly indebted to the generosity of France. M. Rufin Pio trowski was one of those heroic emissaries who, from the extreme limits of Polish emigration, sought to M. RUFIN PIOTROWSKI. 7 carry back and impart to an oppressed country the hopes, the ideas, and the dreams of exile ; and his narrative begins precisely at the point when he started from Paris, on the journey which he undertook to Kaminiec in Podolia.

These emissaries brought with them, generally speaking, impossible plans, and calls which could not be answered, because sufficient reflec tion had not been bestowed upon them. Sometimes, too, they imported ideas which were positively dangerous, and if they almost always half atoned for their errors by a constancy which braved both death and danger, they did not the less draw along with them in their own un happy fate some generous and innocent victims. M. Piotrowski has at least this consolation, that he never made himself the apostle of perverse doctrines, and that he never sowed the seeds of hatred. His actions as an emissary were always enlightened by sentiments of that religious charity to which mob law in all its meanings is utterly repugnant. The same profoundly religious spirit characterises his book — a book which was written now many years ago, but which, for reasons obvious in a case of Polish publication, it was impracti cable to publish before 1861.

We have thought that the recollections of M. Piotrowski were likely to find favour with the French public. At a time when nothing else is heard of in Poland but sentences to Siberia pro nounced upon the most respectable of her citizens, upon canons, rabbins, provosts, merchants, professors,

INTRODUCTION.

. students, and artisans, it surely cannot be useless or amiss to explain by one striking example all that is contained for Poland and the Poles in the single word «deportation.' Is it necessary now to add that what we are about to read in these pages is in every particular strict matter of fact ? The narrative of M. Piotrowski bears the stamp of truth, and of a good faith which pleads for itself, and removes every suspicion of exag geration. For the rest, as we shall see, the author hardly, if ever, blames persons ; as often as not, he ex presses himself with regard to them in words marked by a lively sense of gratitude. It is the system only which he accuses ; and, shall we confess it, the coun trymen of M. Piotrowski, and above all his com panions in misfortune, while unanimous as to the perfect authenticity of his tale, have rather reproached him with an excessive indulgence in speaking of the Russian officials.

How many Poles, for example, have been surprised to see the portraits which he has sketched of Prince Bibikov and of M. Pissarev, men whose names are so painfully distinguished in the annals of the Poland of to-day ? As we do not think it necessary to anticipate or preach a conviction which will soon make itself felt, it remains for us only to point out the method which we have followed in borrowing here from the Polish original of the book. A mere analysis would have effaced its character of individuality, while it spoilt the originality of the book. What is pre- HIS NARRATIVE. sented here is a faithful abridgement of a more de tailed and lengthy narrative — an abridgement of an abyss, if one may borrow Pascal's energetic phrase — for the ' Recollections of a Siberian Exile ' reveal to us a perfect abyss of suffering and of misery.

Chapter I. Of

A MISSION INTO POLAND. A PASSPORT — THE JOURNEY — THE RUSSIAN FRONTIER — KAMINIE$ — A TEACHER OF LANGUAGES ANNOYANCES OF DISGUISE — M. ABAZA — SUSPICIONS OF THE POLICE. [" HAD long decided to take my departure for my ■*- native land, and was only occupied by the necessary preparations for it, when I fell suddenly sick in Paris. It was in the year 1842. I was received into the hospital of La Pitie, then under the direction of Baron Lisfranc, who had formerly served with Polish troops during the wars of the Empire, and who still preserved towards them a friendly sentiment. A number of my compatriots and companions in exile found themselves along with me in the hospital, a prey to the two forms of disease so common among us emigrants — consump tion and madness. More than one of them died in my ward, and at my side — a sight which was well calculated to sadden my spirit, for they died, though without uttering a single complaint, in utter prostra tion and gloom.

One would almost have said that A PASSPORT. 11 they had felt, in leaving this world, as if, even in the next, for them there might still be no country. This sojourn in the hospital was nevertheless not without a good result on my projects. I had the fortune to make the acquaintance of another invalid, an American from the United States, who promised to get a passport for me, a thing which was indispensable for my undertaking, and which up to this time I had never been able to procure. Leaving, after a detention of about six weeks, the hospital from which the American had been discharged a few days earlier, I went at once to seek him at the address which he had given me. He then and there handed over to me an English passport, made out in the name of ' Joseph Catharo, native of La Valette (Malta), aged 36.' The document was quite regular, delivered at the English embassy in Paris, and signed by the ambassador, Lord Cowley.

I could desire nothing better. In my situation an English passport was preferable to any other. I spoke Italian perfectly, whereas I could only speak English very imperfectly; but then my supposed Maltese antecedents would make good any failings on that score. The different visa of Baden, Wurtemberg, Bavaria, Austria, and Turkey, were soon procured ; but at the office of the Minister for Foreign Affairs there had been put alongside of the seals two printed lines containing these fatal words — ' Bound to present himself at the Prefecture of the Police.' Now I had all sorts of reasons for not wishing to announce my departure at the Prefecture of Police, where they might very likely have had more inquisi tiveness than I had found in my American friend. After casting about in my mind for a long time how best to dispose of this luckless clause, I selected the not very ingenious plan of spilling some ink over the two lines, thus counterfeiting a big blot, and leaving nothing visible but the seal of the Minister.

The method was a rude enough one, but it was not the less serviceable, and at none of the numberless police stations at which the passport had afterwards to be presented was any exception taken to the blot which disfigured it. Thus accommodated, and furnished with 150 francs, which were to suffice for the wants of a long journey, I left Paris on January 9, 1843. After having traversed without hindrance Strasburg, Stuttgart, Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna, I took the road from the last-named place to Pesth. In the interests of my mission I was to make a month's stay in the capital of Hungary ; and I profited by this delay, for I addressed in the meantime to the English ambassador at Vienna the request that he would renew my passport, my intention being to go to Russia instead of to Constan tinople, and to make a stay there of considerable length.

An answer was soon returned. At the end of a few days I received from Vienna, in exchange for my old passport, a new one, of a recent date, hap- THE RUSSIAN FRONTIER. pily free from any ominous blots of ink, and vise for Russia. On February 28th, I quitted Pesth, meaning to reach Karniniec in Podolia, the term and goal of my voyage. I found that the small sum which I had brought with me from Paris had, in spite of the most frugal way of living, greatly diminished ; and I resolved to make the rest of my journey from Hungary to Podolia on foot. The season was favourable, the scenery magnificent, the passage of the Karpathians so splendid as to make me forget any slight fatigue. It was a strange, some times almost a diverting, sensation for me thus to tra verse Gralicia, and to have to ask my way in execrable German of the few Austrian officials, while the peasants gave utterance to the, most minute remarks upon me, all in that Polish speech which I declared I did not understand.

The pleasantries of our peasants on the subject of 'the dumb man' did not, however, miss fire or fail to amuse me greatly. To these jokes there were often added on their part marks of respect to a stranger come from the ends of the earth. ' I am sure he comes a long way off,' they would say to each other ; ' from very far, from where even the crow brings no bones.' At last, on one fine March morning, 1843, I found myself at the boundary which separates the Austrian and Russian territory, near the village of Bojany. The. frontier was marked by two barriers, which were distant the one from the other by a few dozen paces. Upon showing my papers the Austrian barrier was opened for me without any difficulty ; but when I arrived at tbe Russian side, it was in vain that I called and looked round in all directions — no one came.

Tired of waiting I passed by, stooping under the beam, and directed my steps to a house at a little distance, which seemed to be the Custom House office. The astonishment there was great when I was seen to arrive thus unaccompanied by a soldier. 'How did you pass the frontier V ' At the barrier, down there.' ' Who opened it for you ?' ' Nobody. I called in vain, and at last determined to slip underneath it.' ' What ! the guard was not there at his post ? ' cried the functionary, as much exasperated he rushed out to give orders, of which his menacing tones only too fully explained the nature. Having returned to his room, he emptied out upon me the remains of his ill humour ; but the sight of the English passport had a sudden and pacifying effect on his wrath. While my papers were being examined, and they took down the answers which I made to sundry questions relating to my journey, I heard the distant cries of the poor soldier, who was expiating under the bastinado what had been either his negligence or perhaps indeed only my hastiness.

At last I was free to leave the office, with a feeling of satisfaction which was not, however, wholly unalloyed. There was indeed something KAMINIEg. 15 ominous in this incident attending my entrance into the territory of the Emperor Nicholas. From the first step I had defied Russian vigilance, but I had at the same time, albeit involuntarily, caused the punishment of an unhappy creature, and my heart was pained at it. On March 22nd, I reached Kaminiec, at midday. I had my portmanteau in one hand, while with the other I opened the door of an inn that had been pointed out to me, and I found myself suddenly in the middle of a large assembly of people, and in a room where they were playing billiards. I had purposely kept my hat on my head, and by this sign, so contrary to our national habits, I was immediately recognised to be a stranger or a Frenchman, for the two words are among us considered to be synonymous.

The sensation, which was evident in the room, was very curious. ' A Frenchman, a Frenchman,' they murmured on all sides, speaking with interest and even with sympathy, but with a manifest fear of com promising themselves by an imprudent or even a friendly word. Two men only ventured to come for ward frankly and converse with me — the one was a Pole from Cracow, only passing through Kaminiec, and therefore less obliged to be circumspect ; the other was a Russian officer, who left the billiard-table when he heard me utter a few sentences in French, and who immediately showed the greatest readiness to make my acquaintance. ' You are, then, come to stay here for some time ? Oh ! pray remain, I beseech you. It is a fine country ! beautiful women, too ! But it is at Warsaw especially that one finds charming women.