neat controversy and theological fine-drawing—as a sentiment, an outlet for the poetical instincts of his Slavonic nature; intensely prone to mysticism, a tendency perhaps painfully exaggerated by his deprivation of well-nigh every intellectual pursuit. It therefore forms more a resource for his heart than a subject of speculation or of calm study. Religion to him means not only the practice of domestic virtues, but still more the faithful observance of public duties: enervating asceticism, or tame submission to wrong, forms no part of it; nor can he conceive religious excellence practised at the expense of patriotism.
The proselytizing efforts of the Czar were to little purpose. The lower clergy were too numerous and too poor to be bribed; and their ranks were now reinforced from the students of the University, members of some of the most honourable families in the country, who renounced all the flatteries of their Russian masters, and the attractions of a life of ease, to devote themselves to the improvement of the peasantry in far-away villages.
Hope and resolution were kept alive in the hearts of the people by their spiritual teachers, from whom they learned not merely lessons of self-denial, and those precepts of patience and submission so beloved of tyrants,—not merely their duties with reference to another world, but those which, as brave men and faithful citizens, were demanded of them in this. Strange as it may seem to our western ideas, liberty found no more enthusiastic apostles than in the monastic orders. The monks at that period formed a peculiar class, recruited in great part from Dombrowski’s old troopers, who thus escaped enlistment under a foreign master. They made no pretence to a false asceticism; they “prayed to the God of mercy, as they had prayed to the God of battles,” like honest, simple-hearted soldiers, who felt that, come what would, they had done and would do their duty, though they as little imagined themselves heroes as saints.
With strong religious feelings, like all their countrymen, they made no parade of their profession, but took an honest satisfaction in turning out a good soup, and still more in sharing it with the poor of their village. They were careful farmers, proud of their pigs and their poultry-yards, apt surgeons, too, ready at any moment to join a wolf-hunt, or seek out some wanderer lost in the winter snow-drift. Though many joined the fraternities who, under other circumstances, would have lapsed into idleness and self-indulgence, they were insensibly influenced by the example of their companions, and shamed into following their example. Hidden behind the altar, or safe in their driest cellar, the good brothers kept their old swords and muskets, trusting the secret only to those whose faith was sure, for in every monastery and cloister it was seldom that one of Rozniecki’s agents had not found admission. Then from time to time, when the spy was safe in his cell, the brave old tonsured warriors stole silently down to inspect their treasure, carefully cleared off each spot of rust from the well-hacked blade, and polished the trusty barrel, as they whispered together of the day that must come soon when they should be used against the Moskovite.
Such, is a brief sketch of the “system” which brought about the Polish Revolution of 1831. As the time of the outbreak approached, Constantine made his “preventive,” “repressive,” and “retributive” measures still more and more severe. The censorship of the press was thought not strict enough, so a commissioner was sent to Vienna to study that system which had condemned Silvio Pellico to his long martyrdom. From 12,000 to 13,000 Russian soldiers, with their officers, were garrisoned in Warsaw. A vague feeling of the “coming struggle” penetrated even Constantine’s obtuse brain; never had the secret police so much to do, never were the dungeons and “piombi” so full. At the prison windows, spies were constantly posted to note down the names of all persons who, in passing, looked up with any expression of interest. But the very excess of this rigour defeated its own object: men became reckless, as they do in sieges or in a long-continued plague, when death grows too familiar to be feared. There was, moreover, no conspiracy—only the whole country was weary of the weight of passive endurance, and felt that an appeal to arms must soon become inevitable.
It was at this time that the Commander-in-Chief, driving through the streets of Warsaw one day, suddenly caught some notes of “Dombrowski’s Mazurek,” the famous national song of Poland, which he had shortly before prohibited under the heaviest penalties. He at once made the coachman draw up, and commanded an adjutant in attendance to arrest the disobedient wretch who dared whistle the incendiary air.
“Pardon me, your Imperial Highness,” cried the adjutant, returning without the culprit, “but—”
“Hold your tongue, sir! I heard the cursed ‘Mazurek’ distinctly: I have prohibited it, and I will see that the rascal is punished who presumes to defy my orders.”
“Your Highness, it is only necessary—”
“Not another word! Bring the wretch directly!”
“May it please your Imperial Highness, I cannot,—the offender is—”
“Not possible? What! when I command it! Do you want to share his fate?”
“May it please your Imperial Highness, the creature is a starling.”
“So much the better; if it is only a bird, that’s no reason it should escape the law. Buy it—there’s a ducat. It shall be taken to the guard-house, and its head chopped off. It will serve as an example.”
There were 40,000 Polish infantry and 15,000 cavalry in the kingdom, and as Constantine, despite the most harassing requirements and all the efforts of his police, could find no signs of disaffection in their ranks, he blindly believed that “his children,” as he called them, were willing to become the executioners of their countrymen if he but willed it. But the army submitted to his discipline the better to defend the rights of the country it represented when the proper moment came. The soldiers, with few exceptions, were all devoted to the patriotic cause; and, while gradually prepared for the coming struggle by
