A FRIGHTFUL STORY.

Marlborough Press, Volume XXIII, Issue 1348, 31 August 1882, Page 4

A FRIGHTFUL STORY.

A writer in the Faria Figaro tells the following frightful story of discipline in the Russian army, which is alleged to have occurred some years ago:—The colonel of a certain Russian regiment, ferociously tyrannical, and I may say merciless, towards his soldiers, was in the habit of treating this human flock like a pack of brutes. He disciplined with the knout, sentencing them to whippings for having one button insufficiently polished, whipping a non-com-missioned officer for one stain on his cloak, striking veterans of Borodino in the face for saluting too slowly, sending poor wretches to Siberia for giving too free an answer. In short, during the lapse of years, this colonel had made himself so detested by his men that he reaped a frightful vengence from the seed of hatred he had sown. One morning during parade he suddenly saw file off from the regiment a company of soldiers bearing, instead of muskets, those long rods which cut deeply into the flesh at every blow. Nevertheless, he had given no orders 1 “ Who is that for ?” he demanded. A grendier advanced from the ranks and replied, with terrible coolness. “For thee!” The entire regiment, non-commissioned officers and soldiers, were in the plot which had been concocted in the barracks. The whole regiment was present at the terrible spectacle. The colonel was seized, his uniform torn off, he was tied down in a wheel-barrow and wheeled up and down before the ranks of the grenadiers, armed with rods, all of whom struck and insulted himThe officers who attempted to aid their colonel were immediately seized and bayonets pointed at their throat. Some were taken away ; others garroted. Only one soldier attempted to take part with them. Then a sergeant, still pallid from the effects of his last whipping, put his musket to the soldier’s temple and blew his brains out. All the regiment saw its colonel pass under the rod. When it was all over they opened a kiln-oven. The colonel waß flung into it, all bleeding, together with the officers who had obeyed him. And when the furnace was well fed, the soldiers heated it slowly, slowly—until at laßt that hideous, heavy and revolting smell of melting fat and burning flesh arose in the air, which the savages of the Russian frontier inhaled some days ago at a Jewish cemetery at Smargon. But the tragedy at Novgorod was not yet over ! An imperial courier bore to the Czar the news of the mutiny. Nicholas listened, became white, but said nothing except to order four batteries of artillery to Novgorod. Ten days after a white-haired and grey-moustached Major-General, accompanied by a single aide-de-camp, knocked at the door of the barracks which the soldiers had never left since the murder of their chiefs. The General gazed coldly upon those pale men, all neatly and faultlessly uniformed, who gave him the military salute. Not a reproach—not one useless word. He only said to them : “ At six o’clock tomorrow morning the regiment will assemble in undress uniform and without arms at the Tartar camp upon the Little Square. Order of the Czar,” Not one voice replied. But the next day upon the narrow square, all in ranks without arms, in their long grey coats, their sergeants at their usual posts, all "the mutinous soldiers were there, in lines regular as if adjusted to a string, with a double 'line of lance-bearing Cossacks before and behind. Then all at once from every far spire, all the great belis began to toll. The Cossack horse men withdrew. Only the unarmed infantry remained upon the square, with folded arms, waiting 1 Then there came a long, low roll of drums, and with it from all the avenues leading into the square came volleys of grape, like iron hail. Then nothing was heard awhile but the thunder of the cannon in that city, otherwise silent as a cemetery, when men, women and children, kneeling before their holy images, were praying for the soldiers they were shooting down in the square. And during an interval in the cannonade, a hymn rolled up from the square ; for the soldiers were dying with the prayers of their chilhood upon their lips. The cannon thundered for hours. -Then all was silent. Powder and iron rested awhile.,. The cannoneers entered the square and recoiled at the sight of those ranks of men mown down like wheat—the marsh of blood. . . . From under the dead they pulled out a few still-breathing victims, able to live awhile. “ What shall be done with them,' General —shall we put them in the hospital ? “ Put them under the knout 1”