Next day (December 20th), I had determined to start for the Caucasus, because very severe fighting was reported there, and it was said, I believe truly, that in some places the Georgians had set up an independent government of their own. Accordingly I sledged to the station, took my ticket, and registered my luggage to Baku by Rostoff-on-Don, occupied my place in the heated train, hung up my fur coat and snow boots, and prepared to endure the full blast of a Russian carriage for the four days and nights of the journey. As is the way in Russia, the train filled up nearly an hour before it was time to start, and we all sat contemplating each other and wondering what our manners would be like on the way. There were a large number of peasants and country people in the train, packed together into family sections with their children, and baskets, and bedding. Next to me sat a cleanly old man and his wife, who held their goods upon their knees with a sturdy resignation, as much as to say, “Now let Heaven do its worst.”

So we waited, and taking out a book I was far away in the city of the “Lys Rouge” upon the Arno, when I became dimly conscious of a feeling of uneasiness in the carriages, as when a motor breaks down and the City men fret. Doors were opened and heads put out, and footsteps passed up and down the corridor. Distant shouting and questions were heard. The man opposite me packed up his lunch and went out. I followed, and saw a party of railway men just uncoupling the engine, which puffed away for twenty yards and then stood still. With a long diminishing hiss, the steam of the heating apparatus rushed out from the pipes and left the train to grow cold, like the dead.

“Strike?” I said, going up to the workmen. “Yes, general strike at twelve o’clock,” they answered, and I gathered up my book and coat. The rest of my luggage could not be recovered then, and next night it went wandering down the line upon the train, and was no more seen. For Christmas was coming, and many trains that were wandering upon the road supplied seasonable gifts for the peasants’ needs. Hundreds of nice geese and ducks they gave them, loads of vegetables, barrels of sugar. For miles beyond the city, the railway was like an enormous Christmas hamper, full of good cheer, and many a starving peasant recognized for the first time the true significance of the holy festival.

As to the cleanly old man and woman, they sat there still, clutching their goods. It seemed that nothing short of the Last Trumpet could induce them to stir. They had taken their tickets, and their confidence in railways was unshaken. They looked at me with the sympathetic tolerance we show to a crank who questions gravitation or maintains the earth is flat. The peasants in like manner sat still and cherished their young. It seemed incredible they should not go after they had taken all that trouble to get started for home, and had settled down into their lairs in the nice warm train. I left them still seated there, amid expostulations growing shrill. But in the next fortnight I had to return many times to the station, and day after day I found them encamped in the waiting-rooms, one family living on a table by day and under it at night, another resolutely holding a leather bench, and two or three nested behind the bar. To keep them alive, the railway issued a dole of about a shilling a day for the grown-ups, and they cooked their tea and bits of food at the stoves or inside the locomotives. But it was not a happy way of spending life. Children sprawled and fought and wailed; mothers tried in vain to wash and clean; men tripped over girls asleep upon the boards. And it was worse when, a few days later, scores of soldiers dribbled in somehow from the war, unwashed, bewildered, and wretched, and were thrown into the station among the peasants, to live there as best they could. The smell of men’s tents in the morning in war time is not pleasant, but it is Arabia compared to those waiting-rooms.

When I got back that Wednesday from the station to the middle of the city, I found the general strike already proclaimed. All the banks were shut and barricaded. If any shops were still open, parties of strikers or revolutionists went into them and compelled the owners to put the shutters up. The schools were closed, the work-people walked out of the mills, clerks left their offices, and several hundred thousand men and women were turned loose into the streets with nothing to do. Such gas as was in the retorts was allowed to burn itself out, but electricity was cut off at once, both for light and for the trams, and so was the water for a time. People began to store it in baths and pails; they even searched the roofs for clean snow and melted it down; but next day the water supply was restored on the ground that it was essential for the existence of the poor. Bread was essential too, and a few bakeries were allowed to keep working; but even that afternoon women were standing in line outside the bakers’ shops, and in the following days they began to gather there long before dawn. In the hotels, and I suppose in most well-to-do homes, bread sank from white to grey, vegetables disappeared, the price of meat doubled, unknown portions of animals were seen, beer ceased to flow, and the suffering rich almost learnt how the poor die daily.

I went up the Tverskaya, already mentioned as the chief radius of Moscow for shops and cafés. It was full of wandering and uncertain crowds. Where the circle of Boulevards crosses it by the Strastnoi convent, I found a troop of horse drawn up in front of the poet Pushkin’s statue. They were facing a thick and excited crowd, from the midst of which a white-faced orator came forward and, standing at the very nose of the officer’s charger, addressed him with impassioned harangues, imploring him to abandon the cause of tyranny, and no longer to trample over the corpses of his fellow-countrymen. The officer listened with genial politeness, and sometimes even answered an argument or raised some objection with a smile. His pleasing manners encouraged hope. The women of the crowd began to say nice things to him, and all through Russian life there is a familiarity among the classes which we have never reached. A friendly sympathy pervaded the air. Could it be possible that the troops would “fraternize”? Ah, how often revolutionists in all countries had told me the troops would fraternize!

But the officer gave an order, and the detachment wheeled off, two deep, down the Boulevard to their barracks, the crowd clapping their hands, the women waving their scarves and blowing kisses to them in cheerful mockery as they went. Two were left behind, waiting for a third whose horse they held, and on them the orator now turned his eloquence, while the rest laughed and cheered, and tried to pat their horses. But they were only two common peasants with broad, red faces, and had no pretty answers to make.

They only sat there looking straight before them while the taunts grew louder and the people began to crush threateningly upon them. I was close at their side and could see their fists doubled tightly round the loaded whips on their saddles. But at that moment their comrade came back, and all three galloped after the others amid a storm of derision and angry cries.

Hardly had they gone when from a tea-house opposite three red flags on poles emerged and were marched into the square. Uncertain what to do next, the boys who were carrying them started down the Tverskaya, and the crowd followed in a dense mass, shouting the “Marseillaise.” They reached the open space in front of the Governor-General’s house where the loyalists had held their panic the day before. But hardly had they passed the porch, when a squadron of Cossacks swept into the crowd behind from a side street at right angles and pursued the red flags at full gallop, whirling their nagaikas and riding down all before them. The procession scattered like leaves. The squadron divided, part charging down the main street, and part across the square. In a few seconds nothing remained upon that open space but some men and girls stretched upon the snow, and the three long strips of red cotton which lay as the emblems of freedom before the Governor-General’s door. The police carried off the wounded to the cells; an infantry battalion was brought out to line the square, and many days were to pass before I could cross it again.

That night, all the main streets stood in absolute darkness, only the narrow side-streets being lit with a glimmer of gas. No sledges ran. Here and there a beggar shuffled out upon me from his lurking-place, or a figure visible for a moment disappeared silently. No women walked; on them too the strike had fallen. Houses and churches stood black and lifeless, like an abandoned city which time had not yet ruined.

The next day was ominously quiet; no business was done; no newspapers were published; people kept indoors; even the restaurants and provision shops were shut, and in the Hotel Métropole the music ceased. Instead of that melancholy orchestra, a battery of eight guns lay hidden there now; the guests were turned out, and it was said the Governor-General himself had made the hotel his headquarters. Others had seen him take refuge in the sacred enclosure of the Kremlin, where the ancient gates were all shut and guarded. Even in the Old Town they brought planks and beams, and nailed up nearly all the gates. Troops were posted at the Nicolai or St. Petersburg station and the line kept open for the arrival of reinforcements. The engines were worked by soldiers and the whole length of the road watched by pickets who were provisioned from the trains. The Government dared not trust the ordinary Moscow garrison, but if outside troops could only be spared from the other capital, all might be well.

A large meeting of the strikers assembled at the Aumont or Aquarium and called upon the revolutionary bands or “militia” (drouzchina) to begin. They pointed to the shameless reaction of the past two weeks, to the imprisonment of the labour leaders in St. Petersburg, the arrest of all Progressive editors, the refusal of the Tsar to make the expected concessions on his name-day. He had made no concessions, he had only sought to buy the loyalty of the troops by promises of better food. It was evident that the Government was forcing civil war upon the people, and unless the revolutionists would act at once, the workmen would throw up the game, go back to their work, and abandon all hope of change for ever.

The revolutionists hesitated. They were not ready—they would not be ready till February—not really ready till April. They were ill-armed, had only eighty rifles as yet; a good many revolvers certainly, but not enough bombs. Besides, if the Government wanted a rising, they obviously ought not to rise. It is a bad strategist who lets the enemy dictate the time for battle. The strike had been proclaimed in St. Petersburg, certainly, but the leaders were all in prison, and already it was seen to be a very half-hearted affair. Both the strike and revolutionary action should be simultaneous in all the large cities, if the great end was to be won. Christmas was near, and all the work-people liked to save up a little money for the festival. Every one bought a bottle of vodka, if nothing else. The peasants would be turned against the revolution if the railway remained blocked over Christmastide, and they could not sell their produce. Already threats had come in from the country, prophesying horrible deaths for the railway men unless the strike ended at once. There was just time to appease the peasants now, for the Russian Christmas Day was still sixteen days ahead. So they hesitated, appealing for delay and a better opportunity.

But the Government had determined that neither delay nor opportunity should be given. Their one thought was the urgent need of money. The power that commands force is the Government, and the power that commands money can command force; that was their just and simple argument. Their one hope was to stir up an ill-prepared rebellion, to crush it down, and stand triumphant before the nations of Europe, confidently inviting new loans in the name of law and order, so as to pay the interest on the old and “maintain the value of the rouble.” For this object it was essential that people should be killed in large numbers. The death of every Progressive went to establish the credit of the Treasury, and unless the slaughter came quickly, the officials could not count upon their pay. The only alternative was national bankruptcy in the face of the world, and no more hope of pleasant loans again. So troops and police were stationed round the Aquarium meeting and met the crowd as it came out with showers of blows from clubs and whips. At all costs the people must be goaded into violence, or the Government’s strategy would have failed.

The final stroke was given the next day (Friday, December 22nd) and it proved entirely successful. It was evening, and a body of some two hundred of the revolutionary bands, including several women, was gathered in a flat belonging to a leader named Fiedler, I think a lawyer. He lived in the top floor of a tall white house, just opposite the British Consulate, and not far from the post office.

The place had long been watched by spies. About ten o’clock, as the bands were debating war and peace, a knock came at the door and a summons to surrender. They looked out of the window, and the street below was full of dark forms with gleams of steel. So it had begun in earnest at last! “And there shall be no drawing back,” thought one of their number, and seizing up a small bomb from the table, he threw it with all his might among the dark figures below. It burst with a flash that revealed the waiting troops, and an officer rolled in the dirt, never to be loved by women again. Two men also were wounded. Some said two officers were killed; some said twenty, and hundreds of men. But to have been in a town where men are really killed sheds a reflected glory, and the more numerous the dead, the finer the reputation of survivors.

The flash of that bomb was a signal for war. The enemy was ready. They had made their preparations for the event, and answered bomb by bomb. While the meeting was breaking up in confusion, rushing from room to room, some peering into the street, some fighting their way downstairs, a shell came whizzing through the corner window and burst against the opposite wall. From the description and the hole it made, I think it was a segment or percussion shell, but it was followed rapidly by case-shot, and at so short a range it is possible that nothing but case shot was used. For the guns had been placed in a main street, at not much more than fifty yards’ distance, and commanded an uninterrupted sight of the whole top story. At once the fatal disadvantage of the revolutionists was seen. Probably there was not a man among them who could have thrown a bomb fifty yards clear; but to the Government’s guns it was a childish range even for case-shot, and without cause for pride they could throw shrapnel and percussion bombs up to four thousand yards two or three times a minute.

The bombardment of the house continued for about half an hour, the shells crashing through the windows and against the brickwork, but not doing very much damage except to furniture and glass, for most of the revolutionists were crowded together on the staircase, and many were escaping through backyards and over walls. A few, however, with great gallantry remained and kept up a revolver-fire from the windows to cover the retreat of the others. Four or five of them were killed by shell-fire, and fifteen were badly wounded. It was said next day that Fiedler was among the killed, and I was told how he had stood outside a window in defiance and been blown to pieces. I was even shown bits of his coat and trousers still sticking to the window-frame; but I was not quite convinced, especially when I heard of his being shot in gaol a fortnight later. In such cases it is hardly ever possible to discover the truth from either side. Even eye-witnesses are generally too excited or too terrified to see, and the Russian Government lives upon the lie.

Towards midnight, a hundred and twenty revolutionists, including ten girls, surrendered. A high official told me next day that the girls had been released, but it is not thus that the Government treats girls, and I know now that he was lying or repeating a lie. As to the rest, he admitted they would be shot, because the prisons were already too full to hold them. The loss of over a hundred was a very serious thing for the party of progress. All manner of estimates of the revolutionary fighting strength have been made. Some of the best authorities said they refused to put it over 15,000 men. A very careful onlooker, who certainly had special opportunities of knowing, fixed on 1,500 as the just figure. The revolutionists themselves maintained, and still maintain, that only 500 were engaged on the barricades. In that case, they had lost a sixth part of their force at the first stroke, and they could not afford to lose a man. For myself, I believe no estimate of numbers in wartime, unless given by the man who issues rations—and to the revolutionists no one issued rations. But to me it is utterly incredible that only 500 were opposed to the Government troops during the following nine days. Five hundred is only half a battalion, and every colonel knows how tiny a handful even a full battalion is when it comes into action. They may mean that only 500 were adequately armed, but in that case the estimate is too high. The revolutionists were said to have possessed two or three machine-guns, though I never saw them or heard them, and attribute the rumour to the identity of the word for machine-gun and repeating rifle (Pulemet). But by their own admission they had only eighty rifles, with very few cartridges, and the remainder were armed with various kinds of revolver, especially the so-called “Brownings” of Belgian make. They are good enough weapons, and will kill at a hundred yards if they hit at all. But few revolvers can be depended on over twenty yards, and I have never found them much good, except as a moral influence, or for the re-assuring comfort of suicide in extremis.

Five hundred could not have done the work. That night the face of a third of Moscow was changed. The morning brought rumours of an assault on the Nicolai station with the loss of 200 men; of assaults on the Government house and the Prefecture of police; but, worse than all, of a serious rising in some cotton and lace mills south of the city, and the probable danger of several English overseers and their families. Driving out early in a sledge to the beginning of the open country, near the place on the river where the Russian people once built a house for their painter Verestchagin, I found a few families of Lancastrians and Nottingham men, anxious and apprehensive indeed but not surrounded by bloodthirsty mobs as we had heard. The hands on strike had been marching with red flags up and down the road as usual the day before and singing the “Marseillaise,” when they were set upon in front and rear by Dragoons and Cossacks with the usual results. Now they were hanging about their factories or living-barracks, indignant and dangerous with the sense of wrong, but outwardly quiet, and only cursing and threatening us with fists and stones as we went about among them. Not that the English overseers were hated. In themselves they were popular, but as the rulers and the best-paid workmen, with separate houses of their own, they were marked as the representatives of overwhelming capitalism.

As I looked out over the silent mills to the open country and wretched villages beyond, the sound of a big gun suddenly came from Moscow. Turning round, I saw the great city glittering with domes and crosses, distinct with towers and lines of brilliant light under the frosty sun, while all the church bells were booming and tinkling for the vigil of some feast. Again came the sound of a gun, and then again, and I had known from the first there was no mistaking it. I had not then heard of the attack on Fiedler’s house, for one of the peculiarities of Russian life is that the Last Judgment might be in progress in one street while, unaware of your danger, you continued increasing your record of sins in the next. But now there could be doubt no longer; the open war had begun.

In half an hour I was crossing the bridge and climbing the Kremlin hill to the Red Square. Crowds of well-dressed people, clerks, and shop-boys were hurrying past me away from the city. In spite of the strike, they had walked in by habit that morning, or merely to see what was going on. But guns in the street were a breach of business habits, and now they had seen enough and preferred to lunch at home. Similarly, I think, Brixton would be unusually full at midday if the shells were bursting in Cheapside; and it was in the Cheapside of Moscow that the guns were then at work.

If we may take Moscow as a circle with the Kremlin for centre, it was on the north-west segment of the circle that the revolutionists made their most serious attack. Certainly, there were other attacks as well—two on the St. Petersburg station, against which the whole effort of the rising ought to have been concentrated; and one attack was made on the Rezan station close by. The rumour came in every morning for the next week that both had been burnt to the ground, though when I visited them, I always found them untouched. Other attacks were also made, and there was a certain amount of fighting on the south side of the wandering little river. But the main interest lay in that north-west segment, of which the Tverskaya, the Dmitrovka, and Petrovka are the main radii, while the Boulevards enclosing the “White Town” form the nearer of the two concentric arcs, and the Sadovaya, or garden circle, the further. The Sadovaya, which runs round the whole city, was a real circumference or boundary to the fighting area during the first few days, and if one started from the red triumphal arch near the Nicolai station, and followed the arc westward and south till the river was reached, the whole scene of action would be included in that segment. But concentric circles make the most puzzling plan on which a town can be built, because it is difficult in walking to allow for the almost imperceptible curves. Only in Moscow and Monastir have I seen such arrangements of streets, and only in those two towns have I ever hesitated about my way.

The revolutionists had chosen this segment for attack because it contained the Government house, the Prefecture of Police, the great Central Prison, from which the exiles used to start for Siberia, and at least three important barracks. As far as they had any definite plan at all, their idea seems to have been to drive a kind of wedge into the heart of the city, supporting the advance by barricades on each side, so as to hamper the approach of troops. The point of the wedge was to be driven down the Tverskaya as far as the Government house, and if once that position had been gained, they probably hoped that the rest would be easy. Accordingly, during the night they had thrown up barricades across all streets leading into the Tverskaya beyond the circle of the Boulevards, and in all streets parallel to it. By morning the point of the wedge had nearly reached the open space where the Boulevard runs and the Pushkin statue confronts the Strasnoi Convent.

That was the main and serious line of attack, as the revolutionists designed it. But at the time it was hard to understand their purpose, for in street fighting one can get no view, the firing comes from many sides at once, and you are open to equal danger from friend or foe. There is no front or rear, and you feel you are nothing but flanks. To every point of the compass you are exposed; there is no obvious line of advance, for the enemy may always be behind you. And there is no line of retreat, for at any moment your communications with your base may be cut, and you may be shot at for hours from street to street before you can get home for food or sleep. But the greatest difficulty in grasping the situation at once arose from the mere numbers of the barricades which had been already thrown up since the previous night. Over a large part of the district barricades had grown up quite at random. They appeared in every lane. Miniature barricades crossed the footpaths on the Boulevard gardens. They were especially thick in the Tsvietnoi, or Flower Boulevard, and often so flimsy that a push would knock them over. As signs of spiritual grace, nothing could have been nobler, for they were the work of high-hearted young men and girls, who, having read that barricades are the proper things in revolution, hastened to build them anywhere and anyhow. Tubs, shutters, gates, iron railings, telegraph poles, and front doors were hurriedly piled across a street or path, and left standing there as a menace to tyrants. So they were a menace to tyrants. Every bandbox there proved the deep-rooted hatred to tyranny. But not one of them would stop a bullet, and there was no possibility or intention of defending them for a moment. They were the work of splendid children learning to make war, and when at last they were torn up and burnt, one passed over their smouldering ruins with the regret we feel for broken toys.

The very multitude of these barricades (early next morning I counted one hundred and thirty of them, and I had not seen nearly half) made it difficult to understand the main purpose of all the fighting, when I found myself suddenly plunged into the middle of it that first afternoon. Alone, and very ignorant both of the language and the town, I could not at first discover any design on either side, beyond setting up barricades and knocking them down again. It seemed as if the Government might have left the revolutionists alone, and simply issued a proclamation to the citizens of Moscow: “Keep your streets blocked up if you like. We should have thought it inconvenient, but it really makes no difference to us.” Like most other people, I had no experience of street fighting to guide me, and it was with this sense of uncertainty and bewilderment that I made my way from point to point towards the part of the Tverskaya from which the sound of guns came. To get into the main street itself was impossible, for every approach was guarded by sentries, who cried “Halt!” and then fired with inconsiderate rapidity. To the crowds of peaceful citizens, such behaviour was novel and pleasantly exciting. They gathered in thick groups behind the shelter of any street corner, or up the passages, and even in the porches of big shops and banks. Every now and then some one would snatch off his cap and dash across an exposed street as though he were finishing for a hundred yards. The crowd held their breaths and watched eagerly, hoping to see him fall, as an audience hopes to see the tight-rope girl break her neck. But when he reached safety and waved his arms, they cheered and another started.

By similar means, except that national vanity made me walk instead of running, I reached the Petrovka (the Lombard-street of Moscow, parallel to the Tverskaya, and below it down a hill), and made my way along it till I came to the Boulevard near the Trouba where the Ermitage restaurant stands. Looking up to the left I could there see the Pushkin statue, and watch the flash of the guns in position on the high open space that commands the cross roads of the Tverskaya and the Boulevard in both directions. Up the hill the Boulevard was quite empty, but in the hollow at the foot a few people were hurrying to and fro. Some were model citizens, who would rather die than break through the habits of every day; some were women who had to provide the Sunday dinner anyhow. But most were possessed by the curious instinct which drives even the gentlest men and women to witness fighting and death against their will.

Hoping to discover the true position of the revolutionists, I started to cross the Boulevard myself, keeping under cover of the snowy trees whenever I could. In the middle I saw a girl coming towards me—an ordinary workgirl with a shawl over her head. Apparently she also had come for curiosity, for all her rosy face was smiling with excitement. But as I looked at it, a little red splash fell upon her cheek, and instantly the side of her neck and the knot of the shawl turned red. She stood still, drew in her breath with a gasp, and then sat down in the snow crying. I jammed my handkerchief against the wound, but the bullet had only just touched her as it fell, and seeing there was no hole in the face I signalled to her to run, and away she went into the Petrovka, screaming for a sledge.

Going on, I had to leave the trees and cross the open road. At the entrance to a yard there, I found a small group of people leaning over another woman, who had just been hit and was lying helpless on the pavement, her eyes white and her breath coming and going heavily. She was a well-dressed girl in a long fur coat, possibly a revolutionist, but more likely a sympathetic spectator. The bullet had struck through her skirts, and a man was trying to stop the terrible bleeding by twisting two handkerchiefs round the leg. We carried her unconscious to a large house about a hundred yards up the hill, where a red-cross flag was flying. It may have been a permanent hospital, for the ambulance stations, afterwards organized by the Zemstvo or Town Council, were not ready then. The soldiers did not fire at us, though we had come into close range. All through those early days of the fighting, the red cross was respected, and people who were carrying the wounded, even without the ambulance badges, were not often fired at. A change came later on, and even to red-cross girls no mercy was shown. This change was due to a special order from Admiral Dubasoff.

When I turned from the hospital door, I found my position excellent but uncomfortable. The protection of the wounded had brought me safely up close to the very centre of the situation; but now that protection was withdrawn. I could not stand still, and to go back meant a long retirement down the open road fully exposed to fire from end to end. The only chance was to go on, and as the entrance to the next street was only about fifty yards away, I gathered up my fur coat and ran for it. Turning sharply round the corner, I found myself in the Mala Dmitrovka, a wide street down which the electric trams run in quiet times. It looked painfully open and empty. Lamp-posts had been knocked down and laid across the road, telegraph wires had been cut and strewn on the pavement or tied into entanglements, and the overhead strands for electricity hung in festoons, threatening the heads of horsemen. I saw at once that I had reached the zone between the contending forces, an admirable position for the military student, but otherwise unpleasing. Still, if I could only go on, I should discover the main revolutionary body, and that was my object. So keeping close to the houses on the left side, I started along the road at a trot. Only one other creature was in sight—a man of the bank-clerk type, who was walking rapidly in front of me, crouching down to protect his head. Once he looked behind to see if I were dangerous, and I was rapidly gaining on him when, all of a sudden, he sank together and lay down on the pavement.

Before I could reach him, he was up again and was leaning against a house, trying to take cover behind a down-spout. He could only speak Russian, but he pointed to his thigh, and I saw the blood running out over his boot and beginning to soak through the trouser-leg. I looked round for help, but the blinds in all the houses were down, and the gates barred and padlocked. Pointing in the direction by which we had come, I made him understand there was an ambulance near, and putting one arm round my neck, he began to hop back along the street down which we had advanced so fast. Neither of us was now in the least anxious about danger, and we listened to the guns and rifles with entire indifference. But the pain of the movement and the loss of blood were overcoming him; he was turning green, and at last I was obliged to rest him on a doorstep. I tried binding his leg over the trouser, but that did not stop the flow, and the cold was so intense that I did not like to take his trousers off. He was falling into unconsciousness, and I tried in vain to make him crawl a few steps further. Again I looked round at the houses, and this time I saw some faces watching me from a window. I waved to them, and presently the front door opened, and three men and a girl came out, bringing a chair. On that we soon carried him down the road to the Red Cross room, and I was left standing outside the entrance again. I then discovered that from first to last we had been exposed to sharpshooters posted on the tower of the Strastnoi Convent, close by, and all running and cover had been useless.

But it was now getting dark. Under the protection of the wounded, I had approached nearer the revolutionary position than I thought possible at starting, and for once virtue had been something better than her own reward. To have put her to the test again would have been wanton, for one cannot count on always finding an object of protective philanthropy. So I made for the trees, and walking down the Boulevard through the deepening twilight, I ran straight into a half-battery of four guns that was coming up to the relief of the guns beside the statue. The scouts, who were thrown out over the space, seized me and searched me down, but raised no further objection to my existence.

That night I had an engagement in the west of the city, but the streets between were so carefully guarded that I had to creep in the dark through the Old Town and round by the Kremlin along the deserted river bank to get there, and then it was impossible to come back, for a minor state of siege had been declared, and the soldiers were shooting at anything that moved. A “minor state of siege” only implies that if you lose your life, or anything else during the time, you have no claim on the Government for compensation. It is a convenient arrangement for a bankrupt Government engaged in re-establishing its credit by the slaughter of its own people.