CHAPTER XXII.WARSAW.
ON the banks of the Danube, but justwherethe story does not say, andwhenit is quite uncertain, lived three brothers, whose names were Lekh, Teckh, and Russ. They were of the Slavonian race. Ambitious to found distinct dynasties of their own, they set off on their travels. Presently three eagles appeared, flying in as many directions, and the brothers instantly agreed to follow the birds and the example. Russ went after one of the eagles, and the region he went into he called Russia; Teckh went to Bohemia, whose people were anciently called Teckhs; and Lekh, led by a white eagle, came to Poland. The people adopted the white eagle as their national emblem, and they were called Polekhs, or Polaks, and in Shakespeare the people of Poland are Polaks. In some parts of this country the Poles are yet called Lekhs. The great importance of this recondite history is not very apparent; but it is enough to intimate that the origin of nations is often involved in obscurity, and this is specially true of these northern peoples.
The history of Poland, through its early centuries down to 1772, is one of the mostromanticin the “book of time.” With the coming of the Jesuits into Poland came trouble, as trouble always comes with those pests of the human race. War with Russia followed, and the Polish territory east of the Dnieper, or Little Russia, was subjected to the Czar; and by and by, when the kingdom of Poland lay at the mercy of three surrounding powers, it was “partitioned”between Russia and Prussia and Austria. This was but the beginning of her trials. Never conquered, though always overcome, fighting for independent existence again and again, she has in her death-struggles shown a tenacity of life that has commanded the admiring sympathy of mankind. Three times she has beendividedamong these devouring kingdoms; and at the settlement of 1815, after the battle of Waterloo, when a new map of Europe was made, it was decided that a part of Poland, Galicia, should belong to Austria, Posen to Prussia, and the large part which Napoleon had made into the Duchy of Warsaw, should be a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Emperor as King. In 1830 the Poles made another insurrection, and when crushed they were deprived of their constitution, their language was proscribed, and the last vestige of their nationality was beaten out.
There is a savage wickedness in this cutting up of nations, that does not touch the moral sentiment of the world as it ought. To murder a man is something palpable, and so obviously damnable. But to blot a nation out of being, to strike down the life of a people and bury it out of sight for ever, this is what has been done for poor Poland, and we have only to drop a tear over her grave, enter a protest in the name of human rights, and pass on. The most extensive portion of ancient Poland is under Russia, the most populous in the grasp of Austria, and the most commercial is held by Prussia. Warsaw is the unwilling serf of Russia. The present Emperor has sought to gild the chains that bind this people; but the iron chafes them, and will. He restored their language and schools; a council of state was formed; all the local officers were Poles. But nothing will satisfy a noble race but to be their own masters: in 1863 Warsaw was again in insurrection; the men rushed to arms, the women to the altars; the streets ran blood, the weak sank under the strong, and the end came.
The city of Warsaw has nearly 200,000 inhabitants. It is a well-built town, modern in its appearance, with many of its streets straight, and having large and handsome houses. It stands on the Vistula. It is more gay and attractive than you would expect to find it, under the heel of an oppressor, and after years of fruitless struggle with a crushing power. On every hand we see the signs of the ruler’s presence, in the persons of his armed deputies, the soldiers of Russia, who are here to keep order in Warsaw. In our hotel, the dining-room is always occupied by soldiers, who are eating and drinking, especially drinking. “Sherry cobblers” in quart tumblers are in front of them, and they are sucking at them diligently. Venice, under Austrian rule, was not more vigilantly guarded than Warsaw is at this day, after a subjugation that has been endured for forty years! It will take two or three generations to make Poland contented under foreign rule, and then the hereditary love of nationality will remain, and rise to the surface whenever it gets a chance for demonstration.
The city has a very unfinished appearance: there are splendid public edifices near by others that seem only begun, or neglected in the midst of building. Revolutions and the fears of revolution have made its prosperity precarious, and the inhabitants lack the highest stimulus to enterprise and exertion, the hope of permanent possession and enjoyment. The splendid government houses are in many cases the palaces of the old Polish nobility, now decayed or extinct families. Many of the former owners, who once rolled in hereditary wealth, have long since been exiled to the desolate wilds of Siberia, and their places will never know them again. A pall, like a perpetual cloud, is on the face of Poland, and by degrees the spirit of liberty will be extinguished. The language and rule of Russia will become universal. There is no hope in the future for the nationality of Poland.
In 1863 a spy of the Russian government was stopping at theHôtel de l’Europein Warsaw, where we are now writing; and, his business being suspected, the patriotic Poles, who are not likely to abide the presence of such a fellow if they know him, took the liberty of murdering him in his bed. The Russian government seized the house, shut it up, and for some years it has stood closed, a monument and a warning. Russia will not allow her spies to be murdered without visiting her vengeance on the house itself in which the murder is committed. As this hotel was formerly the palace of one of the noble Polish families, and the only hotel of large proportions, it was a serious injury to the city as well as to the proprietors. And I do not apprehend that the Poles will be any more gentle in their treatment of Russian spies, because their largest tavern was shut up half a dozen years.
Out of my window I see a soldier standing with his back against the wall; he has a soldier’s cap and long cloak reaching nearly to the ground; he has been there five or six hours, marching now and then a few rods and returning to his post: five soldiers come and stand in front of him, one of them takes off the cloak and puts it on his own shoulders, and, stepping into his place, mounts guard; and this process is continued and repeated all over the city, day and night, year after year. Thousands of Russian soldiers are thus quartered on the city continually: lazy, intemperate, and licentious, they are a moral pestilence; using their power to compel the subject people to submit to their insolence, and corrupting by their example and association those with whom they come into contact.
With this admixture of foreign and native people, it is impossible to discriminate between them; but a more unmannerly set of people I have never met at public places than they are here. The servants have no manners but bad manners. They enter your private room withoutknocking; they are grouty in their address, sulky in their answers, and generally disagreeable. The same may be said of the officers of the hotel: disobliging, inattentive. The women appeared to be lively in each other’s company, but the men of Warsaw are grave and thoughtful.
We rode in the afternoon through the beautiful parks and meadows and groves where the Russian military exercises are held, and through theBotanical Gardens, and to theObservatory, for the pursuit of science has not been arrested by the revolutions that have overturned the government; and then we came toLazienki, a splendid rural palace, built by King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski. Here the Emperor of Russia has his temporary abode when he visits Warsaw, which, by the way, he does not often, for his presence is not specially agreeable to the people. Beautiful villas are scattered through the park, the residences of persons connected with the court; fountains play, a beautiful stream flows by, and a monument to Sobieski, John III. of Poland, stands conspicuous, the sight of which is said to have led the Emperor Nicholas, in 1850, after the war in Hungary, to make the remark: “The two kings of Poland that committed the gravest error are John III. and myself; for we both saved theAustrianmonarchy.” It is hard to say whether such reflections are sound or not; the rise and fall of kingdoms are all in the plans of Infinite Wisdom, and what to us seems exceedingly desirable may be the height of folly in the eye of Him who reads the future. It is certainly not human wisdom that has spared Austria or Turkey and sacrificed Poland, but the end may yet be well.
It was dark when we returned to the city. A feeble attempt at illumination was going on in some of the public buildings. Dim lights were hung along some of the walls, and now and then a private house had an extra lamp or two in its windows! We inquired the cause of this miserableimitation of rejoicing, this abortive demonstration. The telegraph had brought the intelligence that to-day an unsuccessful attempt had been made to assassinate the Emperor Alexander. The illumination was thus very satisfactorily andexactlyexplained. The assassination was attempted by a Polander, and Poland would have madly rejoiced if it had been a success. I was at a loss to know whether the illumination signified joy at the Emperor’s escape from death or joy that his death had been so nearly accomplished. The melancholy exhibition of lights was just enough to suggest the two conflicting sentiments; and if the Russian soldiers and officials and dependants did their duty in hanging out the lamps, the inhabitants of Warsaw almost without exception will go to bed regretting that the shot of the assassin did not lodge in the heart of the Emperor whom they regard as their oppressor.
The streets of Warsaw are badly paved; riding in some of them is a protracted punishment. They are badly lighted, and it is not unusual for an ordinance to be in force requiring every one going out after dark to carry a light, under pain of arrest.
The first drunken person I saw in the streets of a city on the Continent of Europe was here. In the southern capitals, as of Spain and Italy, and even of France, there was gayety, but not intemperance. I had not been long in the city before I saw a woman lying on the pavement dead drunk. And nobody seemed to heed the spectacle, always and everywhere disgusting as the most shameful exhibition of fallen humanity. They have their favorite vices in the south of Europe, but this of drunkenness is not one of them. The use of wine, light wine, is not the cause of the sobriety of the people, though it is a fact beyond all denial that the wine-growing countries are the most temperate countries in the world. Yet they are not temperatebecausethey have wine to drink. They would be just as temperate,and perhaps more so, if they had no wine. They are temperate because the climate does not invite them to the stimulus of alcohol. That’s all. It is not their virtue, nor their wine, that makes them so. They are not tempted to drink strong drink. As soon as we get into these northern countries we find the people making free use of distilled liquors and getting drunk: and intemperance is the prevailing vice of the clime, as licentiousness is the vice of the south of Europe. Climate is to be considered in all our studies of the habits of a people, and it must be allowed its proper effect when we are estimating the virtues and vices of our fellow-men. Climate is no excuse for wrong-doing, but it helps to know why people fall into one or another class of sins.
On Sunday, after searching in vain to find the English service which was said to be performed in anevangelicalchapel by a clergyman of the Church of England, we went to the Lutheran Church. Its dome, rising from an open square, is a prominent object in the city. The building itself is arotunda, and very large. The yard was filled with all sorts of carriages, wagons, droskies, and carts, with horses of various grades, by which the people had come in from the surrounding country. Some of these vehicles were the rudest kind of rustic wagons, and being covered with mud, and filled with straw as the only seat, having no springs, and long and narrow, indicated that the roads were bad, and that the people had encountered some difficulties in getting to the house of God. It is rare to see such a show ofteamsabout a city church. It was all the more interesting in Warsaw, in the heart of the old kingdom of Poland.
I entered the porch, and it was crowded by people unable to get into the thronged church. Looking over their heads, I saw three successive galleries rising above each other; and, following the winding staircase in the vestibule, we reached the first, and, unable to get admission there, wemounted to the second, which was also full, and then to the third, where there was plenty of room. A singularly imposing spectacle was presented. The vast audience-room was a perfect circle; the three galleries sweeping completely around to the pulpit and organ behind it. The pews on the ground floor were occupied by a class of persons by their dress and manner more elevated in rank than the others. The pew doors were kept locked, until the sermon was to be commenced, when they were opened, and the crowd in the porch were permitted to take those not occupied by their owners. The first gallery pews were filled with plainer people. The second gallery had a set of worshippers whose coarse and humble attire indicated the harder worked and poorer people; but their dress was cleanly, and an air of comfort pervaded the whole assembly. The third gallery, into which I found access, was not seated, and the few persons in it stood at the front. It was a sublime spectacle, this crowded sanctuary, perhaps three thousand people, worshipping in a strange tongue, and all animated with the spirit of the hour. Behind the pulpit was a life-size statue of the Saviour on the cross. In front of it four immense candles, each four feet high, were burning. These candles and statue would lead us to suppose that the Lutheran was not wholly reformed, and that some relics of Romanism still lingered. The minister read a hymn, and around the organ a large choir of young men and boys, no females in it, stood up and sang,—the whole assembly, men and women,—with the organ, singing with a mighty noise. The sermon followed. The Polish is not one of the tongues with which I am familiar, and I shall not undertake to pass an opinion upon the eloquence or the orthodoxy of the discourse. But the clear rich tones of the preacher’s voice fell upon attentive ears, and the earnestness of his manner spoke well for him, though I could not understand a word.
At the door, as I came out, there was a row of mendicants, not asking alms, but willing and expecting to receive the charities of those who passed, and they were remembered by many. It was an inoffensive way of begging. Whoever gave was moved to do a good thing without being importuned.
The principal streets of the city had as many people in them, going to and from church, as you would see in New York, and so widely do the fashions of Paris prevail in the west and east and north, that the fashionable people of Warsaw, riding or walking, looked to be the same sort of people that one meets in cities with which he is more familiar.
I walked into the Jewish quarter of the town. Their Sabbath was yesterday; but to-day is one of their feast-days, and they were all out of doors, “a peculiar people” everywhere. The men wore long frock-coats reaching to the ground. Their dwellings were mostly mean and low; but we saw women going in and out of them dressed in rich silks, with splendid velvet mantillas, and they were doubtless as well off for this world as their people seem to be in all countries where they have a chance to live and trade. They have the best hospital in Warsaw. They retain their nationality, the expression of countenance, the curve of the nose, the faculty of making and keeping money wherever they go. And they are strangely hated in the Christian world since they crucified the Lord of Glory, as the serpent has been among men since he tempted the woman in Eden. Of the five or six millions of people in Poland, nearly one million are Jews. This is a large proportion, perhaps larger than any other country in Europe.
There are only about 300,000 Protestants in Poland, and when you learn that of the Russian or Greek church there are but five or six thousand, out of the five or six millions, you will see one grand reason why Poland will never be submissive to the rule of Russia. Their religions are atwar. Poland is intensely bigoted in its Romanism. In the public square we see a statue of the Virgin Mary, with an iron railing around it; flowers in pots are kept before it, lamps by night are burning in its presence, tumblers of oil with lighted wicks in them, and an old woman to light them as often as the wind blows them out, and here the people are constantly coming and throwing themselves down on the stones and saying their prayers: one young man was so earnest in his devotions, that he prayed with a loud voice, regardless of those around him, as if he knew the statue was quite deaf and could hear no common prayer. In 1863, the frightened people rushed to this image, when they saw that the insurrection was not to be successful, and the Russian troops charged upon the praying multitude of men and women and scattered them on their knees.
Before one of the churches two crosses are erected, to commemorate the union of Poland and Russia. Tradition says that they also mark the scene of the strangest duel that was ever heard of,—two brothers being jealous of each other on account of their own sister’s love, fought here and slew each other. The province of “Little Russia” lies between Russia proper and Poland, and for the possession of it the two kingdoms have fought till it has sometimes been thought they would devour each other.
As I saw people going into a court-yard I followed them, into a little chapel, where a corpse was lying in state. It was of an old man; thirty or forty candles were burning around him, but he was raised on a platform so high that his face could not be seen. Leaving him, I came out and met a funeral procession. The body was borne in a hearse, surmounted with a gorgeous crimson canopy, and drawn by six horses richly caparisoned and led by six grooms. The Emperor could not have desired a more ostentatious funeral; all hats were removed as the procession passed, and this practice, which prevails on the Continent generally, andespecially in France, is a beautiful and becoming tribute of respect, which I would be glad to see prevalent at home. They uncover their heads when the King passes by; and what monarch is mightier than he to whom the stateliest head must bow.
Ours were the only English names on the register of the hotel, the largest in the city; we called at another hotel, and not an English name was there, and during the three days we were in Warsaw we did not hear a word of our tongue, except when we spoke ourselves. We were not, however, as much disturbed by this as the lady was in Paris, who was out of all patience and spirits hearing nothing but French day after day. One morning she heard a cock crowing, and exclaimed, “Thank God, there’s somebody who speaks English.”
Polish Peasants.
Polish Peasants.
Polish Peasants.