Lo Retour de la Princesse which for the last couple of months has supplied an unusual amount of dulness to the lighter pages of the Revue des dawe Mendes is brought to close in the number of the 15th July, and ends, we must confess, with a rush of dramatic incident which goes far to redeem from adverse criticism the story taken as a whole. We imagine that by people of ordinary education Russian history is little read. At least, we have never chanced to encounter anybody so well versed in it as one is expected to be in the histories of other European States, ancient and modern.
For some years the Recue des dewx Mendes has made rather a specialty of Russian subjects—history, literature, religious and social conditions. In the current number will be found an account. of the great Pougatchef insurrection which shook the empire to its foundations, and ocoupied the foremost imperial generals for the two years 1773 and 1774. The leader of the revolt was Emélian Pongatchef, a Don Cossack and one of the self styled old-believers, whose religious tenets, so far as they were of political importance, consisted in the. belief that Peter the Great and his successors were incarnations of Antichrist and therefore unworthy of the obedience of the orthodox, The mysterious disappear ance of Peter the Third gave form to the vague discontents which had for long been fermenting among the mixed tribow, descendants of the Golden Horde, who occupied the steppes betwoon the rivers Volga and Ural, living a nomdic life and destitute of the first rudiments of civilisation. To these tribes fled every outcast from society. Escaped convicts, fugitive murderers, all were made welcome, and each brought with him his contribution of vice and villainy. Among these tribes thus recruited, the notion had been for many years entertained that they might put their numbers and savagery to good count by invading and devastating the more settled portions of the empire. It was resolved to set up a false Peter the Third; and Pougatchef, being unknown to the multitude and having given proof of his resolution and audacity by a bold escape from justice, was selected as the pretender. Beginning with an army of three hundred men, he subdued post after post along the steppes, augmenting his numbers every day. Horrible cruelties marked his progress, and having left desolation behind and all round him, he summoned, throo weeks from the outbreak of the revolt, the garrison of Orenburg to sur-ronder. All through the war the Russian commanders opposed to the rebels, though extremely ill-supported from St. Petorsburg, evidenced the greatest bravery and devotion. Dragged before the false Czar, and required to acknowledge him, they all with hardly an exception preferred to dio in the torments which diabolical ingenuity suggested to the Protender and his advisors, It is true that one or two who did obeisance wore butchered all the same; but in each case there was at least a chance which the great majority rejected with disdain, Meanwhile the camp of the rebels was continually the scene of almost inconceivable orgies. After six months, Orenburg was relieved, and the rebel army dispersed, only however to be replaced by. another equally formidable under the same leader, who now appeared in the neighbourhood of Kazan. After a heroic resistance under the leadership of the' archbishop, this wealthy and populous city was taken and given up to rapine with all that this implies. But the triumph was of short duration. On the morrow of the capture, and while still much of the booty remained unremoved, the imperial troops came up with the Tartars and in three decisive battles broke and dispersed them after immense slaughter. But Pougatchef was not beaten.
Crossing the Volga he found an enthusiastic following which speedily threatened Nijni Novgorod and Moscow. Terror now reigned
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.