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met, or was introduced to, he received grinnings and gigglings, snarlings and with a cannonade of questions, the one piteous moanings, his obscene remarks, following the other in rapid succession. weak puns, and small jibes, led those who

As a test of military fitness, presence of mind, self-reliance, and force of character, it was by no means an unsatisfactory one. All those whom he confused or embarrassed, he despised as fools. Suwarrow met his match in imperturbable coolness and impudence in M. de Lameth. "To what country do you belong, sir?" said Suwarrow. "France," was the reply.

knew him not to be Suwarrow to conclude that this grimacing and bejewelled object was Catherine's court fool; and their astonishment may be easily conceived on being told that they beheld a hero who had fought countless battles and never lost one of them; and who at the council table had proved himself a sagacious and clearheaded reasoner, a crafty politician, and

"What profession?" "Military." "What a brilliant epigrammatist. In his riper rank?" "Colonel." "Your name?" years he was able to speak a little French "Alexandre de Lameth." After submit- and German, which he had probably ting meekly to this examination, the picked up in his wars and wanderings. Frenchman turned on Suwarrow and His friends aver that he was an adept in asked him the same questions, imitating the dead languages, and that in his temhis threatening manner and suspicious porary seclusions he studied Hebrew. look; getting the same laconic answers; Several of his sayings have passed into after which both gentlemen burst out Russian proverbs, especially the sarcasm laughing. It was seldom indeed that Su- he uttered on the emperor Paul's military warrow's questions were so coherent. innovations, which were all of the decoWhat would a stranger think when saluted rative order: "Hair-powder is not gunby a grim, snuffy old man, made up exte- powder; curls are not cannon; and tails riorly of dirt and jewels, with the demand are not bayonets;" a bit of doggerel uttered in an imperious tone, "How which cost the rhymer his command. many stars are there in the skies? You The verse in which he announced to the don't know: what do you know? How empress the capture of Tutukay in Bulgamany trees are there in the forest, or

fishes in the lake?" And, on your confessing ignorance in a conciliatory manner, how would you like to have a scornful and filthy finger pointed at you, and be baptized amid a grinning company with the name of Monsieur Know-nothing? Nothing lashed Suwarrow into such fury as the use of that handy conversational phrase, "I don't know." His officers, well aware of this infirmity, would hazard any reply rather than acknowledge ignorance on any subject on which it was his whim to examine them. In his old age he would often be seen running and frolicking in the streets of St. Petersburg, bawling at the top of his voice, "I am Suwarrow, I am Suwarrow," followed by a crowd of urchins among whom he threw apples to be scrambled and fought for. At court he persisted in kissing the portrait of the empress Catherine, which every lady wore on her breast, to the dis may of the wearers, who shuddered when the snuffy nose, innocent of handker

ria is well known :

Salva bogu!
Salva vam!
Tutukay vzala!

I ya tam!

Glory to God!
Glory to thee!
Tutukay is taken!
Here are we!

"К!"

The following satiric episode is simply delicious. His Majesty sent his favorite, Count K, to congratulate the marshal on his recall from exile. said Suwarrow, when the name was announced. "There is no Russian family of that name; who can he be?" The messenger is brought in. "You are not of Russian birth, I judge; from what country are you?" "Of Turkey: I owe my rank and title to his Majesty's favor." "Ah, I see: you have rendered important services to the State; in what battalion are you? in what battles have you fought?" "I have never served in the army." "Oh, you are in the civil service, then?" "No, I have always been in personal attendance on his Majesty." deed: in what capacity?" "Valet to his Majesty." Suwarrow thereupon turned white bosoms. Her Majesty herself had you see this nobleman? He once held one day to ask him to conduct himself the same menial office as you. What a more sanely and decently. In the palace glorious career you have before you! He his antics were of the most whimsical is a count now! so may you yet! Be a description: his facial nerves were never good lad and you will-who knows? at rest, and his jerky attitudinizings, his be decorated with all the orders of Russpasmodic movements, his meaningless | sia!"

"In

chiefs, came near their rich silks and to his own servant and said: "Ivan, do It is characteristic of Eastern religions, | them must have a presiding god whose pagan and Christian alike, to make piety special charge they were; and was it not consist in exterior rather than interior a prudential precaution to secure him as adornment, in gymnastic exercises rather an ally, when a little deference paid to than in loyalty to moral principle or pure affection; and the lower the nation or the individual in the scale of civilization, which is the power to live for and in parties. That he was an intentional hypo

ideas, the more pronounced is this tendency to propitiate deity by ceremonies and grimaces which are of the skin, and which have nothing to do with the dis position and character. Suwarrow's religion was as destitute of moral qualities as his habits were of social refinement. He was a savage both in his inward and outward development. His God was a being to be reconciled and cajoled by a state bow, such as a man makes when he attends one of her Majesty's drawingrooms; a being who could be coaxed to place his own invincible might at the disposal of the man who surpassed all other candidates for that favor in the amount of physical deference he rendered. There never lived a general who insisted more than Suwarrow on the personal piety (as he understood that word) of his soldiers and officers not even Cromwell himself. On Sundays, and the festivals of Holy Church, he delivered sermons to the superior officers of his army, whom in their turn he compelled to preach and pray in the presence of their regiments, abusing in no measured terms those whose ignorance of Russian disqualified them for

his ministers was all the price that was asked? Suwarrow was clearly a Broad Churchman, seeing good in all sects and

crite and impostor seems at any rate not believable. He was religious according to his lights, even when there was little to be gained by pretences and professions; and that his ostentatious devotions, genuflexions, and comic pieties secured him the goodwill of the people, was probably as much due to accident as craft. On one occasion he risked the resentment of Catherine rather than neglect his duty to heaven. After the "pacification of Poland" - that is, after he had executed all likely to provoke dispeace - the czarina conferred on him the rank of field-marshal; but Suwarrow, faithful to his religious principles, would not receive the dignity till he had asked the blessing of Holy Church.

It is needless to say that a man of Suwarrow's habits and temper was little fitted for the domesticities of life. There is a story told of his comrade in arms, Marshal Romanzow, who was parted from his wife. One of his sons, having finished his studies, came to the army to ask a commission. "Who are you?" said Romanzow. "Your son.” “Oh, : indeed; you are grown up, I see." The

praying in the vernacular, and therefore interview finished, the young man asked for humoring the national God to whom, if there was any place where he could like the Jews of old, he ascribed his vic- take up his abode. "Why, surely," said tories, and in whose protection and favor the father, "you are acquainted with he had the blindest faith. The Warsaw some officer in the camp." Suwarrow's

Butcher never began a battle without reverently and repeatedly making the sign of the cross. He won the silent approval and encouragement of the superstitious people of Italy during his campaign in that country, as much by his devoutness as by his success. Wherever on the march he saw a crucifix or saintly image he stopped to pray; wherever he met a monk he asked leave to kiss his hand, and solicited his benediction, invoking his curse on these French regicides and atheists whom it was his mission to punish. He begged relics of departed saints

domestic relations seem to have been on no more cordial footing. He had a daughter whom Catherine appointed one of her maids-of-honor, and whom she afterwards married to the brother of her husband pro tem., Plato Zubof the last of a long list who filled the office; which led the witlings of St. Petersburg to say that Catherine had ended with Platonic love. In this daughter Suwarrow's malformation of mind, to which his eccentricities owe their being, took the form of imbecility. The old man, not having seen his daughter since her childhood, expressed again and again in holy water to make she, "how big you have grown since I himself invulnerable; consumed cart- last saw you!" He quarrelled with his loads of consecrated wafers that he might wife soon after their marriage, and renot hunger any more. Priests and pres- fused to live with her. On hearing that byters, Protestant and Papist to all the empress had made his son an officer alike he paid homage; each and all of in the Guards, he made the following

from the convents he visited; bathed a wish to meet her. "Ah, father," cried

sion when the empress was granting favors to everybody, and when everybody was pressing round her with eyes that said, "What am I to get?" she ordered the mob to stand back till a figure in the background came into the full view of the court. It was Suwarrow. Addressing him she said: "And you, general; do you want nothing?" "Only that you would order my lodgings to be paid, madam." The rent of his lodgings was three roubles a month. It is averred that he never shared in the plunder of the cities, which he gave over to his soldiers to be sacked. "At the fall of Ismail, he did not take even a horse."

comment: "Ah, well, if her Majesty says | ever devout pilgrim kissed papal toe or that I have a son, be it so, but I know Caabah stone. Again and again he renothing about it." There seems, how- fused her Majesty's gifts. On one occaever, to have been one little germ of affection in that tough and twisted and gnarled nature: he was much attached to his nephew, Gortschakoff, who was second in command of the ill-fated army of Switzerland led by Korsakoff against the French. Spiteful gossips say that this nephew was a painted booby, who bedaubed his cheeks as unblushingly as any of the ladies of St. Petersburg who held their toilet-table as incomplete without a rouge-pot, and that he wore whalebone stays to keep his body slim and graceful. The empress Catherine, during whose brilliant reign he rose to fame, knew Suwarrow's worth, and with that instinctive acumen by which she attached to her person and interest all those whose force of character or genius made them dangerous as enemies and powerful as friends, led the rough, uncultured, and perverse hero by a silken thread. Hard cash that had to be deposited out of sight in the pockets which could not be hung about the person, and flashed and flaunted in the eyes of the world-had no charm for Suwarrow. But Catherine knew how to reach and play upon the savage nature deep-seated in the man. She operated on him chiefly through his weakness for gaudy trinkets, a weakness which, in common with all savages, he shared. If he loved and prized any possession in the world, it was the brilliant baubles and toys which she gave him, and which the touch of her white, royal hand had invested with a double value and with something of a sacred character. Each new courier that arrived at her court with tidings of a victory, coincided with the despatch of a messenger bearing a bejewelled gift, and a letter of thanks written by the czarina's own hand. In this way he had accumulated a large collection of richly-carved gold snuff-boxes; imperial portraits set in gold; swords whose hefts sparkled with all the colors of a prism; rich robes bestarred with badges of the royal favor and friendship; and this mot ley treasure he carried about with him in all his wars and wanderings, locked and double-locked in a massive iron chest. He never touched one of these gifts on which Catherine's hand had rested, nay, his glance never casually alighted on one of them, but, as in the presence of something holy, he made the sign of the cross, and, falling on his knees, reverently kissed it, and with greater solemnity than

Catherine was prodigal in her gifts to her favorites and servants, and rewarded on a scale of right Russian magnificence. But Suwarrow could never find it in his heart to refuse a gold toy; and his Stoic indifference to wealth capitulated at once when the seductive light of a precious stone bewildered and blinded his eyes. How often did he vex the ears of his officers with the oft-repeated history of each trinket? Again and again he assembled them to admire and eulogize the loveliness of his collection, till the faculty of admiration in them was exhausted, and the language of eulogy had ceased to be fresh. He would stop his army while on the march, that he might open his chest and gloat over his treasures. At dinner, he would, in a rapid succession of shots, fire the following questions at his neighbors: "Have you seen my jewels? Do you envy me them? What do you think they are worth? Why did our mamma give them to me?" Á failure to answer these questions as promptly as the report follows the explosion, and the general lost his temper, and a louder explosion fol lowed, in which, amid the confusion of gutturals and growls, the only articulate words that could be made out were, "You blockhead!" "You fool!" while the poor victim, too ignorant to answer rightly, or too honest to lie, or too prosaic to invent a fictitious history of the jewels on the spot, sat blushing and trembling.

But his treatment by Catherine's son and successor, the emperor Paul - who, hating his mother, hated every one she prized, reversed all the schemes and ends she labored for and cherished—was harsh and ingrate. After Catherine's death, he denuded the grim, sarcastic old marshal - who had sneered at, and made

at court in civilian costume, without sword or decorative orders. The emperor was amazed at this daring breach of etiquette. Suwarrow threw himself down on his breast and belly and began to crawl over the floor, to the feet of the throne.

some doggerel rhymes about his military obliged Paul to capitulate to his victim reforms of all his commands, and or- and invite him again to lead the armies of dered him to retire to Moscow. Suwar- Russia. Suwarrow made his appearance row was with his beloved troops in southern Poland when he received the imperial mandate, ready to march against France. He determined to break the news of his disgrace to the army himself. Having drawn the troops up in line of battle he appeared before them in the dress of a common soldier, but decorated with all his orders, and with the portraits of the late czarina and the emperor of Austria sparkling on his breast in the sunshine. The soldiers, on hearing the announce ment of the czar's will, broke into cries of indignation and sorrow which the general vainly tried to hush. He then stripped himself of his military accoutrements and deposited them on a pyramid of drums and cymbals, which had previously been raised in front of the embattled battalions. "And now, comrades," said he, "there may come a time when Suwarrow will be again your general; he will then resume these spoils which he leaves to you and which he always wore in his victories." The "mad czar," indignant at the honor and deference paid to the exile by the nobles and populace of Moscow, resolved yet further to humiliate his mother's favorite general. He banished him to an insignificant village. To the officer of police who was deputed to carry out the imperial will, and who had informed Suwarrow that four hours would be allowed him to prepare for his journey, he replied, "Four hours! too much kindness! one hour is enough for Suwarrow." The officer conducted him to the coach which was to bear him to his destination. "A coach!" he said, "Suwarrow in a coach! he will go to exile in the equipage he used when travelling to the court of Catherine or leading the army to victory; go and get a cart."

In course of time the exile's friends succeeded in softening Paul's enmity; they even cajcled the monarch into writing him a letter intimating his re-installation into the favor and protection of his Majesty. The letter was addressed to Field-Marshal Suwarrow. "This letter is not for me," said the stern, uncompromising exile to the royal messenger; if Suwarrow were field-marshal he would not be banished and guarded in a village; he would be seen at the head of the armies;" and the courier had actually to bear the letter back to his Majesty unopened.

The exigencies of State, however,

"What is this, marshal?" said the emperor; "come, my son, this will not do; are you mad? get up." "No, no, sire! I wish to make my way too in this court, and I know it is only by crawling that one can get into your Majesty's good graces." At last Suwarrow was to reap the joy which he had often prayed Catherine to grant him-an army of fifty thousand Cossacks with which to make the conquest of France. For his series of brilliant victories over Macdonald, Moreau, and Joubert, the grateful czar conferred on him the title of prince with the surname of Italisky; and issued a decree ordaining that the same military honors should be paid to Suwarrow as himself, and that henceforward and forever he should be considered the greatest captain of every age, of every nation and country of the world. Paul was the first to disobey his own imperial ukase. He attributed to Suwarrow the disasters of the Helvetian campaign; and in reorganizing his shattered armies he left no command for the brave, grey-haired warrior, who retired to St. Petersburg, bowed with sorrow, broken-hearted and neglected. On his arrival there he went to the house of his nephew Prince Gortschakoff; and lay down never to rise.

Suwarrow, sprung from a family of no social position and held in no respect, began in 1742 the career which he ended as generalissimo of the Russian forces, as a private soldier in the Fusilier Guards of the empress Elizabeth. He won every step in his rapid promotion by his prowess and daring on the field of battle. In five years he attained to the rank of corporal; in 1749 he received further promotion; and in 1754 he quitted the Guards with a lieutenant's commission. His first campaign was made in the course of the Seven Years War with Prussia, when Frederick the Great was "like to be overwhelmed " by his enemies; and he was present at the capture of Berlin by Toddleben in 1760. For his valor in this war Catherine presented him, in 1762, with a colonel's commission written by her own hand. As brigadier-general, he marched against the confederates of Poland in 1768; ob

numerous decorations and orders and trinkets. He danced and skipped like a lunatic, and posed and pirouetted in his new costume. Before enrobing himself, he hugged and kissed it, and made again and again the sign of the cross; and the mild, innocent vanity of the man showed itself not only in the way he strutted about, inflated with a sense of his selfimportance, but in the remark he made on little Nicholas Soltikoff, who thought himself specially slighted by Suwarrow's promotion over his head: "I don't wonder that they did not give such a dress as this to little Nick; it would be too heavy for him."

taining the full rank of major-general two uniform, covering his breast with his years later. When finally he was made marshal of the empire, he performed in the presence of the army some of the most wonderful antics recorded in the chronicles of the great. Catherine never granted promotion on grounds of senior ity, either of merit or of favoritism merit in the recipients' relation to the State, or favoritism in their domestic and personal relations to the throne. There is an anecdote to the effect that she dismissed General Kamenskoi from her service for having taken command of an army on the march, consequent on the death of his superior, Prince Potemkin; a responsibility which he could not well evade. He sent a report to her Majesty, in which His laurels as a general were won in the introductory sentence ran as follows: that Russo-Turkish war which has raged "Having taken the command in conse- through many generations since the dequence of my seniority," on the perusal scent of the Saracen on Europe. In 1788 of which audacious sentence, Catherine, Suwarrow commanded the fortress of in her own hand, wrote the marginal com- Kinburn, besieged by the Turks. He ment," Who gave you orders?" He then suffered the enemy to disembark without proceeded to criticise the disorganized opposition; he even encouraged them to state of the troops an indirect reflection proceed by sending out a small force with on the capacity of the deceased general, instructions to retreat, after exchanging a who, having originally been Catherine's few shots, as though they were frightened. domestic companion, had become her The device succeeded; and while the trustiest adviser; retaining as a states- Turkish boats had gone back to Otchakow man the influence he had acquired over for reinforcements, Suwarrow marched her through the tender passion. On out at the head of two battalions with reading these strictures, Catherine wrote, fixed bayonets, and slaughtered the enemy "He dared not say a word while the to a man. In these Turkish campaigns, prince was alive;" and though Kamens- he heaped deeds of prowess upon each koi was a man of much military capacity, other. At Fokschan, when thirty thouthe answer to his elaborate critique was a sand Austrians fled from the battle-field, command to quit the army. The alle- leaving the Turkish army of one hundred gorical buffooneries Suwarrow performed thousand men victors, Suwarrow put himon the occasion of his elevation to the self at the head of eight thousand Rusmarshalate, were of the most grotesque sians and changed the fortunes of the character. Of the half-superstitious, half- day. "Brothers!” cried he; "never look religious temper of the Russian boor, he to the eyes of your enemies! Fix your saw the hand of Providence in his success view on their breasts and thrust your in life. He resolved that he would pub- bayonets there." licly thank the deity for it, which he did in the cathedral church of Warsaw. He packed the nave and aisle of the cathedral with soldiers to witness the following religio comic entertainment. Having placed in a line as many chairs as there were officers senior to himself and holding military rank between that he had been promoted from and that he had been promoted to, he entered the building in his shirt-sleeves, and in the leapfrog style vaulted over each chair, thereby typifying how he had vaulted over his rivals. Thereafter, in the presence of the grinning yet admiring soldiery, who loved yet laughed at their erratic, brilliant, and vainglorious chief, he dressed himself in his marshal's

The sack of Ismail was his crowning triumph in this war. Potemkin, not very anxious for a conclusion of hostilities, had leisurely and playfully besieged the city for seven months; when Madame de Witt, to tempt him into activity, divining by the cards, predicted its downfall within three weeks. The prince replied that he had a method of divination more prompt and sure than that; and ordered Suwar row to take it within three days. On the third day the hero drew up his soldiers, and addressing them "Brothers! no quarter, provisions are dear!"— delivered the assault. His forces, twice repulsed, at last scaled the walls; and then fol lowed a scene of rapine, and murder, and

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