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The Elements that Made up the Force Sent to Toula, and the Conduct of the Men Composing it How these Men Could Carry Out such Acts The Explanation is Not to be Found in Ignorance, Conviction, Cruelty, Heartlessness, or Want of Moral Sense They do these Things Because they are Necessary to Support the Existing Order, which they Consider it Every Man's Duty to Support The Basis of this Conviction that the Existing Order is Necessary and Inevitable In the Upper Classes this Conviction is Based on the Advantages of the Existing Order for Themselves But what Forces Men of the Lower Classes to Believe in the Immutability of the Existing Order, from which they Derive no Advantage, and which they Aid in Maintaining, Facts Contrary to their Conscience?
One could yet understand how a poor, uneducated, defrauded Japanese, torn from his field and taught that Buddhism consists not in compassion to all that lives, but in sacrifices to idols, and how a similar poor illiterate fellow from the neighborhood of Toula or Nijni Novgorod, who has been taught that Christianity consists in worshipping Christ, the Madonna, Saints, and their ikons one could understand how these unfortunate men, brought by the violence and deceit of centuries to recognize the greatest crime in the world the murder of one's brethren as a virtuous act, can commit these dreadful deeds, without regarding themselves as being guilty in so doing.
He at once sent off the Prince Kourbsky with 15,000 men, who met double that number of Tatars at Toula, and totally defeated them, pursuing them to the River Chevorona, where, after a second defeat, they abandoned a great number of Russian captives, and a great many camels. Prince Kourbsky was wounded in the head and shoulder, but was able to continue the campaign.
This conviction that the existing order is the necessary and therefore immutable order, which it is a sacred duty for every man to support, enables good men, of high principles in private life, to take part with conscience more or less untroubled in crimes such as that perpetrated in Orel, and that which the men in the Toula train were going to perpetrate. But what is this conviction based on?
At the beginning of November, as I was passing through Toula, I saw once again at the gates of the Zemsky Courthouse the crowd of peasants I had so often seen before, and heard the drunken shouts of the men mingled with the pitiful lamentations of their wives and mothers. It was the recruiting session. I can never pass by the spectacle. It attracts me by a kind of fascination of repulsion.
Toula lay in a narrow valley, down whose centre flowed the little river Oupa, passing through the town. Kravkof suggested that they should dam this stream below the town. "Do as I say," he remarked, "and if the whole town is not under water in a few hours, I will answer for the failure with my head." The project thus presented seemed feasible.
Then men are in an abnormal, wavering condition, feeling the necessity of following the new ideal, and yet not bold enough to break with the old-established traditions. Such is the attitude in regard to the truth of Christianity not only of the men in the Toula train, but of the majority of men of our times, alike of the higher and the lower orders.
Once they had crossed the stream, instead of regrouping they fled helter-skelter over the open ground of the opposite bank, where the retreat soon became a rout! Only one regiment, that of Toula, stood its ground on the town side of the bridge.
In order to give an idea of how such things are done I will describe a proceeding of the kind which took place in Orel, and received the full approval of the highest authorities. This is what took place in Orel. Just as here in the Toula province, a landlord wanted to appropriate the property of the peasants and just in the same way the peasants opposed it.
Providing themselves with food, and with small change of money for the journey two things indispensable to Russian travel John Yeardley and William Rasche left Moscow on the 23rd, by malle-poste for Orel. They stopped some hours at Toula: the land south of this town they found to be well-cultivated, and the harvest had begun; it consisted mostly of rye.
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