"
"Do you mean to say. General, that the exiles would make common
cause with the rebels?" exclaimed the Czar.
"Excuse me, your majesty," stammered the chief of police,
for that was really the idea suggested to him by his uneasy
and suspicious mind.
"I believe in their patriotism," returned the Czar.
"There are other offenders besides political exiles in Siberia,"
said the chief of police.
"The criminals? Oh, General, I give those up to you!
They are the vilest, I grant, of the human race.
They belong to no country. But the insurrection, or rather,
the rebellion, is not to oppose the emperor; it is raised
against Russia, against the country which the exiles have not
lost all hope of again seeing--and which they will see again.
No, a Russian would never unite with a Tartar, to weaken,
were it only for an hour, the Muscovite power!"
The Czar was right in trusting to the patriotism of those whom
his policy kept, for a time, at a distance. Clemency, which was
the foundation of his justice, when he could himself direct its effects,
the modifications he had adopted with regard to applications for the
formerly terrible ukases, warranted the belief that he was not mistaken.
But even without this powerful element of success in regard to
the Tartar rebellion, circumstances were not the less very serious;
for it was to be feared that a large part of the Kirghiz population
would join the rebels.
The Kirghiz are divided into three hordes, the greater, the lesser,
and the middle, and number nearly four hundred thousand "tents,"
or two million souls.
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