The Sun.
London, England, 1863-04-03 00:00:00

culative peasant who had sold four of his country-
men for six Polish florins to be strung up to the
nearest tree.

In the meantime Gen. Langiewicz's surgeon had
dressed the wound of Mr. Finkenstein and of the
Pole who still survived. The Dictator then had
Mr. Finkenstein put into a cart, and sent him to
Cracow, attended by his own surgeon, whom he re-
quested not to leave the patient until he was well,
and who still visits him daily. He also wrote, and
confided to the surgeon, a statement to the effect
that he had found a person, supposed to be an En-
glishman, wounded and on the point of death, under
such and such circumstances.

While I was with Mr. Finkonstein, Langiewicz's
surgeon came in. lie had, of course, seen nothing
of the general since the 15th, the day on which the
prisoners were massacred. This was two days before
the battle of Zaposcie (near Chroberz), three days
before the battle of Grochowiza (near Busk), and
from four to five days before the disappearance of
the Dictator from the camp, which, it may be re-
membered, took place early on the morning of the
21st, after the midnight council of war. But he
toIC. me in what state he had met with Mr. Finken-
stein, and that he had found three of the Poles
dead and the fourth all but lifeless.

This afternooD, being at the Hotel de Saxe, I
went into the spacious, well-appointed, and alto-
gether admirably-managed hospital which has been
formed there by private subscription, and one of
the first patients pointed out to me was the Polish
gentleman who had been knocked down and
bayoneted, but not quite killed, though the soldiers
had left him for dead. The surgeon who directs the
hospital had been attached to Rochebruue's corps
of Ziu.sves, and was present at the battles of the
17th (Zaposcie) and 18th (Busk). As he brought
his wounded away with him from Busk (or Gro-
chowica), after attending them on the field of battle
when the Russians had retired to Pinezow, he is
naturally of opinion that Busk was a decided vic-
tory for the Poles. As for Zaposcie, if that had
been won, Bask (or Grochowica), being further
from the Galician frontier, would never have been
fought, and the insurgents, who, as it was, were
compelled by hunger and want of amunition to enter
Cracow and Tarnow on the morning of the 22d,
would have been driven to do so five days earlier
by force of arms.

But to keep to the principal subject of this let-
ter. The surgeon of the &naves, then, was surprised
to hear that Mr. Finkenstein was alive. He had
helped to place him in the cart which conveyed him
to Cracow, and considered at the time that he was
far too badly wounded ever to recover.

We have lost sight of the lady who accompanied
Mr. Finkenstein on his fatal journey to Miechow.
She was, in fact, separated from him in the camp,
and it afterwards appeared that she also had been
wounded, robbed, and partly stripped. She is now
in Cracow, and has so far recovered that she is able
to walk about.

Now, who does the reader suppose these soldiers
were that deliberately bayoneted defenceless men
and women P Mongols, Tartars, Asiatics of some
kind, no doubt. Nothing of the kind. They were
Germans, probably from Courland; but, at least,
they spoke the German language, and it was in that
tongue that they expressed their astonishment at
their English victim not being dead, proposed to
cut his finger off for the sake of his ring, and re-
commended the process (so readily adopted) of
breaking his head with the butt•ends of their mus-
kets, as one likely to finish him. It is not, then,
because there is something essentially barbarous
in the Russian blood, but because there is some-
thing essentially barbarous in the Russian system,
that these atrocities are committed by the soldiers
in the service of the Russian Government.

Formerly the Russian officers, who in some cases
(a minority, no doubt) are as good as the officers of
any other army, could count on the implicit obedience
of their men ; but the bonds of discipline have now
all been loosened. The soldiers have been warned
against their commanders, and have been invited to
watch the conduct of subalterns, and report upon it
to their superiors. In other words, a real revolution-
ary feeling has been created in the ranks in order to
checkthe supposed revolutionary feeling which may
or may not have animated the more educated portion
of the officers. The consequence is that the officers
now find themselves commanding mere hordes of
savages. Some imitate the conduct of the savages ;
others do their best to check it ; while some, ordered
not to restrain, but to urge on their troops to fresh
excesses, have committed suicide, as the unhappy
Colonel liorff did a few weeks since, and as several
Russian officers have done in the course of the last
two years,

" We were told that the Russian officers had
turned revolutionists
and communists,"said a Polish
proprietor to me the other day. " But it is the sol-
diers who have turned communists. They rob and
plunder wherever they
go, and we have often had
to thank the officers for protecting our property
against their thoroughly communistic instincts."
It is, in fact, the revolutionists of the Russian army
wit know how to Chan
—or, in other words, the men who are heartily sick of
the barbarous and de
moralising old system, and do
ge it—that have endeavoured
to keep order in the ranks. Now that they see
what revolution really means, they have to oppose
it with revolvers. It is only their superior personal
courage that saves them from being murdered by
the majority, as the educated classes in Russia will
infallibly be murdered if the long-talked-of peasant
insurrection should ever
take place.

Mr. Finkenstein, of
course, intends to call upon
his Government to obtain redress from the Govern
ment of Russia for the -
the medical report of
injuries done to him ; and I
believe that General Langiewicz's statement, and
General Langiewicz's own
surgeon, have already
been communicated in the
proper quarter.

Whenever I ask a
murdering unarmed,
shocked at the conduct of the Russian soldiers in
pole if he is not astonished and
" Disgusted, yes; but
answer I usually receive is,
perfectly inoffensive men, the
not shocked or astonished, because we have been
;
used to this sort of thing so long. You never be-
lieved it in England yon thought that, as we were
the bitter enemies of the Russians, our evidenc3
against them was of no value. Now you, as an
Englishman, can judge for yourself, without taking
the opinion of any Pole in the matter."
Nevertheless, owing to the absence of discipline
in the Russian army, more horrible deeds are done
now than were ever commited in the war of 1830
land '3l, when the soldiers were ruled with a rod of
iron by men who, if they were not highly civilized,
at least knew the ordinary traditions of European
armies, and tolerated no acts of barbarism not ex-
pressly commanded by themselves. Russia was also
rather stronger then than she is now, and much of
her present cruelty is the cruelty of impotency. D
the Russian troops cannot beat the insurgents in the
field (which they have always failed to do when the
numbers have been anything like equal), the Go-
vernment would like them at least to make their
presence felt in every district they enter ; and, ac
cordingly their passage is marked wherever they go
by robbery, murder, and incendiarism.
News arrives here every day of victories gained
by the insurgents over the Russians. Whether they
are sometimes defeated and the news not published
I cannot say ; but that the insurrection is maintained
in all parts of Russian Poland is quite certain.
Cieszkowski is in great force in the " Palatinate "
or "government" of Cracow, in the kingdom of
Poland; Padlewski is in Plock ; Czachowski com-
mands the insurgents in Sandomir ; Lewandowski
and Lelewel share the direction of a numerous band
in Lublin. It was in Lublin, too, that Mielencki
gained two brilliant victories on the 22d and 23d,
when the Russians are said to have lost altogether
about 400 men. This is thought not to compensate
for the fact that Mielencki himself, one of the best
of the insurgent chiefs, was dangerously wounded
in the action of the second day.
In the Lithuanian provinces the most important
leaders are Rokiuski, who has lately moved towards
Podolia; Count Tyczkiewicz, and the brothers
Rykoff, two Russian gentlemen, formerly in the
Imperial army. By the last accounts the Rykoffs
were fighting hard in the province of Samagitia.
That several Russian officers have joined the insur-
gents is a fact beyond doubt. In this we have a
celebrated letter addressed by the Russian officers
striking proof that the sentiments expressed in the