BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 49
The Times in London made a statement to this effect, and gave particulars of some of the outrages ; and London knew more about what was going on in the unhappy towns of Southern Russia than was known even a few miles from them. And no wonder that the news traveled tardily to Czarovna, for here neither Jews nor Christians interested themselves in political or other affairs outside their own town, which was a model of good government and excep- tional in its general contentment. Several towns had been wrecked, many a Jewish woman outraged, many a poor Jew slaughtered, before the full importance of the awful tidings reached Czarovna, the first agents of trouble arriving in the prosperous town on the very night of the attempted arrest of Ferrari.
In each instance of the risings, agents had arrived in the towns with copies of an alleged ukase empowering His Imperial Majesty's orthodox subjects to seize all the pro- perty of the Jews and put down all resistance of the transfer. The mayor of one town actually read this pro- clamation in public, and the place was only saved by the wisdom and courage of the chief priest, who denounced the ukase as a forgery and forbade the townspeople to act upon it ; but at many other towns and villages near by it was literally interpreted, and the property of the Jews was taken over, in some cases partly destroyed, and the transfer accompanied with barbarities and ruffianisms unknown in this age outside Russia. Children were roasted alive. Women w^re outraged in the presence of their offspring. Men were murdered ruthlessly and without giving the victims a chance of defence. At one place women appeared among the assailants and assisted the men in their devilish orgies and crimes. But it is not within the province of this narrative to enter into the details of these barbarisms, which are duly recorded in the newspapers of the time.
The statistics of the terror are appalling, and the worst 4
