50 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
feature of the whole affair was the barbarities committed against the Jewish women ; even the Czar's commanding officers seeming to think the honor and lives of the poor creatures of no account, so small were the efforts which they made to temper the brutalities of the rioters, who were fre- quently supported and aided by the soldiers and police. The latest phase of the blind passions of the Christian Russians was that of arson. So common did the vengeance of fire become that the mujiks gave it the name of the red cock. This is the technical term of the peasants for the deliberate firing of towns. The red cock crowed over many a Jewish place of settlement ; and within the short time of the riots, which came to an end only at Czarovna, a hundred thou- sand Jewish families were homeless, and their property, to the extent of sixteen million pounds, either taken from them or destroyed. And the date of these events was not later than 1881.
There was one beautiful exception to the generality of the success of the ukase. It was a small unsophisticated town, something like Czarovna ; the Christians called upon their Jewish neighbors and warned them of what was going on, telling them that the agents and rioters from an adjacent village which had been sacked were coming on to them, and saying, " Now if it is true that the Emperor has given your property over to his orthodox subjects it will be better for you to let your neighbors take it than have it wrested from you by strangers, and if the ukase is not true we can hand you your property back again." So when the band of thieves and rioters came to that town they found the Christian inhabitants already in possession of their neighbors' houses, shops, and goods. In this instance the demon of blood and fire and plunder was outwitted ; he had to pass on, and in due course the Jews got their pro- perty back again.
The Government took no action in denying the forged
