nor depressed by evil fortune. He soon acquired complete ascendency over the new Administrative Council; and even the wild Czarowicz was obliged in some degree to curry favour with the minister who held the purse-strings. This little suited the eldest of the Romanoffs; but his soldiers, and still more his spies, must be paid, and he found himself obliged to submit.
The Council quickly became the market for all offices in the State—for bishops’ mitres, chamberlains’ wands, and even all the higher appointments in the army. Lubeckoi resigned to Constantine the duty of carrying out its decrees; but the Grand Duke found these duties insufficient for his civic ardour, and with the same mad energy with which he drilled a regiment of recruits, he now set about reorganising the secret police. He soon established through this means a tribunal completely devoted to his will, immediately under his favourite, General Roznicski, as president, assisted by various other generals, three favourite jailers, His Highness’s late tutor, General Karouta, a confidential valet de chambre, a Jew (broker and poisoner to the tribunal), gendarmes of peculiar acumen, and one or two other villains. The decrees of this council were carried out by a legion of Thugs, composed of pick-pockets, Jew usurers, pimps, dismissed galley-slaves, and other vile instruments, such as can always be found to carry out the will of iniquity in high places.
The tribunal held its sittings at Warsaw, generally in a vault of the Belvedere, and its dread power was soon felt to the farthest limits of the kingdom: its spies contrived to introduce themselves into every family. The attention of the secret police was no longer confined to persons in government employments; barracks, colleges, cafés, public gardens, the boudoirs of courtesans, monks’ cells, Jewish synagogues, and freemasons’ lodges were alike the field of their operations. They were no longer a gang of insignificant scoundrels, but a great State institution, with their own system of administration, their esprit de corps, and peculiar privileges. No person employed in the secret police could be charged with felony or theft, nor could any civil action be brought against its agents but by their immediate superiors; no one had such facilities of travelling as they: the services of the gendarmes were absolutely at their disposition, and they could always demand an escort of Cossacks if necessary. It must not be supposed all this was earned without some trouble. After the Revolution, no less than fifty-nine large volumes of manuscript reports were found in General Karouta’s office alone, all drawn up by his own hand. He was chief paymaster of the force, and a man of untiring devotion; he frequently received as many as 107 agents in one morning; those who had a more than usually interesting conspiracy, or piquant bit of household scandal, were sent on to the Grand Duke; the rest left their reports with him. This indefatigable ex-pedagogue had some human weaknesses: he was bitterly annoyed that Constantine would not grant the secret police a distinguishing uniform to be worn at court balls and levées. General Roznicski was a man of less ambition but far more practical than the Greek; he used to place the greater number of his private creditors on the lists of the secret service, and send them to Karouta with their bills; being, moreover, of an economical disposition, when he acted as his own paymaster he managed to save a good deal of money by receiving his spies in a chamber whilst another agent listened behind the door; after the first man had told his story, Roznicski would storm at him as a lazy rascal, then call in the eaves-dropper, who repeated the same declarations, declaring he had long since furnished them. But this manœuvre could only occasionally be put in practice.
Nor was this institution spoken or written of by its authors with any touch of cynicism: no, it was “a means employed by the Government for the better preservation of public morality, and of guarding the innocent from evil-doers.” We have not space to quote the oath taken by the police agents in full, but here are some extracts:—
I swear to God the Omnipotent in the Holy Trinity, and in the presence of the Holy Virgin, all the saints, and my own blessed patron saint, that I will fulfil the public trust placed in my hands with my best power and ability, and pay the strictest regard to all the instructions communicated to me; that I will neither communicate the duty with which I am charged either to persons of my own family, to persons serving in another section of the Police Administration, nor to the superiors of the latter; that I will faithfully report all I learn in the discharge of my functions to my own superiors, that I will not deceive them on any occasion, nor conceal anything from them; that I will report everything with strict veracity, and betray nothing of the work with which I am charged, so long as I live, etc., etc.
The oath concluded with:
May the one only God in the Holy Trinity, and all the saints, help me to keep this oath, in its fullest and strictest meaning.
