The pillage of Kertch still went on; the inhabitants fled. Even the Tartars were in terror. For two or three days the beach was crowded by women and children, who sat out under the rays of the scorching sun to find safety in numbers. They were starving, and miserably clad, and in charity were taken on board the IZipon, which sailed with them for some Russian port. They were about two hundred in number. Mothers had lost their children, and children were without their mothers. In the confusion which prevailed they were separated, and the Caton carried some off to the Sea of Azoff, and the Ripon took others off to Odessa or Yalta, Our attempts to prevent outrage and destruction were of the feeblest and most contemptible character. If a sailor was found carrying any articles — books, or pictures, or furniture — they were taken from him at the beach and cast into the sea. The result was that the men, when they got loose in the town, where there was no control over them, broke to pieces everything that they could lay their hands on. "We did not interfere with French or Turks, and our measures against our own men were harsh, ridiculous, and impotent. The Austrian Consul was found to have a large store of corn, which he concealed in magazines painted and decorated to pass as part of his dwelling-house. It was all destroyed. Amid the necessary destruction, private plunderers found facility for their work. Along the quay there wTas a long line of walls, which once were the fronts of store-houses, magazines, mansions, and palaces. They soon became empty shells, hollow and roofless, with fire burning luridly within them by night, and streaks and clouds of parti- coloured smoke arising from them by day. The white walls were barred with black bands where the fire had rushed out of the window-frames. These store-houses belonged to Russians, and were full of corn — these magazines were the enemy's — these mansions belonged to their nobles and governors — and these palaces were the residences of their princes and rulers; and so far we carried on war with all the privileges of war, and used all the consequences of conquest. In the whole lengthened front facing the sea, and the wide quay which borders it, there was not an edifice untouched but one. This was a fine mansion, with a grand semicircular front, ornamented with rich entablatures and a few Grecian pillars. The windows permitted one to see massive mirrors and the framework of pictures and the glitter of brasswork. Inside the open door an old man in an arm-chair received everybody. How deferential he was! how he bowed! how graceful, deprecatory, and soothing the modulation of his trunk and arms! But these were nothing to his smile. His face seemed a kind of laughing-clock, wound up to act for so many hours. When the machinery was feeble, towards evening, the laugh degenerated into a grin, but he managed with nods, and cheeks wreathed in smiles, and a little bad German and French, to inform all comers that this house was specially under English and French protection,
CRIMEA.
to save it from plunder and pillage. The house belonged, on dit, to Prince Woronzoff, and the guardian angel was an aged servitor of the Prince. Being paralytic, he was left behind; and did good service in his arm-chair. Prince Woronzoffs house was said to be under the protection of the English and French. Was he protected because he was a Prince, or merely because he was supposed to be friendly to the Englishmen, and connected with some English families? Sir George Brown assuredly had no natural sympathy with pure aristocracy or with anything but pure democratic • soldiery and military good fortune. It might have been — right to save Prince Woronzoffs house, but would it not have been equally proper to protect the stock-in-trade of some miserable Russian mechanic who remained in the town trusting to our clemency, and who was ruined by a few brutal sailors? Prince Woronzoff had many palaces. His friendly feelings towards England were at best known to but few, and were certainly of no weight with Frenchmen, because those sentiments, if they existed at all, dated from a period antecedent to the true entente cordiale, and were suggestive of anything but good liking towards Frenchmen. However, the house was so far safe, and if we were sorry that the museum was sacked, we might be proud that the palace was spared. The marks of useless destruction and of wanton violence and outrage were too numerous and too distressing to let us rest long on the spectacle of this virgin palace.