Dynamite in Politics-Historical Assassinations—Infernal Machines in France—The Inventor of Dynamite—M. Nobel and his Ideas—The Nitro-Compounds—How Dynamite is Made—The New French Explosive—“Black Jelly” and the Nihilists—What the Nihilists Believe and What they Want—The Conditions in Russia—The White and the Red Terrors—Vera Sassoulitch—Tourgeneff and the Russian Girl—The Assassination of the Czar—“It is too Soon to Thank God”—The Dying Emperor—Two Bombs Thrown—Running Down The Conspirators—Sophia Perowskaja, the Nihilist Leader—The Handkerchief Signal—The Murder Roll—Tried and Convicted—A Brutal Execution—Five Nihilists Pay the Penalty—Last Words Spoken but Unheard—A Deafening Tattoo—The Book-bomb and the Present Czar—Strychnine-coated Bullets—St. Peter and Paul’s Fortress—Dynamite Outrages in England—The Record of Crime—Twenty-nine Convicts and their Offenses—Ingenious Bomb-making—The Failures of Dynamite.

THE attempt to gain political ends by an appeal to infernal machines is not a new one. It is as old as gunpowder—and the evangel of assassination is older still. Murder was the recognized political weapon of the Eastern and Western Empires, and the Chicago Anarchists have proved themselves neither better nor worse than the “old man of the mountain” or the Italian princes of the middle ages. During the reign of Mary Queen of Scots the mysterious explosion occurred in the Kirk of Feld in which Darnley lost his life. Somewhat later was the “gunpowder plot,” in which Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The petard and the hand-grenade were the grandfather and the grandmother of the modern bomb, and murderous invention came to its new phase in the infernal machine which Ceruchi, the Italian sculptor, contrived to kill Napoleon when First Consul—a catastrophe which was avoided by the fact that Napoleon’s coachman was drunk and took the wrong turn in going to the opera-house.

France was fertile in this sort of machinery. Some years later Fieschi, Morey and Pepin tried to kill Louis Philippe with a similar apparatus on the Boulevard de Temple. The King escaped, but the brave Marshal Mortier was slain. Orsini and Pieri made a bomb, round and bristling with nippers, each of which was charged with fulminate of mercury, to explode the powder within, meaning to assassinate the Emperor Napoleon and the Empress Eugenie.

In the year 1866, according to the most trustworthy authorities, dynamite was first made by Alfred Nobel. In speaking of the invention, Adolf Houssaye, the French litterateur, recently said:

Few people know what dynamite is, though it has attracted a good deal of attention of late, and before considering its use as a mode for political murder it may be well here to give an account of its making.

Nitro-glycerine, although not the strongest explosive known to science, is the only one of any industrial importance, as the others are too dangerous for manufacture. It was discovered by Salvero, an Italian chemist, in 1845. It is composed of glycerine and nitric acid compounded together in a certain proportion, and at a certain temperature. It is very unsafe to handle, and to this reason is to be ascribed the invention of dynamite, which is, after all, merely a sort of earth and nitro-glycerine, the use of the earth being to hold the explosive safely as a piece of blotting-paper would hold water until it was needed. Nobel first tried kieselguhr, or flint froth, which was ground to a powder, heated thoroughly and dried, and the nitro-glycerine was kneaded into it like so much dough. Of course, many other substances are now used, besides infusorial earth, as vehicles for the explosive—saw-dust, rotten-stone, charcoal, plaster of Paris, black powder, etc., etc. These are all forms of dynamite or giant powder, and mean the same thing. When the substance is thoroughly kneaded, work that must be done with the hands, it is molded into sticks somewhat like big candles, and wrapped in parchment paper. Nitro-glycerine has a sweet, aromatic, pungent taste, and the peculiar property of causing a violent headache when placed on the tongue or the wrist. It freezes at 40° Fahrenheit, and must be melted by the application of water at a temperature of 100°. In dynamite the usual proportions are 25 per cent. of earth and 75 per cent. of nitro-glycerine. The explosive is fired by fulminate of silver or mercury in copper caps.

Outside of the French arsenals it is to be doubted if anybody knows anything more about the new explosive, melinite, further than that it is one of the compounds of picric acid—and picric acid is a more frightful explosive than nitro-glycerine. I find in my scrap-book the following excerpt from the London Standard, describing the artillery experiments at Lydd with the new explosive which the British Admiralty has lately been examining. The Standard, after declaring that the experiments are “entirely satisfactory,” says:

Dynamite, however, is the weapon with which the “revolution” has armed itself for its assault upon society. A terrible arm truly, but one difficult to handle, dangerous to hold, and certainly no stronger in their hands than in ours, if it should ever become necessary to use it in defense of law and order.

A number of Russian chemists, members of the Nihilist party, were the first to apply dynamite to the work of murder. It is to their researches that is to be credited the invention of the “black jelly,” so called, of which so much was expected, and by which so little was done.

Nihilist activity in Russia commenced almost as soon as the emancipated peasantry began to be in condition for the evangel of discontent. It was Tourgeneff, the novelist, who baptized the movement with its name of Nihilism—and the truth is that it is a movement rather than an organization. It is a loose, uncentralized, uncodified society, secret by necessity and murderous by belief; but it is a secret society without grips or passwords, without a purpose save indiscriminate destruction, and its very formlessness and vagueness have been its chief protection from the Russian police, who are, perhaps, after all is said and done, the best police in the world. A statement of Nihilism by that very famous Nihilist who is known as Stepniak, but who is suspected to be entitled to a much more illustrious name, runs thus:

By our general conviction we are Socialists and democrats. We are convinced that on Socialistic grounds humanity can become the embodiment of freedom, equality and fraternity, while it secures for itself a general prosperity, a harmonious development of man and his social progress. We are convinced, moreover, that only the will of the people should give sanction to any social institution, and that the development of the nation is sound only when free and independent and when every idea in practical use shall have previously passed the test of national consideration and of the national will. We further think that as Socialists and democrats we must first recognize an immediate purpose to liberate the nation from its present state of oppression by creating a political revolution. We would thus transfer the supreme power into the hands of the people. We think that the will of the nation should be expressed with perfect clearness, and best, by a National Assembly freely elected by the votes of all the citizens, the representatives to be carefully instructed by their constituents. We do not consider this as the ideal form of expressing the people’s will, but as the most acceptable form to be realized in practice. Submitting ourselves to the will of the nation, we, as a party, feel bound to appear before our own country with our own programme or platform, which we shall propagate even before the revolution, recommend to the electors during electoral periods, and afterwards defend in the National Assembly.

The Nihilist programme in Russia has been officially formulated thus:

It must be remembered that the conditions in Russia are peculiar. The country is ruled by an autocracy; government is not by the people, but by “divine right.” The conditions which the English-speaking people ended at Runnymede still exist in Muscovy. There is neither free speech, free assembly, nor a free press, and naturally discontent vents itself in revolt. There is no safety-valve. Russia is full of generous, high-minded young men and women, who find their church dead, and their state a cruel despotism. They find themselves face to face with the White Terror, and they have sought in the Red Terror a relief. Flying at last from the hopeless contest, they have carried the hate of government born of bad ruling into Western Europe, and it is the infection of this poison that we have to deal with here. The average Russian Nihilist is a young man or a young woman—very often the latter—who, by the contemplation of real wrongs and fallacious remedies, has come to be the implacable enemy of all order and all system. Usually they are half-educated, with just that superficial smattering of knowledge to make them conceited in their own opinions, but without enough real learning to make them either impartial critics or safe citizens of non-Russian countries. We can pity them, for it is easy to see how step by step they have been pushed into revolt. But they are dangerous.

When one reads such a case as that which gave Vera Sassoulitch her notoriety, it is easier to understand Russia. General Trepoff, the Chief of Police of St. Petersburg, had arrested Vera’s lover on suspicion of high treason. The young man was by Trepoff’s order frequently flogged to make him confess his crime. Sassoulitch called on Trepoff and shot him. She was tried by a St. Petersburg jury and acquitted. Immediately a law was declared that no case of political crime should be tried by a jury, except when the Government had selected it. The arrest of the woman was ordered that she might be tried again under the new regulation, but in the meantime her friends had spirited her away.

A very similar crime was that attempted by another Nihilist heroine, Maria Kaliouchnaia, who attempted to kill Col. Katauski for his severity to her brother. In the assassination of the Czar, as I shall relate, a number of women were concerned, and their bravery was greatly more desperate than that of their male companions. The Russian woman is peculiar. I know no better picture of the “devoted ones” than that given in Tourgeneff’s “Verses in Prose”:

With such material it was not difficult to build up the tragedy of 1881. Before the day of the Czar’s death came, there had been desperate attempts upon his life. Prince Krapotkin, a relative of the Nihilist of the same name, was murdered in February, 1879, and following this deed the terrorists applied themselves resolutely to the removal of the Emperor.

For instance, in November, 1879, was the mine laid at Moscow. It was intended to blow up the railway train upon which the Czar was to enter the city, and for this purpose Solovieff and his comrades laid three dynamite mines under the tracks. Hartmann, who subsequently figured in the assassination, was one of the leaders, and here, too, was Sophie Peroosky, another of the regicides. They hired a house near the railway tracks and tunneled under the road amidst incredible difficulties and always in the most imminent danger. One hundred and twenty pounds of dynamite was in position, but the Czar passed by in a common train before the imperial one on which he was expected, and his life was saved. On February 5, 1880, the mine under the Winter Palace was exploded; eleven persons were killed, but again the Czar escaped.

For some time before March 13, 1881, Gen. Count Loris Melikoff, the officer responsible for the safety of Czar Alexander II., had received disquieting reports which gave him the greatest anxiety. On the 10th of the month Jelaboff, the ringleader of the conspiracy, was arrested by accident, and the direction of the attempt on the Czar’s life was accordingly left to Sophie Perowskaja, a young, pretty and highly educated noblewoman, who had left everything to join the Nihilists. It is said that on the morning of the 13th Melikoff begged the Czar to forego his purpose of reviewing the Marine Corps, and keep within the palace. The Emperor laughed at him, and declared there was no danger. There was no incident until after the review. As the Emperor drove back beside the Ekaterinofsky Canal, just opposite the imperial stables, a young woman on the other side of the canal fluttered a handkerchief, and immediately a man started out from the crowd that was watching the passing of the Czar, and threw a bomb under the closed carriage. There was a roaring explosion, a cloud of smoke. The rear of the vehicle was blown away, and the horror-stricken multitude saw the Czar standing unhurt, staring about him. On the ground were several members of the Life Guard, groaning and writhing in pain. The assassin had pulled out a revolver to complete his work, but he was at once mobbed by the people. Col. Dvorjitsky and Captains Kock and Kulebiekan, of the guards, rushed up to their master and asked him if he was hurt.

“Thank God! no,” said the Czar. “Come, let us look after the wounded.”

And he started toward one of the Cossacks.

“It is too soon to thank God yet, Alexander Nicolaivitch,” said a clear, threatening voice in the crowd, and before any one could stop him, a young man bounded forward, lifted up both arms above his head, and brought them down with a swing. There was a crash of dynamite, a blaze, a smoke, and the autocrat of all the Russias was lying on the bloody snow, with his murderer also dying in front of him. Col. Dvorjitsky lifted up the Czar, who whispered:

“I am cold, my friend, so cold,—take me to the Winter Palace to die.”

The desperate Nihilist had thrown his bomb right between the Czar’s feet, and had sacrificed his own life to kill the Emperor.

Alexander was shockingly mutilated. Both of his legs were broken, and the lower part of his body was frightfully torn and mangled. The assassin—his name was Nicholas Elnikoff, of Wilna—was even more badly hurt. He died at once.

The Czar was taken into an open sled, and although it was claimed he received the last sacrament at the Winter Palace, most of those who know believe that he died on the way there.

In the meantime the police, with the utmost difficulty, rescued the first bomb-thrower from the maddened mob. The man, whose name proved to be Risakoff, coolly thanked the officers for preserving him, and then tried to swallow some poison which he had ready. In this he was foiled, and he was taken to prison.

The infernal machine used by Elnikoff was about 7½ inches in height, and its construction is exemplified in the annexed diagram. Metal tubes (b b) filled with chlorate of potash, and enclosing glass tubes (c c) filled with sulphuric acid (commonly called oil of vitriol), intersect the cylinder. Around the glass tubes are rings of iron (d d) closely attached as weights. The construction is such that, no matter how the bomb falls, one of the glass tubes is sure to break. The chlorate of potash in that case, combining with the sulphuric acid, ignites at once, and the flames communicate over the fuse (f f) with the piston (e), filled with fulminate of silver. The concussion thus caused explodes the dynamite or “black jelly” (a) with which the cylinder is closely packed.