and Bakunin. The Nihilist of
Turgenieff's day had been a hedonist of the clubs, or a harmless weaver
of scientific Utopias; the Nihilist of the new age was that most
dangerous of men, a desperado girt with a fighting creed.

[Footnote 227: _Russia in Revolution_, by G.H. Perriss, pp. 204-206,
210-214; Arnaudo, _I Nihilismo_ (Turin, 1879). See, too, the chapters
added by Sir D.M. Wallace to the new edition of his work
_Russia_ (1905).]

The fusing of these two diverse elements was powerfully helped on by the
white heat of indignation that glowed throughout Russia when details of
the official peculation and mismanagement of the war with Turkey became
known. Everything combined to discredit the Government; and enthusiasts
of all kinds felt that the days for scientific propaganda and stealthy
agitation were past. Voltaire must give way to Marat. It was time for
the bomb and the dagger to do their work.

The new Nihilists organised an executive committee for the removal of
the most obnoxious officials. Its success was startling. To name only a
few of their chief deeds: on August 15, 1878, a Chief of the Police was
slain near one of the Imperial Palaces at the capital; and, in February
1879, the Governor of Kharkov was shot, the Nihilists succeeding in
announcing his condemnation by placards mysteriously posted up in every
large town. In vain did the Government intervene and substitute a
military Commission in place of trial by jury. Exile and hanging only
made the Nihilists more daring, and on more than one occasion the Czar
nearly fell a victim to their desperadoes.

The most astounding of these attempts was the explosion of a mine under
the banqueting-hall of the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg on the
evening of February 17, 1880, when the Imperial family escaped owing to
a delay in the arrival of the Grand Duke of Hesse. Ten soldiers were
killed and forty-eight wounded in and near the guard-room.

The Czar answered outrage by terrorism. A week after this outrage he
issued a ukase suspending the few remaining rights of local
self-government hitherto spared by the reaction, and vesting practically
all executive powers in a special Commission, presided over by General
Loris Melikoff. This man was an Armenian by descent, and had
distinguished himself as commander in the recent war in Asia, the
capture of Kars being largely due to his dispositions. To these warlike
gifts, uncommon in the Armenians of to-day, he added admi