d reform of
all the private laws of the State, according to the will of the nation."
In order that the election of this Assembly might be a reality, the Czar
was pressed to grant freedom of speech and of public meetings[231].

[Footnote 231: The whole document is printed in the Appendix to
"Stepniak's" _Underground Russia_.]

It is difficult to say whether the Nihilists meant this document as an
appeal, or whether the addition of the demand of a general amnesty was
intended to anger the Czar and drive him into the arms of the
reactionaries. In either case, to press for the immediate pardon of his
father's murderers appeared to Alexander III. an unpardonable insult.
Thenceforth between him and the revolutionaries there could be no truce.
As a sop to quiet the more moderate reformers, he ordered the
appointment of a Commission, including a few members of Zemstvos, and
even one peasant, to inquire into the condition of public-houses and the
excessive consumption of vodka. Beyond this humdrum though useful
question the imperial reformer did not deign to move.

After a short truce, the revolutionaries speedily renewed their efforts
against the chief officials who were told off to crush them; but it soon
became clear that they had lost the good-will of the middle class. The
Liberals looked on them, not merely as the murderers of the liberating
Czar, but as the destroyers of the nascent constitution; and the masses
looked on unmoved while five of the accomplices in the outrage of March
13 were slowly done to death. In the next year twenty-two more suspects
were arrested on the same count; ten were hanged and the rest exiled to
Siberia. Despite these inroads into the little band of desperadoes, the
survivors compassed the murder of the Public Prosecutor as he sat in a
cafe at Odessa (March 30, 1882). On the other hand, the official police
were helped for a time by zealous loyalists, who formed a "Holy Band"
for secretly countermining the Nihilist organisation. These amateur
detectives, however, did little except appropriate large donations,
arrest a few harmless travellers and no small number of the secret
police force. The professionals thereupon complained to the Czar, who
suppressed the "Holy Band."

The events of the years 1883 and 1884 showed that even the army, on
which the Czar was bestowing every care, was permeated with Nihilism,
women having by their arts won over many officers to the revolutionary
cause. Poland,