The question has not unnaturally been raised, What had Bakunin the cosmopolitan to do at such an institution of national Chauvinism as the Congress? What had the ultra-radical Democrat and sworn enemy of the Czar to do with a congress held by the favour of Nicholas, and visited by orthodox Archimandrites, by the envoys of Slav princes, and privy councillors decorated with Russian orders? When the drama at Prague ended with a sanguinary insurrection and the bombardment of Prague, Bakunin disappeared, only to re-appear again, now in Saxony and now in Thuringia, under all kinds of disguises, and (as those who are well-informed maintain)[2] constantly occupied with the intention of causing a new insurrection at Prague. Here too he was in contradiction with the attitude that he had adopted both before and after this event, for he must have known what a sorry part the Czechs had played and still were playing as regards the Vienna Democracy and the efforts for Hungarian emancipation. [2] Karl Blind, "Vaeter des Anarchismus" (Persoenliche Erinnerungen), 4 feuilletons in the _Neue Freie Presse_, 1894. During the insurrection in May, 1849, we find Bakunin in Dresden, as a member of the provisional government, and taking a prominent part in the defence of the city against the Prussian troops. Bakunin here appears as a champion of the very same cause that he had attacked at the Prague Congress. After the fall of Dresden he went with the provisional government to Chemnitz, where on the 10th of May he was captured and condemned to death by martial law. The sentence, however, was not carried out, since Austria had demanded his extradition. Here he was also condemned at Olmutz to be hanged; but Austria handed this offender, who was so much in request, over to Russia, which country also wished to get hold of him. By a remarkable chance, Bakunin escaped the death to which here also he was condemned, by receiving a pardon from the Czar; he was imprisoned first in the fortress of SS. Peter and Paul, and then at that of Schluesselburg; and in 1855, through the exertions of his influential relatives, was banished to Siberia. At that time a report had generally gained credence in Europe, although lacking any foundation, that Bakunin had by no means owed his life, that three countries had already condemned, to the chance favour of a monarch usually far from gracious; and the distrust of the apostle of Revolution was still more greatly increased when, in 1861, he succeeded in escaping from the penal settlement in the Amur district, and returned to Europe _via_ Japan and America. Now the otherwise mysterious success of this escape has been explained. The Governor of the Amur (Muravieff-Amurski) happened to be a cousin of Bakunin's relation, Muravieff, and moreover (according to Bakunin's own statement),[3] a secret adherent of the revolutionary movement. He appears to have lived on a very intimate footing with Bakunin, and