Under Nicolas the soldiers were so dressed and drilled that they were always falling sick. A third of the army was in hospital the whole year round, and little more than half the men could ever be returned as fit to march. Being badly clothed and poorly fed, they flew to drink. They died in heaps, and rather like sheep than men. The case is different now; for the soldier is better clothed and fed than persons of his class in ordinary life. The men are allowed to stand and walk in their natural way; and, having more bread to eat, they show less craving after drink. A school is opened in every barrack, and pressure is put on the men to make them learn. Many of the soldiers can read, and some can write. Gazettes and papers are taken in; libraries are being formed; and the Russian army promises to become as bright as that of Germany or France. The change is great; and every one finds the root of this reform in that abolition of the Tartar stick, which comes, like other great reforms, from the Crimean war. CHAPTER LXVI. ALEXANDER. The Crimean war restored the people to their national life. "Sebastopol!" said a general officer to me just now, "Sebastopol perished, that our country might be free." The Tartar kingdom, founded by Ivan the Terrible, reformed by Peter the Great, existed in the spirit, even where it clothed itself in Western names and forms, until the allies landed from their transports. Routed on the Alma, beaten at Balaclava, that kingdom made her final effort on the heights of Inkermann; hurling, in Tartar force and fashion, her last "great horde" across that Baidar valley, in the rocks and caves of which a remnant of the tribes of Batu Khan and Timour Beg still lingers; fighting in mist and fog, on wooded slope and stony ridge, her gallant and despairing fight. What followed Inkermann was detail only. Met and foiled that wintry day, she reeled and bled to death. A grave was made for her, as one may say, not far from the spot on which she fought and fell. Before the landing-place in Sebastopol sprang the walls and frowned the guns of an imperial fort--the strongest pile in Russia, perhaps in Europe; rising tier on tier, and armed with two hundred and sixty guns; a fort in the fire of which no ship then floating on the sea could live. It bore the builder's name--the name of Nicolas, Autocrat of all the Russians; a colossal sovereign, who for thirty years had awed and stifled men like Genghis Khan. That fort became a ruin. The guns were torn to rags, the walls were shivered into dust. No stone was left in its place to tell the tale of its former pride; and it is even now an easier task to trace the outlines of Kherson, dead for five hundred years, than to restore, from what remains of them, the features of that proud, imperial fort. The prince, the fortress, and the kingdom fell; their work on earth accomplished to the final act. This ruin is their grave. Asiatic Russia passed away, and European Russia struggled into life.