Pougatchev's intemperate and brutal nature wasi also the cause of his final capture. In spite of the reward set upon his head, three faithful companions had shared with him the dangers and privations of his flight. While lurking in hiding among the salt lakes not far from the Jaik, one of these three — overcome by fatigue and the hopelessness of their situation — dared to suggest to his chief the advisability of considering a surrender. Poug- Patchev, perhaps thinking to overawe his comrades, without hesitation drove his dagger into the speaker's throat.
The companions of the murdered man now threw themselves on their leader and binding him with his own horse's reins and bridle, carried him to the Russian troops under General Zaharov, commanding the town of Jaikskoi. From this place, which had been the scene of "Peter Ill's" wildest exploits and excess successes, he was carried to Moscow in an iron cage, a species of terrible show and example to all the villages along the way.
In captivity Pougatchev showed the psychological transformations so common to wild and brutal natures. His jailers and those who visited him in his prison were astonished to find, instead of the terrible monster created by popular belief, a mild and cringing convict continually hopeful of a reprieve.
Yet the extraordinary powers of persuasion or personal magnetism of which the Cossack leader was master were to be exercised even upon his executioner. The sentence passed upon the "False
Peter the Tliird" — no more barbarous than his crimes demanded in the opinion of his time — required that "he should be quartered alive, his hands and feet cut off, and his ashes then to be thrown to the winds." As a last grace the public hangman consented on the scaffold to alter the course of this terrible punisliment, moved by Pougatchev's tears and eloquent pleadings. First cutting off the bandit's head at a single blow, he thus mercifully ended his sufferings. As a punishment for this humane weakness, defeating the ends of justice, the unfortunate official was given the knout, his tongue was cut out, and he was sent to end his days in Siberian banishment.
CHAPTER IX
IN the days of public rejoicing following the Peace of Paris no hero of the armies of the Grand Coalition which had overthrown Napoleon enjoyed such unrivalled popularity as the Hetman Platov, the leader of the Cossacks of the Don. The versions of his terrifying exploits which became current in Europe were often so exaggerated that the hetman — like Mazeppa — began to be considered by a later generation as a character in fiction. Always modest in his own accounts, Platov became the victim of overzealous biographers. It is only in recent years that writers of his own race have succeeded in making clear the history of the stirring events in which he took part and the important military role played by the Cossacks during the retreat of the French from Moscow.
During Platov's visit to England in the personal suite of the Emperor Alexander, his fame threatened to eclipse even the reception accorded to the "Tsar Idealist" himself. At a memorable race meeting held in Ascot in the year 1815 the hetman was almost mobbed by his admirers: "his arrival was greeted by a tempest of cheers so prolonged that
THE HETMAX PLATOV
they threatened to interrupt the serious business of the occasion. Five men at one time were shaking his hand, each one passing on to a friend the finger that he had enjoyed the honour of holding. An attention even more annoying to the gallant Cossack was offered by a throng of ladies, who, armed with scissors, insisted either upon being presented with locks of the hero's hair, or when, for obvious reasons, this was refused, on cutting souvenirs from the tail of his charger."* Yet in spite of this overwhelming reception, Platov always looked back on this stay among the warm-hearted Londoners as the happiest epoch of his hfe.
Platov was born about the middle of the XVIIIth century at Tcherkass, the old capital of the Don Cossacks.
The exact date of his birth is unknown because in later years he was always careful to conceal his age from his companions-in-arms — many of them younger than his own grandchildren. His military career, hke that of the veteran Prince Kutusov, forms a comiecting link between the group of brilliant generals who directed the victorious wars of Catherine the Great and the history of the Napoleonic era.
Ivan Platov, the future hetman's father, was a simple Cossack officer who, like his son, was bom at Tcherkass. It is considered a noteworthy fact
* Platov's own account, quoted by Prof. A. E. Tarrasov, in "The Hetman Platov," in Russian, 1902.