294. Miracles and other things
“Our earthly life is like a railway trip. You go fast and see neither what's ahead nor - most importantly - the locomotive."
Vincent Van Gogh
“In all countries, railways serve for movement, and in Russia for theft as well.”
Saltykov-Schedrin
“The next train departed ten minutes ago.”
Punch Magazine, 1871.
“Nothing is more tiring than waiting for the train, especially when you are lying on the rails.”
Don Aminado
“The only way to catch the train is to be late for the previous one.”
Gilbert Chesterton
“Remember: in five out of six cases, the light at the end of the tunnel is the light of an approaching train.”
Paul Dixon
“Rhinos are trampling our sorghum,
Monkeys are tearing off the figs,
Worse than the monkeys and the rhinos
Are the white Italian tramps.”
N.Gumilev, “Military Abissinian song”
This country is mine and no other nation can have it”
Menelik II
Russia.
October 17 (29), 1888. Kursk-Kharkov-Azov Railroad. Near Borki station. 2:45PM. The Imperial Train carrying Alexander III and his family was going from the Crimea to St.-Petersburg.
The technical condition of the cars was excellent, they worked for 10 years without accidents. In violation of the railway rules of that period, which limited the number of axles in the passenger train to 42, there were 64 axles in the imperial train, consisting of 15 cars. The weight of the train was within the limits established for the freight, but the speed corresponded to the express. In violation of the rules, the train was conducted by two steam locomotives, the cargo locomotive T.164 (38 tons, design speed 58 km/h) and passenger P.41 (32 tons, design speed 82 km/h). This had been done against protest of the manager of the South-Western Railways Society, S.Y.Witte, who in presence of the emperor was trying to prove to the railroad officials that it is dangerous to use two locomotives to bring the imperial train up to a high speed. He was overruled. Pulling rank on him was plain stupid: unlike his opponents, he was a railroad specialist with the European reputation who already had a very impressive track record both in a narrow area of their exploitation and general organization (under his management between 1881 and 1885 the net income of the South-Western Railways Society, increased more than three times).
Steam locomotives galloping at different rhythms at a speed of 68 km/h shattered the weak upper structure of the railway track, the second locomotive actually fell between the diverged rails. Under such conditions, 10 cars derailed. And the path at the crash site passed through a high embankment - about 5 fathoms high (approximately 10.7 m). Heavy imperial cars crushed with their mass ordinary cars with servants placed in the head of the train. A strong push dropped all those traveling on the train. After the first push, a terrible crackle followed, then there was a second push, even stronger than the first, and after the third, quiet, push, the train stopped.
A terrible picture of destruction appeared before the eyes of the survivors of the crash. Everyone rushed to look for the imperial family and soon saw the emperor and his family alive and unharmed.
Just few minutes before the crash the imperial family left the dinner car and proceeded to their compartments at the end of a train which remained on the rails: in the entire train, consisting of 15 cars, only five that were stopped by the action of Westinghouse automatic brakes survived. Both locomotives also remained intact. The car, which contained court officials and buffet servants, was completely destroyed, all those in it died and were found disfigured - 13 mutilated corpses were raised on the left side of the embankment from the remnants of this car. According to the materials of the investigation, it was established that 21 people were killed and 24 injured during the disaster. Later, two of the wounded died.
Most of the passengers of the imperial car got off with light bruises, abrasions and scratches, with the exception of aide-de-camp Count Sheremetev, who had crushed his finger and the Empress who got hit at the arm. The news of the collapse of the imperial train quickly spread along the line, and the help hurried from all sides. Alexander III personally took charge of the removal of the wounded from under the wreckage of broken cars. “
The Empress with medical staff went to the wounded, helped them, trying in every possible way to alleviate the patients of their suffering, despite the fact that she herself had a damaged arm above her elbow.” Only at dusk, when all the dead were identified and not left without the help of a single wounded, the royal family sat down on the second imperial train (Svitsky) that arrived here and left for Lozovaya station, where the first thanksgiving prayer was served at night for the miraculous deliverance of the tsar and his family from mortal danger.
There were two aspects of the disaster:
1st, celebration of a
miracle - saving the Imperial family clearly was a sign of a direct divine intervention. For a generally religious majority of the Russian population, this was definitely the case worthy of the special prayers which were conducted throughout the empire. A hermitage called Spaso-Svyatogorsky was soon arranged at the crash site. In few fathoms from the embankment, a temple was built in the name of Christ the Savior of the Glorious Transfiguration.
2nd, to find who is at fault and here the interesting part started.
With the knowledge of the tsar, the investigation of the causes of the disaster in Borki was entrusted to the prosecutor of the criminal cassation department of the Senate A. F. Koni [1]. The main version was the train crash as a result of a number of technical factors: poor track condition and increased train speed.
Immediately after the accident, the chief inspector of the railways, Baron Shernval, who was traveling on the imperial train and broke his leg in the accident, summoned the manager of the Society of South-Western Railways S. Y. Witte and the director of the Kharkov Polytechnic Institute Viktor Kirpichev to lead the investigation on the spot. Later, the above-mentioned Anatoly Koni joined them in St. Petersburg. At that point CYA circus started:
- Witte insisted that this was caused by speeding, which exempted the railway administration from responsibility;
- Kirpichev accused rotten wooden sleepers, which moved the blame to the construction company;
- Kony shifted the blame to the railway management, which exempted state officials from liability for their idiotic overriding of Witte’s objections.
Witte, in particular, maneuvered between the accusation of officials and the dismissal of the Minister of Communications Konstantin Posiet. In the end, Emperor Alexander III decided to close the case quietly, allowed Shernval and Posiet to resign, got a number of the lesser personages fired and appointed Witte director of the
Imperial Railways [2]. Despite Witte's efforts, the railway administration was not without public attention. The contractor for the construction of the Kursk-Kharkiv line, Samuel Polyakov, who died two months before the accident, was posthumously accused of poor quality of railway construction. Koni in his official conclusion listed all contributing factors but ended up with blaming everything on the “rotten sleepers” which could not hold the rails under a high pressure.
In parallel with the
official investigation a
semi-official one had been carried by a different “institution” that was not generally specializing in the subjects like the rotten sleepers, trains speed and other technicalities but was quite skilled in finding “who did what, when and how”. This investigation was conducted discretely not to give the creative ideas to some other potential culprits. Few unimportant people, like helper to the cook of imperial train, simply were not seen anymore but perhaps they just moved elsewhere. After all, Russian Empire was a big country.
The new broom
On March 10, 1889, Witte was appointed director of the newly formed Department of Railway Affairs of the Ministry of Finance and promoted to full state councillor [3] . He started with buying out numerous private railroads and creating the unified state-owned railroad system that was going to operate more efficiently. As a part of this program he was hiring the best people from the private companies, treated them well and encouraged the initiative.
Not limiting himself to the scope of his direct functions, in 1889 he published a work in which justified the need to create a powerful national industry, initially protected from foreign competition by a customs barrier, an idea near and dear to Alexander’s heart since he was a heir to the throne. In 1891, working together with Mendeleev, he introduced a new tariff designed along the protectionist lines.
In February 1892 he was made Minister of the Transportation in which capacity he served for only few month but managed to eliminate common large accumulations of untransported cargo and reformed railway tariffs. The longest surviving part of his activities was introduction of the metal cup holders in Russian passenger trains.
In August 1892 he was made Russian Finances Minister and in this capacity was, to put it mildly, all over the place. This was not a shock therapy but something close….
Ethiopia 1889.
On 2 May 1889 King
Menelik II of
Shewa, acting as
Emperor of Ethiopia, and Count
Pietro Antonelli representing Italy, signed Treaty of Wuchale that ended undeclared was that started in 1887. Ethiopia was generally successful but it had simultaneously to fight the Mahdist state on the West and In the vacuum that followed the death of Yohannes IV in the
Battle of Gallabat against the Mahdists on 10/11 March 1889, General
Oreste Baratieri occupied the highlands along the Eritrean coast and Italy proclaimed the establishment of the new colony of
Italian Eritrea. The new Emperor, Menelik II, who was in communications with the Italians even during Yohannes reign, decided to deal with one problem at a time and made peace with the Italians to stop their further expansion. Ethiopia lost access to the sea and had to pay an eight percent port duty to import or export goods through Italian-held port of Massawa but could transport the army from and through Massawa free of charge. The travel and trade exchanges between the two countries were allowed. The rest of the treaty guaranteed freedom of religion and equal rights for the Italian and Ethiopian subjects, extradition rights and some other technicalities.
There was, however, a “time bomb”. The treaty was written in two languages. In the Amharic version of the treaty, Article 17 states that “
His Majesty the King of Kings of Ethiopia can use the Government of His Majesty the King of Italy for all business with other powers or governments.” In the Italian version it was “
obliged”, which was making Ethiopia an Italian
protectorate. Menelik II was not in favor of this and rejected protection from Italy. However, in October 1889, the Italians informed all other European governments that Ethiopia was now an Italian protectorate because of the Treaty of Wuchale and therefore other European nations could not conduct diplomatic relations with Ethiopia. With the exceptions of the Ottoman Empire, which still maintained its claim to Eritrea, and Russia, all of the European powers accepted the Italian claim to a protectorate.
Well, it was one thing for Menelik, as King of Shewa no negotiate neutrality in Italo-Ethiopian conflict in exchange for 5,000 Remington rifles and quite another for him, as an emperor to acknowledge himself an Italian vassal. As far as Alexander was involved, his reasons boiled down to the following:
- Catholic country was trying to take control over an Orthodox nation.
- A minor European state, like Italy, is trying to break existing diplomatic communications of the Russian Empire with an independent state.
- The same minor state is getting a hold on a territory, which puts it in a control of the communications through Suez greater than Russia, one of the big shareholders, has.
- Admiral-General was very convincing in advocating advantages of having a fueling base on the Red Sea and convenience of having it in one of the Ethiopian ports.
Now, the issue was how to proceed. The first obvious step was to explain to Emperor Charles that acknowledgement of the Italian version is detrimental to the French interests, especially taking into an account rather cold, to put it mildly, Franco-Italian relations. This part proved to be easier than expected. Besides the usual diplomatic channels, Grand Duke Alexey, to everybody’s surprise, suddenly proved to be useful. He was a frequent visitor of Paris and tended to spend his time
not attending the art museums. Small wonder that his companion was Prince Imperial, Charles, heir to the throne and darling of the “patriotic circles” due to his frequent public remarks on the account of the French glory and other similar subjects. During their meeting Alexey expressed an unpleasant surprise at the easiness with which France gave away most of the advantages it got thanks to the Suez canal and assured that these feelings are not just his own but shared by many in Russia including his brother the Emperor: of course, the Italians per se were not a big deal but the Brits already injected themselves diplomatically into the conflict acting on the Italian side and this may have all types of the consequences, most of them unpleasant for France. Displaying quite untypical depth of the knowledge he even mentioned that control of Ethiopia will give Italy control over the Nile, which was vital for Egypt. Prince Imperial did not forget to inform his father who already got similar information from his Foreign Minister. Information coming by
two channels has to be taken seriously and worthy of consideration. Further exchange of the telegrams followed and the common platform was developed: France joined Russian and Ottoman protest.
To expand “platform”, Berlin was contacted. Neither Wilhelm II nor Bismarck favored Italy by three reasons: (a) it was too close to Britain, (b) its colonial ambitions were too big and soon enough could get into conflict with those of Germany and (c) a single Italian port on the Red Sea was tolerable but the whole Eritrea was putting it in too favorable position in the terms of controlling the traffic and this may impede the German access to its East Africa colony in the case of colonial dispute with Britain, which already controlled important port there. Anyway, why let Italians (who were so far beaten not only by the Austrians but even the Ethiopians) to imagine themselves equal to the Great Powers? Who do they think they are?
Within few months, the Italian government got diplomatic messages from the numerous countries informing that, due to the well-founded protest of Ethiopia, validity of which was confirmed by the distinguished linguists, acceptance of the Italian claim is being withdrawn. None of the messages contained explicit demand of the Italian withdrawal from the Eritrean territories after Yohannes’ death. Retaining freedom of action was one thing but getting directly into a conflict quite another: situation could easily evolve into a major conflict and why would anybody want to go into a war, even with Italy, on Ethiopian behalf? Menelik was a big boy and presumably knew what he was doing when signing a treaty. Now he is unhappy with it, the Mahdist invasions dwindled to the routine border skirmishes and he is free to act whichever way he wants. Of course, no direct involvement did not mean no help with the “materials”. The railroad from Djibouti was functioning and under the French control. Menelik had coffee, gold and other valuable commodities and his European friends had the weapons to sell and, in the case of Russia, a few people deeply interested in studying Ethiopian culture and, if asked, to share their own knowledge in some aspects of the European culture, for example, usage of certain modern devices (below the most prominent of these enthusiasts with his Ethiopian squire).
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[1] GT did a wonderful job by converting his last name into “Horses” («Кони» is literally “the horses”). 😂 This aside, he was one of the Russian top and most respected legal figures so at some point he was made a presiding judge on a trial of terrorist Vera Zasulich and, being a liberal, he directed process in such a way that she was acquitted. After which he acknowledged that he made some procedural errors but refused to retire (arguing that a judge can’t be dismissed) and the only way of dealing with him was to keep him upstairs. He was made a head of the civic department of the St-Petersburg court (another judicial position from which he could not be fired) and then appointed Chief Prosecutor of the Senate’s Criminal Department, he highest prosecutorial position in the Russian Empire (from which he could be fired at any moment).
[2] This position was within the Finances Ministry and accepting the offer Witte got a serious financial hit: his annual salary went from 40,000 rubles down to 3,000. To partially compensate for the loss, AIII added 9,600 from his own funds and 5,000 for the living expenses. The financial loss remained considerable but Witte looked for “visibility”, power and future career. As the future events demonstrated, he made the right choice.
[3] And has to be referenced “Your Excellency”. In the bureaucratic state like Russian Empire this was a big deal but being
personally known to the Emperor was even a bigger deal especially when it was “known and valued”.