French postcard by Phototypie A. Bergeret et Cie., Nancy. Caption: (Mother Russia:) Aren't you the Children of our old Siberia? For her you need to die.
French postcard by Phototypie A. Bergeret et Cie., Nancy. Caption: On the road to Irkutsk.
French postcard by Phototypie A. Bergeret et Cie., Nancy. Caption: Nadia Fedor.
French postcard by Phototypie A. Bergeret et Cie., Nancy. Caption: The traitor Ivan Ogareff.
French postcard by Phototypie A. Bergeret et Cie., Nancy. Caption: Caption: Sangarre and Ivan Ogareff.
A courier for Tsar Alexander II
The Michael Strogoff series by Bergeret is unnumbered but we've tried to follow the plot. Michael Strogoff, a 30-year-old native of Omsk, is a courier for Tsar Alexander II of Russia. The Tartar Khan (prince), Feofar Khan, incites a rebellion and separates the Russian Far East from the mainland, severing telegraph lines. Rebels encircle Irkutsk, where the local governor, a brother of the Tsar, is making a last stand. Strogoff is sent to Irkutsk to warn the governor about the traitor Ivan Ogareff, a former colonel, who was once demoted and exiled and now seeks revenge against the imperial family. He intends to gain the governor's trust and then betray him to the Tartar hordes.
On his way to Irkutsk, Strogoff meets Nadia Fedor, daughter of an exiled political prisoner, Basil Fedor, who has been granted permission to join her father at his exile in Irkutsk; the English war correspondent Harry Blount of the Daily Telegraph; and Alcide Jolivet, a Frenchman reporting for his 'cousin Madeleine'. Blount and Jolivet tend to follow the same route as Michael, separating and meeting again all the way through Siberia. He is supposed to travel under a false identity, posing as the pacific merchant Nicolas Korpanoff, but he is discovered by the Tartars when he meets his mother in their home city of Omsk.
Michael, his mother, and Nadia are eventually captured by the Tartar forces, along with thousands of other Russians, during the storming of a city in the Ob basin. The Tartars do not know Strogoff by sight, but Ogareff is aware of the courier's mission and when he is told that Strogoff's mother spotted her son in the crowd and called his name, but received no reply, he understands that Strogoff is among the captured and devises a scheme to force the mother to indicate him.
Strogoff is indeed caught and handed over to the Tartars, and Ogareff alleges that Michael is a spy, hoping to have him put to death in some cruel way. After opening the Koran at random, Feofar decides that Michael will be blinded as punishment in the Tartar fashion, with a glowing hot blade. For several chapters, the reader is led to believe that Michael was indeed blinded, but it transpires in fact that he was saved from this fate (his tears at his mother evaporated and saved his corneas) and was only pretending.
Eventually, Michael and Nadia escape and travel to Irkutsk with a friendly peasant, Nicolas Pigassof. They are recaptured by the Tartars; Nicolas witnesses Nadia being raped by a Tartar soldier and murders Nadia's assaulter. The Tartars then abandon Nadia and Michael and carry Nicolas away, reserving him for greater punishment. Nadia and Michael later discover him buried up to his neck in the ground. They continue onward where they are delayed by fire and the frozen river. However, they eventually reach Irkutsk and warn the Tsar's brother in time of Ivan Ogareff. Nadia's father, who has been appointed commander of a suicide battalion and later pardoned, joins them and Michael and Nadia are married.
French postcard by Phototypie A. Bergeret et Cie., Nancy. Caption: Caption: Sangarre and Ivan Ogareff.
French postcard by Phototypie A. Bergeret et Cie., Nancy. Caption: God offers the afflicted ineffable consolations.
French postcard by Phototypie A. Bergeret et Cie., Nancy. Caption: My mother! My mother! They killed my mother!
French postcard by Phototypie A. Bergeret et Cie., Nancy. Caption: The death of the traitor.
French postcard by Phototypie A. Bergeret et Cie., Nancy. Caption: For God, czar, and fatherland! Following the thread of the plot, this could be the last card. Yet, this card talks about consolations by God, which may refer to Michel getting his sight again. When his mother faints when he is blinded, his tears have saved his eyes. So that card could also be the last or penultimate card.
Sources: Gazette Drouot (French), and Wikipedia (French and English).
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