This was in the time of Nicholas I, but men who had been through this service were no older than my grandfather, when I was a little girl; and they told their experiences with their own lips, and one knew it was true, and it broke one's heart with pain and pride.
Some of these soldiers of Nicholas, as they were called, were taken as little boys of seven or eight--snatched from their mothers' laps.

They were carried to distant villages, where their friends could never trace them, and turned over to some dirty, brutal peasant, who used them like slaves and kept them with the pigs.

No two were ever left together; and they were given false names, so that they were entirely cut off from their own world.

And then the lonely child was turned over to the priests, and he was flogged and starved and terrified--a little helpless boy who cried for his mother; but still he refused to be baptized.

The priests promised him good things to eat, and fine clothes, and freedom from labor; but the boy turned away, and said his prayers secretly--the Hebrew prayers.
As he grew older, severer tortures were invented for him; still he refused baptism.