Studies in Literature and History
fixed and registered, the position of a civilised government entangled
in chronic border warfare has long been unknown; the tradition of such
a state of things is preserved in popular recollection mainly by local
records and old ballads. Yet for Englishmen the subject possesses
peculiar interest, since it is connected with their earlier history;
and moreover our dominion in India invests it with special importance,
for it is there a matter of immediate experience and active concern.
We may recollect, in the first place, that Britain was an outlying
province of the Roman empire, for at this moment we are excavating the
ruins of the wall built by the Romans to protect their northern
frontier from the incursions of the warlike tribes beyond it, by the
first administration that established, for a time, peace and
civilisation in England. Then, in the middle ages, and long
afterwards, the border between the kingdoms of England and Scotland
which ran northward of the old Roman line, was for centuries the scene
of plundering raids, punitive expeditions, and internecine feuds that
often laid waste the countryside with fire and sword. We may observe,
in this instance, how shifting and indeterminate was the exact
frontier line between the two kingdoms, and how the local fighting,
the inroads from one side or the other, did not necessarily involve a
rupture of their formal relations. The wardens on each side executed
rough justice upon marauding clans; they wasted and slaughtered in
reprisal for raids; the great nobles engaged in a kind of private
warfare; but all this might go on without embroiling the two
governments in a national war. On the western English border the Welsh
hillmen kept the neighbouring counties in continual alarm; and their
chiefs played an important part in the civil wars and rebellions of
England. They were at last quieted by Edward I., who succeeded in
subduing Wales though he failed in Scotland. Lastly, though the union
of the two kingdoms brought peace to the Anglo-Scottish border, the
Highland line along the Forth river still kept up, though in a much
less serious degree, the troubles of a regular government in contact
with restless tribes. Nor was it until the middle of the eighteenth
century that these relics of an archaic condition of society, which
had long ago disappeared in other parts of western Europe, were
finally effaced in Great Britain. Long afterwards, in the nineteenth
century, when the conquest of the Punjab carried the north-western
frontier of British India up to the slopes of the Afghan mountains,
the scene of perpetual strife between a strong settled administration
and turbulent borderers which had passed away on the Tweed or the
Forth, and on the Welsh Marches, reappeared in the districts beyond
the Indus.
To Englishmen, therefore, whose experience of this situation is long,
varied, and actual, Mr. Baddeley's book on the Russians in the
Caucasus should be of exceptional interest. It is indeed well worth
studying by those upon whom, whether at home or in India, has been
imposed the arduous duty of superintending our policy in dealing with
the Afghan tribes for the protection of our Indian districts. It is
true that the conditions and circumstances, military and political,
under which Russia prosecuted her long war with the Caucasian
mountaineers, rendered her position in many respects different from
that in which the English found themselves when they first came into
contact with Afghanistan, and which has changed very little in the
course of sixty years. The aims and purposes of the two governments
were by no means the same. Yet in both cases we have a story of the
obstinate resistance opposed by fierce and free clans to the arms of a
powerful empire, of perilous campaigns amid rugged hills and passes,
of the hazards and misfortunes to which disciplined troops are always
liable when they encounter resolute and fanatical defenders of a
difficult country.
Mr. Baddeley's book contains an authentic narrative, founded on
diligent study of official documents and on the accounts of those who
took part in the fighting, of the operations by which the Mohammedan
tribes of the Caucasus were finally subdued, after fierce and
protracted resistance, by Russian armies, and their country was
annexed to the dominions of the Czar. His knowledge of this region is
evidently derived from personal exploration; and in the Introduction
to his book he has spared no pains to explain to his readers its
geographical position, its topography, its physical features, and the
extraordinary diversity of races and languages which it contained. We
learn that the chain of mountains which was originally known by the
name of the Caucasus stretches, with a total length of 650 miles, from
the Caspian to the Black Sea. Toward the north is a tract of dense
forest, intersected by numerous streams flowing down from the
mountains; and beyond lies the high plateau of Daghestan, 'through
which the rivers have cut their way to a depth often of thousands of
feet, the whole backed and ribbed, south and west, by mountain ranges
having many peaks often over 13,000 feet in height.' In the forest
tract, to which the Russians gave the name of Tchetchnia, their armies
were constantly entangled; and their difficulties in reducing the
inhabitants to subjection were quite as great as in conquering the
highland tribes of Daghestan. Throughout the eighteenth century, and
even earlier, the Russians had been pushing southward toward the Black
Sea and the Caspian, and had gradually taken under their authority and
protection the Cossack tribes who were settled on the steppes that
spread along the northern border of the Caucasus. On this border they
had established by the end of the century the Cossack line of forts,
military colonies and plantations of armed cultivators, linked
together to form a barrier against the incursions and marauding raids
of the wild folk in the woods and mountains in front of them, and
gradually strengthened and supported by stations of regular troops in
the background. On the south of the central mountain ranges the
Russians held Georgia, inhabited by Christian races whom the Russians
had liberated from the Turkish or Persian yoke before the close of the
eighteenth century, and who ever afterwards remained loyal subjects of
the Czar. The Georgian road which traversed the whole Caucasian region
from north to south, formed a most important line of communication
which was never seriously interrupted. To the south-east, when the
nineteenth century opened, lay Mohammedan khanates, vassals of Persia;
on the south-west were the semi-independent pachaliks of the Ottoman
empire.
We must pass over, reluctantly, Mr. Baddeley's very interesting sketch
of the gradual approach made by Russia toward the Caucasus during the
eighteenth century, which may be said to have begun in earnest with
the expedition of Peter the Great, who led an army to the Caspian
shore and captured Derbend about 1722. This threatening movement upon
the confines of Asia inevitably involved Russia in war with the Turks
and with the Persians, for whom the Caucasian mountains represented a
great fortress, barring the onward march of a powerful Christian
empire toward their dominions. For the Russians, on their side, it
became of vital importance to break through the barrier that separated
them from Georgia, to occupy the country between the two seas, and to
make an end of the perpetual warfare with the tribes, who kept their
frontier on the Cossack line in unceasing agitation and disorder, and
were a standing menace to the Christian population of Georgia. It
should be understood, however, that the Cossacks discharged their
duties of watch and ward after a very rough fashion, raiding and
fighting on their own account, making incursions upon their Mohammedan
neighbours in retaliation for attacks and forays, and laying waste the
enemy's country with the bitter vindictiveness of antagonistic races
and religions.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Georgia and some other
Christian principalities in Trans-Caucasia--that is, on the southern
border of the mountains--had been absorbed into the Russian empire,
which now held continuous territory on this line from the Black Sea to
the Caspian. Along the Caspian shore the vassal States of Persia had
been reduced to submission, while the Turks had been driven back from
their fortified posts on the Black Sea. The Turkish and Persian
governments naturally took alarm at the approach of a military power
whom they had already good reason to mistrust and dread; the Russian
viceroys and generals on the frontier treated these Oriental kingdoms
with high-handed arrogance, and gave ample provocation for the wars
which speedily broke out with both of them. The annals of the next few
years record many vicissitudes of fortune. The Russian armies achieved
some brilliant victories, and suffered some heavy disasters. By
disease and the strain of forced marches through rugged and almost
pathless country, by the storming of petty fortresses, by incessant
skirmishing and treacherous surprises, the troops were reduced in
number and gradually worn out; they were outnumbered by the Persian
and Turkish soldiery, whose military qualities were at that time by no
means despicable; while at this time the great European wars against
Napoleon made reinforcements hard to obtain. In 1811 the Russians
could barely hold their ground against the combined forces of Turkey
and Persia; but just when the whole situation was at its worst the
Russian Government, under the imminent emergency of Napoleon's march
upon Moscow, patched up a peace (May 1812) with Turkey that reinstated
the Sultan in some important positions on the Black Sea coast, and
made considerable retrocessions of territory. By strenuous exertion
the Persians were defeated and beaten off, and next year there was
comparative peace on the Caucasian border. Yet it was but a calm
interval before storms, for Mr. Baddeley remarks that nearly half a
century of fighting was to elapse before the conquest of the mountains
could be completed.
This era of long and sanguinary contest may be said to have begun, on
a deliberate plan, with the appointment of General Yermoloff, in 1816,
to be commander-in-chief in Georgia, with jurisdiction over the whole
Caucasus. It was carried on with undaunted courage, hardihood, and
obstinate endurance on both sides; and in the matter of merciless
ferocity there was little to choose between the two antagonists.
Yermoloff appears to have belonged to the type of military commander
whom the Russian soldier follows with complete trust and unhesitating
devotion--a leader inured to hardship and perils, treating his men as
comrades but unsparing of their lives, rigid in discipline, reckless
of bloodshed, a relentless conqueror yet capable of occasional
generosity. His stern and implacable temper recognised but one method
of dealing with barbarian enemies--the unflinching use of fire and
sword, the policy of devastation and massacre. 'I desire,' said
Yermoloff, 'that the terror of my name shall guard our frontiers more
potently than chains of fortresses; that my word shall be for the
natives a law more inevitable than death. Condescension in the eyes
of Asiatics is a sign of weakness, and out of pure humanity I am
inexorably severe. One execution saves hundreds of Russians from
destruction, and thousands of Mussulmans from treason.' He demanded
unconditional submission from all the tribes of the Caucasus; and he
substituted for the former system of bribery and subsidies the policy
of treating all resistance as rebellion, and suppressing it with cruel
severity, 'but' (says one writer) 'always combined with justice and