Studies in Literature and History
magnanimity.' Upon this Mr. Baddeley remarks that it is difficult to
see where justice came in, 'but in this respect Russia was only doing
what England and all other civilised States have done, and still do,
wherever they come into contact with savage or semi-savage races. By
force or fraud a portion of the country is taken and sooner or later,
on one excuse or another, the rest is sure to follow.' To this it may
be rejoined that on the north-west frontier of India, and nowhere
else, England has come into contact with a race quite as savage and
untamable as the Caucasian mountaineers, but that it would be a great
mistake to suppose that the methods of Yermoloff have ever been
adopted in dealing with the turbulent fanaticism of the Afghan tribes.
On the Cossack line, when Yermoloff assumed charge of operations,
'there was no open warfare, but there was continual unrest. No man's
life was safe outside the forts and stanitzas; robbery and murder were
rife; raiding parties, great and small, harried the fields, the farms
and the weaker settlements.' To this state of things he was resolved
to put an end. He built fortresses, pushed forward his outposts,
formed moving columns of troops, and assiduously trained his soldiers
to the peculiar conditions of warfare on this borderland. The Russian
regiments, like the Roman legions, were often stationed in their
camps or garrisons for twenty-five years; and for the service required
of them their efficiency was admirable. For ten years Yermoloff
carried on this tribal war with inflexible rigour, by expeditions to
punish some marauding village, which was razed to the ground, and most
of the men, women and children burnt or killed after defending the
place with the fury of despair; by night marches to surprise and storm
the hill forts; by exterminating bands of brigands; and more than once
by laying deathtraps for notorious rebels or fanatics. There can be no
doubt that this system of ruthless chastisement, of beating down the
enemy's defences by sharp and rapid strokes, by sudden and daring
inroads into the heart of their country, intimidated the tribes, and
went far toward compelling them to sullen acquiescence in the Russian
overlordship. Of the petty independent chiefships some were seized
forcibly, others submitted and paid tribute. The Russians were
advancing step by step into the interior of the country, piercing it
with roads and riveting their hold on it by throwing forward their
chain of connected forts. By 1820 Yermoloff appears to have convinced
himself that in a few years the whole of the Caucasus--mountain and
forest--would be permanently conquered and pacified; and for some time
after that date there was little or no fighting, though the border was
frequently disquieted by outbreaks that were sternly crushed. With the
Persians and the Turks there was an interval of peace.
But the harsh measures taken by the Russians to bring the forest
tribes under their authority were bitterly resented; and in 1824 two
of their generals were fatally stabbed in Tchetchnia by one of several
villagers whom they were disarming. This murder was avenged by
Yermoloff, as usual, relentlessly, but it was his last campaign in
the Caucasus. In 1826 the Persians, who had been incensed by
Yermoloff's rough ways on their frontier and by his insolent
diplomacy, invaded Russian territory with a strong army. The Russians
were unprepared, and at first could only act on the defensive. The
flames of insurrection at once broke out among the tribes; the whole
country fell back into confusion, and the Emperor Nicholas, holding
Yermoloff responsible for this disastrous state of affairs,
reprimanded and recalled him. He lived in retirement until 1861,
revered by the Russian nation as the type and model of a valiant
soldier and a devoted patriot who won brilliant victories and
conquered large territories for the empire. But on his system and its
consequences Mr. Baddeley pronounces a judgment which in fact points
the moral of his whole narrative, and explains the history of the
events that followed Yermoloff's departure:
'He gained brilliant victories at slight cost; and brought for a
time the greater part of Daghestan under Russian dominion.... He
absorbed the Persian and Tartar khanates, and treated Persia with
astonishing arrogance. But it was these very measures and successes
that led, on the one hand, to the Persian War and the revolt of the
newly-acquired provinces; on the other, to that great outburst of
religious and racial fanaticism which, under the banner of
Muridism, welded into one powerful whole so many weak and
antagonistic elements in Daghestan and Tchetchnia, thereby
initiating the bloody struggle waged unceasingly for the next forty
years. Daghestan speedily threw off the Russian yoke, and defied
the might of the mother empire until 1859. In Tchetchnia mere
border forays conducted by independent partisan leaders ...
developed into a war of national independence under a chieftain as
cruel, capable, and indomitable as Yermoloff himself.'
The Persian War ended in 1828, but in the same year hostilities broke
out with Turkey, involving the Russian troops on the Georgian frontier
in hard and hazardous fighting, which lasted, with a great expenditure
of men and money, until peace was concluded in 1829. From that year
until 1854, when the Crimean War began, Russia had a free hand in the
Caucasus, and applied her strength with inexorable energy to its
subjugation. And it is to the rise and spread of the ferocious
enthusiasm which Mr. Baddeley has called _Muridism_ that he attributes
the striking fact that the complete conquest of the country was only
accomplished in 1864--that the tribes held out against the forces of
the Russian empire for more than thirty years.
Muridism, in which this spirit of heroic and hopeless resistance by
armed peasants against the Russian armies was, so to speak, incarnate,
is a word employed by Mr. Baddeley with a special purpose and meaning,
which he explains at some length. For our present purpose it may be
sufficient to say that _Murshid_ denotes a religious teacher who
expounds the mystic Way of Salvation to his _Murids_, or disciples,
who gather round him, adopt his doctrines, obey his commands, and
cheerfully accept martyrdom in his service. Muridism, therefore, may
be taken to signify the passionate fanaticism of religious devotees,
of warriors who follow a spiritual leader and fight in the sacred
cause of Islam against the infidel. It was this movement that united
the Mohammedan tribes in a holy war against the Russians, who, as our
author observes, had never gauged correctly the latent forces of the
twin passions, religious fanaticism and the love of liberty--two
elements which always form a very dangerous compound, and which became
heated up to the point of explosion as the tribes found the iron
framework of Russian administration steadily closing up around them.
Any attempt to break out of this house of bondage was repulsed with
inflexible severity. In this inflammable atmosphere, charged with
ferocious suspicion, hatred, and superstition, one Kazi Mullah was
elected to the rank of 'Imam'; and on his proclamation of holy war
against the infidel oppressor the whole country rose and rallied to
his standard. He was, if we may borrow Mr. Baddeley's description of
the class, 'one of those strange beings, compounded of fanaticism,
military ardour, and a nature prone to adventure, for whom only the
dreaming, fighting, tumultuous, ignorant East, in its days of trouble
and unrest, can supply a fitting field of action.' He came forward as
a man sent by God to deliver the faithful from their servitude,
holding in his hands the power of life or death, and those who refused
to obey him or denied his authority were denounced and slain without
mercy. Under such leadership the war spread again along the border,
some Russian detachments were cut to pieces, and even when the
insurgents were defeated the troops suffered terribly, for as no
quarter was asked or expected none was given on either side. After
some two years of incessant fighting Kazi Mullah made his last stand
in a mountain stronghold, where he was surrounded by the Russian
troops, who in their first assault were repulsed with heavy loss; but
on a second attempt the place was stormed, and Kazi Mullah with a band
of devoted Murids died sword in hand on the last breastwork.
Of the sixty men who stood by their chief to the end two only escaped;
but one of these was Shamil, who became afterwards the most famous and
formidable champion of the Mohammedan tribes in the Caucasus.
'His marvellous strength, agility, and swordsmanship served him in
good stead. With an Alvarado's leap he landed behind the line of
soldiers about to fire a volley through the raised doorway where
he stood, and whirling his sword in his left hand he cut down three
of them, but was bayoneted by the fourth clean through the breast.
Undismayed, he grasped the weapon in one hand, cut down its owner,
pulled it out of his own body, and escaped into the forest, though
in addition to the bayonet wound he had a rib and shoulder broken
by stones.'
Shamil had been born and bred in the same village with Kazi Mullah,
whose disciple he became, and whose rules of rigid adherence to the
strictest injunctions of Islam he adopted and enforced. He even
attempted to put down, as a practice forbidden by the law of Mahomet,
the inveterate blood feuds that divided and weakened the tribes, with
the politic object of uniting them in the holy war against the
infidels; and when the Kazi had been killed his mantle fell upon
Shamil, who soon proved himself a far more able and terrible leader of
fanatic insurrection. The Russians, who at first believed that the
Kazi's death was a decisive and final blow to the cause of Muridism,
soon found that they were grievously mistaken. Mr. Baddeley's
narrative shows occasionally some disregard of orderly arrangement, so
that the sequence in time and interconnection of incidents is not
always clear. We gather from this part of it, however, that very soon
after Shamil took command the whole country had risen against the
Russians, that their posts were attacked and their detachments cut
off, and that expeditions sent to seize the positions or disperse the
gatherings of the tribes paid dearly for their victories, while they
were more than once repulsed with defeat and disaster. Villages were
burnt; the vineyards and orchards were destroyed; desperate fights,
hand to hand, ended only with the extermination of the defenders by
the exasperated Russian soldiers; and after one campaign, when the
Russian Commander-in-Chief led a considerable force against Shamil's
stronghold, he was content to conclude, in the emperor's name, a
treaty of peace with the tribal chief, being 'compelled to retire by
the total disorganisation of the expeditionary corps, the enormous
loss in _personnel_, and the want of ammunition.' A treaty with the
Russian emperor raised Shamil's reputation high among the tribes;
while the slaughter and devastation inflamed his revengeful temper.
When the Emperor Nicholas came next year to the Caucasus, General
Klugenau met Shamil and tried to persuade him to tender submission in
person, with the result that Klugenau narrowly escaped assassination
at the interview. He was saved by Shamil's intervention. In 1839
almost all the tribes were united under Shamil's command; and the
Russian Government, seriously alarmed, determined that he must be
effectively crushed. In the story of this campaign we have a signal
and striking example of the perils that beset regular troops who