Studies in Literature and History
encounter fierce and fearless barbarians on their own ground. The
Russians had a powerful artillery; they were led by experienced
commanders; their officers and soldiers fought with astonishing
courage and endurance. After several bloody actions Shamil was shut up
in the hill fort of Akhlongo, and here the undaunted Murids turned to
bay. It was a stronghold surrounded by ravines and sheer precipices,
accessible only along narrow ridgeways. Mr. Baddeley has related in
full detail the operations and incidents of this eventful siege. The
first assault failed after a prolonged and desperate struggle. 'Only
at nightfall,' writes an eye-witness, 'and at the word of command, did
our troops retire from the bloodstained rock.' The bombardment went on
'until the castle was reduced to a heap of ruins, in which the heroic
defenders seemed literally buried.' After a siege which lasted eighty
days the place was at last taken with a total loss of 3000 Russians,
including 116 officers, killed and wounded. The defenders were
slaughtered almost to the last man; many women and children were
killed; but Shamil again escaped miraculously.
'Vanquished, wounded, a homeless fugitive, without means, with
hardly a follower, it might well seem that nothing was left to the
indomitable chieftain but the life of a hunted outlaw ... yet
within a year Shamil was again the leader of a people in arms;
within three he had inflicted a bloody defeat on his present
victor; yet another, and all northern Daghestan was reconquered,
every Russian garrison there beleaguered or destroyed, and Muridism
triumphant in the forest and on the mountain, from the Samour to
the Terek river, from Vladikavkaz to the Caspian.'
By 1840 the Tchetchnia tribes of the wooded lowlands under the
mountains had broken out into outrageous rebellion, for Shamil had
established himself in the forests, and was harassing the whole
Russian border. 'We have never,' wrote General Golovine, 'had in the
Caucasus an enemy so savage and dangerous as Shamil'; and it was again
decided to send an overwhelming army against him. The two first
expeditions virtually failed. Between 1839 and 1842 the Russians had
lost in killed or wounded 436 officers and 7930 men, and 'had
accomplished little or nothing.' In 1844 the Emperor Nicholas had
despatched large reinforcements to the Caucasus, with stringent orders
to make an end of Shamil's 'terrible despotism' and to subdue the
whole country. On his side Shamil mustered all his forces for an
energetic defence. His mounted bands traversed the borderlands with
amazing rapidity, rushing in suddenly upon the Russian outposts,
waylaying detachments, and bewildering the commanders by the speed and
secrecy of their movements. Count Vorontzoff marched against him with
an army of about 18,000, horse, foot, and artillery. Shamil retreated
gradually before him, drawing on the Russians, and abandoning his
forward positions after a show of defending them. He had laid waste
the country on the line of the Russian advance; so, as supplies were
running very short, Vorontzoff pushed on hastily toward Shamil's
headquarters at Dargo. This place, surrounded by forests,
'lay along the crest of a steep wooded spur of the Betchel ridge,
nowhere very broad, narrowed here and there to a few feet, and
consisting of a series of long descents with shorter intervening
rises. Abattis of giant trunks with branches cunningly interlaced
barred the way at short intervals, and the densely-wooded ravines
on either side swarmed with hidden foes.'
Mr. Baddeley's vivid description of the hurried advance upon Dargo,
and of the Russian retreat after capturing it, has all the tragic
interest of a situation where heroic valour strives vainly against
calamitous misfortune, and brave men, caught in a well-laid snare,
tear their way out of it with the energy of despair. The six barriers
of twisted branches were attacked and carried without serious loss,
though at one point, where the path along the hill-top was narrowest,
the troops fell into confusion, suffered heavily, and were rescued
with some difficulty. Dargo was then occupied without resistance; but
the army had only food for a few days, and Vorontzoff, instead of
retiring immediately, resolved to wait for a convoy that was coming up
from the rear and had reached the edge of the forest. But the force
despatched to protect and bring it into camp had to pass again over
the strait ridgeway, where all the barriers had been reconstructed;
and the Russians again ran the gauntlet of incessant and murderous
fire, losing one of their generals with many officers and men. There
still remained the most arduous task of all, to force a way for the
third time along the ridge with weakened and disheartened troops
encumbered by the provision train that they were escorting to Dargo.
'The enemy were in greater numbers than before; the barriers had
once more been renewed, and a heavy rain added greatly to the
difficulties of the march.... On the narrow neck the advance guard
found the breastwork of trees faced with the Russian dead of the
previous day, stripped, mutilated, and piled up; it was enfiladed
by four smaller breastworks on each side.'
Passek, a daring and fearless commander, was killed in leading the
attack with other officers and many men. The foremost regiments fell
back in disorder. Yet the main body, with their general, who charged
at the head of companies like any captain, struggled along the ridge,
fighting all the way, though the Mohammedans kept up an unceasing
rifle-fire, and from time to time they dashed right into the Russian
line. Nevertheless the predicament of the Russians was becoming
hopeless, when a fresh regiment sent out to their rescue from Dargo
threw itself between the exhausted troops and their assailants, and
thus enabled them to reach the camp. But most of the convoy had been
lost, the total list of casualties was frightful, and for Vorontzoff,
with little to eat, surrounded by victorious hordes, encumbered with
more than a thousand wounded men, the only prospect of saving the rest
of his army lay in cutting his way homeward through many miles of
forest. Mr. Baddeley's description of the retreat is intensely
dramatic. After fighting every step of the road the starving and
demoralised army was brought to a standstill, and was eventually saved
from annihilation by fresh troops that arrived just in time under the
Russian commander on the frontier, who had foreseen the emergency, and
made forced marches to the rescue of his chief.
Thus the attempt to piece the heart of Shamil's country had been
completely foiled; and Vorontzoff now confined himself to
strengthening his fortified posts, linking up more effectively their
connection, and improving his communications. But in this situation
the Russians were acting upon the outer circle of Shamil's central
position in the mountains, whereas their enemy held the interior
lines, and could choose his point of attack. Shamil's strategy was
directed toward keeping the whole Russian frontier in constant alarm,
breaking in upon various and distant parts of the line by incessant
raids and surprises, in order to prevent concentration of the Russian
forces on either flank. He made a daring attempt to seize Kabarda, on
the extreme west of the border, but was hunted out of it by the
activity of Freytag, the general whose foresight and promptitude had
extricated Vorontzoff from destruction. This desultory warfare went on
until in 1847 Vorontzoff, having secured his base, again tried
conclusions with Shamil, being resolved that it was necessary to
reduce the fortified village (or _aoul_) of Ghergebil, which Shamil
was no less determined to defend. On the morning of the assault the
Russians, in their camps below the precipitous rocks, above which
stood the aoul, 'heard the melancholy, long-drawn notes of the
death-chant rising from behind its wall as from an open grave,' the
sure prelude to a stubborn and sanguinary fight.
The forlorn hope rushed forward, but lost its way and suffered
severely; the supports kept the right direction and made for the
breach.
'A withering fire from hundreds of rifles mowed down the troops
like grass. Their gallant commander, Yeodskeemoff, fell dead,
pierced by a dozen bullets. The captain of the grenadier company
strode over his body and gained the top of the breach, to fall in
turn; the men were exasperated rather than daunted; a Danish
officer, more fortunate and not less brave than his predecessors,
led them forward, and the wall was won. In front was the first row
of low _saklias_ (stone houses) and, climbing their walls, the
attackers rushed forward, when to their horror the ground gave way
beneath their feet, and amid shouts of demoniac laughter they fell
on to the swords and daggers of the Murids below. The flat roofs
had been taken off the whole row of houses and replaced by layers
of brushwood thinly covered with earth; every house, in fact, was a
death-trap.'
Nevertheless the troops came on, and most of them got inside the
village, but they were entangled in the labyrinth of narrow streets,
and were obliged to retire. Another assault ended with another
repulse, 'and the victorious Murids, driving the broken columns before
them, followed until stopped by the bayonets of the reserve.'
Vorontzoff had now been twice beaten off by Shamil: he had been
repulsed, and had nearly lost his army in the forests; his troops had
been hurled back with slaughter from the mountain fort. Next year he
despatched another large army, furnished with heavy artillery, against
Ghergebil, which drove out the Murid garrison by a tremendous
bombardment, but retired without occupying the place. During the next
few years, though wild work went on as usual along the border, where a
sharp guerilla warfare was kept up, neither Shamil nor Vorontzoff
attempted to strike any decisive blow. But the lowlands were
devastated by perpetual incursions and reprisals, and the forest
tribes, placed between two fires, driven to choose between the Murids
and the Russians, gradually transferred their allegiance to the side
best able to protect them, and migrated northward across the Russian
line. The uninhabited woodlands became a kind of neutral ground which
neither side cared to occupy; and from this time Shamil's sphere of
action was confined to the mountains of Daghestan. Then, in 1854,
began the war in the Crimea, when according to Mr. Baddeley the Allies
might have ruined Russia in the Caucasus by making common cause with
Shamil and supporting him vigorously. But England and France were
absorbed in besieging Sebastopol, and Omar Pasha's Transcaucasian
campaign was undertaken too late for any effective result. Mr.
Baddeley considers that in neglecting their opportunity of backing
Shamil the Allies made a strategic blunder; yet we agree with him that
this is not to be regretted. For the credit of civilisation it is well
that they did not let loose the savage Mohammedan fanatics upon
Christian Georgia and the peaceful Russian settlements beyond the
frontier, to their own dishonour, and to the misery of the people whom
Russia was protecting. Shamil did make one foray into Georgia, when a
party of his men carried off two Georgian princesses, the wife and
sister of the Viceroy, who were kept by Shamil in rigorous captivity
and treated cruelly for eight months while negotiations went on for
their release. His object was to exchange them for his son, who had
been captured by the Russians some fourteen years earlier, had been
brought up from childhood among them, and at this time was a