Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 65, No. 400, February, 1849
The capture of these forts spread discouragement and consternation in the ranks of the Russian army. The emperor was furious, and General Rajewski, then commander-in-chief on the Circassian frontier, was superseded. This officer, who at the tender age of twelve was present with his father at the battle of Borodino, and who has since distinguished himself in the Turkish and Persian wars, was reputed an able general, but was reproached with sleeping too much, and with being too fond of botany. His enemies went so far as to accuse him of making military expeditions into the mountains, with the sole view of adding rare Caucasian plants to his herbarium, and of procuring seeds for his garden. General Aurep, who succeeded him, undertook little beyond reconnoissances, always attended with very heavy loss; and the Circassians remained upon the defensive until the year 1843, when the example of the Tshetshens, who about that time obtained signal advantages over the Russians, roused the martial ardour of the chivalrous Circassians, and spurred them to fresh hostilities. But the war at the western extremity of Caucasus never assumed the importance of that in Daghestan and the country of the Tshetshens.
From the straits of Zabache to the frontier of Guria, the Russians possess seventeen Kreposts, or fortified posts, only a few of which deserve the name of regular fortresses, or could resist a regular army provided with artillery. To mountaineers, however, whose sole weapons are shaska and musket, even earthen parapets and shallow ditches are serious obstacles when well manned and resolutely defended. The object of erecting this line of forts was to cut off the communication by sea between Turkey and the Caucasian tribes. It was thought that, when the import of arms and munitions of war from Turkey was thus checked, the independent mountain tribes would soon be subjugated. The hope was not realised, and the expensive maintenance of 15,000 to 20,000 men in the fortresses of the Black Sea has but little improved the position of the Russians in the Caucasus. The Caucasians have never lacked arms, and with money they can always get powder, even from the Cossacks of the Kuban. In another respect, however, these forts have done them much harm, and thence it arises that, since their erection, and the cession of Anapa to Russia, the war has assumed so bitter a character. So long as Anapa was Turkish, the export of slaves, and the import of powder, found no hindrance. The needy Circassian noble, whose rude mountains supply him but sparingly with daily bread, obtained, by the sale of slaves, means of satisfying his warlike and ostentatious tastes – of procuring rich clothes, costly weapons, and ammunition for war and for the chase. In a moral point of view, all slave traffic is of course odious and reprehensible, but that of Circassia differed from other commerce of the kind, in so far that all parties were benefited by, and consenting to, the contract. The Turks obtained from Caucasus handsomer and healthier wives than those born in the harem; and the Circassian beauties were delighted to exchange the poverty and toil of their father's mountain huts for the luxurious farniente of the seraglio, of whose wonders and delights their ears were regaled, from childhood upwards, with the most glowing descriptions. The trade, although greatly impeded and very hazardous, still goes on. Small Turkish craft creep up to the coast, cautiously evading the Russian cruisers, enter creeks and inlets, and are dragged by the Circassians high and dry upon the beach, there to remain till the negotiation for their live cargo is completed, an operation that generally takes a few weeks. The women sold are the daughters of serfs and freedmen: rarely does a work consent to dispose of his sister or daughter, although the case does sometimes occur. But, whilst the sale goes on, the slave-ships are anything but secure. It is a small matter to have escaped the Russian frigates and steamers. Each of the Kreposts possesses a little squadron of row-boats, manned with Cossacks, who pull along the coast in search of Turkish vessels. If they detect one, they land in the night, and endeavour to set fire to it, before the mountaineers can come to the assistance of the crew. The Turks, who live in profound terror of these Cossack coast-guards, resort to every possible expedient to escape their observation; often covering their vessels with dry leaves and boughs, and tying fir branches to the masts, that the scouts may take them for trees. If they are captured at sea by the cruisers, the crew are sent to hard labour in Siberia, and the Circassian girls are married to Cossacks, or divided as handmaidens amongst the Russian staff officers. From thirty to forty slaves compose the usual cargo of each of these vessels, which are so small that the poor creatures are packed almost like herrings in a barrel. But they patiently endure the misery of the voyage, in anticipation of the honeyed existence of the harem. It is calculated that one vessel out of six is taken or lost. In the winter of 1843-4, eight-and-twenty ships left the coast of Asia Minor for that of Caucasia. Twenty-three safely returned, three were burned by the Russians, and two swallowed by the waves.
A Turkish captain at Sinope told Dr Wagner the following interesting anecdote, illustrating Circassian hatred of the Russians: – "A few years ago a slave-ship sprang a leak out at sea, just as a Russian steamer passed in the distance. The Turkish slave-dealer, who preferred even the chill blasts of Siberia to a grave in deep water, made signals of distress, and the steamer came up in time to rescue the ship and its living cargo from destruction. But so deeply is hatred of Russia implanted in every Circassian heart, that the spirit of the girls revolted at the thought of becoming the helpmates of gray-coated soldiers, instead of sharing the sumptuous couch of a Turkish pasha. They had bid adieu to their native mountains with little emotion, but as the Russian ship approached they set up terrible and despairing screams. Some sprang headlong into the sea; others drove their knives into their hearts: – to these heroines death was preferable to the bridal-bed of a detested Muscovite. The survivors were taken to Anapa, and married to Cossacks, or given to officers as servants." Nearly every Austrian or Turkish steamboat that makes, in the winter months, the voyage from Trebizond to Constantinople, has a number of Circassian girls on board. Dr Wagner made the passage in an Austrian steamer with several dozens of these willing slaves, chiefly mere children, twelve or thirteen years old, with interesting countenances and dark wild eyes, but very pale and thin – with the exception of two, who were some years older, far better dressed, and carefully veiled. To this favoured pair the slave-dealer paid particular attention, and frequently brought them coffee. Dr Wagner got into conversation with this man, who was richly dressed in furs and silks, and who, despite his vile profession, had the manners of a gentleman. The two coffee-drinkers were daughters of noblemen, he said, with fine rosy cheeks, and in better condition than the others, consequently worth more money at Constantinople. For the handsomest he hoped to obtain 30,000 piastres, and for the other 20,000 – about £250 and £170. The herd of young creatures he spoke of with contempt, and should think himself lucky to get 2000 piastres for them all round. He further informed the doctor that, although the slave-trade was more dangerous and difficult since the Russian occupation of the Caucasian coast, it was also far more profitable. Formerly, when Greek and Armenian women were brought in crowds to the Constantinople market, the most beautiful Circassians were not worth more than 10,000 piastres; but now a rosy, well-fed, fifteen-year-old slave is hardly to be had under 40,000 piastres.
The Tshetshen successes, already referred to as having at the close of 1842 stirred into flame and action, by the force of example, the smouldering but still ardent embers of Circassian hatred to Russia, are described with remarkable spirit by Dr Wagner, in the chapter entitled "Caucasian War-Scenes," – episodes taken down by him from the lips of eye-witnesses, and of sharers in the sanguinary conflicts described. This graphic chapter at once familiarises the reader with the Caucasian war, with which he thenceforward feels as well acquainted as with our wars in India, the French contest in Africa, or with any other series of combats, of whose nature and progress minute information has been regularly received. The first event described is the storming of Aculcho, in the summer of 1839. It is always a great point with guerilla generals, and with leaders of mountain warfare, to have a centre of operations – a strong post, whither they can retreat after a reverse, with the confidence that the enemy will hesitate before attacking them there. In Spain, Cabrera had Morella, the Count d'Espagne had Berga, the Navarrese viewed Estella as their citadel. In the eastern Caucasus, Chasi-Mollah had Himri, and preferred falling in its defence to abandoning his stronghold; his successor, Chamyl, who surpasses him in talent for war and organisation, established his headquarters at Aculcho, a sort of eagle's nest on the river Koisu, whither his escorts brought him intelligence of each movement of Russian troops, and whence he swooped, like the bird whose eyrie he occupied, upon the convoys traversing the steppe of the Terek. Here he planned expeditions and surprises, and kept a store of arms and ammunition; and this fort General Grabbe, who commanded in 1839 the Russian forces in eastern Caucasus, and who was always a strong advocate of the offensive system, obtained permission from St Petersburg to attack. General Golowin, commander-in-chief of the whole army of the Caucasus, and then resident at Teflis, approved the enterprise, whose ultimate results cost both generals their command. The taking of Aculcho itself was of little moment; there was no intention of placing a Russian garrison there; but the double end to be obtained was to capture Chamyl, and to intimidate the Tshetshens, by proving to them that no part of their mountains, however difficult of access and bravely defended, was beyond the reach of Russian valour and resources. Their submission, at least nominal and temporary, was the result hoped for.
Nature has done much for the fortification of Aculcho. Imagine a hill of sand-stone, nearly surrounded by a loop of the river Koisu – a miniature peninsula, in short, connected with the continent by a narrow neck of land – provided with three natural terraces, accessible only by a small rocky path, whose entrance is fortified and defended by 500 resolute Tshetshen warriors. A few artificial parapets and intrenchments, some stone huts, and several excavations in the sand rock, where the besieged found shelter from shot and shell, complete the picture of the place before which Grabbe and his column sat down. At first they hoped to reduce it by artillery, and bombs and congreve rockets were poured upon the fortress, destroying huts and parapets, but doing little harm to the Tshetshens, who lay close as conies in their burrows, and watched their opportunity to send well-aimed bullets into the Russian camp. From time to time, one of the fanatical Murides, of whom the garrison was chiefly composed, impatient that the foe delayed an assault, rushed headlong down from the rock, his shaska in his right hand, his pistol in his left, his dagger between his teeth; causing a momentary panic among the Cossacks, who were prepared for the whistling of bullets, but not for the sudden appearance of a foaming demon armed cap-à-pie, who generally, before they could use their bayonets, avenged in advance his own certain death by the slaughter of several of his foes, whilst his comrades on the rock applauded and rejoiced at the heroic self-sacrifice. The first attempt to storm was costly to the besiegers. Of fifteen hundred men who ascended the narrow path, only a hundred and fifty survived. The Tshetshens maintained such a well-directed platoon fire, that not a Russian set foot on the second terrace. The foremost men, mown down by the bullets of the besieged, fell back upon their comrades, and precipitated them from the rock. General Grabbe, undismayed by his heavy loss, ordered a second and a third assault; the three cost two thousand men, but the lower and middle terraces were taken. The defence of the upper one was desperate, and the Russians might have been compelled to turn the siege into a blockade, but for the imprudence of some of the garrison, who, anxious to ascertain the proceedings of the enemy's engineers – then hard at work at a mine under the hill – ventured too far from their defences, and were attacked by a Russian battalion. The Tshetshens fled; but, swift of foot though they were, the most active of the Russians attained the topmost terrace with them. A hand-to-hand fight ensued, more battalions came up, and Aculcho was taken. The victors, furious at their losses, and at the long resistance opposed to them, (this was the 22d August,) raged like tigers amongst the unfortunate little band of mountaineers; some Tshetshen women, who took up arms at this last extremity, were slaughtered with their husbands. At last the bloody work was apparently at an end, and search ensued amongst the dead for the body of Chamyl. It was nowhere to be found. At last the discovery was made that a few of the garrison had taken refuge in holes in the side of the rock, looking over the river. No path led to these cavities; the only way to get at them was to lower men by ropes from the crag above. In this manner the surviving Tshetshens were attacked; quarter was neither asked nor given. The hole in which Chamyl himself was hidden held out the longest. Escape seemed, however, impossible; the rock was surrounded; the banks of the river were lined with soldiers; Grabbe's main object was the capture of Chamyl. At this critical moment the handful of Tshetshens still alive gave an example of heroic devotion. They knew that their leader's death would be a heavy loss to their country, and they resolved to sacrifice themselves to save him. With a few beams and planks, that chanced to be in the cave, they constructed a sort of raft. This they launched upon the Koisu, and floated with it down the stream, amidst a storm of Russian lead. The Russian general doubted not that Chamyl was on the raft, and ordered every exertion to kill or take him. Whilst the Cossacks spurred their horses into the river, and the infantry hurried along the bank, following the raft, a man sprang out of the hole into the Koisu, swam vigorously across the stream, landed at an unguarded spot, and gained the mountains unhurt. This man was Chamyl, who alone escaped with life from the bloody rock of Aculcho. His deliverance passed for miraculous amongst the enthusiastic mountaineers, with whom his influence, from that day forward, increased tenfold. Grabbe was furious; Chamyl's head was worth more than the heads of all the garrison: three thousand Russians had been sacrificed for the possession of a crag not worth the keeping.
After the fall of Aculcho, Chamyl's head-quarters were at the village of Dargo, in the mountain region south of the Russian fort of Girselaul, and thence he carried on the war with great vigour, surprising fortified posts, cutting off convoys, and sweeping the plain with his horsemen. Generals Grabbe and Golowin could not agree about the mode of operations. The former was for taking the offensive; the latter advocated the defensive and blockade system. Grabbe went to St Petersburg to plead in person for his plan, obtained a favourable hearing, and the emperor sent Prince Tchernicheff, the minister at war, to visit both flanks of the Caucasus. Before the prince reached the left wing of the line of operations, Grabbe resolved to surprise him with a brilliant achievement; and on the 29th May 1842, he marched from Girselaul with thirteen battalions, a small escort of mounted Cossacks, and a train of mountain artillery, to attack Dargo. The route was through forests, and along paths tangled with wild flowers and creeping plants, through which the heavy Russian infantry, encumbered with eight days' rations and sixty rounds of ball-cartridge, made but slow and painful progress. The first day's march was accomplished without fighting; only here and there the slender active form of a mountaineer was descried, as he peered between the trees at the long column of bayonets, and vanished as soon as he was observed. After midnight the dance began. The troops had eaten their rations, and were comfortably bivouacked, when they were assailed by a sharp fire from an invisible foe, to which they replied in the direction of the flashes. This skirmishing lasted all night; few were killed on either side, but the whole Russian division were deprived of sleep, and wearied for the next day's march. At daybreak the enemy retired; but at noon, when passing through a forest defile, the column was again assailed, and soon the horses, and a few light carts accompanying it, were insufficient to convey the wounded. The staff urged the general to retrace his steps, but Grabbe was bent on welcoming Tchernicheff with a triumphant bulletin. Another sleepless bivouac – another fagging day, more skirmishing. At last, when within sight of the fortified village of Dargo, the loss of the column was so heavy, and its situation so critical, that a retreat was ordered. The daring and fury of the Tshetshens now knew no bounds; they assailed the troops sabre in hand, captured baggage and wounded, and at night prowled round the camp, like wolves round a dying soldier. On the 1st June, the fight recommenced. The valour displayed by the mountaineers was admitted by the Russians to be extraordinary, as was also their skill in wielding the terrible shaska. They made a fierce attack on the centre of the column – cut down the artillery-men and captured six guns. The Russians, who throughout the whole of this trying expedition did their duty as good and brave soldiers, were furious at the loss of their artillery, and by a desperate charge retook five pieces, the sixth being relinquished only because its carriage was broken. Upon the last day of the retreat, Chamyl came up with his horsemen. Had he been able to get these together two days sooner, it is doubtful whether any portion of the column would have escaped. As it was, the Russians lost nearly two thousand men; the weary and dispirited survivors re-entering Girselaul with downcast mien. Preparations had been made to celebrate their triumph, and, to add to their general's mortification, Tchernicheff was awaiting their arrival. On the prince's return to St Petersburg, both Grabbe and Golowin were removed from their commands.
Against this same Tshetshen fortress of Dargo, Count Woronzoff's expedition (already referred to) was made, in July 1845. A capital account of the affair is given in a letter from a Russian officer engaged, printed in Dr Wagner's book. Dargo had become an important place. Chamyl had established large stores there, and had built a mosque, to which came pilgrims from the remotest villages of Daghestan and Lesghistan, partly to pray, partly to see the dreaded chief – equally renowned as warrior and priest – and to give him information concerning the state of the country, and the movements of the Russians. Less vigorously opposed than Grabbe, and his measures better taken, Woronzoff reached Dargo with moderate loss. "The village," says the Russian officer: "was situated on the slope of a mountain, at the brink of a ravine, and consisted of sixty to seventy small stone-houses, and of a few larger buildings, where the stones were joined with mortar, instead of being merely superimposed, as is usually the case in Caucasian dwellings. One of these buildings had several irregular towers, of some apparent antiquity. When we approached, a thick smoke burst from them. Chamyl had ordered everything to be set on fire that could not be carried away. One must confess that, in this fierce determination of the enemy to refuse submission – to defend, foot by foot, the territory of his forefathers, and to leave to the Russians no other trophies than ashes and smoking ruins – there is a certain wild grandeur which extorts admiration, even though the hostile chief be no better than a fanatical barbarian." This reminds us of the words of the Circassian chief Mansour: – "When Turkey and England abandon us," he said, to Bell of the 'Vixen,' – "when all our powers of resistance are exhausted, we will burn our houses, and our goods, strangle our wives and our children, and retreat to our highest rocks, there to die, fighting to the very last man." "The greatest difficulty," said General Neidhardt to Dr Wagner, who was a frequent visitor at the house of that distinguished officer, "with which we have to contend, is the unappeasable, deep-rooted, ineradicable hatred cherished by all the mountaineers against the Russians. For this we know no cure; every form of severity and of kindness has been tried in turn, with equal ill-success." Valour and patriotism are nearly the only good qualities the Caucasians can boast. They are cruel, and for the most part faithless, especially the Tshetshens, and Dr Wagner warns us against crediting the exaggerated accounts frequently given of their many virtues. The Circassians are said to respect their plighted word, but there are many exceptions. General Neidhardt told Dr Wagner an anecdote of a Circassian, who presented himself before the commandant of one of the Black Sea fortresses, and offered to communicate most important intelligence, on condition of a certain reward. The reward was promised. Then said the Circassian, – "To-morrow after sunset, your fort will be assailed by thousands of my countrymen." The informer was retained, whilst Cossacks and riflemen were sent out, and it proved that he had spoken the truth. The enemy, finding the garrison on their guard, retired after a short skirmish. The Circassian received his recompense, which he took without a word of thanks, and left the fortress. Without the walls, he met an unarmed soldier; hatred of the Russians, and thirst of blood, again got the ascendency: he shot the soldier dead, and scampered off to the mountains.
Chamyl did not long remain indebted to the Russians for their visit to Dargo. His reputation of sanctity and valour enabled him to unite under his orders many tribes habitually hostile to each other, and which previously had fought each "on its own hook." Of these tribes he formed a powerful league; and in May 1846 he burst into Cabardia at the head of twenty thousand mountaineers, four thousand of whom were horsemen. Formidable though this force was, the venture was one of extreme temerity. He left behind him a double line of Russian camps and forts, and two rivers, then at the flood, and difficult to pass. With an undisciplined and heterogeneous army, without artillery or regular commissariat, this daring chief threw himself into a flat country, unfavourable to guerilla warfare; slipping through the Russian posts, marching more than four hundred miles, and utterly disregarding the danger he was in from a well-equipped army of upwards of seventy thousand men, to say nothing of the numerous military population of the Cossack settlements on the Terek and Sundscha, and of the fact that the Cabardians, long submissive to Russia, were more likely to arm in defence of their rulers than to favour the mountaineers. Shepherds and dwellers in the plain, and far less warlike than the other Circassian tribes, they never were able to make head against the Russians; and had remained indifferent to all the incentives of Tshetshen fanatics and propagandists. For years past, Chamyl had threatened them with a visit; but nevertheless, his sudden appearance greatly surprised and confounded both them and the Russian general, who had just concentrated all his movable columns, with a view to an expedition, relying overmuch upon his lines of forts and blockhouses. The Tshetshen raid was more daring, and at least as successful, as Abd-el-Kader's celebrated foray in the Metidja, in the year 1839. Chamyl addressed to the Cabardians a thundering proclamation, full of quotations from the Koran, and denouncing vengeance on them if they did not flock to the banner of the Prophet. The unlucky keepers of sheep found themselves between the devil and the deep sea. From terror rather than sympathy, a large number of villages declared for Chamyl, whose wild hordes burned and plundered the property of all who adhered to the Russians; leaving, like a swarm of locusts, desolation in their track. When the Cossacks began to gather, and the Russian generals to manœuvre, Chamyl, who knew he could not contend in the plain with disciplined and superior forces, and whose retreat by the road he came was already cut off, traversed Great and Little Cabardia, burning and destroying as he went; dashed through the Cossack colonies to the south of Ekaterinograd, and regained his mountains in safety – dragging with him booty, prisoners, and Cabardian recruits. These latter, who had joined through fear of Chamyl, remained with him through fear of the Russians. By this foray, whose apparent great rashness was justified by its complete success, Chamyl enriched his people, strengthened his army, and greatly weakened the confidence of the tribes of the plain in the efficacy of Russian protection. As usual, in cases of disaster, the Russians kept the affair as quiet as they could; but the truth could not be concealed from those most concerned, and murmurs of dismay ran along the exposed line fringing the Muscovite and Circassian territories.
The Russian army of the Caucasus reckoned, in 1843, about eighty thousand men, exclusive of thirty-five thousand who had little to do with the war, but were more especially employed in watching the extensive line of Turkish and Persian frontier, and in endeavouring to exclude contraband goods and Asiatic epidemics. But the severe fighting that occurred in 1842 and 1843, showed the necessity of an increase of force. Subsequent events have not admitted of a reduction in the Caucasian establishment; and we are probably very near the mark, in estimating the troops occupying the various forts and camps on the Black Sea, and the lines of the rivers, (Terek, Kuban, Koisu, &c.,) at about one hundred thousand men – not at all too many to guard so extensive a line, against so active and enterprising a foe. The Russian ranks are constantly thinned by destructive fevers, which, in bad years, have been known to carry off as much as a sixth of the Caucasian army. At a review at Vladikawkas, Dr Wagner was struck by the powerful build of the Russian foot-soldiers – broad-shouldered, broad-faced Slavonians, with enormous mustaches, drilled to automatical perfection. In point of bone and limb, every man of them was a grenadier. In a bayonet charge, such infantry are formidable opponents. Ségur mentions that, on the battle-field of Borodino, the nation of the stripped bodies was easily known – the muscle and size of the Russians contrasting with the slighter frames of French and Germans. "You may kill the Russians, but you will hardly make them run," was a saying of Frederick the Great; and certainly Seidlitz, who scattered the French so briskly at Rossbach, had to sweat blood before he overcame the Russians at Zorndorf. Those survivors of Napoleon's famous Guard who fought in the drawn battle of Eylau, will bear witness to the stubborn resistance and bull-dog qualities of the Muscovite. But the grenadier stature, and the immobility under fire – admirable qualities on a plain, and against regular troops – avail little in the Caucasus. The burly Russian pants and perspires up the hills, which the light-footed chamois-like Circassians and Tshetshens ascend at a run. The mountaineers understand their advantages, and decline standing still in the plain to be charged by a line of bayonets. They dance round the heavy Russian, who, with his well-stuffed knapsack and long greatcoat, can barely turn on his heel fast enough to face them. They catch him out skirmishing, and slaughter him in detail. "One might suppose," said a foreigner in the Russian service to Dr Wagner, "that the musket and bayonet of the Russian soldier would be too much, in single combat, for the sabre and dagger of the Tshetshen. The contrary is the case. Amongst the dead, slain in hand-to-hand encounter, there are usually a third more Russians than Caucasians. Strange to say, too, the Russian soldier, who in the serried ranks of his battalion meets death with wonderful firmness, and who has shown the utmost valour in contests with European, Turkish, and Persian armies, often betrays timidity in the Caucasian war, and retreats from the outposts to the column, in spite of the heavy punishment he thereby incurs. I myself was exposed, during the murderous fight near Ischkeri (Dargo,) in 1842, to considerable danger, because, having gone to the assistance of a skirmisher, who was sharply engaged with a Tshetshen, the skirmisher ran, leaving me to fight it out alone." This shyness of Russian soldiers in single fight and irregular warfare, is not inexplicable. They have no chance of promotion, no honourable stimulus: food and brandy, discipline and dread of the lash, convert them from serfs into soldiers. As bits of a machine, they are admirable when united, but asunder they are mere screws and bolts. Fanatic zeal, bitter hatred, and thirst of blood, animate the Caucasian, who, trained to arms from his boyhood, and ignorant of drill, relies only upon his keen shaska, and upon the Prophet's protection.