Chapter XIX (1)

RIVALRY BETWEEN RUSSIA AND ENGLAND IN CENTRAL ASIA.

It is three years ago since, in the closing chapter of my Travels in Central Asia, I expressed my surprise and dissatisfaction at the indifference of Englishmen towards Russian progress in those regions. I then indicated not only the exact course of Russian procedure on the Yaxartes, but also its steadily approaching influence on British India. Abstaining purposely from all far-reaching political reflections, I was as brief and concise as possible, and could hardly have believed that the unassuming remarks of a European, just returned home from Asia, would be found worthy of closer consideration. Nevertheless, these few lines were discussed and dwelt upon by almost every organ of the English and Indian press, from the _Times_ to the _Bengal Hirkáru_. Only a very small proportion of those various journals attached itself in any measure to my ideas; the most of them, on the contrary, rejected my good counsel; and without directly ridiculing my judgment, raised from all sides a loud-sounding Hosannah over the happy change in English politicians, who, being less short-sighted now than they were thirty years back, discovered in the advance of the Russians only a disagreeable event; nay, would even regard it with pleasure, and cry success to their march southward over the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu-Kush and the Himalayas.

In these three years, however, a great change has taken place. Far though I be from wishing as an ex-dervish to exult over the fulfilment of my prophecies, still I cannot help referring to the lines in which I happened to proclaim the progress of the Russian arms. While I was in Central Asia the furthest out-posts of the Cossacks lay at Kale-Rehim, thirty-two miles from Tashkend. Forts 1, 2, and 3, on the Yaxartes, if actually conquered, were not yet wholly in safe keeping. On the north of Khokand, too,--on the west of the Issikköl and the Narin, the Court of St. Petersburg could show but few tokens of success. The Kirghis were embittered and hostile to the strange intruders, and the Œzbeg tribes on the northern frontier of Khokand would then have deemed a Russian occupation equivalent to the destruction of the world; so much did they hate and scout the Unbelievers. Three years have passed, and what has happened in that time? Not only has Khodja-Ahmed-Yesevi, that holiest patron of the Kirghis, become a Russian subject in Hazreti-Turkestan; not only has Tashkend, the most important trading town, the great mart of Central-Asiatic and Chinese trade with Russia, been absorbed into the northern Colossus; not only does the Russian flag wave from the citadel of Khodjend, the second town of importance in Khokand; it may now be also seen on the small fortress of Zamin, Oratepa, and Djissag. The dreaded Russ has set himself up as lord-protector in the eastern Khanat of Turkestan: the Hazret, the Khan, as also the Hazret or High Priest of Namengan, strive for the favour of one who, but a year before, would have filled their very dreams with mortal terror. Nay, not Khokand only, but the Tadjik population also throughout Bokhara and Khiva, the great number of freedmen and slaves in service, and even the wealthier merchants from Mooltan and other parts of India, who once trembled before the Œzbeg power, now whisper delightedly into each other's ears that the Russians are slowly drawing nearer, and that Œzbeg lordship and Œzbeg absolutism are coming to an end.

For three years have these metamorphoses in the oasis-countries of Turkestan been carried on with sure and steady hand from the banks of the Neva. As an erewhile traveller, for whom those spots had been full of interest from my youth up, I had already kept, albeit from a distance, a watchful eye on all that went on amidst the plains of the Yaxartes. I devoured alike the newspaper reports and the scanty notices which my fellow pilgrims from Turkestan communicated to me through their westward journeying brethren. That I took a hearty interest in everything will surprise no one, little as the utterances of the English press and the writings of British Indian diplomatists during these occurrences claimed my full attention. To the prophecies of the Dervish neither the one party nor the other gave a thought. The note of satisfaction struck three years before was kept up without a break. People were no longer content with the bare assertion, that Russian progress in Central Asia was a thing to welcome, but tried their utmost to show convincing grounds for that assertion, in order to represent the success of the Muscovite arms as tending more and more profitably for English interests.

To solve this problem the more happily, to convince all thoughtful Englishmen the more unanswerably of the profit to be gained from Russian successes, the question was debated by a light which was sure to be equally welcome to all the different classes. The scientific world was informed by the learned President of the Royal Geographical Society touching the excellent service rendered to science at large by the trigonometrical, geographical, and geological societies of Russia. Russian voyages of discovery were exalted above everything; Russian scholars were deified; nay, it was only lately that even Vice-Admiral Butakoff was presented with the large gold medal for his discoveries on the Sea of Aral. Social Reformers, on the contrary, were taught to compare Tartar savagery with Russian civilisation. The picture which I myself drew of Central Asia was contrasted with the young Russia of to-day: the emancipation of slaves, the Russian endeavours after national enlightenment, the great change in manners, the mighty strides by which Russia was approaching England in civilised ideas, were all brought into the foreground; and in every thread of this tissue was expression given to the great usefulness of Russian supremacy in Asia. The trading world was shown the advantage which must accrue from safe means of communication, now that Russian arms are on the point of smoothing a way through the inhospitable steppes of Turkestan towards India. Some journals, indeed, were carried so far away by their zeal as to point out to the honest workmen of Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, &c., that only English wares and English capital would travel to and fro along the new Russian commercial road to Central Asia. Even the military class had a friendly word whispered into its ear. To the sons of Mars it was needful to represent a Russian invasion of India as a ridiculous bugbear. From every stand-point, moral, physical, strategical, was such an attempt proved to be an impossibility. How, indeed, could Russia overcome the enormous difficulties of those parched steppes that stretched week after week before her; how master the warlike Afghans, or win through the dreaded Khyber Pass? And even if she succeeded in that also, how roughly would she not be handled by the British Lion, who would lie waiting leisurely for her in his luxurious palankeen? Nay, even to the Church, that mightiest of English levers, should a lullaby be chanted forth. People hinted at a happy union between the Orthodox Church of Russia and that of England. Dr. Norman Macleod is an authority; and his cry, "The Greek Church is not yet lost," has aroused the hopes of many; and very learned church dignitaries have looked forward with blissful smiles to the moment when the three-fold Greek Cross shall rise from the Neva up to the proud dome of St. Paul's in London, for the kiss of brotherhood, and the two united churches shall become a powerful weapon against Papal ideas.

Independent pamphlets and thundering newspaper articles alternated on the field of this question with the expositions above-named. The warning voice of a small minority could not succeed in making head against the Optimists, against those apostles of the new political doctrine. Sir Henry Rawlinson, whose perfect conversance with the circumstances of that region no one can dispute, a man whose practical experience is at one with his theoretic insight, has here and there in the _Quarterly Review_ pointed out the errors of such speculations in solidly written essays; and though, as doubting any ultimate design of Russia upon India, he protested against all actual interference, merely blaming the indifference above-mentioned; still his words passed unheeded of the multitude. I might well say to myself that where such an authority carries no weight, my present words could but travel a very short way. I was therefore slow to speak; and yet, as I had studied this momentous question in all its aspects, and examined it from many sides with impartial eyes, I deemed it possible to show, not only to the statesmen of England, but to those of all Europe, how fatally the Cabinet of St. James errs in its way of looking at the matter; and how this cherished indifference is not only hurtful to English interests, but becomes a deadly weapon wherewith Great Britain commits a suicide unheard of in history.

How it happens that I, who by race am neither English nor Russian, have taken so warm an interest in this matter, is mainly accounted for by the fact of my regarding the collision of these two Colossi in Asia less from the stand-point of their mutual rivalry, than from that of the interests of Europe at large. Whether England or Russia get the advantage, which of the two will become chief arbiter of the old world's destinies, can never be to us an indifferent matter; for widely as these two powers differ from each other in their character as channels of Western civilisation, not less widely do they diverge from one another in any future reckoning up of the issues of their struggle. A passing glance, on the one hand, at the Tartars, who have lived for two hundred years under Russian rule; on the other, at the millions of British subjects in India, might teach us a useful lesson from the past on this point. This, however, may be reserved for later investigation. For the present we will only affirm that the question of a rivalry between these two North European powers in Central Asia concerns not only Englishmen and Russians, but every European as well; nay, more, it deserves to be studied with interest by every thoughtful person of our century.[59]

[59] Up to this moment the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, alone of all
the Continental press, has brought out two special articles on
Central Asia. The first, without any acknowledged leaning, points
out the critical conditions of the approaching conflict; the second,
imbued with a Russian spirit, keeps time to the song of the English
optimists; for doing which I would not blame the writer, had he not
cited several passages from my book as his own property.

1. RUSSIAN CONQUESTS IN CENTRAL ASIA DURING THE LAST THREE YEARS.

First of all we will recount the historical facts of the Russian war of conquest during the last three years. Instead of going into those details about the campaigns of Perovski, Tchernaieff, and Romanovski, which were recorded partly in Mitchell's book, "The Russians in Central Asia," partly in several solid treatises in the _Quarterly_ and the _Edinburgh Review_, or into the slender notices which have trickled out into publicity from the Russian State-Cabinets, or those yet scantier notices which were revealed by highly-paid English spies in Central Asia, we would cast only a hurried glance at events, in order to acquaint the reader with the latest posture of Russian arms in Central Asia.

So successfully had the Russian operations been started in Central Asia, that after a brilliant overthrow of the Kirghis, they entered first on the conquest of Khokand, in order to gain firm foothold in the three Khanats. In those eastern parts of the three oasis-countries of Turkestan the social order has always been relatively least, the religious culture weakest, and the antipathy to warlike enterprises most strong. These were accompanied by internal disorders, for while the Khodjas through their inroads into Chinese territory on the east of the Khanat were always encountering the risk of a collision with China, which in bygone centuries did sometimes ensue, the greedy Ameers of Bokhara from the west have continually laid the country waste with their wanton lust of conquest. Before the capture of Ak-Meshdjid the nearing columns of the mighty Russ on the north had but little place in the bazaar-talk of Namengan and Khokand. At the time of the miscarriage of Perovski's expedition Mehemed Ali Khan was seated on the throne. He was beloved and honoured, and the dazzled masses were much too wanting in ideas of conquest, to think seriously of self-defence against the threatening foe on the north, or of Conolly's projected alliance with Khiva. Not till after the death of Mehemed Ali ensued the fall of Ak-Meshdjid, the first serious wound in the Khanat's existence; and the Russian success was all the easier, because at that time their fighting powers were crippled, on one side by the fierce conflict between Kirghis and Kiptchaks in the interior of the Khanat, and by the first attempt of Veli-Khan-Töre against Kashgar on the other. The storming columns of the Russians against the Khokandian fastnesses on either shore of the Yaxartes leave no cause to complain of cowardice, although the thousands of Khokandian warriors mentioned in the Russian accounts seem to rest on an over-keen eyesight.

After the capture of the last-named place, or, to speak more correctly, after a systematic restoration of the chain of fortresses along the Yaxartes, on whose waters the steamers of the Aral flotilla could now move freely about, the Russian power advanced with strides as gigantic as those with which Khokand, through the continuous working of the causes above-mentioned, continually fell away. The line of forts offered not only security against Turkestan, but was also a powerful bulwark against the Kirghis, who, being at length surrounded on all sides, could not so easily raise into the saddle an _Ished_,[60] as the last anti-Russian chief styled himself during the Crimean War. Thenceforth the work of occupation was pursued by the court of St. Petersburg with its wonted energy; and not till both the army corps, which were operating from the Chinese frontier to the Issik-köl, from the Sea of Aral along the Yaxartes, had drawn together southwards from the north-east and the north-west at Aulia Ata, (_Holy Father_, an ancient place of pilgrimage,) did Russian diplomacy deem it necessary to announce, in a despatch signed by Prince Gortshakoff on the 21st November, 1864, that the government of the Tzar had at length obtained its long-cherished desire to remove the boundary line of its possessions from the ill-defined region of the Sandy Desert to the inhabited portion of Turkestan; that the policy of aggression was now at an end, and that its one single aim in the future would be to demonstrate to the neighbouring Tartar states, with regard to their independence, that Russia was far from being their foe, or indulging in ideas of conquest, &c. &c.

[60] _Ished_, which the Russians wrongly pronounce _Iset_, is a
usual contraction of "Eish Mehemmed," which signifies "Mohammed's
delight."

That no Cabinet save the English placed any more faith in such assurances than the Russian Minister himself, it is easy enough to imagine. The tale of ever-recurring conquests from vanquished states has long been notorious. We have instances thereof in every page of the world's history, in every age in which some power has set about enlarging itself. Just as the English are vainly apologising for Lord Dalhousie's thirst for annexation, or absorption in India, so are all Russian notes composed in a strain of overflowing politeness. It is only the natural course of things; and the court of St. Petersburg was right, could not indeed do otherwise, after setting up a government in Turkestan, than follow the southern course of the Yaxartes; and as the waste steppe formed at the first no defensible frontier, neither could the thinly-peopled neighbourhood of Tchemkend and Hazret furnish a better one. There was need of a well-inhabited region, to provide against being dependent merely on the means of communication from Orenburg and Semipalatinsk. Therefore was Tashkend, rich and fertile Tashkend, doomed to incorporation in Russian territory.

It would be a profitless waste of time to quote as the main cause of the Russian occupation of the last-named town, on the 25th June, 1865, the moving history of the petition of the Tashkend merchants, of the numerous deputation that came beseechingly to the Russian camp, to obtain the shelter of the two-headed Eagle, whom the Central Asiatics call the _ajder_-kite, a bird not greatly beloved of yore. Tashkend, which from time immemorial, lived at feud with the masters of Khokand, was latterly very much enraged, because its darling Khudayar was twice driven from his throne. To endamage the dominant influence of the Khirgis by means of Russian supremacy, was for it a welcome idea; but it is not at all likely that the supremacy itself should have been generally desired.

Russia has absorbed Tashkend, because she deemed it indispensable as a firm base for further operations; not, however, with a view to erecting therewith a bulwark against possessions already secured. Still it was through Tashkend that the court of St. Petersburg had embroiled itself in hostilities with the Khanat of Bokhara. The Ameer, as we know, had earned for himself, through his campaign of 1863, the nominal right of suzerainty over the western part of Turkestan; and though after his departure everything fell back into the old rut of Kiptchak lawlessness and party warfare, he still thought to make good his right over all Khokand. He therefore wrote the commandant of the newly-conquered town a threatening letter, in which he summoned him to vacate the fortress. This, however, gave small concern to the Russian general; and, hearing that Colonel Struve, the famous astronomer, whom he had sent to Bokhara for a friendly settlement of the affair, had been forthwith taken prisoner, he burst forth on the 30th January, crossed the Yaxartes at Tashkend with fourteen companies of foot, six squadrons of Cossacks, and sixteen guns, with the purpose of going straight into Bokhara and punishing the Ameer for the violation of his envoy.

This design, however, miscarried. The Russians had to retire, but did so in perfect order; and though countless hosts of Bokharians swarmed round them on every side, yet their loss was too insignificant to accord with the bombastic tales of triumph which the Bokharians thereon trumpeted through all Islam, and which even found their way to us through the Levantine press. General Tchernaieff had excused himself on the plea that his hasty advance was intended merely to baffle the movements of secret English emissaries, who were striving with all possible zeal after an Anglo-Bokharian alliance, and were also the main cause of his envoy, Colonel Struve's imprisonment. In Petersburg, however, they could not pardon his military failure: he was displaced from his high command, and General Romanofski went out in his stead. The latter moved forward with slow but all the more cautious steps. On the 12th April a flock of fifteen thousand sheep, escorted by four thousand Bokharian horsemen, was made prize of; and a month afterwards there ensued, in the neighbourhood of Tchinaz, a fierce fight, called the battle of Irdshar, in which the Tartars were utterly beaten. On the 25th May fell the small fort of Nau; and afterwards Khodshend, the third town in the Khanat of Khokand, was taken by storm; but not without a hard fight, in which the Russians left on the field a hundred and thirty-three killed and wounded, the Tartars certainly ten times that number. The battle, however, was well worth the cost, for the fortifications of this place were better than those of Tashkend or of any other town in the Khanat. This was the second resting-point for the Russian arms on their march southward; and though the "Russian Invalid," in an official report concerning further projects, affirms that the conquest of that part of Bokhara which is severed from the rest of their possessions by the steppes could never become the goal of Russian operations, while for the present it would be entirely profitless, yet progress has already been made over Oratepe, through the small districts of Djam and Yamin, as far as Djissag; whilst everywhere important garrisons have been left behind.

What has happened in the Khanat of Khokand itself during this triumphal march of the Russians, is a point no less worthy of our attention. The inhabitants, consisting of nomads,--Œzbeg, and Tadjik or Sart,--were as much divided in their Russian likings and dislikes, as they were different from each other in race, condition, and pursuits. The warlike, powerful, and widely-courted Kiptchaks, being ancient foes of the oft-encroaching Bokharians, who wanted to force upon them the hated Khudayar Khan, immediately sided with the Russians. Their friendship was for these latter an important acquisition; and the friendly movement must have already begun, when the north-eastern army-corps came in contact with them in its forward struggle from Issikköl; for if this had not been the case, the Russian advance on that line would certainly have been purchased at heavier cost.

The Œzbegs, as being _de jure_ the dominant race, had defended themselves as well as they could; yet with their well-known lack of courage, firmness, and endurance, they had but small success; and when they began to reflect that Russian rule would probably be no worse a misfortune than the incessant war with Bokhara, or their internal disorders, they prepared to accommodate themselves to inevitable fate. Only a few angry Ishans and Mollahs maintained an unfounded dread of Bokhara; the descendants, for example, of Khodja Ahmed Yesevi in Hazreti-Turkestan, who, however, in all likelihood will soon go back to the bones of their sacred forefathers, as the Russians assuredly will not hinder them from collecting pious alms among their pilgrims. Moreover, to the wealthier merchants of Tashkend, to the Sarts and Tadjiks, and a small number of Persian slaves, the Russian occupation seemed welcome and advantageous; for whilst the former expected considerable profit from the admission of their native town into the Russian customs-circle, the latter hope to be rescued from their oppressed condition through the downfall of Œzbeg ascendancy. As we may see from the correspondence addressed by General Krishanofski to a Moscow journal, it was these very Sarts who gave the Russians most help. Their Aksakals, not those of the Œzbegs, were the first to accept office under the Russians. In public places they always appear by the side of the Russian officers, harangue the people, and while Russian churches were getting built, spread about a report that His Majesty, having been converted by a vision in the night to Islam, was on the point of making a pilgrimage to Hazreti-Turkestan. From the length of their commercial intercourse with Russia, many of the Tadjiks, especially the Tashkenders, are skilled in writing and speaking Russian; they serve as interpreters and middle-men, and as many of them reach the highest places in the _mehkeme_ (courts of justice) and other posts, the main motive of their adherence is easy to apprehend.

So far has it fared with the main line of operations in the Khanat of Khokand. On adjacent points likewise, both eastern and western, has the work of transformation stealthily begun. From Chinese Tartary we learn, that ever since 1864 the Chinese garrisons have been expelled, and replaced by a national government. First came disorders among the Tunganis, presently followed by the deliverance of Khoten, Yarkand, Aksoo, and Kashgar; and although these disorders may have been caused at bottom by the traditional delight of the Khokandie Khodjas in free plundering, still many of us are positively assured that the court of St. Petersburg countenanced all those revolutionary movements; aye, and that the Kiptchaks, who are now masters of Kashgar, were helped to win it by Russian arms. Such is the usual prelude to Russian interference. For a time these independent towns are permitted to carry on feuds and warfare against each other; but it is easy to foresee that their enmity will come to appear dangerous to the peace of the yet distant Russian frontier; and if haply the court of Pekin be in no hurry to restore order, the Russians are very certain to forestal it on that point ere long. The English press comforts itself with remarking, that the insuperable barrier of the Kuen-Lun mountains renders further progress towards Kashmir impossible; and that this Russian diversion is only for the good of Central-Asiatic trade. For the moment, however, we will put aside the discussion of this question, preferring to glance at that part of Central Asia which inclines westward from Khokand. Albeit engaged in war with Bokhara, Russia has hitherto made no attack on the real territory of that State, for Djissag is the lawful boundary between the former and Khokand. About this well-known seat of the struggle with Bokhara, there is only a diplomatic skirmish, which still goes on, under whose cover the revolution of Shehr-i-Sebz holds its ground. For, even if the Russian press denies for the thousandth time all interference, yet the appearance of the Aksakal of Shehr-i-Sebz in Tashkend cannot be regarded as unimportant. It is, at any rate, noticeable with reference to the Russian plans in Khiva. The settled portion of the Khanat proper has not yet been touched by Russian influence, and only in the north, since the destruction of the fortress of Khodja-Niyaz, on the Yaxartes, have some Cossack and Karakalpak hordes, skirting the eastern shore of the Sea of Aral, been converted into Russian subjects.

2. RUSSIA'S FUTURE POLICY.

Our sketch of Russian progress in Central Asia furnishes its own evidence of the way in which the policy of the court of St. Petersburg will follow out its purpose in the immediate future.

The most southern, therefore the most advanced, outposts rest on Djissag. This word, in Central Asiatic, means a hot, burning spot, and its position in the deep, cauldron-like valley of the Ak-Tau hills entirely justifies the name. Owing to its utterly unwholesome climate, and the great want of water, the population of this station on the way to Khokand is but very small; and that the Russians have selected it for a more abiding resting-place, I cannot believe, in spite of the aforenamed asseverations of the "Russian Invalid," and in spite of the contrary opinion of the learned writer of the article, Central Asia, in the "Quarterly Review." Not only is it an unhealthy and barely tenable post; but a lengthened stay here must also be acknowledged as most impolitic. The gentlemen on the banks of the Neva know well what Bokhara is in the eyes of all Central Asia, I might even say of all Mohamedans. They know that on the Zerefshan may be sought the special fount of religious ideas and modes of thought, not only for the mass of Central Asiatics, but for Indians, Afghans, Nogay Tartars, and other fanatics. In order to achieve a grand stroke, the Ameer, who styles himself Prince of all true believers, must be made to recognise the supremacy of the white Tzar; the holy and honoured Bokhara, where the air exhales the aromatic fragrance of the Fatiha and readings from the Koran, must learn to reverence the might of the black unbelievers; and the crowd of crazy fanatics, of religious enthusiasts, must acknowledge that the influence of the saints who rest in her soil is not strong enough to blunt the point of the Russian bayonet. The fall of Bokhara will be a fearful example for the whole Islamite world; the dust of her ruins will penetrate the farthest distance, like a mighty warning-cry. For this must the court of St. Petersburg assuredly be striving, and ready to strive.

From this stand-point it is therefore most probable that the greatest attention will henceforth be paid to the line of operations from Tashkend, Khodjend, and Samarkand. The conquest of the whole Khanat of Khokand may also follow in time, for that offers no special difficulties; but the chief interest lies in the maintenance and security of the roads of communication, on which the advancing army, in concert with the strong garrisons in the now well-fortified Tashkend and the northern forts, as also with the governments of Orenburg and Semipalatinsk, will move along a road furnished with an unbroken line of wells. The Ameer may have recourse to all possible means of gaining the friendship of the Russians, in which he has hitherto failed; he may send to Constantinople as many Job's messengers as he will; he may despatch ever so many friendly invitations to the Durbar of the Indian Viceroy: but all that will do him no good. The town of Bokhara shall, with or without his leave, be governed by an Ispravnik; for the Russians dare not and cannot rest, until ancient Samarkand and Nakhsheb (Karshi), or the whole right bank of the Oxus has been absorbed into the gigantic possessions of the House of Romanoff. That this catastrophe, this last hour of Transoxanian independence, will not be brought about so easily as the heretofore successes in Central Asia, is manifest enough. Already in my mind's eye do I behold a frantic troop of Mollahs and Ishans, with thousands of students, roaming the Khanats with holy rage, in order to preach the Djihad (religious war) among the Afghans, Turkomans, Karakalpaks; and going through scenes of the deepest, the devoutest anguish, in order to draw down the curse of God on the foreign intruder. The death-struggle will be fierce but profitless. So far as I know the Khivans and the Afghans, I deem the notion of a general alliance with Bokhara to be quite impracticable; for, if such was their inclination, they should have formed one long ago. No egotism, no political combinations, but the greatest want of principle alone, an utter recklessness of the future, will keep them quiet until Hannibal stands before their gates. In vain shall we look for any effort after a general league, either in Central Asia, or even among any of the other Eastern nations. As the very warlike Afghans could play their part with a force of disciplined auxiliaries, so also might the Khan of Khiva join the Ameer's army with twenty to thirty thousand horse. Yet this is what neither the one nor the other will do. To unite them under one command might be possible for a Timur or a Djinghiz; and even then the smallest booty might stir up rancour and dissensions in their ranks. So, too, the hundred thousand well-mounted Turkomans, who inhabit the broad steppes from this side the Oxus to the Persian frontier, are utterly useless for the rescuing of the Holy City. Their Ishans, indeed, if summoned by their fellow-priests in noble Bokhara and by the Ameer, might do their very best to stir up the wild sons of the desert to a holy warfare: but I know the Turkomans too well not to be sure that they will take part in the _Djihad_ only so long as the Ameer can offer them good pay and the prospect of yet richer booty; and as they sometimes owned in Afghan-Persian offices, it is most likely that the Russian imperialists will soon turn them into excellent brothers-in-arms of the Cossacks. Enthusiasm for the creed of the Prophet existed, if I remember rightly, only for the first hundred, indeed I might say only for the first fifty years. What Islam afterwards accomplished in Anatolia, in the empire of Constantine, in the islands of the Mediterranean, in Hungary, and in Germany, was due to the impulse of a wild daring in quest of booty and treasures, and a hankering after adventures. Where these leading incentives failed, there was a failure in zeal; and I repeat that, although the struggle will be a stern one, the speedy triumph of Russian arms in Bokhara is open to not the slightest doubt.

With the fall of the mightiest and most influential part of Turkestan, will Khokand, of her own accord, exchange a protection for the manifest sovereignty of the white Tzar. Khiva however, undaunted by the example, will, to all seeming, take up the struggle nevertheless. The conquest of Kharezm, moreover, though easier than that of Khokand, is connected with remarkable difficulties. With the exception of two towns, whose inhabitants are better known through their commercial relations with Russia, the Œsbeg population of this Khanat abhor the name of Russian. In courage, they stand much higher than the men of Khokand and Bokhara, and, protected by the formation of their native land, will cause much trouble to the Russian troops from the way of fighting peculiar to the Turkoman race. As for the view upheld by many geographers and travellers, that the Oxus will form the main road of the expedition, I am bound to meet it with the same denial as before. That river, on account of its great irregularity and the fluid sea of sand borne down upon its waves, is hard of passage for small vessels, not to speak of ships of war. Not a year passes without its changing its bed several miles in the shifting ground of the steppes; and if the Russians were not quite convinced of this circumstance, the small steamers of the Aral-Sea flotilla, built as they were for river navigation, would have begun forcing their way inland by the Oxus, instead of the Yaxartes. For although the smaller forts, such as Kungrad, Kiptchak, and Maugit, which were built on the fortified heights by the left bank of the river, might do harm to a flotilla passing near; yet, owing to the sad state of the Khivan artillery, they are hardly worth considering. Attempts to pass up the river, from its mouths to Kungrad, where the stream is deepest and most regular, have already been tried; still, the fact of their remaining merely attempts, clearly shows that the navigation of the Deryai Amus (Oxus), if not altogether impossible, is a hard problem nevertheless.

These, however, are but secondary drawbacks, and in Khiva, as in Bokhara, the white Tzar will be raised aloft upon the white carpet of the Kharezmian princes, if not through the grey-beards of the Tshagatay race, at any rate by his own bayonets and rifled guns.

The conquest of the whole right bank of the Ganges once assured to them, the strip of land from Issikköl to the Sea of Aral once come into full possession of the Russians, and well provided with excellent victualling-stores, then will the game of diplomacy have begun in Afghanistan also. Among the Afghans the court of St. Petersburg will not intervene so suddenly with arms in hand; not because England's miscarriage in 1839 has made it cautious, but because such a procedure is by no means customary with the Russians. That, moreover, would be partly superfluous, partly beyond the mark, amidst the now proverbial disunion of Dost Mohammed's successors. Where brother rages against brother in deadliest feud, where intrigues caused by greed and vanity are ever in full swing; there the secret agent, the kind word, a few friendly lines of writing, are much more profitable than a sudden assault with the armed hand. Hitherto, in his brother-strife against Shere-Ali-Khan, Abdurrahman-Khan has in no way entangled himself with Russian agents, although he sought to frighten the English moonshee (agent), by bringing some such conception to his notice. That he was greatly inclined to such a step I have not the slightest doubt; but as yet the Russians have given him no encouragement to take it. For if the Afghan opponents of Shere-Ali-Khan, the Ameer accredited by England, had received but the faintest wink from the Neva, they would never have coquetted with Sir John Lawrence in Calcutta. Not only chiefs and princes, but every Afghan warrior, nay, every shepherd on the Hilmund, puts his trust in the idea of Russian trade; and I have a hundred times over convinced myself how easily, indeed how gladly, these people would embrace a Russian alliance against the masters of Peshawar. Whether the fruits of such a friendship would be wholesome, and conduce to the interests of Afghanistan, no one takes into question. The Afghans, like all Asiatics, look only to the interests of the moment, see only the harm which Afghans have suffered in Kashmere and Sindh through English ascendancy, have a lively remembrance of the last sojourn of the red-jackets in Kabul and Kandahar; and though every one knows that the Kaffirs of Moscow are very little better than the Feringhies, still, from an impulse of revenge, they all desire and will prefer an alliance with the North to a good understanding with England.

Hence it is but a friendly regard, it is only a compact upheld not by treaties, but by a strong force on the Oxus, which the Russians can aim at for some time to come.

The same kind of relation must be their object in Persia. Here too, for the last ten years, has the court of St. Petersburg been playing a lucky game. Since the appearance of Russian envoys at the splendid court of the Sofies, in the time of Khardin, until now, Russian influence has gone through many phases. At first scorned and disregarded, the Russians have risen into the strongest and most dangerous opponent of Iran. Whilst, in the days of Napoleon I., England and France, to the profit and partial aggrandisement of the Shah, vied with each other in turning to account their influence at the court of Teheran, Russia, as "inter duos certantes tertius gaudens," quietly smoothed her way to the conquest of the countries beyond the Caucasus, to the profitable treaties of Gulistan and Turkmanshay. And while the same Western Powers persevered in that policy, the Colossus of the North took up such a position on the Caucasus as well as the Caspian Sea, that its shadow stretched not only over the northern rim of Iran, but far also into the country. At the time of Sir Henry Rawlinson's embassy, English influence was near being in the ascendant; but since then it has been continually sinking; for however lavish of gold and greetings the English policy might be in Malcolm's days, it showed itself just as cold and indifferent from the time of Mac Neil downwards. Both the Shah and his ministers seem urged on by necessity to accept the Russians as their Mentor. It is not from any conviction of a happier future that they have flung away from the fatherly embraces of the British Lion into the arms of the Northern Bear; and the Shah must dance for good or ill to the song which the latter growls out before him.

If now, in accordance with the aforeshown position of the Russian power and policy in Central Asia, we cast a glance on the frontier, stretching for 13,000 versts wide, from the Japanese Sea to the Circassian shore of the Black Sea, where Russia is always in contact with so many peoples of different origin and different religion, over whose future her aggressive policy hangs like the doomful sword of a Damocles; we shall soon be driven to observe that, although the southern outposts in Asia are on the Araxes, yet the only point where, in their further advance, they impinge on a European power is to be found in Central Asia. Separated twenty years ago from British India's northern frontier by the great horde of the Khirgis and the Khanats, the space at this moment left between Djissag and Peshawar, although the difficult road over the Hindu-Kush lies midway, amounts to no more than fifteen days' journey, and in reckoning by miles to hardly a hundred and twenty geographical miles. For an army the road, though difficult, is not insuperable, while it should be tolerably easy for the development of political influence; and for all England's readiness to see a mighty bulwark for her frontier in the snow-crowned peaks of the Hindu-Kush, she forgets the ease with which a Russian propaganda from the banks of the Oxus can smooth a way hence towards the north of Sindh. From the moment, indeed, when the Russian flag waves in Karshi, Kerki, and Tchardshuy, may England regard this power as her nearest neighbour.

3. RUSSIA'S VIEWS ON INDIA; AND ENGLISH OPTIMISTS.

Has Russia any serious views, then, on British India? Will she attack the British Lion in his rich possessions? Does her ambition really reach so far, that she would wield her mighty sceptre over the whole continent of Asia, from the icy shores of the Arctic Sea to Cape Comorin? These are questions of needful interest, not to Englishmen only, but to all Europeans. On the bank of the Thames as well as in Calcutta, statesmen have latterly answered them in the negative; for their organs, official and unofficial, regard the utmost danger of the meeting as a neighbourhood of frontiers, and not an aggression; a neighbourhood which, so far from imperilling English interests, will be altogether to their advantage. These gentlemen are sadly at fault, for the spirit of Russia's traditional policy,--her steadfast clinging to the schemes before indicated, the unbounded ambition of the House of Romanoff, the immense accumulation of means at their disposal for the accomplishment of their designs,--place in surer prospect the fulfilment of any aim on which they have once bent their gaze. Russia wants India first of all in order to set so rich a pearl in the splendid diamond of her Asiatic possessions; a pearl, for whose attainment she has so long, at so heavy a cost, been levelling the way through the most barren steppes in the world; next, in order to lend the greatest possible force to her influence over the whole world of Islam (whose greatest and most dangerous foe she has now become), because the masters of India have reached, in Mohamedan eyes, the non-plus-ultra of might and greatness; and lastly, by taming the British Lion on the other side the Hindu-Kush, to work out with greater ease her designs on the Bosphorus, in the Mediterranean, indeed all over Europe; since no one can now doubt that the Eastern question may be solved more easily beyond the Hindu-Kush than on the Bosphorus: for if, at the time of the Crimean war, when Nana Sahib's brother was fêted at Sevastopol, Russia had held her present position on the Yaxartes, the plans of Tzar Nicholas on Constantinople would not have been so easily buried under the ruins of the Malakhoff.

These far-reaching designs may not, perhaps, be the work of the next years, nor even of the Government of the peaceful and well-disposed Alexander; yet who can assure us that after him no Nicholas, or no yet sterner nature than his, may succeed to the throne, who will thwart the desire of a Taimur or a Nadir to come forth as a thoroughly Asiatic conqueror of the world? What a Russian autocrat can do in the present condition of Russia, in the present social position of his subjects, who, moreover, will long continue such, every one knows, and the statesmen of England best of all. It is, therefore, the more remarkable, that these gentlemen should think to put the said eventualities so easily aside, and to contest the question of a Russian invasion of India with arguments so very shallow. They usually bring forward the unpassable glaciers of Hindu-Kush and the Himalayas, and the swarms of hostile nomads which would hem in a force advancing from the north on its way southward. They console themselves with the great distance, which would bring an invading army to the Indian frontier tired and exhausted, while the English troops lying by, ready to strike at their ease, and strong in military zeal and training, awaited the shock of war with greediness. But do these gentlemen believe that Russia, in the event of her really cherishing these sort of views, would dispatch her invading armies thitherwards direct from Petersburg, Moscow, or Archangel? What end is served by the South-Siberian forts? What by Tashkend, Khodshend, and still more afterwards, by Bokhara and Samarkand? What, too, by the Persian-Afghan alliance? What did the Cossacks and the Russian troops of the line do in Gunib, and in the rugged hills of Circassia? Were they exhausted when they reached their journey's end? And the latter station is not so much farther from the capital on the Neva, than Peshawar is from the cities just named! And why are we to assume that Russia would choose only the difficult road through Balkh to Kabul, and thence through the Khyber Pass, and none other? Without mentioning that this could have been so fatal to the English army of 1839, which fled in affright and disorder, for the march thither cost no especial sacrifices; the road through Herat and Kandahar, the proper caravan-course to India through the Bolan Pass, is far more convenient. The latter, fifty-four or five English miles in length, did indeed cost the Bengal corps of the army of the Indus many days' toil; and yet we read in a trustworthy English author that the passage of 24-pounder howitzers and 18-pounder guns caused no particular trouble. Or why should the Russians not force the Gomul or the Gulari Pass, called also the middle road from Hindostan to Khorassan, which, according to Burnes, serves the Lohani Afghans as their main road of communication, and offers no especial difficulties?

It is too hard, indeed, to scatter the sanguine views of the English optimists with regard to the strength of their fancied bulwarks. The way through Kabul would have to be taken only in case of necessity; for the chief points by which Russia could quite easily approach the Indian frontiers are Djhissag and Astrabad; from the former in a southerly, from the latter in an easterly direction. Both roads have often led armies, time out of mind, to the goal of their desires; for both, though bordered by large deserts, pass through well-peopled, even fertile districts, which can support many thousands of marching men with ease.

Indeed, even the chances of an eventual war are greatly over-estimated by the English. True, that their present army in India, numbering 70,000 picked British troops besides the strong contingent of sepoys, is not to be compared with any of their former fighting forces in those regions. To throw as strong a muster across Afghanistan into the Punjaub, would certainly cost Russia some trouble. Still we must not forget how stout a support an invading army would find in a Persian-Afghan alliance, and in the great discontent which prevails in the Punjaub, in Kashmir, in Bhotan, and among the fanatic Mohamedans of India. The ever-broadening network of Indian railways may do much to hasten and promote a concentration; but the fountain-head of military support for India being on the Thames or the islands of the Mediterranean, is not much nearer than that of the Russians, especially if we consider that more than three hundred vessels sailing down the Volga make the transport to the southern shore of the Caspian Sea considerably easier. By this road may a large army be brought in a short time to Herat and Kandahar through the populous part of northern Persia; on the one hand through Astrabad, Bujnurd, and Kabushan; on the other, by the railway as yet only projected to Eneshed. This railroad the Tzar wants to build for the relief of the pilgrimage to the tomb of Imam Rizah; yet through all the Russian promises of subsidies there gleam forth other and non-religious plans. Or would people in England, besides the no longer doubtful possibility of a Russian design upon India, measure the political constellations which the said power has called into being on her behalf, in the field of European diplomacy? The Russian-French alliance of a Napoleon I. and an Alexander I., which left noticeable traces in Teheran, would now be much easier to enter on than before, owing to the dominant influence of France in Egypt and Syria, through the commencement of the Suez Canal. And these things apart, will not the ever-increasing _entente cordiale_ between Washington and St. Petersburg prove of signal advantage for Russia's purposes? People scoff at the way in which the Yankee cap entwines itself with the Russian knout; and yet the banquets on the Neva, at which American brotherhood was vigorously toasted, the journey of the Tzarovitch to New York, the mighty show made by America in China and Japan, where she threatens to turn the calm face of ocean into an American lake;--do not these things furnish ample reason for discerning in the alliance between Russia and America symptoms of the greatest danger for English interests? Indeed, when the decisive moment comes for acting, Russia will be able to avail herself of many ways and many means, which, however little worthy of notice they may seem to English statesmen, will be carefully pre-arranged without any noise.

Nevertheless, we are willing to allow that the actual shock will follow only in some very distant future. Gladly, too, will we bear to be pointed at as a false prophet. But how is it that English statesmen will proclaim as harmless the more and more manifest advance of their northern rival; how disguise and palliate the mischievous menace of that rival's aims?

The body of English politicians friendly to Russia is wont, whenever this question comes up for discussion, to reply that the neighbourhood of a well-ordered State is more acceptable to them, than several wild nomad tribes living in anarchy and plunder. An Englishman once asked me, whether I would not prefer to sit beside an elegantly-dressed fine gentleman, instead of a dirty and uncouth boor. People may wish success with all their might to a Muscovite neighbour; yet to me it is not at all clear, why those gentlemen should wish for the neighbourhood of a sly and powerful adversary in the room of an unpolished but essentially-powerless foe. What happened once in America, in the north of Africa, and even on Indian ground, between rising England on the one hand, and waning Holland and Portugal on the other, has often been and will yet often be repeated in the pages of history. As in ordinary life two strong, selfish individuals, will but rarely thrive in one same path; so does the same impossibility exist in the case of two States;--a fact, of which the long war between France and England for the superiority in India furnishes the best proof. Even if she followed the best aims, how could Russia, backed as she is by the gigantic power of the whole Asiatic continent;--she, whose policy for the last hundred years, has led her through desert regions with a perseverance so great, at a cost so lavish,--refuse a hearing at once to her own designs and to the insinuations of her abettors? Will she have sufficient self-control to forbear from profiting by the happy occasion which plays into her hands the Mohamedan population of India, more than thirty millions strong? The last-named, being the most fanatical of all who profess Islam, are filled with unspeakable hatred of the British rule. Their religious zeal, fostered on one side by Bokhara, on the other by the Wahabies, goes so far, that, in order to drain the cup of martyrdom, they often murder a British officer walking harmlessly about the bazaar, and even give themselves up to the headsman's axe.[61] In India, where religious enthusiasm has ever found a most fruitful soil, Islam has revealed itself in the oddest forms. The brotherhoods introduced in the days of the Taimurides, are there more powerful and important than elsewhere; and not Scoat alone, but every place has an Akhond of its own to show, whose summons to a crusade would be followed by thousands. In spite of the manifold blessings which English rule has secured to the Mohamedans, it is they alone who form the nest of revolutions; they alone who gave most support to the rebellion in its last disorders; they alone who take chief delight in conspiring for a Russian occupation, and proclaim in all directions the advantages of Muscovite rule.

[61] Query--Hangman's halter? (Trans.)

Should we not also take this occasion to think of the Armenians, who, scattered through Persia and India, form single links of the chain wherewith the court of St. Petersburg conducts the electric stream of its influence from the Neva to the Ganges; aye, even to the shores of Java and Sumatra? The hard-working, wealthy Armenians, who in their religious sentiments are inclined to be more catholic than the Papist, more Russian, more orthodox than the Tzar himself, will assuredly not recommend the Protestant church and Protestant power to the natives of India, to the injury of supremely Christian Russia. How many zealous subjects of British rule in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, are not enrolled at Petersburg as yet more zealous promoters of Russian interests! Every member of this church in Asia is to be regarded as a secret agent of Muscovite policy; and if the moment came for a decision, the English would be amazed to see what kind of chrysalis emerged from this religious, moral, free and industrious people.