XXXIX.
HIS INVASION OF THE KABARDAS.
The black cloud of vengeance, though so small as not to be noticed by the Kabardians, was now gathering in the south-east. Schamyl, surveying the posture of affairs in the spring of 1846, with the eye of a warrior who was at the same time a prophet, saw that the concentration of Russian troops was mostly in the fortresses of Temir-Chan-Chura and Grosnaja; that Woronzoff was busy looking after his kreposts and his stanitzas; and that consequently there was an opening for himself by means of fast galloping to break through the enemy's line, and make a raid in the Kabardas. It was an inspiration of genius to conceive the plan; it would require the boldest riders in the world to execute it.
But notwithstanding the loss of Dargo, the year preceding, "Sultan Schamyl," as the mountaineers sometimes fondly called him, had attained to such an influence that he was now at the head of the largest force which had ever been mustered in the highlands. Among the tribes of the western Caucasus, their proudest chiefs, Guz-Bey, and Dschimbulat, had never been able to raise a troop for crossing the Kuban of more than four thousand riders; Scheik Mansur, the Schamyl of the eastern Caucasus in the preceding century, and Khasi-Mollah had never taken the field with upward of eight thousand; nor had the Russians in their hostile incursions, as at Akhulgo and Dargo, assembled under their eagles a greater force than from twelve to fourteen thousand. But the Imam after all the losses of the preceding years had now under him no less than twenty thousand warriors, a large proportion of them cavalry, and waiting only his order to spring into their saddles.
In the beautiful month of May, when nature in bud and full leaf throughout the mountains inspired the breast of the warrior as well as of the husbandman with hope, Schamyl set forth for the Kabardas. The week before, the highlands lay as peaceful in the midst of the spring's blossoming as they had under the protecting mantle of the winter's snows. The steed was cropping the first tender blades of grass in the vale, long unaccustomed to the bit and saddle which hung suspended against his master's wall; while the Lesghian himself was sitting listless at the door of his sakli apparently basking without a thought of war in the genial beams which shine in the time when the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.
But suddenly there was a hot riding of messengers from one end of the little empire of the Imam to the other. In a week all the men of Himri, Akhulgo, and Dargo, the riders of Arrakan and Gumbet, Avaria and Koissubui, Itchkeria and Salatan, the dwellers on the four branches of the Koissu and the still blood-stained banks of the Aksai, Lesghians, Tchetchenians, and warriors of Daghestan, tribes of different origin and speaking various dialects, but freemen all, were in the stirrup, shaskas at their sides, and millet at their saddle-bows.
Two rivers flowed between their land and the Kabardas; and across their war-path ran two lines of hostile fortresses. Among these latter was the strong-hold of Wladikaukas, besides others scarcely less impregnable; and in them all lay an army of seventy thousand troops well armed and ready for service. In the intervals between stretched the settlements of the Cossacks; and beyond, the Kabardians themselves had been born warriors, and still retained their arms. On the other hand, Schamyl had no artillery, and no regular convoys of provisions and ammunition. Without fortresses, depots, or communications of any sort to fall back upon in case of need, he would in fact have nothing behind him to rely upon, but only that which was before. It would be therefore a dash at a venture, and with, for order of march, "The devil take the hindmost."
But the Imam was conscious of his strength, and was justly proud of his twenty thousand men of the mountains, every one of whom held in contempt the plains below and all they that defended them. Seeing beforehand both the victory and the way of escape, he confidently set forward. It was at the season of the year when the banks of the rivers were filled full from the melting of the snows in the mountains; but the horses swam where they could not ford the currents. To no purpose was it that the Cossack, seeing from his tall look-out the approach of the foremost riders of this host, lighted his beacon, or that the sentries of the kreposts fired their alarm-guns. Schamyl rode down the Cossacks, plundered the stanitzas, and left behind the forts which were not carried amid the whirlwind of his first coming. There was no stopping; and before the garrisons along the line knew that Schamyl had come, he was gone; and when the Kabardians believed that the braggart who had threatened their land with plundering was shut up in his mountains six hundred wersts away, he was in their midst.
No less than sixty populous aouls of the Kabardians were plundered; twenty Cossack stanitzas were destroyed; and ravaging on either side the lands through which he passed, the Imam seriously threatened the strong places of Mosdok, Jekaderinograd, and Stavropol. It was easy galloping over the smooth valleys and softly rolling hills of the Kabardas; nor having once broken the bounds of the mountains were Schamyl's riders content to turn back their horses until they had watered them on the Kuban, and even filled with consternation the stanitzas on the still more distant banks of the Laba.
To retreat from these remote steppes in safety to the mountains was indeed a triumph. For the generals Freitag and Nestoroff, on hearing the news of Schamyl's incursion, had immediately mustered their battalions, and occupied the Terek to intercept his return; and the Cossacks, those of the Don, of Tchernomozen, and of the line, riding at full speed, had come in from the plains with a strength of several thousand lances. Schamyl well knew that he could not retire by the way in which he had advanced. But when the work of devastation and pillage was done, he suddenly turned his horses' heads south from Jekaderinograd; overran the Cossack colonies in that direction; and with a considerable number of Kabardians forced into his ranks, with his cruppers loaded with the booty of the plains, and his saddle-bows well furnished with both millet and mutton, regained the mountains. It was still the beautiful month of May when his riders unloosed their saddle-girths at the doors of their saklis; the time of the singing of birds was not past; nor had the voice of the turtle yet ceased in the land.