Shortly before the end of the fight, following Captain (now Colonel) Schultz, the boldest among the brave, at the head of the remains of my battalion, I climbed a steep ascent. The firing from above had ceased; the wind dispersed the dense clouds of smoke which, like a curtain, hung between us and the fortress, and over my head I saw a number of Circassian women standing on a little flat platform in the face of the rock. The closer and closer approach of our troops showed them too surely their fate, but, determined not to fall alive into our hands, they spent their last strength in destroying their enemies. Surrounded by the smoke, which grew clearer as we approached, they looked like avenging spirits born of the clouds, and scattering fear and destruction from the mountain side. In the heat of the fight, they had thrown off their upper garments, and their long thick hair streamed in wild disorder over their half-bared necks and bosoms. With superhuman exertion, four of these women contrived to roll down a vast stone, which came thundering towards us, passing within a few feet of me, and crushing several of my soldiers. I saw a young woman who till then had been, with fixed eyes, a quiet spectator of the bloody tragedy, suddenly grasp the little child that clung to her garments; I saw her dash its head to pieces against a projecting rock, and hurling it, with a wild shriek, down the abyss, leap after it. Many of the other women followed her example.
Akhulgo was taken, but Schamyl was not to be found in it, dead or alive. The Russian officers, however, had seen him, surrounded by his Murids, in the thickest of the fight, and knew he must be there. After awhile, intelligence was received that he and two or three of his Murids were concealed in a cave excavated in a face of the cliff overlooking the Koissu, permitting of access only by a ladder, which they had drawn after them. A considerable body of men, horse and foot, was immediately set to watch the mouth of the cave, whence, on the first dark night, the guard observed a small raft of planks being very carefully lowered by a rope into the Koissu; a Murid followed, who, after appearing to look carefully in all directions, made a signal; then followed another; and at last came a third in the white garb of Schamyl. The raft was cut adrift, and the whole party dashed down the stream of the Koissu. In an instant, the Russians, who had carefully watched the whole proceedings, rushed upon them. The infantry fired from the bank, and the Cossack cavalry waded and swam their horses into the Koissu. The little crew of the raft, after defending itself with tenacity, was soon cut and shot down; but when the Russians examined their corpses, Schamyl was not there. While every one’s attention had been drawn from the cave, he had lowered himself by the rope, and swimming the Koissu, had plunged into the forests of the opposite bank. The devotion of his Murids had saved the life and the cause of the prophet. Fifteen hundred dead lay in the ruins of Akhulgo, and six hundred prisoners, mostly wounded, were taken by the Russians.
The taking of Akhulgo was the crisis of Schamyl’s fate. But an event which seemed utterly to annihilate his party, in reality served only to consolidate his power, and to render its foundation secure. The fifteen hundred slain in Akhulgo were the seeds of so many blood-feuds between the Russians and every tribe in the Caucasus—the pledges of an unquenchable personal hatred on the part of the mountaineers to the Muscovites, for ever. The wanton brutality of the soldiers to the inhabitants, in their line of march, disgusted even those tribes who would have been willing to remain friendly; and all learned unmistakably what they had to expect from Russian rule. On the other hand, the skill and courage shown by Schamyl and his followers in the defence, and the severe losses which they inflicted upon the invaders, appealed to the inmost sympathies of the gallant Caucasians; while the escape of the Imam, the details of which he carefully kept secret, appeared, for the third time, to be due to nothing but the miraculous interference of Allah. Schamyl himself, finding that no courage could resist the “Czar’s pistols,” as his people called the field-pieces, learned to change his tactics, and henceforward to confine himself to the guerilla warfare for which the country seems made. His wonderful energy soon revived the spirit of his people, and early in 1840, all Tchetchenia was in revolt again.
The storming of Akhulgo, is the last real advantage of which the Russians have to boast. Schamyl, henceforward avoiding fortifications in the European style, set up his head-quarters at Dargo. Here he organized a scheme of government, which converted the whole of Lesghistan and the greater part of Tchetchenia into a vast military colony, and gave him the power of concentrating his forces upon a given point with the utmost ease. His system has been to avoid as much as possible coming into contact with the Russians in open ground. If the Russians make an expedition against him, he never opposes their entrance into the passes—no sign of life is, for the first day or two, to be seen in the mountains; but as the gorges narrow and the ground becomes more difficult, dropping shots from invisible enemies pick off the Russian officers. By degrees the dropping shots increase into a hot fire, and clouds of wild Lesghians and Tschetchenians, agile and surefooted as goats, hover behind trees and stones.
[CHAPTER XI.]
SINOPE.
Town of Sinope—Osman Pacha—The Mussulmans—The Black Sea Squadron—Exploit of Captain Drummond—Sebastopol Harbor—Achmet Pacha—Citate—The Battle—Turkey, as a Military Power—Christian Population—War in Asia—England and France—Declaration of War—Embarkation of Troops.