On the 5th of January, 1771, began one of the most remarkable events in the history of the world, the migration of an entire nation, more than half a million strong, with its women and children, flocks and herds, and all that it possessed, to a new home four thousand miles away. More than once—many times, apparently—in the history of the past such migrations have taken place. But those were warlike movements, with conquest as their aim. This was a peaceful migration, the only desire of those concerned being to be let alone. This desire was not granted, and death and terror marked every step of their frightful journey.
A century and a half earlier the fathers of these people, the Kalmuck Tartars, had left their homes in the Chinese empire and wandered west, finding a resting-place at last on the Volga River, in the Russian realm. Here they would have been well content to remain but for the arts and designs of one man, Zebek-Dorchi by name, who, ambitious to be made khan of the tribe, and not being favored in his desires by the Russian court, determined to remove the whole Kalmuck nation beyond the reach of Russian control.
This was no easy matter to do. Russia had spread to the east until the whole width of Asia lay within its broad expanse and its boundary touched the Pacific waves. To reach China, the mighty Mongolian plain had to be crossed, largely a desert, swarming with hostile tribes; death and disaster were likely to haunt every mile of the way; and a general tomb in the wilderness, rather than a home in a new land, was the most probable destiny of the migrating horde.
Zebek-Dorchi was confronted with a difficult task. He had to induce the tribesmen to consent to the new movement, and that so quickly that a start could be made before the Russians became aware of the scheme. Otherwise the path would be lined with armies and the movement checked.
Oubacha, the khan of the Kalmucks, was a brave but weak man. The conspirator controlled him, and through him the people. On a fixed day, through a false alarm that the Kirghises and Bashkirs had made an inroad upon the Kalmuck lands, he succeeded in gathering a great Kalmuck horde, eighty thousand in all, at a point out of reach of Russian ears. Here, with subtle eloquence, he told them of the oppressions of Russia, of her insults to the Kalmucks, her contempt for their religion, and her design to reduce them to slavery, and declared that a plan had been devised to rob them of their eldest sons. By a skilful mixture of truth and falsehood he roused their fears and their anger, and at length he proposed that they should leave their fields and make a rapid march to the Temba or some other great river, from behind which they could speak in bolder language to the Russian empress and claim better terms. He did not venture as yet to hint at his startling plan of a migration to far-off China.
The simple minded Tartars, made furious by his skilful oratory, accepted his plan by acclamation, and returned home to push with the utmost haste the preparations for their stupendous task. The idea of a migration en masse did not frighten them. They were nomads and the descendants of nomads, who for ages had been used to fold their tents and flit away.
The Kalmuck villages extended on both sides of the Volga. A large section of the horde would have to cross that great stream, and this could be done with sufficient speed only when its surface was bridged with ice. For this reason midwinter was chosen for the flight, despite the sufferings which must arise from the bitter Russian cold, and the 5th of January was appointed for religious reasons by the leading Lama of the tribe. The year had been selected by the Great Lama of Thibet, the head of the Buddhist faith, to which the Kalmucks belonged, and to whom the conspirator had appealed.
Despite the secrecy and rapidity of the movement, tidings of it reached the Russian court. But the Russian envoy who dwelt among the Kalmucks was quite deceived by their wiles, and sent word to the imperial court that the rumors were false and nothing resembling an outbreak was in view. The governor of Astrachan, a man of more sense and discernment, sent courier after courier, but his warnings were ignored, and the fatal 5th of January came without a preventive step being taken by the government. Then the governor, learning that the migration had actually begun, sprang into his sleigh and drove over the Russian snows at the furious speed of three hundred miles a day, finally rushing into the imperial presence-chamber at St. Petersburg to announce to the empress that all his warnings had been true and that the Kalmucks were in full flight. Other couriers quickly confirmed his words, and the envoy paid for his blindness by death in a dungeon-cell.
Meanwhile the banks of the Volga had been the locality of a remarkable event. At early dawn of the selected day the Kalmucks east of the stream began to assemble in troops and squadrons, gathering in tens of thousands, a great body of the tribe setting out every half-hour on its march. Women and children, several hundred thousand in number, were placed on wagons and camels, and moved off in masses of twenty thousand at once, with escorts of mounted men. As the march proceeded, outlying bodies of the horde kept falling in during that and the following day.
From sixty to eighty thousand of the best mounted warriors stayed behind for work of ruin and revenge. Their first purpose was to destroy their own dwellings, lest some of the weak-minded might be tempted to return. Oubacha, the khan, set the example by applying the torch to his own palace. Before the day was over the villages throughout a district of ten thousand square miles were in a simultaneous blaze. Nothing was saved except the portable utensils and such of the wood-work as might be used in making the long Tartar lances.