The authorities in Tashkent, perceiving that it was doubtful whether English public opinion was ripe yet for an active interference in Central Asia, reverted, despite all orders from the home authorities to the contrary, to their original intention of coercing the ruler of Kashgar. In 1874, therefore, all preparations for commencing the campaign in the approaching spring were made ready. Provisions and munitions of war were despatched to Naryn, and an auxiliary division was to make a flank movement by the Terek Pass on the west. It has been laid to the charge of the Russian generals in Asia, that expeditions are arranged for their mutual advantage, both in obtaining higher rank and orders. So seriously bitten had every officer since Perovsky become by the desire for promotion and distinction, that the disease became generally known as the St. George or the St. Ann Cross fever. Now during the seven years previous to the date at which we have arrived, if there had been a fair share of distinction and spoil for the soldiers and the lower ranks of the officers, some of those in higher posts considered that they were aggrieved by the monopoly of supreme credit obtained by General Kaufmann. This, indeed, had shown itself very clearly after the fall of Khiva, a success for which Kaufmann obtained all the credit, and yet towards which the division under his command contributed little or nothing. The etiquette, too, maintained in the little court at Tashkent, and the semi-regal state observed by the successful general, were irksome to officers more accustomed to the licence of a camp than to the punctilio of a palace. Nor were there wanting more sinister motives still among some of the chief general officers who filled the subordinate posts in the service of the Czar's representative. Prominent among them was the youthful Scobelef, who, burning to distinguish himself, clamoured loudly for some expedition which, when accomplished successfully, would be recompensed with the Cross of St. George. Strong as General Kaufmann may really be in the good opinion of his superiors, he was unable to resist, if he were inclined, the demands pressed upon him by Scobelef and his father, and the more warlike portion of his forces. It is said, that in addition to these palpable reasons there were others touching the family rivalries of the Kaufmanns and Scobelefs, who appear to have been at feud with each other when younger men in the service of the palace, when Nicholas was Czar. To remove these differences, and to satisfy the demands of his other subordinates, General Kaufmann consented that an expedition should be arranged against Kashgar, and entrusted to the command of the younger Scobelef. Towards the end of 1874 the war-cloud was drawing ominously over the Athalik Ghazi, and to all observers it seemed as if it were about to break with destructive violence on his devoted head. Loudly was it asserted that nothing but British intervention would save him, and it was only too clear that England's policy would be guided by events. The Viceroy had certainly not advised that an active participation should be undertaken in this question. The failure, too, of the Granville-Gortschakoff negotiations to define a neutral zone had convinced this country of the inutility of solving the question between the two countries by treaty. But it was not clear that, even if Kashgar were to fall into the power of Russia, our interests would suffer so much as to justify us in adopting an extreme remedy. The path being thus left clear for Russia to strike, every precaution was taken by Generals Kaufmann and Scobelef that the blow should be sharp and decisive. Not fewer than 20,000 Russian troops in all were to be directed against Yakoob Beg, who too late now attempted some concessions to his neighbours. Such troops as he could raise were massed in the neighbourhood of Kashgar, while another force under his son was stationed at Aksu. But of the result there could not be two opinions. Very few weeks' respite remained to the intended victim, when an event occurred which changed the whole current of Russian thought into a different channel. Yakoob Beg was saved by the outbreak of disturbances in Khokand, and, although the Russians never acknowledged that they were so serious as to prevent them persisting in their Kashgarian enterprise, still gradually the troops who had been despatched to the frontier were recalled, and those who had been ordered to set out for Naryn were retained in Tashkent and Hodjent, the two towns chiefly threatened. Although this event is not part of Kashgarian history, yet it performed so useful a function to that state, which indeed it may be said to have saved, that some brief account of it here may not be unwelcome.
Khudayar Khan, after the death of Alim Kuli, his hostile minister, in 1865, had been reinstated in his possession of Khokand, partly by the efforts of his own faction, and partly by Russian assistance. From that year to the year 1875 he was de facto as he was de jure Khan of Khokand, and, although imbroiled on several occasions with Russia and with his own subjects in those ten years, he still maintained a nominal independence in the western half of Khokand, with his capital at the city of the same name. For some reason, however, this Khan never was popular. So far as we know concerning him, he does not appear to have been any way worse than his neighbours; but one party in the state accused him of being a tool of the Russians, while another, urged on by the agents employed by that government, declared that he was gradually drifting the country into a hopeless contest with that Power. Widespread throughout the state there was dissatisfaction at his rule, and the occasion afforded by a commotion among the Kirghiz was eagerly seized by his subjects to rise for the purpose of subverting his power. At first this movement seemed to possess no importance for the Russians, and was regarded as one of those dynastic squabbles that had become too ordinary an occurrence to occasion any surprise. The insurrectionary party, too, had put on the throne Nasruddin, the eldest son of the Khan, a youth who was supposed to be friendly to Russia, and who was not likely to prove in any way formidable, having become passionately addicted to vodka drinking. But behind this ostensible ruler there were others who aspired to greater eminence than the king-makers of a petty state like Khokand. Chief among these was Khudayar's brother-in-law, Abderrahman Aftobatcha, who was entrusted with the chief control of the military arrangements. This chief was the son of Mussulman Kuli, the Kipchak minister of Khudayar's earlier days. Either incredulous of the maintenance of a neutral attitude by Russia, or urged on by a patriotic impulse to free the enslaved portion of Khokand, these confederates issued a proclamation of war against General Kaufmann. The border districts rose in response to the proclamation, the communications between Tashkent and Hodjent were severed, and confusion for a time reigned supreme within the Russian possessions. The Khokandian forces hesitated to make any serious attack and wasted their time in useless depredations in the mountains. Had a prompt move been made on Tashkent, or even on Hodjent, the insurrection might have been successful. Bokhara might have struck in at the critical moment, and Yakoob Beg awoke from the lethargy into which his warlike spirit was sinking. Such was not to be, however; and gradually the Russian scare wore off. Colonel Scobelef scoured the country with his Cossacks; telegraphic communication was restored between Hodjent and Tashkent; and the country was rapidly cleared of the rebels. The fugitives who had accompanied Khudayar in his flight were sent to the rear, and reinforcements were hastily summoned to take part in the necessary offensive measures against Khokand. It will be sufficient here to say that, having been defeated in the fight at Makhram and several other small engagements, the party of Nasruddin and Aftobatcha sued for peace. This was granted, but Khokand became the Russian province of Ferghana, Colonel Scobelef was raised to a major-general, and obtained his Cross of St. George by the battle of Makhram. This event, generally known as the revolt of the Khokandians against Russia of 1875, marks an important era, for it convinced the Khokandians and other Asiatics that any attempt to obtain their liberty, short of a concerted and organized movement, would be fruitless. There has been no renewal of the attempt that then failed, but which ought to have achieved more success.
To the discord unhappily existent among its victims has Russia been chiefly indebted for the facility with which her Asiatic conquests have been acquired, and to the same ally it seems probable that she will be chiefly indebted for their preservation. There is no clearer evidence of this than the history of this last war with Khokand. But when we endeavour to divide the share of culpability for this dissension, we are on this occasion bound to admit that the chief blame attaches to Yakoob Beg. More than any other Asiatic ruler had he assumed to himself the title of general protector of his religion and his order, against the conquering strides of Russia; more than any other had he fostered, by his bold and defiant attitude towards that state, the belief that there still remained some hope of coping with the danger by a united league of Central Asian states; more than any other had he seemed to justify this aspiration; and more than any other must he be held culpable when he permitted the moment that seemed most auspicious to slip by unutilized. Moreover, when this insurrection broke out in Khokand, he had made every preparation to defend himself against a Russian invasion. He saw the Russians compelled, by the very necessities of their position, to call off their forces to other quarters, and yet he abstained from striking a blow in defence of those interests which he had ever declared were most sacred to him. It is impossible to explain such apathy on so important an occasion as this was; and his refusal to strike in on the side of Aftobatcha must remain the greatest blot on an otherwise brilliant reputation. With the collapse of that effort, and the subsequent occupation of Ferghana, Russian attention seemed to become more occupied with the state of affairs on the Oxus and in Cabul, than with the fortunes or misfortunes of Kashgar. During the few months that intervened between the annexation of Khokand and the appearance of the Chinese north of the Tian Shan, Yakoob Beg adopted a more conciliatory policy towards Russia, and might in a short time have sunk into the position of a somewhat more important Khudayar or Mozaffur Eddin. Other events intervened, however, and gave a complete change to the question, as will be considered in a later chapter. We take our leave of this narrative of his dealings with Russia with an admiration that would be perfect but for the weakness he exhibited in 1875. Even that vacillation will scarcely destroy all the claim that his bold defiance and consistent opposition to all Russian pretensions to supremacy over Eastern Turkestan gives him to our respectful and admiring consideration.
CHAPTER XI. YAKOOB BEG'S RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND.
In describing the relations that subsisted between England and Kashgar, while under the rule of Yakoob Beg, there will be no necessity for us to enter so deeply into the under-currents that guided those relations, as was necessary in the preceding chapter, where we detailed the rivalry of Russia and Kashgar. While England could hold out a hand of friendship to the Athalik Ghazi, because he sought to please us by making commercial concessions, Russia felt doubly piqued with the man who for long refused her a similar foothold, and who, for a brief space, went still farther in his defiance, secure—as he thought—under British protection. Our government could not fail to see, in the bold conduct of this ruler, the result of a mistaken notion of what it would do in the event of a war in Central Asia, and it strove to bring home to the mind of Yakoob Beg and his emissaries a sense of our determination not to interfere beyond the Karakoram. Looking back now on the old legends that successive travellers brought us from Eastern Turkestan, where such strange things had been wrought, where the Chinese had been expelled, and a new king from Khokand enthroned, and regarding them in the light of our greatly extended information, even since Mr. Shaw penned his interesting volume on High Tartary, it will not be without some interest to trace back the story of how Yakoob Beg's name first became known to us, and how, for eight or nine years, a large section of Englishmen wove a romance round his name, and converted "the land of the six cities" into a fertile and populous region, which might serve as a barrier to Russian progress, and which, like Cabul elsewhere, should extend as another "cushion" from the mountains of Hindostan to the Celestial range of the Chinese. Those dreams have vanished now, and in their place has risen up the very unromantic and matter-of-fact spectacle of a Chinese triumph.
Whoever has chanced to reside in the valleys of the Himalaya—Mr. Shaw is the authority—must experience a desire to know of the countries beyond that range. The desire is natural, but the obstacles of nature are stupendous. To enter Tibet has been the object of numerous Englishmen, from the time of Warren Hastings, yet that object has been only attained by three of our countrymen, the latest sixty-six years ago. There are forty or fifty passes of various degrees of practicability leading into Tibet from Nepaul, Sikhim, and Bhutan; and to act as a spur to the explorer there is a highly civilized and peaceable race just beyond our border of whom we know scarcely anything. Yet the vision of Warren Hastings and of Thomas Manning remains unfulfilled.
North of the Karakoram there were no similar incentives. Mr. Moorcroft who, fifty years ago, resided in Ladakh, does not appear to have manifested any desire to pierce the iron barrier to the north, although towards Ruduk and Tibet he turned as if irresistibly fascinated. The character which the brothers Michell gave Little Bokhara, or Eastern Turkestan, expressed a fact, which long deterred any traveller from attempting to explore it. "Little Bokhara," they said, "was a country where every man carried his life in his hand, and there were indubitable excuses for each successive traveller who recoiled before the hardships and dangers of a journey through that country." But although no Englishman traversed the dizzy passes of the Karakoram and the Kuen Lun, now and then the people from Sanju, Khoten, and the neighbourhood came to Ladakh, where they brought intelligence of the political events that were taking place further north. Their intelligence was often completely false, it was always vague and exaggerated, but it, at all events, told us whether peace or war, satisfaction or dissatisfaction, was the existing circumstance in Eastern Turkestan. It was known in a general sense that China was the nominal ruler of this vast region; but the exact relations China held there, how she conquered the country and when, and by what means she retained her conquest, all these were unascertained. There had, indeed, been one break in this state of darkness when the learned traveller, Adolph Schlagintweit, in 1857, penetrated, with a few native followers, into Kashgar. The initial difficulties were successfully overcome, and fortune seemed at first disposed to smile upon his enterprise. Herr Schlagintweit had come, however, at a singularly inopportune moment. The Khoja Wali Khan had just invaded Kashgar, and his forces had spread as far south as Yarkand, when the traveller approached that city. He appears to have been able to report himself to the Aksakal, representing Cashmere at Yarkand, who, in turn, communicated with the Chinese Amban, for permission for him to enter the city; but while detained outside the walls he was captured by a roving party of Wali Khan's army. He was at once hurried off to Wali Khan's head-quarters at Kashgar, where that despot, in a fit of fury, brought about by excess in "bang," ordered him to be executed. His followers escaped, and brought back the tale of his death to Ladakh.
Such was the untoward fate of the first explorer of Kashgar. In the course of the early summer of 1868, it became generally known that the Chinese had been driven out of Kashgar, and that Yakoob Beg was ruling the country, under the title, conferred upon him by the Ameer of Bokhara, of Athalik Ghazi. He had sent a sort of semi-official messenger, Mahomed Nazzar, in that year into the Punjab, to take notes, as it were, of our dominions. Mr. Shaw, in Ladakh, had heard of the recent changes in Eastern Turkestan, and mentioned to this envoy on his return the desire he had to visit Kashgar, and see the widely famed Athalik Ghazi. The envoy received the proposition with enthusiastic approval, but it was considered more prudent to await the formal assent of the ruler himself. After overcoming the difficulties that beset his task, with prompt resolution Mr. Shaw entered the dominions of the Athalik Ghazi in December, 1868, being the first Englishman who had ever entered Little Bokhara. His reception was singularly cordial, and everything that the officials could do to make his sojourn in the country pleasant to him was done. One and all of the Khokandian dignitaries received him as a friend and a brother; and even Mahomed Yunus, Dadkwah of Yarkand, the second man in the kingdom, treated him in a spirit of marked cordiality. It should be remembered that Mr. Shaw went there without any official status whatever, and simply as an English traveller. Of course, it was the best policy for the Kashgarian rulers to greet him hospitably, and prove that they had completely pacified Eastern Turkestan; but in pointing out the hospitable reception that was given to Mr. Shaw, it is impossible to detract from its merit by referring to such latent political motives as these. Yakoob Beg received the English traveller in special audience at Kashgar, and treated him in the most cordial manner. On Mr. Shaw offering him a few presents that he had brought from India, such as rifles, &c., the ruler laughed, and said, "What need is there of presents between you and me? We are already friends, and your safe arrival has been sufficient satisfaction to me." During Mr. Shaw's residence in Kashgar, which extended over a period of three months, he had three interviews with the Athalik Ghazi, who on each occasion became, if possible, more friendly than on the previous one. Mr. Shaw was fairly treated on the whole, and has of all writers on Kashgar given us the most graphic description of the people and the country. Mr. Shaw's position was to a certain extent compromised by the arrival of another Englishman, the lamented Mr. Hayward, who was murdered in a somewhat mysterious manner, three or four years afterwards, in the neighbourhood of the Cashmerian fortress of Gilgit. Both travellers were for a time detained in a sort of honourable confinement in Kashgar, but all ended happily, and the first two English explorers of Eastern Turkestan returned in perfect safety to Ladakh. The result of Mr. Shaw's interesting journey was not made known in England until 1871, after he had set out and returned from Kashgar a second time, in the first embassy of Mr., now Sir, Douglas Forsyth. The result of this visit to Yarkand and Kashgar was almost magnetic. Not only did the Indian Government promptly take into its consideration the question of what our political relations were to be with the Athalik Ghazi, but the whole Anglo-Indian community turned an attentive ear to the stories told of the new country. A new avenue for commerce had been opened up, and Eastern Turkestan might, after all, prove the true gateway to the marts of Bokhara and Kuldja. In our more immediate vicinity there was the jade trade of Khoten to be revived, and the wool of Tartary, of ancient fame, should alone form a staple article of commerce. For Manchester goods and Indian wares there was also a very inviting prospect in the thickly populated districts of Yarkand and Kashgar, which were at first supposed to contain a much larger population than as a matter of fact they did. At first it is probable that the main sentiment was one of satisfaction on commercial grounds alone; later on, the progress of events in Khokand and Kuldja made the political motives appear more prominently before English minds. A trading company was formed in conception, but it did not begin operations until several years later on, after the signature of the Forsyth treaty, for which, and the official regulations concerning the working of that company, the reader may be referred to the Appendix of this volume.
Mr. Shaw himself formed a very roseate estimate of the future of the trade between India and Kashgar, and participated with all his wonted activity in promoting the fortunes of the Yarkand Trading Company from his advantageous post at Lêh. Although the more sanguine expectations were never realized, the company itself was successful, and performed a very useful work under no easy circumstances. Its functions are suspended during the uncertainty that always follows a change in the ruling power of a state, until it is seen what steps are taken by the Chinese, or this country, to perpetuate, under the Chinese sway, those good feelings which first arose under Yakoob Beg. Many are sceptical of the possibility of living on terms of good neighbourship with the Chinese, and of carrying on an intercourse, which certainly does not exist anywhere along the whole extent of the Anglo-Chinese frontier. But these persons will scarcely admit that the Chinese are to blame in this respect if we neglect the subject, for Russia by right of several treaties, and by right also of diplomatic tact, has a commercial status in every northern mart of the Chinese Empire, from Ourga to Urumtsi, Manas, Chuguchak, Kuldja and Kashgar. If the Chinese were reinstalled in every one of their old possessions, yet Russia would have a legal foothold in all those outlying dependencies. English commerce must not by any means despair of success in opening up the interior of China from the direction of India and Cashmere. In most cases, political action generally follows upon commercial enterprise; but in our dealings with the Chinese the order is reversed, and political overtures and diplomatic arrangements must clear the way for the commerce that must infallibly spring up between Hindostan and not only Tartary and Tibet, but also the home provinces of Yunnan and Szchuen. The root of the difficulty is no doubt to be found in the fact that the Mantchoo caste is in many respects as much a race apart from the mass of Chinamen as the Norman was in England during the twelfth century. The Mantchoo mandarin believes that in some undefined manner the introduction of European science and civilization into China would tend to lower his influence and political power. But if we are wise, we shall ignore this sentiment, and endeavour to reach the people through their legitimate authorities, the Tartar conquering race of two centuries and a half ago, and not by attempting to influence the rulers by a propagandist crusade among the people, as some advise.