[545] Ney, p. 214.
[546] Ney, En Asie Centrale, p. 214. Stumm asserts that the Bokhāran Amīr made the exiled Khān named Khudā Yār his Bey, or governor of Kokand (The Russians in Central Asia, p. 57).
[547] The chief was Colonel Von Struve, who afterwards attended Kauffman in a diplomatic capacity during his campaign against Khiva in 1873, and, at a later period of his career, was envoy of Japan. Among the other members was Colonel Glukhovsky, who was an ardent pioneer for Russia in these little-known tracts (see Schuyler’s Turkestan, ii. 354, 386), and published an interesting account of his mission in the Paris Geographical Society’s Bulletin for September 1868.
[548] This illustrious soldier never regained imperial favour, and died almost unnoticed in August 1898.
[549] See Schuyler’s Turkestan, i. 312.
[550] It is to be found in extenso in the Journal de St. Petersburg of 16th July 1867.
[551] 500,000 roubles; equivalent to about £53,000. This ultimatum is omitted in Vambéry’s admirable description of the Samarkand campaign in the Monatsschrift für deutsche Litteratur, 1896. He alleges that Kauffman ignored the Amīr’s embassies, and fell unexpectedly on Samarkand when the preparation for the campaign was complete.
[552] Schuyler denies that this affair was really a battle. Judged by his standard, Plassey was a mere skirmish. The two battles closely resemble one another. See his Turkestan, i. 242.
[553] Sarts, as we shall presently see, is the Russian term for the sedentary inhabitants of Central Asia.
[554] Schuyler denies that the attack on a small isolated garrison was an act of treachery. It may not have been so on the part of the people of Shahrisabz; but the inhabitants of Samarkand were undoubtedly guilty of the basest dissimulation in welcoming the Russians and then secretly conspiring their destruction (Turkestan, i. 246).