VIEW FROM THE INTERIOR OF THE FORT OF GEOK TEPPE
On the Russian left flank more than 300 dead bodies remained as witnesses of the Tekkes’ heroic but useless courage. This encounter cost the besiegers one of their best and most valiant officers, Colonel Petrusevitch, to whom we are indebted for most of our knowledge of Turkomania at the eve of its conquest. The second parallel was laid on the 4th January, and five days later another determined sortie was made by the beleaguered Tekkes. At dusk they poured into the second parallel, which was held by 2600 men, and took possession of the outworks and trenches, destroying the artillerymen and capturing four mountain guns and three regimental standards. But the reserves were hurried up from the camp at Yangi Kal`a, and after a fearful struggle the trenches were reoccupied, and all but one of the lost guns were regained. On the 10th of January the Tekke outposts were seized after severe fighting; but at half-past eight the besieged made a third sortie. They stormed a redoubt on the left flank, cut to pieces the artillerymen and a company of Transcaspian rifles who defended it, and dragged the two cannon which it contained towards the trenches. The Russian reserves again deprived them of the fruit of victory; for one mountain gun only, rendered useless by the removal of the breech-piece, was carried off by the Tekkes.[625] The time chosen by the besieged for these very effective operations was always the dark hour between sunset and the rise of the young moon. They inspired such terror that it was difficult to induce the young soldiers to await the Tekkes’ onslaught. The night of the 16th January was marked by the last of these mighty encounters, but experience had taught the Russians many a bitter lesson, and their tactics rendered the heroic bravery of their opponents useless.[626] On the 16th the sap had been pushed within twenty-four yards of the east side of the entrenchments. Breaching began on the 20th; and while a heavy fire was concentrated on a spot near the south-eastern angle, a perfect hail of petroleum shells was thrown on the dense mass of kibitkas packed into the Tekke enclosure. Fearful must have been the sufferings of the 7000 women and children who had sought refuge there. Every part of the works was searched by the fragments of shell and streams of unextinguishable flame. The traveller who visits the scene of this battle of the giants is filled with wonder that an undisciplined mob should have held out for three weeks with defences so paltry. Their stubbornness inspired respect in Skobeleff himself, who was as ready as all really brave men are to render justice to a gallant foe. In a proclamation addressed to his troops on the eve of the final assault, he told them that they were face to face with a people “full of courage and honour.”[627] But the end was drawing near. Not only was the breach reported to be practicable on the 23rd, but a mine had been driven under the eastern face about one hundred yards from the angle, which was charged with dynamite by a party of volunteers after nightfall. At seven on the morning of the 24th of January 1881 four columns formed for the assault, commanded respectively by General Skobeleff in person, and by Colonels Kozelkoff, Kurapatkine, and Gaidaroff. The signal was given by a vast column of smoke attended by a dull roar which rose from the eastern front. It proclaimed the explosion of the mine, which levelled 300 feet of the rampart, and overwhelmed several hundreds of the defenders. Instantly the force under Gaidaroff sprang forward and escaladed the parapet on the south-western angle. This was intended to be a feigned attack, but it soon developed into a serious one. Pushing northwards, Gaidaroff captured the mound which commanded the camp, and thus convinced the defenders of the impossibility of further resistance. In the meantime the other columns had swarmed through the breaches caused by the mine and the artillery fire, and climbed the parapet on the southern side between the two. The hand-to-hand encounter was brief, for the position was clearly untenable. O’Donovan, who watched the attack from a spur of the Kopet Dāgh twelve miles off, saw a cloud of horsemen issuing in disorder from the northern side, followed by a confused mass of fugitives.[628] The Russian flag waved on the mound which gave Dangil Teppe its name. It was planted at a cost to the assailants of 1200 men[629] killed and wounded, out of a total engaged of 8000. That undergone by the garrison will never be accurately known. Four thousand bodies were found in the enclosure, and Skobeleff admitted that a flying column pursued and hacked the fugitives for ten miles.[630] General Kurapatkine estimates that the enemy lost 9000 out of a total of 30,000. He strenuously denies the oft-repeated allegation that Tekke women and children were intentionally slaughtered. The Russians, he states, did not wilfully kill a single non-combatant, though, of course, many must have perished from the hail of petroleum shells which were poured for three weeks into the doomed enclosure. So anxious, he affirms, were his countrymen to avoid shedding innocent blood, that on the eve of the assault the garrison were formally summoned to send their families to a distance. The Turkomans’ reply was characteristic: “If you want our wives and children,” they said, “you must step over our corpses to seize them.” Fireside theorists are apt to reprobate the bloodshed of Geok Teppe and the slaughter of the wounded foe at Omdurman as unworthy of civilisation. A superficial acquaintance with the Asiatic character would convince them that an extreme application of the Virgilian debellare superbos is the least cruel policy which can be adopted in dealing with the forces of savagery and fanaticism. Geok Teppe was the last stronghold of Central Asian independence, and its capture must rank among the decisive battles of the world. While civilisation gained by the Russian victory, it is impossible to refuse sympathy to those who were crushed by its giant forces. With the conquest of Turkomania a national entity disappeared for ever which had been preserved intact during ages of change and retained many noble qualities. The world is the poorer by the disappearance of such types, and by the gradual reduction of all mankind to a dead level devoid of colour and charm. The news was received with dismay by the population of the Khānates, who still cherished hopes of regaining independence. Geok Teppe inspired the most bigoted of Russia’s foes with a conviction of the hopelessness of battling against the decree of fate; and to the lesson thus learnt is due the unbroken tranquillity which reigned for eighteen years in Central Asia. The Shāh of Persia hailed the extirpation of the hornets’ nest with joy. He saw his northern provinces delivered from a terrible scourge, and peace restored to a rich territory which the corruption and incapacity of his own government was unable to protect. Thus he at once acceded to a suggestion made by the Russian ambassador, M. Zinovieff, that the left bank of the Atrak, which had been virtually annexed, should be ceded to Persia in return for the abandonment of her rather shadowy rights as suzerain over the Merv oasis, and for authority to push the Transcaspian Railway through territory which was still nominally subject to her sway.[631] The absorption by Russia of the whole area inhabited by the conquered race was but a matter of time. The Akkal oasis was hers by right of conquest, and it remained to add that of Merv to the long list of her conquests. The way was paved for this measure by diplomacy, the agent being an astute Mohammedan named Alikhanoff.[632] He was a native of Dāghistan in the Caucasus, and had won the rank of colonel by gallantry in the field. Alikhanoff found a potent ally in the person of the once beautiful Gul Jamāl, widow of the last great chieftain, Nūr Verdi Khān, who enjoyed universal respect, due alike to her own force of character and the memory of her husband’s exploits. Her persuasion was seconded by a military demonstration which took place on December 1883, under Colonel Masloff; and, on the 31st January 1884, 124 delegates from the various settlements of the Merv oasis, headed by the four tribal chiefs, met at Askabad, which had been recently created the headquarters of the Transcaspian military district. Here they solemnly swore fidelity to the Tsar in the presence of the governor-general, Komaroff. A recrudescence of the old lawless spirit followed, which was prompted by an Afghan adventurer, but it was stifled on the 3rd of March by military force. In the following May, Prince Dondukoff-Korsakoff, governor-general of the Caucasus, paid a formal visit to the latest and not the least valuable trophy of Russian diplomacy, and was able to report to his imperial master that the inhabitants of the oasis had willingly acknowledged his sway. Soon afterwards the Sārik tribe, numbering 65,000, who inhabited the Yolatan oasis thirty-six miles south of Merv, tendered their submission, and that of the tribes between Giaour and Sarakhs followed.
The tract over which Russia had gained mastery was a parallelogram lying between the Oxus and the Harī Rūd, which washes the walls of Herāt, and in Turkomania is known as the Tajand. The western boundary marched with that of Persia, and at its northern extremity was defined by Old Sarakhs, a Turkoman village perched on an elevation which commanded a once thickly peopled country extending northwards to Merv. Old Sarakhs was easily accessible by wheeled traffic from Puli Khatan, a village on the left bank of the Harī Rūd, thirty-three miles from the Zū-l-Fikār Pass, through which the Tekke hordes had often poured into Khorāsān. To the east of this defile lay the Paropamisus range, a double spur of the Kūh-i-Bābā Mountains, which consists of low rolling hills covered with asafœtida and thistles.[633] The northern flank of the Paropamisus gives rise to the Murghāb, which fertilises Merv, and its confluent the river Kushk. The country between these streams and the Harī Rūd was known as the Bādghīs,[634] and is described by Lessar as presenting the appearance of a stormy sea suddenly reduced to solidity. In 1884 it had been ruined by Tekke incursions. A few thousand Jamshīdīs still clung to the rich valley of the Kushk, where they had been planted by Nādir Shāh in the eighteenth century as a bulwark against Turkoman aggression, and are described as a peaceable nomad race famed for their breed of horses.[635] On the north-west of this forlorn tract stood Bālā Murghāb, an Afghan fortress commanding the road to Maymena; and thirty-five miles farther north the village of Panjdih towered above an oasis with an area of 170 square miles, peopled by the Sārik Turkomans. Afghanistan lay to the south of the debatable land. Its natural boundary was defined by the Paropamisus, and only eighty miles beyond them lay Herāt. This city had played a great part in history. It was regarded as the key to Afghanistān; the only serious obstacle to a successful invasion of India from the north-west; and its citadel had been fortified in 1838 under the supervision of British officers. Nor was the importance of Herāt confined to its strategic position. It was the emporium of Central Asian trade, and the centre of a well-watered and fertile country. Thus the value to Russia of her latest acquisition was immense. In Merv she possessed a region which had been once the most fertile on the world’s surface, and needed but settled government to resume its ancient importance. The ill-defined area which she claimed to the south of the Merv oasis commanded the richest province of Persia and the north of Afghanistān. It was inevitable that the news of its impending appropriation should excite a storm of indignation in England, where every step of the Russian advance was watched with the keenest suspicion. An attempt to propitiate public feeling had been made as far back as 1882, when Russia proposed a joint commission to demarcate the northern boundary of Afghanistān, and at that time she would doubtless have accepted a line drawn from Khwāja Sālih on the Oxus to Sarakhs. But the Government then in power was not inclined to raise so delicate a question, and it was not until June 1884, when the situation had been radically modified by the conquest of Turkomania, that the proposal found acceptance. A joint commission was appointed in July, charged with the duty of laying down the disputed boundary. It was headed on the British side by General Sir Peter Lumsden, who had won distinction in India; while General Zelenoi was directed to watch over the interests of Russia. Sir Peter traversed Afghanistān, with the Amīr `Abd er-Rahmān’s permission, escorted by a little army of 500 strong with twice as many camp followers. This demonstration, for such it was, excited the suspicion of Lieutenant-General Komaroff,[636] the military governor of Transcaspia, and General Zelenoi was directed to return to Tiflis. In the meantime the explorations of Lessar in the valleys of the Murghāb and Kushk had led Russia to modify her claims. It was contended at the conference which followed that she should be allotted an ethnological frontier, based on the submission rendered by the Sāriks inhabiting the Panjdih oasis. The British representative, on the other hand, declined to recognise any other boundary than one based on natural conditions which excluded from Russian sway all territory south of an imaginary line drawn from Old Sarakhs to Khwāja Sālih on the Oxus. The Gordian knot was cut by the Afghans, who, encouraged by the presence on the Murghāb of the small British force attending Sir Peter Lumsden, moved northwards and occupied Bālā Murghāb and the disputed oasis of Panjdih. This aggression elicited warm protests from Russia; and, according to her wont, she brought material force to the aid of diplomacy. General Komaroff occupied Pul-i-Khatun, the Zū-l-Fikār Pass, and Ak Rabāt; and, on February 1885, he took possession of Pul-i-Kishti, at the edge of the Panjdih oasis. The alarm excited in England was intense. Engineers were despatched to place the fortifications of Herāt in a state of defence; arms and ammunition were poured into Afghan arsenals, and troops were massed under General (afterwards Lord) Roberts on the north-western boundary of India. The match was laid to the train by Lieutenant-General Komaroff. On the 30th of March 1885 his little force of 1200 men all told[637] attacked and routed an Afghan mob 46,000 strong with six guns, which latter fell into Komaroff’s hands.[638] The discomfited Afghans at once retired to Merūchak, at the eastern extremity of the oasis. The skirmish, for such it was, aroused a storm in England, and war was considered inevitable. Parliament voted unanimously a credit of £11,000,000 sterling for military preparations; while Russia called into existence a Volunteer Fleet, with the object of preying upon our commerce. Happily for the tranquillity of Asia, the two greatest Powers were led to pause ere they appealed to the awful arbitration of arms. General Lumsden and his ablest coadjutor, Captain Yates, used their influence with the Afghans to prevent a recurrence of the untoward accident of the 30th of May; while the tact of the latter prompted him to open overtures which were completely successful. Diplomacy, thus assisted, won a peaceful triumph, and a basis for the demarcation of the frontier was agreed upon. The process was completed at the close of 1886, and in the April of the following year the British and Russian representatives met at St. Petersburg. The outcome of their deliberation was, on the whole, favourable to Russia. She obtained the right bank of the Harī Rūd as far as the Zū-l-Fikār Pass, and the valleys of the Bādghīs south of and including the Panjdih oasis.
The southern boundary of her Asiatic possessions has advanced to a point within fifty-three miles of Herāt as the crow flies, and separated by no natural obstacle of importance from that great commercial and strategic centre. On the other hand, the Amīr of Bokhārā surrendered to the Afghans the rich pastures on the left bank of the Amū Daryā south of Khwāja Sālih. Russia has loyally accepted the work performed by the Boundary Commission, and has concentrated her energies during the eleven years which have intervened in developing the commerce and improving the administration of the rich possessions thus added to her empire.
The successful issue of this enterprise led, in 1895, to the appointment of a mixed commission to demarcate the spheres of English and Russian influence on the Pamirs. The boundaries of the three Asiatic empires meet in those stupendous hills, but their difficulty of access had hitherto precluded any attempt to lay them down authoritatively. The English representatives, under the direction of Sir M. G. Gerard, K.C.S.I., left India on the 30th June; and, a month later, they met their Russian colleagues on the shore of Lake Victoria, a wild mountain tarn which gives birth to the Oxus. No time was lost in tracing the boundary prescribed in an agreement entered into between the two Powers. Starting from the eastern side of the lake, it follows the crest of the Sarikol range until the Chinese frontier is reached. “From the sixth mile,” wrote Sir T. Holdich, K.C.I.E., the chief survey officer, “a rugged and inaccessible spur of the Sarikol range carried the boundary into regions of perpetual ice and snow to its junction with the main range. Here, amidst a solitary wilderness, 20,000 feet above sea-level, absolutely inaccessible to man, and within the ken of no living creature except the Pamir eagles, the three great empires actually meet. No more fitting tri-junction could possibly have been found.”
The cordiality which marked the relations between the subjects of Queen and Tsar was even more marked than on the earlier occasion. On their arrival at the scene of action the travel-worn Britons were hospitably received in the Russian camp, and a feeling of good-fellowship was then and there engendered which never afterwards grew cold. The scanty leisure left the commissioners by their duty of traversing ninety miles of the most difficult country in the world was devoted to races and shooting-matches.
The Kirghiz of the Russian escort astonished our countrymen by their prowess at ulak, a struggle on horseback for a goat, similar to the Bokhāran game of baigha. The Cossacks, too, displayed their wondrous equestrian skill. August 3rd, the name-day of the Dowager-Empress of Russia, was the occasion of an outdoor service, and the sweet plaintive melody of the anthems of the Greek Church never sounded so impressively as it did on those remote mountain heights.[639] Every lover of his country will re-echo the hope expressed by the Russian commissioner at a farewell banquet given to his colleagues on 11th September 1895, that “the agreement just concluded would be the beginning of more cordial relations between the two countries, and of a better understanding of their national aims and desires.”
CHAPTER VI
The Central Asian Railways
The conception of a railway between the Caspian and the heart of Asia took shape, as we have seen, during the campaign of Geok Teppe, when a little portable line between the base and a point thirteen miles inland was of good service to the transport. The new railway battalion redoubled its efforts after the fall of the Tekke stronghold, and before the close of 1885 the line had been carried as far inland as the large Turkoman village of Kizil Arvat, 135 miles from the Caspian. A mighty impulse was given to schemes for railway extension by the cession of the Merv oasis in 1884. The entire area between the Caspian and the Amū Daryā was now in Russian hands, and there were no political and few natural obstacles to delay the construction of a railway which should connect the great arteries of traffic. But the advisers of the Tsar were by no means unanimous in approving of the enterprise. A strong party favoured the canalisation of the Amū Daryā, and an attempt to divert its stream to its ancient channel, which entered the Caspian at Krasnovodsk. Another faction pointed to the vast results achieved in India by the network of railways, which enables a European military force barely 60,000 strong to dominate 250,000,000 Asiatics; and urged the necessity of providing the means of rapid transport of troops and material between the Caucasus and the new strategic bases. Foremost among the latter was General Annenkoff, who enjoyed great influence at St. Petersburg, due less to family connections than to his experience in the construction of railway lines.[640] His opinion was reinforced by events in the Merv oasis, for the collision with Afghanistān in 1884 convinced the stubbornest advocates for water-carriage that a post of vital importance could not be held without the assistance of a railway. In April 1885 an imperial ukase directed the construction of a line on the standard gauge between the Caspian and the new territories, and charged its designer with the duty of carrying it into execution and studying the question of extensions. General Annenkoff’s first care was to devise a system calculated to economise time and transport, and peculiarly adapted to countries which present few obstacles to the engineer. A temporary line was to be laid with the utmost speed, over which the materials and labour for completing the task might be conveyed at leisure. The accommodation of the personnel was of equal importance. The supervising staff consisted of three engineers-in-chief and an army of subordinates, military and civil, selected for their exceptional ability and vigour. Under their orders were two battalions of railway operatives on a strictly military basis. The second of these was recruited at Moscow by the general himself; and both corps showed a devotion to their arduous duties which it would be difficult to parallel. The scarcity of water in the desert precluded the possibility of forming camps at intervals or working in sections. By a brilliant intuition Annenkoff conceived the idea of a camp on wheels, which would move onwards as the work progressed, and be furnished with provisions and material by construction trains. It contained everything needful for comfort and efficiency. There were carriages for the office staff; dormitories and restaurants in two-storeyed cars, a telegraph carriage, and a saloon for the director, resembling the cabin on a man-of-war in the compactness and modest luxury of its fittings. Each vehicle communicated with the others by means of covered passages; and due attention was paid to ventilation and warming. Work began on the 30th of June 1885. The rails[641] were spiked down to the sleepers without the aid of chairs, and the rolling camp moved forwards at a speed which was ultimately four miles a day. When Kizil Arvat had thus been reached the soil ahead was levelled by 22,000 Tekke labourers, whom stern necessity had compelled to exchange their long knives for spades and sacks.[642] The rails and sleepers, brought from the base daily by a portable railway on the Decauville system, were rapidly laid on the soil thus prepared. Water in this dry and thirsty land is of prime importance. It was provided at Uzun Ada, the Caspian terminus, by a huge distilling apparatus. At other points the streams issuing from the distant hills were diverted into reservoirs, whence the precious liquid was carried to the line in pipes. At Merv the source of supply was a canal connected with the Murghāb. The waterless tracts were supplied from the nearest spring in immense wooden tubs placed on trucks. To avoid the interruption in the flow of materials due to the closure of the Volga by thick-ribbed ice, great depôts were formed at Merv, Charjūy, and, later, at Bokhārā, while the minutest care was given to perfecting every portion of the complicated mechanism.