Of the sixty men who stood by their chief to the end two only escaped; but one of these was Shamil, who became afterwards the most famous and formidable champion of the Mohammedan tribes in the Caucasus.
'His marvellous strength, agility, and swordsmanship served him in good stead. With an Alvarado's leap he landed behind the line of soldiers about to fire a volley through the raised doorway where he stood, and whirling his sword in his left hand he cut down three of them, but was bayoneted by the fourth clean through the breast. Undismayed, he grasped the weapon in one hand, cut down its owner, pulled it out of his own body, and escaped into the forest, though in addition to the bayonet wound he had a rib and shoulder broken by stones.'
Shamil had been born and bred in the same village with Kazi Mullah, whose disciple he became, and whose rules of rigid adherence to the strictest injunctions of Islam he adopted and enforced. He even attempted to put down, as a practice forbidden by the law of Mahomet, the inveterate blood feuds that divided and weakened the tribes, with the politic object of uniting them in the holy war against the infidels; and when the Kazi had been killed his mantle fell upon Shamil, who soon proved himself a far more able and terrible leader of fanatic insurrection. The Russians, who at first believed that the Kazi's death was a decisive and final blow to the cause of Muridism, soon found that they were grievously mistaken. Mr. Baddeley's narrative shows occasionally some disregard of orderly arrangement, so that the sequence in time and interconnection of incidents is not always clear. We gather from this part of it, however, that very soon after Shamil took command the whole country had risen against the Russians, that their posts were attacked and their detachments cut off, and that expeditions sent to seize the positions or disperse the gatherings of the tribes paid dearly for their victories, while they were more than once repulsed with defeat and disaster. Villages were burnt; the vineyards and orchards were destroyed; desperate fights, hand to hand, ended only with the extermination of the defenders by the exasperated Russian soldiers; and after one campaign, when the Russian Commander-in-Chief led a considerable force against Shamil's stronghold, he was content to conclude, in the emperor's name, a treaty of peace with the tribal chief, being 'compelled to retire by the total disorganisation of the expeditionary corps, the enormous loss in personnel, and the want of ammunition.' A treaty with the Russian emperor raised Shamil's reputation high among the tribes; while the slaughter and devastation inflamed his revengeful temper. When the Emperor Nicholas came next year to the Caucasus, General Klugenau met Shamil and tried to persuade him to tender submission in person, with the result that Klugenau narrowly escaped assassination at the interview. He was saved by Shamil's intervention. In 1839 almost all the tribes were united under Shamil's command; and the Russian Government, seriously alarmed, determined that he must be effectively crushed. In the story of this campaign we have a signal and striking example of the perils that beset regular troops who encounter fierce and fearless barbarians on their own ground. The Russians had a powerful artillery; they were led by experienced commanders; their officers and soldiers fought with astonishing courage and endurance. After several bloody actions Shamil was shut up in the hill fort of Akhlongo, and here the undaunted Murids turned to bay. It was a stronghold surrounded by ravines and sheer precipices, accessible only along narrow ridgeways. Mr. Baddeley has related in full detail the operations and incidents of this eventful siege. The first assault failed after a prolonged and desperate struggle. 'Only at nightfall,' writes an eye-witness, 'and at the word of command, did our troops retire from the bloodstained rock.' The bombardment went on 'until the castle was reduced to a heap of ruins, in which the heroic defenders seemed literally buried.' After a siege which lasted eighty days the place was at last taken with a total loss of 3000 Russians, including 116 officers, killed and wounded. The defenders were slaughtered almost to the last man; many women and children were killed; but Shamil again escaped miraculously.
'Vanquished, wounded, a homeless fugitive, without means, with hardly a follower, it might well seem that nothing was left to the indomitable chieftain but the life of a hunted outlaw ... yet within a year Shamil was again the leader of a people in arms; within three he had inflicted a bloody defeat on his present victor; yet another, and all northern Daghestan was reconquered, every Russian garrison there beleaguered or destroyed, and Muridism triumphant in the forest and on the mountain, from the Samour to the Terek river, from Vladikavkaz to the Caspian.'
By 1840 the Tchetchnia tribes of the wooded lowlands under the mountains had broken out into outrageous rebellion, for Shamil had established himself in the forests, and was harassing the whole Russian border. 'We have never,' wrote General Golovine, 'had in the Caucasus an enemy so savage and dangerous as Shamil'; and it was again decided to send an overwhelming army against him. The two first expeditions virtually failed. Between 1839 and 1842 the Russians had lost in killed or wounded 436 officers and 7930 men, and 'had accomplished little or nothing.' In 1844 the Emperor Nicholas had despatched large reinforcements to the Caucasus, with stringent orders to make an end of Shamil's 'terrible despotism' and to subdue the whole country. On his side Shamil mustered all his forces for an energetic defence. His mounted bands traversed the borderlands with amazing rapidity, rushing in suddenly upon the Russian outposts, waylaying detachments, and bewildering the commanders by the speed and secrecy of their movements. Count Vorontzoff marched against him with an army of about 18,000, horse, foot, and artillery. Shamil retreated gradually before him, drawing on the Russians, and abandoning his forward positions after a show of defending them. He had laid waste the country on the line of the Russian advance; so, as supplies were running very short, Vorontzoff pushed on hastily toward Shamil's headquarters at Dargo. This place, surrounded by forests,
'lay along the crest of a steep wooded spur of the Betchel ridge, nowhere very broad, narrowed here and there to a few feet, and consisting of a series of long descents with shorter intervening rises. Abattis of giant trunks with branches cunningly interlaced barred the way at short intervals, and the densely-wooded ravines on either side swarmed with hidden foes.'
Mr. Baddeley's vivid description of the hurried advance upon Dargo, and of the Russian retreat after capturing it, has all the tragic interest of a situation where heroic valour strives vainly against calamitous misfortune, and brave men, caught in a well-laid snare, tear their way out of it with the energy of despair. The six barriers of twisted branches were attacked and carried without serious loss, though at one point, where the path along the hill-top was narrowest, the troops fell into confusion, suffered heavily, and were rescued with some difficulty. Dargo was then occupied without resistance; but the army had only food for a few days, and Vorontzoff, instead of retiring immediately, resolved to wait for a convoy that was coming up from the rear and had reached the edge of the forest. But the force despatched to protect and bring it into camp had to pass again over the strait ridgeway, where all the barriers had been reconstructed; and the Russians again ran the gauntlet of incessant and murderous fire, losing one of their generals with many officers and men. There still remained the most arduous task of all, to force a way for the third time along the ridge with weakened and disheartened troops encumbered by the provision train that they were escorting to Dargo.
'The enemy were in greater numbers than before; the barriers had once more been renewed, and a heavy rain added greatly to the difficulties of the march.... On the narrow neck the advance guard found the breastwork of trees faced with the Russian dead of the previous day, stripped, mutilated, and piled up; it was enfiladed by four smaller breastworks on each side.'
Passek, a daring and fearless commander, was killed in leading the attack with other officers and many men. The foremost regiments fell back in disorder. Yet the main body, with their general, who charged at the head of companies like any captain, struggled along the ridge, fighting all the way, though the Mohammedans kept up an unceasing rifle-fire, and from time to time they dashed right into the Russian line. Nevertheless the predicament of the Russians was becoming hopeless, when a fresh regiment sent out to their rescue from Dargo threw itself between the exhausted troops and their assailants, and thus enabled them to reach the camp. But most of the convoy had been lost, the total list of casualties was frightful, and for Vorontzoff, with little to eat, surrounded by victorious hordes, encumbered with more than a thousand wounded men, the only prospect of saving the rest of his army lay in cutting his way homeward through many miles of forest. Mr. Baddeley's description of the retreat is intensely dramatic. After fighting every step of the road the starving and demoralised army was brought to a standstill, and was eventually saved from annihilation by fresh troops that arrived just in time under the Russian commander on the frontier, who had foreseen the emergency, and made forced marches to the rescue of his chief.
Thus the attempt to piece the heart of Shamil's country had been completely foiled; and Vorontzoff now confined himself to strengthening his fortified posts, linking up more effectively their connection, and improving his communications. But in this situation the Russians were acting upon the outer circle of Shamil's central position in the mountains, whereas their enemy held the interior lines, and could choose his point of attack. Shamil's strategy was directed toward keeping the whole Russian frontier in constant alarm, breaking in upon various and distant parts of the line by incessant raids and surprises, in order to prevent concentration of the Russian forces on either flank. He made a daring attempt to seize Kabarda, on the extreme west of the border, but was hunted out of it by the activity of Freytag, the general whose foresight and promptitude had extricated Vorontzoff from destruction. This desultory warfare went on until in 1847 Vorontzoff, having secured his base, again tried conclusions with Shamil, being resolved that it was necessary to reduce the fortified village (or aoul) of Ghergebil, which Shamil was no less determined to defend. On the morning of the assault the Russians, in their camps below the precipitous rocks, above which stood the aoul, 'heard the melancholy, long-drawn notes of the death-chant rising from behind its wall as from an open grave,' the sure prelude to a stubborn and sanguinary fight.