Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, the Crimea, the Caucasus, &c.

by Xavier Hommaire de Hell; Adèle Hommaire de Hell

CHAPTER XXX.

SITUATION OF THE RUSSIANS AS TO THE CAUCASUS.

HISTORY OF THEIR ACQUISITION OF THE TRANS-CAUCASIAN PROVINCES—GENERAL TOPOGRAPHY OF THE CAUCASUS—ARMED LINE OF THE KOUBAN AND THE TEREK—BLOCKADE OF THE COASTS—CHARACTER AND USAGES OF THE MOUNTAINEERS—ANECDOTE—VISIT TO A CIRCASSIAN PRINCE.

Among the various Asiatic nations which force and diplomacy are striving to subject to the Muscovite sceptre, there is one against which the whole might of Russia has hitherto been put forth in vain. The warlike tribes of the Caucasus have victoriously maintained their national independence; and in thus separating the trans-Caucasian provinces from the rest of the empire, they have protected Persia and Asiatic Turkey, and postponed indefinitely all thoughts of a Russian invasion of India. The cabinets of Europe have generally overlooked the importance of the Caucasus, and the part which its tribes are destined to play soon or late in eastern questions. Great Britain alone, prompted by her commercial instinct and her restless jealousy, protested for a time against the encroaching career of the tzars; but the singular manifestation of the Vixen produced no slackening of the operations of Russia. The war has now been going on for sixteen years, yet few exact notions of its character and details are as yet possessed by Europe. Let us endeavour to complete as far as possible what we already know respecting the situation of the Russians in the Caucasus, and to see what may be the general results, political and commercial, of the occupation or independence of that region.

We know that one of Peter the Great's most cherished schemes, the dream of his whole life, was to re-establish the trade of the East on its old footing, and to secure to himself a port on the Black Sea, in order to make it the link between the two continents. The genius of that sovereign must surely have been most enterprising to conceive such a project, at a time when its realisation required that the southern frontiers of the empire should first be pushed forward from 150 to 200 leagues, as they have since been. Peter began his new political career by the taking of Azof and the foundation of the port of Taganrok in 1695. The fatal campaign of the Pruth retarded the accomplishment of his designs; but when circumstances allowed him to return to them, he began again to pursue them in the direction of Persia and the Caspian. The restitution of Azof, and the destruction of Taganrok, stipulated in the treaty of the Pruth, thus became the primary cause of the Russian expeditions against the trans-Caucasian provinces.

At this period Persia was suffering all the disorders of anarchy. The Turks had possessed themselves of all its western provinces up to the foot of the Caucasus; whilst the mountaineers, availing themselves of the distracted state of the country, made bloody inroads upon Georgia and the adjacent regions. The Lesghis, now one of the most formidable tribes of the Caucasus, ravaged the plains of Shirvan, in 1712, reduced the towns and villages to ashes, and massacred, according to Russian writers, 300 merchants, subjects of the empire, in the town of Shamaki. These acts of violence afforded Peter the Great an opportunity which he did not let slip. Under the pretence of punishing the Lesghis, and protecting the Shah of Persia against them, he prepared to make an armed intervention in the trans-Caucasian provinces. A formidable expedition was fitted out. A flotilla, constructed at Casan, arrived at the mouths of the Volga, and on the 15th of May, 1722, the emperor began his march at the head of 22,000 infantry, 9000 dragoons, and 15,000 Cossacks and Kalmucks. The transports coasted the Caspian, whilst the army marched by the Daghestan route, the great highway successively followed by the nations of the north and the south in their invasions. Thus it was that the Russians entered the Caucasus, and the valleys of those inaccessible mountains resounded, for the first time, to the war music of the Muscovite. The occupation of Ghilan and Derbent, and the siege of Bakou were the chief events of this campaign. Turkey, dismayed at the influence Russia was about to acquire in the East, was ready to take up arms; but Austria, taking the initiative in Europe, declared for the policy of the tzar, and vigorously resisted the hostile tendencies of the Porte. Russia was thus enabled to secure, not only Daghestan and Ghilan, but also the surrender of those provinces in which her armies had never set foot. In the midst of these events, Peter died when on the eve of consolidating his conquests, and before he had completed his negotiations with Persia and Turkey. His grand commercial ideas were abandoned after his death; the policy of the empire was directed solely towards territorial acquisition, and the tzars only obeyed the strong impulse, that, as if by some decree of fate, urges their subjects towards the south. Thenceforth the trans-Caucasian provinces were considered only a point gained for intervention in the affairs of Persia and Turkey, and for ulterior conquests in the direction of Central Asia. The rise of the celebrated Nadir Shah, who possessed himself of all the ancient dominions of Persia, for a while changed the face of things. Russia, crippled in her finances, withdrew her troops, gave up her pretensions to the countries beyond the Caucasus, acknowledged the independence of the two Kabardas by the treaty of Belgrade, and even engaged no longer to keep a fleet on the Sea of Azof.

A religious mission sent to the Ossetans, who occupy the celebrated defiles of Dariel, was the only event in the reign of Elizabeth, that regarded the regions we are considering. Hardly any conversions were effected, but the Ossetans, to a certain extent, acknowledged the supremacy of Russia: this satisfied the real purpose of the mission, for the first stone was thereby laid on the line which was to become the great channel of communication between Russia and her Asiatic provinces.

Schemes of conquest in the direction of Persia were resumed with vigour under Catherine II., and were carried out with more regularity. The first thing aimed at was to protect the south of the empire against the inroads of the Caucasians, and to this end the armed line of the Kouban and the Terek was organised and finished in 1771. It then numbered sixteen principal forts, and a great number of lesser ones and redoubts. Numerous military colonies of Cossacks, were next settled on the banks of the two rivers for the protection of the frontiers. While these preparations were in hand, war broke out with Turkey. Victorious both by sea and land, Catherine signed, in 1774, the memorable treaty of Koutchouk Kainardji, which secured to her the free navigation of the Black Sea, the passage of the Dardanelles, the entry of the Dniepr, and, moreover, conceded to her in the Caucasus, the sovereignty over both Kabardas.

Peace being thus concluded, Catherine's first act was to send a pacific mission to explore the country of the Ossetans. The old negotiations were skilfully renewed, and a free passage through the defiles was obtained with the consent of that people. In 1781, an imperial squadron once more appeared in the Caspian, and endeavoured, but ineffectually, to make some military settlements on the Persian coasts. This expedition limited itself to consolidating the moral influence of Russia, and exciting, among the various tribes and nations of those regions, dissensions which afterwards afforded her a pretext for direct intervention. The Christian princes of Georgia, and the adjacent principalities, were the first to undergo the consequences of the Russian policy. Seduced by gold and presents, and doubtless also, wearied by the continual troubles that desolated their country, they gradually fell off from Persia and Turkey and accepted the protection of Catherine. The passes of the Caucasus were now free to Russia; she lost no time in making them practicable for an army, and so she was at last in a condition to realise in part the vast plans of the founder of her power.

At a later period, in 1787, Russia and Turkey were again in arms, and the shore of the Caspian became for the first time a centre of military operations. Anapa, which the Turks had built for the protection of their trade with the mountaineers, after an unsuccessful assault, was taken by storm in 1791. Soudjouk Kaleh shared the same fate, but the Circassians blew up its fortifications before they retired. Struck by these conspicuous successes, the several states of Europe departed from the favourable policy with which they had previously treated the views of Russia, and the empress thought herself fortunate to conclude the treaty of Jassy in 1792, by which she advanced her frontiers to the Dniestr, and obtained the sovereignties of Georgia and the neighbouring countries. But Turkey had Anapa and Soudjouk Kaleh restored to her, upon her engaging to suppress the incursions of the tribes dwelling on the left of the Kouban.