Aga Mahomed Khan marched against Georgia in 1795, to punish it for having accepted the protectorate of Russia. Tiflis was sacked, and given up to fire and sword. On hearing of this bloody invasion Catherine II. immediately declared war against Persia, and her armies were already in occupation of Bakou, and a large portion of the Caspian shores, when she was succeeded by her son Paul I., who ordered all the recent conquests to be abandoned. Nevertheless, this strange beginning did not hinder the eccentric monarch from doing four years afterwards for Georgia what Catherine had done for the Crimea. Under pretext of putting an end to intestine discord, Georgia was united to Russia by an imperial ukase. Shortly after the accession of Alexander, Mingrelia shared the fate of Georgia; the conquests beyond the Caucasus were then regularised, and Tiflis became the centre of an exclusive Muscovite administration, civil and military.
The immediate contact of Russia with Persia soon led to a rupture between these two powers. In 1806, hostilities began with Turkey also, and the campaign was marked like that of 1791 by the taking of Anapa and Soudjouk Kaleh, and the establishment of the Russians on the shores of Circassia. The unfortunate contest which then ensued between Napoleon and Alexander, and the direct intervention of England, put an end to the war, and brought about the signature of two treaties. That of Bucharest stipulated the reddition of Anapa and Soudjouk Kaleh; but Russia acquired Bessarabia and the left bank of the Danube; and Koutousofs 80,000 men marched against Napoleon. The treaty of Gulistan, in 1814, gave to the empire, among other countries, Daghestan, Georgia, Imeritia, Mingrelia, the province of Bakou, Karabaugh, and Shirvan. This latter treaty was no sooner ratified than endless discussions arose respecting the determination of the frontiers. War was renewed, and ended only in 1828 by the treaty of Turkmantchai, which conceded to Russia the fine countries of Erivan and Naktchivan, advanced her frontiers to the banks of the Araxus, and rendered her mistress of all the passes of Persia.
It was during these latter wars that the people of the Caucasus began to be seriously uneasy about the designs of Russia. The special protection accorded to the Christian populations, the successive downfall of the principal chiefs of the country, and the introduction of the Russian administration, with its abuses and arbitrary proceedings, excited violent commotions in the Caucasian provinces, and the mountaineers naturally took part in every coalition formed against the common enemy. The armed line of the Kouban and the Terek was often attacked, and many a Cossack post was massacred. The Lesghis, the Tchetchenzes, and the Circassians distinguished themselves especially by their pertinacity and daring. Thenceforth Russia might conceive some idea of the contest she would have to sustain on the confines of Asia.
We now approach the period when Russia, at last relieved from all her quarrels with Persia and Turkey, definitively acquired Anapa and Soudjouk Kaleh by the treaty of Adrianople, and directed all her efforts against the mountaineers of the Caucasus. But as now the war assumed a totally different character, it will be necessary to a full understanding of it that we should first glance at the topography of the country, and sketch the respective positions of the mountaineers and their foes.
The chain of the Caucasus exhibits a peculiar conformation, altogether different from that of any of the European chains. The Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Carpathians, are accessible only by the valleys, and in these the inhabitants of the country find their subsistence, and agriculture develops its wealth. The contrary is the case in the Caucasus. From the fortress of Anapa on the Black Sea, all along to the Caspian, the northern slope presents only immense inclined plains, rising in terraces to a height of 3000 or 4000 yards above the sea level. These plains, rent on all directions by deep and narrow valleys and vertical clefts, often form real steppes, and possess on their loftiest heights rich pastures, where the inhabitants, secure from all attack, find fresh grass for their cattle in the sultriest days of summer. The valleys on the other hand are frightful abysses, the steep sides of which are clothed with brambles, while the bottoms are filled with rapid torrents foaming over beds of rocks and stones. Such is the singular spectacle generally presented by the northern slope of the Caucasus. This brief description may give an idea of the difficulties to be encountered by an invading army. Obliged to occupy the heights, it is incessantly checked in its march by impassable ravines, which do not allow of the employment of cavalry, and for the most part prevent the passage of artillery. The ordinary tactics of the mountaineers is to fall back before the enemy, until the nature of the ground or the want of supplies obliges the latter to begin a retrograde movement. Then it is that they attack the invaders, and, entrenched in their forests behind impregnable rocks, they inflict the most terrible carnage on them with little danger to themselves.
On the south the character of the Caucasian chain is different. From Anapa to Gagra, along the shores of the Black Sea, we observe a secondary chain composed of schistous mountains, seldom exceeding 1000 yards in height. But the nature of their soil, and of their rocks, would be enough to render them almost impracticable for European armies, even were they not covered with impenetrable forests. The inhabitants of this region, who are called Tcherkesses or Circassians, by the Russians, are entirely independent, and constitute one of the most warlike peoples of the Caucasus.
The great chain begins in reality at Gagra, but the mountains recede from the shore, and nothing is to be seen along the coast as far as Mingrelia but secondary hills, commanded by immense crags, that completely cut off all approach to the central part of the Caucasus. This region, so feebly defended by its topographical conformation, is Abkhasia, the inhabitants of which have been forced to submit to Russia. To the north and on the northern slope, westward of the military road from Mosdok to Tiflis, dwell a considerable number of tribes, some of them ruled by a sort of feudal system, others constituted into little republics. Those of the west, dependent on Circassia and Abadza, are in continual war with the empire, whilst the Nogais, who inhabit the plains on the left bank of the Kouma, and the tribes of the Great Kabarda, own the sovereignty of the tzar; but their wavering and dubious submission cannot be relied on. In the centre, at the foot of the Elbrouz, dwell the Souanethes, an unsubdued people, and near them, occupying both sides of the pass of Dariel, are the Ingouches and Ossetans, exceptional tribes, essentially different from the aboriginal peoples. Finally, we have eastward of the great Tiflis road, near the Terek, Little Kabarda, and the country of the Koumicks, for the present subjugated; and then those indomitable tribes, the Lesghis and Tchetchenzes, of whom Shamihl is the Abd el Kader, and who extend over the two slopes of the Caucasus to the vicinity of the Caspian.
In reality, the Kouban and the Terek, that rise from the central chain, and fall, the one into the Black Sea, the other into the Caspian, may be considered as the northern political limits of independent Caucasus. It is along those two rivers that Russia has formed her armed line, defended by Cossacks, and detachments from the regular army. The Russians have indeed penetrated those northern frontiers at sundry points, and have planted some forts within the country of the Lesghis and Tchetchenzes. But these lonely posts, in which a few unhappy garrisons are surrounded on all sides, and generally without a chance of escape, cannot be regarded as a real occupation of the soil on which they stand. They are in fact only so many piquets, whose business is only to watch more closely the movements of the mountaineers. In the south, from Anapa to Gagra, along the Black Sea, the imperial possessions are limited to a few detached forts, completely isolated, and deprived of all means of communication by land. A rigorous blockade has been established on this coast; but the Circassians, as intrepid in their frail barks as among their mountains, often pass by night through the Russian line of vessels, and reach Trebisond and Constantinople. Elsewhere, from Mingrelia to the Caspian, the frontiers are less precisely defined, and generally run parallel with the great chain of the Caucasus.
Thus limited, the Caucasus, including the territory occupied by the subject tribes, presents a surface of scarcely 5000 leagues; and it is in this narrow region that a virgin and chivalric nation, amounting at most to 2,000,000 of souls, proudly upholds its independence against the might of the Russian empire, and has for twenty years sustained one of the most obstinate struggles known to modern history.
The Russian line of the Kouban, which is exactly similar to that of the Terek, is defended by the Cossacks of the Black Sea, the poor remains of the famous Zaporogues, whom Catherine II. subdued with so much difficulty, and whom she colonised at the foot of the Caucasus, as a bulwark against the incursions of the mountaineers. The line consists of small forts and watch stations; the latter are merely a kind of sentry box raised on four posts, about fifty feet from the ground. Two Cossacks keep watch in them day and night. On the least movement of the enemy in the vast plain of reeds that fringes both banks of the river, a beacon fire is kindled on the top of the watch box. If the danger becomes more pressing, an enormous torch of straw and tar is set fire to. The signal is repeated from post to post, the whole line springs to arms, and 500 or 600 men are instantly assembled on the point threatened. These posts, composed generally of a dozen men, are very close to each other, particularly in the most dangerous places. Small forts have been erected at intervals with earthworks, and a few pieces of cannon; they contain each from 150 to 200 men.