We have yet to speak of another cause of weakness to the Russian arms, and one which is the more serious as it operates exclusively on the moral of the soldiers. Russia has made the Caucasus a place of transportation, a regular Botany Bay for all the rogues in the empire, and for those who by their acts or their political opinions, have incurred the wrath of the tzar. In reference to this subject, we will mention a fact which may seem hard to believe, but which I attest as an eye-witness. In 1840, the fifteenth division, commanded by Lieutenant-General S——, received orders to march to the Caucasus. On leaving Taganrok, it was about 1200 short of its complement, and its deficiency was supplied from the prisons of southern Russia. Robbers, pickpockets, vagabonds, and soldiers that had been flogged and degraded, were marched into Taganrok, and incorporated with the regiments which were about to begin the campaign. These singular recruits were put under the keeping of the soldiers, and each of them, according to his supposed degree of rascality, was guarded by two, three, or four men. Surely the moral of the Russian troops is sufficiently jeopardised by the social and military institutions of the empire, and it cannot be prudent so deeply to debase the soldier by associating him with thieves and highway robbers, and to change the toilsome wars of the Caucasus into a means of punishment, I may say of destruction, for political offenders and real criminals. Furthermore, a conflict so prolonged, so disastrous, and that for so many years has been without any tangible result, must inevitably have the worst effect on the minds of troops who are not actuated either by the sense of glory or honour, or by the feeling that they are defending the right. We have visited the Caucasus at various times, and never did we meet one officer who was heartily attached to the service in which he was engaged. Despondency is universal, and many expeditions against the mountaineers have been marked by a total absence of discipline. The soldiers have often refused to march, and have suffered themselves to be massacred by their officers, rather than advance a foot.
The Caucasus has also become a place of exile for a great number of Poles. After the revolution of 1831, the Russian government committed the blunder of sending to the Kouban most of the regiments compromised in that ill-fated effort. The result was very easy to foresee; desertion soon began in the ranks of the outlaws, and it is now known beyond a doubt that the Tcherkesses have Poles among them, who instruct them in the art of war, endeavour to create an artillery for them with the pieces captured from the Russians, and labour actively to allay the dissensions between the various tribes. General Grabe himself assured me that he had seen in several places fortifications which he recognised as quite modern. He had also in his campaign of 1840 remarked a more compact and better concerted resistance on the part of the Circassians, and often a remarkable degree of combined action in their attacks.
We have not much to say about the military tactics employed by Russia in this war; in point of science it presents no very striking features, but on the contrary, cannot but give a very low idea of the merit of the imperial generals. At first it was expected that the conquest would be effected by hemming in the mountaineers with military lines, and gradually encroaching on their territory; but this very costly system seems to me quite impracticable in a country in which the forts are always solitary, and cannot protect each other, or cross their fires. I do not know, however, whether it has been quite given up.
Attempts were made in 1837 to set fire to the forests of the Caucasus by means of pitch. Three years afterwards it was hoped to effect their destruction by arming the men of the 15th division with axes; but these strange expedients only produced useless expenditure. I know a general of the highest personal courage, who calls in the aid of natural philosophy to beguile or awe the mountaineers. Whenever he receives a visit from chiefs whose fidelity he is inclined to suspect, he sets an electrical machine in play. His visitors feel violent shocks, they know not how, their beards and hair stand on end, and in the bewilderment caused by these mysterious visitations, they sometimes let out an important secret, and betray themselves to their enemy.
An officer of engineers told me an anecdote of this same general which is worth recording. A mosque which the Russian government had built at its own expense for a tribe of Little Kabarda was to be inaugurated, and as usual there was a grand military parade in honour of the occasion. When the Kabardians had displayed all their address in horsemanship and shooting, the Russian general proceeded to give a sample of what he could do, and to strike the assembled tribes with amazement. He called for his double-barrelled gun, and having himself charged one of the barrels with ball, he ordered a pigeon to be let loose, which he instantly brought down, to the astonishment of the beholders. "That is not all," said he to the chiefs near him; "to shoot a pigeon flying is no very extraordinary feat; but to cut off his head with the ball is what I call good shooting." Then turning to his servant, he said something to him in German. The man went and picked up the bird, and when he held it out to view, it was seen to be beheaded just as the general had said. Unbounded was the admiration of the simple mountaineers; they looked on the general as a supernatural being, and nothing was talked of for many a day in the aouls, but the beheaded pigeon and the wonderful Russian marksman.
Now to explain the enigma. The inhabitants of the Caucasus are ignorant of the use of small shot, and it was with this the general had accomplished his surprising exploit, having previously loaded one barrel with it. As for the pigeon's head, it was adroitly whipped off by the servant, who had received his orders to that effect in German.
But it would be idle to expect that the shrewd good sense of the mountaineers will long be imposed on by the scientific accomplishments of the Russian generals; on the contrary, these curious expedients only give them increased confidence in their own strength. Yermoloff appears to us to have been the only governor who understood the nature of the war in the Caucasus, and who conducted affairs with the dignified and inflexible vigour which were fitted to make an impression on the tribes. Several commanders-in-chief have succeeded him in turns: Rosen, Golovin, Grabe, Raiefsky, Anrep, Neughart; but the government has gained nothing by all these changes.
After the details we have given, comments and arguments would be almost superfluous: it is easy to conceive how critical is the situation of the Russians in the Caucasian regions. For twenty years the Emperor Nicholas has expended all the military genius of his empire, shrinking from no sacrifice of men or money, and employing generals of the highest reputation, and yet the might of his sovereign will has broken down before the difficulties we have pointed out. The tribes of the mountain are, on the contrary, growing stronger every day. They are making progress in the art of war; success fires their zeal; the old intestine discords are gradually disappearing, and the various tribes seem to feel the necessity of acting in concert, and uniting under one banner. Now can Russia, under existing circumstances, increase her chances of success? We think not, and the facts sufficiently corroborate our opinion. With his system of war and absolute dominion, the tzar has entangled himself in a hopeless maze, and the Caucasus will long remain a running sore to the empire, a bottomless pit to swallow up many an army and much treasure. It has often been proposed to renounce the present system, but the emperor's vanity will not admit of any pacific counsels. Besides, even if Russia were now willing to change the nature of her relations with the independent tribes, she could not do so. Her overtures would be regarded as tokens of weakness, and the mountaineers would only become so much the more enterprising.
In Alexander's time, when warlike ideas were less in favour, it was proposed to establish a commercial intercourse with the Tcherkesses, and bring them gradually by pacific means to acknowledge the supremacy of Russia. A Genoese, named Scassi, proposed in 1813 to the Duc de Richelieu, governor of Odessa, a plan for a commercial settlement on the coasts of Circassia. His scheme was adopted, and a merchant vessel touched soon afterwards at Guelendchik and Pchiat, without meeting with any hindrance on the part of the inhabitants. A trade was soon established, but the disorderly conduct of the Russians aroused the jealousy of the Circassians, who soon burned and destroyed the factory at Pchiat, and the government, whether justly or not, treated Scassi as a culprit. Since that time there has been no thought of commerce or pacification, and the tribes of the Caucasus have been regarded only as rebels to be put down, not as a free people justly jealous of their privileges. Frequent conferences have taken place between the Russian generals and the mountain chiefs; but as the one party talked only of liberty and independence, and the other of nothing but submission and implicit obedience, hostilities always broke out again with fresh vehemence. It appears, however, from facts recently communicated to me, that the emperor is at last disposed to give up his warlike system, and that his generals have at last received orders to act only on the defensive.[63] But as the government, whilst adopting these new measures, still loudly proclaims its rights of sovereignty over the Caucasus, it follows that this change of policy is quite illusory, and cannot effect any kind of reconciliation between the Russians and the mountaineers.
We now come to the point at which we may advert to a question which set the whole English press in a blaze in 1837; namely, the blockade of the Circassian coasts, and the pretensions of Russia as to that part of the Caucasus. It is evident that the tzar's government being at open war with the mountaineers, may at its pleasure intercept the foreign trade with the enemy's country. This is an incontestible right recognised by all nations, and the capture of the Vixen was not worth the noise that was made about it. As to the proprietary right to the country which Russia affects to have received from Turkey, through the treaty of Adrianople, it is totally fallacious, and is unsupported by any historical document or positive fact. It is fully demonstrated that Turkey never possessed any right over Circassia; she had merely erected on the seaboard, with the consent of the inhabitants, the two fortresses of Anapa and Soudjouk Kaleh, for the protection of the trade between the two countries. Russia herself, in the beginning, publicly acknowledged this state of things; and the evidence of her having done so is to be found in the general depôt of the maps of the empire. Chance threw into my hands a map of the Caucasus, drawn up by the Russian engineers, long prior to the treaty of Adrianople. The Turkish possessions are distinctly marked on it, and defined by a red boundary line; they consist solely, as we have just stated, of the two fortresses on the coast. This map, the existence of which one day sorely surprised Count Voronzof (governor-general of New Russia), was sent to England, and deposited in the Foreign Office during Lord Palmerston's administration. After all, I hardly know why Russia tries to avail herself of the treaty of Adrianople as a justification in the eyes of Europe of her schemes of conquest in the Caucasus. She is doing there only what we are doing in Algeria, and the English in India, and indeed with still greater reason; for, as we shall presently see, the possession of the Caucasus is a question vitally affecting her interests in her trans-Caucasian provinces, and her ulterior projects respecting the regions dependent on Persia and Central Asia.