After the line from the eastern coast of the Caspian, that from Orenburg to Khiva and Bokhara appears to have attracted the particular attention of the tzars. But General Perofsky's fruitless expedition against Khiva, in 1840, has demonstrated that this line is quite as perilous and difficult as the other. The steppes that lie between Russia and the two khanats are exactly similar to those situated north and east of the Caspian, presenting the same nakedness and sterility, an almost total want of fresh water, and nomade tribes perpetually engaged in rapine. When State Councillor Negri was sent on an embassy to the Khan of Bokhara, in 1820, he set out accompanied by 200 Cossacks, 200 infantry, twenty-five Bashkir horsemen, two pieces of artillery, 400 horses, and 358 camels. The government afforded him every possible facility and means of transport, and he took with him more than two months' rations for his men and cattle. Yet though he met with no obstruction on the part of the hordes whose steppes he traversed, he was not less than seventy-one days in completing the journey of 1600 kilometres (1000 miles) from Orenburg to Bokhara.
Perofsky, who marched at the head of 6000 infantry, with 10,000 baggage camels, could not even reach the territory of Khiva. The disasters suffered by his troops obliged him to retrace his steps without having advanced further than Ac Boulak, the last outpost erected by the Russians in 1839, at 180 kilometres from the Emba. The obstacles encountered by his small army were beyond all description. The cold was fearful, being 40 degrees below zero of the centigrade thermometer; the camels could scarcely advance through the snow; and the movements of the troops were constantly impeded by hurricanes of extraordinary violence. Such an expedition, undertaken in the depth of winter, solely for the purpose of having fresh water, may enable one to guess at the difficulties of a march over the same ground in summer. Spring is a season unknown in all those immense plains of southern Russia; intense frost is there succeeded abruptly by tropical heat, and a fortnight is generally sufficient to dry up the small streams and the stagnant waters produced by the melting of the snows, and to scorch up the thin coating of pasturage that for a brief while had covered the steppes. What chance then has Russia of successfully invading Turkistan from the north, and reigning supreme over Bokhara, which is separated from Orenburg by 400 leagues of desert? All that has been done, and all that has been observed up to this day, proves that the notion is preposterous. As for any compact and amity between Russia and the numerous Kirghis hordes, such as might favour the march of the imperial armies in Bokhara, no such thing is to be expected. A great deal has been said of the Emperor Alexander's journey to Orenburg in 1824, and the efforts then made by the government to conciliate the Kirghis; but these proceedings have been greatly exaggerated, and represented as much more important than they really were. They have not produced any substantial result, and I know from my own experience how hostile to Russia are all the roving tribes of the Caspian, and how much they detest whatever menaces their freedom and independence.
We have now to consider in the last place the two great Persian routes, which coincide, or run parallel, with each other, as far as Meshed, where they branch off to Bokhara on the one hand, and on the other to Cabul by Herat and Candahar. The former of these routes, travelled over by Alexander Burnes, seems to us totally impracticable. The distance to Bokhara from Teheran (which we will assume for the starting point, though it is still the capital of Persia) is not less than 500 leagues; and it cannot reasonably be supposed possible to effect, and above all to preserve, a conquest so remote, when in order to reach the heart of the coveted country, it is necessary to traverse the vast deserts north of Meshed, occupied by nomade hordes, which are the more formidable, inasmuch as no kind of military tactics can be brought to bear on them. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the occupation of Bokhara by no means infers that of Affghanistan. The distance from the former to Cabul is more than 250 leagues. The regions between the two towns are indeed less sterile and easier to traverse; but, on the other hand, an army marching towards India would have to penetrate the dangerous passes of the high mountain chain between Turkistan and Affghanistan, which are defended by the most indomitable tribes of Central Asia. Here would be repeated those struggles in which Russia has been vainly exhausting her strength for so many years in the Caucasus.[66] In truth, in presence of such obstacles, of ground, climate, population, and distance, all discussion becomes superfluous, and the question must appear decided in the negative by every impartial man who possesses any precise notions as to the regions of Western Asia.
There remains the route by Meshed, Herat, and Candahar. This is incontestably the one which presents fewest difficulties; yet we doubt that it can ever serve the ambitious views attributed to Russia. Along the line from Teheran to Herat lie important centres of agricultural populations; villages are found on it surrounded by a fertile and productive soil. But these advantages, besides being very limited, are largely counterbalanced by uncultivated plains destitute of water which must be traversed in passing from one inhabited spot to another, and by the obstacles of all kinds which would be subsequently encountered in a march through the deserts of Affghanistan, the warlike tribes of which are much more formidable even than the Turcomans who infest the route from Teheran to Herat. Besides, as it is nearly 600 leagues from the capital of Persia to the centre of Affghanistan, it is exceedingly unlikely that Russia will ever succeed in subjugating a country in which its armies could only arrive by a military road maintained and defended through so huge a space.
No doubt the way would be considerably smoothed for Russia along both the Candahar and the Bokhara lines, if by gradually extending the circle of her conquests she had brought the inhabitants of Khorasan and Turkistan to obey her. But there are obstacles to the achievement of this preliminary task which the empire is not by any means competent to surmount, nor will it be so for a very long time to come. To say nothing of climate, soil, and distance, all the tribes in question are animated with a hatred and aversion for Russia, which will long neutralise the projects of the tzars. We often hear of the great influence exercised by the cabinet of St. Petersburg at Khiva, Bokhara, and Cabul; but we believe it to be greatly exaggerated, and the history of the various Muscovite embassies proves most palpably that it is so. What did Negri and Mouravief effect at Khiva and Bokhara? They were both received with the most insulting distrust, prevented from holding any communication with the natives, and watched with a strictness which is only employed against an enemy. Mouravief even went near to pay for his embassy with his head. Was Russia more fortunate at Cabul? We think not. The remoteness of her dominions may cause her agents to be received with some degree of favour, especially at a time when the sovereign of Cabul finds himself exposed to the hostility of England. Yet it is not the less true that any serious attempt of Russia on Turkistan and the eastern regions of Persia would suddenly arouse the animosity of the Affghans and all their neighbours. We readily admit that the imperial government has it in its power, by its advice and its intrigues, to exercise a certain influence at Cabul, to the detriment of England; but that this influence can ever serve the extension of the Muscovite sway is what we utterly deny, knowing as we do the intense and unmitigable aversion to Russia which is felt by all the natives of Asia.
The conquests of Alexander the Great and of Genghis Khan have often been appealed to as proving how easy it would be for the tzars to follow in the footsteps of those great captains. Such language bespeaks on the part of the writers who have put it forth the most profound ignorance of the actual condition of the places and the inhabitants. When Alexander marched towards Bactriana to subjugate the last possessions of Persia, he left behind him rich and fertile countries, important Greek colonies, and nations entirely subdued; moreover, he marched at the head of an army consisting of natives of the south, possessing all the qualifications necessary for warfare in the latitudes of Central Asia. Furthermore, at that period the provinces of the Oxus contained numerous rich and flourishing towns, with inhabitants living in luxury, and little capable of resistance. Nevertheless, in spite of all the facilities and all the supplies which the country then offered to an invading army, its physical conformation, broken and bounded by deserts both on the north and on the south, seems to have aided the efforts of its defenders to a remarkable degree. It was in fact in this remote part of Persia that the conqueror of Darius had to fight many a battle for the establishment of his transient sway. The same circumstances marked his march to India. Invasions have become still more difficult since his day, for all those regions once occupied by wealthy and agricultural nations have been ravaged and turned into deserts; scarcely do there exist a few traces of the ancient towns, and the populations subdued by Alexander have been succeeded by hordes of Khirgis, Turcomans, and Affghans, who would be for the Russians what the Scythians were for the King of Macedon and the other conquerors who tried to enslave their country.
The Mongol invasions can no more than Alexander's be regarded as a precedent for Russia. Inured to the fatigues of emigration, carrying all their ordinary habits into the camp, changing their country without changing their ways of life, unburdened by any matériel of war, and never retarded by the slow and painful march of a body of infantry, the hordes of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane were singularly fitted for occupying and retaining possession of the immense plains of Turkistan, and realising the conquest of India.
Russia, on the contrary, is totally devoid of those grand means of sway which Alexander and the Mongols enjoyed. The Russians have nothing in common with the soldiers of antiquity and of the middle ages, and are placed in very different circumstances: they are natives of the coldest regions of the globe; they have no possible opportunity of previous acclimation, and they are separated from the frontiers of India by more than 500 leagues of almost desert country, in which the employment of infantry, wherein alone consists the real superiority of Europeans over Orientals, is impracticable.
And now, if we look to India, and to the people from whom the tzars propose to wrest its empire, we see Great Britain occupying all the towns on the coast and in the interior, mistress of the great rivers of the country, controlling millions of inhabitants by her irresistible political ascendency, having the richest and most productive countries of the world for the basis of her military operations, commanding acclimated European troops, and a powerful native army habituated to follow her banners; in a word, we see Great Britain placed in the most admirable position for defending her conquests, and repulsing any aggression of the northern nations, foreign to the soil of Hindustan and Central Asia. The fears of the English and the schemes of the Russians appear to us, therefore, alike chimerical. Undoubtedly, as we have already said, the intrigues of the government of St. Petersburg, may, like those of any other influential power, create difficulties and annoyances in Affghanistan and elsewhere; but the English rule will never be really in danger, until the time shall come when national ambition and a desire of resistance shall have been kindled in the Hindu populations themselves.
Let us turn back to the Caucasus, of which we have not spoken in this discussion, though the independence of its tribes is in our opinion one of the most important obstacles to the aggrandisement of Russia in Asia; and let us imagine what are the immediate palpable interests which are at stake in the Trans-Caucasian regions for certain powers of Europe. Every one knows that Persia is become of late years the point of contact between England and Russia, the scene of competition between the two nations for the disposal of their merchandise. Our readers are aware, that since the suppression of the transit trade and free commerce of the Caucasian provinces, the English have established a vast depôt for their manufactures at Trebisond, whence they have not only acquired a monopoly in the supply of Armenia, Eastern Turkey, and the greater part of Persia, but also supply the Russian provinces themselves by contraband. Hence it may be conceived with what wakeful jealousy England must watch the proceedings of Russia beyond the Caucasus, and what an interest she has in impeding any conquest that would close against her the great commercial route she has pursued by way of Erzeroum and Tauris. She cannot, therefore, be indifferent to the independence of the Caucasus, which, while serving as a bulwark to the frontiers of Turkey and Persia, affords also a most effectual protection to her mercantile operations in Trebisond. It may perhaps be said that this is a merely English question, very interesting to the manufacturers of London and Manchester, but of little concern to France. But where our neighbours find means to dispose annually of more than 2,000,000l. sterling worth of manufactures, there also we think our own political and commercial interests are concerned. Have not we, too, an influence to keep up in Asia? Do not we, too, possess manufactories and a numerous working population, and is it not carrying indifference and apathy too far, to let other powers engross all those regions of Asia where we could find such ready and profitable markets? Whose fault is it if the French flag is so seldom seen on the Black Sea, if Trebisond is become an English town, and if the commerce of Asia is monopolised by our rivals? There is much to blame in the indifference of our country, and in the incapacity of some of our consular agents. But if our commercial policy is often vicious, if our trade is misdirected and mismanaged, and we are often outstripped by our neighbours across the channel, is that any reason why we should, in blind selfishness, express our approval of conquests which would only end in the destruction of all European commerce in the Black Sea? Certainly if Russia, modifying her prohibitive system, and frankly abandoning all further designs against Turkey and the coasts of the Black Sea, would seek to extend her dominions solely on the side of Persia, we think it would be good policy not to thwart such a movement; for in case of a struggle between that power and England, France would unquestionably be called on to act as a mediator, which would give her an admirable opportunity for dictating conditions favourable to her policy and her influence in the East.