With the Genoese sway, fell all that had constituted the glory and prosperity of Soldaya during so many centuries; the population of the town was driven out and scattered; the once animated harbour was deserted, and grass grew in the streets trodden of yore by the elegant Greeks of the Lower Empire, the victorious Komans and the proud citizens of Genoa. A feeble Turkish garrison became the tenants of the place, and for nearly three centuries continued the unmoved spectators of the decay and desolation of one of the oldest and most remarkable cities of the Pontus Euxinus.
The imperial eagle of the tzars floated over the towers of Soldaya in 1781, and from that time began for the monuments of the Genoese colony that rapid destruction which everywhere characterises the Russian conquests. All the beautiful public and private buildings which Pallas so much admired in his first journey, disappeared, and out of their precious remains, Muscovite vandalism erected great useless barracks, the unmeaning ruins of which have, for many years, strewed the ground. At present Soldaya, erased from the list of towns and fortresses, has not even a watchman to guard its walls and its magnificent towers with their proud inscriptions. Every year the sight is saddened by fresh mutilations, and ere long there will remain nothing of those marble tablets with their elegant arabesques that adorned every tower and doorway, and recorded its origin and history. The only thing that could save the Genoese castle from total destruction, would be to leave it quite alone, and to remove far from it every body of Russian authorities. Unfortunately, the government seems willing to take upon itself the care of its preservation, and there can be no doubt that demolition awaits the remains of Soldaya from the moment an employé, without salary enough to live on, shall be invested with the right of protecting them against the ravages of time and of men.[73]
On leaving Soldaya we proceeded towards Theodosia, the Caffa of the Genoese. We will not weary the reader with a monotonous description of our route. This part of the country is less diversified, less beautiful and picturesque, and the population much more thinly spread than in the other mountainous parts of the Crimea. The great calcareous chain recedes considerably from the coast, and from its precipitous sides it sends off blackish schistous offshoots, scarcely covered by a meagre vegetation, enclosing between them in their course to the sea some valleys in which the Tatars have established the only villages in the country. Completely abandoned by the aristocracy, destitute of roads, and unadorned by any of those elegant dwellings with which luxury and fashion have embellished the hill sides of Ialta, the whole coast between Alouchta and Theodosia is neglected by most tourists, and is only visited at rare intervals by scientific travellers. But if the Soudagh coasts are disdained by the Russian nobles, and display no Italian villas or porphyry gothic manors, the traveller finds there the most frank reception and truly Oriental hospitality. Far from all the centres of the elegant and partly corrupt civilisation which the Russians have imported into the Crimea within the last twenty years, the Tatars of these regions retain unaltered their ancient usages, and the prominent features of their primitive character. I could not easily describe the kindly good-will with which I was received in all the villages where I stopped. The fact that I was a Frenchman, who had nothing to do with any branch of Russian administration, had a really marvellous effect on the mountaineers. Wherever I went the best house, the handsomest divan, cushions, and carpets were assigned for my use; and in an instant I found myself sipping my coffee and smoking my chibouk, surrounded with all those comforts the want of which is so sorely felt by those who travel in certain parts of the East.
In Toklouk, Kooz, and Otouz, which we passed through successively, the flat-roofed Tatar houses are, as everywhere else, backed against the hills that flank the valley. By this means the inhabitants are enabled to keep up a communication with each other by the terrace tops of their houses, where they regularly carry on their work, and which are formed of stout carpentry covered with a thick bed of clay. Nothing can be more picturesque than the appearance, at evening, of all these terraces rising in gradations one above the other. At that period of the day the whole population of each village is on the alert; and quitting the dark rooms in which they had sheltered from the heat of the day, men, women, and children gather on the roofs; animation, mirth, and the din of tongues, takes place of the silence of day, and the observer is never weary of watching the picturesque scenes formed by the various groups engaged in their household occupations.
At Koktebel, a little village on the sea shore, twenty-nine versts from Soudagh, the sombre headland Kara Dagh terminates the bolder scenery of the Crimea. Beyond that point the country presents no picturesque features; vast plains gradually succeed the hills, and as the traveller advances he is forewarned by various tokens of his approach to the steppes, which form all the northern part of the peninsula, and extend eastward of the old Genoese colony to the shores of the Cimmerian Bosphorus. Along the whole line from Soudagh to Theodosia there is not one point, not one monument or ruin to interest the historian or the antiquarian. Indeed the nature of the coast, now abrupt, now formed of great unsheltered flats, does not seem to favour the foundation of a town or of a harbour, whether for war or commerce.
We are now arrived at Theodosia or Caffa, formerly the splendid metropolis of the Genoese dominion in the Black Sea, now a Russian town, stripped of all political and commercial importance. The genius of barbarous destruction has wrought still more deplorable effects here than at Soldaya or any other spot in the Crimea.
Theodosia was founded by the Milesians in the early times of their expedition to the Pontus Euxinus, and long prospered as an independent colony. It was afterwards incorporated into the kingdom of the Bosphorus, and shared its destinies for many centuries. The Alans, a barbarous people from the heart of Asia, appeared in the Crimea about the middle of the first century of our era; Theodosia was sacked by them, and sixty years afterwards Arrian speaks of it in his Periplus of the Black Sea as a town entirely deserted. The Huns subsequently completed what the Alans had begun, and left not a vestige to indicate the true position of the old Milesian colony.
Ten centuries after the destruction of Theodosia, other navigators not less intelligent or enterprising than the Milesians, landed on the Crimean coasts; and soon there arose on the site of the Greek city another equally remarkable city, the annals of which form unquestionably one of the finest chapters in the political and commercial history of the Black Sea. It was in the middle of the thirteenth century, after the conquest of the Crimea by the Mongols, when three potent republics were contending for the empire of the seas, that the Genoese, entering the bay of Theodosia, obtained from Prince Oran Timour the grant of a small portion of ground on the coast. The colony of Caffa was regularly founded in 1280, and so rapid was its rise, that in nine years from that date it was able, without impairing its own means of defence, to send nine galleys to the succour of Tripoli, then besieged by the Saracens.[74]
The foundation of Caffa increased the rancorous strife between Genoa and her potent rival of the Adriatic. The Crimean colony was surprised by twenty Venetian galleys in the year 1292, and totally destroyed. In the following year the Genoese again took possession of their territory; Caffa quickly rose from its ruins, and twenty years afterwards Pope John XXII. made it a bishop's see. War having broke out with the Tatars in 1343, Djanibeck Khan, sovereign of Kaptchak, laid siege to Caffa. The Genoese came off victorious in this warfare, but the dangers to which they were exposed made them feel the need of a strong system of fortifications. The earthen ramparts and the palisades of the town were, therefore, replaced by thick and lofty walls, flanked by towers, and surrounded by a deep, wide ditch, faced with solid masonry. These magnificent works, whose excellence and gigantic proportions may still be admired by the traveller, were begun in 1353, and finished in 1386. The most remarkable tower, that at the southern corner which commands the whole town, was dedicated to the memory of Pope Clement VI., in an inscription relating to the crusade preached by that pontiff at the time when the Tatars were invading the colony.
From that period the prosperity of Caffa augmented incessantly; it attracted to itself the trade of the most remote regions of Asia, and according to the statement of its historians it soon equalled in extent and population the capital of the Greek empire, which it surpassed in industry and opulence. The Genoese colony had thus reached the apogee of its glory and might in the middle of the fifteenth century, when the taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II. cut it off from the metropolis, and prepared its entire destruction.