The traveller, who has studied the Cossacks and the mountaineers of the Caucasus, can never admit the doctrine that would make but one nation of these two. Our notions on this subject are corroborated in every point by physiological observations. In the first place, considerations founded on religion and language, are not so lightly to be rejected as Clarke and Lesur assert. The conversion of the Cossacks would not certainly have been passed over unnoticed in the history of the Lower Empire; the Byzantine writers would have been sure to record such a triumph of their creed; but they say not a word about it; and every one knows perfectly well in what manner Christianity was categorically introduced into Russia. Moreover, if the Cossacks had been nothing but Circassians at the beginning of the thirteenth century, it would be hard to account for their ready adoption of a foreign language and religion, at a time when that language and that religion were, if not proscribed, at least much discredited under the Tatar sway. The last Russian expeditions into the Caucasus, towards the sources of the Kouban, have, it is true, given birth to new historical ideas as to that part of Asia. Thus, there have been discovered two churches in a perfect state of preservation, the origin of which is evidently Genoese or Venetian, and we can scarcely fail to recognise in the Circassians some traces of Christianity in the profound respect they bear to the cross. But, on the other hand, nothing indicates that this people was ever Christian; on the contrary, every thing proves that its primitive religion, if its religious notions may be so called, has undergone no alteration. Those Christian edifices, too, which we have alluded to, belong to a later period than the inroads of the Tatar hordes, consequently they can only testify in favour of our views.
No chronicle speaks of the emigration of a Tcherkess people in the middle ages. The only tradition relating to any thing of the kind, is that of a strong tribe from the Caucasus, which, after occupying the plains of the Danube, is said to have settled at last in Pannonia. Every one is aware that mountain tribes are the least migratory of all, and the most attached to their native soil; it is, therefore, natural to suppose that the Circassians, so proud of their independence and so often ineffectually attacked, did not receive the warriors of Genghis Khan as friends, or take part in their sanguinary expeditions.[15] Hence M. Schnitzler appears to me to propound a more than questionable fact when he alleges, following Karamsin, that the Circassians entered Russia with Batou Khan, and so formed by degrees that new people, which, to borrow the language of this statician, on the breaking up of the Tatar rule and the dispersion of the clouds, which till then had hung over their country, appears to us as Russian and Christian, but with Circassian features, with Tatar manners and customs, and hating the Muscovites.
How can we assign such an origin to the Don Cossacks when there exists neither among them, nor among their supposed brethren, any tradition of so modern a fact? Besides, if the Cossacks had really come from the Caucasus, would they not have retained some neighbourly relations with the mountaineers? Is it not a singular notion to take Circassians, the most indomitable of all men, and the most attached to their hereditary usages and manners, to subject them to the Tatars for more than 300 years, and then to transform them at once, and without transition, into a people speaking pure unmixed Sclavonic, and professing the Greek religion? This is certainly one of the most curious of metamorphoses; before it could happen there must have been a combination of circumstances exactly the reverse of those which have really existed. The Circassians, one would think, would have been much more disposed to adopt the religion of the victors, than of the vanquished, the more so as islamism having already at that period made considerable progress in Eastern Caucasus, would give them a much stronger bias towards the Tatars, than towards the wandering hordes of the Polovtzis, from which we derive the Cossacks.
Notwithstanding the assertions of Dr. Clarke, it is not easy to trace much resemblance between the Circassians and the Cossacks. At present we see all the people who dwell at the foot of the Caucasus, generally adopting the habits of the mountain tribes. A great number of Nogai Tatars have become completely blended with them. The Cossacks of the Black Sea have borrowed from them their costume and their arms. The Muscovites and the German colonists themselves have not escaped the energetic influence of the Caucasian tribes; and yet some would have us believe that the Don Cossacks, a Tcherkess tribe, separated from the parent stock not more than 400 years, have undergone a contrary impulse during all that time, and now present, in a manner, no resemblance to their ancestors. The two peoples differ in costume, arms, industry, and every other particular. The Circassians are extremely apt in manufactures, and excel in all sorts of handicraft productions, to which they give a very marked and original character. The Cossacks, on the contrary, have little or no turn for manufactures; in this respect they exhibit no trace of what characterises the Caucasian tribes in so high a degree. As for the Tatar habits, of which M. Schnitzler speaks, I know not where to look for them, unless they consist in the trousers generally worn by the Cossack women. After all, the Tatars must necessarily have left some traces of their habits in the countries over which they ruled for so many centuries.
The real point of contact between the Cossacks and the Circassians, consists in their love of freedom, and their intense hatred for every thing Russian. But these sentiments evidently flow from their ancient and primitive constitution; and if they detest the Russians, it is because the Muscovite sovereigns, who have never ceased to attack their privileges, have at last succeeded in annihilating their whole political existence.
Undoubtedly the Cossacks are not pure Sclavonians, like the people of Great Russia, but are mixed up with many other races. The Don country long remained a soil of freedom, a real land of asylum for all refugees. The Circassians have probably not been strangers to their past history, and the adventurous life of the Cossack must have fascinated many a mountain chief. History, too, informs us that the Sclavons of Poland have mingled their blood with that of the inhabitants of the Don country. It is this medley of races, and the combination of all these various influences, added to the thoroughly republican character of their primitive constitution, that give the Cossacks their intellectual superiority, and make them a nation apart. But the principle stock is nevertheless Sclavonic.
The partisans of the Circassian origin have also dwelt on the resemblance between the name of the capital of the Don country, and that of a Caucasian tribe. But really when a historical question of this importance is under discussion, such a resemblance cannot be of much weight. We know that some fugitives from the Boristhenes, about the year 1569, fell in with Cossacks on the Don, and joined with them in an attack on Azov, which then belonged to the Turks. It was just about this period, 1570, that Staro Tcherkask was founded. We should hence be disposed to believe that the fugitives from the Ukraine had a great share in the creation of that town, and that they called it Tcherkask, in memory of the name of the old capital of their native land.
The Don Cossacks appear to us for the first time in the thirteenth century, on the ruins of the Tatar empire. Not till then did they begin to make a certain figure in the history of the Muscovite empire. In the reign of Ivan IV. the Terrible, they put themselves under the protection of Russia. From that time until near the end of the last century, we see them sometimes marching under the banners of the Muscovite sovereigns, sometimes rising against them, and often bringing the empire to the very verge of ruin. Their political condition was in those days a real republic, founded on a basis of absolute equality. The head of the government, styled ataman, was selected by the whole assembled nation, and retained his office but for five years; but his power was dictatorial, and no one could call him to account for his acts, even after the expiration of his office. All the subaltern leaders were likewise elected, and retained their posts for a greater or less time, according to circumstances. Equality, however, resumed its sway at the end of each military campaign; each officer, on returning into private life, enjoyed only the rights common to all; and the colonel or starshine often made the ensuing campaign as a private soldier. Aristocracy was totally unknown to the Don Cossacks in those days; if some families were distinguished from the rest by their greater influence, they owed this solely to their courage and their exploits. So strong was then the sense of independence, that the Cossacks despised as vile mercenaries those who took permanent service under the Russian sovereigns. As for the imperial suzerainty, it was limited to the right of calling for a military contingent in case of war, and of disposing of a small body of troops to defend the frontiers against the nomades of the steppes.
Cossack freedom was doomed to perish when brought into collision with the principles of absolutism and servitude which rule in the Russian empire; accordingly, as soon as the Empress Catherine II. felt strong enough to make the attempt, she decided on a radical change in the political constitution of the Don country.
The first of her ukases to this effect enacted that all the Cossack officers in the service of Russia should retain their rank and privileges on their return to their own country; a regulation directly opposed to the habits and usages of that republican people. How, indeed, could that haughty soldiery have endured that slave-officers, as it called them, should be put on the same footing with its own, elected by the acclamations of the nation? A revolt ensued, but it was promptly put down. The illustrious Potemkin could not understand that insurrection, for it seemed to him incredible that the Cossacks should rebel because they were granted almost all the privileges of Russian officers. After these unhappy troubles, their elections were abolished, and their political system was gradually changed, until it came to resemble that of a Russian government. Count Platof was the last ataman of the Cossacks, and he owed the authority he was allowed to enjoy, in a great measure to the peculiar circumstances in which he was placed by the wars of the empire.