distinction, by name Kichinskoi,--a man memorable for his vanity, and
memorable also as one of the many victims to the Tartar revolution. This
Kichinskoi had been sent by the empress as her envoy to overlook the
conduct of the Kalmucks. He was styled the _grand pristaw_, or great
commissioner, and was universally known amongst the Tartar tribes by
this title. His mixed character of ambassador and of political
_surveillant_, combined with the dependent state of the Kalmucks, gave
him a real weight in the Tartar councils, and might have given him a far
greater had not his outrageous self-conceit and his arrogant confidence
in his own authority, as due chiefly to his personal qualities for
command, led him into such harsh displays of power and menaces so odious
to the Tartar pride as very soon made him an object of their profoundest
malice. He had publicly insulted the khan; and upon making a
communication to him to the effect that some reports began to circulate,
and even to reach the empress, of a design in agitation to fly from the
imperial dominions, he had ventured to say, "But this you dare not
attempt. I laugh at such rumors; yes, khan, I laugh at them to the
empress; for you are a chained bear, and that you know." The khan turned
away on his heel with marked disdain; and the pristaw, foaming at the
mouth, continued to utter, amongst those of the khan's attendants who
stayed behind to catch his real sentiments in a moment of unguarded
passion, all that the blindest frenzy of rage could suggest to the most
presumptuous of fools. It was now ascertained that suspicions _had_
arisen; but at the same time it was ascertained that the pristaw spoke
no more than the truth in representing himself to have discredited these
suspicions. The fact was, that the mere infatuation of vanity made him
believe that nothing could go on undetected by his all-piercing
sagacity, and that no rebellion could prosper when rebuked by his
commanding presence. The Tartars, therefore, pursued their preparations,
confiding in the obstinate blindness of the grand pristaw, as in their
perfect safeguard. And such it proved, to his own ruin as well as that
of myriads beside.
Christmas arrived; and a little before that time courier upon courier
came dropping in, one upon the very heels of another, to St. Petersburg,
assuring the czarina that beyond all doubt the Kalmucks were in the very
crisis of departure. These despatches came from the governor of
Astrachan, and copies were instantly forwarded to Kichinskoi. Now, it
happened that between this governor--a Russian named Beketoff--and the
pristaw had been an ancient feud. The very name of Beketoff inflamed his
resentment; and no sooner did he see that hated name attached to the
despatch than he felt himself confirmed in his former views with tenfold
bigotry, and wrote instantly, in terms of the most pointed ridicule,
against the new alarmist, pledging his own head upon the visionariness
of his alarms. Beketoff, however, was not to be put down by a few hard
words or by ridicule. He persisted in his statements. The Russian
ministry were confounded by the obstinacy of the disputants; and some
were beginning even to treat the governor of Astrachan as a bore and as
the dupe of his own nervous terrors, when the memorable day arrived,
the fatal 5th of January, which forever terminated the dispute and put
a seal upon the earthly hopes and fortunes of unnumbered myriads. The
governor of Astrachan was the first to hear the news. Stung by the mixed
furies of jealousy, of triumphant vengeance, and of anxious ambition, he
sprang into his sledge, and, at the rate of three hundred miles a day,
pursued his route to St. Petersburg, rushed into the imperial presence,
announced the total realization of his worst predictions, and upon the
confirmation of this intelligence by subsequent despatches from many
different posts on the Wolga, he received an imperial commission to
seize the person of his deluded enemy and to keep him in strict
captivity. These orders were eagerly fulfilled; and the unfortunate
Kichinskoi soon afterwards expired of grief and mortification in the
gloomy solitude of a dungeon,--a victim to his own immeasurable vanity
and the blinding self-delusions of a presumption that refused all
warning.
The governor of Astrachan had been but too faithful a prophet. Perhaps
even _he_ was surprised at the suddenness with which the verification
followed his reports. Precisely on the 5th of January, the day so
solemnly appointed under religious sanctions by the lama, the Kalmucks
on the east bank of the Wolga were seen at the earliest dawn of day
assembling by troops and squadrons and in the tumultuous movement of
some great morning of battle. Tens of thousands continued moving off the
ground at every half-hour's interval. Women and children, to the amount
of two hundred thousand and upwards, were placed upon wagons or upon
camels and drew off by masses of twenty thousand at once, placed under
suitable escorts, and continually swelled in numbers by other outlying
bodies of the horde who kept falling in at various distances upon the
first and second day's march. From sixty to eighty thousand of those who
were the best mounted stayed behind the rest of the tribes, with
purposes of devastation and plunder more violent than prudence justified
or the amiable character of the khan could be supposed to approve. But
in this, as in other instances, he was completely overruled by the
malignant counsels of Zebek-Dorchi. The first tempest of the desolating
fury of the Tartars discharged itself upon their own habitations. But
this, as cutting off all infirm looking backward from the hardships of
their march, had been thought so necessary a measure by all the
chieftains that even Oubacha himself was the first to authorize the act
by his own example. He seized a torch, previously prepared with
materials the most durable as well as combustible, and steadily applied
it to the timbers of his own palace. Nothing was saved from the general
wreck except the portable part of the domestic utensils and that part of
the woodwork which could be applied to the manufacture of the long
Tartar lances. This chapter in their memorable day's work being
finished, and the whole of their villages throughout a district of ten
thousand square miles in one simultaneous blaze, the Tartars waited for
further orders.
These, it was intended, should have taken a character of valedictory
vengeance, and thus have left behind to the czarina a dreadful
commentary upon the main motives of their flight. It was the purpose of
Zebek-Dorchi that all the Russian towns, churches, and buildings of
every description should be given up to pillage and destruction, and
such treatment applied to the defenceless inhabitants as might naturally
be expected from a fierce people already infuriated by the spectacle of
their own outrages and by the bloody retaliations which they must
necessarily have provoked. This part of the tragedy, however, was
happily intercepted by a providential disappointment at the very crisis
of departure. It has been mentioned already that the motive for
selecting the depth of winter as the season of flight (which otherwise
was obviously the very worst possible) had been the impossibility of
effecting a junction sufficiently rapid with the tribes on the west of
the Wolga, in the absence of bridges, unless by a natural bridge of ice.
For this one advantage the Kalmuck leaders had consented to aggravate by
a thousand-fold the calamities inevitable to a rapid flight over
boundless tracts of country with women, children, and herds of
cattle,--for this one single advantage; and yet, after all, it was lost.
The reason never has been explained satisfactorily; but the fact was
such. Some have said that the signals were not properly concerted for
marking the moment of absolute departure; that is, for signifying
whether the settled intention of the eastern Kalmucks might not have
been suddenly interrupted by adverse intelligence. Others have supposed
that the ice might not be equally strong on both sides of the river, and
might even be generally insecure for the treading of heavy and heavily
laden animals such as camels. But the prevailing notion is, that some
accidental movements on the 3rd and 4th of January of Russian troops in
the neighborhood of the western Kalmucks, though really having no
reference to them or their plans, had been construed into certain signs
that all was discovered, and that the prudence of the western
chieftains, who, from situation, had never been exposed to those
intrigues which Zebek-Dorchi had practised upon the pride of the eastern
tribes, now stepped in to save their people from ruin. Be the cause what
it might, it is certain that the western Kalmucks were in some way
prevented from forming the intended junction with their brethren of the
opposite bank; and the result was, that at least one hundred thousand of
these Tartars were left behind in Russia. This accident it was which
saved their Russian neighbors universally from the desolation which else
awaited them. One general massacre and conflagration would assuredly
have surprised them, to the utter extermination of their property, their
houses, and themselves, had it not been for this disappointment. But the
eastern chieftains did not dare to put to hazard the safety of their
brethren under the first impulse of the czarina's vengeance for
so dreadful a tragedy; for, as they were well aware of too many
circumstances by which she might discover the concurrence of the western
people in the general scheme of revolt, they justly feared that she
would thence infer their concurrence also in the bloody events which
marked its outset.
Little did the western Kalmucks guess what reasons they also had for
gratitude on account of an interposition so unexpected, and which, at
the moment, they so generally deplored. Could they but have witnessed
the thousandth part of the sufferings which overtook their eastern
brethren in the first month of their sad flight, they would have
blessed Heaven for their own narrow escape; and yet these sufferings of
the first month were but a prelude or foretaste comparatively slight of
those which afterwards succeeded.
For now began to unroll the most awful series of calamities and the most
extensive which is anywhere recorded to have visited the sons and
daughters of men. It is possible that the sudden inroads of destroying
nations, such as the Huns, or the Avars, or the Mongol Tartars, may have
inflicted misery as extensive; but there the misery and the desolation
would be sudden, like the flight of volleying lightning. Those who were
spared at first would generally be spared to the end; those who perished
would perish instantly. It is possible that the French retreat from
Moscow may have made some nearer approach to this calamity in duration,
though still a feeble and miniature approach; for the French sufferings
did not commence in good earnest until about one month from the time of
leaving Moscow; and though it is true that afterwards the vials of wrath
were emptied upon the devoted army for six or seven weeks in succession,
yet what is that to this Kalmuck tragedy, which lasted for more than as
many months? But the main feature of horror, by which the Tartar march
was distinguished from the French, lies in the accompaniment of women
and children. There were both, it is true, with the French army, but so
few as to bear no visible proportion to the total numbers concerned. The
French, in short, were merely an army,--a host of professional
destroyers, whose regular trade was bloodshed and whose regular element
was danger and suffering; but the Tartars were a nation carrying along
with them more than two hundred and fifty thousand women and children,
utterly unequal, for the most part, to any contest with the calamities
before them. The children of Israel were in the same circumstances as to
the accompaniment of their families; but they were released from the
pursuit of their enemies in a very early stage of their flight; and
their subsequent residence in the desert was not a march, but a
continued halt, and under a continued interposition of Heaven for their
comfortable support. Earthquakes, again, however comprehensive in their
ravages, are shocks of a moment's duration. A much nearer approach made
to the wide range and the long duration of the Kalmuck tragedy may have
been in a pestilence such as that which visited Athens in the
Peloponnesian war or London in the reign of Charles II. There, also, the
martyrs were counted by myriads, and the period of the desolation was
counted by months. But, after all, the total amount of destruction was
on a smaller scale; and there was this feature of alleviation to the
_conscious_ pressure of the calamity,--that the misery was withdrawn
from public notice into private chambers and hospitals. The siege of
Jerusalem by Vespasian and his son, taken in its entire circumstances,
comes nearest of all for breadth and depth of suffering, for duration,
for the exasperation of the suffering from without by internal feuds,
and, finally, for that last most appalling expression of the furnace
heat of the anguish in its power to extinguish the natural affections
even of maternal love. But, after all, each case had circumstances of
romantic misery peculiar to itself,--circumstances without precedent,
and (wherever human nature is ennobled by Christianity) it may be
confidently hoped never to be repeated.
The first point to be reached, before any hope of repose could be
encouraged, was the river Jaik. This was not above three hundred miles
from the main point of departure on the Wolga; and, if the march thither
was to be a forced one and a severe one, it was alleged, on the other
hand, that the suffering would be the more brief and transient; one
summary exertion, not to be repeated, and all was achieved. Forced the
march was, and severe beyond example,--there the forewarning
proved correct; but the promised rest proved a mere phantom of the
wilderness,--a visionary rainbow, which fled before their hopesick eyes,
across these interminable solitudes, for seven months of hardship and
calamity, without a pause. These sufferings, by their very nature and
the circumstances under which they arose, were (like the scenery of the
_steppes_) somewhat monotonous in their coloring and external features:
what variety, however, there was will be most naturally exhibited by
tracing historically the successive stages of the general misery exactly
as it unfolded itself under the double agency of weakness still
increasing from within and hostile pressure from without. Viewed in this
manner, under the real order of development, it is remarkable that these
sufferings of the Tartars, though under the moulding hands of accident,
arrange themselves almost with a scenical propriety. They seem combined
as with the skill of an artist, the intensity of the misery advancing
regularly with the advances of the march, and the stages of the calamity
corresponding to the stages of the route; so that, upon raising the
curtain which veils the great catastrophe, we behold one vast climax of
anguish, towering upwards by regular gradations as if constructed
artificially for picturesque effect,--a result which might not have been
surprising had it been reasonable to anticipate the same rate of speed,
and even an accelerated rate, as prevailing through the later stages of
the expedition. But it seemed, on the contrary, most reasonable to
calculate upon a continual decrement in the rate of motion according to
the increasing distance from the head-quarters of the pursuing enemy.
This calculation, however, was defeated by the extraordinary
circumstance that the Russian armies did not begin to close in very
fiercely upon the Kalmucks until after they had accomplished a distance
of full two thousand miles. One thousand miles farther on the assaults
became even more tumultuous and murderous; and already the great shadows
of the Chinese Wall were dimly descried, when the frenzy and
_acharnement_ of the pursuers and the bloody desperation of the
miserable fugitives had reached its uttermost extremity. Let us briefly
rehearse the main stages of the misery and trace the ascending steps of
the tragedy according to the great divisions of the route marked out by
the central rivers of Asia.
The first stage, we have already said, was from the Wolga to the Jaik;
the distance about three hundred miles; the time allowed seven days. For
the first week, therefore, the rate of marching averaged about
forty-three English miles a day. The weather was cold, but bracing; and,
at a more moderate pace, this part of the journey might have been
accomplished without much distress by a people as hardy as the
Kalmucks. As it was, the cattle suffered greatly from over-driving; milk
began to fail even for the children; the sheep perished by wholesale;
and the children themselves were saved only by the innumerable camels.
The Cossacks who dwelt upon the banks of the Jaik were the first among
the subjects of Russia to come into collision with the Kalmucks. Great
was their surprise at the suddenness of the irruption, and great also
their consternation; for, according to their settled custom, by far the
greater part of their number was absent during the winter months at the
fisheries upon the Caspian. Some who were liable to surprise at the most
exposed points fled in crowds to the fortress of Koulagina, which was
immediately invested and summoned by Oubacha. He had, however, in his
train only a few light pieces of artillery; and the Russian commandant
at Koulagina, being aware of the hurried circumstances in which the khan
was placed, and that he stood upon the very edge, as it were, of a
renewed flight, felt encouraged by these considerations to a more
obstinate resistance than might else have been advisable with an enemy
so little disposed to observe the usages of civilized warfare. The
period of his anxiety was not long. On the fifth day of the siege he
descried from the walls a succession of Tartar couriers, mounted upon
fleet Bactrian camels, crossing the vast plains around the fortress at a
furious pace and riding into the Kalmuck encampment at various points.
Great agitation appeared immediately to follow. Orders were soon after
despatched in all directions; and it became speedily known that upon a
distant flank of the Kalmuck movement a bloody and exterminating battle
had been fought the day before, in which one entire tribe of the khan's
dependants, numbering not less than nine thousand fighting men, had
perished to the last man. This was the _ouloss_, or clan, called
_Feka-Zechorr_, between whom and the Cossacks there was a feud of
ancient standing. In selecting, therefore, the points of attack, on
occasion of the present hasty inroad, the Cossack chiefs were naturally
eager so to direct their efforts as to combine with the service of the
empress some gratification to their own party hatreds, more especially
as the present was likely to be their final opportunity for revenge if
the Kalmuck evasion should prosper. Having, therefore, concentrated as
large a body of Cossack cavalry as circumstances allowed, they attacked
the hostile _ouloss_ with a precipitation which denied to it all means
for communicating with Oubacha; for the necessity of commanding an ample
range of pasturage, to meet the necessities of their vast flocks and
herds, had separated this _ouloss_ from the khan's head-quarters by an
interval of eighty miles: and thus it was, and not from oversight, that
it came to be thrown entirely upon its own resources. These had proved
insufficient. Retreat, from the exhausted state of their horses and
camels, no less than from the prodigious encumbrances of their live
stock, was absolutely out of the question. Quarter was disdained on the
one side, and would not have been granted on the other; and thus it had
happened that the setting sun of that one day (the thirteenth from the
first opening of the revolt) threw his parting rays upon the final
agonies of an ancient _ouloss_, stretched upon a bloody field, who on
that day's dawning had held and styled themselves an independent
nation.
Universal consternation was diffused through the wide borders of the
khan's encampment by this disastrous intelligence, not so much on
account of the numbers slain, or the total extinction of a powerful
ally, as because the position of the Cossack force was likely to put to
hazard the future advances of the Kalmucks, or at least to retard and
hold them in check until the heavier columns of the Russian army should
arrive upon their flanks. The siege of Koulagina was instantly raised;
and that signal, so fatal to the happiness of the women and their
children, once again resounded through the tents,--the signal for
flight, and this time for a flight more rapid than ever. About one
hundred and fifty miles ahead of their present position there arose a
tract of hilly country, forming a sort of margin to the vast, sealike
expanse of champaign savannas, steppes, and occasionally of sandy
deserts, which stretched away on each side of this margin both eastwards
and westwards. Pretty nearly in the centre of this hilly range lay a
narrow defile, through which passed the nearest and the most practicable
route to the river Torgai (the farther bank of which river offered the
next great station of security for a general halt). It was the more
essential to gain this pass before the Cossacks, inasmuch as not only
would the delay in forcing the pass give time to the Russian pursuing
columns for combining their attacks and for bringing up their artillery,
but also because (even if all enemies in pursuit were thrown out of the
question) it was held, by those best acquainted with the difficult and
obscure geography of these pathless steppes, that the loss of this one
narrow strait amongst the hills would have the effect of throwing them
(as their only alternative in a case where so wide a sweep of pasturage
was required) upon a circuit of at least five hundred miles extra;
besides that, after all, this circuitous route would carry them to the
Torgai at a point ill fitted for the passage of their heavy baggage. The
defile in the hills, therefore, it was resolved to gain; and yet, unless
they moved upon it with the velocity of light cavalry, there was little
chance but it would be found preoccupied by the Cossacks. They, it is
true, had suffered greatly in the recent sanguinary action with their
enemies; but the excitement of victory, and the intense sympathy with
their unexampled triumph, had again swelled their ranks, and would
probably act with the force of a vortex to draw in their simple
countrymen from the Caspian. The question, therefore, of preoccupation
was reduced to a race. The Cossacks were marching upon an oblique line
not above fifty miles longer than that which led to the same point from
the Kalmuck head-quarters before Koulagina; and therefore, without the
most furious haste on the part of the Kalmucks, there was not a chance
for them, burdened and "trashed" as they were, to anticipate so agile a
light cavalry as the Cossacks in seizing this important pass.
Dreadful were the feelings of the poor women on hearing this exposition
of the case; for they easily understood that too capital an interest
(the _summa rerum_) was now at stake to allow of any regard to minor
interests, or what would be considered such in their present
circumstances. The dreadful week already passed--their inauguration in
misery--was yet fresh in their remembrance. The scars of suffering were
impressed not only upon their memories, but upon their very persons and
the persons of their children; and they knew that, where no speed had
much chance of meeting the cravings of the chieftains, no test would be
accepted, short of absolute exhaustion, that as much had been
accomplished as could be accomplished. Weseloff, the Russian captive,
has recorded the silent wretchedness with which the women and elder boys
assisted in drawing the tent ropes. On the 5th of January all had been
animation and the joyousness of indefinite expectation: now, on the
contrary, a brief but bitter experience had taught them to take an
amended calculation of what it was that lay before them.