hundred miles with wild horses of a docile and beautiful breed. Each of
the four fugitives had caught from seven to ten of these spirited
creatures in the course of the last few days. This raised no suspicion,
for the rest of the Kalmucks had been making the same sort of provision
against the coming toils of their remaining route to China. These horses
were secured by halters, and hidden about dusk in the thickets which
lined the margin of the river. To these thickets, about ten at night,
the four fugitives repaired. They took a circuitous path which drew them
as little as possible within danger of challenge from any of the
outposts or of the patrols which had been established on the quarters
where the Bashkirs lay, and in three quarters of an hour they reached
the rendezvous. The moon had now risen; the horses were unfastened; and
they were in the act of mounting, when the deep silence of the woods was
disturbed by a violent uproar and the clashing of arms. Weseloff fancied
that he heard the voice of the khan shouting for assistance. He
remembered the communication made by that prince in the morning; and,
requesting his companions to support him, he rode off in the direction
of the sound. A very short distance brought him to an open glade in the
wood, where he beheld four men contending with a party of at least nine
or ten. Two of the four were dismounted at the very instant of
Weseloff's arrival. One of these he recognized almost certainly as the
khan, who was fighting hand to hand, but at great disadvantage, with
two of the adverse horsemen. Seeing that no time was to be lost,
Weseloff fired and brought down one of the two. His companions
discharged their carabines at the same moment; and then all rushed
simultaneously into the little open area. The thundering sound of about
thirty horses, all rushing at once into a narrow space, gave the
impression that a whole troop of cavalry was coming down upon the
assailants, who accordingly wheeled about and fled with one impulse.
Weseloff advanced to the dismounted cavalier, who, as he expected,
proved to be the khan. The man whom Weseloff had shot was lying dead;
and both were shocked, though Weseloff at least was not surprised, on
stooping down and scrutinizing his features, to recognize a well-known
confidential servant of Zebek-Dorchi. Nothing was said by either party.
The khan rode off, escorted by Weseloff and his companions; and for some
time a dead silence prevailed. The situation of Weseloff was delicate
and critical. To leave the khan at this point was probably to cancel
their recent services; for he might be again crossed on his path, and
again attacked by the very party from whom he had just been delivered.
Yet, on the other hand, to return to the camp was to endanger the
chances of accomplishing the escape. The khan, also, was apparently
revolving all this in his mind; for at length he broke silence and said,
"I comprehend your situation; and, under other circumstances, I might
feel it my duty to detain your companions; but it would ill become me to
do so after the important service you have just rendered me. Let us turn
a little to the left. There, where you see the watchfire, is an outpost.
Attend me so far. I am then safe. You may turn and pursue your
enterprise; for the circumstances under which you will appear as my
escort are sufficient to shield you from all suspicion for the present.
I regret having no better means at my disposal for testifying my
gratitude. But, tell me, before we part, was it accident only which led
you to my rescue? or had you acquired any knowledge of the plot by which
I was decoyed into this snare?" Weseloff answered very candidly that
mere accident had brought him to the spot at which he heard the uproar;
but that, _having_ heard it, and connecting it with the khan's
communication of the morning, he had then designedly gone after the
sound in a way which he certainly should not have done at so critical a
moment unless in the expectation of finding the khan assaulted by
assassins. A few minutes after they reached the outpost at which it
became safe to leave the Tartar chieftain; and immediately the four
fugitives commenced a flight which is, perhaps, without a parallel in
the annals of travelling. Each of them led six or seven horses besides
the one he rode; and by shifting from one to the other (like the ancient
_desultors_ of the Roman circus), so as never to burden the same horse
for more than half an hour at a time, they continued to advance at the
rate of two hundred miles in the twenty-four hours for three days
consecutively. After that time, considering themselves beyond pursuit,
they proceeded less rapidly, though still with a velocity which
staggered the belief of Weseloff's friends in after years. He was,
however, a man of high principle, and always adhered firmly to the
details of his printed report. One of the circumstances there stated
is, that they continued to pursue the route by which the Kalmucks had
fled, never for an instant finding any difficulty in tracing it by the
skeletons and other memorials of their calamities. In particular, he
mentions vast heaps of money as part of the valuable property which it
had been necessary to sacrifice. These heaps were found lying still
untouched in the deserts. From these Weseloff and his companions took as
much as they could conveniently carry; and this it was, with the price
of their beautiful horses, which they afterwards sold at one of the
Russian military settlements for about fifteen pounds apiece, which
eventually enabled them to pursue their journey in Russia. This journey,
as regarded Weseloff in particular, was closed by a tragical
catastrophe. He was at that time young, and the only child of a doting
mother. Her affliction under the violent abduction of her son had been
excessive, and probably had undermined her constitution. Still she had
supported it. Weseloff, giving way to the natural impulses of his filial
affection, had imprudently posted through Russia to his mother's house
without warning of his approach. He rushed precipitately into her
presence; and she, who had stood the shocks of sorrow, was found unequal
to the shock of joy too sudden and too acute. She died upon the spot.
We now revert to the final scenes of the Kalmuck flight. These it would
be useless to pursue circumstantially through the whole two thousand
miles of suffering which remained; for the character of that suffering
was even more monotonous than on the former half of the flight, but also
more severe. Its main elements were excessive heat, with the
accompaniments of famine and thirst, but aggravated at every step by
the murderous attacks of their cruel enemies, the Bashkirs and the
Kirghises.
These people, "more fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea," stuck to the
unhappy Kalmucks like a swarm of enraged hornets; and very often, whilst
_they_ were attacking them in the rear, their advanced parties and
flanks were attacked with almost equal fury by the people of the country
which they were traversing; and with good reason, since the law of
self-preservation had now obliged the fugitive Tartars to plunder
provisions and to forage wherever they passed. In this respect their
condition was a constant oscillation of wretchedness; for sometimes,
pressed by grinding famine, they took a circuit of perhaps a hundred
miles, in order to strike into a land rich in the comforts of life. But
in such a land they were sure to find a crowded population, of which
every arm was raised in unrelenting hostility, with all the advantages
of local knowledge, and with constant preoccupation of all the
defensible positions, mountain passes, or bridges. Sometimes, again,
wearied out with this mode of suffering, they took a circuit of perhaps
a hundred miles, in order to strike into a land with few or no
inhabitants; but in such a land they were sure to meet absolute
starvation. Then, again, whether with or without this plague of
starvation, whether with or without this plague of hostility in front,
whatever might be the "fierce varieties" of their misery in this
respect, no rest ever came to their unhappy rear; _post equitem sedet
atra cura_; it was a torment like the undying worm of conscience; and,
upon the whole, it presented a spectacle altogether unprecedented in the
history of mankind. Private and personal malignity is not unfrequently
immortal; but rare indeed is it to find the same pertinacity of malice
in a nation. And what imbittered the interest was, that the malice was
reciprocal. Thus far the parties met upon equal terms; but that equality
only sharpened the sense of their dire inequality as to other
circumstances. The Bashkirs were ready to fight "from morn to dewy eve."
The Kalmucks, on the contrary, were always obliged to run: was it _from_
their enemies as creatures whom they feared? No; but _towards_ their
friends,--towards that final haven of China,--as what was hourly
implored by their wives and the tears of their children. But, though
they fled unwillingly, too often they fled in vain,--being unwillingly
recalled. There lay the torment. Every day the Bashkirs fell upon them;
every day the same unprofitable battle was renewed. As a matter of
course, the Kalmucks recalled part of their advanced guard to fight
them. Every day the battle raged for hours, and uniformly with the same
result; for, no sooner did the Bashkirs find themselves too heavily
pressed, and that the Kalmuck march had been retarded by some hours,
than they retired into the boundless deserts, where all pursuit was
hopeless. But if the Kalmucks resolved to press forward, regardless of
their enemies, in that case their attacks became so fierce and
overwhelming that the general safety seemed likely to be brought into
question; nor could any effectual remedy be applied to the case, even
for each separate day, except by a most embarrassing halt and by
countermarches that, to men in their circumstances, were almost worse
than death. It will not be surprising that the irritation of such a
systematic persecution, superadded to a previous and hereditary hatred
and accompanied by the stinging consciousness of utter impotence as
regarded all effectual vengeance, should gradually have inflamed the
Kalmuck animosity into the wildest expression of downright madness and
frenzy. Indeed, long before the frontiers of China were approached, the
hostility of both sides had assumed the appearance much more of a
warfare amongst wild beasts than amongst creatures acknowledging the
restraints of reason or the claims of a common nature. The spectacle
became too atrocious; it was that of a host of lunatics pursued by a
host of fiends.
* * * * *
On a fine morning in early autumn of the year 1771, Kien Long, the
Emperor of China, was pursuing his amusements in a wild frontier
district lying on the outside of the Great Wall. For many hundred square
leagues the country was desolate of inhabitants, but rich in woods of
ancient growth and overrun with game of every description. In a central
spot of this solitary region the emperor had built a gorgeous
hunting-lodge, to which he resorted annually for recreation and relief
from the cares of government. Led onwards in pursuit of game, he had
rambled to a distance of two hundred miles or more from this lodge,
followed at a little distance by a sufficient military escort, and every
night pitching his tent in a different situation, until at length he had
arrived on the very margin of the vast central deserts of Asia. Here he
was standing, by accident, at an opening of his pavilion, enjoying the
morning sunshine, when suddenly to the westward there arose a vast,
cloudy vapor, which by degrees expanded, mounted, and seemed to be
slowly diffusing itself over the whole face of the heavens. By and by
this vast sheet of mist began to thicken towards the horizon and to roll
forward in billowy volumes. The emperor's suite assembled from all
quarters; the silver trumpets were sounded in the rear; and from all the
glades and forest avenues began to trot forward towards the pavilion the
yagers, half cavalry, half huntsmen, who composed the imperial escort.
Conjecture was on the stretch to divine the cause of this phenomenon;
and the interest continually increased in proportion as simple curiosity
gradually deepened into the anxiety of uncertain danger. At first it had
been imagined that some vast troops of deer or other wild animals of the
chase had been disturbed in their forest haunts by the emperor's
movements, or possibly by wild beasts prowling for prey, and might be
fetching a compass by way of re-entering the forest grounds at some
remoter points secure from molestation. But this conjecture was
dissipated by the slow increase of the cloud and the steadiness of its
motion. In the course of two hours the vast phenomenon had advanced to a
point which was judged to be within five miles of the spectators; though
all calculations of distance were difficult, and often fallacious, when
applied to the endless expanses of the Tartar deserts. Through the next
hour, during which the gentle morning breeze had a little freshened, the
dusty vapor had developed itself far and wide into the appearance of
huge aerial draperies, hanging in mighty volumes from the sky to the
earth; and at particular points, where the eddies of the breeze acted
upon the pendulous skirts of these aerial curtains, rents were
perceived, sometimes taking the form of regular arches, portals, and
windows, through which began dimly to gleam the heads of camels
"indorsed" with human beings, and at intervals the moving of men and
horses in tumultuous array, and then through other openings, or vistas,
at far-distant points, the flashing of polished arms. But sometimes, as
the wind slackened or died away, all those openings, of whatever form,
in the cloudy pall, would slowly close, and for a time the whole pageant
was shut up from view; although the growing din, the clamors, the
shrieks and groans ascending from infuriated myriads, reported, in a
language not to be misunderstood, what was going on behind the cloudy
screen.
It was, in fact, the Kalmuck host, now in the last extremities of their
exhaustion, and very fast approaching to that final stage of privation
and intense misery beyond which few or none could have lived, but also,
happily for themselves, fast approaching (in a literal sense) that final
stage of their long pilgrimage at which they would meet hospitality on a
scale of royal magnificence and full protection from their enemies.
These enemies, however, as yet, still were hanging on their rear as
fiercely as ever; though this day was destined to be the last of their
hideous persecution. The khan had, in fact, sent forward couriers with
all the requisite statements and petitions, addressed to the Emperor of
China. These had been duly received, and preparations made in
consequence to welcome the Kalmucks with the most paternal benevolence.
But as these couriers had been despatched from the Torgau at the moment
of arrival thither, and before the advance of Traubenberg had made it
necessary for the khan to order a hasty renewal of the flight, the
emperor had not looked for their arrival on their frontier until full
three months after the present time. The khan had, indeed, expressly
notified his intention to pass the summer heats on the banks of the
Torgau, and to recommence his retreat about the beginning of September.
The subsequent change of plan being unknown to Kien Long, left him for
some time in doubt as to the true interpretation to be put upon this
mighty apparition in the desert; but at length the savage clamors of
hostile fury and the clangor of weapons unveiled to the emperor the true
nature of those unexpected calamities which had so prematurely
precipitated the Kalmuck measure.
Apprehending the real state of affairs, the emperor instantly perceived
that the first act of his fatherly care for these erring children (as he
esteemed them), now returning to their ancient obedience, must be, to
deliver them from their pursuers. And this was less difficult than
might have been supposed. Not many miles in the rear was a body of
well-appointed cavalry, with a strong detachment of artillery, who
always attended the emperor's motions. These were hastily summoned.
Meantime it occurred to the train of courtiers that some danger might
arise to the emperor's person from the proximity of a lawless enemy; and
accordingly he was induced to retire a little to the rear. It soon
appeared, however, to those who watched the vapory shroud in the desert,
that its motion was not such as would argue the direction of the march
to be exactly upon the pavilion, but rather in a diagonal line, making
an angle of full forty-five degrees with that line in which the imperial
_cortége_ had been standing, and therefore with a distance continually
increasing. Those who knew the country judged that the Kalmucks were
making for a large fresh-water lake about seven or eight miles distant.
They were right; and to that point the imperial cavalry was ordered up;
and it was precisely in that spot, and about three hours after, and at
noonday, on the 8th of September, that the great exodus of the Kalmuck
Tartars was brought to a final close, and with a scene of such memorable
and hellish fury as formed an appropriate winding up to an expedition in
all its parts and details so awfully disastrous. The emperor was not
personally present, or at least he saw whatever he _did_ see from too
great a distance to discriminate its individual features; but he records
in his written memorial the report made to him of this scene by some of
his own officers.
The Lake of Tengis, near the frightful Desert of Kobi, lay in a hollow
amongst hills of a moderate height, ranging generally from two to three
thousand feet high. About eleven o'clock in the forenoon the Chinese
cavalry reached the summit of a road which led through a cradle-like dip
in the mountains right down upon the margin of the lake. From this pass,
elevated about two thousand feet above the level of the water, they
continued to descend, by a very winding and difficult road, for an hour
and a half; and during the whole of this descent they were compelled to
be inactive spectators of the fiendish spectacle below. The Kalmucks,
reduced by this time from about six hundred thousand souls to two
hundred thousand, and after enduring for two months and a half the
miseries we have previously described,--outrageous heat, famine, and the
destroying cimeter of the Kirghises and the Bashkirs,--had for the last
ten days been traversing a hideous desert, where no vestiges were seen
of vegetation and no drop of water could be found. Camels and men were
already so overladen that it was a mere impossibility that they should
carry a tolerable sufficiency for the passage of this frightful
wilderness. On the eighth day, the wretched daily allowance, which had
been continually diminishing, failed entirely; and thus, for two days of
insupportable fatigue, the horrors of thirst had been carried to the
fiercest extremity. Upon this last morning, at the sight of the hills
and the forest scenery, which announced to those who acted as guides the
neighborhood of the Lake of Tengis, all the people rushed along with
maddening eagerness to the anticipated solace. The day grew hotter and
hotter, the people more and more exhausted; and gradually, in the
general rush forwards to the lake, all discipline and command were
lost,--all attempts to preserve a rearguard were neglected. The wild
Bashkirs rode in amongst the encumbered people and slaughtered them by
wholesale, and almost without resistance. Screams and tumultuous shouts
proclaimed the progress of the massacre; but none heeded,--none halted;
all alike, pauper or noble, continued to rush on with maniacal haste to
the waters,--all with faces blackened by the heat preying upon the
liver, and with tongue drooping from the mouth. The cruel Bashkir was
affected by the same misery, and manifested the same symptoms of his
misery, as the wretched Kalmuck. The murderer was oftentimes in the same
frantic misery as his murdered victim. Many, indeed (an ordinary effect
of thirst), in both nations, had become lunatic; and in this state,
whilst mere multitude and condensation of bodies alone opposed any check
to the destroying cimeter and the trampling hoof, the lake was reached;
and to that the whole vast body of enemies rushed, and together
continued to rush, forgetful of all things at that moment but of one
almighty instinct. This absorption of the thoughts in one maddening
appetite lasted for a single minute; but in the next arose the final
scene of parting vengeance. Far and wide the waters of the solitary lake
were instantly dyed red with blood and gore. Here rode a party of savage
Bashkirs, hewing off heads as fast as the swaths fall before the mower's
scythe; there stood unarmed Kalmucks in a death-grapple with their
detested foes, both up to the middle in water, and oftentimes both
sinking together below the surface, from weakness or from struggles, and
perishing in each other's arms. Did the Bashkirs at any point collect
into a cluster for the sake of giving impetus to the assault, thither
were the camels driven in fiercely by those who rode them, generally
women or boys; and even these quiet creatures were forced into a share
in this carnival of murder by trampling down as many as they could
strike prostrate with the lash of their forelegs. Every moment the water
grew more polluted; and yet every moment fresh myriads came up to the
lake and rushed in, not able to resist their frantic thirst, and
swallowing large draughts of water visibly contaminated with the blood
of their slaughtered compatriots. Wheresoever the lake was shallow
enough to allow of men raising their heads above the water,
there, for scores of acres, were to be seen all forms of ghastly
fear, of agonizing struggle, of spasm, of convulsion, of mortal
conflict,--death, and the fear of death,--revenge, and the lunacy of
revenge,--hatred, and the frenzy of hatred; until the neutral
spectators, of whom there were not a few, now descending the eastern
side of the lake, at length averted their eyes in horror. This horror,
which seemed incapable of further addition, was, however, increased by
an unexpected incident. The Bashkirs, beginning to perceive here and
there the approach of the Chinese cavalry, felt it prudent--wheresoever
they were sufficiently at leisure from the passions of the murderous
scene--to gather into bodies. This was noticed by the governor of a
small Chinese fort built upon an eminence above the lake; and
immediately he threw in a broadside, which spread havoc amongst the
Bashkir tribe. As often as the Bashkirs collected into "_globes_" and
"_turms_" as their only means of meeting the long line of descending
Chinese cavalry, so often did the Chinese governor of the fort pour in
his exterminating broadside; until at length the lake, at the lower end,
became one vast seething caldron of human bloodshed and carnage. The
Chinese cavalry had reached the foot of the hills; the Bashkirs,
attentive to _their_ movements, had formed; skirmishes had been fought;
and, with a quick sense that the contest was henceforwards rapidly
becoming hopeless, the Bashkirs and Kirghises began to retire. The
pursuit was not as vigorous as the Kalmuck hatred would have desired;
but, at the same time, the very gloomiest hatred could not but find, in
their own dreadful experience of the Asiatic deserts, and in the
certainty that these wretched Bashkirs had to repeat that same
experience, a second time, for thousands of miles, as the price exacted
by a retributary Providence for their vindictive cruelty, not the very
gloomiest of the Kalmucks or the least reflecting but found in all this
a retaliatory chastisement more complete and absolute than any which
their swords and lances could have obtained or human vengeance could
have devised.
* * * * *
Here ends the tale of the Kalmuck wanderings in the desert; for any
subsequent marches which awaited them were neither long nor painful.
Every possible alleviation and refreshment for their exhausted bodies
had been already provided by Kien Long with the most princely
munificence; and lands of great fertility were immediately assigned to
them in ample extent along the river Ily, not very far from the point at
which they had first emerged from the wilderness of Kobi. But the
beneficent attention of the Chinese emperor may be best stated in his
own words, as translated into French by one of the Jesuit missionaries:
"La nation des Torgotes (_savoir les Kalmuques_) arriva à Ily, toute
_delabrée_, n'ayant ni de quoi vivre, ni de quoi se vêtir. Je l'avais
prévu; et j'avais ordonné de faire en tout genre les provisions
nécessaires pour pouvoir les secourir promptement; c'est ce qui a été
exécuté. On a fait la division des terres; et on a assigné à chaque
famille une portion suffisante pour pouvoir servir à son entretien, soit
en la cultivant, soit en y nourissant des bestiaux. On a donné à chaque
particulier des étoffes pour l'habiller, des grains pour se nourrir
pendant l'espace d'une année, des ustensiles pour le ménage et d'autres
choses nécessaires: et outre cela plusieurs onces d'argent, pour se
pourvoir de ce qu'on aurait pu oublier. On a designé des lieux
particuliers, fertiles en pâturages; et on leur a donné des boeufs,
moutons, etc., pour qu'ils pussent dans la suite travailler par
eux-mêmes à leur entretien et à leur bienêtre."
These are the words of the emperor himself, speaking in his own person
of his own paternal cares; but another Chinese, treating the same
subject, records the munificence of this prince in terms which proclaim
still more forcibly the disinterested generosity which prompted, and the
delicate considerateness which conducted, this extensive bounty. He has
been speaking of the Kalmucks, and he goes on thus: "Lorsqu'ils
arrivèrent sur nos frontières (au nombre de plusieurs centaines de
mille), quoique la fatigue extrême, la faim, la soif, et toutes les
autres incommodités inséparables d'une très-longue et très pénible route
en eussent fait périr presque autant, ils étaient réduits à la dernière
misère; ils manquaient de tout. Il" (viz., l'empereur, Kien Long) "leur
fit préparer des logemens conformes à leur manière de vivre; il leur fit
distribuer des aliments et des habits; il leur fit donner des boeufs,
des moutons, et des ustensiles, pour les mettre en état de former des
troupeaux et de cultiver la terre, _et tout cela à ses propres frais_,
qui se sont montés à des sommes immenses, sans compter l'argent qu'il a
donné à chaque chef-de-famille, pour pourvoir à la subsistance de sa
femme et de ses enfans."
Thus, after their memorable year of misery, the Kalmucks were replaced
in territorial possessions, and in comfort equal, perhaps, or even
superior, to that which they had enjoyed in Russia, and with superior
political advantages. But, if equal or superior, their condition was no
longer the same; if not in degree, their social prosperity had altered
in quality; for, instead of being a purely pastoral and vagrant people,
they were now in circumstances which obliged them to become essentially
dependent upon agriculture, and thus far raised in social rank, that, by
the natural course of their habits and the necessities of life, they
were effectually reclaimed from roving and from the savage customs
connected with so unsettled a life. They gained also in political
privileges, chiefly through the immunity from military service which
their new relations enabled them to obtain. These were circumstances of
advantage and gain. But one great disadvantage there was, amply to
overbalance all other possible gain,--the chances were lost, or were
removed to an incalculable distance, for their conversion to
Christianity, without which in these times there is no absolute advance
possible on the path of true civilization.