It may be doubted whether many students of history are aware that the
demarcation of frontiers, of precise lines dividing the possessions of
adjacent sovereignties and distinguishing their respective
jurisdictions, is a practice of modern origin. At the present time it
is the essential outcome of territorial disputes, it is the operation
by which they are formally settled at the end of a war: it registers
conquests and cessions; and occasionally it has been the result of
pacific arbitration. Among compact and civilised nationalities an
exterior frontier, thus carefully defined, remains, like the human
skin, the most sensitive and irritable part of their corporate
constitution. The slightest infringement of it by a neighbouring Power
is instantly resented; to break through it violently is to be
inflicting a wound which may draw blood; and even interference with
any petty State that may lie between the frontiers of two great
governments is regarded as a serious menace.
The whole continent of Europe has now been laid out upon this system
of strict delimitation. Yet it may be maintained that among the
kingdoms of the ancient world no such exact and recognised
distribution of territory existed; and, further, that up to a very
recent period none of the great empires in Asia had any boundaries
that could be traced on a map. Their landmarks were incessantly
shifting forward or backward as their military strength rose or fell;
and where their territories marched with some rough mountainous tract
inhabited by warlike tribes, they were perpetually plagued by petty
warfare on a zone of debateable land. On both sides some temporary
intrusion upon or occupation of country held by a neighbour, which
would now be the signal for mobilising an army, was treated as a
trespass of small importance, to be resented and rectified at leisure.
It is true that in earlier times the Romans marked off distinct
frontiers, and guarded them by military posts; but their policy was to
acknowledge no frontier power with equal rights, and their actual
political jurisdiction usually extended far beyond their lines of
defence, which were advanced or withdrawn as political or military
considerations might require. In fact, the Roman empire, like the
British empire in Asia, was a great organised State, surrounded, for
the most part, by small and weak principalities, or by warlike tribal
communities, and it grew by a natural process of inevitable expansion.
The emperors were often reluctant to enlarge their possessions; but
the raids and incursions of intractable barbarians, or the revolt of
some protected chiefship, frequently left them no option but to
conquer and annex. They soon found themselves compelled to overstep
the limits of empire prescribed by the policy of Augustus, and to lay
down an advanced frontier in the lands beyond the Rhine and the
Danube.
In Europe, where, as we have said, all national frontiers are now
fixed and registered, the position of a civilised government entangled
in chronic border warfare has long been unknown; the tradition of such
a state of things is preserved in popular recollection mainly by local
records and old ballads. Yet for Englishmen the subject possesses
peculiar interest, since it is connected with their earlier history;
and moreover our dominion in India invests it with special importance,
for it is there a matter of immediate experience and active concern.
We may recollect, in the first place, that Britain was an outlying
province of the Roman empire, for at this moment we are excavating the
ruins of the wall built by the Romans to protect their northern
frontier from the incursions of the warlike tribes beyond it, by the
first administration that established, for a time, peace and
civilisation in England. Then, in the middle ages, and long
afterwards, the border between the kingdoms of England and Scotland
which ran northward of the old Roman line, was for centuries the scene
of plundering raids, punitive expeditions, and internecine feuds that
often laid waste the countryside with fire and sword. We may observe,
in this instance, how shifting and indeterminate was the exact
frontier line between the two kingdoms, and how the local fighting,
the inroads from one side or the other, did not necessarily involve a
rupture of their formal relations. The wardens on each side executed
rough justice upon marauding clans; they wasted and slaughtered in
reprisal for raids; the great nobles engaged in a kind of private
warfare; but all this might go on without embroiling the two
governments in a national war. On the western English border the Welsh
hillmen kept the neighbouring counties in continual alarm; and their
chiefs played an important part in the civil wars and rebellions of
England. They were at last quieted by Edward I., who succeeded in
subduing Wales though he failed in Scotland. Lastly, though the union
of the two kingdoms brought peace to the Anglo-Scottish border, the
Highland line along the Forth river still kept up, though in a much
less serious degree, the troubles of a regular government in contact
with restless tribes. Nor was it until the middle of the eighteenth
century that these relics of an archaic condition of society, which
had long ago disappeared in other parts of western Europe, were
finally effaced in Great Britain. Long afterwards, in the nineteenth
century, when the conquest of the Punjab carried the north-western
frontier of British India up to the slopes of the Afghan mountains,
the scene of perpetual strife between a strong settled administration
and turbulent borderers which had passed away on the Tweed or the
Forth, and on the Welsh Marches, reappeared in the districts beyond
the Indus.
To Englishmen, therefore, whose experience of this situation is long,
varied, and actual, Mr. Baddeley's book on the Russians in the
Caucasus should be of exceptional interest. It is indeed well worth
studying by those upon whom, whether at home or in India, has been
imposed the arduous duty of superintending our policy in dealing with
the Afghan tribes for the protection of our Indian districts. It is
true that the conditions and circumstances, military and political,
under which Russia prosecuted her long war with the Caucasian
mountaineers, rendered her position in many respects different from
that in which the English found themselves when they first came into
contact with Afghanistan, and which has changed very little in the
course of sixty years. The aims and purposes of the two governments
were by no means the same. Yet in both cases we have a story of the
obstinate resistance opposed by fierce and free clans to the arms of a
powerful empire, of perilous campaigns amid rugged hills and passes,
of the hazards and misfortunes to which disciplined troops are always
liable when they encounter resolute and fanatical defenders of a
difficult country.
Mr. Baddeley's book contains an authentic narrative, founded on
diligent study of official documents and on the accounts of those who
took part in the fighting, of the operations by which the Mohammedan
tribes of the Caucasus were finally subdued, after fierce and
protracted resistance, by Russian armies, and their country was
annexed to the dominions of the Czar. His knowledge of this region is
evidently derived from personal exploration; and in the Introduction
to his book he has spared no pains to explain to his readers its
geographical position, its topography, its physical features, and the
extraordinary diversity of races and languages which it contained. We
learn that the chain of mountains which was originally known by the
name of the Caucasus stretches, with a total length of 650 miles, from
the Caspian to the Black Sea. Toward the north is a tract of dense
forest, intersected by numerous streams flowing down from the
mountains; and beyond lies the high plateau of Daghestan, 'through
which the rivers have cut their way to a depth often of thousands of
feet, the whole backed and ribbed, south and west, by mountain ranges
having many peaks often over 13,000 feet in height.' In the forest
tract, to which the Russians gave the name of Tchetchnia, their armies
were constantly entangled; and their difficulties in reducing the
inhabitants to subjection were quite as great as in conquering the
highland tribes of Daghestan. Throughout the eighteenth century, and
even earlier, the Russians had been pushing southward toward the Black
Sea and the Caspian, and had gradually taken under their authority and
protection the Cossack tribes who were settled on the steppes that
spread along the northern border of the Caucasus. On this border they
had established by the end of the century the Cossack line of forts,
military colonies and plantations of armed cultivators, linked
together to form a barrier against the incursions and marauding raids
of the wild folk in the woods and mountains in front of them, and
gradually strengthened and supported by stations of regular troops in
the background. On the south of the central mountain ranges the
Russians held Georgia, inhabited by Christian races whom the Russians
had liberated from the Turkish or Persian yoke before the close of the
eighteenth century, and who ever afterwards remained loyal subjects of
the Czar. The Georgian road which traversed the whole Caucasian region
from north to south, formed a most important line of communication
which was never seriously interrupted. To the south-east, when the
nineteenth century opened, lay Mohammedan khanates, vassals of Persia;
on the south-west were the semi-independent pachaliks of the Ottoman
empire.
We must pass over, reluctantly, Mr. Baddeley's very interesting sketch
of the gradual approach made by Russia toward the Caucasus during the
eighteenth century, which may be said to have begun in earnest with
the expedition of Peter the Great, who led an army to the Caspian
shore and captured Derbend about 1722. This threatening movement upon
the confines of Asia inevitably involved Russia in war with the Turks
and with the Persians, for whom the Caucasian mountains represented a
great fortress, barring the onward march of a powerful Christian
empire toward their dominions. For the Russians, on their side, it
became of vital importance to break through the barrier that separated
them from Georgia, to occupy the country between the two seas, and to
make an end of the perpetual warfare with the tribes, who kept their
frontier on the Cossack line in unceasing agitation and disorder, and
were a standing menace to the Christian population of Georgia. It
should be understood, however, that the Cossacks discharged their
duties of watch and ward after a very rough fashion, raiding and
fighting on their own account, making incursions upon their Mohammedan
neighbours in retaliation for attacks and forays, and laying waste the
enemy's country with the bitter vindictiveness of antagonistic races
and religions.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Georgia and some other
Christian principalities in Trans-Caucasia--that is, on the southern
border of the mountains--had been absorbed into the Russian empire,
which now held continuous territory on this line from the Black Sea to
the Caspian. Along the Caspian shore the vassal States of Persia had
been reduced to submission, while the Turks had been driven back from
their fortified posts on the Black Sea. The Turkish and Persian
governments naturally took alarm at the approach of a military power
whom they had already good reason to mistrust and dread; the Russian
viceroys and generals on the frontier treated these Oriental kingdoms
with high-handed arrogance, and gave ample provocation for the wars
which speedily broke out with both of them. The annals of the next few
years record many vicissitudes of fortune. The Russian armies achieved
some brilliant victories, and suffered some heavy disasters. By
disease and the strain of forced marches through rugged and almost
pathless country, by the storming of petty fortresses, by incessant
skirmishing and treacherous surprises, the troops were reduced in
number and gradually worn out; they were outnumbered by the Persian
and Turkish soldiery, whose military qualities were at that time by no
means despicable; while at this time the great European wars against
Napoleon made reinforcements hard to obtain. In 1811 the Russians
could barely hold their ground against the combined forces of Turkey
and Persia; but just when the whole situation was at its worst the
Russian Government, under the imminent emergency of Napoleon's march
upon Moscow, patched up a peace (May 1812) with Turkey that reinstated
the Sultan in some important positions on the Black Sea coast, and
made considerable retrocessions of territory. By strenuous exertion
the Persians were defeated and beaten off, and next year there was
comparative peace on the Caucasian border. Yet it was but a calm
interval before storms, for Mr. Baddeley remarks that nearly half a
century of fighting was to elapse before the conquest of the mountains
could be completed.
This era of long and sanguinary contest may be said to have begun, on
a deliberate plan, with the appointment of General Yermoloff, in 1816,
to be commander-in-chief in Georgia, with jurisdiction over the whole
Caucasus. It was carried on with undaunted courage, hardihood, and
obstinate endurance on both sides; and in the matter of merciless
ferocity there was little to choose between the two antagonists.
Yermoloff appears to have belonged to the type of military commander
whom the Russian soldier follows with complete trust and unhesitating
devotion--a leader inured to hardship and perils, treating his men as
comrades but unsparing of their lives, rigid in discipline, reckless
of bloodshed, a relentless conqueror yet capable of occasional
generosity. His stern and implacable temper recognised but one method
of dealing with barbarian enemies--the unflinching use of fire and
sword, the policy of devastation and massacre. 'I desire,' said
Yermoloff, 'that the terror of my name shall guard our frontiers more
potently than chains of fortresses; that my word shall be for the
natives a law more inevitable than death. Condescension in the eyes
of Asiatics is a sign of weakness, and out of pure humanity I am
inexorably severe. One execution saves hundreds of Russians from
destruction, and thousands of Mussulmans from treason.' He demanded
unconditional submission from all the tribes of the Caucasus; and he
substituted for the former system of bribery and subsidies the policy
of treating all resistance as rebellion, and suppressing it with cruel
severity, 'but' (says one writer) 'always combined with justice and
magnanimity.' Upon this Mr. Baddeley remarks that it is difficult to
see where justice came in, 'but in this respect Russia was only doing
what England and all other civilised States have done, and still do,
wherever they come into contact with savage or semi-savage races. By
force or fraud a portion of the country is taken and sooner or later,
on one excuse or another, the rest is sure to follow.' To this it may
be rejoined that on the north-west frontier of India, and nowhere
else, England has come into contact with a race quite as savage and
untamable as the Caucasian mountaineers, but that it would be a great
mistake to suppose that the methods of Yermoloff have ever been
adopted in dealing with the turbulent fanaticism of the Afghan tribes.
On the Cossack line, when Yermoloff assumed charge of operations,
'there was no open warfare, but there was continual unrest. No man's
life was safe outside the forts and stanitzas; robbery and murder were
rife; raiding parties, great and small, harried the fields, the farms
and the weaker settlements.' To this state of things he was resolved
to put an end. He built fortresses, pushed forward his outposts,
formed moving columns of troops, and assiduously trained his soldiers
to the peculiar conditions of warfare on this borderland. The Russian
regiments, like the Roman legions, were often stationed in their
camps or garrisons for twenty-five years; and for the service required
of them their efficiency was admirable. For ten years Yermoloff
carried on this tribal war with inflexible rigour, by expeditions to
punish some marauding village, which was razed to the ground, and most
of the men, women and children burnt or killed after defending the
place with the fury of despair; by night marches to surprise and storm
the hill forts; by exterminating bands of brigands; and more than once
by laying deathtraps for notorious rebels or fanatics. There can be no
doubt that this system of ruthless chastisement, of beating down the
enemy's defences by sharp and rapid strokes, by sudden and daring
inroads into the heart of their country, intimidated the tribes, and
went far toward compelling them to sullen acquiescence in the Russian
overlordship. Of the petty independent chiefships some were seized
forcibly, others submitted and paid tribute. The Russians were
advancing step by step into the interior of the country, piercing it
with roads and riveting their hold on it by throwing forward their
chain of connected forts. By 1820 Yermoloff appears to have convinced
himself that in a few years the whole of the Caucasus--mountain and
forest--would be permanently conquered and pacified; and for some time
after that date there was little or no fighting, though the border was
frequently disquieted by outbreaks that were sternly crushed. With the
Persians and the Turks there was an interval of peace.
But the harsh measures taken by the Russians to bring the forest
tribes under their authority were bitterly resented; and in 1824 two
of their generals were fatally stabbed in Tchetchnia by one of several
villagers whom they were disarming. This murder was avenged by
Yermoloff, as usual, relentlessly, but it was his last campaign in
the Caucasus. In 1826 the Persians, who had been incensed by
Yermoloff's rough ways on their frontier and by his insolent
diplomacy, invaded Russian territory with a strong army. The Russians
were unprepared, and at first could only act on the defensive. The
flames of insurrection at once broke out among the tribes; the whole
country fell back into confusion, and the Emperor Nicholas, holding
Yermoloff responsible for this disastrous state of affairs,
reprimanded and recalled him. He lived in retirement until 1861,
revered by the Russian nation as the type and model of a valiant
soldier and a devoted patriot who won brilliant victories and
conquered large territories for the empire. But on his system and its
consequences Mr. Baddeley pronounces a judgment which in fact points
the moral of his whole narrative, and explains the history of the
events that followed Yermoloff's departure:
'He gained brilliant victories at slight cost; and brought for a
time the greater part of Daghestan under Russian dominion.... He
absorbed the Persian and Tartar khanates, and treated Persia with
astonishing arrogance. But it was these very measures and successes
that led, on the one hand, to the Persian War and the revolt of the
newly-acquired provinces; on the other, to that great outburst of
religious and racial fanaticism which, under the banner of
Muridism, welded into one powerful whole so many weak and
antagonistic elements in Daghestan and Tchetchnia, thereby
initiating the bloody struggle waged unceasingly for the next forty
years. Daghestan speedily threw off the Russian yoke, and defied
the might of the mother empire until 1859. In Tchetchnia mere
border forays conducted by independent partisan leaders ...
developed into a war of national independence under a chieftain as
cruel, capable, and indomitable as Yermoloff himself.'
The Persian War ended in 1828, but in the same year hostilities broke
out with Turkey, involving the Russian troops on the Georgian frontier
in hard and hazardous fighting, which lasted, with a great expenditure
of men and money, until peace was concluded in 1829. From that year
until 1854, when the Crimean War began, Russia had a free hand in the
Caucasus, and applied her strength with inexorable energy to its
subjugation. And it is to the rise and spread of the ferocious
enthusiasm which Mr. Baddeley has called _Muridism_ that he attributes
the striking fact that the complete conquest of the country was only
accomplished in 1864--that the tribes held out against the forces of
the Russian empire for more than thirty years.
Muridism, in which this spirit of heroic and hopeless resistance by
armed peasants against the Russian armies was, so to speak, incarnate,
is a word employed by Mr. Baddeley with a special purpose and meaning,
which he explains at some length. For our present purpose it may be
sufficient to say that _Murshid_ denotes a religious teacher who
expounds the mystic Way of Salvation to his _Murids_, or disciples,
who gather round him, adopt his doctrines, obey his commands, and
cheerfully accept martyrdom in his service. Muridism, therefore, may
be taken to signify the passionate fanaticism of religious devotees,
of warriors who follow a spiritual leader and fight in the sacred
cause of Islam against the infidel. It was this movement that united
the Mohammedan tribes in a holy war against the Russians, who, as our
author observes, had never gauged correctly the latent forces of the
twin passions, religious fanaticism and the love of liberty--two
elements which always form a very dangerous compound, and which became
heated up to the point of explosion as the tribes found the iron
framework of Russian administration steadily closing up around them.
Any attempt to break out of this house of bondage was repulsed with
inflexible severity. In this inflammable atmosphere, charged with
ferocious suspicion, hatred, and superstition, one Kazi Mullah was
elected to the rank of 'Imam'; and on his proclamation of holy war
against the infidel oppressor the whole country rose and rallied to
his standard. He was, if we may borrow Mr. Baddeley's description of
the class, 'one of those strange beings, compounded of fanaticism,
military ardour, and a nature prone to adventure, for whom only the
dreaming, fighting, tumultuous, ignorant East, in its days of trouble
and unrest, can supply a fitting field of action.' He came forward as
a man sent by God to deliver the faithful from their servitude,
holding in his hands the power of life or death, and those who refused
to obey him or denied his authority were denounced and slain without
mercy. Under such leadership the war spread again along the border,
some Russian detachments were cut to pieces, and even when the
insurgents were defeated the troops suffered terribly, for as no
quarter was asked or expected none was given on either side. After
some two years of incessant fighting Kazi Mullah made his last stand
in a mountain stronghold, where he was surrounded by the Russian
troops, who in their first assault were repulsed with heavy loss; but
on a second attempt the place was stormed, and Kazi Mullah with a band
of devoted Murids died sword in hand on the last breastwork.
Of the sixty men who stood by their chief to the end two only escaped;
but one of these was Shamil, who became afterwards the most famous and
formidable champion of the Mohammedan tribes in the Caucasus.
'His marvellous strength, agility, and swordsmanship served him in
good stead. With an Alvarado's leap he landed behind the line of
soldiers about to fire a volley through the raised doorway where
he stood, and whirling his sword in his left hand he cut down three
of them, but was bayoneted by the fourth clean through the breast.
Undismayed, he grasped the weapon in one hand, cut down its owner,
pulled it out of his own body, and escaped into the forest, though
in addition to the bayonet wound he had a rib and shoulder broken
by stones.'
Shamil had been born and bred in the same village with Kazi Mullah,
whose disciple he became, and whose rules of rigid adherence to the
strictest injunctions of Islam he adopted and enforced. He even
attempted to put down, as a practice forbidden by the law of Mahomet,
the inveterate blood feuds that divided and weakened the tribes, with
the politic object of uniting them in the holy war against the
infidels; and when the Kazi had been killed his mantle fell upon
Shamil, who soon proved himself a far more able and terrible leader of
fanatic insurrection. The Russians, who at first believed that the
Kazi's death was a decisive and final blow to the cause of Muridism,
soon found that they were grievously mistaken. Mr. Baddeley's
narrative shows occasionally some disregard of orderly arrangement, so
that the sequence in time and interconnection of incidents is not
always clear. We gather from this part of it, however, that very soon
after Shamil took command the whole country had risen against the
Russians, that their posts were attacked and their detachments cut
off, and that expeditions sent to seize the positions or disperse the
gatherings of the tribes paid dearly for their victories, while they
were more than once repulsed with defeat and disaster. Villages were
burnt; the vineyards and orchards were destroyed; desperate fights,
hand to hand, ended only with the extermination of the defenders by
the exasperated Russian soldiers; and after one campaign, when the
Russian Commander-in-Chief led a considerable force against Shamil's
stronghold, he was content to conclude, in the emperor's name, a
treaty of peace with the tribal chief, being 'compelled to retire by
the total disorganisation of the expeditionary corps, the enormous
loss in _personnel_, and the want of ammunition.' A treaty with the
Russian emperor raised Shamil's reputation high among the tribes;
while the slaughter and devastation inflamed his revengeful temper.
When the Emperor Nicholas came next year to the Caucasus, General
Klugenau met Shamil and tried to persuade him to tender submission in
person, with the result that Klugenau narrowly escaped assassination
at the interview. He was saved by Shamil's intervention. In 1839
almost all the tribes were united under Shamil's command; and the
Russian Government, seriously alarmed, determined that he must be
effectively crushed. In the story of this campaign we have a signal
and striking example of the perils that beset regular troops who
encounter fierce and fearless barbarians on their own ground. The
Russians had a powerful artillery; they were led by experienced
commanders; their officers and soldiers fought with astonishing
courage and endurance. After several bloody actions Shamil was shut up
in the hill fort of Akhlongo, and here the undaunted Murids turned to
bay. It was a stronghold surrounded by ravines and sheer precipices,
accessible only along narrow ridgeways. Mr. Baddeley has related in
full detail the operations and incidents of this eventful siege. The
first assault failed after a prolonged and desperate struggle. 'Only
at nightfall,' writes an eye-witness, 'and at the word of command, did
our troops retire from the bloodstained rock.' The bombardment went on
'until the castle was reduced to a heap of ruins, in which the heroic
defenders seemed literally buried.' After a siege which lasted eighty
days the place was at last taken with a total loss of 3000 Russians,
including 116 officers, killed and wounded. The defenders were
slaughtered almost to the last man; many women and children were
killed; but Shamil again escaped miraculously.
'Vanquished, wounded, a homeless fugitive, without means, with
hardly a follower, it might well seem that nothing was left to the
indomitable chieftain but the life of a hunted outlaw ... yet
within a year Shamil was again the leader of a people in arms;
within three he had inflicted a bloody defeat on his present
victor; yet another, and all northern Daghestan was reconquered,
every Russian garrison there beleaguered or destroyed, and Muridism
triumphant in the forest and on the mountain, from the Samour to
the Terek river, from Vladikavkaz to the Caspian.'
By 1840 the Tchetchnia tribes of the wooded lowlands under the
mountains had broken out into outrageous rebellion, for Shamil had
established himself in the forests, and was harassing the whole
Russian border. 'We have never,' wrote General Golovine, 'had in the
Caucasus an enemy so savage and dangerous as Shamil'; and it was again
decided to send an overwhelming army against him. The two first
expeditions virtually failed. Between 1839 and 1842 the Russians had
lost in killed or wounded 436 officers and 7930 men, and 'had
accomplished little or nothing.' In 1844 the Emperor Nicholas had
despatched large reinforcements to the Caucasus, with stringent orders
to make an end of Shamil's 'terrible despotism' and to subdue the
whole country. On his side Shamil mustered all his forces for an
energetic defence. His mounted bands traversed the borderlands with
amazing rapidity, rushing in suddenly upon the Russian outposts,
waylaying detachments, and bewildering the commanders by the speed and
secrecy of their movements. Count Vorontzoff marched against him with
an army of about 18,000, horse, foot, and artillery. Shamil retreated
gradually before him, drawing on the Russians, and abandoning his
forward positions after a show of defending them. He had laid waste
the country on the line of the Russian advance; so, as supplies were
running very short, Vorontzoff pushed on hastily toward Shamil's
headquarters at Dargo. This place, surrounded by forests,
'lay along the crest of a steep wooded spur of the Betchel ridge,
nowhere very broad, narrowed here and there to a few feet, and
consisting of a series of long descents with shorter intervening
rises. Abattis of giant trunks with branches cunningly interlaced
barred the way at short intervals, and the densely-wooded ravines
on either side swarmed with hidden foes.'
Mr. Baddeley's vivid description of the hurried advance upon Dargo,
and of the Russian retreat after capturing it, has all the tragic
interest of a situation where heroic valour strives vainly against
calamitous misfortune, and brave men, caught in a well-laid snare,
tear their way out of it with the energy of despair. The six barriers
of twisted branches were attacked and carried without serious loss,
though at one point, where the path along the hill-top was narrowest,
the troops fell into confusion, suffered heavily, and were rescued
with some difficulty. Dargo was then occupied without resistance; but
the army had only food for a few days, and Vorontzoff, instead of
retiring immediately, resolved to wait for a convoy that was coming up
from the rear and had reached the edge of the forest. But the force
despatched to protect and bring it into camp had to pass again over
the strait ridgeway, where all the barriers had been reconstructed;
and the Russians again ran the gauntlet of incessant and murderous
fire, losing one of their generals with many officers and men. There
still remained the most arduous task of all, to force a way for the
third time along the ridge with weakened and disheartened troops
encumbered by the provision train that they were escorting to Dargo.
'The enemy were in greater numbers than before; the barriers had
once more been renewed, and a heavy rain added greatly to the
difficulties of the march.... On the narrow neck the advance guard
found the breastwork of trees faced with the Russian dead of the
previous day, stripped, mutilated, and piled up; it was enfiladed
by four smaller breastworks on each side.'
Passek, a daring and fearless commander, was killed in leading the
attack with other officers and many men. The foremost regiments fell
back in disorder. Yet the main body, with their general, who charged
at the head of companies like any captain, struggled along the ridge,
fighting all the way, though the Mohammedans kept up an unceasing
rifle-fire, and from time to time they dashed right into the Russian
line. Nevertheless the predicament of the Russians was becoming
hopeless, when a fresh regiment sent out to their rescue from Dargo
threw itself between the exhausted troops and their assailants, and
thus enabled them to reach the camp. But most of the convoy had been
lost, the total list of casualties was frightful, and for Vorontzoff,
with little to eat, surrounded by victorious hordes, encumbered with
more than a thousand wounded men, the only prospect of saving the rest
of his army lay in cutting his way homeward through many miles of
forest. Mr. Baddeley's description of the retreat is intensely
dramatic. After fighting every step of the road the starving and
demoralised army was brought to a standstill, and was eventually saved
from annihilation by fresh troops that arrived just in time under the
Russian commander on the frontier, who had foreseen the emergency, and
made forced marches to the rescue of his chief.
Thus the attempt to piece the heart of Shamil's country had been
completely foiled; and Vorontzoff now confined himself to
strengthening his fortified posts, linking up more effectively their
connection, and improving his communications. But in this situation
the Russians were acting upon the outer circle of Shamil's central
position in the mountains, whereas their enemy held the interior
lines, and could choose his point of attack. Shamil's strategy was
directed toward keeping the whole Russian frontier in constant alarm,
breaking in upon various and distant parts of the line by incessant
raids and surprises, in order to prevent concentration of the Russian
forces on either flank. He made a daring attempt to seize Kabarda, on
the extreme west of the border, but was hunted out of it by the
activity of Freytag, the general whose foresight and promptitude had
extricated Vorontzoff from destruction. This desultory warfare went on
until in 1847 Vorontzoff, having secured his base, again tried
conclusions with Shamil, being resolved that it was necessary to
reduce the fortified village (or _aoul_) of Ghergebil, which Shamil
was no less determined to defend. On the morning of the assault the
Russians, in their camps below the precipitous rocks, above which
stood the aoul, 'heard the melancholy, long-drawn notes of the
death-chant rising from behind its wall as from an open grave,' the
sure prelude to a stubborn and sanguinary fight.
The forlorn hope rushed forward, but lost its way and suffered
severely; the supports kept the right direction and made for the
breach.
'A withering fire from hundreds of rifles mowed down the troops
like grass. Their gallant commander, Yeodskeemoff, fell dead,
pierced by a dozen bullets. The captain of the grenadier company
strode over his body and gained the top of the breach, to fall in
turn; the men were exasperated rather than daunted; a Danish
officer, more fortunate and not less brave than his predecessors,
led them forward, and the wall was won. In front was the first row
of low _saklias_ (stone houses) and, climbing their walls, the
attackers rushed forward, when to their horror the ground gave way
beneath their feet, and amid shouts of demoniac laughter they fell
on to the swords and daggers of the Murids below. The flat roofs
had been taken off the whole row of houses and replaced by layers
of brushwood thinly covered with earth; every house, in fact, was a
death-trap.'
Nevertheless the troops came on, and most of them got inside the
village, but they were entangled in the labyrinth of narrow streets,
and were obliged to retire. Another assault ended with another
repulse, 'and the victorious Murids, driving the broken columns before
them, followed until stopped by the bayonets of the reserve.'
Vorontzoff had now been twice beaten off by Shamil: he had been
repulsed, and had nearly lost his army in the forests; his troops had
been hurled back with slaughter from the mountain fort. Next year he
despatched another large army, furnished with heavy artillery, against
Ghergebil, which drove out the Murid garrison by a tremendous
bombardment, but retired without occupying the place. During the next
few years, though wild work went on as usual along the border, where a
sharp guerilla warfare was kept up, neither Shamil nor Vorontzoff
attempted to strike any decisive blow. But the lowlands were
devastated by perpetual incursions and reprisals, and the forest
tribes, placed between two fires, driven to choose between the Murids
and the Russians, gradually transferred their allegiance to the side
best able to protect them, and migrated northward across the Russian
line. The uninhabited woodlands became a kind of neutral ground which
neither side cared to occupy; and from this time Shamil's sphere of
action was confined to the mountains of Daghestan. Then, in 1854,
began the war in the Crimea, when according to Mr. Baddeley the Allies
might have ruined Russia in the Caucasus by making common cause with
Shamil and supporting him vigorously. But England and France were
absorbed in besieging Sebastopol, and Omar Pasha's Transcaucasian
campaign was undertaken too late for any effective result. Mr.
Baddeley considers that in neglecting their opportunity of backing
Shamil the Allies made a strategic blunder; yet we agree with him that
this is not to be regretted. For the credit of civilisation it is well
that they did not let loose the savage Mohammedan fanatics upon
Christian Georgia and the peaceful Russian settlements beyond the
frontier, to their own dishonour, and to the misery of the people whom
Russia was protecting. Shamil did make one foray into Georgia, when a
party of his men carried off two Georgian princesses, the wife and
sister of the Viceroy, who were kept by Shamil in rigorous captivity
and treated cruelly for eight months while negotiations went on for
their release. His object was to exchange them for his son, who had
been captured by the Russians some fourteen years earlier, had been
brought up from childhood among them, and at this time was a
lieutenant in a Russian lancer regiment. As Shamil demanded not only
his son but a large ransom for the princesses, there was long haggling
over the money, but this point was at last settled, and the exchange
took place on the banks of the river. The princesses and Jamal-ud-deen
crossed from opposite banks to the escorts appointed to deliver and
receive them; the youth was then made to change his Russian uniform
for a native dress and rode up the hill to his father, who welcomed
him with tears and embraces.
The scene must have been strangely picturesque; and the whole story
illustrates the accidents and incongruities of warfare between nations
whose standard of morals and manners is entirely different. The
abduction and brutal treatment of the princesses were altogether
contrary to the rules and ideas of modern belligerents; but what would
have been to the Russians a foul disgrace was to the rude Caucasian
chief no more than a simple and justifiable method of extorting his
son's release. On the other hand the Russians had bred up their
captive at their capital; they had converted him to their own social
habits and ways of life. And the sequel is instructive for those who
have yet to learn how completely European education may incapacitate
an Asiatic from returning to associate with his own people, how
effectually it may obliterate the early influences of race and
religion.
'The fate of Jamal-ud-deen was indeed a sad one. Brought up from
the age of twelve years in St. Petersburg and entered in the
Russian army, he was now a stranger to his own father, an alien in
the land of his birth, and totally unfitted to resume his place
among a semi-barbarous people. He had looked forward to his return
with the gloomiest forebodings, which were fully justified by the
event. As a matter of fact, there could be little real sympathy
between his fellow-countrymen and himself; they soon began to look
upon him with suspicion and distrust. Even Shamil was estranged
when he found his son imbued with Russian ideas, and convinced of
Russia's right to the extent of counselling surrender.' ... Nothing
'could reconcile him to the change from civilisation to barbarism;
he grew melancholy, fell into a decline, and died within three
years.'
After the end of the Crimean War the Russian Government could turn its
undivided attention to the enterprise of finishing the conquest of the
Caucasus. The preliminary work of cutting roads through the forests,
throwing bridges over rivers and ravines, destroying the enemy's petty
forts, and throwing forward detachments to occupy important points,
was carried out actively during 1857; and in the next summer three
separate columns, under one supreme command, drove back Shamil's
bands, and took up strong positions in the heart of his country. The
inhabitants, severely harried by the Murids, who maltreated
ferociously all villages that would not join them, took refuge under
Russian protection; and though Shamil made several bold attempts to
break through the circle that was gradually encompassing him, he was
compelled to abandon Veden, so long his home, which was taken in April
1859. The forest tracts were now entirely under Russian control, and
the highland tribes were rapidly surrendering to the Russian
commanders, whose strategy it was to avoid frontal attacks upon large
bodies prepared to fight behind entrenchments, but to make resistance
impossible by enveloping movements. In the mountains, which had so
long defied the armies of the Czar, the local chiefs and their
clansmen were now falling away from Shamil, who was forced to retreat
hastily with a few hundred followers to his stronghold at Gooneeb,
where he entrenched himself for a final stand, knowing well that
defence was hopeless, yet resolved to die fighting. But his men were
almost exterminated by the overpowering numbers which the Russians
threw upon the fortifications in their assault. When the outworks had
fallen, and the place was practically won, the Russian commander, who
desired to capture Shamil alive, suspended the final rush upon the
spot where he still held out, and sent him a message that his life
would be spared on surrender. He yielded, and rode out to meet the
Russian lines; but a burst of cheering from the Russian soldiers at
sight of him so startled him that he went back. A Russian officer
persuaded him to turn again.
'Followed by about fifty of his Murids, the sole remnant of his
once mighty hosts, he rode towards where Bariatinsky, surrounded by
his staff, sat waiting on a stone. Shamil dismounted and was led to
the feet of his conqueror, who told him that he answered for his
personal safety and that of his family; but he had refused terms
when offered, and all else must now depend on the will of the
emperor. The stern Imam bowed his head in silence and was led off
captive. Next day he was sent to Shoura, and thence to Russia,
where later on his family was allowed to join him.'
In the foregoing pages we have run rapidly over Mr. Baddeley's
narrative of the long and laborious operations by which the Russians
gradually made good their footing in the Caucasus, and at last
consolidated their dominion. We have necessarily omitted many curious
incidents and exploits characteristic of a deadly struggle between
antagonists representing the collision of archaic with modern
societies, the clash of two religions eternally irreconcilable, the
deadly wrestle of assailants and defenders unlike in everything but
their tenacious intrepidity. The story, until Mr. Baddeley wrote it,
has hitherto been little known in England. Yet Englishmen should be
interested in this singular and striking example of the obstinate
resistance that can be opposed by free and warlike tribes to the
organised military forces of a first-class European Government; for
they are not without similar experiences of their own. And moreover
the long contest for possession of the tracts lying between the Black
Sea and the Caspian, on the borderland between Europe and Asia, had
its effect in the wider sphere of Asiatic politics. If the Russians,
in their wars with Turkey and Persia, had not been constantly
distracted by the raids and revolts of the Caucasian highlanders, the
consequences to these two Eastern kingdoms might have been much more
serious. It will be remembered that at this period (1826-8) we were
actively concerned in preserving Persia's independence insomuch that
the Russians had accused us of fomenting hostilities against them. At
a later time also Sir Henry Rawlinson, writing in 1849, when Shamil
was still formidable and undefeated, observes that it would have been
impossible for Russia, with her communications at the mercy of such an
enemy, to carry her arms farther eastward into Asia, or to contemplate
territorial extension in that direction. And in a subsequent Note, of
1873, he points out that not until after Shamil's surrender in 1859
did Russia begin to push her way continuously along the upper course
of the Jaxartes river toward Tashkend and the Asiatic midlands. So
long, indeed, as the mountains between the two seas were unsubdued,
they formed an effectual barrier to the expansion of Russia into
Central Asia; but when that frontier fortress of Islam had been
captured, and when the Circassians had emigrated into Turkish
territory, the onward march of Russia went on securely and speedily.
Tashkend was taken and Kokand annexed in 1866; and soon afterward the
communications between the Russian base in Georgia and the Russian
garrisons in Turkestan were firmly established. Thereafter the flood
of Russian conquest overflowed irresistibly the plains of Central
Asia, until it was arrested by another breakwater, the kingdom of
Afghanistan. It is true that the North-western Afghan borderlands were
comparatively open and easily penetrable by an invading force; but
beyond them lie lofty ranges with passes at high altitudes, guarded by
a hard-fighting and intractable people, and on the farther side of
these mountains stands the rival European Power whose policy it had
been always to retard and obstruct the Russian advance across the
Asiatic Continent. We may conjecture that if Afghanistan had been
left, as the Caucasus was left after the Crimean War, isolated and
obliged to rely on its own resources for defence, the drama of the
Caucasian wars would have been repeated. The Russians would have
besieged and reduced without great difficulty this second mountain
fortress; and after another similar though less protracted struggle
the Afghans would have undergone the same fate as the Daghestanis. The
Czar's rulership, solidly established in the two natural strongholds
that stand on either side of the great central plains, and command,
east and west, the exits and entrances, would have been supreme
throughout Mohammedan Asia.
That the Russian armies were forced to halt on the edge of Afghanistan
is thus a point of cardinal importance, and it marks a turning-point
in the career of her expansion. It also produced a situation that is
the outcome of the different strategy adopted by England and Russia
respectively, in circumstances not otherwise very dissimilar. For
whereas the Russians had been compelled by imperative political and
military exigencies to conquer and occupy the Caucasian highlands, the
policy of the British Government has always been not to subjugate
Afghanistan, but to preserve its independence and to fortify it as an
outwork for the protection of the gates of India. It is due to this
fundamental distinction of aim and object that the history of the
relations of the British with Afghanistan during the nineteenth
century, and of their management of the tribes on the Afghan border,
differs widely from Mr. Baddeley's narrative of events and
transactions in the Caucasus. Nevertheless in both instances the
general situation presented a strong resemblance. The Russians,
pushing their dominion down from the north to the Black Sea and the
Caspian, were checked and baffled for many years by the woods and
precipices that lay across the line of their march into Trans-Caspia.
The British, moving up by long strides north-westward across India,
came to a halt at the foot of the Afghan hills fifty years ago; and to
this day they have scarcely moved farther. Here they were met by races
almost identical in character and circumstances with the tribes of
Daghestan, fanatically attached to the faith of Islam, profoundly
influenced by religious preachers, prizing their liberty above their
lives, and looking down from their rugged uplands upon a great
military power that had swept away many principalities and subdued all
the cities of the plain below. If the British had pressed onward and
endeavoured to take possession of Afghanistan [which had indeed been
occupied by the Moghul empire in its prime] they would certainly have
been involved in a series of sanguinary conflicts, revolts, and costly
expeditions not unlike those which put so severe a strain upon the
Russian armies in the Caucasus. This, as we know, they did not do;
they adopted the alternative of asserting an exclusive protectorate
over the country; they were content to remain outside it so long as no
rival power was allowed to set foot in it. Yet we know that even this
much more prudent policy was carried out at a heavy cost. The British
army suffered at least one grave disaster by the total destruction of
a division in the retreat from Kabul in the winter of 1842-3. And the
Afghan War of 1878-80, with the massacre of the British envoy and his
escort at Kabul in 1879, showed us the perils and difficulties of even
a temporary and partial occupation.
At the present moment, however, the objects of our policy have been
satisfactorily fulfilled. The Russians have settled with us the
frontier line between their dominion and Afghanistan, and have bound
themselves to respect it. With the Afghan Amir we are on friendly
terms, and we have taken up our permanent position on his Eastern
border towards India, reserving to ourselves the control of the tribes
within a broad belt of territory, otherwise independent, between the
Afghan kingdom and British India. This tract is intersected by lofty
ridges running parallel for the most part to our frontier, with
precipitous slopes toward India, with a few practicable passes and
numerous gorges formed by the drainage from the watershed, enclosing
some fertile valleys along the courses of the rivers, inhabited by a
hardy population that is broken up into manifold clans and sects by
the configuration of their country. The Caucasus, as we learn from Mr.
Baddeley, 'is peopled by a greater number of different tribes and
races than any similar extent on the surface of the globe'; and it is
precisely from the same causes, difficulty of intercourse between
villages secluded in the valleys or perched on the heights, scarcity
of sustenance, inbred jealousy of each other, feuds and factions, that
the groups of the Afghan borderland dwell apart, become estranged or
hostile, are at constant war with each other, and cannot unite against
a common enemy. But while in the Caucasus this trituration of the
people has produced a multiplicity of dialects, the Afghan borderers
speak a language that is generally the same.
In Dr. Pennell's book, the title of which stands at the head of this
article, we have a vivid description, drawn from life, of the names,
habits, and peculiarities of these primitive communities, with many
incidental examples of the relations existing between them and the
British officers who are in touch with them on the frontier. Lord
Roberts, in a short introduction that may be taken as a guarantee of
the accuracy and authenticity of the volume's contents, tells us that
it is a valuable record of sixteen years' good work by a medical
missionary in charge of a mission station at Bannu, on the
north-western frontier of India. And Dr. Pennell's experience,
acquired in the prodigious enterprise of taming and converting to
Christianity some of the most murderous ruffians and inveterate
robbers in Asia, has provided him with a rare insight into their
character, and furnished him with numerous anecdotes of their strange
inconsistencies and wayward, impulsive nature. On the Afghan frontier,
indeed, we may survey a situation that has frequently recurred in the
history of organised governments, whenever they have found themselves
in contact, and therefore in collision, with intractable barbarism.
Immediately across the border line may be seen in the Afridi tribes a
complete and living picture of man in his aboriginal condition of
perpetual war, under no government at all, in daily peril of ending by
a violent death a life that in the pithy words of Hobbes is 'poor,
nasty, brutish, and short.' A few steps back into the British district
brings us among men, often of the same breed and tribe, dwelling
without arms in peace and security, pleading before regular law
courts, learning in English schools, occupied in commerce and industry
under the protection of magistrates and police. The contrast in
morals and manners is as abrupt as the transition from the Afghan
hills to the Indian plains. Such is the frontier along which British
officers are charged with duties of watch and ward. Their business is
to guard the Indian districts that march with the wild borderland, to
prevent or punish incursions by the marauding tribes who have
continued from time immemorial to live in practical anarchy. They obey
no laws and acknowledge no ruler, though in emergencies they appeal
alternately to the Afghan Amir for assistance against the British and
to the British Government against any encroachments by the Amir.
The Afghan character, writes Dr. Pennell, is a strange medley of
contradictory qualities, in which courage blends with stealth, the
basest treachery with the most touching fidelity, intense religious
fanaticism with an avarice that will even induce a man to play false
with his faith, and a lavish hospitality with an irresistible
propensity for thieving. It will be remembered how 'Muridism,' the
spirit of religious enthusiasm inflaming political hostility, was
stirred up by the Mullahs of the Caucasus against the Russians, and
embittered the resistance of the tribes. The same elements of fiery
hatred lie close below the surface on the Afghan borderland. Dr.
Pennell tells us that there is no section of the Afghan people which
has a greater influence on their life than the Mullahs, who sometimes
use their power to rouse the tribes to join in warfare against the
English infidels; and that a prelude to one of the little frontier
wars has often been some ardent Mullah going up and down the frontier,
like Peter the Hermit, inciting them to break out. The notorious
Mullah Powindah, who is still a firebrand on the border, is reported
to possess a magical charm that renders his followers invulnerable
before English bullets. Whether he led them in person to battle is
not mentioned; though he could hardly adopt the excuse of Friar John,
who, as Rabelais tells us, made a liberal distribution of mirific
amulets to his soldiers, assuring them that those who had firm faith
in their efficacy would come to no harm. He added, however, that to
himself the charm would be useless, because unfortunately he could not
believe in it. Such an explanation would be coldly received among the
Afghans.
Under the exhortations of these Mullahs their students often became
Ghazis.
'The Ghazi is a man who has taken an oath to kill some
non-Mohammedan, preferably a European, as representing the ruling
race, but, failing this, a Hindu or a Sikh is a lawful object of
his fanaticism.... When the disciple has been worked up to the
requisite degree of religious excitement, he is usually further
fortified by copious draughts of intoxicating drugs.... Not a year
passes on the frontier but some young officer falls a victim to one
of these Ghazis.'
It is manifest that this sporadic Muridism might become epidemic under
serious and widespreading excitement, but the provocation that leads
to petty frontier wars comes entirely from the tribes, who make
predatory incursions upon the Indian villages and refuse all
reparation. In every tribe, as Dr. Pennell tells us, the outlaws who
live by raiding and robbery, and the Mullahs who detest the infidel
and fear his rule, are the fomenters of crime and outrage.
The vendetta, or blood-feud, our author tells us, has eaten into the
very core of Afghan life. At present some of the best and noblest
families in Afghanistan are on the verge of extermination through this
wretched system. Even the women are not exempt. In a village which
the missionary visited he noticed that the houses communicated
laterally by little doors all down one long street; and on inquiry he
was told that some time before a great faction fight had been carried
on between the two rows of houses. The villagers 'were always in
ambush to fire at each other across the street. The only way to get to
the supply of water was to go from house to house to the bottom, and
in order to do this without exposure the doors had been made, while by
common consent they had agreed not to shoot while getting their
supplies from the stream.' Another anecdote relates how a British
officer visited a petty chief in his tower, and would have opened a
window to look at the country round. 'He was hurriedly and
unceremoniously pulled back by the Afghan, who told him that his
cousin had been watching that window for months in the hope of an
opportunity of shooting him there.' In fact the chief was actually
shot at this window a short time after the visit. From the universal
enmity existing between cousins in Afghanistan the proverb 'as great
an enemy as a cousin' has become a household word. 'The causes of 90
per cent. of these feuds are described by the Afghans as belonging to
one of three heads--women, money, and land; and on such matters
disputes are more likely to arise between cousins than strangers.' We
may compare Mr. Baddeley's account of an almost identical state of
things in Daghestan. It was split up (he says) 'into numerous khanates
and free communities of many different races and languages, for the
most part bitterly hostile one to another. Strife and bloodshed were
chronic between village and village, between house and house ... and
of many contributory causes none had operated so powerfully in
originating and perpetuating this state of things as the elaborate
system of blood-feud and vengeance.' And he gives one instance of a
quarrel that arose from the theft of a hen from a villager, who
retaliated by appropriating a cow. The retort was by taking a horse,
upon which the murders began.
'The blood-feud was now in full swing, and was kept up for three
centuries, during which some scores, some say hundreds, were
sacrificed in the name of honour to this terrible custom; and all
for a hen.'
But it may be more interesting to remind our readers that these feuds
were 'in full swing' not so very long ago in our own island. A
remarkable description of the state of the Border between England and
Scotland in the sixteenth century and earlier has recently been
published.[39] In a chapter headed 'The Deadly Feud' the author tells
us that blood-feuds set family against family and clan against clan;
and he quotes from a report submitted by Burghley to the English
Government a passage in which the term is defined thus:
'Deadly Foed, the word of enmytie on the Borders, implacable
without the blood and whole family destroyed.'
Feuds of the most bitter and hostile character, we are told, were an
everyday occurrence, and were carried on with the most ferocious
animosity on both sides. The feud was inherited along with the rest of
the family property. It was handed down from generation to generation.
The son and grandson maintained it with a bitterness which in some
cases seemed year by year to grow more intense. It affected a man's
whole social relationship, and gave rise to endless animosities and
heart-burnings.
In fact the whole description in Mr. Borland's book of the feuds
prevalent three centuries ago on our own Border might be applied to
those now actually raging among the Afghans, with the simple
alteration of time, places, and names. The comparison is worth making,
if only to show that similar conditions and circumstances produce
everywhere the same results; and that there is yet hope for the wild
Afghan, if hereafter it should be his destiny to fall under a strong
government that can enforce laws, though this is the fate which he
most dreads. No axiom is more easily refuted by historic experience
than the commonplace saying that men cannot be made moral by statutes;
the truth is that respect for a neighbour's purse or person cannot be
inculcated by any other method.
It was the political division along the Scottish Border that so long
prevented the suppression of lawlessness, and when the two kingdoms
were united it gradually ceased. On the frontier between Afghanistan
and India the British Government keeps the peace within its own
districts, but maintains only a fluctuating and ineffectual control
over the tribal territory. Yet it is manifest that no permanent
pacification can be accomplished until both sides of the line are
brought under the same firm and civilised administration. For such a
purpose it would be necessary, and would be practicable, to establish
strong posts among the turbulent highlanders, to make roads, and
probably to insist on a general disarmament, as the Russians did in
the Caucasus. But the British Government has always been reluctant to
undertake so arduous and so costly a task; though until some measure
of that kind is found possible, the intestine strife and chronic
disorder must continue; and in fact it is the natural and inevitable
solution of the problem.
'No doubt,' Dr. Pennell observes, 'the Government desires not to
make any further annexation of this barren, mountainous, and
uninviting region, but it is not always easy to avoid doing so; and
it is an universal experience of history that when there are a
number of disorganised and ill-governed units on the borders of a
great power, they become inevitably, though it may be gradually and
piece by piece, absorbed into the latter.'
In short, to manage a country without occupying it is no less
impossible than to steer a boat without taking a seat in it. The
process of subordinating the Afghan tribes to effective control will
probably go forward slowly and at intervals. It may be that when one
part of the country is taken resolutely into hand, the rest will be
overawed and quieted; but we doubt whether any other remedy can be
found for the feuds and forays that from time immemorial have
distracted this borderland, which has preserved the primitive
conditions of life and habits that have long disappeared from the
frontiers of all other civilised nations. Yet the objections to
pushing forward our landmarks into these mountains are great and
manifest, while the disadvantages of the present system are equally
patent. The attempt to protect our subjects by a line of outposts, to
adopt the tactics of stationary defence, varied by occasional sallies
forth from our cantonments to pursue assassins or to punish
depredators by destroying houses and crops, is to assume a somewhat
impotent and undignified attitude, hardly creditable in the case of a
mighty empire worried by mere highland caterans. The Indian
Government, therefore, finds itself placed in a dilemma: to advance or
to stand still is equally difficult; nor is any practicable issue out
of this situation to be foreseen.
We are compelled, unwillingly, to pass over without the notice that it
undoubtedly deserves Dr. Pennell's very impressive accounts of his
intercourse, as medical missionary, with the strange folk whom he was
trying to reclaim from savagery, of the risks which he faced with cool
courage and self-command in his travels among them, and of his quaint
theological disputations with arrogant Mullahs, whose invincible
ignorance easily convinced a congenial audience of their argumentative
superiority. His skill in surgery naturally invested him with a high
reputation among people who were incessantly fighting--he had more
success in healing their wounds than in curing their vices. His
general 'Deductions' in regard to the present state and prospect of
Christian missions in India are well worth attention, and with his
survey of the existing conditions and tendencies of religious
movements in India all who have studied the subject will generally
agree. He lays stress on the delusion that to assault and overthrow
the citadels of Islam and Hinduism, if such an achievement were
possible, would be to lay open a clear field for the success of
Christianity. 'Much more probably we should find an atheistic and
materialistic India, in which Mammon, Wealth, Industrial Success, and
Worldliness had become new gods.' Such attacks upon Eastern religion
'may for the moment win a Pyrrhic victory ... but they are at the same
time undermining the religious spirit, the ardent faith, the
unquestioning devotion which have been the crown and glory of India
for ages.' The wisdom and enlightened morality of these warnings are
incontestable. But at such questions we can only glance, although from
one point of view they may be said to have an important bearing upon
the main subject of this article.
In conclusion, we may observe that the frontiers of European dominion
in Asia are the battleground upon which the forces of archaic and
modern societies meet in arms for decisive conflict. In the ancient
world the contest was only ethnical and political; the rude tribes
were coerced into amalgamation with an expanding State, far superior
in power and usually more humane. 'The nations of the empire[40]
insensibly melted away into the Roman name and people.' But the
antique polytheism had no fanatical element; the deities of the
victorious Romans were often acknowledged and accepted by the
conquered population. Whereas in these latter days the Russians in the
Caucasus and the English on the Afghan border have discovered that in
the passionate religious animosity between Islam and Christendom lies
the mainspring of the stubborn energy and fierce hatred that so long
held their armies in check, and that still prevents the establishment
of even a pacific _modus vivendi_ on the most important frontier of
India.