a covered way up to the foot of a portion of the fortress which had
newly been constructed, and the Circassians becoming anxious to learn
the cause of the strange noises constantly heard beneath their feet, a
party of the latter imprudently went out to reconnoitre, when the chief
of a battalion who lay in wait with his men on the second terrace,
seizing upon the advantage offered, not only drove the exploring party
back into the fortress, but also went in with them. The Circassians
within, however, seeing that the Russians were mixed up with their own
comrades refrained from firing. This gave the other battalions time to
hasten to the support of the party which they saw had gained the summit,
when a hand to hand conflict ensued in which both sides fought, the one
with the bravery of despair, the other with that of victory. But
superior numbers prevailed; and four times stormed the fortress fell. Of
the mountaineers that lay dead on the top of the rock the Russians
counted, according to some of their accounts, fifteen hundred, according
to others, more likely to be true, seven hundred; of the wounded, from
nine hundred to five hundred; while their own loss was set down as
considerably less than one half these numbers. Several hundred prisoners
also were taken, consisting of women and children; for of men there were
none left. With the blood of these the Koissu was already red, and their
bodies were thrown in afterwards.
But Schamyl, who had often been seen during the final conflict
surrounded by his white turbaned murids, was nowhere to be found. The
fortress, all the approaches to which were strictly guarded, was
ransacked; every nook and corner explored; but the Imam was nowhere to
be found. Alas! for General Grabbe, that but one man should escape from
Akhulgo, and he Schamyl. His single head would have made up for the loss
of the three thousand Russian heads laid low in the siege; but without
it the victory was barren, all its spoils a mere rock in the mountains!
The manner of Schamyl's escape was kept secret by him, as before had
been the case at Himri and at Chunsach; but among the reports respecting
it which were circulated in the mountains, the following one was most
generally credited.
On the fall of the fortress a number of its defenders took refuge in
certain caves and holes in the rock, into which they let themselves down
by means of ladders. In one of these was Schamyl with a few of his
murids. Attacked by the enemy, this one held out longer than the others;
but the rock being guarded on all sides, escape was thought impossible.
The murids, however, having devised a plan for preserving the life of
their chief by the loss of their own, constructed from materials
previously collected in the cave, a raft of sufficient size to carry
several persons, and letting it down at night into the river below, then
followed themselves. The guard on the bank observing this manouvre,
immediately gave chase to the raft, those on horseback plunging into the
stream, those on foot running along the bank, and all together pouring
their fire into the little party of murids among whom was, as they
supposed, Schamyl. But the attention of the enemy once turned away from
the cave, the wily chieftain let himself down into the water, swam the
river, and in another moment was safe under the protection of the rocks
and the forest.
Certain it is that early in the month of September, Schamyl reappeared
in the aoul Siassan, in the woods of Itchkeria. There, partly for the
sake of ransoming the families of his nearest relatives and most devoted
murids taken captive in Akhulgo, he sued for peace, and offered to give
in pledge of sincerity two of his own sons as hostages. But General
Grabbe insisting as a preliminary condition that Schamyl should take up
his residence in an aoul friendly to the Russians, the negotiations were
not proceeded with.
Thereupon, General Grabbe having razed Akhulgo, having laid a
contribution in sheep and cattle on some districts, taken hostages from
others, and received the bread and salt of submission from all the aouls
through which he passed, returned in triumph to Temir-Chan-Schura. Great
thereupon was the rejoicing in all the fortresses of the Russian
line--in all the Cis and Trans-Caucasian provinces--and in St.
Petersburg itself where the emperor ordered a medal to be struck
commemorative of this brilliant feat at arms, and copies of it to be
distributed among the brave soldiers who had taken part in it.
XXXV.
THE EXPEDITION AGAINST DARGO.
The defeat at Akhulgo did not turn away from Schamyl the hearts of his
countrymen. On the contrary, now thrice delivered by Allah out of the
hands of the infidels, he was regarded by them with the greater
veneration. Though escaped with only his life and his arms, when he
appeared in the aouls of Itchkeria, a territory lying north of the
Andian branch of the Koissu, the mountaineers received him as a prophet
come directly from God, and mounting their horses followed him. The news
of his coming ran before him through all the highlands; the warriors
half drew their shaskas at hearing it; the chieftains of the
Tchetchenians who had received the cross of St. George from the
Russians, tore it from their breasts; and the bards striking with a
frenzy of inspiration their lyres, chanted the miraculous deliverance
and great deeds of this successor of Mahomet.
Thus going from aoul to aoul preaching faith in Allah and war against
his enemies, sending out also disciples to visit in his name the remoter
districts, threatening death to all who held with the Russians, here
driving away flocks and herds, and there taking hostages, he in a few
months succeeded in rallying around his standards great numbers of the
Tchetchenians, of the Lesghians, and of the various tribes of Daghestan.
Disgusted by the treatment he received at the hands of the Russians, as
was also the case with most of the highland tribes who had recently been
obliged to submit their necks to the yoke of bondage, even his old enemy
Hadji-Murad came over to the side of the Imam, bringing the greater part
of Avaria with him. The spirit of fanatic war swept over the whole
eastern Caucasus like a tempest; and those tribes, like the Salatanians,
who from the nearness of their position to the Russian line were obliged
nominally to acknowledge the supremacy of the czar, burned in their
hearts to join again the standard of revolt.
His head-quarters Schamyl now established in Dargo, an aoul consisting
of about seventy houses, and situated some fifty miles northwest from
Akhulgo, in that part of Tchetchenia inhabited by the Itchkerians.
Though an open aoul, Dargo was sufficiently protected by the mountains
and the thick forests which everywhere covered them; for here the
primeval woods had never been disturbed by the axe of any pioneers of
civilization. The oaks stretched out against the sky their twisted
branches crowned with the glory of two centuries; the beeches with their
innumerable leaves spread out a wider shade than those which in Italy
inspired the pastoral reed of Virgil; the round-topped elms towered high
above the gracefully pointed birches, and the trembling poplars; while
below in many localities a vast variety of flower-bearing plants, vines,
and creepers formed a tangled web as beautiful to the eye and fragrant
to the sense as to the feet impenetrable.
But instructed by the disasters of the campaign of Akhulgo, Schamyl
resolved no more to concentrate his forces and attempt to meet the enemy
face to face. Accordingly, apportioning them among his chief murids,
such as Achwerdu-Mahomet, Schwaib-Mollah, Ulubuy-Mollah, Taschaw-Hadji,
Dschewad-Khan, and Hadji-Murad, besides retaining a considerable force
under his own command, he was enabled to overawe a very great number of
tribes, and to threaten the Russians simultaneously at various points.
Inroads were made at one time into the land of the Kumucks, that of
Schamchal, and Avaria; at another, the Russian line was threatened; and
again, the forts were attacked on the road to Kisliar. If hard pushed
the murids retreated; wherever opportunity offered they struck a blow
and suddenly retired; those tribes who wavered in their allegiance found
themselves unexpectedly visited with retribution; and when the
Tchetchenians, aggrieved by Schamyl's apparent neglect of their
interests, took advantage of a wound received by him to send messengers
to Tiflis to sue for peace, immediately he appeared in their midst,
terrifying rather than winning them back to the cause of the patriots.
Such remained the state of affairs until the year 1842, when General
Grabbe, less benefited by experience than his antagonist, resolved to
make an expedition against Dargo, similar to that of Akhulgo. Differing
in his views of the proper mode of conducting the war from his superior,
Governor-general Golowin, who resided in Tiflis, away from the scene of
actual hostilities, and who was in favor of the less aggressive system
of a blockade, he had then just returned from St. Petersburg, whither he
had gone to explain his plans of action to the imperial cabinet, and
whence partly in consequence of his representations the emperor had sent
his minister of war, Prince Tschernitscheff to inspect the military
posts in both Cis and Trans-Caucasia. To surprise then the Prince, upon
his arrival on the left flank of the line of operations, by a splendid
feat of arms which should serve to demonstrate the correctness of his
own theory of procedure, General Grabbe undertook the expedition against
Dargo.
On the twenty ninth of May, accordingly, he set out at the head of
thirteen battalions, or about eight thousand six hundred foot-soldiers.
Of cavalry, on account of the difficult nature of the march, he took
none, excepting a few Cossacks to attend upon his own person. Every
soldier was loaded down with sixty cartridges, and provisions for eight
days in his knapsack. The guns, four and six pounders, were drawn each
by four horses; and there were besides a few baggage-wagons, which were
dragged with still more difficulty over ground where wheels never rolled
before.
At the close of the first day's march, the soldiers as they lay around
their camp-fires congratulated themselves that they had not heard on the
way the report of a single rifle; though some of the sharpshooters of
the vanguard pretended that they had seen here and there the slender
form of a Circassian flitting like an apparition or a wood-demon behind
the large-stemmed trees. But after the soldiers, having cooked and eaten
their pottage and swallowed the refreshing draught of _wodka_, had
stretched their limbs wearied with the hard day's march upon the
sweet-smelling herbs and branches, suddenly a rattling volley of
musketry brought every man to his feet. The Circassians were upon them.
But in the dark they could not discern the enemy scattered about among
the trees, and could fire only wherever they saw a flash. The contest,
however, did not prove to be a serious one, from lack of certain aim,
comparatively few falling on either side; but the firing continued at
intervals through the night effectually scared away sleep, and thereby
rendered the soldiers less fit for the duties of the day following.
When the morning dawning lit up the darkness of the woods, not a
Circassian was to be seen. The enemy had in fact begun to put his new
tactics into execution, worrying the march he had no wish to arrest, and
giving the column of invaders only a foretaste of the retribution which
awaited them for daring to profane by their presence the woods free from
the foundations of the world. During the freshness of the early morning
the column advanced unhindered save by the unevenness of the ground, the
thick-standing trees, and the undergrowth which in many places almost
barred the way which it beautified. But towards noon, as the route led
through a ravine in the forest, the firing recommenced. A considerable
body of Circassians posted behind the trees poured a murderous volley in
upon the vanguard. The number of the wounded increased to such a degree
that the horses and wagons were not sufficient for their transportation.
Thereupon several of the higher officers, their minds weighed down with
sad presentiments, advised the commanding general to relinquish an
expedition which at every step seemed to be involved in greater
difficulties and more serious dangers. But the heart of General Grabbe
was set upon entertaining the imperial minister of war with the
celebration of a great victory; and he kept on.
On the second evening of the march the tents were pitched in a small,
open meadow in the hills, skirted by the forest; yet the weary soldiers
were not lulled to sleep by the soft murmuring of the night wind in the
tree tops, nor by the silvery tinkling of the brook which flowed through
the green; but all night long the sharp crack of rifles and the whizzing
of bullets drove away repose, and filled the before silent woods with
the tumult and the pains of a pandemonium. Nor did the rising sun
scatter the enemy with the darkness, but at every step of the morning's
march the pitiless missiles of destruction were hurled from invisible
foes upon the now nearly decimated column.
Twelve wersts more, and it would be at the end of its march. The little
aoul of Dargo, perched on a hill-top, was even descried in the
transparent distance. But the eyes which were turned towards it beheld
death staring them in the face still nearer; and at length General
Grabbe, seeing that to reach his destination however near would imperil
the entire column,--and that for a purpose which by this time he must
have perceived to be utterly futile,--gave the order to retreat.
Then as the Circassians, estimated to have been nearly six thousand
strong, saw that the advanced guard had wheeled about, and that the
column was retracing its footsteps, their enthusiasm mounted to frenzy;
and slinging their rifles behind their backs they rushed upon the
enemy's centre shaska in hand. Several times they broke through it. But
the well-disciplined soldiers restoring as often the disordered ranks
fought bravely; for they fought for their lives, the Circassians giving
no quarter. Still, as the day wore away many a comrade wearied out by
both marching and fighting, exhausted from loss of blood, and tormented
by thirst still more than by his wounds, dropped behind the column, and
throwing away his knapsack in despair, resigned himself to death at the
hands of the first warrior who should come up with him.
At night no soul was allowed any other sleep than that of death. Though
the enemy was reluctant to waste his powder in the darkness, yet he kept
close by the side of his victims; while the wolves of the forest
followed howling behind. As the captain at sea when the tempest roars
around his vessel ready to ingulf it stands watching through the dismal
hours of the night by the wheel, so did the officers of this forlorn
column stand around the bivouac fires vociferating orders which in the
confusion and the darkness could but imperfectly be executed. And when
at last day broke over the mountain tops, the first beautiful day of
June, the soldiers looked at its blush in the east with faces pallid
with watching and haggard with despair.
Three hundred times, as was estimated, did the soldier discharge his
musket, until from want of cleaning it could be used no longer. The
officers, who to prevent their coats from being a mark for the rifles
had put on those of common soldiers, still recognized by their
sharp-eyed foe by means of the superior cast of lineaments and the
manlier carriage, were picked off--thirty-six out of sixty. A drummer
taken captive was compelled to beat his drum as a signal indicating the
direction of the march, but which led those who followed its call into
the midst of their enemies. Six cannon at one time fell into the hands
of the Circassians, who in attacking the artillery especially displayed
a strength of muscle in wielding the shaska, and an agility of limb in
parrying or avoiding the bayonet-thrust, which excited the wonder as
well as the dread of the enemy.
But the brave Lieutenant-colonel Wittert, burning with shame at the loss
of the guns, led on his men to the rescue; when took place one of the
most terrible encounters on the march. The officers led the attack sword
in hand and the hurra in their throats; while the soldiers advanced on
the run with fixed bayonets. The first man, Lieutenant-colonel Hahn, who
laid his hand on a cannon, fell back dead; and many shared his fate; for
the mountaineers fought for the possession of "the emperor's pistols"
like tigers for their prey; some climbing into the tops of the trees the
better to take aim at the rescuers below; and when hit themselves
frequently lodging in the branches, where they continued to hang a
convenient carrion for the foul birds of the forest.
Schamyl arriving at the head of his riders,--alas! for him, too
late,--attacked the column of invasion as it was about coming out of the
forests. Having intrusted his foot-soldiers to his principal murids, he
had been going the rounds of the aouls, collecting his mounted men, and
not expecting that the enemy would so soon turn back. Had he arrived on
their line of march two days earlier, not a Russian of them all would
have ever again seen a krepost. As it was, two thousand left their bones
in the woods to be picked by wolves and vultures. The rest succeeded in
reaching Girsel-aoul, a fortress on the line about fifty miles north of
Dargo, but in sorry plight indeed. Preparations had been made there for
a military triumph, with salvos of cannon, music, and colors flying; and
the minister of war, Prince Tschernitscheff, had most inopportunely
arrived to witness it; but instead he beheld the battalions marching in
with faintly beating drums, the men haggard from fatigue and want of
food, their uniform tattered and blood-stained, and the officers sadder
still at the loss of so many brave soldiers sacrificed in vain.
When some months afterward the minister of war made to the emperor his
report on the state of affairs in the Caucasus, General Grabbe was
immediately recalled, and his chief, Governor-general Golowin, likewise.
XXXVI.
HIS DOMESTIC LIFE.
Schamyl's head-quarters continued for several years to be at Dargo,
where aided by Polish deserters he built a residence somewhat superior
in style to the houses generally seen in the eastern Caucasus. It was
surrounded by a double row of strong palisades with a filling of small
stones and earth, and was approached through a single gateway guarded by
sentinels. Near this, on the inner side, stood a tower for defence,
irregular in shape, and built of stone. Still beyond was the principal
building in the inclosure inhabited by the Imam and his harem. Like the
tower, this was constructed of stones not, as is usually the case,
smeared on the sides by clay, but laid in a kind of mortar; was of two
stories, with a stairway outside leading to the chambers; had a verandah
on one side and a balcony on the other; and was covered by a flat roof
from which frowned a couple of Russian six-pounders. There were also
several smaller outbuildings for the servants, the guard, and for the
storing of provisions. Of these there were always kept on hand a
considerable quantity, such as maize, wheat, barley, and millet, all
preserved in large casks hollowed out of logs. In the inclosure was
likewise a fountain of water brought down from the hills, besides stalls
for horses, pens for cattle, and coops for poultry. A number of murids
were always on guard about the establishment; and when Schamyl went to
the mosque they walked by his side with drawn shaskas.
If built in other respects like the Circassian dwellings, as is
probable, the house would have but a single door, only a few small
windows to admit the light, and these very likely of either parchment or
paper. Generally the floor is of hard earth, which is kept cleanly
swept, is sprinkled in hot weather with water, and is partially covered
with mats. Around two or three sides of the room runs the divan; the
chimney is constructed in an outer wall not projecting into the room as
in the houses of the western Caucasus; and there is very little
furniture. The divan, however, answers the purpose of both seat and bed;
for while during the daytime the inhabitants sit upon it on their heels
after the fashion of the Turks, at night with the addition of
mattresses, pillows, and coverlets, it is a sufficiently convenient
couch for the Asiatic, who lies down to rest without undressing. In
summer many persons have their mattresses spread under the verandah; or,
wrapping themselves in their felt bourkas, lie down to their repose
under the trees. But in winter all sleep around the fire, the warmest
corner being always occupied by the master of the house, an elder, or a
guest, in case there be one.
If the proprietor is rich the divan will be furnished at considerable
expense, it being the custom of eastern Asia to lavish expenditure more
upon the furniture of the habitation than upon the habitation itself.
Covered with red leather and stuffed with hair, the divan is supplied
with cushions of some dark, rich silk, and bolsters sprigged with gold
and silver; its mattresses are bordered with velvet; the coverlet is of
quilted brocade, or a gay muslin of various colors studiously arranged,
and fringed with satin; and there may even be clean white sheeting.
Above the divan the walls will be hung with beautifully wrought matting
or carpets brought from Stamboul. Small tablets likewise are sometimes
placed around the room, inscribed with verses from the Koran in the
Arabic characters. But the principal ornament of the walls are the arms,
which, suspended from wooden pegs, gleam and flash in the
fire-light--sabres, pistols, rifles, coats of mail, bows and quivers,
besides bridles, saddles, and housings. For on entering the house, the
warrior lays aside all his weapons save the poniard, and his guest does
the same.
The apartments for females and children are always separate from the
others, and are frequently in a building by itself. Here with no
look-out from windows on the passing world, the news of which it would
be an impropriety in a Circassian to question his wives about, they ply
their tasks, spinning, weaving, embroidering, and knitting silver lace
in an obscurity illumined by scanty rays of sunlight. The walls of these
apartments are hung with dresses, not with arms. Strung also upon lines
across the room are various specimens of female industry, as embroidered
napkins, handkerchiefs, veils, silken bodices, and anteris glittering
with threads of gold and silver; in the corners are piles of large boxes
containing the bedding of the house; while on shelves are arranged china
and glass ware, with various culinary utensils of brass, copper, or
glazed pottery, kept for show, while the wooden are for use. Here also
the loom has its place, at which are woven all the plainer stuffs worn
in the family.