the vilest of the beasts.'
"Say not in reply: we believe, and have always held the doctrines of the
Prophet holy. Verily, God will punish you--liars. Say not: we faithfully
perform our washings and our prayers, give alms, and fast, as it is
written in the Koran. Verily, I say unto you, for all this shall ye
appear black-faced before the judgment-seat of Allah. The water shall
become mud in your mouths; your alms, the wages of sin; and your
prayers, curses. The true believer has the faith in his heart, and the
sword in his hand; for whoso is strong in faith is strong in battle.
More accursed even than our enemies are ye; for they are ignorant and
wander in darkness; but the light of truth shone before you, and ye have
not followed it. Say not: they have overpowered us and by their great
numbers put us to flight. For how often shall I repeat to you the words
of the Prophet when he says,
"'Ye faithful, though the unbelieving come against you by hosts, turn
not your back to them; for whoso then turneth his back, even though in
the thick of the fight, him shall the wrath of God smite, in hell shall
be his resting-place, and verily the way thither is not pleasant!'
"Wherefore have ye doubted the truth of my mission, and listened rather
to the threats of the enemy than to my admonitions? God himself hath
said,
"'Rouse, O Prophet, the faithful to battle; for twenty of you standing
fast shall overpower two hundred, and a hundred of you shall put to
flight thousands of the unbelieving, for they are a people that have no
knowledge.'
"God has made your way easy, for he knew that you were weak. Had ye
joined yourselves in league with us, ye would never have become the
slaves of the infidels, and their touch had never defiled you. But now
is it not easy to wash yourselves clean of their dirt. Was it then I who
united together the tribes of the mountains, or was it rather the power
of God working through me with wonders? The Prophet saith,
"'Though thou hadst squandered on them all the treasures of the earth,
thou couldst not have united their hearts; but God hath made them one,
for he is almighty and all-wise. O Prophet, with God and the faithful on
thy side, thou hast nothing to be afraid of.'
"Believe not that God is with the many! He is with the good, and the
good are always fewer than the bad. Look about you, and see if my words
be not true. Are there not fewer noble war-steeds than bad ones? Are
there not fewer roses than weeds? Is there not more mud than pearls, and
more lice than cattle? Is not gold scarcer than iron? And are we not
better than the gold, and the roses, and the pearls, and all the horses
and cattle put together? For all the treasures of the earth pass away;
but we are immortal. But if the weeds be more numerous than the roses,
shall we instead of rooting them out, suffer them to grow and choke the
noble flowers? And if the enemies be more than we, shall we, instead of
hewing them down, suffer them to take us in their snares? Say not: the
enemy has conquered Tscherkei, and destroyed Akhulgo, and taken
possession of Avaria. When the lightning strikes one tree, do all the
others bow their heads and cast themselves down, lest it strike them
also? O ye of little faith! would that ye might take example from the
green wood! Verily, the trees of the forest might shame you if they had
tongues. Or when the worm destroyeth one kind of fruit, do then all the
other kinds perish for fear lest they may be pierced through also?
Wonder not that the unbelievers multiply so rapidly, and send army after
army to take the place of those whom we cut off; for I say unto you that
thousands of mushrooms and poisonous weeds shoot up out of the earth,
while one good tree is growing to maturity. I am the root of the tree of
freedom; my murids are the trunk; and ye the branches. But think not
because one branch rots the whole tree will go to ruin. Verily, the
rotten branches will God lop off and cast them into hell-fire; for he is
a good husbandman. Repent, therefore, and return to the ranks of those
who fight for the faith, and my grace and protection shall overshadow
you. But if ye continue to trust to the enticing words of the
flax-haired Christian dogs rather than to my warnings, I will surely
fulfil that which Khasi-Mollah long ago promised you. Like dark clouds
shall my warriors overshadow your aouls, and take by force what you
refuse to kindness; blood shall mark my path, and terror and desolation
shall follow in my footsteps; for where words do not suffice, deeds
shall."
Of the Russian proclamations in the Caucasus, on the other hand, the
following, issued in reply to Schamyl's, may serve as a specimen.
"In the name of God, the almighty.
"The Adjutant-general, commander of the Caucasian corps, and chief of
the civil government of the Cis and Trans-Caucasian territories, to the
Khans, Beys, Cadis, Effendis, Mollahs, and to all the people of
Daghestan and Tchetchenia.
"The commotions and bloodshed which during so many years have taken
place among the Caucasian mountaineers have attracted the most serious
attention of our lord, the emperor; and his Imperial Majesty has
resolved this year to introduce the reign of peace and prosperity into
all these unhappy districts. To carry this purpose into execution fresh
troops have arrived, and in case of need still greater numbers can be
drawn from the terrible hosts of Russia. And how numerous, and powerful
are her armies, those of you who have been in that country can best
tell.
"Ye inhabitants of Daghestan and Tchetchenia! I assure you that these
troops have in nowise been sent to root out the doctrine of Mahomet and
to destroy his people, but simply for the punishment of Schamyl and his
followers. For he is a shameless deceiver, who from purely personal
motives, from the desire of self-aggrandizement and the love of
dominion, has stirred up the tribes to revolt, and exposed them to all
the horrors of war; who seeks himself to avoid every danger, while he
delivers you, deluded ones, to death; who preaches equality of rights
and abolition of all hereditary rights of property simply to get
possession himself of the inheritances of your khans and beys; who fills
your aouls with his murtosigators, who spare neither the lives nor the
property of the innocent inhabitants; who lays on your settlements the
burdens of his taxes and the hateful yoke of his despotism; who calls
himself your protector and defender, while everywhere his presence is
marked by death and desolation. So, for example, was it in Khasikumuck,
Avaria, and Andi, in the Sechamschal district, and in Itchkeria, where
he acted such a faithless and inhuman part towards the inhabitants of
the aoul of Zoutera, sparing neither the aged, nor women, nor children.
In place of your ruined prosperity he gives you nothing but false and
delusive promises, as when he encouraged you with the hope of the speedy
appearance of a Turkish army for your relief; whereas the sultan has
just renewed to us his word never to interfere in the affairs of the
Caucasian tribes, in opposition to their rightful emperor.
"Ye people of Tchetchenia and Daghestan! Soon will the Russian army
appear in your midst. And I repeat to you that our troops will come only
to deliver you from the yoke of your oppressor, to protect the weak, and
those who turn from the error of their ways with repentance, as well as
all those who have risen in revolt against the power of the despot. In
the name of the great ruler of men, the emperor of all the Russias, who
has delivered all power into my hands to punish the fomenters of strife
as they deserve, but who nevertheless desires to throw over their
offences the covering of his gracious forgiveness, do I promise full
pardon to all those who by word or deed have labored for the cause of
Schamyl, provided they now come to me with tokens of repentance and
submission. I promise that all necessary means shall be taken for the
preservation of your faith, of your mosques, of your customs and usages,
and of the rights of property of all those who will now present
themselves before me and take the oath of subjection and fidelity. All
these their rights and privileges shall be placed on secure and
ever-enduring foundations.
"But at the same time I inform you that all the aouls and tribes who
join the party of Schamyl and oppose themselves to our rightful
authority shall be subjected to the most terrible punishments. The same
shall be inflicted also on all those who seek to retire into the
mountains, and all those who, having fled thither, do not immediately
return to their former habitations. And these habitations likewise shall
be razed to the ground.
"As to the tribes of Akuska and Zudakera, the conditions on which their
submission will be accepted will be made known to them by the commander
of the forces in Daghestan.
"Ye people of Tchetchenia and Daghestan! In this year will your destiny
be decided. It depends on yourselves. Choose! In case you submit
yourselves to the rightful and beneficent rule of Russia, you will
receive the inexpressibly great gift of the grace of our lord the
emperor, who watches equally over the happiness and prosperity of all
his subjects. But if you obstinately continue in your errors, and place
yourselves in the ranks of our enemies, you will share in the punishment
inflicted on Schamyl, and will be torn in pieces by the claws of the
Russian eagle, which at the same time appears at the rising of the sun
and where it goes down in the west, and which wings its flight over
Elbrus and Kasbek as though they were mere mole-hills."
XXXIX.
HIS INVASION OF THE KABARDAS.
The black cloud of vengeance, though so small as not to be noticed by
the Kabardians, was now gathering in the south-east. Schamyl, surveying
the posture of affairs in the spring of 1846, with the eye of a warrior
who was at the same time a prophet, saw that the concentration of
Russian troops was mostly in the fortresses of Temir-Chan-Chura and
Grosnaja; that Woronzoff was busy looking after his kreposts and his
stanitzas; and that consequently there was an opening for himself by
means of fast galloping to break through the enemy's line, and make a
raid in the Kabardas. It was an inspiration of genius to conceive the
plan; it would require the boldest riders in the world to execute it.
But notwithstanding the loss of Dargo, the year preceding, "Sultan
Schamyl," as the mountaineers sometimes fondly called him, had attained
to such an influence that he was now at the head of the largest force
which had ever been mustered in the highlands. Among the tribes of the
western Caucasus, their proudest chiefs, Guz-Bey, and Dschimbulat, had
never been able to raise a troop for crossing the Kuban of more than
four thousand riders; Scheik Mansur, the Schamyl of the eastern Caucasus
in the preceding century, and Khasi-Mollah had never taken the field
with upward of eight thousand; nor had the Russians in their hostile
incursions, as at Akhulgo and Dargo, assembled under their eagles a
greater force than from twelve to fourteen thousand. But the Imam after
all the losses of the preceding years had now under him no less than
twenty thousand warriors, a large proportion of them cavalry, and
waiting only his order to spring into their saddles.
In the beautiful month of May, when nature in bud and full leaf
throughout the mountains inspired the breast of the warrior as well as
of the husbandman with hope, Schamyl set forth for the Kabardas. The
week before, the highlands lay as peaceful in the midst of the spring's
blossoming as they had under the protecting mantle of the winter's
snows. The steed was cropping the first tender blades of grass in the
vale, long unaccustomed to the bit and saddle which hung suspended
against his master's wall; while the Lesghian himself was sitting
listless at the door of his sakli apparently basking without a thought
of war in the genial beams which shine in the time when the singing of
birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.
But suddenly there was a hot riding of messengers from one end of the
little empire of the Imam to the other. In a week all the men of Himri,
Akhulgo, and Dargo, the riders of Arrakan and Gumbet, Avaria and
Koissubui, Itchkeria and Salatan, the dwellers on the four branches of
the Koissu and the still blood-stained banks of the Aksai, Lesghians,
Tchetchenians, and warriors of Daghestan, tribes of different origin and
speaking various dialects, but freemen all, were in the stirrup, shaskas
at their sides, and millet at their saddle-bows.
Two rivers flowed between their land and the Kabardas; and across their
war-path ran two lines of hostile fortresses. Among these latter was the
strong-hold of Wladikaukas, besides others scarcely less impregnable;
and in them all lay an army of seventy thousand troops well armed and
ready for service. In the intervals between stretched the settlements of
the Cossacks; and beyond, the Kabardians themselves had been born
warriors, and still retained their arms. On the other hand, Schamyl had
no artillery, and no regular convoys of provisions and ammunition.
Without fortresses, depots, or communications of any sort to fall back
upon in case of need, he would in fact have nothing behind him to rely
upon, but only that which was before. It would be therefore a dash at a
venture, and with, for order of march, "The devil take the hindmost."
But the Imam was conscious of his strength, and was justly proud of his
twenty thousand men of the mountains, every one of whom held in contempt
the plains below and all they that defended them. Seeing beforehand both
the victory and the way of escape, he confidently set forward. It was at
the season of the year when the banks of the rivers were filled full
from the melting of the snows in the mountains; but the horses swam
where they could not ford the currents. To no purpose was it that the
Cossack, seeing from his tall look-out the approach of the foremost
riders of this host, lighted his beacon, or that the sentries of the
kreposts fired their alarm-guns. Schamyl rode down the Cossacks,
plundered the stanitzas, and left behind the forts which were not
carried amid the whirlwind of his first coming. There was no stopping;
and before the garrisons along the line knew that Schamyl had come, he
was gone; and when the Kabardians believed that the braggart who had
threatened their land with plundering was shut up in his mountains six
hundred wersts away, he was in their midst.
No less than sixty populous aouls of the Kabardians were plundered;
twenty Cossack stanitzas were destroyed; and ravaging on either side the
lands through which he passed, the Imam seriously threatened the strong
places of Mosdok, Jekaderinograd, and Stavropol. It was easy galloping
over the smooth valleys and softly rolling hills of the Kabardas; nor
having once broken the bounds of the mountains were Schamyl's riders
content to turn back their horses until they had watered them on the
Kuban, and even filled with consternation the stanitzas on the still
more distant banks of the Laba.
To retreat from these remote steppes in safety to the mountains was
indeed a triumph. For the generals Freitag and Nestoroff, on hearing the
news of Schamyl's incursion, had immediately mustered their battalions,
and occupied the Terek to intercept his return; and the Cossacks, those
of the Don, of Tchernomozen, and of the line, riding at full speed, had
come in from the plains with a strength of several thousand lances.
Schamyl well knew that he could not retire by the way in which he had
advanced. But when the work of devastation and pillage was done, he
suddenly turned his horses' heads south from Jekaderinograd; overran the
Cossack colonies in that direction; and with a considerable number of
Kabardians forced into his ranks, with his cruppers loaded with the
booty of the plains, and his saddle-bows well furnished with both millet
and mutton, regained the mountains. It was still the beautiful month of
May when his riders unloosed their saddle-girths at the doors of their
saklis; the time of the singing of birds was not past; nor had the voice
of the turtle yet ceased in the land.
XL.
HIS SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT.
But the one half is not told respecting the genius of Schamyl after the
recital of his military exploits simply; for he is not more
distinguished as a warrior than as a ruler and a lawgiver. Out of the
heterogeneous materials of numerous independent tribes, separated from
each other in many instances by blood-feuds, speaking various dialects,
and having traditions and customs more or less differing, he has
organized a form of society in which all these discordant elements have
been brought into harmony. Where before there were tribes, there is now
a State; where there were many warlike leaders and hereditary chiefs of
clans, there is now one supreme ruler; in the place of usage and
tradition, there is the reign of law and order; and instead of a
resistance of clans fighting bravely but without concert, there is a
well-organized system of defence, with concentration of powers and
unanimity of action. It is an organization called forth by the
exigencies of a state of perpetual war, and one wherein individual
liberty is necessarily and rightfully sacrificed to the common
independence.
The foundations of this militant state were laid on the rock of
religious fanaticism, the cleft between the two sects of Omar and Ali
having been finally cemented together in the new faith of the Sufis.
This great work was begun by the predecessors of Schamyl, but to him is
due the credit of having carried it on to perfection, until now the war
of sects has been completely merged in the war against the common enemy,
and hatred of the "blonde unbelievers" is synonymous with love of Allah
and faith in the Prophet. Of this united church Schamyl is the head, he
is acknowledged as the second great prophet and Allah's vicegerent,
appointed to defeat his enemies and to maintain the liberty originally
granted by him to the sons of the mountains. Twice in the year he is
believed to hold direct communications with heaven, retiring for that
purpose to the privacy of his inner apartments, or the solitude of some
cave or retreat among the rocks. There for three weeks he performs his
priestly worship with fasting, prayer, and the reading of the Koran,
until at length he beholds in a vision the spirit of the Prophet
descending out of heaven in the form of a dove, and receives from it the
divine commands. On returning from his place of seclusion he delivers
these to the assembled congregation of his murids and murschids, and
exhorts them with the rapt eloquence of a messenger come directly from
God to persevere in the holy war against the Muscovites. Awed by the
solemn tones of his voice and by the almost supernatural shining of his
countenance, the congregation accepts his words as the inspiration of
the Almighty, and bows itself in prayer. Then going out of the mosque he
chants a verse from the Koran, and harangues the multitude outside, who
thereupon sing a hymn which is half a battle song, and drawing their
shaskas swear anew fealty to the faith, and eternal hate against Russia.
And finally, the ceremony over, all separate amid shouts of, "God is
great; Mahomet is his first prophet; and Schamyl his second!"
The territory over which Schamyl bears rule is divided into provinces,
districts, and aouls. A convenient number of aouls forms a district, and
five districts a province. Over the latter are set governors who have a
control in things both spiritual and temporal which is wellnigh supreme;
but for the rightful exercise of which they are answerable to the Imam
with their lives. Next in authority are the chiefs of districts, who are
called naibs, and whose duties consist in maintaining a supervision over
the inhabitants, collecting the revenues, raising recruits, settling
feuds, and enforcing due obedience to the law of the scharyat. Finally,
in every aoul resides a cadi, or elder, who is required to make reports
to his naib of all important occurrences, to keep the peace, to deliver
up persons accused of crimes, to promulgate the orders and proclamations
of his superiors, and to keep swift horses constantly standing saddled
and bridled for the instant despatch of messengers of State.
Every naib, moreover, is bound to maintain in his district an armed
force of three hundred riders, to be raised in the manner following.
Every ten houses furnish a warrior, the family from whom he is taken
being free of all taxes during his lifetime, and the other nine being at
the expense of his equipment and maintenance. This soldier is to be
ready to march at the minute, and may not lay aside his arms even at
night. In addition, every male from fifteen years of age to fifty is
liable to be called out for the defence of his aoul, or, in
extraordinary cases, for active service in the army. At the same time
the horseman of every ten houses takes command of the men on foot from
those houses.
Separate from his standing army Schamyl has also a guard constantly
attached to his person, which is made up by selection from his murids.
They are called by way of distinction Murtosigators. Into their number
none are admitted save warriors of well-tried valor, zealous for the
faith taught by the murschids, and devoted partisans of the Imam. Called
to the high office of guarding the person of their prophet, they must
keep themselves pure from whatever in the world might tempt them to a
neglect of duty, or even make life too dear to them. If unmarried, they
must remain so; if married, they must have no intercourse with their
families. They must exercise temperance in living, and strictly keep the
scharyat. The extension of the new faith, the maintenance of the
supremacy of the Imam, and the triumph of his arms over his enemies,
must be the aim of their every thought and endeavor.
In number the murtosigators are about one thousand, and are organized on
the decimal system, every ten having a leader, and every ten leaders
again a superior, as is the case also in the regular army. They receive
a regular monthly pay, besides a share in all spoils. In time of
comparative peace, while one half of them keep watch over the life of
the imam, rendering access to him a matter of extreme difficulty, the
other half act as lay preachers of his political Sufism; and in time of
actual war, they are the soul of his army, caring not for their lives
but only for his, leading the raid, covering the retreat, a strong wall
of defence around the faithful, and the terror of the enemy, by whom not
one of them has ever been taken alive.
In imitation of the grades of office in the Russian armies, Schamyl
established a difference of rank among his own chieftains. Three of his
most eminent partisans received titles corresponding to those of
generals; and a number of his murids, especially the chiefs of the
murtosigators, were made captains. At the same time these high officers
were distinguished by decorations after the European fashion. The
generals were authorized to wear on each breast stars of silver; the
captains had silver plates of an oval form; and the chiefs of the guard
who had distinguished themselves by acts of extraordinary heroism were
presented with medals bearing complimentary inscriptions in the Arabic
character. There were also various other rewards of military merit
established, such as epaulettes of beaten silver, daggers with silver
hilts, and ensigns decorated with fine needle-work. And to correspond
with these marks of honorable distinction were instituted badges of
disgrace, such as the patch sewed on the back, and the rag tied around
the right arm. Finally, a system of military punishments was introduced,
comprising various fines, imprisonment, and death.