Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 65, No. 400, February, 1849

The general Sass above-named commanded for several years on the line of the Kuban, and is the only Russian general who has understood the mountain warfare, and proved himself a match for the Circassians at their own game of ambuscades and surprises. His tactics were those of the Spanish guerilla leaders. Lavish in his payment of spies, he was always accurately informed of the musters and projects of the Circassians; whilst he kept his own plans so secret, that his personal staff often knew nothing of an intended expedition until the call to "boot and saddle" sounded. His raids were accomplished, under guidance of his well-paid scouts, with such rapidity and local knowledge that the mountaineers rarely had time to assemble in force, pursue the retiring column, and revenge their burnt vilages and ravished cattle. But one day the report spread on the lines of the Kuban that the general was dangerously ill; shortly afterwards it became known that the physicians had given him up; and finally his death was announced, and bewailed by the whole army of the Caucasus. The consternation of the Cossacks, accustomed, under his command, to victory and rich booty, was as great as the exultation of the mountaineers. Hundreds of these visited the Russian territory, to witness the interment of their dreaded foe. A magnificent coffin, with the general's cocked hat and decorations laid upon it, was deposited in the earth amidst the mournful sounds of minute guns and muffled drums. With joyful hearts the Circassians returned to their mountains, to tell what they had seen, and to congratulate each other at the prospect of tranquillity for themselves, and safety to their flocks and herds. But upon the second night after Sass's funeral, a strong Russian column crossed the Kuban, and the dead general suddenly appeared at the head of his trusty lancers, who greeted with wild hurrahs their leader's resurrection. Several large auls (villages) whose inhabitants were sound asleep, unsuspicious of surprise, were destroyed, vast droves of cattle were carried off, and a host of prisoners made. This ingenious and successful stratagem is still cited with admiration on the banks of the Kuban. Notwithstanding his able generalship, Sass was removed from his command when in full career of success. All his military services could not shield him from the consequences of St Petersburg intrigues and trumped-up accusations. None of his successors have equalled him. General Willaminoff was a man of big words rather than of great deeds. In his bombastic and blasphemous proclamation of the 28th May 1837, he informed the Circassians that "If the heavens should fall, Russia could prop them with her bayonets;" following up this startling assertion with the declaration that "there are but two powers in existence – God in heaven, and the emperor upon earth!"4 The Circassians laughed at this rhodomontade, and returned a firm and becoming answer. There were but few of them, they said – but, with God's blessing, they would hold their own, and fight to the very last man: and to prove themselves as good as their word, they soon afterwards made fierce assaults upon the line of forts built by the Russians upon the shores of the Black Sea. In 1840 four of these were taken, but the triumph cost the victors so much blood as to disgust them for some time with attacking stone walls, behind which the Russians, perhaps the best defensive combatants in the world, fight like lions. Indeed, the Circassians would hardly have proved victorious, had not the garrisons been enfeebled by disease. During the five winter months, the rations of the troops employed upon this service are usually salt, and the consequences are scurvy and fever. Informed by Polish deserters of the bad condition of the garrisons, the Circassians held a great council in the mountains, and it was decided to take the forts with the sabre, without firing a shot. It is an old Caucasian custom, that, upon suchlike perilous undertakings, a chosen band of enthusiastic warrors devote themselves to death, binding themselves by a solemn oath not to turn their backs upon the enemy. Ever in the van, their example gives courage to the timid; and their friends are bound in honour to revenge their death. With these fanatics have the Circassian and Tshetshen chiefs achieved their greatest victories over the Russians.

When it was decided to attack the forts, several hundred Shapsookians, including gray-haired old men and youths of tender age, swore to conquer or to die. They kept their word. At the fort of Michailoff, which made the most obstinate defence, the ditch was filled with their corpses. The conduct of the garrison was truly heroic. Of five hundred men, only one third were fit for duty; the others were in hospital, or on the sick-list. But no sooner did the Circassian war-cry rend the air than the sufferers forgot their pains; the fever-stricken left their beds, and crawled to the walls. Their commandant called upon them to shed their last drop of blood for their emperor; their old papa exhorted them, as Christians, to fight to the death against the unbelieving horde. But numbers prevailed: after a valiant defence, the Russians retreated, fighting, to the innermost enclosures of the fortress. Their chief demanded a volunteer to blow up the fort when farther resistance should become impossible. A soldier stepped forward, took a lighted match, and entered the powder magazine. The last defences were stormed, the Circassians shouted victory. Then came the explosion. Most of the buildings were overthrown, and hundreds of maimed carcases scattered in all directions. Eleven Russians escaped with life, were dragged off to the mountains, and subsequently ransomed, and from them the details of this bloody fight were obtained.

The capture of these forts spread discouragement and consternation in the ranks of the Russian army. The emperor was furious, and General Rajewski, then commander-in-chief on the Circassian frontier, was superseded. This officer, who at the tender age of twelve was present with his father at the battle of Borodino, and who has since distinguished himself in the Turkish and Persian wars, was reputed an able general, but was reproached with sleeping too much, and with being too fond of botany. His enemies went so far as to accuse him of making military expeditions into the mountains, with the sole view of adding rare Caucasian plants to his herbarium, and of procuring seeds for his garden. General Aurep, who succeeded him, undertook little beyond reconnoissances, always attended with very heavy loss; and the Circassians remained upon the defensive until the year 1843, when the example of the Tshetshens, who about that time obtained signal advantages over the Russians, roused the martial ardour of the chivalrous Circassians, and spurred them to fresh hostilities. But the war at the western extremity of Caucasus never assumed the importance of that in Daghestan and the country of the Tshetshens.

From the straits of Zabache to the frontier of Guria, the Russians possess seventeen Kreposts, or fortified posts, only a few of which deserve the name of regular fortresses, or could resist a regular army provided with artillery. To mountaineers, however, whose sole weapons are shaska and musket, even earthen parapets and shallow ditches are serious obstacles when well manned and resolutely defended. The object of erecting this line of forts was to cut off the communication by sea between Turkey and the Caucasian tribes. It was thought that, when the import of arms and munitions of war from Turkey was thus checked, the independent mountain tribes would soon be subjugated. The hope was not realised, and the expensive maintenance of 15,000 to 20,000 men in the fortresses of the Black Sea has but little improved the position of the Russians in the Caucasus. The Caucasians have never lacked arms, and with money they can always get powder, even from the Cossacks of the Kuban. In another respect, however, these forts have done them much harm, and thence it arises that, since their erection, and the cession of Anapa to Russia, the war has assumed so bitter a character. So long as Anapa was Turkish, the export of slaves, and the import of powder, found no hindrance. The needy Circassian noble, whose rude mountains supply him but sparingly with daily bread, obtained, by the sale of slaves, means of satisfying his warlike and ostentatious tastes – of procuring rich clothes, costly weapons, and ammunition for war and for the chase. In a moral point of view, all slave traffic is of course odious and reprehensible, but that of Circassia differed from other commerce of the kind, in so far that all parties were benefited by, and consenting to, the contract. The Turks obtained from Caucasus handsomer and healthier wives than those born in the harem; and the Circassian beauties were delighted to exchange the poverty and toil of their father's mountain huts for the luxurious farniente of the seraglio, of whose wonders and delights their ears were regaled, from childhood upwards, with the most glowing descriptions. The trade, although greatly impeded and very hazardous, still goes on. Small Turkish craft creep up to the coast, cautiously evading the Russian cruisers, enter creeks and inlets, and are dragged by the Circassians high and dry upon the beach, there to remain till the negotiation for their live cargo is completed, an operation that generally takes a few weeks. The women sold are the daughters of serfs and freedmen: rarely does a work consent to dispose of his sister or daughter, although the case does sometimes occur. But, whilst the sale goes on, the slave-ships are anything but secure. It is a small matter to have escaped the Russian frigates and steamers. Each of the Kreposts possesses a little squadron of row-boats, manned with Cossacks, who pull along the coast in search of Turkish vessels. If they detect one, they land in the night, and endeavour to set fire to it, before the mountaineers can come to the assistance of the crew. The Turks, who live in profound terror of these Cossack coast-guards, resort to every possible expedient to escape their observation; often covering their vessels with dry leaves and boughs, and tying fir branches to the masts, that the scouts may take them for trees. If they are captured at sea by the cruisers, the crew are sent to hard labour in Siberia, and the Circassian girls are married to Cossacks, or divided as handmaidens amongst the Russian staff officers. From thirty to forty slaves compose the usual cargo of each of these vessels, which are so small that the poor creatures are packed almost like herrings in a barrel. But they patiently endure the misery of the voyage, in anticipation of the honeyed existence of the harem. It is calculated that one vessel out of six is taken or lost. In the winter of 1843-4, eight-and-twenty ships left the coast of Asia Minor for that of Caucasia. Twenty-three safely returned, three were burned by the Russians, and two swallowed by the waves.

A Turkish captain at Sinope told Dr Wagner the following interesting anecdote, illustrating Circassian hatred of the Russians: – "A few years ago a slave-ship sprang a leak out at sea, just as a Russian steamer passed in the distance. The Turkish slave-dealer, who preferred even the chill blasts of Siberia to a grave in deep water, made signals of distress, and the steamer came up in time to rescue the ship and its living cargo from destruction. But so deeply is hatred of Russia implanted in every Circassian heart, that the spirit of the girls revolted at the thought of becoming the helpmates of gray-coated soldiers, instead of sharing the sumptuous couch of a Turkish pasha. They had bid adieu to their native mountains with little emotion, but as the Russian ship approached they set up terrible and despairing screams. Some sprang headlong into the sea; others drove their knives into their hearts: – to these heroines death was preferable to the bridal-bed of a detested Muscovite. The survivors were taken to Anapa, and married to Cossacks, or given to officers as servants." Nearly every Austrian or Turkish steamboat that makes, in the winter months, the voyage from Trebizond to Constantinople, has a number of Circassian girls on board. Dr Wagner made the passage in an Austrian steamer with several dozens of these willing slaves, chiefly mere children, twelve or thirteen years old, with interesting countenances and dark wild eyes, but very pale and thin – with the exception of two, who were some years older, far better dressed, and carefully veiled. To this favoured pair the slave-dealer paid particular attention, and frequently brought them coffee. Dr Wagner got into conversation with this man, who was richly dressed in furs and silks, and who, despite his vile profession, had the manners of a gentleman. The two coffee-drinkers were daughters of noblemen, he said, with fine rosy cheeks, and in better condition than the others, consequently worth more money at Constantinople. For the handsomest he hoped to obtain 30,000 piastres, and for the other 20,000 – about £250 and £170. The herd of young creatures he spoke of with contempt, and should think himself lucky to get 2000 piastres for them all round. He further informed the doctor that, although the slave-trade was more dangerous and difficult since the Russian occupation of the Caucasian coast, it was also far more profitable. Formerly, when Greek and Armenian women were brought in crowds to the Constantinople market, the most beautiful Circassians were not worth more than 10,000 piastres; but now a rosy, well-fed, fifteen-year-old slave is hardly to be had under 40,000 piastres.

The Tshetshen successes, already referred to as having at the close of 1842 stirred into flame and action, by the force of example, the smouldering but still ardent embers of Circassian hatred to Russia, are described with remarkable spirit by Dr Wagner, in the chapter entitled "Caucasian War-Scenes," – episodes taken down by him from the lips of eye-witnesses, and of sharers in the sanguinary conflicts described. This graphic chapter at once familiarises the reader with the Caucasian war, with which he thenceforward feels as well acquainted as with our wars in India, the French contest in Africa, or with any other series of combats, of whose nature and progress minute information has been regularly received. The first event described is the storming of Aculcho, in the summer of 1839. It is always a great point with guerilla generals, and with leaders of mountain warfare, to have a centre of operations – a strong post, whither they can retreat after a reverse, with the confidence that the enemy will hesitate before attacking them there. In Spain, Cabrera had Morella, the Count d'Espagne had Berga, the Navarrese viewed Estella as their citadel. In the eastern Caucasus, Chasi-Mollah had Himri, and preferred falling in its defence to abandoning his stronghold; his successor, Chamyl, who surpasses him in talent for war and organisation, established his headquarters at Aculcho, a sort of eagle's nest on the river Koisu, whither his escorts brought him intelligence of each movement of Russian troops, and whence he swooped, like the bird whose eyrie he occupied, upon the convoys traversing the steppe of the Terek. Here he planned expeditions and surprises, and kept a store of arms and ammunition; and this fort General Grabbe, who commanded in 1839 the Russian forces in eastern Caucasus, and who was always a strong advocate of the offensive system, obtained permission from St Petersburg to attack. General Golowin, commander-in-chief of the whole army of the Caucasus, and then resident at Teflis, approved the enterprise, whose ultimate results cost both generals their command. The taking of Aculcho itself was of little moment; there was no intention of placing a Russian garrison there; but the double end to be obtained was to capture Chamyl, and to intimidate the Tshetshens, by proving to them that no part of their mountains, however difficult of access and bravely defended, was beyond the reach of Russian valour and resources. Their submission, at least nominal and temporary, was the result hoped for.

Nature has done much for the fortification of Aculcho. Imagine a hill of sand-stone, nearly surrounded by a loop of the river Koisu – a miniature peninsula, in short, connected with the continent by a narrow neck of land – provided with three natural terraces, accessible only by a small rocky path, whose entrance is fortified and defended by 500 resolute Tshetshen warriors. A few artificial parapets and intrenchments, some stone huts, and several excavations in the sand rock, where the besieged found shelter from shot and shell, complete the picture of the place before which Grabbe and his column sat down. At first they hoped to reduce it by artillery, and bombs and congreve rockets were poured upon the fortress, destroying huts and parapets, but doing little harm to the Tshetshens, who lay close as conies in their burrows, and watched their opportunity to send well-aimed bullets into the Russian camp. From time to time, one of the fanatical Murides, of whom the garrison was chiefly composed, impatient that the foe delayed an assault, rushed headlong down from the rock, his shaska in his right hand, his pistol in his left, his dagger between his teeth; causing a momentary panic among the Cossacks, who were prepared for the whistling of bullets, but not for the sudden appearance of a foaming demon armed cap-à-pie, who generally, before they could use their bayonets, avenged in advance his own certain death by the slaughter of several of his foes, whilst his comrades on the rock applauded and rejoiced at the heroic self-sacrifice. The first attempt to storm was costly to the besiegers. Of fifteen hundred men who ascended the narrow path, only a hundred and fifty survived. The Tshetshens maintained such a well-directed platoon fire, that not a Russian set foot on the second terrace. The foremost men, mown down by the bullets of the besieged, fell back upon their comrades, and precipitated them from the rock. General Grabbe, undismayed by his heavy loss, ordered a second and a third assault; the three cost two thousand men, but the lower and middle terraces were taken. The defence of the upper one was desperate, and the Russians might have been compelled to turn the siege into a blockade, but for the imprudence of some of the garrison, who, anxious to ascertain the proceedings of the enemy's engineers – then hard at work at a mine under the hill – ventured too far from their defences, and were attacked by a Russian battalion. The Tshetshens fled; but, swift of foot though they were, the most active of the Russians attained the topmost terrace with them. A hand-to-hand fight ensued, more battalions came up, and Aculcho was taken. The victors, furious at their losses, and at the long resistance opposed to them, (this was the 22d August,) raged like tigers amongst the unfortunate little band of mountaineers; some Tshetshen women, who took up arms at this last extremity, were slaughtered with their husbands. At last the bloody work was apparently at an end, and search ensued amongst the dead for the body of Chamyl. It was nowhere to be found. At last the discovery was made that a few of the garrison had taken refuge in holes in the side of the rock, looking over the river. No path led to these cavities; the only way to get at them was to lower men by ropes from the crag above. In this manner the surviving Tshetshens were attacked; quarter was neither asked nor given. The hole in which Chamyl himself was hidden held out the longest. Escape seemed, however, impossible; the rock was surrounded; the banks of the river were lined with soldiers; Grabbe's main object was the capture of Chamyl. At this critical moment the handful of Tshetshens still alive gave an example of heroic devotion. They knew that their leader's death would be a heavy loss to their country, and they resolved to sacrifice themselves to save him. With a few beams and planks, that chanced to be in the cave, they constructed a sort of raft. This they launched upon the Koisu, and floated with it down the stream, amidst a storm of Russian lead. The Russian general doubted not that Chamyl was on the raft, and ordered every exertion to kill or take him. Whilst the Cossacks spurred their horses into the river, and the infantry hurried along the bank, following the raft, a man sprang out of the hole into the Koisu, swam vigorously across the stream, landed at an unguarded spot, and gained the mountains unhurt. This man was Chamyl, who alone escaped with life from the bloody rock of Aculcho. His deliverance passed for miraculous amongst the enthusiastic mountaineers, with whom his influence, from that day forward, increased tenfold. Grabbe was furious; Chamyl's head was worth more than the heads of all the garrison: three thousand Russians had been sacrificed for the possession of a crag not worth the keeping.

After the fall of Aculcho, Chamyl's head-quarters were at the village of Dargo, in the mountain region south of the Russian fort of Girselaul, and thence he carried on the war with great vigour, surprising fortified posts, cutting off convoys, and sweeping the plain with his horsemen. Generals Grabbe and Golowin could not agree about the mode of operations. The former was for taking the offensive; the latter advocated the defensive and blockade system. Grabbe went to St Petersburg to plead in person for his plan, obtained a favourable hearing, and the emperor sent Prince Tchernicheff, the minister at war, to visit both flanks of the Caucasus. Before the prince reached the left wing of the line of operations, Grabbe resolved to surprise him with a brilliant achievement; and on the 29th May 1842, he marched from Girselaul with thirteen battalions, a small escort of mounted Cossacks, and a train of mountain artillery, to attack Dargo. The route was through forests, and along paths tangled with wild flowers and creeping plants, through which the heavy Russian infantry, encumbered with eight days' rations and sixty rounds of ball-cartridge, made but slow and painful progress. The first day's march was accomplished without fighting; only here and there the slender active form of a mountaineer was descried, as he peered between the trees at the long column of bayonets, and vanished as soon as he was observed. After midnight the dance began. The troops had eaten their rations, and were comfortably bivouacked, when they were assailed by a sharp fire from an invisible foe, to which they replied in the direction of the flashes. This skirmishing lasted all night; few were killed on either side, but the whole Russian division were deprived of sleep, and wearied for the next day's march. At daybreak the enemy retired; but at noon, when passing through a forest defile, the column was again assailed, and soon the horses, and a few light carts accompanying it, were insufficient to convey the wounded. The staff urged the general to retrace his steps, but Grabbe was bent on welcoming Tchernicheff with a triumphant bulletin. Another sleepless bivouac – another fagging day, more skirmishing. At last, when within sight of the fortified village of Dargo, the loss of the column was so heavy, and its situation so critical, that a retreat was ordered. The daring and fury of the Tshetshens now knew no bounds; they assailed the troops sabre in hand, captured baggage and wounded, and at night prowled round the camp, like wolves round a dying soldier. On the 1st June, the fight recommenced. The valour displayed by the mountaineers was admitted by the Russians to be extraordinary, as was also their skill in wielding the terrible shaska. They made a fierce attack on the centre of the column – cut down the artillery-men and captured six guns. The Russians, who throughout the whole of this trying expedition did their duty as good and brave soldiers, were furious at the loss of their artillery, and by a desperate charge retook five pieces, the sixth being relinquished only because its carriage was broken. Upon the last day of the retreat, Chamyl came up with his horsemen. Had he been able to get these together two days sooner, it is doubtful whether any portion of the column would have escaped. As it was, the Russians lost nearly two thousand men; the weary and dispirited survivors re-entering Girselaul with downcast mien. Preparations had been made to celebrate their triumph, and, to add to their general's mortification, Tchernicheff was awaiting their arrival. On the prince's return to St Petersburg, both Grabbe and Golowin were removed from their commands.

Against this same Tshetshen fortress of Dargo, Count Woronzoff's expedition (already referred to) was made, in July 1845. A capital account of the affair is given in a letter from a Russian officer engaged, printed in Dr Wagner's book. Dargo had become an important place. Chamyl had established large stores there, and had built a mosque, to which came pilgrims from the remotest villages of Daghestan and Lesghistan, partly to pray, partly to see the dreaded chief – equally renowned as warrior and priest – and to give him information concerning the state of the country, and the movements of the Russians. Less vigorously opposed than Grabbe, and his measures better taken, Woronzoff reached Dargo with moderate loss. "The village," says the Russian officer: "was situated on the slope of a mountain, at the brink of a ravine, and consisted of sixty to seventy small stone-houses, and of a few larger buildings, where the stones were joined with mortar, instead of being merely superimposed, as is usually the case in Caucasian dwellings. One of these buildings had several irregular towers, of some apparent antiquity. When we approached, a thick smoke burst from them. Chamyl had ordered everything to be set on fire that could not be carried away. One must confess that, in this fierce determination of the enemy to refuse submission – to defend, foot by foot, the territory of his forefathers, and to leave to the Russians no other trophies than ashes and smoking ruins – there is a certain wild grandeur which extorts admiration, even though the hostile chief be no better than a fanatical barbarian." This reminds us of the words of the Circassian chief Mansour: – "When Turkey and England abandon us," he said, to Bell of the 'Vixen,' – "when all our powers of resistance are exhausted, we will burn our houses, and our goods, strangle our wives and our children, and retreat to our highest rocks, there to die, fighting to the very last man." "The greatest difficulty," said General Neidhardt to Dr Wagner, who was a frequent visitor at the house of that distinguished officer, "with which we have to contend, is the unappeasable, deep-rooted, ineradicable hatred cherished by all the mountaineers against the Russians. For this we know no cure; every form of severity and of kindness has been tried in turn, with equal ill-success." Valour and patriotism are nearly the only good qualities the Caucasians can boast. They are cruel, and for the most part faithless, especially the Tshetshens, and Dr Wagner warns us against crediting the exaggerated accounts frequently given of their many virtues. The Circassians are said to respect their plighted word, but there are many exceptions. General Neidhardt told Dr Wagner an anecdote of a Circassian, who presented himself before the commandant of one of the Black Sea fortresses, and offered to communicate most important intelligence, on condition of a certain reward. The reward was promised. Then said the Circassian, – "To-morrow after sunset, your fort will be assailed by thousands of my countrymen." The informer was retained, whilst Cossacks and riflemen were sent out, and it proved that he had spoken the truth. The enemy, finding the garrison on their guard, retired after a short skirmish. The Circassian received his recompense, which he took without a word of thanks, and left the fortress. Without the walls, he met an unarmed soldier; hatred of the Russians, and thirst of blood, again got the ascendency: he shot the soldier dead, and scampered off to the mountains.