Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/662

654 out the old people and children, and would listen to no negotiation till Schamyl’s own son was delivered to them as a hostage. They were constantly reporting the completion of their conquest to be just at hand; but Schamyl was always gliding out between their hands, or passing over their heads by inaccessible heights, or assailing them from some ambush, or starting up before them when they were least ready. A long series of Russian generals, from Yermoloff to Woronzoff, tried to bring the Caucasus under the rule of the Czar, and failed; and perhaps there are some people who doubt whether Prince Bariatinsky has done so now,—thoroughly and permanently. But Schamyl is no longer there; and the second Prophet of Allah has been led captive away. The sacrifice of life and treasure on the part of three successive Czars has been enormous, and out of all visible proportion to the object: but the will and policy of Peter the Great must be carried out at any cost: so hundreds and thousands of Russians have been picked off by concealed marksmen, and crushed by fallen rocks, before their comrades could stop the slaughter. When scaling the heights, the Russians saw the men escaping by climbing to eyries almost out of sight, and the women preparing to baffle their invaders. On the rocky platforms stood groups of women, firing their last charges with excellent aim, and joining their strength to roll down masses of rock on the heads of their enemies; and when their retreat was scaled, the mothers would dash out their infants’ brains, throw them down the precipice, and leap after them. Prince Woronzoff met the Czar in the Crimea in 1845, and used his utmost influence to induce him to make no further attempts in the Caucasus; but the pride of Nicholas was enlisted in the struggle, and he commanded that Schamyl should be destroyed next season. It was, however, Schamyl’s most victorious year. He led out 10,000 soldiers, conducted a siege, gained all his points, and retired with a vast booty, leaving the Russians aghast.

The contest was not so desperate as it seemed at the time to us; for we were not aware how great Schamyl was as a lawgiver and civic ruler. He had extinguished the feuds of the tribes, and by a thorough organisation of the whole country, rendered the renewal of them almost impossible. He had made life and industry secure in places out of the line of invasion. He established an administration which rendered justice accessible to every inhabitant, and instituted a postal arrangement which harmonised distant districts and people. He obtained a revenue which amounted to so much more than his frugal expenditure, that his followers believed him to have concealed a great amount of treasure with which to carry on and extend the war. Thus did the prospects of the Caucasus improve, in the belief of friends and foes.

Yet there were reverses; and in one of these, the imperilled people sent a deputation to beg permission to surrender, if they could not be rescued. It was death to propose to Schamyl to yield to the Russians. He had sworn this; and he was a man of his word. The deputies shrank from their task, and imposed it upon Schamyl’s aged mother.

With fear and trembling she put the petition before him; and with fear and trembling she told the deputies that the will of Allah was to determine the answer. For three days and nights the chief was shut up alone in the mosque; and the fasting people were collected round it, praying all day long. When Schamyl reappeared, he was so altered that the gazers could scarcely believe it was he. There was no escape from the horror of the divine command. The tempter must be punished with a hundred blows of the heavy whip; and the tempter was his mother! She died at the fifth blow. Schamyl stripped off his garment, and insisted on receiving the other ninety-five. The deputies dared not look in his face, and grovelled on the ground; but he raised them, and gently told them to go home, and tell their neighbours what they had seen that day.

Still the Russians went on sacrificing 20,000 men every year, and a vast amount of money, in this obstinate war, and there seemed to be no prospect of an end, when Schamyl’s son was taken prisoner. With politic kindness, he was well treated at St. Petersburg, carefully educated, and in course of time sent home. There was a visible change in Schamyl after that. The unity of his purpose was broken up. Gratitude to the Czar was a perplexing emotion to the Sultan of the Caucasus; and his ideas of the Russians must have been much modified by what his son had to tell. He certainly flagged in his military career latterly; and last year it was all over. He had retired with his family and his band of 400 Murids,—pupil followers in the faith,—to a remote fastness, where the Russians, in great force, followed them up. The Murids, posted in a wood, were surrounded. Not a man of them survived. They all chose to die in killing as many Russians as they could. Schamyl was conducting the defence of the dwellings, inclosed within a wall. When no chance of escape remained, and his family must perish if he did not yield, he surrendered. This was on the 26th of August, last year. Since that date we have only the accounts of Russian observers. According to them, Schamyl’s gratitude to the Czar, his astonishment at finding the Russians men, and religionists, and his bewilderment at the achievements of civilisation, have cowed his spirit. They may easily have confused and darkened his mind, always hitherto illuminated by singleness of purpose and a consciousness of inspiration. He appears to be leading a life of devotion, so quiet as to be interrupted only by acts of homage to the Czar. But all this is very uncertain, however probable. One’s natural impulse is to dwell upon the last scenes in the Caucasus at the real close of his life,—remembering, however, that life may be no more over for him than for Abd-el-Kader, when he was pining in a French prison.

It would not be just to allow the recent intellectual and moral perplexities of Schamyl to weaken our sympathy with him, or impair our admiration. Every great man might seem infirm of purpose, and irresolute in action, if the whole contrary of what he knows and thinks could be suddenly opened up at the most critical moment of his course. Great champions are not the men