THE RUSSIANS

AT MERV AND HERAT,

AND THEIR

POWER OF INVADING INDIA.

BY

CHARLES MARVIN,

AUTHOR OF "THE DISASTROUS RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN AGAINST THE TURCOMANS,"
66 GRODEKOFF'S RIDE TO HERAT," "MERV, THE QUEEN OF THE WORLD,"
"THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE TOWARDS INDIA," "OUR PUBLIC OFFICES,"
"THE RUSSIAN RAILWAY TO HERAT AND INDIA," ETC.

"A body of European troops established at Herat, and standing with its front
to the south-east, would draw upon it the attention of the whole population of
India. In that lies the moral significance of a military occupation of Herat; and
it is not without reason that a number of English experts, knowing India well,
have expressed their belief that were an enemy to occupy Herat with a powerful
force, the English army, without having fired a shot, would consider itself half
beaten."-GENERAL SOBOLEFF, 1882.

LONDON:

W. H. ALLEN & CO., 13 WATERLOO PLACE,

PALL MALL. S.W.

PUBLISHERS TO THE INDIA OFFICE.

1883.

(All rights reserved.)

PREFACE.

WHEN one of the principal feudatory princes of India instructs a London publishing house to purchase for him all the books that have been issued by English and European authors on the Central Asian Question, and to make a special point of acquiring such works as embody the Russian view of the problem, an excuse certainly seems to exist for an Englishman to call the attention of his countrymen to the remarkable changes that have taken place in that question since the annexation of Askabad and the evacuation of Candahar. Among those changes may be mentioned the introduction of the Caucasian factor into the Central Asian Question, the formation of a new base of operations beyond the Caspian infinitely stronger than the Turkestan one, the completion of railway communication between that base and Russia proper, the extraordinary development of the Caspian Marine, the opening up of commercial relations with Merv, the discovery by Lessar of an easy road to Herat, and the surveys of Russia for a railway, needing only a few millions to connect her Empire with India.

In 1878, when Kaufmann assembled his troops on the Bokharan frontier to march upon Cabul and India, he was distant six months from the terminal point of the Russian railway system-Orenburg. Were an advance ordered from Askabad to-morrow, the Russian com