CHAPTER II.

THE CONQUEST OF THE THREE KHANATES.

RUSSIA, after having subdued the Kirghises; and reached, on the left bank of the Yaxartes, the outlying northern districts of Khokand, had in the meantime fully prepared all the ways and means of an attack upon the three khanates. During my stay in Bokhara in 1863, I heard vague rumours only of the Russian approach towards Tashkend. "The formerly sweet waters of the Yaxartes river," said a pious Mohammedan to me, "have been utterly spoiled and rendered undrinkable, for the Russians have watered their horses and dipped their abominable idols into it; but as to the country of Khokand, they will never be able to conquer it, for the glorious spirit of the holy Khodja Ahmed Yessevi at Hazreti-Turkestan is on the watch, and will never allow the infidels to pass into the region of Islam." Unhappy dreamer! He and his countrymen had quite forgotten that the poor Khodja Ahmed Yessevi was but a doubtful champion against the adventurous General Tchernayeff, who, with but two thousand men, not only trampled upon

the grave of the said saint, but succeeded also in capturing Tashkend, the great commercial centre of the north of the khanates in 1864, and defeating an enemy at least twenty times as numerous as his daring companions in arms.

It was during the very year I arrived in London that the news of the capture of Tashkend had reached Europe. A few weeks before that I happened to meet Lord Palmerston, and I consider it no small distinction to have been listened to with attention by this greatest English statesman of modern times. After having given to him the outlines of my stirring adventures, and related all that I had heard of the approach of Russia, adding, at the same time, remarks upon the comparative ease with which the Muscovite would advance towards the Oxus, the noble lord said amongst other things, that we Hungarians, like the Poles, had a hot brain, and that many generations must pass before Russia would be able to pull down the Tartar barrier and approach the country intervening between India and Bokhara. I very much doubt whether the great English statesman seriously meant what he stated to me, for his careful inquiries into sundry details belied his seeming indifference. At all events he did not continue with that Olympian calmness with which he had tried to impress me at first, and shared by no means in the indifference

exhibited by English statesmen I occasionally met after the publication of the Russian circular of Prince Gortschakoff in 1864. It must be borne in mind that Russia, fully conscious of the importance of the step she had taken, condescended to give explanations even without being asked. The aforesaid circular, intended to appease any eventual anxiety, related in a cleverly written memorandum how the Government of the Czar had been compelled, against his own will and without any hope of material benefit, to annex the country of the Kirghises; and how these Kirghises, unruly fellows, could be only governed and ruled from a point where the cultivable region might secure a firm footing for the invader, and afford the best opportunity to check disorder and lawlessness.

In that famous circular it was said that the following reasons had mainly precipitated the conquest of Tashkend:

"1. It has been deemed indispensable that the two fortified lines of our frontiers, one starting from China and extending as far as the Issyk Kul lake, the other from the Aral Sea along the Syr-Darya, should be united by fortified points, in such a manner that all our posts would be in a condition to eventually sustain each other, and not to allow any interval to remain open through which the nomadic tribes might effect with impunity their invasions and depredations.

"2. It was essential that the line of our advanced forts laid down in this manner should be situated in a country not only sufficiently fertile to secure their provisions, but also to facilitate regular colonisation, for this alone can secure to an occupied country a future of stability and prosperity in winning the neighbouring populations for civilised life.

"3. Lastly, it was urgent to fix that line in a definite manner, in order to escape from the dangerous and almost inevitable inducements to go on from repression to reprisals, which might result in an endless extension."

"With this object the basis of a system had to be laid down, which should be founded not only upon reason, which is elastic, but upon geographical and political conditions which are of a fixed and permanent nature."

In reading these passages we really are at a loss to decide whether grim humour or unprecedented hypocrisy and impudence have dictated them. The ink was scarcely dry with which the lines had been written, when Russia, anxious to avoid "endless extension," plunged again into fresh conquests. Khudayar Khan, the ruler of Khokand, a noted coward even in Central Asia, had soon lost his spirits, and implored Muzaffar-ed-din-Khan for assistance. Bokhara, reputed at that time the very stronghold of

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moral and material strength in Central Asia, was soon at hand with an army outnumbering the Russian adventurers ten or fifteen times; an army in name only, but consisting chiefly of a rabble, ill-armed, and devoid of any military qualities. By dint of preponderating numbers, the Bokhariots succeeded so far as to inflict a loss upon the daring Russian general at Irdjar, who, constrained to retreat upon Tashkend, was at once deposed by his superiors in St. Petersburg, and instead of praises being bestowed upon him for the capture of Tashkend, he had to feel the weight of Russian ingratitude. His successor, General Romanovsky, played the part of a consolidator and a preparer, and as soon as this duty was fulfilled he likewise was superseded by General Kauffmann, a German from the Baltic Russian provinces, uniting the qualities of his predecessors in one person, and doing accordingly the work entrusted to him with pluck and luck in a comparatively short time. In 1868 the whole Yaxartes valley, together with Samarkand, the former capital of Timur, fell into the hands of Russia, and General Kauffmann would have proceeded to Bokhara, and even farther, if Muzaffar-eddin-Khan, terrified by the heavy blows which he had received, and afraid of a revolutionary rising in his own country headed by his own son, had not voluntarily submitted and begged for peace.