Life of Schamyl Part 1

Life of Schamyl.

by John Milton Mackie.

PREFACE.

The princ.i.p.al authors who have recently written on Circa.s.sia are Bodenstedt, Moritz Wagner, Marlinski, Dubois de Montpereux, Hommaire de h.e.l.l, Taillander, Marigny, Golovin, Bell, Longworth, Spencer, Knight, Cameron, Ditson; and from their pages chiefly has been filled the easel with the colors of which I have endeavored to paint the following picture of a career of heroism nowise inferior to that of the most famous champions of cla.s.sical antiquity, of a war of independence such as may not improperly be compared with the most glorious struggles recorded in the annals of liberty, and of a state of society perhaps the most romantic and the most nearly resembling that described in the songs of Homer which the progress of civilization has now left for the admiration of mankind.

LIFE OF SCHAMYL.

I.

THE LAND OF SCHAMYL.

Circa.s.sia--under which name the country occupied by a great number of tribes of which the Circa.s.sians are one, is best known to foreigners--lies in the Caucasus, a range of mountains which, running in the direction between north-west and south-east, extends from the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea to those of the Caspian, and divides by its wall of rock the two continents of Europe and Asia.

The traveller approaching these mountains from the steppes inhabited by the Cossacks subject to Russia, beholds at a distance of thirty miles a single white conical summit towering high above the otherwise level horizon. This is the peak of Elbrus, the loftiest in the Caucasian chain, and called by the natives the Dsching Padischah, or great spirit of the mountains. Next, is seen the no less solitary top of Kasbek, situated further eastward, and its snows tinged by the first red rays of the morning. Then, the whole line of summits, "the thousand peaked,"

rises to view; and finally, a lower range covered with forests, and hence called the Black Mountains, draws its dark and irregular outline against the higher snows beyond.

The waters shed from the northern declivities of the Caucasus, are received by two princ.i.p.al rivers, the Kuban and the Terek; while those which flow down on the south side are gathered into the Rion and the Kur, or ancient Cyrus. Of these streams the Kuban is the largest, and empties itself as does the Rion, into the Black Sea; the other two running eastward to the Caspian.

The western portion more especially of the Black Mountains is heavily wooded. Gigantic oaks spread their branches above cliffs and summits, where in less favored climes only the cold pine would be able to find a scanty subsistence; while the spray of the Black Sea is dashed against the immense stems of the blood-wooded taxus, and the red and almond-leaved willows sweep with their long branches the waves. The box here is a giant of the forest; the stern of the juniper measures often fifteen feet in circ.u.mference; and the vine climbing to the top of the lofty elm sends its tendrils across to the neighboring beech, hanging festoons from tree-top to tree-top, and almost making of the forest one far spreading arbor. Lower down the pomegranate hangs out its blossoms; the fig and wild pear their fruits; the laurel and the myrtle their green leaves; while an infinite variety of creepers entwine themselves around every form, and wild flowering plants, from gorgeous rhododendrons and azalias to the lowly violet and arbutus, fill the woods with sweet odors.

The distant view of the Caucasus, so bold in its outlines and varied in its forms, surpa.s.ses in grandeur that of the Alps; and if from the small number of lakes and glaciers, the interior aspects present less of that exceeding beauty which characterizes the Swiss landscapes above those of all other mountains, there is nevertheless a brilliancy of tints in this oriental air, a glory of nearly five hundred miles of snow peaks, a luxuriance of woods on the lower ranges, and a degree of cultivation in the valleys where the hand of man has been busy since times the most remote, which render this mountain land one of the fairest portions of the globe, and worthy of having been, as by some traditions is reported, the cradle of the human race.

The western portion of the mountains is fruitful to the height of five thousand feet, and the eastern is frequently terraced with gardens. The valleys, green with meadows or golden with many varieties of grain, are dotted over with villages and cl.u.s.ters of cottages. White sheep in great numbers and jet black goats crop the hill-sides; while in lower pastures feed the buffalo and the camel. Herds of tame or half-wild horses roam at large through the glades; wild boars house among the reeds on the river banks; and the chamois looks down from its rocks upon wild deer and gazelles grazing unscared in the vicinity of the habitations of man.

II.

ITS HISTORY.

The Caucasus is celebrated as the scene of some of the most popular fables of Grecian antiquity, as well as of some of the earliest traditions of the race. For while the ark of Noah is said to have grounded on the top of Mount Elbrus before reaching its final resting-place on the neighboring Ararat, it was on Kasbek that Prometheus was chained to a rock for having stolen the fire of the G.o.ds and given it to mortals. In the mountain land of Colchis, Jason carried off the golden fleece, and Cadmus reaped a harvest of armed men from sowing serpent's teeth in furrows turned by the fire-breathing bulls of Vulcan. Hither wandered that primitive race of men who were driven by the Pelasgi from the regions of Olympus; on an island off the coast the poets located the palace of Aurora, wherein were kept up the perpetual dances and songs of the hours, and where was daily reborn the sun; and finally, between the present Little Kabarda and Svanethi existed, say the traditions, the gallant state of the Amazons, until the heart of their otherwise unconquerable prophetess was taken captive by Thoulme, chief of the Circa.s.sians, while long afterwards the famous Nina continued to rule over the heroic sisterhood in Immeritia.

The ancient Persians gave to the Caucasus the name of Seddi Iskender, or the barrier of Alexander, who here met with the first check in his attempt to subjugate the world. Rome early sent her conquering legions to bring under the yoke the prosperous colonies of Greece on the sh.o.r.es of the Euxine; and Pompey returning home from the East, after having chased Mithridates from the Euphrates to Colchis and Dioscurias, graced his triumphal entry into the city with the gigantic sons of these mountains. Genoa, in a later and more commercial age, made settlements on the Caucasian sh.o.r.e, whither she sent her argosies to be freighted with grain, skins, tallow, and the fruits of the hive, and where she has left to this day the foundations of her walls and towers, her carved stones and crosses, her sepulchres and a name. In more recent times, the princes of the dynasties of the White Horde and the Golden Camp have come from the Crimea to break their lances on the plains of the k.u.ma; Attila, Tamerlane, and Genghis Khan have swept in their victorious career along the base of these rocky ramparts of freedom; the Persian and the Turk have waged occasional war with some of the Caucasian tribes, though never with more than partial and temporary success; and it is the Muscovite empire alone which has ever succeeded in throwing the shadows of imminent subjugation over the landscape of these sunny vales.

Accordingly, the independence of most of these mountain tribes has been maintained from the earliest times to the present against all the attempts of their enemies of the plains. They have lived for generations, the memory of man runneth not to the end of, in the enjoyment of a large degree of natural liberty, in obedience to ancient laws and usages, in the respect of age, virtue, and superiority in arms, and now furnish the only specimen left of tribes of men still living in all the simplicity, and retaining, along with the practice of some of the semi-barbarous vices, all the heroism of the so-called age of gold.

Georgia, which lies on the southern declivities of the Caucasus, was nominally converted to Christianity in the days of Constantine the Great, when its heroic queen Thamar ruled over one of the most powerful empires of western Asia; but beautiful on these mountain tops as were the feet of those who brought the glad tidings and published peace, the doctrines of the cross made but little impression on the benighted minds of these wors.h.i.+ppers in the temple of nature. Nor though Russia early endeavored to introduce the peaceful soldiers of the church into the fastnesses where she could not penetrate with her secular dragoons, the native heart continued to hold to the simple religious rites handed down by tradition from the fathers, and finally relinquished them only within the last hundred years in exchange for the doctrines of the Prophet, which, though introduced a couple of centuries before, at the point of the spears of the Crimean Khans, were then first made plain and acceptable by missionaries from Turkey.

For subsistence the Caucasian tribes have always relied mainly on pasturage and agriculture, also on the chase, on rapine and the spoils of war, and on the exchange of their natural products and slaves for the salt, gunpowder, and manufactured goods of foreigners. So constant for centuries has been their attachment to the mountains that they have never emigrated to the plains, the life of which they despise. Only the harems of Constantinople have an attraction for their females; and a few restless youth, wandering at different times into foreign parts, have furnished bodyguards to the sultans of Turkey and the Khans of the Crimea; have served under the name of Mamelukes in Egypt, where Mehemet Ali could not control but only ma.s.sacre them; and latterly have graced the parade days of the Russian capital, where, treated like pet lions, their fiery spirit of independence and impatience of discipline have been but mildly restrained by the Czar, and where such is their haughty, imposing bearing, that whenever the vulgar crowd in the streets gives way for the coming of any one, it has become almost a proverb to say, it is either a general officer in the army or a Circa.s.sian.

III.

THE WAR WITH RUSSIA.

The contest between the Circa.s.sians and the Russians may be said to have originated as far back as the middle ages. For it was in the tenth century that the grand duke Swatoslaff, overrunning a portion of the Bosphoric territories, came into collision with the inhabitants of the Caucasus; and in the sixteenth, the Russians under the grand duke Wa.s.siljewitsch made their appearance on the Caspian, on the western coast of which they established garrisons as far south as Tarku. In the latter century also the Kabardian princes, whose territory consisting of open valleys was less defended by nature against the inroads of enemies, bowed their necks for a time in submission; and Georgia, on the Asiatic slope, took in the person of her king Alexander the oath of va.s.salage to the Muscovite, obtaining a master where she had asked only for a protector. But occupied during the next two hundred years with affairs at the north, the Russian princes lost their possessions and most of their influence in the Caucasus; and it was not until 1722 that the far-seeing ambition of the great Peter brought him to the "Albanian gates" of Derbend, and even within sight of the sacred fires of the promontory of Apsheron.

It was permitted to this most gifted of the czars to behold these mountains and get a glimpse of the fair Asiatic vales beyond, but not to possess them. In leaving, however, to his successors the legacy of his boundless ambition, he pointed with his dying hand to the peaks of Elbrus and Kasbek; and ever since his race, extending itself on all sides, has not ceased to press onward in this pathway to ward the rising of the sun.

Especially within the last quarter of a century has Russia occupied herself in earnest with the conquest of the Caucasus. During that period she has maintained there constantly a large force, and latterly as many as two hundred thousand men under arms. Year after year she has despatched her battalions to supply the places of those who had fallen by the shaskas of the Circa.s.sians or the still more deadly arrows of the fever, which in the most sickly seasons has cut off no less than one sixth of the whole army. She has sent thither also her best generals and administrators from Jermoloff to Paskiewitsch and Woronzoff. The emperor Nicholas went himself into these mountains at the risk of his life, to inspect and encourage by his presence the invading columns. Every system of attack which the ingenuity of the St. Petersburg cabinet could devise has in turn been tried; efforts have constantly been made to gain over by intrigue the tribes who could not be subjugated by force; the cross, joining its influence to the power of the sword, has endeavored to bring the native mind under the dominion of a system of religion more favorable to the aims of the autocrat; a superior civilization has held out to the comparatively rude barbarians, its hands full of gifts dazzling and fatal to liberty; but hitherto mostly, if not all, in vain.

The inhabitants of the upper and more inaccessible mountains have held their independence above all price, fighting for their homes as the mountaineer only will; and the chieftains who have been tempted by preferment in the Russian army and the glitter of its epaulettes, by the honors of the parades at Tiflis, and even by the imperial champaign, and the sight of the ballet dancers of St. Petersburg, have disdained to sell a birthright of freedom inherited from a thousand generations in exchange for these high-flavored sops of an overreaching foreign despotism.

An intense interest of humanity, therefore, still hangs over this prolonged contest between the forces of civilization and those of the primitive state of nature, between the battalions of imperial authority and the bands of democratic liberty; and the more intense because this barrier of nature and wall of freemen once completely carried, there will remain no further hinderance to the victorious course eastward of that ambition which, possessing already the path to the orient by the northern snows, covets that also across the sands of the tropics.

IV.

HIS BIRTHPLACE.

Schamyl, the princ.i.p.al hero of this war of independence, was born in the year 1797. The place of his birth is Himri, an aoul or village in the district of Arrakan, and in the north-western part of Daghestan, a territory lying on the Caspian. It is situated on the river, called lower down where it approaches the sea, the Sulak, but here the Koissu; and at a point just above where the main stream throws off that one of its four branches which is termed the Andian Koissu.

All these waters flow down, on the south, from the main Caucasian range; on the west, from the Andian offshoot; and on the east, from that of the Kaitach; which two latter running, the one north-easterly and the other north-westerly until they meet, form the two sides of a triangle of mountains having for its base the high Caucasus. The apex is just below Himri, and consists of the escaped cliffs of two summits called the Touss-Tau and the Sala-Tau; while through a gorge between them is precipitated the whole volume of the united branches of the Koissu.

Himri, accordingly, together with the neighboring fortified aoul of Akhulgo, is one of the keys of this triangular region of well-watered highlands, which is inhabited by a considerable number of warlike tribes known collectively as the Lesghians, and which, with the territory of Daghestan on the east, and that of Tchetchenia on the north, is the princ.i.p.al theatre of the great military achievements of Schamyl.

The aoul of Himri is placed like an eagle's nest high on a rock projecting from the mountain side. From the beautiful vale through which winds the Koissu, a narrow path cut out of the rock is carried zig-zag up a height of two or three hundred feet, and is exposed to be swept by stones let loose from above of any enemy that might be daring enough to attack this strong-hold. A triple wall supported by high towers adds the defences of art to those of nature; while above, the place is sheltered by the overhanging brow of the mountain.

Standing on one of these towers the native looks down upon the narrow but fertile valley, divided in twain by the fast-flowing river. Several of the surrounding mountains are laid out in terraced gardens; while some are partially covered with oaks and plane-trees; and others again are entirely bare, having instead of the drapery of foliage only the tints of gold or purple which the rising and the setting sun sheds over the ruggedness of the limestone and the porphyry. Near at hand are seen one or two heights which are clad with perpetual snows; while westward, far away beyond the lower highlands, the view is terminated by the white form of Mt. Kasbek.

The internal aspect of the aoul is less pleasing. Most of the streets are steep and crooked, though the scattered position of the dwellings in others, affords some sites both open and level. The roofs are generally flat; the walls, almost dest.i.tute of windows, are rough with unhewn stones; and many of the houses lie half buried under the rocky mountain side. These are without numbers as the streets are without names. Here, moreover, rises no village spire to point the thoughts of men heavenward; no church bell rings out its merry festal peals, or tolls the march to the grave; no sundial marks the succession of the hours which pa.s.s by unheeded all, save those of morning, noon, and evening; and in no public school-house is heard the low buzz of children conning their tasks. But the mollah calls to prayers from the minaret of a humble mosque; and in a dark corner illumined by aslant rays from a small high window in a wall, teaches to some half a dozen urchins the strange Arabic letters and the chants of the Koran. From the going down of the sun until early morn not a light is seen throughout the aoul, nor scarcely a sound heard, save the howling of the watch-dogs and the plaintive crying of the jackals in the forests. Indeed, the only hour in the day when there is any appearance of life in these streets is at noon, when the labors of the garden and the exercises of the games being suspended, many of the male inhabitants either sit about idle, or lie sleeping like Italian lazzaroni, or stand grouped together in long, light-colored surtouts with a negligent grace and natural dignity not surpa.s.sed in antique statues. Here and there one more diligent burnishes his arms, and another grooms his horse. A few veiled women come and go, bearing jars of water or other burdens, though most of the female population are occupied in their apartments with the preparation of food, and in the labors of the loom and spindle; while young children, half-naked, play around the house doors and through the lanes with an activity in strong contrast with the prevailing tone of grave and somnolent repose.

V.

HIS PARENTS, ATALIK, AND TEACHER.

Of the parents of Schamyl nothing is known; nor is this lack of information greatly to be regretted, considering that they lived in a state of society where there is so little inequality of cla.s.ses or diversity of external condition. His father not being probably a chief of the tribe, was a freeman and peer among his fellows, possessing like them a small, amphitheatrical house, the husband of but one wife, owning a war-horse, and arms, besides a few sheep and goats, and the proprietor of a garden supported by terraces on a neighboring mountain side.

Nor is it known who was his foster-father, or atalik; for according to the custom prevalent in western, and to some extent in eastern Circa.s.sia, he may at an early age have been adopted by some one in whose family he resided during the years spent in learning the rudiments of letters and the art of war, and who sustained a relation towards him even more intimate and affectionate than that of his own father. The atalik would have supplied the boy with food and clothing, instruction, and a home, without expecting any other compensation than such plunder as the latter during his pupilage might bring in from the enemy, together with the grat.i.tude through life of both himself and his family.

And this he could well afford to do, being possessed of means somewhat superior to those of the majority of his clansmen. If descended from a family among the first in the tribe and long ill.u.s.trious in arms, he might own as many as fifteen hundred head of cattle, and an equal number of sheep, besides a small herd of horses and mares. Like the ancient patriarchs, he would have his wives and his servants, some of them captured in forays, and all living together as one family in a stone house of several stories and defended by a high tower.