Let Our Fame Be Great (9 page)

Be that as it may, the Circassians first met by Bell and Longworth were democratic in their decision-making and they called their grand council for all the elders of their province shortly after the arrival of the two Englishmen and allowed them to be observers. The meeting, held beneath trees in the open air, presents a picture of a natural democracy that is wonderful to observe but hopeless in practice, and which could not possibly resist an organized aggressor. Anyone was allowed to speak and at any length, and the meeting went on for days.

‘Should there be any individual fonder than others of hearing himself talk, they have a way of silencing him peculiar to themselves;
they neither crow like cocks, nor bray like certain other animals in more civilized assemblies, but adopt a method for which the form and the roomy nature of their house of meeting,
al fresco
, are most peculiarly adapted. The unfortunate orator in such cases is apt to find himself with no other audience than the neighbouring trees and bushes, the circle he had been addressing having rapidly dissolved and re-adjusted itself out of earshot, where it might be seen listening to somebody with better claims on its attention.'

The council's decision had to be unanimous, meaning the Circassians would never take action that was not agreed to by everyone, so the debates were long and tedious. This unity of purpose was both the nation's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. Elsewhere in the Caucasus, the Russians succeeded in conquering provinces by bribing or persuading local elites to side with them. This policy was most successfully used in Georgia and the Georgians never rebelled against their rule despite the deposition of the royal family that had decided to ally itself to St Petersburg.

In Circassia, however, the absence of a government meant the people could not be bought. Sadly it also meant the people could not be organized. The council attended by the travellers lasted for five days but had to keep moving to new locations to avoid bankrupting its hosts. Without a government to organize taxes and food for the dignitaries, the assembled elders were fed and housed by the local inhabitants.

While the elders talked, the younger men engaged in games of strength involving shooting in the air, throwing large stones as far as they could, or showing off on their horses. ‘The principal of these [sports] is the race, or, rather, the chase, one horseman being followed at full speed by several others, whom he seeks to elude, not only by the swiftness of his horse, but by his address in dodging, winding, and availing himself of the inequalities of the ground,' wrote Longworth, before going on to describe with similarly breathless enthusiasm how accomplished the young men were with their rifles, their bows and arrows, and their pistols.

But this chaotic picture should not be interpreted as meaning that affairs between Circassians were not regulated, for they were, and in
a manner that seems far more similar to that of the Bedouins of the desert than to the ways of other settled communities. Every Circassian belonged to a brotherhood or society, which fulfilled the roles of an extended family. Marriages within the society were banned so, to prevent unnecessary expense, the societies were scattered and intermingled among each other. Membership of a society meant that every member was responsible for the actions of an individual. If a crime was committed, a jury of twelve – half from the society of the victim, half from the society of the criminal – would meet to decide on what action to take.

The brotherhoods would take upon themselves the payment of fines for crimes committed by a member in the first few offences but, not wanting a drain on their resources, would take more serious action if the member was a repeat offender. Criminal cases, however, only involved those connected to the brotherhoods in question, and there were no courts or judges who dealt with cases independently. At one point, Longworth and a companion called Emin came across a fugitive wanted for murder, and the Englishman asks why Emin did not shoot him. ‘God forbid . . . I should have involved myself and my connexions in a feud with his tribe. Besides, the boy he has murdered does not belong to my tribe; and if he did, we should prefer the penalty of two hundred oxen to the villain's life, which his own clansmen will, no doubt, take care to shorten for him, since they have found it so detrimental to them,' said Emin. Sure enough, the murderer was later weighted with rocks and thrown into the sea.

These descriptions are a rare glimpse into the organization of a society with no government. However, when looked at from the perspective of trying to organize resistance to the Russian invasion, the brotherhoods, and the habits of independence they encouraged, served as more of a hindrance than a help. Mobilizing the societies, and then mobilizing their members, proved almost impossible except when defending desperately against a direct attack. The Circassians would, throughout the nineteenth-century war, prove all but incapable of taking the initiative. On many occasions they dispersed rather than destroy a defeated army. The expense of an army living off the land was one that the disorganized local economy could not support.

The council attended by Longworth and Bell discussed and considered for five days, but resolved on little more than sending a letter to the Russian General Ivan Velyaminov asking him to withdraw from Circassia. The reply from the general was chilling, and instructive of the tactics that Russia was employing in its unequal battle.

Velyaminov had landed a force at the bay of Gelendzhik, which is a sheltered if shallow anchorage, that was joined by another marching overland. The Circassians, wary of the Russians' grapeshot, were confining themselves to sniping from the trees, and neither side was in a position to win a significant victory. The general, however, was arrogant in his demand for submission.

‘Are you not aware that if the heavens should fall, Russia could prop them up with her bayonets? The English may be good mechanics and artisans, but power dwells only with Russia. No country ever waged successful war against her,' he wrote. ‘If you refuse to listen to us, your country shall be taken from you, and yourselves treated with the utmost rigour. Be obedient, therefore, to my instructions. You must believe what has been told you, and you will be treated with lenity; otherwise, it will not be our fault if your valleys are destroyed with fire and sword, and your mountains trampled to dust! Yield, and you may retain your property; if not, all you possess, even your arms, shall be taken from you, and yourselves made slaves.'

The warning was prophetic, since the Circassians would indeed lose their country and experience their national tragedy, but a lot of skirmishing was to take place before that day.

Much of the Russian energy at this time was devoted to establishing a chain of forts along the coast that would seal off the Circassians from their allies over the sea. These forts were truly miserable affairs, often more deadly for the defenders than the attackers, but they served to warn off traders from the most important coastal sites.

Built of mud and brush, they were often cut off from all communications for the entire winter, when the sea was plagued by storms. During the winter months, the unfortunate defenders were exposed to disease and starvation as well as the ceaseless sniping of the Circassian rifles. Tornau, an engineer officer, despaired of the conditions of the forts he passed. The garrisons, he wrote, were too weak to intimidate
the local inhabitants and served only as a source of slaves for the Circassians, who traded in Russian prisoners openly.

The garrison in Sukhumi, capital of present day Abkhazia, came in for particular censure when he passed through in 1835. ‘The people had the look of unfortunate victims, doomed to permanent fever, from which half of them died every year. They knew this and, not exactly with a calm spirit, but uncomplainingly bore their lot, not ceasing to fulfil their difficult duty with the submissiveness characteristic of the Russian soldier.'

The appalling conditions endured by the Russian soldiers must be borne in mind when reading descriptions of the military prowess of the Circassians, who so frequently failed to capture the forts manned by these pitiful creatures. The Russian army, though justly lauded for its defeat of Napoleon, had gone sharply downhill since 1815. The freedoms that its soldiers and officers had enjoyed during those heroic campaigns had been anathema to the government, and constant drill had replaced soldiering. The army had gone from a place where aristocrats and peasants were united in a common cause to a herd of cowed conscripts lorded over by vicious martinets. The tipping point had come in early winter 1825 when Alexander I died.

Officers who had seen conditions in western Europe, and who had lived in occupied Paris, wanted to push Russia towards the European mainstream. Alexander's successor and brother Konstantin turned down the crown, and it passed to the younger brother Nikolai, who surpassed even his dead sibling in small-mindedness. In response to the proclamation of his accession, liberal officers called out their regiments to stand on Palace Square in St Petersburg, where they demanded a constitution until they were cut down by loyal troops. The significance of this ‘Decembrist' uprising is often overstated, and the Decembrists were unlikely to have changed much even if they had won – Russia has a habit of reverting to autocratic type no matter who rules it – but their revolt terrified the new tsar.

Nikolai was convinced he had been spared by God, and forced the generals to come down even harder than before on any signs of subversion in the ranks. He came to believe that ‘unquestioning obedience and an absence of dangerous initiative on the part of subordinates
were essential to the security of his realm', according to one historian of the period.

He interfered and quibbled and altered plans drawn up for the Circassian war. At one point he was told about plans for a fort at a river crossing. Nikolai dug into his files for the results of a reconnaissance of the site three years earlier. ‘After studying the drawing, he marked on it the spot for the fort, and then ordered a special messenger to gallop two thousand versts [2,000 kilometres] to the Caucasus, so the entrenchment could be built according to his wishes,' wrote the historian John Shelton Curtiss, in his book
The Russian Army under Nicholas I
.

The strict rules and mismanagement that resulted had the inevitable effect of creating flourishing circumstances for corruption. Alexandre Dumas, the French author of
The Three Musketeers
, recorded one case when he travelled in the Caucasus in the 1850s. A soldier he met told him how the men of his regiment were entitled to the meat of one bullock a day – a far from excessive amount for 400 or 500 men. On the long march from Kaluga near Moscow, their captain marched a bullock along with them. ‘Whenever an official came on a visit of inspection, there were the captain's accounts, showing the purchase of one bullock a day as instructed, and there was the bullock, large as life, and ready for the men's supper tonight.' On they marched, the bullock bringing up the rear, for two and a half months. ‘Perhaps we might think that at last the men had a chance to eat their beef? Not a bit of it! The captain sold the bullock and since (unlike the men) it had been well fed every day, he made a handsome profit.'

The poor food coupled with a malarial climate and constant skirmishes had a devastating effect on the Russian soldiers sent to subdue the tribesmen. Xavier Hommaire de Hell, a French explorer who travelled extensively through southern Russia with his wife Adele, noted that, in spring 1840, 12,000 men of the 12th Division went to occupy the forts of Circassia. Four months later, only 1,500 of them returned.

‘The same year, the commander-in-chief found but nine men fit for service out of 300 that composed the garrison of [Sukhumi],' he wrote, adding that 17,000 men died a year in 1841 and 1842.

‘Is it to be wondered that with such a military administration, Russia makes no progress in the Caucasus? What can be expected of armies in which want of all necessities and total disregard for the lives of men are the order of the day?' he asked.

The tsar raged against the corruption and inefficiency. But, in truth, what was needed was delegation of powers to men on the ground and that the tsar was not prepared to do.

His micromanagement, with its inevitable inability to react to local conditions, would have catastrophic results in the eastern Caucasus, where the war was more intense. And it was bad for morale in the west. However, it did have one unintended consequence that we can welcome: a new witness of the warfare appeared on the scene.

Nikolai Ivanovich Lorer was one of the unfortunate Decembrists who appealed for a constitution in 1825. He was not a leader of the revolt – he would have been hanged had he been – but was sent into exile in Siberia for twelve years. At the end of this period, aged forty-eight, he was posted to the Caucasus to serve as a private soldier, and arrived on the Black Sea just when the army was building its chain of forts. He was in an anomalous position. He was an aristocrat, so the officers of this force were his friends and his schoolmates, but he was forced to fight in the ranks, giving him a unique perspective on how the army worked. He took part in a massive amphibious landing at a place he called Shapsugo (Bell calls it Sashe), not far from modern-day Tuapse, where the fort of Tenginskoye was to be built.

The Russians first made a feint attack, causing the Circassians to gather, then under cover of an artillery barrage landed their troops to the north. The troops took a few small hills, much to the surprise of the Circassians gathered there, who bustled off to save their possessions and families.

The Russian victory was easy and they built their fort despite the best efforts of the Circassian snipers. But then the evil reputation of the Black Sea was confirmed. A massive storm sank a steamship and two frigates that were escorting it, leaving the army without reinforcements. The destruction was terrible. As it happens, Bell was only a few kilometres away at this time and the next few days are the only time during this whole campaign when we have two, independent
witnesses to an event. According to Bell, the storm wrecked twenty-nine Russian ships on the coast as whole.