The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia

by Peter Hopkirk

  After two days’ hard riding, usually at night to escape the heat, they reached the small Persian frontier village of Regan, on the far side of the desert. It was surrounded by a high wall, each of its sides 250 yards long, 5 or 6 feet thick at the base, and excellently maintained. The villagers, Pottinger learned, lived in permanent fear of the Baluchi tribesmen who, he tells us, ‘seldom fail to pay them, or some other part of the Persian domains, a hostile visit once or twice a year.’ In addition to the guards on the single gate, there were sentinels armed with matchlocks positioned at intervals along the wall who kept watch all night – ‘frequently hallooing and shouting to encourage each other and warn any skulkers who may be outside that they are on the alert.’

  Pottinger’s unexpected arrival from out of the desert caused considerable consternation. ‘For none could divine’, he wrote, ‘how we had entered the country unperceived.’ The Khan, who received him warmly, expressed astonishment that the Baluchis had allowed him to pass through their country unmolested. Even so he had to spend the night outside the fort, for it was an absolute rule that no stranger should be allowed to sleep within its walls.

  Pottinger now pressed on towards Kerman, the provincial capital, a large and heavily fortified town governed by a Persian prince and celebrated throughout Central Asia for its fine shawls and matchlock guns. It was here that he and Christie had agreed to rendezvous on the completion of their secret missions. Eight days later, after leaving the desert and riding through neatly tended villages and snow-capped mountain scenery, he arrived there, hiring himself a room in a caravanserai near the bazaar. Word of his arrival spread quickly, and soon the usual inquisitive crowd, this time several hundred strong, assembled at the door of his lodgings and began to pester him with questions. For although he no longer needed to conceal his identity, Pottinger was still dressed like a native in a faded blue turban, a coarse Baluchi shirt and a pair of filthy and tattered trousers which had once been white. But that evening, he tells us, having disposed of his inquisitors and purchased the best meal he had enjoyed in weeks, ‘ I lay down and slept with more composure than I had done any night for the preceding three months.’

  On arrival he had sent a message to the Prince, seeking an audience. At the same time he had dispatched a courier to Shiraz where he believed (wrongly, as it turned out) his chief, General Malcolm, to be, advising him that he had come through safely and that his mission had been successfully accomplished. The Prince sent back a message welcoming him, and inviting him to his palace the following day. This presented Pottinger with a slight problem, for clearly he could not see the Prince in the clothes he had arrived in. Fortunately, however, he was able to borrow a change of dress from a Hindu merchant living near the caravanserai, and at ten o’clock the next morning he presented himself at the palace gates.

  After crossing several inner courtyards, he was met by the Urz Begee, or Master of Ceremonies, who led him into the royal presence. The Prince, a handsome bearded man wearing a black lambskin cap, was seated at a window some ten feet above them, looking down into a small court with a fountain playing in the centre of it. ‘We made a low bow,’ Pottinger recounts, ‘then we advanced a few yards and made a second, and in like manner a third, all of which the Prince acknowledged by a slight inclination of the head.’ Pottinger had expected to be invited to be seated. ‘But my dress not being of the first order,’ he wrote afterwards, ‘I suppose I was not thought respectable enough for that honour, and therefore I was placed opposite the Prince in the courtyard, round the walls of which all the officers of government were standing, with their arms folded across their bodies.’ The Prince then called out ‘in a very loud voice to know where I had been, and what could have induced me to undertake the journey I had performed, or how I had escaped from the dangers that must have attended it.’

  Although he could now safely admit to being a European, indeed an English officer, the real purpose of his journey could not be revealed, even to the Persians. He therefore told the Prince how he and another officer had been sent to Kelat to buy horses for the Indian Army. His companion had returned by another route, while he had travelled overland through Baluchistan and Persia where he hoped to join Malcolm. The Prince seemed to accept his story and after half an hour dismissed him. There was no sign yet of Christie, nor any word from him, so Pottinger decided to stay a little longer in Kerman before attempting to report to Malcolm. This the Prince agreed to, and Pottinger filled in the time usefully by garnering all he could about the character and customs of the Persians, and in particular the city’s defences.

  When he had been in Kerman for some days, he was able to observe Persian justice in action. Seated at the same window from which he had addressed Pottinger, the Prince passed both judgement and sentence on a number of men accused of murdering one of his servants. The city that day was in a state of great excitement. The gates were closed and all official business halted. The sentences were carried out on the spot, in the courtyard where Pottinger had stood, the Prince looking on with satisfaction at the horrifying spectacle. ‘Some,’ wrote Pottinger, ‘were blinded of both eyes, had their ears, noses and lips cut off, their tongues slit, and one or both hands lopped off. Others were deprived of their manhood, also having their fingers and toes chopped off, and all were turned out into the streets with a warning to the inhabitants not to assist or hold any intercourse with them.’ When dispensing justice, Pottinger was told, the Prince wore a special yellow robe called the Ghuzub Poshak, or Dress of Vengeance.

  Not long afterwards Pottinger received first-hand experience of the Prince’s devious ways when he was paid a furtive visit by a middle-aged court official who asked to speak to him in private. No sooner had Pottinger closed the door than his visitor launched into a long oration extolling the virtues of Christianity, finally declaring that he wished to embrace it. Suspecting that the man was an agent provocateur sent by the Prince, Pottinger told him that regrettably he had neither the knowledge nor the authority to instruct him in this or any other religion. His visitor tried a new tack. There were at that very moment, he assured Pottinger, 6,000 men living in Kerman praying that the English would come and liberate them from the Prince’s tyrannical rule. When, he asked, might they expect the English army to arrive? Anxious to avoid being drawn into such a dangerous conversation, Pottinger pretended not to understand the question. At that moment another visitor arrived and the man hastily departed.

  Pottinger had now been in Kerman for three weeks and there was still no sign or news of his brother officer. Hearing that a caravan was about to leave for Isfahan, he decided to join it. Eleven days later he reached Shiraz and after a further sixteen days entered Isfahan, only to learn that Malcolm was in Maragheh, in north-western Persia. While resting in Isfahan, luxuriating in the comforts of a palace set aside for important visitors, Pottinger was informed one evening that there was a man wishing to speak to him. ‘I went down’, he wrote later, ‘and as it was then quite dark I could not recognise his features.’ For several minutes he conversed with the stranger before it suddenly dawned on him that this shabby, travel-stained figure was Christie. Christie had learned on reaching Isfahan that there was another firingee, or European, in town, and had asked to be taken to him. Like Pottinger he at first failed to recognise his deeply tanned friend, dressed in Persian costume. But seconds later the two men were embracing, overwhelmed with relief and joy at the other’s survival. ‘The moment’, wrote Pottinger, ‘was one of the happiest of my life.’

  It was June 30, 1810, more than three months since their parting at Nushki. In all, since first setting foot in Baluchistan, Christie had ridden 2,250 miles through some of the most dangerous country in the world, while Pottinger had exceeded this by a further 162 miles. These were astonishing feats of daring and endurance, not to say of discovery. Had it been twenty years later, when the Royal Geographical Society was founded, both men would certainly have won its coveted gold medal for exploration, which so many of their fellow players i
n the Great Game were to carry off for journeys equally perilous.

  As it turned out, their enterprise and courage did not go unrecognised by their superiors who were delighted by the valuable intelligence they had brought back. Both were now earmarked as young officers of outstanding enterprise and ability. Lieutenant Pottinger, who was not yet 21, was destined for rapid promotion, a long and distinguished role in the coming Great Game, and eventually a knighthood. In addition to the secret reports that he and Christie had prepared on the military and political aspects of their journeys, Pottinger was to write an account of their adventures which thrilled readers at home, and which is today still sought after by collectors of rare and important works of exploration. For their adoption of a pilgrim’s robes to penetrate forbidden regions was undertaken nearly half a century before Sir Richard Burton won himself immortal fame by doing likewise.

  Christie, sadly, was less fortunate than Pottinger, his days already being numbered. When Pottinger was recalled for duty in India, Christie was invited by General Malcolm to stay behind in Persia to help, under the terms of the new treaty, to train the Shah’s troops to withstand Russian or French aggression. Two years later, while leading Persian infantry he had trained against the Cossacks in the southern Caucasus, he was to die in singularly dramatic circumstances. But we are moving ahead of the narrative, for much was to happen before that. Early in 1812, to the immense relief of London and Calcutta, the alarming partnership between Napoleon and Alexander had broken up. In June of that year Napoleon attacked, not India, but Russia, and to the astonishment of the world suffered the most catastrophic reverse in history. The threat to India had been lifted. Or so it seemed to a wildly rejoicing Britain.

  ·4·

  The Russian Bogy

  In the Baltic town of Vilnius, through which Napoleon’s troops marched to their doom in the summer of 1812, there stands today a simple monument bearing two plaques. Together they tell the whole story. On the side with its back towards Moscow is written: ‘Napoleon Bonaparte passed this way in 1812 with 400,000 men.’ On the other side are the words: ‘Napoleon Bonaparte passed this way in 1812 with 9,000 men.’

  The news that the Grande Armée was streaming back through the Russian snows in total disorder was received at first in Britain with utter disbelief. The overwhelming forces which he had hurled against the Russians made a French victory appear certain. Word that Moscow had fallen to Napoleon’s troops, and was in flames, seemed merely to confirm this. But then, after weeks of conflicting rumours, the truth began to emerge. It was not the French but the Russians themselves who had set fire to Moscow in order to deny Napoleon the food and other supplies he had hoped to find. The story of what followed is too well known to need retelling here. With winter approaching, and already desperately short of food, the French were forced to withdraw, first to Smolensk, and finally from Russia altogether.

  Harassed continuously by Cossack and guerrilla bands, Napoleon’s men soon found themselves forced to eat their own horses to survive. The retreat now turned into a rout, and soon the French soldiers were dying in tens of thousands, from frost-bite, sickness and starvation as much as from enemy action. As Marshal Ney’s rearguard crossed the frozen Dnieper, the ice gave way, plunging two-thirds of the men to their deaths. In the end, only a shattered and demoralised remnant of Napoleon’s once great army, which had been earmarked for the conquest of the East, including India, succeeded in escaping from Russia. But Alexander, convinced now that he had been ordained by the Almighty to rid the world of Napoleon, was not content simply to drive them back beyond his own frontiers. He pursued the French half-way across Europe to Paris, entering it in triumph on March 30, 1814.

  In Britain, as elsewhere, news of Napoleon’s downfall was greeted with euphoria. Alexander’s earlier duplicity in joining forces with him against Britain was conveniently forgotten, as relief overcame every other consideration. The newspapers vied with one another in heaping praise upon the Russians and extolling their many virtues, imaginary or otherwise. The heroism and sacrifice of the ordinary Russian soldier, especially of the splendid Cossacks, caught the imagination of the British public. Touching stories reached London from Europe of how ferocious Cossacks preferred to sleep on straw palliasses beside their horses rather than on comfortable beds in the best hotels, and how others turned their hand to help housewives on whom they were billeted with the domestic chores. One Cossack private who arrived in London that spring received a rapturous welcome – as did the Cossack chieftain who, fourteen years earlier, had led his men on that short-lived expedition against India on the orders of Tsar Paul. If anyone remembered, they said nothing. Instead, he was festooned with honours – including an honorary degree from Oxford – and was sent home laden with gifts.

  This love affair with Russia was not, however, destined to last. For an uneasy feeling had already begun to dawn on some that a new monster had been created in Napoleon’s place. Among them was the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh. When Alexander demanded at the Congress of Vienna, called in 1814 to redraw the map of Europe, that the whole of Poland should come under his control, Castlereagh objected strongly, believing Russia to be already powerful enough in Europe. But the Tsar was insistent, and the two powers came close to war, this only being averted when Alexander agreed to share Poland with Austria and Prussia. However, the lion’s share went to Russia. Nonetheless the European frontiers with which Russia finally emerged when Napoleon was safely imprisoned on St Helena were to mark the limits of its westward expansion for a century to come. In Asia, however, where there was no Congress of Vienna to curb St Petersburg’s ambitions, it would soon be a very different story.

  If one man could be said to be responsible for the creation of the Russian bogy, it was a much-decorated British general named Sir Robert Wilson. A veteran of many campaigns, with a reputation for hot-headedness both on and off the battlefield, he had long taken a close interest in the affairs of Russia. It was he who had been the first to report Alexander’s now notorious words as he stepped aboard the barge at Tilsit in 1807. ‘I hate the English as much as you do, and am ready to assist you in any undertaking against them,’ one of Wilson’s contacts overheard him declare. Wilson had begun by greatly admiring the Russians, and even after this had remained on good terms with them. When Napoleon turned on Russia, Wilson had been sent as official British observer with Alexander’s armies. Despite his non-combatant status, he had thrown himself as frequently as possible into the battle against the invader. This gallantry had won him the admiration and friendship of the Tsar, who had added a Russian knighthood to those of Austria, Prussia, Saxony and Turkey which he already possessed. The general was to witness the burning of Moscow, and was the first to send back news of Napoleon’s defeat to a disbelieving Britain.

  It was on his return to London that Wilson drew official wrath upon himself by launching a one-man campaign against the Russians, Britain’s allies, and in the eyes of most people the saviours of Europe. He began by demolishing romantic notions about the chivalry of the Russian soldier, especially those darlings of press and public, the Cossacks. The atrocities and cruelties perpetrated by them against their French captives, he alleged, were horrifying by the accepted standards of European armies. Large numbers of defenceless prisoners were buried alive, while others were lined up and clubbed to death by peasants armed with sticks and flails. While awaiting their fate, they were invariably robbed of their clothes and kept standing naked in the snow. The Russian women, he claimed, were especially barbaric towards those Frenchmen unfortunate enough to fall into their hands.

  Few at home were in any position to challenge Wilson, a soldier of great distinction and experience, who had witnessed these things at first hand, including acts of cannibalism. Nor did he have much time for the Tsar’s generals, then still basking in the glory of their victory. He accused them of professional incompetence in failing to attack the retreating French, thus allowing Napoleon himself, together with an entire army cor
ps, to escape. They had been content, he reported, to allow the Russian winter to destroy the invader. ‘Had I commanded 10,000, or I might say 5,000 men,’ he noted in his diary at the time, ‘Buonaparte would never again have sat upon the throne of France.’ He even claimed that the Tsar had confided to him his own lack of confidence in the abilities of Marshal Kutuzov, his commander-in-chief, but explained that it was not possible to sack him because he enjoyed the support of powerful friends.

  But Wilson’s most violent onslaught was still to come. In 1817, four years after his return from Russia and after successfully standing for Parliament, he published a diatribe against Britain’s ally. Entitled A Sketch of the Military and Political Power of Russia, and written anonymously (although no one was in any doubt as to its author), it was quickly to prove a bestseller and run to five editions in rapid succession. In it he claimed that the Russians, emboldened by their sudden rise to power, were planning to carry out Peter the Great’s supposed death-bed command that they conquer the world. Constantinople would be their first target, followed by the absorption of the remains of the Sultan’s huge but dying empire. After that would come India. In support of his sensational claim, Wilson pointed to the massive and continuing build-up of Russia’s armed forces, and the remorseless expansion of the Tsar’s domains. ‘Alexander’, he warned, ‘already has a much larger army than his defensive line requires or his finances can satisfy, and yet he continues to increase his force.’

  During Alexander’s sixteen years on the throne of Russia, Wilson calculated, he had added 200,000 square miles to his empire, together with thirteen million new subjects. To underline this, his book included a folding map on which Russia’s latest frontiers were marked in red, and its previous ones in green. This demonstrated just how close Alexander’s armies now were to the capitals of Western Europe, and also to Constantinople, the key to the crumbling Ottoman Empire and eventually to the most direct route to India. The Ottoman capital was vulnerable to an attack by Russia from three directions. One was down the western littoral of the Black Sea from what is now Romania. Another was across the same sea from the Crimea. A third was from the Caucasus and westwards through Anatolia. Once Alexander was in possession of the Sultan’s Near Eastern territories, he would be in a position to strike against India, either through Persia – and papers captured from Napoleon showed that he considered such a route feasible – or by a sea-borne force from the Persian Gulf, a voyage taking under a month.