In late August 1839, two disturbing pieces of intelligence reached the British garrison in Kabul. The first was that Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Stoddart, who had been sent to Bokhara to reassure the Emir about British intentions in Afghanistan, had been arrested and thrown unceremoniously into a pit filled with vermin. The second, even more worrying item of news was that a large Russian expedition was on its way southwards from Orenburg to seize the khanate of Khiva.
·16·
The Race for Khiva
Ever since William Moorcroft’s visit to Bokhara fourteen years earlier, concern had been growing in St Petersburg over British designs on Central Asia and its markets. By the autumn of 1838, this disquiet matched that of London and Calcutta over Russia’s incursions into the regions surrounding India. In October of that year, shortly before learning of the British plan to replace Dost Mohammed with their own puppet, Count Nesselrode wrote to his ambassador in London to brief him on St Petersburg’s fears. He warned him of ‘the indefatigable activity displayed by English travellers to spread disquiet among the peoples of Central Asia, and to carry agitation even into the heart of the countries bordering our frontier’. Chief among these troublesome travellers was Alexander Burnes, who was clearly intent on undermining Russian influence in Central Asia and replacing it with that of Britain, and also on driving out Russian goods in favour of British ones. ‘For our part,’ Nesselrode insisted, ‘we ask nothing but to be allowed to partake in fair competition for the commerce of Asia.’
The ink was hardly dry on his letter when the news reached St Petersburg of Britain’s proposed invasion of Afghanistan. And if that were not alarming enough, it was followed shortly by the ill-tidings that British action in the Gulf had forced the Shah to withdraw from Herat, thus removing any hopes that Russia might have had of gaining a surrogate foot-hold there. Realising that there was little or nothing they could do about either of these British moves, the Russians decided instead to embark on a bold initiative of their own. This was to seize Khiva, an old dream of theirs, before the British began to venture north of the Oxus, not merely with agents, but with armies and caravans of merchandise. With Britain behaving so aggressively in Afghanistan, the Russians could hardly have asked for a better moment to make their own first major thrust into Central Asia. Nor was their excuse for it easy to fault. Its officially proclaimed aims were to free the many Russian and other slaves known to be held by the Khivans, to punish the Turcoman raiders and slavers who regularly plundered the native caravans bearing Russian goods, and to replace the ruler – just as the British were doing in Afghanistan – with a compliant candidate of their own who would forswear the barbaric practices of his predecessor.
Even Burnes found it difficult to criticise these aims, although it was obvious to him and to his fellow hawks that the Russian advance southwards would not end there. Bokhara and Merv would probably be the next victims, with Herat after that. The only way to prevent this happening would be for British troops, using their newly won base at Kabul, to get there first. It was Macnaghten’s view that Balkh, the crucial bridgehead on the Oxus, should be seized in the coming May, when the passes of the Hindu Kush would be free of snow. From there a swift and effective blow could be struck against Bokhara, where Britain’s envoy, Lieutenant-Colonel Stoddart, was being held prisoner in appalling conditions by the cruel and tyrannical Emir. Next, before the Russians or the Persians could get their covetous hands on it, Herat should be taken into permanent British care. Having come so far, there seemed little point in not taking full advantage of it if the Russians were bent on seizing Khiva. It was classic forward school reasoning. Veterans of the Great Game began to feel that their hour of destiny had come at last.
What finally decided the Russians to press ahead with the seizure of Khiva was a wild (and totally false) report which reached them via Bokhara that a twenty-five-strong British mission had arrived in Khiva with offers of military assistance. On instructions from St Petersburg, General Perovsky, the commander-in-chief at Orenburg, immediately set about assembling a force consisting of 5,200 infantry, cavalry and artillery. He hoped to keep his intention secret until the very last moment. Apart from not wishing to alert the Khivans to his coming, he had not forgotten how one young British subaltern had foiled their plans at Herat, and had no wish for anything like that to happen again. Finally he wanted to see the British fully committed to their Afghan adventure, so that they would be in no position to protest about similar kingmaking activities by St Petersburg at Khiva. In case rumours began to leak out about the preparations, the expedition was to be officially described as a ‘scientific’ one to the Aral Sea, which lay on its route. Indeed, in the coming years ‘scientific expeditions’ were frequently to serve as covers for Russian Great Game activities, while the British preferred to send their officers, similarly engaged, on ‘shooting leave’, thus enabling them to be disowned if necessary.
In the event the Russians found it impossible to maintain secrecy for very long. As we have seen, the British first learned of Perovsky’s preparations in the summer of 1839, three months before the expedition’s departure. The warning had come from Khiva itself, after rumours reached the Khan’s ears through his efficient network of spies. There are two versions of how it travelled from there to Herat, where there were still British officers stationed following the Shah’s withdrawal. According to one, the Khan of Khiva, in a state of panic, sent an envoy post-haste to the Heratis to beg assistance, knowing that they had successfully held off the Persians and their Russian advisers. According to the British account, it was one of their own native agents who had returned from Khiva with the news that a Russian army – rumoured to be 100,000 strong – was about to set out from Orenburg. In any event, on hearing of it, Major d’Arcy Todd, the senior British officer at Herat, at once dispatched messengers to Teheran and Kabul to alert his superiors to the danger. In the meantime, he determined to do whatever he could from Herat to prevent Khiva from falling into the hands of the Russians.
It being impossible for him to desert his own post, he decided to dispatch Captain James Abbott, a resourceful officer on his staff, to Khiva to offer to negotiate with the advancing Russians on the Khan’s behalf. If the Khan could be persuaded to release all his Russian slaves, then St Petersburg would no longer have any excuse for advancing into Khivan territory. The threat to the Khan’s throne, not to mention that to British India, might thus be removed. It was Abbott’s task to convince the Khan of the urgent need to jettison the slaves before Perovsky advanced too far to turn back. Wearing Afghan dress, and with the fate of Colonel Stoddart, the last British officer to be sent to one of the Central Asian khanates, very much in mind, Abbott set off alone for Khiva, 500 miles away to the north, on Christmas Eve 1839.
Meanwhile, 1,500 miles to the north, General Perovsky had also departed for Khiva. Accompanied by more than 5,000 troops, both Russian and Cossack, he was followed by a train of 10,000 camels bearing their ammunition and equipment. Before setting out on their long and gruelling march across steppe and desert, the general had assembled his men in Orenburg’s main square and read out a special order of the day. ‘By command of His Majesty the Emperor,’ he declared, ‘we are going to march against Khiva.’ Although rumours of their destination had long been rife, this was the first that the troops had been told officially of the expedition’s objective. Hitherto they had been informed that they were to serve as an escort to a scientific mission to the Aral Sea. ‘Khiva’, the general continued, ‘has for many years tried the patience of a strong but magnanimous power, and has at last brought down upon itself the wrath which its hostile conduct has provoked.’ Honour and glory would be their reward, he told them, for braving danger and hardship to rescue their brethren who were languishing in bondage. Thorough preparations, however, had been made for the journey, and these, together with their own determination to reach Khiva, would ensure them victory. ‘In two months, with God’s help,’ he promised, ‘we shall be in Khiva.’
At first everything went according to plan. The early winter months had been deliberately chosen because of the intense heat of the desert in summer and the difficulty of obtaining water for so large a force along the 1,000-mile route. It was the general’s aim to reach Khiva before the worst of the Central Asian winter closed in on them in February. Nonetheless, the cold came as something of a shock to men who, in the words of the official report of the expedition, ‘had always lived in warm houses, and rarely ventured out of doors except when hunting or performing short journeys’. At night in their felt tents the Russians covered themselves from head to foot with their sheepskin coats to protect their noses and other extremities from frostbite. Even so the men’s breath and sweat caused their hair and moustaches to freeze to their sheepskins, and when they rose in the mornings ‘it took them a considerable time to disentangle themselves’. Fortunately, however, the troops were extremely hardy and soon began to adjust to the sub-zero temperatures.
November now gave way to December, and the snow began to fall. It was far heavier and more frequent than Perovsky and his staff had expected. Even the local Kirghiz could not recall so much falling so early in winter. Soon it began to obliterate the tracks of the preceding columns, making navigation treacherous in the flat, featureless terrain. ‘It was only now and again’, the report declares, ‘that the route pursued by the columns in front could be ascertained by the pillars of snow erected at some distance from each other by the Cossacks, by the snow heaps which marked the night camps, and by the camels, living and dead, some frozen and partly devoured by wild beasts, which lay along the line of march.’ The deep snow and frozen earth made it increasingly difficult to find food for the camels, and soon they began to die at an alarming rate. ‘Once a camel fell,’ the report tells us, ‘it rarely rose again.’ Constantly having to transfer the loads from fallen camels to others greatly slowed the expedition’s progress and exhausted the men. A subaltern was sent ahead to the Aral Sea region to try to buy fresh camels, but word came back that he had been captured by a Khivan patrol and carried off, bound hand and foot, to the capital.
By early January they had lost nearly half their camels, and the surviving beasts, crazed by hunger, began to gnaw through the wooden cases containing the men’s rations. To prevent this, every night some 19,000 boxes and sacks had to be unloaded, and loaded again the following morning. Before fires could be lit for cooking and for warmth, fuel had somehow to be found beneath the snow. This consisted of the roots of small shrubs which had to be dug from the frozen earth. Large areas of snow also had to be cleared at every halt so that the felts could be laid down, tents erected and lines prepared for the camels and horses. ‘Only towards 8 or 9 in the evening could the soldier or Cossack obtain a little repose,’ the official record recounts, ‘and by 2 or 3 the next morning he was obliged to rise and go through the same round of heavy duties.’ Nonetheless they still pressed stoically on.
The snow-drifts were now so deep that the men had to work up to their waists in them to clear the way for the camels and artillery. As the snow continued to fall and temperatures to drop, their suffering increased, testing their strength and morale to the limit.’ In such cold,’ the official report declares, ‘it was impossible to wash clothes or observe personal cleanliness. Many of the men, during the whole march, not only did not change their soiled linen, but did not take off their clothes. They were covered with vermin and their bodies engrained with dirt.’ Sickness now became a serious problem, with scurvy beginning to take an increasing toll. Yet they were still less than half-way to Khiva.
As January drew to a close, it became increasingly clear that the expedition was heading for disaster. More than 200 men had already died of sickness, while more than twice that number were too ill to fight. The camels, on which they were so dependent, were now dying at the rate of 100 a day. The weather was still deteriorating, and the Cossack scouts reported that ahead the snow lay even deeper, making it almost impossible to find fuel and forage of any kind, and reducing their likely progress to no more than a few miles a day, if that. On January 29, General Perovsky visited each of the columns to see for himself whether men and beasts were capable of continuing the march for another month – the minimum time it would take them to reach the nearest inhabited parts of the Khivan khanate. It was the unanimous view of his column commanders that, if a catastrophe was to be averted, any further advance was now out of the question. From what he himself had seen of the men, Perovsky knew that they were right.
It must have been a moment of bitter disappointment, not to say humiliation, for them all, but especially for the general. By sheer ill-luck they had chosen to attack Khiva during the worst winter that anyone living on the steppe could remember. Had they only set out a little earlier they might have missed the worst of its fury and reached the rich and sheltered oasis of Khiva in safety. As it was, they had not so much as seen the enemy, let alone engaged him. On February 1, 1840, the general gave orders for the exhausted and depleted columns to turn about and head back to Orenburg. It had taken them the best part of three months to struggle this far, and the return march was unlikely to take them any less. Putting as brave a face on things as possible, Perovsky told his men: ‘Comrades! Ever since we started out we have had to struggle against obstacles of the severest character, and a winter of unprecedented ferocity. These difficulties we have successfully overcome, but we have been denied the satisfaction of meeting the foe.’ He assured them that their victory had merely been delayed, and that ‘our next expedition will be more fortunate’.
But Perovsky’s immediate problem was to extricate his force from its perilous situation with as little further loss of life as possible – not to mention loss of face. For this was the second time in little more than a century that a Russian expedition to Khiva had met with failure and humiliation. However, in the words of the official report: ‘It was preferable to succumb to the insurmountable obstacles of nature, and to retreat at once, than to give the miserable opponents of Russia any pretext for exultation over an imaginary victory.’ Nonetheless, those obstacles were to prove no less hazardous during the retreat than during the advance. In addition to the snow-drifts and blizzards, food shortages and sickness, there was the grisly trail of rotting camel carcasses, half eaten by wolves and foxes, to remind them of their plight. Having scented the carrion from far off, packs of wolves now plagued the columns when they halted at night.
In a misguided attempt to halt the ravages of scurvy, Perovsky managed with great difficulty to obtain supplies of fresh meat, believing that the deficiency of this, and not of fresh vegetables, was its cause. Sadly but not surprisingly, ‘in spite of these preventive measures’, the official report tells us, ‘the scurvy, instead of diminishing, grew worse’. This was blamed on the men’s general ill-health, and the filthy condition of their clothes and bodies. With the arrival of March, however, there was a slight but welcome improvement in the weather, though this gave rise to a new hazard – snow-blindness. Many of the men, their eyes weakened by months of vitamin deficiency, found themselves badly affected by the glare of the bright spring sunlight off the snow. Even improvised sun-glasses made from lattices of horsehair did little to ease the pain, which was aggravated by the acrid smoke from the green twigs used for fuel.
Throughout March and April, men and camels continued to drop, and by the time the last of the columns struggled into Orenburg in May, nearly seven months after their confident departure, the full magnitude of the catastrophe had become apparent. Of the 5,200 officers and men who had set out for Khiva, more than 1,000 had perished without a shot being fired, or the loss of one Khivan soldier. Fewer than 1,500 of the 10,000 camels which had accompanied the force were to return alive. Not one of the Russian slaves had been freed, the Turcoman caravan raiders remained unpunished, and the Khan who was to have been replaced was still firmly on his throne. Yet across the Oxus, for the whole world to see, the British had successfully carried out a not dissimilar operation with text
book professionalism. It could not have been more galling for the Russians, coming so soon after their setback at Herat, where again the British had outmanoeuvred them, in full view of everyone, on the Great Game battlefield. Furthermore, it was no secret that their campaign against the Circassians and Shamyl’s Daghestanis in the Caucasus was going far from well.
One need hardly add that the Russophobe press in Britain and on the Continent was rubbing its hands in satisfaction at this triple misfortune. For their part the St Petersburg newspapers sought to justify the Khivan adventure, rebuking the foreign press for denouncing it, and accusing the editors of hypocrisy. The Russians argued that the British, with considerably less justification, had occupied India, much of Burma, the Cape of Good Hope, Gibraltar, Malta, and now Afghanistan, while the French had summarily annexed the whole of Algeria on the dubious pretext that its Muslim ruler had insulted their consul. ‘The guilt of the Algerian Bey’, the official Russian report on the Khivan expedition was to argue, ‘shrinks into insignificance when compared with that of the Khivan khans. For many years they have tempted the patience of Russia with their treachery, outrages, robberies and the detention of thousands of the Tsar’s subjects as slaves and bondsmen.’ Referring to the failure of the expedition, the report’s anonymous authors declared that it was to be hoped that this would finally prove to the world ‘the impracticability of all ideas of conquest in this region – even if they had existed’, and would end, once and for all, such ‘erroneous interpretations’ of Russian policy in the East.
The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia Page 23
