Chapter 7

"The first great law of our prophet," said he to the people, "is a law of freedom. No Moslem shall be a slave, much less shall he acknowledge the rule of the foreigner and the unbeliever. And the second law is like unto the first. The Moslem shall be a soldier of Allah and his prophet, an enemy in arms of all infidels. For whosoever will not leave house, wife, and child, yea all that he hath or hopeth for to draw the sword for his faith, he shall not pass over the bridge El-Sirat into paradise. The Moslem shall keep the scharyat; but all his giving of alms to the poor, all his prayers and ablutions, all his pilgrimages to Mecca are nothing so long as the eye of a Muscovite looks upon them. Yea, your marriages are unlawful and your children bastards while there is a Muscovite in your midst. For who can serve both Allah and the Russian!"

XXVI.

KHASI-MOLLAH.

Among the murids of Mahomet-Mollah the foremost was Khasi-Mahomet, better known as Khasi-Mollah. After having spent much time sitting at the feet of the patriotic and fanatical murschid, he returned to his native aoul of Himri, and began his career as leader of the popular movement against Russia by sending to the neighboring tribes missives full of such reproof and exhortation as he had been in the habit of hearing at Jarach. This he continued to do until it became manifest that the time for decisive action had arrived, when accompanied by a considerable body of disciples, among whom was Schamyl, he sallied forth on an expedition of proselytism, and made his way first to the powerful aoul of Tcherkei, situated lower down on the Koissu, and in the territory of the Tchetchenians.

Assembling the warriors in a council ring, Khasi-Mollah said sharply to them, "Ye men of Tcherkei, ye are too much inclined to evil doing. Ye are guilty of idleness, of lying, of deceit, even as are others. The Christians have their gospel, the Jews their talmud, and we the koran; but in what are we better than others while we keep not the holy scharyat? There is but one path for us to paradise--it is the war path. Death to the Muscovites, and to all who are with them! Hate and war against the red-haired dogs, the unbelievers!"

Thereupon rose up an aged man of Tcherkei and said in reply, "Preach to us the scharyat; and we will obey it. We will cease from hating and robbing, and from all the sins you truly lay to our charge. But the Russians hold our chief men as hostages in Andrejewa; our herds are pastured in valleys subject to them; we are hemmed in on all sides by their strong places; every attempt we make to shake off their yoke only brings down on our heads retribution; and we cannot fight."

"Bide your time," rejoined Khasi-Mollah; "only be ready when I call; the day of your deliverance is at hand."

Then having received from the people a solemn promise that they would observe the scharyat, confirmed by a pouring out upon the ground of all the wine laid by in the aoul, as well as by the breaking of the wine vessels, he continued on his journey. Aoul after aoul was visited. Where persuasion failed, threats of fire and sword were resorted to; and in many instances promises of adherence were guaranteed by hostages sent to Himri. And so by dint of argument, intimidation, and force, the new doctrine of political Sufism was in the course of a few months diffused over the greater part of the Lesghian highlands.

Here and there, however, the more aged ulema[A] rejected the teaching that the taking up of arms against the infidels was the best fulfilment of the law of the scharyat, as for example in Chunsach, the principal aoul of Avaria, where, owing to strong Russian influence, the view prevailed that it was not expedient to run the risk of losing what of liberty was left by vainly attempting to regain that which had been lost. Accordingly Pachu Biké, who here bore rule under the title of Khaness, prayed Khasi-Mollah not to enter the Avarian territory; but he persisting, she called together her warriors to resist him. They, however, fearing at first to face the determined band of murids, she seized a sword and cried out, "Go home, ye men of Chunsach, and gird on your wives the swords ye are unworthy to bear yourselves!" Thereupon the warriors, stung with shame, followed the amazon who immediately put herself at their head and drove back Khasi-Mollah, though supported by a force of eight thousand men.

[Footnote A: Plural of alim.]

This repulse turned the hearts of many of the recently converted away from the new prophet; so that when in the summer of 1830, General Von Rosen, who had taken the command of the army after the brief and inefficient career in the Caucasus of Paskievitch, the successor of Jermoloff, marched on Himri to crush the germ of war which was preparing to unfold itself in this part of the mountains, the chief men of the neighboring aouls hastened in great numbers to give in their adhesion to the supremacy of the Russians. So general in fact was the appearance of submission that Von Rosen, staying his advance, let Himri go unpunished.

"The enemy are smitten by Allah with blindness!" exclaimed Khasi-Mollah as he heard that the Russians were retracing their footsteps without penetrating further into the mountains. "They could not see their advantage. As is written in the book of the prophet, 'With blindness will I smite them!'"

This interpretation of the turning back of Von Rosen, struck the heated imaginations of the mountaineers with such force that they all regarded it as a miraculous interposition of Allah in behalf of the new prophet; and when Khasi-Mollah, taking advantage of this sudden turn of men's minds towards him, defeated a detachment sent under Prince Bekovitsch to disperse a gathering of murids in the woods of Tchunkeskan, his fame increased in the land, and a large number of warriors flocked around his standard.

The next year, therefore, he was enabled to perform the great feat of capturing Tarku, an important place on the Caspian, and of laying siege to the fortress of Burnaja which overlooks it. The reinforcements of the enemy compelled him indeed to retire; but not until after several days of desperate fighting, and when he had literally strewn the streets of Tarku with his dead. Then devastating the unfriendly aouls on the Sulak, beating General Emanuel in a pitched battle, converting by fire and sword the district of Tabasseran which had held with the Russians, blockading the strong town of Derbend until it was relieved by superior numbers, and storming Kisliar on the Terek whence he carried away captives and much treasure, he terminated the conquests of the season by captivating the heart of a daughter of Mahomet-Mollah, whom he took to wife, and then retired into winter quarters in Himri.

Shortly before he had issued the following call, written in Arabic, to the tribes of Daghestan:--

"Hear all ye men of Daghestan! Our next breaking into the territory of the unfriendly tribes will be like the rising red of the morning. Blood will mark our track; fire and desolation will be left behind us; and what words cannot describe shall be executed in deeds. But accept the new doctrine and your lives shall be spared, and your property left in your possession. The song of the nightingale in the spring will be the sign of our coming. So soon as the snow melts on the mountains, and the new year puts on its green, we shall sweep over the hostile aouls, taking by force what is denied to forbearance. We are the terror of the unbelieving, but the strength and refuge of the faithful; and he who follows us shall have peace and eternal life. Amen."

But in Himri was destined to terminate the brief career of glory run by Khasi-Mollah. With the first singing of birds he did indeed go forth, carrying devastation beyond the Russian lines, even from Kisliar to Wladikaukas, from the Caspian to the central Caucasus; but the Russian commander-in-chief, accompanied by General Williaminoff, Prince Dadian, and the valiant Austrian Kluke Von Klugenau, forced the prophet to retire and take refuge behind the triple walls of Himri. Thereupon, during the retreat, the warriors who had been compelled to join his standard contrary to their inclination, gradually fell off; one by one the chieftains deserted him as they saw the superiority of the forces of the enemy; even the principal murid, Hamsad Bey, deceived, it is said, by forged proclamations issued in the name of the prophet, separated himself from a leader whose fortunes were so evidently on the wane; and when October's unfallen leaves were still covering the hills of Himri, the Russian bayonets arrived to add their gleam to the gorgeousness of the autumnal decay of nature.

There was now no escape for the faithful few who still adhered to the cause of Khasi-Mollah, among whom was Schamyl. The artillery under the direction of General Williaminoff soon brought down the towers of loose stones over the devoted heads of the murids in Himri. But they met their fate chanting verses from the Koran. No man had a thought of surrender, though the paths into the mountains were all in the possession of the enemy. From street to street and from house to house fought the men of Himri. Their granite rocks were as red with blood as the leaves of the trees with the glory of the autumn. Khasi-Mollah, though from his priestly character he did not himself bear arms, fell surrounded by the dead bodies of sixty of his disciples. Schamyl also lay at his feet bored through by two balls, and was left there by the enemy for dead. When the Russians found the corpse of Khasi-Mollah, the right hand still pointed to heaven, the left grasped the beard, and over the face was spread the placid expression of a dream instead of the last agony.

Khasi-Mollah was of a short stature, with small eyes, a thin, long beard, and a countenance somewhat marked by smallpox.

XXVII.

HAMSAD BEY.

The manner of Schamyl's escape and recovery from the wounds received at Himri never having been explained by himself, was believed by the mountaineers to have been miraculous. Certain it is he survived to receive the mantle of the heroic Khasi-Mollah, though in descending to him it rested for a short time on the shoulders of Hamsad Bey.

This leader possessed neither the fanatical zeal of his predecessor nor the military genius of the still greater prophet who came after him; but being consecrated by Mahomet-Mollah as the successor of Khasi-Mollah, notwithstanding his separation from the latter previously to the fight at Himri, he was universally acknowledged as the chief of the new party. The first of the two years of his rule was spent by him in making preparations for taking the field, during which time he had the address to gather together a considerable number of Russian deserters whom he formed into a separate corps commanded by their own officers, and in whom, being attached to him by good treatment, he placed such entire confidence that he even made them his bodyguard. This was something new in the annals of Circassian warfare; but it was an innovation of short duration and very questionable utility, inasmuch as such a perfect machine as the Russian soldier could work to little advantage by the side of the Circassian warrior with his impetuous impulses and action independent of the word of command.

The only feat of arms attempted during this year by Hamsad Bey was a successful attack on the aoul of Chergow, in the Mechtulinian district; but the spring following he concentrated his forces, amounting to some twelve thousand men, in the aoul of Gotsatl, in Avaria, eighteen wersts east of Chunsach, for the purpose of striking a blow at Russian ascendency in the neighboring districts of Daghestan. But to do this effectually it was necessary first to put an end to the influence of the enemy in Avaria itself, and to substitute his own spiritual authority as murschid in place of the deference paid there to the hereditary khans.

Accordingly Hamsad Bey marched on Chunsach, where Pachu Biké with her three sons held for the Muscovites. Pitching his tent before this populous aoul, he sent in his herald to the khaness requiring her to adopt the new religion of hatred against the Russians, and to join her forces with his to drive them out of the country. Pachu Biké, who had so heroically taken up arms against Khasi-Mollah, now thought it more prudent to try the fortune of negotiation, and for that purpose sent her two eldest sons, Omar Khan and Abu-Nunzal, to treat with the murschid. But the latter having got the princes in his possession, caused them to be put to death; then followed up his treachery by seizing upon the unresisting aoul; and having decapitated the khaness herself, destroyed all of the reigning race save her youngest son Bulatsch Khan, a lad eleven years of age, who was then not present in Chunsach.

The submission of all Avaria, together with several adjacent districts, followed these acts of barbarous severity on the part of Hamsad Bey; but the avenger of blood followed close behind him. Two brothers, Osman and Hadji-Murad, being foster-brothers of Omar Khan, resolved to satisfy the law which requires in Circassia, as formerly in Judea, that whosoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. They were at the time murids of Hamsad Bey, but being urged on by their father, a man venerable in years, and opposed to the reformed party in religion, they were induced to set their allegiance to the law of vengeance before their loyalty to their chief, and accordingly conspired to take him off. Forty of their relations and friends joined the conspiracy, all taking an oath on the Koran to be faithful to each other, and never to rest until they had slain Hamsad Bey. But one among them proved to be a traitor. Going straightway to the murschid he revealed the plot of the two brothers. But the Bey, confiding in the loyalty of disciples who had given him so many proofs of fidelity, would not listen to the tale, and peacefully resumed the sleep from which he had been awakened to hear it.

On the morrow he fell dead in the mosque of Chunsach, pierced by the pistol balls of the two murids. One of them, Osman, instantly received the reward of his treachery in the loss of his life at the hands of the attendants of the prophet; but the other, Hadji-Murad, escaping in the confusion of the moment, brought the crowd outside to his assistance by raising the cry of, "Down with the murids." With sabre and pistol they rushed into the house of Allah, and in a moment all its stones were red with the blood of his children. Only thirty out of the one hundred murids of Hamsad Bey escaped from the mosque with their lives. These flying before the excited multitude sought refuge in the neighboring tower; but this being built of wood was set on fire by the order of Hadji-Murad. Then of the thirty, some precipitated themselves headlong from the top of the tower; others fell fighting; Mahomet-Hadshi-Jaf, the same who had betrayed the conspirators, being sorely wounded was taken captive; only one escaped, as if by miracle--it was Schamyl.

XXVIII.

CIRCASSIAN MODE OF WARFARE.

Such were the leaders under whom Schamyl served his apprenticeship in the art of war. But from his youth up he had also been trained for the great military part he was to play in life by engaging in those raids and forays by means of which the Circassians were wont at that period to harass and keep at bay the enemy. For while from lack of unanimity among the tribes, from want of a hero like Schamyl to lead them, from the superiority of the Russian forces, or from whatever other cause, the mountaineers were engaged in no great, combined movements of self-defence, there was notwithstanding constantly kept up, by most of the tribes of both the eastern and the western Caucasus, the running fire of the guerilla, and the predatory expeditions of a war of the border.

Such expeditions were set on foot either by some chieftain who rode from aoul to aoul calling upon the brave to follow him; or by a summons sent abroad to the warriors of a certain district inviting them to assemble in the council ring at a given time and place for the purpose of agreeing upon an attack upon some fort, or a foray within the lines of the enemy. The spot selected for holding the assembly would be some convenient hill-top or vale shaded by trees. There, with no little rude eloquence, accompanied by the singing the praises of heroes, the subject of the proposed expedition would be considered, and the course to be pursued be determined by a majority of voices. With scarcely the formality of an election, the general preference would select some chieftain to head the incursion, if finally agreed upon. And to set off if the occasion pressed, would hardly require more preparation than the springing into their saddles; for at the bows of these could quickly be hung a sufficiency of provisions for their simple wants, while ammunition and arms are always worn about their person.

The Circassian spares his horse when he can, and generally rides slowly to the scene of contest. Indeed, the route admits of no hurrying; for it often leads along precipices which would turn almost any head but his own; winds a narrow, rugged path over the mountains; picks its way along the rocky bed of the torrent; dives into forests tangled with vines and brambles; and cannot always turn aside even from the bog and the quagmire. But his hardy steed never tires; and up hill or down dale toils patiently, bravely, cheerfully, as if conscious that he was going on to meet the armed men, and smelling afar off the future battle, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting. Sometimes the party travels through the night, each warrior being muffled in a shaggy capote or bourka, which covers not only the rider but the entire back of his steed. Above protrude the barrels of the rifles, while below dangle the horse-tails, making, by their constantly dangling to and fro, the night-march a very promenade of hobgoblins.

But on the longer expeditions the war party halts at night. Some green spot having been selected where there is pasturage and water, the horses are tethered, or allowed to graze under care of persons appointed to watch them. Their saddles furnish a pillow at night, and their cloth a carpet to sit upon. Each person contributes from the leathern bottles and bags at his saddle-bow a portion towards the general mess, which is prepared by a certain number of the party in turn; and while it is being made ready, the others having said their evening prayers and performed their ablutions resign themselves to the soothing influences of the chibouque, if not prohibited, and to the cordial of coffee, if they have any. The supper at the very best will consist of hot millet or barley cakes, and the savory pilaff of minced mutton and millet or rice. A little honey will be sure to be added, and possibly dried fruits. This, however, is on the supposition that there are a few sumpter horses loaded with provisions, as is generally the case when the party is a large one. There may also have been more or less game picked up by the way. A bowl of mead or _skhone_ is generally to be had by the Circassian, let the supper it accompanies be never so scanty; and the sharp appetite which heaven sends to those journeying through the hills in the saddle, will season even a little sour milk and a few cakes of millet and honey, if there be nothing else, with more than the savor of a feast. The chieftain fares no better than his clansmen; all share in the mess alike.

The supper finished, and every man having carefully cleansed his weapons, loaded and primed his guns and pistols, placed his sabre by his saddle-pillow, while his faithful poniard guards the side it never leaves, and finally a short prayer for protection having been offered to Allah, the sentinels also being duly set, the warrior who is to fall in battle on the morrow lies down to sleep as peaceful as that of the babe he has left behind in the aoul, and soft as if the canopy overhead were not the star-spangled curtain of the skies. If the party have tents, as is sometimes the case, they are pitched by cutting down branches of trees for lack of poles, and then covering them with the mats and felts which have been transported in bales on horseback. These simple structures serve sufficiently well to keep out wind and rain; while the boughs of many kinds of trees furnish a couch both elastic and fragrant.

Watch fires, too, are often kept burning through the night; and in cold weather they serve likewise to keep warm those sleeping around them. When the fires are numerous they light up with picturesque effect the grim-faced rocks and the solemn woods. A whole mountain side even may be illuminated by the multitude of flames, making the granite, porphyry, and limestone glow with colors more gorgeous than those borrowed from the light of day. Or the gloom of the deep glen is dissipated and devoured by the lambent tongues of fire, while the rocks over against each other burn with the additional radiance reflected from their faces. Beacon answers to beacon from cliffs and hilltops. Perhaps the enemy's fires far off diffuse a glow through another quarter of the heavens. The reeds of the Kuban and the Terek set on fire by the Russians to destroy the ambuscades of the mountaineers, touch with a dull red tint the low northern horizon; here and there conflagrations raging in the grass-grown steppes show at night where lie the vast and dreary confines of the Muscovite; while perhaps the moon sinking below the Black mountains draws, with a line of silver, the broken outline of their ridges, leaving in the blackness of midnight the vast forests and outcropping rocks below.

When the first faint blush of breaking day suffuses the eastern sky far off above the Caspian, the warrior's eye already open is straining to catch it. His tent is struck; his horse saddled; his arms girded on; and he ready for the march. As the gray dawn deepening to crimson fills the mountains ere the sun be risen with its increasing, all-pervading light, the horsemen descend in small parties from the already purple heights into the mists which hang their thin veils over the depths of the valleys. Their arms reflect the beams of the risen sun, and the red or purple in their caps is heightened by the glow of the mountain tops. Gaily they gallop down the easy declivities, their horses snuffing eagerly the fresh air of the morning, but their ragged banners too wet with the dews of night to flaunt upon the zephyrs that, newly risen, scarcely move their wings. The foremost riders, gaining the open valley screened by an intervening mountain from the plain of the enemy, prance over it, and companies of horse coming in from different directions join the general rendezvous until, all counted, they may amount to two or three hundred, or as many thousand men. For seldom does a Circassian chief lead on a raid into the enemy's country with either less than the former number or more than the latter.