The remaining 3,000 or so horsemen wanted to continue the attempt, and a few individuals attempted to construct bridges over the gaps in the ice. Despite orders to the contrary by the senior commanders, who feared an ambush with no possibility of retreat, about 300 young men accompanied by the two Englishmen invaded Russian territory on the far side.
The two Circassian forces, now separated by the river, stood and looked at each other for an hour or so while messages went back and forth urging their respective courses of action as the better. After lengthy deliberations and a certain amount of prayer, the smaller force decided to press on through the forest of reeds that blocked the northern bank. It moved a few kilometres in good order into Russian territory when the Circassians came across the ambush their more cautious comrades had been dreading, and which clearly showed how deeply their plans had been betrayed to the enemy.
A causeway they would have had to cross was completely dominated by cannon, while a strong force of Cossacks and infantry waited at the far end. The Circassian force stopped now for further debate, only for the discussion to be forestalled by the most hot-headed members of the group, including the two Englishmen, who charged the guns. A mad gallop foundered halfway along the causeway in a deep bog, which came up to their stirrups and which none of the warriors could circumvent. ‘Our party was compelled reluctantly to retreat and disperse with the main body on the opposite bank,’ concluded Longworth. The reaction of the Russians was not recorded.
As an attack, it was a complete fiasco. But, as a demonstration of the shortcomings of the Circassians, it is rather instructive. The difficulties they faced in uniting under one leader, in maintaining a force, in keeping their plans secret, in crossing difficult terrain, and in facing down artillery are all laid bare in a single episode. The attack, like much that the Circassians did when they tried to be ambitious, was a complete failure.
The Englishmen remained in Circassia some time, but they must have already known that their hopes that Britain would fight to secure their friends’ freedom were pointless. Letters were few, but when they came they painted a uniformly gloomy picture of how Urquhart’s plan had unravelled. Longworth remained until June, spending much of that time bedridden with a fever. Bell stayed for another year, but eventually he too was forced to return home a broken man.
They did not vanish entirely from history, however, and were both to write about Circassia again. Bell found a new lost cause to champion, and became the British representative to the Mosquito Coast, a part of the Caribbean shore of central America that London claimed as a protectorate despite Nicaraguan and American objections, whence he wrote a letter to the London Times about Circassia in 1855. Longworth was to return to Circassia as an official government agent. Their actions were provoked by an event that could yet have saved Circassia from conquest: the Crimean War.
4.
Three Hundred Prime-Bodied Circassians
The cause of the Crimean War was in fact more bizarre than Urquhart’s peculiar plan of provoking Russia to seize a merchant ship, and ignite a world war. It started with a spat between France and Russia over who had the right to protect Christians in the Holy Land, but was really about the Russian desire to dominate the Ottoman Empire. Action rapidly moved into the Black Sea, where Russia destroyed the Ottoman fleet. The British and French navies stormed into the sea in response, forcing the Russians to scuttle their own ships in the harbour of Sevastopol.
That left Russia’s Black Sea forts – its frontline against the Circassians – undefended, so their garrisons pulled back beyond the Kuban river, destroying the fortifications behind them. The Circassians had the best chance of securing their independence since Turkey had so casually given them away a generation before. They had powerful potential allies in Britain and France, who like them were sworn to fight the Russians. They had free access to the Turkish markets that had long been cut off by the Russian forts. They had the morale boost given by seeing their Russian enemies running away to the borders of three decades before. They could finally take the initiative.
They did nothing.
With the Russian evacuation of the Black Sea coast, Sefer Bey, a Circassian prince who had been friends with Urquhart, scurried back into action. The Turks despatched him to the old fort of Anapa, now once more in Turkish hands, to take control of Circassia. So began a great fiasco, despairingly chronicled by Longworth, in which all sides squabbled and disagreed and the prize of an independent, free Circassia was lost for ever.
Longworth returned to Circassia in 1855, shortly after British troops had moved into Crimea in their drive to destroy Russia’s naval power in the Black Sea. He was an official agent of the British government but his trip was a sideshow, ignored rightly by historians of the terrible conflict which raged on the Crimean peninsula to the west of Circassia. But, for a historian of Circassia, his account provides unique information.
In his despatch of 2 July, Longworth was already frustrated and despairing. Sefer Bey, now called by the grander title of Sefer Pasha, was lying and wheedling to hide the truth that the Circassians had no army to speak of and no way of raising one. ‘I have despatched trustworthy messengers to ascertain the truth of this statement and have found it to be a deliberate falsehood,’ Longworth wrote. The relations between Longworth and Turkish officials, who claimed they were ruling Circassia on Turkey’s behalf, were strained since Britain still officially aimed for an independent Circassia. These relations collapsed almost completely when British and French forces arrived to destroy Anapa’s fortifications. Sefer wanted the town to be the capital of his province, whereas London and Paris saw it as a threat that must not be allowed to fall back into Russian hands. Sefer threatened to send tribesmen to oppose the landing allies. The threat did not materialize, and may indeed have been empty since Sefer lacked an army, but it was not a sign of good relations between the Western powers and the Circassians.
Longworth set out on a twelve-day trip into the hills to try and discover for himself what was happening. He came back dispirited. The social structure, and the division into nobles, freemen and slaves that had been already on the brink of collapse when he first visited two decades previously, had finally gone. The nobles of the coast, he noted, had lost all authority, and people inland were cooperating with the Russian government as and when they wanted to.
Longworth was rapidly coming to hate Sefer. ‘He is the only man, I believe, who has the slightest control over them [the Circassians]; and that rather of a negative than an active character. He has neither the means nor the energy requisite to raise a Circassian force himself; but he is, in some measure able as he is, evidently disposed to prevent any recruitment on our part, making no secret of his objections on that score. As to his organizing anything out of this anarchy for administrative purposes, I consider such a thing as quite hopeless and out of the question.’
In despair, Longworth tried to meet Muhammad-Emin, a puritan Muslim leader operating inland. But the Muslim leader refused to talk to him, saying any contacts had to go via the Turks. Muhammad-Emin had a low opinion of the British, having met their ambassador during a previous stay in Istanbul. The Turks, angered by the meeting, which they had not been informed about in advance, cut off his allowance and stopped him returning to the Caucasus. Longworth knew nothing of this; he just saw his plans frustrated on all sides by men who were supposed to be his allies.
‘Till the troubles fomented by . . . Mohamed Emin Effendi, in the Kuban provinces, have been appeased, there is no probability of the Circassians being brought to co-operate, in any warlike operation against the common enemy,’ he wrote in an angry memo to London, in which he accused Muhammad-Emin of trying to destroy what remained of the social hierarchy. ‘While the lives and properties of a large portion of the inhabitants are at stake we cannot expect that they should take any interest in affairs of a political nature,’ wrote Longworth in September 1855.
The whole picture at this point was confused, and it is hard to see what
was really going on. But, essentially, the Turks appear to have decided to take over Circassia for good. The British and the French did not support that aim, but did not wish to block it and thus anger the Turks. The good old-fashioned Circassians, meanwhile, took the opportunity of relaxing. Ironically, in the midst of a European war, they had their first opportunity in decades for a bit of peace.
Longworth kept firing back letters to London, but his mission was a waste of time. Circassia would always have been a sideshow compared to the Crimean battlefield, although a force advancing north from Circassia could have seriously disturbed the Russian supply lines. With the degree of dissension and argument that Longworth experienced, however, the country did not even become a sideshow. Longworth took a steamer home, and Circassia was once again forgotten about.
The remaining papers relating to the case in the Foreign Office file are a severe anticlimax, detailing only Longworth’s attempts to regain his expenses. They do, however, reveal how much Circassia had changed since the 1830s. The Circassians might have claimed they were resisting Russia, but the economic facts on the ground suggested something very different.
During the 1830s, Circassian leaders tried to impose a blockade on trade with the Russians, and foreign travellers in the region carried a great supply of goods that they could barter for food, horses, arms, clothes and their other necessities. Longworth, knowing his Circassia, took a similar amount of merchandise to defray his expenses on his return in the 1850s, but to no avail.
‘I discovered however on revisiting Circassia that a decided change had taken place in this respect, not only on the coast but in the interior; and that although these effects were available as presents they could not be disposed of to advantage for the payment of travelling expenses, money being almost everywhere demanded in preference,’ he wrote in one of the many letters that deal with his £142 9s. 7d. in expenses and a pile of missing trade goods.
The development of a cash-based economy in Circassia was a major change and goes to show how far the Russians had succeeded in taking over the plain of the Kuban north of the mountains on which the Circassians depended for food and grazing.
The Russian blockade of the coast, via those miserable little forts, had clearly been more successful than it at first appeared, for it stopped large Turkish ships stopping at many points on the coast, thereby forcing the Circassians to rely on Russia for trade goods and salt, which they had no way of producing. Presumably, in return the Russian merchants took their livestock and grain.
At this point, perhaps it is worth questioning what the Circassians would have been able to sell to the Turks anyway.
It is clear what they needed from the Turks: arms and gunpowder, which the Russians would not have sold them. But they produced very little, and with a subsistence economy and restricted trade routes their agricultural system was not geared up to producing enough to earn the goods they wanted to buy. What they needed was a high-value, easily transportable product.
They found one: their own children.
The slave business was Circassia’s only significant export trade, except perhaps for the gold found by Jason and the Argonauts in ancient times. Otherwise, the Circassians sent their sons and daughters to fight and breed for the Turks and received the goods of war in return.
Bell noted the story of a young boy whom he met in November 1839, and who pretended to have a sore leg, and was repeatedly sent to different doctors to have his fictitious ailment examined. There was nothing in fact wrong with the boy, except that he was desperate to avoid being sold in Istanbul. Eventually, he had to admit there was nothing wrong with him and he was duly sent off. The case was unique. ‘This is the only instance I can at present recollect, as having come under my observation, of disinclination having been shown by any male or female to being taken to Turkey, which appears to be in general looked to by Circassians as the land of promise,’ Bell wrote towards the end of his stay on the Black Sea coast.
Russia was tactically torn over the slave trade. The more people that departed – and those leaving were either fighting-age men or breeding-age women – the fewer people there would be left to conquer. However, the more people that departed the more money would be earned with which the remaining Circassians could resist Russia. The Russians’ policy oscillated. In the 1830s, they sought to throttle the trade. Later on they, or at least some of their officials, connived in it.
Alexandre Dumas, when he left the Caucasus through the port of Poti in the 1850s, said his ship was rammed with slaves. ‘There are three hundred prime-bodied Kabardians with us at the moment, travelling steerage,’ the captain said, ‘mostly women and children in charge of two tribal chiefs and the headmen of the various villages.’
‘What can I do?’ the captain told him. ‘They all have valid passports and have paid their fare. Everything is in perfect order and they never give us any trouble. Besides, the girls do not seem to mind. They all expect to marry a Pasha or join the harem of some great lord. If they complained to us we might take action. They easily could, for twice a day they come up for fresh air and exercise, but they never say a word.’
Visitors to the Caucasus, like Dumas’s captain, were always rather torn over what to do about the slave trade. Westerners opposed it on principle and wished to abolish it, but also could not help remarking that the Circassians appeared to be leaving voluntarily, and that slavery was not the degrading institution that it was in, for example, the United States. In the Ottoman Empire, many high-ranking individuals – including every mother of every sultan – were slaves.
Dr Moritz Wagner, a German traveller, once sailed from Trabzon to Istanbul with a slave-trader and twelve Circassian girls. ‘This Turkish trader was very richly attired in furs and silk and, notwithstanding his vile occupation, a man of very sociable manners. He informed me, among other things, that since the occupation of the Caucasian coast by the Russians, his trade had become much more difficult and dangerous, but also much more lucrative.’ Wagner, who travelled extensively in the Caucasus and the Middle East, tried hard to understand why a Circassian would sell his daughter into slavery and in the end struggled to condemn it. ‘The [children] go to pass a happy and splendid existence in Stamboul; the price of their beauty probably rescues the family from starvation, or procures them powder and shot to defend their independence. The Circassians are a poor people; their rugged land is wanting in almost every necessity. When we consider the extreme disproportion between our means and those of the Circassians, we ought not to wonder if they resort to desperate expedients.’
For any visitor to modern-day Istanbul, where the sultan’s palace is a magnificent complex of beautiful architecture and stunning views, it is easy to understand how Wagner came to his conclusion. Any Circassian girl would dream of swapping the danger of the Russian wars and the squalor of existence in a wattle-and-daub hut for the glorious peace of one of the grandest palaces on earth.
Of course, now the giant Topkapi Palace, of which the harem is just a small part, is open to the public and no longer home to a sultan and his slave-girls. Where once the sultan strolled in splendid seclusion, thousands of tourists spill over onto the lawns, eat ice creams and queue to goggle at the jewels and treasures of the Turkish state.
In the blazing sunshine of a May afternoon when I visited, the clamour of the tourists was distracting and I wondered if I could ever recapture the mystery and serenity that must once have reigned in this magnificent enclave. Then, passing through the gate into the harem, there it was. The bright sunshine, parched foliage and brash noise of outside was replaced by a cool gloom produced by blue and white tiles and tall narrow passageways. Its deep courtyards and tiled walls all conspired to keep both the heat and the noise of the outside world where they belonged – outside.
But this tranquillity was a treacherous impression. This serene first courtyard belonged not to the women but to the eunuchs, the living wall of sexless muscle that policed these women and stopped anyone but the sultan interfe
ring with them. As if to emphasize the point, a tour guide with a group of elderly Americans in baggy shorts and sandals passed into the courtyard, and destroyed my peaceful reverie. Her high-pitched and loud voice was to be my constant companion during my time in the harem. It was an irritation, but it served to remind me that the harem should not be romanticized by a lone traveller wandering around in peace. It was a place of intrigue and aggression, and very real danger.
‘There were lives inside lives here. These were high-energy women, and they were competitors in power and energy,’ intoned the tour guide, her voice fading away as I moved into another room to escape the bustle.
The girls who came here were all supposed to be from non-Muslim backgrounds, since a Muslim could not be enslaved. However, Muslims could be traded if they were already slaves, and a feudal society still technically existed in Circassia. Some Circassians were therefore already slaves, making them very popular with Turks seeking to buy light-skinned and blue-eyed girls to serve as playthings for the lords of the Golden Horn. Girls were brought to Istanbul and sold alongside slaves from the Christian lands of Greece, Georgia, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and elsewhere.
Pushing further into the harem, I began to appreciate the intricacy of the power structures that had grown up around the sultan’s throne. Access to the girls of the harem was controlled by the sultan’s mother, and the system seemed to have a brutal honesty to it. People who had access to the sultan either were essentially sexless – his mother or the eunuchs – or were sex slaves. And the harem was finely designed to ensure the situation was not disturbed. The mother’s room and the sultan’s room adjoined each other, a situation that made clear the power that women wielded in this now extinct system.
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