The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia

by Peter Hopkirk

  His interview with the Koosh Begee, a wizened old man with small, crafty eyes and a long grey beard, began with an interrogation lasting two hours. The vizier first wanted to know what had brought Burnes and his party to a kingdom so far from their own. Burnes explained as usual that they were returning overland to England, and that they wanted to take back with them word of Bokhara’s splendours, already so renowned throughout the Orient. ‘What’, the vizier next asked him, ‘is your profession?’ Burnes hesitated for a moment before confessing to being an officer in the Indian Army. But he need not have worried, for this did not appear to perturb the Koosh Begee in the least. The Bokharan seemed to be more interested in Burnes’s religious beliefs, asking him first whether he believed in God, and then whether he worshipped idols. Burnes denied the latter emphatically, upon which he was invited to bare his chest to show that he was not wearing a crucifix. When it transpired that Burnes was not, the vizier declared approvingly: ‘You are people of the Book. You are better than the Russians.’ He next asked whether Christians ate pork, a question which Burnes knew he had to answer with caution. Some did, he replied, though mainly the poor. ‘What’, his interrogator next asked, ‘does it taste like?’ But Burnes was ready for that one. ‘I have heard’, he replied, ‘that it is like beef.’

  Very soon, however, as he invariably did with Asiatics, Burnes was getting on famously with the vizier, to whom he was evidently a source of tantalising information from the sophisticated outside world. The friendship was to cost him one of his only two compasses, although this gift won for him and his companions the freedom to wander the city at will, and to observe its everyday life. They saw the grim minaret from which criminals were hurled to their deaths, and they visited the square before the Ark where beheadings were conducted with a huge knife. Burnes went to watch the slave-market in action, reporting afterwards: ‘Here these poor wretches are exposed for sale, and occupy thirty or forty stalls where they are examined like cattle.’ That morning there were only six being offered, none of them Russians. ‘The feelings of a European’, he added, ‘revolt at this most odious traffic’, which Bokharans defended on the grounds that the slaves were kindly treated, and were often far better off than in their own land.

  Burnes had discreetly let it be known that he wanted to meet one of the Russian slaves, of whom there were 130 or so in Bokhara. Not long afterwards a man of obvious European origin slipped into their house one night and flung himself emotionally at Burnes’s feet. He told them that as a boy of 10 he had been captured by Turcoman slavers while asleep at a Russian outpost. He had been a slave for fifteen years now, and worked for his master as a carpenter. He was well treated, he said, and was allowed to go where he wished. But for reasons of prudence he pretended to have adopted Islam, although secretly (‘and here’, Burnes noted, ‘the poor fellow crossed himself) he was still a Christian. ‘For I live among a people’, he explained, ‘who detest, with the utmost cordiality, every individual of that creed.’ After sharing the Englishmen’s meal with them, he told them before departing: ‘I may appear to be happy, but my heart aches for my native land. Could I but see it once again, I would willingly die.’

  They had now been in Bokhara for a month, and their enquiries were complete. Burnes had hoped to press on to Khiva, and return home from there via Persia. However, the Koosh Begee warned him strongly against attempting the journey to Khiva, saying that the surrounding region was unsettled and extremely dangerous. In the end Burnes decided to head directly for Persia, via Merv and Astrabad, and forget Khiva. He managed to obtain from the vizier a firman bearing the Emir’s personal seal and ordering all Bokharan officials to assist the party in every way possible. However, once they were outside the Emir’s domains, he cautioned Burnes, they would be in treacherous country all the way to the Persian frontier, and should trust no one. For reasons he did not explain, the vizier had at no time allowed them to meet the Emir himself, although this may well have been done in their own interest. Newly installed on the Bokharan throne was the man who was to have the next two British officers to arrive there brutally put to death. Finally, as the Koosh Begee, who had been so kind to Burnes, bade them farewell, he asked them to pray for him when they reached home safely, ‘as I am an old man’. And Oh yes! One other thing. If Burnes ever returned to Bokhara would he be kind enough to bring him a good pair of English spectacles?

  After a series of adventures and misadventures too numerous to go into here, Burnes and his party reached Bombay by sea from the Persian Gulf on January 18, 1833. There they were to learn that a great deal had taken place elsewhere during their thirteen months away, leading to a further sharp decline in Anglo-Russian relations. On February 20, just as Burnes arrived in Calcutta to report to the Governor-General on the results of his reconnaissance into Central Asia, a large fleet of Russian warships dropped anchor off Constantinople, causing profound dismay in London and in India. This was the final outcome of a chain of events which had begun in 1831, following a revolt in Egypt, then nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, against the Sultan’s rule. At first the revolt had seemed purely a local affair, though very soon it began to represent a serious threat. The man behind it was one of the Sultan’s own vassals, the Albanian-born Mohammed Ali, the ruler of Egypt. Having first seized Damascus and Aleppo with his powerful army, he now advanced into Anatolia, and looked set on marching on Constantinople and relieving the Sultan of his throne. The latter appealed desperately to Britain for help, but Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, hesitated to act alone.

  If Britain was slow to respond to the Sultan’s pleas, however, Tsar Nicholas was not, for he had no wish to see the present compliant ruler in Constantinople replaced by an aggressive new dynasty. He at once dispatched Nikolai Muraviev (of Khiva fame, and now a general) to Constantinople to offer the Sultan protection against Mohammed Ali’s advancing army. At first the Sultan hesitated, for he still clung to the hope of receiving British assistance, which he would have much preferred. London continued to do nothing, though, Palmerston being convinced that St Petersburg, officially an ally of Britain’s, would never act unilaterally. But finally, on the urgings of his men on the spot, who viewed the crisis as a threat to Britain’s Near Eastern interests, not to mention those of India, he allowed himself to be persuaded, though even now he preferred mediation to intervention. His decision, needless to say, proved too late. As Mohammed Ali’s troops fought their way through Anatolia towards the capital, driving all before them, the Sultan had no choice but to accept gratefully Nicholas’s offer of immediate help.

  As it was, the Russian fleet arrived off Constantinople only just in time, for the invaders were now less than 200 miles away. The Sultan’s throne, however, had been saved. Aware that they could not defeat both the Russians and the Turks, Mohammed Ali’s commanders called a halt, and a settlement was duly arranged. British indecisiveness had enabled St Petersburg to realise at last its age-old dream of landing troops at Constantinople. When news of this latest Russian move reached Calcutta it was at once seen as part of a grand design, with India as its ultimate goal. The pieces seemed to be falling ominously into place. No longer were men like Wilson, Moor-croft, Kinneir and de Lacy Evans viewed as scaremongers. Such then was the mood when Burnes arrived in Calcutta. He could hardly have chosen a better moment to reappear. The Great Game was beginning to intensify.

  After Burnes had reported to the Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck, he was ordered to sail at once for London where he was to brief the Cabinet, the Board of Control and other senior officials on the situation in Central Asia and the likelihood of a Russian threat to India. The reception he received was a heady one for a young subaltern, culminating in a private audience with the King, for he, like everyone else, wanted to hear Burnes’s story at first hand. Overnight Burnes became a hero. Professionally, too, he was made. In addition to being promoted to captain, he was awarded the coveted gold medal of the Royal Geographical Society for his remarkable journey. He was also invit
ed to join the Athenaeum, holy of holies of England’s literary and scientific elite, without first having to stand for election, while society hostesses and would-be mothers-in-law joined in the pursuit of this dashing young officer.

  John Murray, the leading publisher of the day, was quick to acquire Burnes’s account of his journey. Entitled Travels into Bokhara, it was rushed through the press so as to steal a march on Arthur Conolly’s book, which appeared a few months later, and Moorcroft’s long-delayed posthumous work, which was not to be published for a further seven years. Burnes’s epic, in three volumes, thus brought to the reader for the first time the romance, mystery and excitement of Central Asia. It was to prove an immediate bestseller, 900 copies being sold on the first day, a huge number for those times. Sadly, Dr Gerard was unable to enjoy any of this acclaim, being far away in India. Indeed, within two years he was dead, his health broken by the illness which had struck him and his companions on the final march to Bokhara.

  But amidst all this adulation, Burnes had not lost sight of the real purpose of their journey. In addition to his book, which had mainly been written on the sea voyage home, he produced for his superiors two secret reports – one military and the other political – and two more, less sensitive, on the topography and commercial prospects of the region. In his military report he argued that it would be as dangerous for Kabul to fall into Russian hands as Herat. A hostile army, he reported, could get there from Balkh in a month. The passes of the Hindu Kush, where so many of Alexander’s troops had frozen to death, would prove no obstacle to a well-equipped, modern army. Ferocious and courageous though they were in tribal warfare, the Afghans could not hope to defend Kabul for very long against a determined Russian army. Once in possession of Kabul, an invader would have little difficulty in advancing on India, there being several possible routes open to him.

  As for reaching Balkh, this could be achieved by ferrying troops up the Oxus in barges towed by horses – ‘as on a canal’. The river, he and his companions had ascertained, was fully navigable to that point. Its banks were low and firm, and horses plentiful in the region. Artillery could either be carried up the river by barge, or be dragged along the river bank. If the invasion force were to set out from Orenburg, rather than from the eastern shore of the Caspian, it would not even be necessary to occupy Khiva first. Bokhara too could be bypassed, although both oases might serve as valuable sources of food and other supplies if their rulers’ co-operation could first be won. Because of the danger of Kabul thus falling into Russian hands, he argued, Britain should back Dost Mohammed rather than Kamran Shah for the throne of a united Afghanistan. Burnes made a Russian move against Kabul sound all too easy, and he, unlike Wilson, Kinneir or de Lacy Evans, had actually been there.

  Eager to return to the region which had brought him such sudden fame, Burnes now lobbied vigorously to be allowed to establish a permanent mission in Kabul. Apart from maintaining close and friendly ties with Dost Mohammed, and keeping an eye on any Russian moves south of the Oxus, its purpose would be to ensure that British goods rather than Russian ones dominated the markets of Afghanistan and Turkestan. If the River Indus route, which he had shown to be navigable, was fully exploited by the Company, then British goods, being cheaper and better, would eventually drive out those of Russia. At first Burnes’s proposal for a British trade mission (albeit with strong political undertones) at Kabul was turned down by his superiors, for they feared that it might, as one put it, ‘degenerate into a political agency.’ However, the newly appointed Governor-General, Lord Auckland, thought otherwise, and on November 26, 1836, Burnes was dispatched once more to Kabul.

  Like his earlier visit to Dost Mohammed, and the month he had spent in Bokhara, this did not go unnoticed in St Petersburg. For some time now, and with growing concern, the Russians had been keeping a close watch on the movements of British travellers in Central Asia. Not only were their own goods beginning to suffer from increasing British competition, but political rivalry also appeared to be intensifying. No longer was the Great Game confined to the khanates of Central Asia. Play had spread to the Caucasus, which the Russians had hitherto regarded as theirs. Reports were beginning to reach St Petersburg from Circassia, on the north-eastern shore of the Black Sea, that British agents were operating among the tribes there, supplying them with arms and inciting them to resist the infidels who had come to seize their lands.

  ·12·

  The Greatest Fortress in the World

  Although by now most of the Caucasian region, including Georgia and Armenia, was firmly in Tsar Nicholas’s hands, and officially incorporated in the Russian Empire, in the mountains of the north fierce resistance continued among the Muslim tribes. The two principal areas still remaining to be conquered were Circassia in the west and Daghestan in the east. No longer at war with the Turks or Persians, the Russian generals now devoted all their energies to crushing the warlike inhabitants in these two strongholds. It was to take them a great deal longer than they had expected, for the local commanders showed a brilliant aptitude for mountain and forest warfare. In addition, they had discovered an unexpected ally.

  David Urquhart, then aged 28, had acquired a passionate attachment to the Turks as a result of his experiences as a volunteer during the Greek War of Independence. In 1827, together with some eighty other Britons, he had gone to Greece to help drive out the Turks, but had soon found himself thoroughly disillusioned by the Greeks. His new devotion to the Turks, whose courage and other qualities he greatly admired, was to give rise in him to an equally intense dislike of their ancient foes the Russians. Educated at a French military academy and at Oxford, Urquhart also possessed remarkable skills as a propagandist, which he now directed against St Petersburg. Before long he was to become Britain’s leading Russophobe. He enjoyed the added advantage of having friends in the highest realms of public life, including the King himself. As a result he was employed by the government on a number of secret diplomatic missions in the Near East, and it was during one of these, while in Constantinople, that he found himself caught up in the Circassian cause.

  Not long before, with the ending of Mohammed Ali’s threat to the Sultan’s throne, the Russians had reluctantly agreed to withdraw their task-force from Constantinople, although not without first making the Turks pay heavily for their intervention. Under the terms of a treaty signed in the summer of 1833, Turkey had been reduced – at least in the eyes of Urquhart and his fellow Russophobes – to little more than a protectorate of the Tsar’s. To London’s alarm, it was soon discovered that under a secret clause the Turks were committed, if St Petersburg so demanded, to closing the Dardanelles to all foreign warships save those of Russia. Thus, in the event of war, the Russians would have exclusive rights of passage through the Turkish straits for their powerful Black Sea fleet.

  Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, was incensed at this, and protested strongly to St Petersburg. He was beginning to wonder whether the redoubtable Mohammed AH, who had made friendly overtures to Britain, would not have been better on the Turkish throne than the supine Sultan. His humour was not improved by the Russian reply to his protest, which argued that they had merely done what Britain would have liked to have done, but had beaten her to the draw. This Palmerston dismissed as ‘flippant and impertinent’, although he knew it to be uncomfortably near the truth. It did little, however, to improve the rapidly deteriorating climate between the two powers. Concern over Russia’s long-term ambitions was intensified by the news that St Petersburg was greatly expanding its fleet, and the Royal Navy was accordingly enlarged to match this. Coming on top of Russia’s victories over Persia and Turkey in 1828 and 1829, and the secret deal over the Dardanelles, this did indeed seem ominous. In such an atmosphere, almost anything, however trivial, served the cause of the Russophobes.

  Such was the mood when David Urquhart took up the cudgels on behalf of the Circassians. He had first established contact with their leaders in 1834 while dwelling in Constantinople, and paid a se
cret visit to their mountain strongholds, the first of his countrymen ever to do so. The Circassian chiefs, fearless but unsophisticated, were much impressed by this visitor from the great world outside who represented and spoke for – or so they assumed – a nation as powerful as Great Britain. He offered them much encouragement and advice, and they begged him to stay on and lead them in their struggle against the Russians. Urquhart refused, however, insisting that he could be of far more use to them in London. He returned home convinced that it was Britain’s moral duty to prevent the Russians from overrunning this small highland nation, which posed no threat to anyone and reminded him of his own native Scotland. It was strongly in her own interest, too, to help the Caucasian tribes to drive the Russians out of this vital bridgehead, from which Turkey, Persia and eventually India could be invaded. Not for nothing had one Russian general described the Caucasus as ‘the greatest fortress in the world.’

  Urquhart kept his word to his friends, and a torrent of articles, pamphlets and news items began to pour from his pen propagating their cause and execrating all things Russian. The following year he published a book entitled England and Russia, in which he warned of Russia’s expansionist aims in the Near East and in Central Asia. Turkey, he forecast, would be the first to be swallowed up. ‘The whole Ottoman empire passes at once from us to her, by then our open foe,’ he wrote. ‘The force, the arms, the frontiers, the fortresses, the treasures and the ships of Turkey, now placed against Russia, will be placed against us – disciplined, combined and directed by her.’ Having absorbed Turkey, Russia would next subjugate Persia. The Persians were ‘a numerous, patient and warlike people, to be disciplined and moved by Russia without inconvenience or expense’. Urquhart had little doubt against whom they would be moved. With their fondness for plunder, the Persians would require little urging if India’s fabulous wealth were the prize held out to them.