The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia

by Peter Hopkirk

  Russia, he concluded, ‘chooses her own time . . . she cannot miscalculate on such a moment as this. Her whole mind, energies and resources are concentrated on it. She will be perfectly certain of success before she makes her move’. None of this was entirely original. Sir Robert Wilson had been the first to raise the spectre of the Ottoman Empire being overwhelmed by Russian armies, while the concept of St Petersburg using the Persians to invade India had been mooted by Kinneir seventeen years earlier. But much had changed since then. Urquhart’s warning came at a time when the Russians appeared to be on the move again. In addition to enlarging their fleet, they had greatly strengthened their hand in the Caucasus, the bridgehead from which any further advances into Turkey or Persia would almost certainly be launched. With Russophobia now at an all-time high, Urquhart found no shortage of people who were willing to listen to him.

  Possessing such powerful friends as William IV, the Turkish Sultan and Lord Ponsonby, then British ambassador to Constantinople, it was no surprise when early in 1836 Urquhart was posted to the Turkish capital as First Secretary at the British Embassy. But Urquhart was not a man to allow his new diplomatic status to curb either his Russophobe activities or his support for the Circassian cause, and it was while he was serving at Constantinople that the celebrated, if now long forgotten, affair of the Vixen took place. At that time, although Circassia was far from subdued, the Russians claimed it as their sovereign territory, acquired by treaty from the Turks. On the pretext of isolating the region because of an outbreak of plague, they had imposed a strict naval blockade of its Black Sea coastline.

  Britain did not recognise this claim, but the government did not feel strongly enough about it to challenge Russia over the matter. Urquhart, however, was incensed by what he saw as Palmerston’s acquiescence in St Petersburg’s efforts to crush the gallant Circassians, as well as by his spinelessness in not challenging the blockade, which was aimed at keeping British goods, and possibly arms, out of the Caucasus. To force the issue, therefore, Urquhart persuaded a British shipping company to send one of its schooners, the Vixen, from Constantinople with a cargo of salt to the port of Sudjuk Kale, at the northern end of the Circassian coast. It was a deliberate act of provocation, intended to see how far the Russians were prepared to go to maintain their claim to Circassia. If the vessel was intercepted, Urquhart hoped that this would inflame public opinion at home and thus force the government to take direct action against the Russians to protect its merchant fleet. Such a move, necessitating the sending of British warships into the Black Sea, would also serve the purpose of challenging the new Russo-Turkish secret agreement over the Dardanelles. If, on the other hand, the Russians failed to seize the Vixen, then it showed that they could be forced to climb down if only one stood up to them. It would also show that supplies of arms for the beleaguered Circassians might be able to follow.

  In November 1836, the Vixen left Constantinople and headed eastwards across the Black Sea. Her departure could hardly have escaped St Petersburg’s notice, for Urquhart’s newspaper contacts saw to it that this received widespread coverage. Urquhart and his co-conspirators, hawks to a man, clearly hoped that she would be intercepted. For they believed that only a showdown between London and St Petersburg could now halt Russian aggrandisement. Things got off to a promising start when the commander of a Russian brig arrested the vessel in the port of Sudjuk Kale, where she had been trading for two days. News of her seizure was promptly dispatched to London by British newspaper correspondents, mostly friends of Urquhart’s, based in Constantinople. As had been expected, the tidings aroused the wrath of press and public, although few Britons had even the haziest idea where Circassia was. The Russophobe newspapers, temporarily out of ammunition, rose predictably to Urquhart’s bait. While The Times chided the government for allowing the Russians to ‘scoff at the pusillanimity of England’, the Edinburgh Review examined the wider implications of the crisis. ‘The Circassians once subdued,’ it declared, ‘the Caucasus is open and Persia lies at St Petersburg’s mercy . . . Thus we shall see the frontier of Russia advanced at one stride 1,200 miles nearer our Indian frontier.’

  Palmerston himself was no less angered by the illegal seizure of the British vessel, and a heated correspondence commenced with St Petersburg. The Foreign Secretary was equally annoyed with Urquhart and his Russophobe friends, whom he knew to be behind it all. He had tried to block Urquhart’s appointment to Constantinople, but it was no secret that this had had the King’s personal backing, and he had been overruled by his Cabinet colleagues. Now feeling thoroughly vindicated, he at once set about getting the offender recalled to London before he could do any more damage to Anglo-Russian relations. Meanwhile, in the Turkish capital, Urquhart and his friends eagerly awaited the British government’s response to the arrest and confiscation of the Vixen.

  It was around this time that the Russians began to claim that there were British agents operating among the Circassians, supplying them with arms, advising them and encouraging them to resist. Indeed, in addition to its cargo of salt, they alleged that the Vixen had been found to be carrying weapons intended for the rebellious tribesmen. So concerned were they about the possible effects of this on the course of the war, that the Russian commander issued a warning to the Circassians suspected of harbouring the foreigners in their mountain lairs. ‘The Englishmen in your midst’, he declared, ‘are merely unprincipled adventurers.’ They had come, not to help the Circassian cause, but to try to acquire Circassia for Britain. They should be seized forthwith and killed. The Circassians themselves, he said, would be wise to lay down their arms, for no country had ever waged war against Russia and won. ‘Are you not aware’, he asked them, ‘that were the heavens to fall, the Russians could prop them up with their bayonets?’ It was far better for the Caucasian tribes to be ruled by the Tsar than by the King of England. However, if they listened to the British and chose to resist, then it would not be the Russians’ fault if their valleys and homes were destroyed by fire and sword, and their mountains ‘trampled into dust’.

  As the Russians were to discover during the next quarter of a century or more, it would take more than bombast to intimidate the Circassians, who continued to resist long after the other Caucasian peoples had submitted. But on one point the general was right. There were indeed Englishmen living with the Circassians at that moment. One, James Longworth, was a special correspondent of The Times, a newspaper sympathetic to the Circassian cause, who had come to see how they were faring in their David and Goliath struggle with the Russians. His companion, James Bell, was also a Circassian sympathiser. Indeed it was he, perhaps unwisely, who had lent the Vixen to further their cause. Encouraged by Urquhart, he had run the Russian gauntlet like Longworth in order to witness the war and to try to keep it in the headlines at home. He was also anxious to discover what had happened to his vessel and its cargo, and to endeavour to recover them.

  During the months they were to spend with the mujahedin, living under the very noses of the Russians, the two men learned of the extraordinary veneration felt by the Circassians for ‘Dauod Bey’, as David Urquhart was known to them. When, more than two years earlier, he had landed on their shores he had found them divided and disorganised. He at once set about forming a central authority to organise and coordinate their resistance. He also wrote for them a formal declaration of independence, which he ensured was widely publicised in Europe. For their part, Longworth and Bell were able to offer the Circassians encouragement and advice while they and their hosts awaited news of the British government’s response to the seizure of the Vixen, and St Petersburg’s claim to Circassia. In the meantime they were able to observe some of the fighting, and Longworth to report on its progress to his newspaper, thus helping to keep the Circassian cause in the public eye.

  At first, when the fighting had been confined to the frontier region, the Russians had used their Cossack cavalry to try to crush resistance. But with centuries of mountain and forest warfare behind them, and
an intimate knowledge of the terrain, the Circassians had shown themselves to be more than a match for the Russians. They were also better mounted and armed than the Cossacks, and quite as skilled and ferocious in combat. The result was that the Russian commanders had to think again. Their next move was to use infantry supported by artillery, with Cossack cavalry to guard their flanks. In this way they were able to advance cautiously into hostile territory, destroying villages and crops as they went.

  After disastrous attempts to break the Russian squares, during which, Longworth recounts, ‘the best and the bravest of the warriors fell victim to their own rashness’, the Circassians likewise changed their tactics. Instead of attempting to meet the Russians head on, they learned to steer them into skilfully laid ambushes and traps, striking from nowhere on their swift mounts and vanishing as quickly. The Russians next introduced grape-shot, an early form of shrapnel. ‘Their guns,’ one Circassian complained to Longworth, ‘instead of sending a single ball which came whistling over our heads . . . now vomit ten thousand of them at the very least which come tearing and smashing everything about us.’ If only the British would provide them with such weapons, he pleaded, then the Russian troops ‘would be no more able to keep their ranks than we are, and, being once dispersed, our cavalry would play the devil with them as before.’

  Resistance in the Caucasus, the Englishmen learned, was not confined to Circassia. Across the mountains to the east, on the Caspian side of the Caucasus, a similar struggle was going on against the Russians in Daghestah. This was led by a Muslim divine of extraordinary charisma and genius at guerilla tactics called Shamyl. However, because of Daghestan’s remoteness, and the fact that there was no Urquhart to publicise it, or Longworth to report it, this war went virtually unnoticed in Europe. But if the British had not yet heard of Shamyl, the Tsar’s generals certainly had, for none of the usual tactics appeared to work against him. More than twenty years of incessant warfare lay ahead before Shamyl was defeated, and a further five before the Circassian tribes were finally overrun. The campaign was to prove extremely costly to the Russians, in both money and lives, but it was to inspire some of their greatest writers and poets, including Tolstoy, Pushkin and Lermontov. All that was still far off at the time of which we are writing, however, as Longworth and Bell awaited word from London on the outcome of the Vixen affair.

  When news did finally reach them, in the shape of a cutting from The Times, it was profoundly disappointing. The British government, it was clear, was unwilling to make a major issue of the vessel’s seizure, let alone risk going to war with Russia over it. To the fury of the Russophobes, Palmerston decided that while Circassia did not belong to the Russians, the port of Sudjuk Kale, where the arrest had taken place, did. By this time Urquhart had been ordered back to London and sacked for his role in the confrontation between the two powers, officially allies. None of Urquhart’s friends was powerful enough to intercede on his behalf, for a month before his return William IV had been taken ill and died. Instead, Urquhart launched a vituperative campaign against Palmerston, claiming that he had been bought with Russian gold. He even sought to have the Foreign Secretary impeached for treason, though nothing finally came of this.

  The news that Britain had backed down came as a grave embarrassment to Longworth and Bell, for they had repeatedly assured their hosts that they would soon enjoy the support of the most powerful nation on earth, apparently firmly convinced of this themselves. Palmerston’s decision was an even worse blow for Bell, who could now bid farewell to any hopes of recovering his vessel from the triumphant Russians. The two men decided that there was little further to be gained by staying on, although they promised their Circassian friends that they would continue the fight from England. Indeed, both were to publish detailed accounts of their adventures and experiences with the mujahedin. Meanwhile, though foiled by Palmerston in his attempt to bring Russia and Britain into collision, Urquhart had returned with fresh vigour to the Russophobe cause, and, among other things, was organising the smuggling of arms to the Circassians. John Baddeley, in his classic study The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus, published in 1908, attributes the successes of the Circassians in large part ‘to these efforts’. However, he accuses Urquhart and his collaborators of thus prolonging a war which the Circassians could never win, and of feeding them with false hopes of receiving British support.

  Urquhart eventually entered Parliament where he continued to pursue his campaign against Palmerston and his efforts to have him impeached for treason, as well as his Russian-baiting activities. But gradually he found himself caught up in other causes, and finally ill-health drove him to retire to the Swiss Alps. As the arch-Russophobe of the day, however, he had done much to turn British public opinion against St Petersburg, and to deepen the growing rift between the two powers. Indeed, modern Soviet historians lay some of the blame for today’s problems in the Caucasus on British interference in the region, even claiming that Shamyl was a British agent. Certainly the resistance the Russians encountered there was to keep them stretched militarily, and to act for some years as a restraint on their ambitions elsewhere in Asia. The Caucasus, thanks to Urquhart and his friends, had thus become part of the Great Game battlefield.

  Despite Urquhart’s claims to the contrary, Palmerston was anything but in St Petersburg’s pocket. He shared Urquhart’s suspicion of Russia’s intentions, but was far from persuaded that they yet posed a threat to Britain’s interests. His main source of reassurance on this was Lord Durham, then British ambassador in St Petersburg. Durham was convinced that Russia’s apparent military might was of defensive value only, and that Tsar Nicholas was not in a position to indulge in any expansionist dreams which he might harbour. Foreign adventures required huge resources that Durham knew, from his secret contacts in St Petersburg, Russia simply did not possess. ‘The power of Russia has been greatly exaggerated,’ wrote Durham in March 1836, in what Palmerston described as one of the most brilliant dispatches ever received at the Foreign Office. ‘There is not one element of strength which is not directly counterbalanced by a corresponding . . . weakness,’ he went on. ‘In fact her power is solely of the defensive kind. Leaning on and covered by the impregnable fortress with which nature has endowed her – her climate and her deserts – she is invincible, as Napoleon discovered to his cost.’

  But not everyone at the Foreign Office was as confident as Durham about Russia’s powerlessness to act aggressively. Among those who shared Urquhart’s fears, even if they did not approve of his methods, were Lord Ponsonby, the British ambassador to Constantinople, and Sir John McNeill, the newly appointed Minister to Teheran, who had travelled as far as the Ottoman capital with Urquhart when they were taking up their respective posts. McNeill, an old Persia hand, had served for some years in Teheran under Sir John Kinneir, and had watched Russian influence grow there at the expense of Britain. He was strongly suspected by the Russians of having had a hand in the death of the unfortunate Griboyedov when their embassy had been attacked by a mob eight years earlier, although there was not a shred of evidence to support this. A man of considerable ability, not to say ambition, McNeill had originally come to Teheran as a doctor to the legation, but had quickly shown himself to possess great political acumen.

  While waiting to take up his appointment as Minister, McNeill had written a book detailing Russia’s territorial gains, in both Europe and Asia, from the time of Peter the Great. Published anonymously, at Palmerston’s insistence, it appeared in 1836 under the title The Progress and Present Position of Russia in the East, and was the most carefully reasoned piece of Great Game literature so far. The book contained a large folding map which showed the alarming extent of Russia’s expansion during the previous century and a half. Appended to the map was a table demonstrating Russia’s population gains resulting from these annexations and other acquisitions. In all, since the time of Peter’s accession, the number of the Tsar’s subjects had increased nearly fourfold, from 15 million to 58 million. At the sa
me time Russia’s frontiers had advanced 500 miles towards Constantinople, and 1,000 miles towards Teheran. In Europe, Russia’s acquisitions from Sweden were greater than what was now left of this once-powerful kingdom, while those from Poland were almost equal in area to the entire Austrian Empire. This was all in stark contrast to the picture of a purely defensive Russia painted by Lord Durham in St Petersburg.

  ‘Every portion of these vast acquisitions’, McNeill wrote, ‘has been obtained in opposition to the views, the wishes and the interests of England. The dismemberment of Sweden, the partition of Poland, the conquest of the Turkish provinces and those severed from Persia, have all been injurious to British interests.’ The Russians, he added, had achieved all this by stealth, gaining their objectives by means of ‘successive encroachments, no one of which has been of sufficient importance to interrupt friendly relations with the great powers of Europe.’ It was an apt description of a process which would be repeated again and again by St Petersburg in Central Asia during the coming years.