Sabres on the Steppes Read online

  But all these exchanges with the Russians and the bartering for goods were proving distractions for Longworth, who really wanted to be involved in some active operations against the enemy. It seemed his time had come when one of the chiefs invited him to join a ‘reconnoitring’ party intent on attacking, or at least disrupting, the garrison of a small Russian fort and military colony. Ten of them set off together on horseback, and soon found that – even as so small a body of men as that – they were attracting cannon fire from the fort, so they split up and Longworth found himself riding alone along the edge of a ravine when he spotted four horsemen riding along the skyline of the ridge opposite. Convinced that these were part of the Circassians’ own raiding party, he descended into the ravine to join them on the other side. But the bottom of the ravine was marshy and he was slowed down, which was just as well for him as it enabled one of his own party to overtake him and point out that the four figures he had seen on the ridge were not their own men but Cossacks. He had been on the point of blundering into the hands of an enemy who would undoubtedly have captured and hanged him, no doubt causing immense embarrassment to the British government.

  While Longworth was surviving this narrow squeak, one of the tribesmen of his party was deliberately putting himself at equal risk. He had spotted the Cossacks and rode straight at them, being the next moment ‘sword in hand among them’, doubtless reckoning that odds of four to one were odds that he could manage. He was right. The Cossacks – possibly because they saw he had other supporters following on – took to flight, but not before the tribesman had overtaken one of them and stripped him of his carbine and sabre. Longworth thought this fellow could have captured the Cossack if he had not been so intent on acquiring his weapons. The operation was only called off when they observed that ‘a body of infantry, which, judging from the lengthening line of bayonets flashing in the sun, amounted to not less than five hundred men’ was advancing to cut off their retreat – a gratifying reaction to a reconnaissance by ten men! Even then, the chief made a feint of charging the enemy ‘apparently to see if I [Longworth] would accompany him’. Longworth kept abreast of him until the last moment, proving his courage and horsemanship. It was the sort of experience he had been wanting, to prove his commitment to his hosts and to himself.

  But in the weeks that followed he was more than ever conscious of the Circassians’ disappointment in the performance of the British government. They were continually looking out to sea to search the horizon for ships of the Royal Navy on their way to break the Russian blockade or to escort trading vessels that were doing so. There were rumours that the British had a fleet in the Black Sea. On one occasion a red flag was spotted on an incoming vessel and the tribesmen were exultant at the prospect of welcoming a merchant ship sailing under the red ensign; unhappily, the flag turned out to be a red signal flag on a Russian ship. Worse still, there appeared to be a real threat of a raiding party being landed from a Russian corvette to ambush and capture Longworth or his Circassian hosts – conjuring up horrific fears of ‘captivity, death, or more than death, the gloom of Siberian banishment’. An unlit bonfire was discovered on a headland which looked as if it were intended as a guiding beacon for the incoming corvette; when the tribesmen dismantled the bonfire, it was sinisterly reassembled a day or two later. Even when lookouts were posted along the coastline, there was a continual anxiety about surprise attack from the sea.

  Sometimes the tribesmen took the initiative. When a landing party from a Russian corvette put in to the shore close to where Longworth was staying, the Russian sailors claimed to be wanting to buy mutton, having seen sheep on the shore line. In a bargaining exchange – carried on at a safe distance without contact – the Russians made it clear they knew an Englishman was in the region. The Circassians were convinced the whole episode was a trap to lure them within range of the Russians’ rifles and capture prisoners – hopefully including Longworth. So they reversed the trap and when the next party of Russians came ashore, the tribesmen came out of hiding and opened fire on them. The shooting continued even after the Russians had regained their landing craft and ‘many of the men in the boat were killed before they could regain the vessel’.

  On another occasion, a small Turkish ship that had evaded the blockade was spotted on the shore by the Russians and subjected to intensive bombardment. It was for this reason that the tribesmen tried to conceal – with leafs and branches in the rigging – any such vessels that were sheltering by the shore. Longworth himself was caught in one such bombardment ‘shut in between the cliffs and the sea’ where he could find no shelter until he managed to escape inland up a path leading to a ruined fort; but he did not venture far, because of the number of poisonous snakes encountered. All these maritime events increased distrust on both sides, and alarmed Longworth.

  They also proved beyond doubt that there were Russian agents or spies acting on their behalf in the tribal areas. The principle suspects were always the Armenian traders. They were despised and mistrusted in the same sort of way the Jewish community was blamed for mischief within Russia.

  Longworth himself, who – despite his generally liberal views – could be very prejudiced, comments in his book that ‘Armenians are the bane of all those who admit them to their bosom’. He also subscribed to the view that it was through the Armenians that Russia was informed of everything that took place in Circassia. To their credit however, both Longworth and Bell tried to dissuade their tribal hosts from routinely robbing Armenian caravans of their trade goods.

  When Longworth moved from this rugged coastal region to a more fertile plain, in the hope of seeing more action against the Russians, he finally encountered Nadir Bey, the nom de guerre already bestowed on the new arrival Mr Knight, who was suffering from fever, brought on by the extreme exertions and alarms of the voyage: Nadir Bey’s ship had been intercepted by no less than three Russian ‘cruisers’, one of which had succeeded in getting between them and the shore. It had been a question of all hands to the oars, and Nadir Bey had ‘set a steady example to the crew’. A Circassian merchant who had cadged a lift on the ship with his cargo had not rewarded Nadir Bey’s efforts with any great generosity of spirit: he had suggested that – to lighten the ship’s load and add to their speed – the Englishman’s baggage should be jettisoned overboard rather than his own. And to add to Nadir Bey’s exasperation – and no doubt aggravating his fever – the same fellow passenger on discovering that the Englishman had a valuable pocket watch had made a practice of asking him the time every hour of the day and night until, in desperation to be left alone, Nadir Bey had succumbed and given him the watch in question. Altogether it had not been a good introduction to the more greedy practices of the country.

  Longworth for his part immediately assumed that the visitor was an agent of the British government, just as the locals had made the same assumption about himself, but he was not. It transpired that he was – in Longworth’s words – ‘a volunteer to the cause, a gentleman of fortune [. . .] impelled thereto solely by the genuine spirit of chivalry’. He had come prepared for action, bringing with him no less than sixteen large chests of powder and lead, which he declared he was happy to give to any local chief who would allow him to join in some worthwhile enterprise, such as the storming of a fort or an incursion into Russian territory.

  Nor did Nadir Bey have long to wait before seeing some action. The Russians, who had clearly been informed by their spies of the arrival of an Englishman with a cargo of military material, sent a frigate to the point on the coast where he had landed with instructions to capture or burn the gunpowder and bullets even if they could not capture the visitor. When he heard what was afoot, Nadir Bey rose from his sick bed to go down to the beach and rally his supporters among the tribesmen, who turned out in such large numbers that the Russian frigate commander thought better of the attempt and instead sailed a few miles further up the coast and set fire to another Turkish ship which had taken refuge there. A desperate cavalry gallop up the
coast by the tribesmen to forestall this arrived too late to stop the burning, but not too late to kill twenty of the Russian landing party.

  As soon as he was well enough to be more active, Nadir Bey decked himself out in a garb that he must have realized was likely to increase the local view that he was an official representative or ambassador of his government: he wore a scarlet yeomanry uniform with gold and green facings, which – even in comparison with the colourful attire of the local warriors – must have looked spectacular. As with Longworth, the tribal chiefs could not be persuaded he was a private adventurer: either he must be an envoy of England, or a spy for Russia. His hyperactivity against the invaders made the latter seem implausible. Both Longworth and Nadir Bey saw one of their main roles as being credible witnesses to what was happening in the Caucasus, at a time when there were no other first-hand reports reaching England. But they soon got news from home which made them very despondent about how much attention would be paid to their reports in high places. King William IV had died. The king had always been seen as sympathetic to the independence of the Caucasus – ‘one who sincerely resolved to stem the tide of Russian aggrandisement’; his ministers – notably Lord Palmerston – were less so. The two Englishmen assured their hosts that, despite this bad news, they still had plenty of friends in Britain.

  With his newly arrived compatriot so full of aggressive energy, Longworth was more than ever determined to engage in military action. Nadir Bey was set on storming a major Russian fort, and had earmarked Fort Shapsine as his intended target: it was set on a river bank in a forest, had walls fifteen feet high, was crenellated, flanked by bastions and boasted heavy guns. He and Longworth decided to do a private recce together at dawn. They crept from bush to bush along the river bank as the sun was beginning to rise. By the time it was fully light they were within musket range of the battlements and could ‘distinguish the features of the sentinels on duty’. Having spied out all they could, and worked out the best line for a serious assault, they retraced their steps to where they had tethered their horses and galloped back to the tribal camp from which they had set out – no doubt expecting to be congratulated on their escapade. But they were to be disappointed. The tribal chiefs were furious that they had embarked on this exploit on their own and without a proper escort. In fact, they went so far as to suggest that ‘such early visits to a Russian fortress might be misinterpreted’. They could never quite shake off the idea that they might, after all, be Russian spies.

  Perhaps the Circassians had special reason to be nervous at that moment. They had just learnt that the Russian tsar himself – the formidable Nicholas I, renowned for his terrifying ‘pewter gaze’ – had arrived in the Caucasus to assess the situation and was lodged with a garrison only some three miles away at Ghelendjik. A formidable force of Cossacks and infantry, leaving behind them dead and wounded as well as cattle and provisions, had arrived by forced marches to give protection to their sovereign; the hills above them were bristling with Russian bayonets. But all was not well at the Russian camp, and while the tsar was there a fire broke out, destroying much ammunition and vital food supplies, and obliging the tsar to return to his ship and go further along the coast.

  There were sinister rumours about the cause of the fire, some people thinking that it had been started on the orders of General Williamanoff, the commander of the base, to avoid the tsar discovering the ‘wholesale fraud and spoliation’ that had been going on there. (Nicholas I was on another occasion publicly to humiliate and drive to suicide one of his senior officers of whose conduct he disapproved.) Whatever the truth, in the confusion of the fire a large number of Russian soldiers deserted. However brief and troubled the tsar’s visit, it still gave time for him to issue an order that if any of the three English soldiers-of-fortune in the region were captured, they were to be unceremoniously hanged. Longworth comments in his book that were that to have happened he was confident that ‘the people of England would have called him [the tsar] to a strict account’; and it was possibly bearing in mind the need to alert British opinion to what was happening that Nadir Bey offered to finance from his own funds the sending of a Circassian embassy to London.

  The tribal chiefs had for some months now pursued a policy of non-provocation towards the Russians, partly as a result of the advice given them in Lord Ponsonby’s letter. But the Russians had conspicuously failed to respond: their aggressive behaviour on land and sea and their tenacious holding on to all their forts showed that a policy of reconciliation was not for them. The Circassians therefore resolved, with much encouragement from Longworth and Nadir Bey, to be more active themselves. As a preliminary step, they insisted that their supporters took a solemn oath on the Koran promising full support; many did this only reluctantly because they realized they were putting their lives on the line by signing up in this way.

  Spring was coming and the solid ice across the Kuban river would soon begin to melt, making any forays northwards into Russian territory more difficult. The Wolf and other tribal chiefs therefore decided that this was the moment for a major raid which would concentrate on capturing Russian cannons and ammunition, rather than on the more usual and popular objective of carrying off plunder in the form of sheep and cattle. Five thousand horsemen, reminded of their oath of loyalty to the cause, were assembled; the hills, which earlier had been crawling with Russian infantry, were now illuminated by the campfires of the insurgents. Longworth and Nadir Bey toured some of the campsites and found the tribal warriors gathered around their minstrels listening to war songs and in high spirits.

  Longworth tells how they rode back to their own watch-fire and attempted to get some sleep on the night before the crossing. He explains that this was not easy ‘less owing to apprehension for my personal safety, than conscientious scruples as to how far I was justified as an Englishman to take part in the wild sort of warfare I was now enlisted in’. But he comforted himself with the thought that there could be no nobler cause than the independence of these mountain people, and that if he did find himself witnessing some horrors then at least his presence would be likely to have the effect of mitigating them. He also felt that however wild and ruthless his fellows in arms might be, the Circassians were not given to slaughtering their enemies in cold blood, nor to violating women.

  It was two hours after midnight when the Circassians began their march towards the Kuban river. Longworth struggled to keep up and not to lose sight of his companions in the thick brushwood through which they had to ‘flounder and scramble’ on their horses; he was scratched by branches and brambles and his horse sank into half-frozen bogs. Strange and unknown warriors loomed up out of the darkness, with just the muzzles of their rifles and the tails of their horses appearing from the folds of their poncho-like capes. When they halted in a hamlet, Longworth dozed in his saddle while his horse quietly munched the roof of a thatched cottage.

  As dawn broke, they found themselves on a hill overlooking the Kuban river. It was then that an advance scouting party brought back the disturbing news that the river ice had already begun to melt and a passage across was problematical – and the return even more so. Disheartened by these reports, most of the infantry and about a third of the cavalry immediately gave up, and set off for home. The remainder was not so easily deterred from ‘an enterprise from which they had promised themselves such glorious results’. They went forward, through about a mile of reeds along the bank, to judge for themselves whether bridges of interwoven branches could not be constructed over the broken ice. Longworth went with them and when he reached this point he was not surprised to find that it was the Wolf (whose real name was Tougouse) who was leading the work of bridging the ice, and he was relieved to find his compatriot Nadir Bey also there – as he had lost contact with him and feared that he had been somehow lost in the approach march.

  While some of the other chiefs conferred on the bank, the Wolf led a party of some three hundred horsemen over the rickety bridge and the broken ice into the Russian terr
itory on the other side. Among the first to push forward were Long-worth and Nadir Bay ‘not doubting we should be followed by the whole army’. But the others did not follow. They listened to the council of chiefs, who concluded that ‘it would be madness to persist in the expedition’ because they reckoned that the return – hopefully laden with booty – would involve fighting their way through Russian troops and then trying to re-cross the river, which would be quite impossible. Also, they thought the silence of the Russian guns on the far bank was an ominous sign that an ambush was being prepared. They feared – as always – that spies had given away their plans and that large reinforcements of Russians were lurking in the reeds on the other side of the river, ready to attack the tribesmen the moment they became ‘entangled in the marshes’. The expedition was formally abandoned.

  But what had been decreed too risky for the majority was now to be attempted by the ‘chivalrous handful’ who had already crossed the ice. The Wolf was determined to press on, and he crossed and re-crossed the river to persuade a few of the bolder spirits on the southern side to join him on Russian territory. The party on the north of the river dismounted and offered a prayer to Allah before springing again into their saddles. Two chiefs from the south bank went so far as to cross the river to try to persuade the two Englishmen to withdraw, but when they failed in this – Nadir Bey declaring he and Longworth would stand or fall with their companions – decided to stay on themselves with the ‘chivalrous handful’.