THE CAPTURE OF SCHAMYL.
THE dynamic forces, active in the movement of races, seem to follow chiefly two directions, a westerly and an easterly one. The first, the westerly current of history, indicates apparently the main stream ; as evidenced in the course of progress of civilization over our globe, which, beginning on the highlands of Asia, has marched through Egypt, Greece, and Rome into Western Europe, thence across the Atlantic, and in our own days even over the Rocky Mountains to the shores of the Pacific. This movement of races to the West may be called the natural one, inasmuch as nations appear to follow it instinctively and without any evident outward propulsion. Those blue-eyed barbarians, the Teutonic tribes, who some thousands of years ago stepped down from over the Ural Mountains into the heart of Europe, to seek both a home and a field for their prowess, had probably no very clear or distinct idea of what they were about ; no more than their descendants have, the peasants of Baden, Wiirtemburg, Hanover, and Saxony, who to the number of hundreds of thousands are now annually crowding every sea-port on Baltic and Atlantic to seek passage for the Western world. This movement, the rolling wave of civilization, follows the course of the sun, and seems to be as all powerful in its origin as universal in its effects. But it is never- theless counteracted by another force which runs in diametrically opposite direction, and which, in contradistinction, we may call the artificial movement of races. To this latter class belong the expeditions of the Greeks to Troy, the campaigns of Alexander the Macedonian, the crusades of the Middle Ages, and, in more modern times, the conquests of our own race in the East. These movements of nations enjoying a higher state of civilization towards the barbarism of the East are certainly artificial, for they are at all times engendered not by the masses but by a few leading minds. But they are not the less salutary on this account, and clearly as necessary to progress as the westward striving of the races. A grand thing it was, no doubt, that a handful of pil- grims from the shores of Great Britain should land on the coast of America, there to establish an empire which embraces the future of a large portion of the human race ; but scarcely less grand was the act of some other staunch hearts from this our island, who carried the flag of civilization and the light of the Gospel on to the borders of the Ganges, sweeping before it savageness and tyranny and superstition without end. Notwithstanding all that Quakers and Peace-at-any-price men may say to the contrary, it is a great truth, well expressed by Alexander von Humboldt, that " the conquest of India is the noblest deed yet achieved by the Anglo-Saxon race."
But nations are apt to imitate each other in their great as well as little undertakings and gigantic as is the enterprise of England in the East, she has found even in that field a rival almost since the beginning. Russia, too, is trying to expand not only in the historical Western direction, but in the opposite artificial move- ment towards the East. For more than half a century now the Czars have been knocking with their iron fist against the gates ' ' which bar their way to the sunny plains of Asia, and in spite of endless failures and many defeats have gradually advanced on the road. From 1791, when the first fortress of the Circassians, Anapa, was taken, until the 7th of September this year, when the last leader of the bold mountaineers, Schamyl, was captured, the Russians have stepped in slow and gradual strides up the hills which divide their country from the East, till now finally they are looking down from the summit into the promised land of wonder and romance, the cradle of mankind, which lies beyond. Schamyl, the hero of a thousand battles, is now no more a living barrier : the road to the Ganges lies open to Muscovite valour. With pride the Russian mind glances back on the efforts of the seventy years' struggle ; with culminating pride at the last concluding act. The capture of Schamyl, indeed, is a deed as full of romance as any of our own Indian exploits. The renowned chief, it ap- pears, being like a hunted lion successively driven from one corner into the other, at last found himself shut up in what his pursuers called the fortress of Gounib, but what was in fact nothing but a crevice in the side of the mountain, approached by a steep path so narrow that only two men could walk on it abreast. In this hiding-place the grey-haired old Imam, sur- rounded by his last faithful four hundred, determined to show opposition once more, and if not to conquer so to die. But the Russian commander, as bold as the death-defying chief, ordered his troops to scale the surrounding rocks, and to attack the moun- taineers from above as well as from the narrow pathway in front. Seven hundred soldiers volunteered for this desperate service, and fighting so to say between heaven and earth, they succeeded in killing three hundred and fifty out of the four hundred Circassians, besides taking from them all their cannon. But Schamyl,yet undaunted, shut himself up in a hole in the rock, (a saklia in the language of the natives,) the ground before which was covered with dead bodies. The Russian general, Prince Bariatinski, soon after arrived, and giving orders for the firing to cease, the following dialogue began. " Art thou Schamyl ? "—" Yes," replied the Imam, "1 am."—" Give in then," the Prince continued, " and thy life shall he saved, and thou shalt keep thy wives and thy riches. But I must send thee to the Czar ; it is from him that thy further fate will depend." On this, the reports say, Schamyl bowed his head, without uttering a word. And so the last scene in the great struggle between mighty Russia and the handful of mountaineers who barred to her so long the golden gates of the East, ended. Ended, too, in true Oriental fashion : not on a well-planned field of battle, where science is sitting, telescope in hand, behind rifled cannon; but in a saklia, a hole in the rock, with corpses between and vultures hovering above. Yery picturesque indeed ; but alas, very unpractical.
This capture of Schamyl, the last of the Circassian leaders, is, it cannot be denied, of considerable political importance. The statesmen of Western Europe cannot now but turn their eyes again and again to the history of the great Slavonic empire, which, proceeding from a comparatively small district at the foot of the Yaldai Mountains, has gradually spread during a thousand years over the seventh part of our globe. But what is more, Russia has become from so small a beginning not only one of the largest em- pires the world has ever seen, 1Dut one of the most homogeneous states of the present day. It is true that more than a hundred tribes, with as many different languages, are comprised within the dominions of the Czar ; but nearly all these live on the frontiers of the empire, and the interior is inhabited by a race of the same origin, with the same manners and customs, speaking the same language, and worshiping God under the same form. This race numbers about fifty millions, whereas all the other inhabitants of the empire united do not exceed twelve or thirteen millions. No other European country has so numerous a population of the same blood, except perhaps that ideal State called Germany, which to the great advantage of the Slavonic neighbours in the East, and the Gallic in the West, is politically more divided than any other.
Of the three great national families which constitute the civilized world, the Romanic, Germanic, and Slavonic, the last named is in this respect undoubtedly more in advance than any
other. Whereas we see other nations either decaying in sloth- ful inactivity at home, or frittering away their forces by con- quest in distant lands with which they have no natural con- nexion, the Slavonic races of the Russian empire have been slowly and gradually extending themselves in all directions with almost mathematical regularity. First we see the Grand-dukes of !lief and subsequently those of Moscow amalgamating all the sur- rounding countries inhabited by Slavonic tribes. Then, when Russia had become an immense inland country, Peter I. con- quered the coasts of the Baltic, there to seek a lever by which to raise his country from her isolated .'position and place her on a footing with the rest of European states. This was followed by the conquest of the Crimea and the coasts of the Black Sea, which procured the same lever towards the south, opening the roads
into Persia and Asia Minor ; and this, having finally made the empire powerful enough to hazard greater things, Poland was crushed, Finland conquered, the northern districts of Turkey taken, Georgia, Daghestan, and Armenia occupied, the mouth of the
Danube sequestered, and even a part of North America taken pos- session of, to obtain a firm footing in the empire of the future. It might be inferred from these facts, that, like ancient Rome, Russia evidently aims at universal dominion by means of con- quest. In this respect the great Slavonic state colossus is most unlike Great Britain, which at all times has more colonised than conquered, has thrown its forces westward rather than eastward. Even in India, where our rule is so much calumniated and so little appreciated, we have built more roads than fortresses, more schools than barracks. It is very doubtful if Russia, should she one day reach the country south of the Himalaya, will do the same :—it is sure that she has not done so in the provinces she has hitherto taken possession of. Poland, as all the world knows, has any- thing but risen under the rule of the Czar, nor have the Baltic provinces, nor the rich and smiling countries on the Danube. In its movement westward, therefore, Russia has been far from carry- ing the seeds of civilization. Let us hope that she will fulfil a higher mission in the East, towards which now a new gate has been opened to her over the mountains of the Caucasus. Indeed, there is one simple aspect of the long dreaded " Russian question" which may a little reassure our apprehensions. Some kinds of power carry with them no alarm for neighbours. The successive heirs of Peter the Great have acted as if they were try- ing to execute his traditionary will, with some success while con- tending only with barbaric tribes, or with states of mediaeval cus- toms, whose policy of the sword made no effective stand against the steady pressure of diplomatic and resourceful Russia. But when the Peter policy has tempted the contest with states older in the practical wisdom of the nineteenth century, it has given way and failed,—save when it accommodated itself to the policy of Europe at large. Alexander II. seems to be trying another course—to develop Russia's wealth and greatness by competing with the social, industrial, commercial, and material reforms of Modern Europe. It is the way to make Russia great and strong —but not alarming. That country which is civilized and wealthy can aid in preserving the peace of the world ; but she gives hos- tages to fortune against her ever again joining the predaceous disturbers of Europe.
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