THE CONQUEST OF KHIVA.
THE grand fact made evident by the conquest of Khiva, now officially ascertained, is the weakness, moral and physical, of the soldiery of Central Asia. With their flight before in- ferior foes expires a superstition which has lasted down from the siege of Vienna in 1529, the belief that at some always receding point in Central Asia there would be found an army capable of defeating Europeans. Somewhere or other there must be force in those regions, which had twice sent out their myriads to ravage Europe. When a new country was con- quered, say by Clive, with 3,000 men, or a " hidden " capital entered like -Pekin, by a few brigades of English and French- men, or a vast State like Persia compelled to submit to Ontram and. his few men, or Japan compelled to alter her whole policy by a few war-ships, the inferiority of the Asiatic organisation was acknowledged, but the superstition only altered its locale. One-half of the English people still speak of Afghanistan as if it were some mighty State, whose friend- ship or enmity were of the last importance ; and if Sir H. Rawlinson or Lord Lawrence were to tell them what they know, that 10,000 men would conquer Afghanistan and hold it as securely as 7,000 police hold London, they would be -simply disbelieved. Think, say unreflecting folk, of the hills and the valleys, which are really easier, far easier in a military sense, than those of Ceylon. About Persia and Turkey the people are no doubt more or less disenchanted, but about Central Asia the old opinion till yesterday still held firm. The people, fanatically brave, were de- fended by their deserts, by their rude but strong fortifi- cations, and by their readiness to die at their Khan's sum- mons. We ourselves, who certainly ought to have known better, believed that the Khan would defend Khiva as the old Sikh Moolraj, would have thrown his horsemen on the artillery, as we did at Chillianwallah, and have died sword in hand upon the ruins of his fort, as Turkish Pachas have so often done. Nothing of the kind occurred. The numbing sense that they were fighting the irresistible— the feeling which Theodore expressed when he said he could not be expected to resist weapons like the rockets, which kept searching out his palisading —seems to have struck the Khivese, and from first to last they never offered serious battle to the invaders. If the desert turned them back, well. If not, God had ordered the victory of the Infidel. If a body of Khivese cavalry approached the Russians they were driven off by a few rockets, which they probably had never previously seen, and which will sometimes drive horses mad with terror. If the Russians threatened a fortified place, the garrison, after receiving a shell or two, decamped in a body, and at last Khiva itself was surrendered unconditionally without a shot, and with an intimation that the Khanate also was at Russian service. The defence was that of men whose hearts were broken. The Turcomans are not cowards, they have fought well in intestine wars, they belong to tribes whose life is passed in the saddle and on the desert, who under competent leaders once conquered "the world," who do not differ in any out- ward condition from the Kashgarees, who seem to be building an empire in Yarkund, and who, if we have not forgotten Mr. T. Prinsep's paper about their fathers, he deemed formidable to the Indian Empire. They had fair arms, and strong walls, and large numbers. They are only dismayed by the contact with civilisation, fly before it as we should all fly before genii ; as Theodore fled before Lord Napier of Magdala, as the army -surrounding Lucknow fled before Havelock and his brigade, or as hitherto the Anamese have fled before the French. So far as we can judge from the accounts as yet published, there is nothing except the danger of differences with England to prevent General Kaufman from annexing all Central Asia, and Bolding it as safely as the Governor-General of Tobolsk holds Siberia. Bokhara actually assisted him. The desert has been fatal to one column, but it has not stopped the march of three other columns, and with that march the deadly charm of the Steppe is disenchanted. The Europeans are rulers of the Steppe Road, they are masters of the spell which fetters the desert, the artesian well, and if Russia is resolute to main- tam her possession, the route from the Caspian to Khiva can
never be closed again except by war. As feudatories, or allies, or subjects, all of which words mean, for warlike purposes, the same thing, the Czar will be obeyed by all chiefs from the Polar sea to the frontier of Afghanistan. No power can hinder him except England, and England only by direct alliance with the Shah, or direct force applied through the Shah's dominions. A few score wells sunk, and his Cossacks may ride whither they will.
It is a strange, though an explicable change which has passed over these tribes, and indeed all Asiatic sovereignties, and it is difficult to resist the temptation of speculating whether it will be permanent. Are Russia and England—allied perhaps with Holland, which has a very distinct function to perform in Asia, and has just telegraphed that she means to go on performing it—really to mould these populations for centuries to come, absorbing their wealth, abolishing their politics, and training their people ? or is the spell laid on these vast multitudes one which can be removed ? As yet the answer is in the negative, for no attempt could be more desperately made to shake the West off than that which is called the Mutiny, and none could have been more thoroughly suppressed. But Europe, nevertheless, has only a moral hold on Asia, which is daily losing its force. We cannot help an uneasy feeling that the moral yoke is giving way ; that the East is reckoning with its difficulties, or as it says, its enemies ; that it is beginning to feel that if it knew the truth strength might come to it. That clearly is the motive of the Shah's visit to Europe, and though he may go back over- whelmed with the signs of power he sees around him, that was not the effect of England on Azimoollah, the Cawnpore mur- derer, and we are told is not the effect of recent conflicts on the rulers of China. They are arming in the Western fashion, are mounting, it is stated, steel cannon on the forts of Tientsin, are importing rifles, and are disciplining their troops to strict Euro- pean obedience under regular officers. Their people in San Francisco, who have been insulted, tortured, and plundered for months, seem suddenly to have been emboldened by tidings from the East, and in an extremely clever remonstrance have warned the municipality that if the Americans will not keep the Treaty neither will the Chinese ; that the Treaty will be abolished, and each side allowed to do as it pleases, a remark we recommend to the consideration of American merchants in Shanghai. They may not like to be pat in prison in heaps every day for doing nothing, and forcibly shaven besides. We do not wish to believe and do not believe half the stories repeated by the alarmists, but it is quite clear, from the sudden and tre- mendous defeat of the Chinese Mohammedans in Yunan, a defeat which seems to involve the stamping-out of their power, that some new force, it may be only a new General, but it may also be a new army, has accrued to the Chinese Government. What if that Government provided itself with new and heavy guns, light steel batteries, a good desert cavalry, and infantry without numbers, all taught, as it is quite clear Chinese can be taught, to die steadily in their ranks? Our own Coolie corps did that. Could Europe, with its vast distances to cross, again hope to enter Pekin ? The Anamese might readily draw similar help from within China, and as to India, nothing can prevent the entry, if not of great guns, at least of rifles and repeating carbines and revolvers. Lord Napier would have a pleasant chase after Hyder All and 50,000 horsemen armed and drilled to use repeating carbines. Even as it is, the people of the Khanates may be taught by some exile the secret of their proper warfare, the use of cavalry to harass and desolate, but not to fight, and may import weapons, particularly revolvers, through the Gulf. There is an ugly little sentence in the Russian official account that the Khan and his cavalry, "over-persuaded by the war- party," have rushed into the desert. One real defeat of the Europeans would enlighten all Asia, and Asia can wait long and quietly for her news. She is now nearly sub- jugated, and we do not doubt will remain so for a time ; but there may be terrible struggles yet, struggles so fierce that the curious federation of Europe which now governs Shanghai may be called into existence to keep Asia down till her educa- tion is complete. The thorough extinction of the white man in China would call Europe to very different work than its present one of squabbling whether dead dynasties are corpses or sacred mummies.
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