The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (4 page)

The man to whom the Russians owe their freedom from Mongol oppression was Ivan III, known also as Ivan the Great, then Grand Prince of Moscow. At the time of the Mongol conquest Moscow was a small and insignificant provincial town, overshadowed by and subservient to its powerful neighbours. But no vassal princes were more assiduous than those of Moscow in paying tribute and homage to their alien rulers. In return for their allegiance they had gradually been entrusted with more power and freedom by the unsuspecting Mongols. Over the years Moscow, by now the principality of Muscovy, thus grew in strength and size, eventually coming to dominate all its neighbours. Preoccupied with their own internal rifts, the Mongols failed to see, until too late, what a threat Muscovy had become.

The showdown came in 1480. In a fit of rage, it is said, Ivan trampled on a portrait of Ahmed Khan, leader of the Golden Horde, and at the same time put several of his envoys to death. One escaped, however, and bore the news of this undreamed-of act of defiance to his master. Determined to teach this rebellious underling a lesson he would never forget, Ahmed turned his army against Muscovy. To his astonishment he found a large and well-equipped force awaiting him on the far bank of the River Ugra, 150 miles from Moscow. For weeks the two armies glowered at one another across the river, neither side seeming inclined to make the first move to cross it. But soon, with the arrival of winter, it began to freeze. A ferocious battle appeared inevitable.

It was then that something extraordinary happened. Without any warning, both sides suddenly turned and fled, as though simultaneously seized by panic. Despite their own inglorious behaviour, the Russians knew that their centuries-long ordeal was all but over. Their oppressors had clearly lost their stomach for the fight. The Mongol war-machine, once so dreaded, was no longer invincible. Their centralised authority in the West had finally collapsed, leaving three widely separated khanates – at Kazan, Astrakhan and in the Crimea – as the last remnants of the once mighty empire of Genghis Khan and his successors. Although the overall Mongol grip had been broken, these three remaining strongholds still constituted a threat, and would eventually have to be destroyed if anyone was to feel safe.

It fell to one of Ivan’s successors, Ivan the Terrible, to seize the first two of these and incorporate them in Muscovy’s rapidly expanding empire. Thirsting for revenge, his troops stormed the fortress of Kazan on the upper Volga in 1553, slaughtering the defenders just as the Mongols had done when they laid waste Russia’s great cities. Two years later the Khanate of Astrakhan, where the Volga flows into the Caspian, met with a similar fate. Only the Crimea, the last remaining Tartar redoubt, still held out, and then merely because it enjoyed the protection of the Ottoman sultans, who regarded it as a valuable bulwark against the Russians. Thus, save for the occasional raid by the Crimean Tartars, the Mongol threat had been eliminated for ever. It would leave the way open for the greatest colonial enterprise in history – Russia’s expansion eastwards into Asia.

The first phase of this was to carry Muscovy’s explorers, soldiers and traders 4,000 miles across the immensity of Siberia, with its mighty rivers, frozen wastes and impenetrable forests. Comparable in many ways to the early American settlers’ conquest of the West, it was to take more than a century and only end when the Russians had reached the Pacific seaboard and established themselves there permanently. But the conquest of Siberia, which is one of the great epics of human history, lies outside the scope of this narrative. This vast inhospitable region was too far away from anywhere for any other power, least of all the British in India, to feel threatened by it. Its colonisation, however, was only the first stage of a process of expansion which would not cease until Russia had become the largest country on earth, and, in British eyes at least, an ever-increasing threat to India.

The first of the Tsars to turn his gaze towards India was Peter the Great. Painfully conscious of his country’s extreme backwardness, and of its vulnerability to attack – largely the result of the ‘lost’ Mongol centuries – he determined not only to catch up, economically and socially, with the rest of Europe, but also to make his armed forces a match for those of any other power. But to do this he desperately needed vast sums of money, having emptied the treasury by going to war with Sweden and Turkey simultaneously. By a happy coincidence, at around this time, reports began to reach him from Central Asia that rich deposits of gold were to be found there on the banks of the River Oxus, a remote and hostile region where few Russians or other Europeans had ever set foot. Peter was also aware, from the accounts of Russian travellers, that beyond the deserts and mountains of Central Asia lay India, a land of legendary riches. These, he knew, were already being carried away by sea on a massive scale by his European rivals, and by the British in particular. His fertile brain now conceived a plan for getting his hands on both the gold of Central Asia and his share of India’s treasures.

Some years before, Peter had been approached by the Khan of Khiva, a Muslim potentate whose desert kingdom lay astride the River Oxus, seeking his assistance in suppressing the unruly tribes of the region. In exchange for Russian protection, the Khan had offered to become his vassal. Having little or no interest in Central Asia at that time, and more than enough on his hands at home and in Europe, Peter had forgotten all about the offer. It now occurred to him that possession of Khiva, which lay midway between his own frontiers and those of India, would provide him with the staging point he needed in the region. From here his geologists could search for gold, while it would also serve as a half-way house for the Russian caravans which he soon hoped to see returning from India laden with exotic luxuries for both the domestic and European markets. By exploiting the direct overland route, he could seriously damage the existing sea trade which took anything up to a year to travel between India and home. A friendly Khan, moreover, might even provide armed escorts for the caravans, thus saving him the enormous expense of employing Russian troops.

Peter decided to send a heavily armed expedition to Khiva to take up, somewhat belatedly, the Khan’s offer. In return, the ruler would be provided with a permanent Russian guard for his own protection, while his family would be guaranteed hereditary possession of the throne. Should he prove to have changed his mind, or be short-sighted enough to resist the expedition, then the accompanying artillery could knock sense into him by reducing the medieval mud architecture of Khiva to dust. Once in possession of Khiva, preferably on an amicable basis, then the search for the Oxus gold, and for a caravan route to India, would begin. Chosen to lead this important expedition was a Muslim prince from the Caucasus, a convert to Christianity and now a regular officer in the elite Life Guards regiment, Prince Alexander Bekovich. Because of his background Bekovich was judged by Peter to be the ideal man to deal with a fellow oriental. His party consisted of 4,000 men, including infantry, cavalry, artillery and a number of Russian merchants, and was accompanied by 500 horses and camels.

Apart from hostile Turcoman tribesmen who roamed this desolate region, the principal obstacle facing Bekovich was a dangerous stretch of desert, more than 500 miles wide, lying between the eastern shore of the Caspian and Khiva. Not only would the expedition have to negotiate this, but eventually the heavily laden Russian caravans returning from India would also have to cross it. But here a friendly Turcoman chieftain came to their assistance. He told Peter that many years before, instead of flowing into the Aral Sea, the River Oxus used to discharge into the Caspian, and that it had been diverted by the local tribes to its present course by means of dams. If this was true, Peter reasoned, it would not be difficult for his engineers to destroy the dams and restore the river to its original course. Goods travelling between India and Russia, and vice versa, could then be conveyed for much of the way by boat, thus avoiding the hazardous desert crossing. The prospects for this began to look promising when a Russian reconnaissance party reported finding what appeared to be the old Oxus river bed in the desert not far from the Caspian shore.

After celebrating the Russian Easter, Bekovich and his party set sail from Astrakhan, at the northern end of the Caspian, in April 1717. Conveyed across the great inland sea by a flotilla of nearly a hundred small vessels, they carried with them enough provisions to last a year. But everything took much longer than had been expected, and it was not until mid-June that they entered the desert and headed eastward towards Khiva. Already they were beginning to suffer from the extreme heat and from thirst, and soon they were losing men through heat-stroke and other sickness. At the same time they had to fight off the attacks of marauding tribesmen determined to prevent their advance. But there could be no question of turning back now and risking the fury of the Tsar, and the party struggled stoically on towards distant Khiva. Finally, in the middle of August, after more than two months in the desert, they found themselves within a few days’ march of the capital.

Far from certain how they would be received, Bekovich sent couriers ahead bearing lavish gifts for the Khan, together with assurances that their mission was strictly a friendly one. Hopes of successfully accomplishing it looked promising when the Khan himself came out to welcome the Tsar’s emissary. After exchanging courtesies, and listening to the mission’s band together, Bekovich and the Khan rode on towards the town, the former’s somewhat depleted force following at a distance. As they approached the city gates, the Khan explained to Bekovich that it would not be possible to accommodate and feed so many men in Khiva. He proposed instead that the Russians should be split up into several groups so that they could be properly housed and entertained in villages just outside the capital.

Anxious not to offend the Khan, Bekovich agreed and told Major Frankenburg, his second-in-command, to divide the men into five parties and to send them to the quarters assigned to them by their hosts. Frankenburg objected, expressing his misgivings over allowing the force to be dispersed in this way. But he was overruled by Bekovich, who insisted that his order be obeyed. When Frankenburg continued to argue with him, Bekovich warned him that he would have him court-martialled when they got back if he did not do as he was told. The troops were then led away in small groups by their hosts. It was just what the Khivans had been waiting for.

Everywhere they fell upon the unsuspecting Russians. Among the first to die was Bekovich himself. He was seized, stripped of his uniform, and while the Khan looked on, brutally hacked to death. Finally his head was severed, stuffed with straw, and displayed, together with those of Frankenburg and the other senior officers, to the jubilant mob. Meanwhile the Russian troops, separated from their officers, were being systematically slaughtered. Forty or so of the Russians managed to escape the bloodbath, but when it was over the Khan ordered them to be lined up in the main square for execution before the entire town. Their lives were saved, however, by the intervention of one man. He was Khiva’s
akhund,
or spiritual leader, who reminded the Khan that his victory had been won through treachery, and warned him that butchering the prisoners would merely worsen the crime in the eyes of God.

It was the act of a very brave man, but the Khan was impressed. The Russians were spared. Some were sold by their captors into slavery, while the remainder were allowed to make their painful way back across the desert towards the Caspian. Those who survived the journey broke the dreadful tidings to their colleagues manning the two small wooden forts which they had built there before setting out for Khiva. From there the news was carried back to Peter the Great at his newly finished capital of St Petersburg. In Khiva, meanwhile, to boast of his triumph over the Russians, the Khan dispatched the head of Bekovich, the Muslim prince who had sold his soul to the infidel Tsar, to his Central Asian neighbour, the Emir of Bokhara, while keeping the rest of him on display in Khiva. But the gruesome trophy was hastily returned, its nervous recipient declaring that he had no wish to be a party to such perfidy. More likely, one suspects, he feared bringing down the wrath of the Russians on his own head.

The Khan of Khiva was luckier than he probably realised, having little concept of the size and military might of his northern neighbour. For no retribution was to follow. Khiva was too far away, and Peter too busy advancing his frontiers elsewhere, notably in the Caucasus, to send a punitive expedition to avenge Bekovich and his men. That would have to wait until his hands were freer. In fact, many years would pass before the Russians once more attempted to absorb Khiva into their domains. But if the Khan’s treachery went unpunished, it was certainly not forgotten, merely confirming Russian distrust of orientals. It was to ensure that little quarter would be given when they embarked on their subjection of the Muslim tribes of Central Asia and the Caucasus, and in our own times of the
mujahedin
of Afghanistan (although this was to prove rather less successful).