The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (60 page)

During Burnaby’s brief halt in Kazala, he heard that 10,000 more Russian troops were being moved from Siberia to Tashkent in preparation, it was rumoured, for a campaign against Yakub Beg in Kashgaria. On his way northwards to Orenburg he encountered the commander of one of these units travelling in a large sleigh with his family many miles ahead of his troops. He also heard that there had been serious trouble recently in some of the Cossack regiments, and that a number of the ringleaders were to be shot. On reaching London at the end of March 1876, he immediately set about the task of writing his book. He also found himself lionised, for everyone, including Queen Victoria herself, wished to hear of his adventures and listen to his views on the Russian menace. He was received by the Commander-in Chief, the Duke of Cambridge, who had been leaned on by the Cabinet to order him out of Central Asia. Afterwards, writing to the secretary of state for war, the Duke declared: ‘I saw Captain Burnaby yesterday, and a more interesting conversation I never remember holding with anybody. He is a remarkable fellow, singular-looking, but of great perseverance and determination. He has gone through a great deal, and the only surprise is how he got through it.’ He strongly recommended that the secretary of state should listen to what Burnaby had to say, and that the Foreign Office and India Office should do likewise.

Burnaby’s graphic, 487-page narrative of his adventures, which included lengthy appendices on Russian military capabilities and likely moves in Central Asia, appeared later that year under the title
A Ride to Khiva.
Its strongly anti-Russian flavour caught the mood of the moment, and it was to prove a bestseller, being reprinted eleven times in its first twelve months. While the Foreign Office deplored it, for it did little for Anglo-Russian relations, the hawks and the largely Russophobe press were delighted by its jingoistic tone. Flushed by the book’s success, and by a £2,500 advance on his next, Burnaby set his sights on Eastern Turkey, a wild and mountainous region where Tsar and Sultan shared an uneasy frontier. His aim was to try to discover what the Russians were up to in this little-known corner of the Great Game battlefield, and how capable the Turks were of holding out against a Russian thrust towards Constantinople from their Caucasian stronghold. For relations between the two powers were deteriorating rapidly in the wake of a serious quarrel over Turkey’s Balkan possessions. War appeared imminent, and likely to involve Britain.

The trouble began in the summer of 1875, with an uprising against Turkish rule in a remote village in Herzegovina, one of the Sultan’s Balkan provinces. From there it quickly spread to Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. Whether it was a genuinely spontaneous movement, or the result of Russian intrigue, is uncertain. In May 1876 the crisis deepened when Turkish irregular troops, known as
bashi-bazouks,
put 12,000 Bulgarian Christians to the sword in a frenzy of blood-letting. This massacre was to result in almost universal condemnation of the Turks, and to bring the likelihood of war between the Tsar, who claimed to be the protector of all Christians living under Ottoman rule, and the Sultan even closer. In Britain the Russophobes, Turcophiles almost to a man, tried hard to pin the blame on the Tsar, whom they accused of fomenting the trouble in the first place. Disraeli, the Prime Minister, dismissed first reports of the Bulgarian massacres as ‘coffee-house babble’. Gladstone, on the other hand, demanded that the Turks be cleared ‘bag and baggage’ out of the Balkans.

With the storm clouds gathering once more over the East, Burnaby set out from Constantinople in December 1876 to ride the length of Turkey. His arrival in the capital was not to go unnoticed by the astute Count Ignatiev, the Russian ambassador, and when he reached the important garrison town of Erzerum, in Eastern Turkey, a friendly official confided to him that the Russian consul there had received a telegram ordering him to keep a close watch on the British officer. ‘Two months ago,’ it declared, ‘a certain Captain Burnaby left Constantinople with the object of travelling in Asia Minor. He is a desperate enemy of Russia. We have lost all traces of him since his departure from Stamboul. We believe that the real object of his journey is to cross the frontier into Russia.’ The consul was ordered to discover the whereabouts of Burnaby, and at all costs prevent him from entering Russian territory. A portrait of Burnaby, he was also to discover, had been posted prominently at all Russian frontier posts. Having seen all he needed to of Turkey’s ill-preparedness against a sudden attack, Burnaby cut short his 1,000-mile ride and caught a steamer back along the Black Sea coast to Constantinople, from where he returned hurriedly by train to London to start work on his book before events overtook it. Entitled
On Horseback Through Asia Minor,
it was even more anti-Russian than his previous book. In April 1877, while he was still writing it, news reached London that the Russians had declared war on Turkey, and had begun their advance on Constantinople through the Balkans, while simultaneously marching into eastern Anatolia.

With the British bracing themselves once again for war over Constantinople, and anti-Russian feeling running at an all-time high, Burnaby’s new book was assured an eager readership, being reprinted in all seven times. Its author now set off for the Balkan front where, although ostensibly a neutral observer, he managed to obtain unofficial command of a Turkish brigade fighting against those recent travelling companions of his, the Cossacks. At this point, however, having achieved his self-appointed task of drumming up public opinion at home against the Russians and in favour of the Turks, Burnaby makes his exit from this narrative.

‘If the Russians reach Constantinople, the Queen would be so humiliated that she thinks she would abdicate at once.’ So wrote Queen Victoria herself to Disraeli, urging him to ‘be bold’. To the Prince of Wales she declared: ‘I don’t believe that without fighting . . . those detestable Russians . . . any arrangements will be lasting, or that we shall ever be friends! They will always hate us and we can never trust them.’ Her sympathies were shared by the masses, even if few of them had a very clear idea of where either Bulgaria or Herzegovina were, let alone any grasp of the issues involved. But their mood was well summed up in the words of a jingoistic song which was then doing the rounds of the music halls. It went like this:

‘We don’t want to fight,
But, by jingo, if we do,
We’ve got the men, we’ve got the ships,
We’ve got the money too.
We’ve fought the Bear before,
And while we’re Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.’

Against all expectations, the Russian advance towards the Ottoman capital was slow. For five months it was held up by the gallant and resolute defence by the Turks of their stronghold at Plevna in Bulgaria, which cost the invaders 35,000 lives and the Romanians, who had been persuaded to join them, a further 5,000. In the east, too, despite initial successes, the Russian Caucasian forces found themselves facing tougher opposition than St Petersburg had anticipated, as well as nationalist uprisings among the Muslim tribes behind their own lines. Finally, however, Turkish resistance crumbled, and in February 1878 the Russian armies stood at the gates of Constantinople, their age-old dream seemingly about to be realised, only to find the British Mediterranean fleet anchored in the Dardanelles. It was a blunt warning to the Russians to proceed no further. War now seemed certain.

Meanwhile, having foreseen such a possibility, in Turkestan General Kaufman had been assembling a 30,000-strong force, the largest ever to be deployed in Central Asia. The moment war broke out it was his intention to strike against India through Afghanistan. At the same time he sent a powerful military mission, led by Major-General Nikolai Stolietov, to Kabul to try to obtain Afghan co-operation against the British. Ideally Kabul would be the springboard for the attack, with the Khyber Pass as the principal point of entry. Ahead of the invasion force, which it was hoped would consist of both Russian and Afghan troops, would go secret agents to prepare the way. They would be well supplied with gold and other inducements. For Kaufman was convinced that the Indian masses were ripe for revolt, and that once it was known that a large Russo-Afghan force was on its way to liberate them, the powder-keg would ignite. Although not yet aware of what Kaufman was planning, to the British a joint Russian-Afghan thrust at India represented the ultimate nightmare.

In the event, confronted by the prospect of another war with Britain, and to the immense disappointment of the hawks on either side, Tsar Alexander backed down. With the Russian armies only two days’ march from Constantinople, a hasty truce was agreed between the Russians and the Turks. This gave Bulgaria independence from Ottoman rule and the Russians large tracts of eastern Anatolia. Immediately the British objected. They feared Bulgaria would merely become a satellite state of St Petersburg, giving the Russians a direct overland route to the Mediterranean. This, like their threatened occupation of Constantinople, would enable them to menace India’s lines of communication at will in time of war. Thus, despite the ending of hostilities between Russia and Turkey, the threat of war between Russia and Britain had not lessened. Not only had Austria-Hungary now allied itself with Britain over the issue of Bulgaria, but 7,000 British troops had been moved to Malta from India in an effort to induce the Tsar to withdraw his own forces from before Constantinople. In the end, however, the crisis was settled without recourse to war. In July 1878, at the Congress of Berlin, the contentious treaty was revised to the satisfaction of all the major powers except for Russia. The Tsar, under strong pressure, agreed to withdraw his troops in exchange for some limited gains from the Turks. The Sultan, on the other hand, had two-thirds of the lands he had lost in the war restored to him. For their parts, the British occupied Cyprus while the Austrians acquired Bosnia and Herzegovina. So it was that St Petersburg saw its costly victory wrenched from its grasp by the other major European powers, with the British playing a key role.

This setback was not to go wholly unavenged, however. Although Kaufman’s planned invasion of India was called off when the risk of war with Britain receded, he nonetheless allowed the mission to Kabul to proceed. This was partly due to pique, for Kaufman was aware of the anguish it would cause the British, and partly to explore the possibilities of a joint invasion in case it ever became necessary to revive the plan. Intelligence that the Russian mission was on its way to the Afghan capital reached India through native spies while the Congress of Berlin was still deliberating. The Emir, Sher Ali, was said to have tried to persuade the Russians to turn back, only to be told by Kaufman that it was too late to recall his men, and that he would be held personally responsible for their safety and for ensuring them a cordial reception. When challenged about the mission by the British, the Russian Foreign Ministry denied all knowledge of it, insisting that no such visit was being contemplated. Once again St Petersburg was vowing one thing while Tashkent was doing precisely the reverse.

Lord Lytton, the Viceroy, was by now well aware of the truth, and was incensed by Sher Ali’s apparent duplicity. Having repeatedly refused to receive a British mission to discuss relations between the two countries, the Emir was now secretly welcoming a Russian one. What the Viceroy did not fully appreciate was the degree of pressure being applied by the Russians on the Afghan ruler, who was already in a state of profound distress over the death of his favourite son. Kaufman had warned him that unless he agreed to a treaty of friendship with the Russians, they would actively support his nephew and rival for the throne, Abdur Rahman, then living under their protection in Samarkand. Fearing the might of Russia more than that of Britain, Sher Ali reluctantly yielded. Having accomplished his task, and leaving some of his subordinates to work out the details, General Stolietov left Kabul for Tashkent on August 24. Before departing he cautioned the Emir against receiving any British missions, at the same time promising him the support of 30,000 Russian troops if the need arose.

By now Lord Lytton, with London’s telegraphed approval, had decided to dispatch a mission to Kabul, using force if necessary. The officer chosen to lead it was General Sir Neville Chamberlain, an old frontier hand who was known to be on excellent personal terms with the Emir. He was to be accompanied by a senior political officer, Major Louis Cavagnari, and an escort of 250 troopers of the Corps of Guides – precisely the same number of men as had gone with General Stolietov. On August 14, the Viceroy wrote to the Emir announcing his intention of sending a mission to Kabul and asking for a safe conduct for it from the frontier. The letter remained unanswered. Chamberlain was now ordered to proceed to the entrance to the Khyber Pass. From there Major Cavagnari rode forward with a small escort to the nearest Afghan post and demanded leave to enter the country. However, he was informed by the officer commanding it that he had received orders to oppose the mission’s advance, by force of arms if necessary, and were Cavagnari not an old friend he would already have opened fire on him and his party for illegally crossing the frontier.