Let Our Fame Be Great (43 page)

Aminat seems shortly after this to have incited one of the princesses to ‘accidentally' bump into Hajio, a man who was rather enamoured of the princess. If an unbeliever touched him, he would have to wash himself ritually seven times, a fact that the princess then found out about and exploited mercilessly with regular accidental contacts. ‘At last Hadjio avoided the young princess as if she had been fire, and went in a cautious and circuitous manner round every point where she was likely to make her appearance. He was moreover in a constant state of trepidation as long as he was in the same room with her, and was particularly amusing whenever she gave the least sign of approaching him.'

With diversions like this, time passed, although the princesses, their children and their servants remained desperately uncomfortable in a small room measuring just twenty-six shoe-lengths by twelve shoe-lengths. The major enemy was boredom, particularly when Shamil went away campaigning and they became targets for Zeidat's spitefulness. The senior wife appeared to derive pleasure from tormenting the women, and took the opportunity of her husband not being present to serve them scarcely edible food, and to dangle the prospect of death over them.

Shuanat, mindful of her Christian background as an Armenian's daughter and the possibility of rumours about her loyalty starting behind her back, was kind to them but had to be careful to visit them only rarely.

Only Aminat remained friendly and during the winter was their
only visitor. One evening, the princesses sat on their balcony enjoying the moonlight and the fresh air, and the young wife came to see them. They all sat and looked out on the view, when Shamil appeared wearing a white coat and walked to Aminat's chamber. It was clear that he wanted to see his wife, but his wife – it transpired – did not want to see him, since she dived under the princesses' bench and hid there.

Shamil knocked, but there was no answer. So he waited, and waited, and waited, and still his wife did not come. ‘Thus, for a considerable time, the illustrious saint, the powerful Iman of Chechni and Daghestan, waited freezing in the cold, like an ardent and not particularly saintlike young man, for the sake of a love-meeting with a girl of seventeen. At last the severity of the night, and the evident inutility of waiting any longer, made him return to his own apartments. '

While this peculiar family story unfolded, letters had been to taken to St Petersburg, requesting that the imam's son be released. The tsar agreed, as did the unfortunate Jamal-Edin, who now faced the prospect of setting up home in mountains he had not seen since he was a child. Shamil demanded 40,000 silver roubles in ransom as well, and the prince was forced to mortgage his land and seek loans from elsewhere to redeem his family.

The outcome of the talks was probably never in doubt, although Zeidat kept the princesses in a state of panic by occasionally saying they would be sent as wives to Shamil's lieutenants if the ransom was not larger than previously agreed. The distractions aside, however, the handover was finally set for mid-March 1855, on the Michik river not far from the town of Khasavyurt.

The two wives the captives had befriended were heartbroken to see them go. ‘Now you are going away you will forget us,' said Shuanat in a melancholy tone. ‘When you get home, you will live as you did before; but I – We had become fond of you; your presence here occupied and interested us; and we were quite accustomed to you.'

Aminat could not speak for sadness, but Zeidat – true to form – saw the opportunity and stole their samovar.

The handover is probably a unique occasion in the entire Caucasus
war, when we have four separate accounts of one event, as well as the official Russian documents. It was a fascinating display, the highlanders and the Russians lined up opposite each other in force, with hostilities postponed for the day.

Madame Drancey, the governess, wrote of her joy in seeing the Russian troops lined up to receive the freed hostages, their ranks shining in the sun of a glorious spring day. When the Russians arrived, there were already some highlander units waiting for them, and these too made an impression on their foes. Jamal-Edin, the son whom Shamil had not seen for a decade and a half, was ready for the exchange.

A group of Russian soldiers escorted Jamal-Edin and the carts full of money to the place of exchange. His half-brother Gazi-Muhammad and an equivalent number of highlanders were already waiting to receive them, and to escort the princesses back to the Russian lines.

‘All the poetical ideas which had been formed in Europe about Schamyl and his followers, the fallacy of which three years sojourn here has sufficiently proved to me, seemed at this moment to be more than justified. At the head of the troops rode Khasi-Mahoma, a young man of good though slender figure, but a pale expressionless face. His entirely white appearance – he was mounted on a beautiful white horse, wore a white tunic, and a white fur cap – gave me a very disagreeable impression of him, which was much strengthened by his pompous and affected manner,' wrote a Prussian serving as an officer in the Russian army and part of Jamal-Edin's escort.

‘Behind him in two ranks appeared his 32 followers, all Murids, splendidly mounted, equipped and armed. There was a grace in their proud and military bearing which was enhanced by a dash of half-savage wildness. They carried their long guns cocked, and rested on their right thigh. Their stern dark faces and wiry forms, the richness of their arms, glittering with gold and silver, the beauty of their fiery little horses, combined with the background of the surrounding landscape, offered a coup d'oeil, the like of which I never remember to have witnessed.'

As Prince Chavchavadze rode forward, he heard one of his daughters call out: ‘Look, mama! There is papa on a white horse!' It was
then that he knew his family had finally been freed. Gazi-Muhammad sought to reassure him that the women had been well treated.

‘The Imam gave me orders, prince, to inform you that he took as much care of your family as if it had been his own; and that if the captives suffered any discomfort with us it did not arise from any intention on our part to annoy them, but from our ignorance how to behave towards such women and from our want of means,' the young man said.

Jamal-Edin, still dressed in Russian uniform, embraced his brother, and the two sides separated once more. As the highlander party returned to the river, the excitement bubbled ever higher. Individuals dashed forward from the ranks to kiss the hands of Shamil's eldest son, freed from the clasp of the non-believers, then joyously joined the escort which swelled to hundreds of people.

‘I have seldom seen, collected in one place, a body of more fine and more powerful men and horses,' wrote the Prussian officer, who accompanied Jamal-Edin on this last journey too.

But before the young man could be presented to the father who had waited for him now for sixteen years, he had to change into the clothing of his people, and to discard the uniform of his captors which he had worn for so long. Hajio walked forward and handed a bundle of clothing to him, upon which he was surrounded by his companions to screen him from sight. He changed, and emerged as a magnificent prince of the mountains, in tunic, fur hat and silver-gilt weapons.

He rode to his father, and dismounted, and Shamil took him in his arms, tears pouring down his face. The imam had won a great victory, and his son was restored to him. But, even now, he did not exult or show any crude emotion. He turned to his son's escort of Russian officers and thanked them for their kindness.

‘I had, I know not why, formed to myself quite another idea of Schamyl,' the Prussian officer wrote, ‘and his dignified exterior, his noble features, his graceful and distinguished, though somewhat shy deportment, surprised me in the highest degree, and made a deep impression on me. That such a man should be able to inspire a sentiment of enthusiastic devotion I can well understand.'

A hundred of the murids escorted the Russians back to their lines, and Jamal-Edin was led before his father's troops. ‘They rejoiced in God's blessing and glory. They fired their weapons to show happiness and anger at [their] enemies. As for the imam, he sat under a tree – crying, humbling himself before God, thanking Him, and saying, “Praise God and exalt Him”,' one of Shamil's closest allies later wrote.

The silver was handed out among those who had conducted the raid, with a fifth reserved for the imam. Shamil's army was rich. The troops could turn and go home, thinking themselves fit to take on the world. They had seized the imam's lost son from the coils of the Russian state. What could stop them now?

But, perhaps even then, Shamil may have seen the dangers that awaited him. The very same day he won back his beloved son, the tsar who had fought him all his adult life was being buried. The hide-bound, reactionary, unimaginative Nikolai was dead. His energetic son Alexander, the second tsar to bear that name, would be a far more deadly foe.

And yet, at that moment, the war was in the past and the future, and Imam Shamil could just revel in having his son back for a while.

Apollon Ivanovich Runovsky was an ordinary officer in the Russian army in the Caucasus. Born in 1823, he had not completed his science training when he was sent off as a cadet – the most junior of officer grades – to Dagestan in 1840. He served in the Caucasus for the next two decades, and was shot in the leg while fighting Shamil's forces; the bullet stayed there for the rest of his days.

He became an ensign in 1846, and an aide-de-camp a year later. By 1852, he had spent a year fighting the Circassians and become a lieutenant. After two more years had passed, he perhaps sensed that his talents lay more in administration than in battle and he asked to be named supervisor of the military hospital in Grozny. All in all, it was an undistinguished career, its chief point of interest being a minor blemish in 1857, when he was briefly dismissed for exploiting lower ranks in his own service.

But then, in 1859, everything changed for the 36-year-old, when his career was yanked spectacularly off course.

Shamil had been defeated.

When the end came, it came very quickly. Shamil might have seemed at the peak of his powers when he raided Georgia, carried off the two princesses and regained his son, but, in truth, that had been his last moment of triumph, and the delight of reuniting his family had held within it a tragedy more bitter even than the initial loss.

Jamal-Edin, the prince who had been welcomed back by the rapturous highlanders, had spent too long among the Russians. He was not ready for the harsh life of the mountains. Deprived of the Russian food he had grown accustomed to, praying five times a day, and subjected to the harsh discipline of his father, the handsome young man sickened and started to fade.

In February 1858, a messenger galloped into Khasavyurt, desperate to see the military commander. He came from Shamil, and begged
that medicine be provided for Jamal-Edin, who was dying. It was clear to the doctor that the symptoms were those of tuberculosis. Medicines were given, and the messenger galloped away again. The Russian officers wondered if the medicines would arrive in time to save the young man, though in truth there was little that a nineteenth-century doctor could have done anyway.

What hopes they entertained must have all but vanished three months later, when the messenger returned and this time he wanted to take a doctor with him. The doctor agreed, and endured a relentless weeklong journey into the hills, his guides changing daily but never willing to talk to him or tell him how much further he must travel.

Arriving at last, he looked at his patient and realized there was nothing he could do. He stayed for three days, but Jamal-Edin was dying. His face drawn, his body emaciated, he died alone and uncomplaining, as he had lived those sorry last three years of his life.

Two months before his death, he had been taken to the village of Karata, where his brother Gazi-Muhammad ruled in the imam's name. Perhaps Shamil thought the climate there would be more suitable for a consumptive person, or perhaps he thought that the brother's care would be more amenable than the fierce regulation of his life elsewhere.

Jamal-Edin had loved reading, but he feared punishment from his father, and had hidden away his books – written in the proscribed Russian language – for as long as he could. Many of his 300 volumes had been obtained in exchange for freeing a Georgian prisoner of war given to him as a slave by Shamil. That fact alone must have shown Shamil that his son's heart was not in the fight.

His death was drawn-out and painful. Jamal-Edin – understanding that he had tuberculosis, and knowing enough about the disease to know it was incurable – predicted each stage of his decline. He was desperate to avoid rumours springing up around his untimely death. But the highlanders did not believe him, and the story told by the villagers was that he had been given a slow-acting poison when in Russian hands.

He tried repeatedly to persuade those nearest to him that the story was not true, that he was dying of a slow and fatal condition, since he
felt a great debt of obligation to his former captors. He struggled to persuade his brothers that the Russians were not bad people and, they said, he died happy, believing he had convinced them. Perhaps indeed he had.

His death could have been an omen for Shamil that the end was near. The triumph of regaining his son had turned sour for the imam. This time there would be no miraculous escape, there would be no clambering down precipices, and no death-defying leaps over ranks of bayonets. The Russians were coming to finish the job.

For the Russians, humiliated in the Crimean War and energized by their new Tsar Alexander II, had re-adopted the plans laid out by Velyaminov forty years before. They would treat the Caucasus as a fortress, and its inhabitants as a garrison.