The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (15 page)

They put into Baku on Christmas Eve. There Muraviev learned that General Yermolov was at Derbent, further up the coast, and he immediately set off to report his safe return to his superior. The general sent orders for the Khivan envoys to be brought to Tiflis where he would receive them. Meanwhile Muraviev sat down to prepare a full report on his mission, and his own recommendations over what action could be taken to free the Tsar’s subjects from bondage. It covered everything from the strength of the Khan’s armed forces, the weaknesses of his defences, the size of his arsenals and the best approach routes for an advancing army, to the economy, the system of government, crime, punishment, torture and methods of execution (impalement being a favourite). Muraviev also described the Khan’s ‘monstrous cruelty’ and his penchant for devising new methods of torture and punishment. Those caught drinking alcohol or smoking, which were forbidden after he himself had decided to give them up, had their mouths slit open to the ears. The permanent grin which resulted was intended as a macabre warning to others.

Muraviev argued passionately for the early conquest of Khiva. Not only would this free the Russian slaves from their bonds, but it would also bring to an end the tyranny under which most of the Khan’s subjects were forced to live. Furthermore, possession of Khiva would enable Russia to break the British monopoly of India’s priceless trade. For with Khiva in its hands ‘the whole trade of Asia, including that of India’ could be re-routed via there to the Caspian, and thence up the Volga to Russia and the European markets – an altogether shorter and cheaper route than via the Cape. This would seriously undermine, and eventually destroy, British rule in India, while providing badly needed new markets there and in Central Asia for Russian goods.

The conquest of Khiva, moreover, would not be difficult or costly, Muraviev argued. He believed that it could be achieved by a determined commander with as few as ‘three thousand brave soldiers’. An invading force would discover very quickly that it had valuable allies awaiting it. For a start there were the warlike Turcoman tribes living in the deserts through which it must pass to reach Khiva. Muraviev could vouch from his own experience of them that they went in as much fear of the Khan as his own subjects did, and would rally eagerly to anyone coming to overthrow him. Inside the capital the invader would enjoy the desperate support of a large fifth column. In addition to the 3,000 Russian slaves, many of whom had once been soldiers, there were 30,000 Persians and Kurds held in bondage by the Khivans. All were men with everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Despite all the perils that the young Muraviev had faced to gather intelligence for his chiefs, his grandiose plan for the annexation of Khiva and the release of the Russian and other slaves was to go unheeded. The moment had passed, for the once-great Yermolov had begun the slow slide from grace which would end with his replacement as Military Governor of the Caucasus. Moreover, Tsar Alexander himself had more urgent problems to contend with at home where his own position was threatened by disaffection. Nonetheless, Muraviev was at least able to keep his promise to the hapless Russians he had left behind in Khiva. Summoned by the Tsar to St Petersburg to be commended on his daring, he briefed the Emperor personally on the plight of his subjects there. Even if Muraviev was unable to do anything to hasten their freedom, his revelations were to provide the Russians with an excellent excuse for their subsequent expansion into Muslim Central Asia. Thus his journey was destined to mark the beginning of the end of the independent khanates of Central Asia.

One man who foresaw this only too clearly was an official of the East India Company named William Moorcroft, who had spent several years travelling in the extreme north of India on the fringes of Turkestan. From remote camps on the upper Indus, where no European had ever set foot before, he was urging his superiors in Calcutta to pursue a forward policy in Central Asia and thus pre-empt Russian moves there. Not only, he repeatedly warned them, would the Russians seize the whole of Turkestan and Afghanistan, with their vast untapped markets, but very likely British India too. But whereas Muraviev, the first Russian player in the Great Game, was to be rewarded by his country, ending his career as Commander-in-Chief in the Caucasus, Moorcroft would be disowned by his chiefs, and finish up in a lonely, unmarked grave beside the Oxus.

·7·
A Strange Tale of Two Dogs

North of the Himalayan passes, on the storm-swept Tibetan plateau, stands the sacred mountain of Kailas. Wreathed in mystery, superstition and perpetual snow, the 22,000-foot peak is believed by both Buddhists and Hindus to lie at the very centre of existence. For as long as anyone can remember, devotees of both faiths have risked their lives to reach this remote mountain, one circuit of which is said to wash away the sins of a lifetime. To the faithful the bleak landscape around Kailas abounds in religious associations, including, some say, the footprints of the Buddha himself. There are holy lakes to bathe in, the tombs of saints to visit, sacred caves in which to meditate and pray, and monasteries where the exhausted traveller may rest.

The pilgrims come from as far away as Mongolia and Nepal, India and Ceylon, China and Japan, as well as from Tibet itself. Over the years many have perished in the icy passes, the victims of frost-bite or starvation, avalanches or bandits. However, it has taken more than the fear of death to deter men from making the hazardous journey through the mountains to Kailas. Even today they come, with their prayer-wheels and amulets, some carrying heavy rocks on their arduous circuit of the holy mountain as an act of extreme penance. But nowadays the ragged pilgrims have to share this sacred terrain with jeep-loads of Western tourists who have added it to their list of exotic destinations.

Until quite recently the Kailas region was one of the least accessible places on earth. Only a handful of Europeans had ever set foot there, the first being two Jesuit priests who passed through it in 1715, describing the mountain as ‘horrible, barren, steep and bitterly cold’, before hastening on to Lhasa. A further century was to pass before the next European set eyes on it, this time a British veterinary surgeon travelling the far north of India and beyond in search of horses for the East India Company’s cavalry, and combining this with a bit of unofficial exploration. His name was William Moorcroft, and he had come to India in 1808 at the Company’s invitation to be superintendent of its stud. He soon became convinced that somewhere to the north, in the wilds of Central Asia or Tibet, there was to be found a breed of horse of great speed and stamina which could be used to revitalise the Company’s bloodstock. It was in the course of the second of three long journeys he made in search of these horses – this one to the Kailas region of Tibet – that something happened which gave birth to an obsession that haunted him for the rest of his life.

It occurred in the house of a Tibetan official. There, to the Englishman’s astonishment, he was greeted by two strange dogs which he knew at once to be of European origin. One was a terrier and the other a pug, both of them breeds unheard of in Central Asia. But where had they come from? Very soon Moorcroft guessed the answer. Clearly recognising him as a European, the two dogs jumped all over him, licking him and barking excitedly. Then, after begging, the creatures put on a passable imitation of military drill. To Moorcroft this meant only one thing. The two dogs had once belonged to soldiers. The villagers told him that they had acquired them from Russian traders, but Moorcroft was persuaded otherwise. Either way, however, it demonstrated that the Russians had already been there. From then until his death in 1825, Moorcroft was to deluge his superiors in Calcutta with impassioned warnings about Russian intentions in Central Asia.

St Petersburg, he was convinced, was out to seize the great untapped markets of Central Asia. The East India Company, he wrote, must decide whether the natives of Turkestan and Tibet ‘shall be clothed with the broadcloth of Russia or of England’, and whether they should purchase their ‘implements of iron and steel from St Petersburg or from Birmingham.’ More than that, he believed that the Russians were intent on conquest. First it would be the khanates of Central Asia, and then India itself. In one letter to his superiors he explained how a handful of British officers commanding native irregulars might halt an entire Russian army advancing southwards through the passes by rolling huge boulders down on it from the heights above.

But these were early days yet. In both Britain and India the Russophobes were still very much in a minority, enjoying little or no support from either the government or the Company. Indeed, although they shared similar views, it is unlikely that Sir Robert Wilson, the father of Russophobia, and Moorcroft had ever heard of one another, let alone corresponded. Meanwhile, the Company’s directors remained far from convinced that St Petersburg, officially still Britain’s ally, harboured any ill intentions towards India. Their own first priority was the consolidation and protection of the territories they had already acquired, which was proving costly enough, rather than winning new ones in the Himalayas and beyond, as Moorcroft was urging them to do. His warnings were thus dismissed by his superiors as resulting from excessive zeal rather than from sound judgement. They were simply filed away in the Company’s archives, ignored and unread, and were not destined to see the light again until after his death.

It had long been the dream of Moorcroft, in his quest for horses, to visit the great caravan city of Bokhara, the capital of the richest of the Central Asian khanates. For in the markets there, he was convinced, he would find the horses he needed for the Company’s stud, which so far had eluded him. These were the legendary Turcoman steeds, of whose speed, stamina and manoeuvrability he had heard so much in the bazaars of northern India. In the spring of 1819 his persistence was rewarded, and finance and approval were granted for the 2,000-mile expedition, which was to be his third and last. But, like the Russian traveller Muraviev on his mission to Khiva, Moorcroft was given no official status, so that he could be disowned if he got into difficulties, or if his visit to a city so far beyond India’s frontiers were to lead to protests from St Petersburg.

To purchase horses was only one of Moorcroft’s objectives. He also planned to open up the markets of the far north to British goods, and so pre-empt the Russians whom he believed to have similar aims. So it was that on 16 March, 1820, he and his party crossed out of Company-held territory followed by a large and slow-moving caravan laden with the finest British exports, ranging from porcelain to pistols, cutlery to cotton, and deliberately chosen to outshine the greatly inferior Russian goods. Apart from the many pony men and servants, Moor-croft’s companions for this long-distance raid across the Oxus were a young Englishman named George Trebeck, and an Anglo-Indian, George Guthrie. Both men would prove not only capable and reliable, but also steadfast friends when things became difficult. Though none of them could have foreseen it, due to long and frequent delays their journey into the unknown was to take them no less than six years to complete, and then it would end in tragedy.

The most direct route to Bokhara, Moorcroft knew from his earlier travels in the north, lay through Afghanistan. Unfortunately a bitter civil war was raging there which, despite their small Gurkha escort, would expose the expedition to the gravest danger, especially when word got around that their camels were weighed down with valuables intended for the markets of Turkestan. Moorcroft decided therefore to try to bypass Afghanistan, and approach Bokhara from the east, from Kashgar in Chinese Turkestan. This was most easily reached across the Karakoram passes from Leh, the capital of Ladakh. By approaching Bokhara this way, moreover, Moorcroft also hoped to open up the markets of Chinese Turkestan to British goods. In September 1820, after innumerable delays in the Punjab, and more than a year on the road, Moorcroft and his companions finally arrived in Leh, the first Englishmen ever to set foot there. They at once set about trying to establish contact with the Chinese authorities in Yarkand, on the far side of the Karakorams, seeking leave to enter their domains. But it was not to be that easy, as Moorcroft soon discovered.