The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (18 page)

Mystery will always surround the fate of Moorcroft, as well as that of his companions. Officially he died of fever on or about August 27, 1825. He was nearly 60, by Indian standards an old man, and had been complaining of ill-health for some months. His body, too decomposed to indicate the cause of death, was brought back not long afterwards to Balkh by his men and buried there by his companions. Within a short time Guthrie too was dead, followed not long afterwards by Trebeck, both deaths apparently due to natural causes. Meanwhile the expedition’s interpreter, long in Moorcroft’s service, had also died. It seemed too much of a coincidence, and soon rumours began to circulate in India that they had been murdered, probably poisoned, by Russian agents. Another version, rather less sensational, was that they had been killed for their possessions. In the view of his biographer, Dr Alder, Moorcroft almost certainly did die from some kind of fever, his will to live perhaps finally broken by the discovery that there were no horses of the type he sought at the village on which he had pinned his last hopes.

But there is one last twist to the story. More than twenty years after his supposed death, two French missionary explorers who reached Lhasa, 1,500 miles away to the east, were told a curious tale before being expelled by the Tibetans. An Englishman named Moorcroft, pretending to be a Kashmiri, had lived there for twelve years, they were assured. It was only after his death, while on his way to Ladakh, that the truth had come to light. For in his home were discovered maps and plans of the forbidden city which this mysterious stranger had apparently been preparing. Neither of the two French priests had ever heard of Moorcroft before, but they reported that a Kashmiri who claimed to have been his servant had corroborated the Tibetans’ story. When first published in 1852, in an English-language account of their travels, this extraordinary revelation was to cause a minor sensation in Britain. For it raised the question of whether it really was Moorcroft’s decomposing body which his companions had buried at Balkh, or that of someone else.

Moorcroft’s biographer, while not totally ruling out the possibility that he could have faked his own death rather than return home to face his critics and official censure, nevertheless believes this to be highly unlikely, ‘the great weight of evidence and probability’ being against it. Only temporary insanity, Dr Alder concludes, ‘perhaps under the influence of high fever, could account for actions so utterly inconsistent with Moor-croft’s character, his record and everything he stood for’. One possible explanation which has been suggested for the Frenchmen’s story is that when Moorcroft’s caravan broke up after his own and his companions’ deaths, one of his Kashmiri servants may have found his way to Lhasa with maps and papers belonging to him. When the servant subsequently died on his way home to Kashmir, these – bearing Moorcroft’s name – might well have been found in his house. The unsophisticated Tibetans, ever suspicious of outsiders’ intentions, would have assumed the maps to be of their country, and the dead servant to be the Englishman whose name they bore, who evidently had been spying on them all those years.

However, if Moorcroft was written off by his superiors during his lifetime, only death saving him from the humiliation of official censure, then he was to be more than compensated for this afterwards. Today he is honoured by geographers for his immense contribution to the exploration of the region during his endless quest for horses, and regarded by many as the father of Himalayan discovery. No one cares about his failure to find those horses, or to open up Bokhara to British merchandise, even if these meant so much to Moorcroft himself. But it is in the realm of geopolitics that his real vindication, so far as we are concerned, lies. For it was not so long after his death that his repeated but unheeded warnings about Russian ambitions in Central Asia began to come true. These, together with his remarkable travels through Great Game country, were soon to make him the idol of the young British officers who were destined to follow in his footsteps.

Perhaps Moorcroft’s final vindication lies in the location of his lonely grave, last seen in 1832 by Alexander Burnes, a fellow countryman and player of the game, who was also on his way northwards to Bokhara. With some difficulty he found it by moonlight, unmarked and half covered by a mud wall, outside the town of Balkh. For his wearied companions, as infidels, had not been allowed to bury him within its limits. Moorcroft thus lies not far from the spot where, more than a century and a half later, Soviet troops and armour poured southwards across the River Oxus into Afghanistan. He could have asked for no finer epitaph.

·9·
The Barometer Falls

The truce in the Caucasus between Russia and Persia, which had halted the Cossacks’ advance and turned St Petersburg’s covetous gaze towards Central Asia, was not to last long. Both Tsar and Shah had looked upon the Treaty of Gulistan, which the British had negotiated between them in 1813, as no more than a temporary expedient which would allow them to strengthen their forces prior to the next round. It was the Shah’s aim to win back his lost territories, ceded under the treaty to the Russian victors, while St Petersburg intended, when the moment was right, to extend and consolidate its southern frontier with Persia. Within a year of Moorcroft’s death the two neighbours were at war again, to the dismay of the British who had no wish to see Persia overrun by the Russians.

The immediate cause of hostilities this time was a dispute over the wording of the treaty, which failed to make it clear to whom one particular region, lying between Erivan and Lake Sevan, belonged. Talks were held between General Yermolov, the Russian Governor-General of the Caucasus, and Abbas Mirza, the Persian Crown Prince, to try to resolve this. But these broke down, and in November 1825 Yermolov’s troops occupied the disputed territory. The Persians demanded their withdrawal, but Yermolov refused. The Shah was incensed, as were his subjects, and recruits for a holy war against the infidel Russians flocked to Abbas Mirza’s standard from all parts of the country.

The Persians were aware that the Russians were not yet ready for a war. Not only was St Petersburg embroiled on the side of the Greeks in their struggle for independence against the Turks, but at home, especially within the army, it was facing serious disorders following the sudden death of Tsar Alexander in December 1825. Encouraged by his own recent success against the Turks, Abbas Mirza decided to strike the Russians while they were off their guard. Suddenly and without warning a 30,000-strong Persian force crossed the Russian frontier, carrying all before it. An entire Russian regiment was captured, as were a number of key towns once belonging to the Shah, while Persian irregulars carried out raids right up to the very gates of Tiflis, Yermolov’s Caucasian headquarters. The triumphant Persians also managed to recover the great fortress of Lenkoran, on the Caspian shore.

For the first time in his long and brilliant career, Yermolov, known as the ‘Lion of the Caucasus’, had been taken by surprise. Mortified, St Petersburg accused London of inciting the Persians to attack, for it was no secret that there were British officers serving with Abbas Mirza’s force as advisers, and some even directing his artillery. The new Tsar, Nicholas I, immediately decided to relieve Yermolov of his command, and replace him with one of Russia’s most brilliant young generals, Count Paskievich. But if the ageing ‘Lion’ had lost the confidence of his superiors, he still retained the respect and affection of his troops, who blamed St Petersburg for the debacle. When he drove away from Tiflis, in a carriage he had to pay for himself, many of his men wept openly.

With the help of reinforcements, Paskievich now turned the tide against the invaders. Before long Abbas Mirza suffered a succession of defeats, which culminated in the capture of Erivan, today capital of Soviet Armenia. To commemorate his victory, Nicholas appointed Paskievich ‘Count of Erivan’, a move calculated to enrage the Persians. In return, Paskievich presented Nicholas with a sword said to have been that of Tamerlane himself, which had been taken from a Persian general. The Shah now called urgently on his ally Britain for help under their recently signed defence pact. This caused considerable embarrassment in London. Militarily speaking, Britain was in no position to help, having no troops within reach of the Caucasus. Moreover, she was extremely unwilling to tangle with Russia, still officially her ally.

The original purpose of the pact between London and Teheran had, so far as the British were concerned, been the protection of India from attack by an invader marching across Persia. Despite the warnings of Wilson and others, there seemed to be little immediate risk of this happening. Fortunately for the British, the pact contained an escape clause. Under this they were only obliged to go to the Shah’s assistance if he were attacked, and not if he were the aggressor. And legally speaking, despite much provocation and humiliation, he was the aggressor, for it was his troops which had crossed the Russian frontier, whose demarcation he had agreed to under the Treaty of Gulistan. Thus was Britain able to wriggle off the hook, for the second time in twenty-two years. But it was to do considerable harm to her reputation, not merely among the Persians, but throughout the East. For it was immediately assumed that the British were too frightened of the Russians to come to the help of their friends. Rather more worrying, the Russians were beginning to believe this too.

Without the help they had expected from their British allies, the Persians had no choice but to sue once again for peace. Luckily for them, however, the Russians were at that moment at war with the Turks, or the surrender terms agreed in 1828 at Turkmanchi might have been harsher than they were. As it was, Tsar Nicholas added the rich provinces of Erivan and Nakitchevan permanently to his empire. The Persians, for their part, had learned a bitter lesson about great power politics, not to mention the deviousness of the British. For London, aware that the unfortunate Shah was desperate for funds, now persuaded him to waive any remaining liability on the part of Britain to come to his assistance if he was attacked, in exchange for a substantial sum of money. With that, British influence in Persia, hitherto paramount, evaporated, to be replaced by that of Russia. The Persians now found themselves a virtual protectorate of their giant northern neighbour, which had the right to station its consuls wherever it wished in the country, and whose merchants were entitled to special privileges.

In the winter of 1828 the new Russian ambassador to the Shah’s court, Alexander Griboyedov, arrived in Teheran where he was received with much formal politeness and official ceremony, despite the hostility felt towards him and his government. A distinguished literary figure with strong liberal leanings, and one-time political secretary to Yermolov, it was Griboyedov who had negotiated the humiliating terms of the Persian surrender. Now it was his task to see that these were fully carried out, including the payment by Persia of a crippling war indemnity. To the more fanatical religious elements, his presence in their midst served as a red rag. It was unfortunate, moreover, that he arrived in Teheran in January 1829 during the holy month of Muharram, when feelings run high and the faithful slash themselves with swords and pour glowing cinders on their heads. Hatred of the infidel Russians was thus at flashpoint. It was Griboyedov himself who provided the spark.

Under the terms of the peace treaty it had been agreed that Armenians living in Persia might, if they so wished, return to their homeland now that it had become part of the Russian Empire, and was therefore under Christian rule. Among those who sought to take advantage of this was a eunuch employed in the Shah’s own harem, and two young girls from that of his son-in-law. All three fled to the Russian legation where they were given sanctuary by Griboyedov while arrangements were being made for their journey home. When the Shah learned of this, he immediately asked Griboyedov to return all three of them. The Russian refused, arguing that only Count Nesselrode, the Tsar’s Foreign Minister, could make exceptions to the terms of the treaty, and that the Shah’s request would have to be referred to him. It was a brave decision, for it would have been only too easy to return them for the sake of better relations, but Griboyedov knew very well the fate which would befall the three were he to hand them over.