The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (58 page)

The airing of hawkish views in print was not this time confined to the British forward school. Warning of Britain’s ambitions in the East, one St Petersburg newspaper declared: ‘They will attempt to extend their influence to Kashgar, Persia and all the Central Asian states bordering on us, and then will pose a direct threat to our interests in Asia . . . We must watch them vigilantly and take swift measures to parry the blow being prepared for us by them.’ The words might easily have come from a London newspaper issuing a similar warning about Russian designs. Indeed, it was from the St Petersburg press that the British embassy there obtained much, if not all, of its intelligence about what was going on in Central Asia, albeit usually long after it had happened.

In 1876, the year after Rawlinson’s book appeared, an English translation of a Russian Great Game classic – Colonel M. A. Terentiev’s
Russia and England in the Struggle for the Markets of Central Asia
– was published in Calcutta in two volumes. Intensely Anglophobic, among many other things it accused the British of secretly distributing rifles among the Turcoman tribes for use against Russia. It also alleged that Sir John Lawrence, that staunch believer in masterly inactivity, had been sacked as Viceroy of India for not being sufficiently Russophobic. The Indian Mutiny, Terentiev maintained, had only failed because the Indians lacked a proper plan and outside support. They continued to suffer from British misrule and exploitation. ‘Sick to death,’ Terentiev went on, ‘the natives are now waiting for a physician from the north.’ Given such assistance, they had every chance of starting a conflagration which would spread throughout India, and thus enable them to throw off the British yoke. In the event of such an uprising, the Russian claimed, the British would find themselves unable to rely on the support of their native troops, who formed the major part of their army in India.

Turning to the question of a Russian invasion of India, Terentiev declared that if the two powers were to go to war ‘then we shall clearly be obliged to take advantage of the proximity of India to our present position in Central Asia’. He rated highly the chances of such an expedition succeeding in ending British rule in India, particularly in view of what he claimed to be the seething discontent of the native population. As for the many natural obstacles in the path of an invading army, he saw no insurmountable problems. If such an expedition had been judged feasible during the reign of Tsar Paul, more than seventy years earlier, then it should pose considerably fewer difficulties now that the intervening distance had been dramatically reduced. This latter argument said little for the colonel’s powers of reasoning, for it will be recalled that the invasion force sent against India by the half-mad Paul in 1801 was saved from almost certain annihilation only by its hasty recall on his assassination.

It need hardly be said that Terentiev’s views on the Great Game were precisely the reverse of those which Prince Gorchakov was trying to convey to the British government. Yet in Russia, where the printed word was so rigidly controlled by the censor, the colonel’s exposition must have enjoyed high-level approval for it to have been published. Very likely it was intended for internal consumption only, and not for British eyes. It serves nonetheless as yet another example of Russia’s twin-policy strategy. One, emanating from St Petersburg, was official and conciliatory. The other, unofficial and aggressive, was left to those on the spot, and could always be repudiated if necessary. Terentiev’s book clearly reflected the thinking of the Russian forward school. As such it was extremely valuable, for very little was known about what lay in the minds of the Russian military in Central Asia, let alone about what was going on in the Tsar’s new domains north of the Oxus. One British officer, who had read Terentiev’s work in the original Russian, was determined to discover more. And that could only be done by going there.

·28·
Captain Burnaby’s Ride to Khiva

Captain Frederick Gustavus Burnaby of the Royal Horse Guards was no ordinary officer. For a start he was a man of prodigious strength and stature. Standing six-foot-four in his stockinged feet, weighing fifteen stone, and possessing a forty-seven-inch chest, he was reputed to be the strongest man in the British Army. Indeed, it was even said that he could carry a small pony under his arm. Another Herculean feat of Burnaby’s was to grasp the tip of a billiard cue between his middle and index fingers, and hold it out horizontally, his arm fully extended and the butt end steady. Nor was this son of a country parson entirely brawn. He also displayed a remarkable gift for languages, being fluent in at least seven, including Russian, Turkish and Arabic. Finally he was born with an insatiable appetite for adventure which he combined with a vigorous and colourful prose style. Inevitably these two latter qualities brought him into contact with Fleet Street, with the result that during his generous annual leaves he served abroad on several occasions as a special correspondent of
The Times
and other journals, on one occasion travelling up the Nile to interview General Gordon at Khartoum.

It was during one of these periods of leave that Burnaby made up his mind to visit Russian Central Asia, which was then said to be closed to British officers and other travellers. His plan was to journey to St Petersburg and apply direct to Count Milyutin, the Minister of War, for permission to travel to India via Khiva, Merv and Kabul. It was a bold approach, though it appeared to offer little prospect of success, especially at a time when Anglo-Russian relations were anything but cordial. But where the slightest chance of adventure was concerned, Burnaby was willing to try anything. He had carefully avoided doing one thing, however, and that was seeking permission for his journey from the British Foreign Office or from his own superiors. The answer, he knew very well, would be no.

Burnaby, carrying only 85 lbs of baggage, left Victoria by the night mail train for St Petersburg on November 30, 1875. In the Russian capital he was advised by friends that the authorities would never agree to his journey. ‘They will imagine that you are being sent by your government to stir up the Khivans,’ he was told. ‘They will never believe that an officer, at his own expense, would go to Khiva.’ Surprisingly, his friends proved wrong, for the following day he received a reply to his request to Milyutin which gave partial approval for his journey. The Minister informed him that the authorities along his route had been instructed to help him on his way, but that ‘the Imperial Government could not give its acquiescence to the extension of the journey beyond Russian territory’, as it was unable to accept responsibility for his life in regions outside its control. This, Burnaby decided, was ambiguous. Either Milyutin meant that he could not go as far as Khiva, then nominally still self-governing – and certainly not to Merv, which lay outside Russian control – or that he could go there, though strictly at his own risk. Given the circumstances, most people would have taken it that Milyutin meant the former. Burnaby decided to assume he meant the latter. Quite why the Minister agreed to Burnaby travelling in the Tsar’s Central Asian territories at all is puzzling, unless he feared that the British authorities might apply similar restrictions on Russians travelling in India or elsewhere in the Empire, which at present they were free to do.

Burnaby was not the first British officer to have attempted recently to reach Merv, which many felt might very shortly become the flashpoint of an Anglo-Russian conflagration if Kaufman attempted to seize it. The previous year, while travelling in north-eastern Persia, Captain George Napier, an Indian Army intelligence officer, had gathered an impressive amount of strategical and political information on the line of advance likely to be taken by a Russian force marching on Merv from Krasnovodsk, their new base on the eastern shore of the Caspian. Although invited to visit Merv by the Turcomans, who were anxious for British protection from Kaufman’s troops, Napier had reluctantly declined lest this raise the tribesmen’s ‘undue expectations’. Only five months before Burnaby’s arrival in St Petersburg, a second British officer, Colonel Charles MacGregor, who was later to become chief of military intelligence in India, had reached Herat, intending to visit Merv. But at the last moment he had received an urgent message from his superiors in Calcutta ordering him not to proceed. It was feared that a visit to this strategically sensitive oasis by a British officer known to be involved in intelligence work might expedite its seizure by Kaufman. Indeed, on his return MacGregor had been reprimanded for having gone as far as he had, although he, like Napier, had managed to collect much valuable information on this little-known region.

Burnaby, answerable only to himself, was not a man to allow such considerations to deter him. Travelling part of the way by rail, and the remainder by troika, he reached Orenburg shortly before Christmas. On the way there he had met the Governor and his wife returning to St Petersburg. ‘You must remember’, the Russian had told him, ‘that on no account are you to go to India or Persia. You must retrace your steps to European Russia along the same road by which you go.’ It was all too evident to Burnaby that the Governor had received instructions about him from Milyutin. He made little attempt to conceal his own disapproval of the visit, or to assist Burnaby with advice. It was also clear that he had been warned by St Petersburg that this British officer spoke Russian, something highly unusual in those days, although at their roadside meeting Burnaby had addressed him in English. Nonetheless he made no attempt to prevent Burnaby from continuing to Orenburg, although it was still left somewhat in the air just how far he could proceed from there. He was well aware, however, that wherever he went the Russians would keep a close watch on him, and ensure that he saw nothing he was not supposed to see. At Orenburg he met the former Khan of Khokand, exiled there by the Russians but evidently enjoying his new lifestyle, having recently thrown a ball for the garrison officers and their wives. He also learned that Kaufman had asked for two more regiments to be sent to Central Asia for his unspecified use.

After hiring a Muslim servant, and horses to carry their baggage, Burnaby next set out through the snow by sleigh for the Russian fortress town of Kazala, 600 miles away on the northern shore of the Aral Sea, from where he hoped to reach Khiva, and finally Merv, before crossing into Afghanistan. The winter of 1876 was one of the worst in memory, and the journey southwards proved to be an extremely harsh one as the two men fought their way through blizzards and snow-drifts. Although Burnaby was to make light of it later, he was lucky not to lose both his hands from frostbite, being unwise enough to fall asleep with them exposed. Fortunately some friendly Cossacks he encountered managed to restore the circulation by vigorously massaging his arms with naphtha. ‘If it had not been for the spirit,’ one of the soldiers assured him, ‘your hands would have dropped off, and you might very well have lost both arms.’ As it was, he did not regain full use of his hands for several weeks.

In Kazala Burnaby was cordially received by his Russian fellow officers. However, they informed him with relish that they were greatly looking forward to the coming struggle with the British for possession of India. ‘We will shoot at each other in the morning,’ one Russian told Burnaby, handing him a glass of vodka, ‘and drink together when there is a truce.’ The next morning Burnaby boldly asked the Governor, with whom he was staying, how best he could reach Khiva, 400 miles further south. He was told firmly that he must not proceed there direct, but must go first to the nearest Russian garrison town, Petro-Alexandrovsk, where he could seek permission to visit the khanate. When Burnaby asked him what would happen if he made straight for Khiva, the Governor warned him that the Turcomans who roamed the desert around it were extremely dangerous, as were the Khivans themselves. ‘Why,’ he told Burnaby, clearly hoping to frighten him, ‘the Khan would very likely order his executioner to gouge out your eyes.’

To protect the Englishman from the marauding Turcomans, he offered him a small Cossack escort. But Burnaby knew that the tribesmen had been largely pacified by Kaufman’s troops, and that anyway they were well disposed towards the British, as Captain Napier had discovered, hoping for assistance from them if the Russians advanced on Merv. Having learned what he needed to know, Burnaby was determined to head straight for Khiva, and thence try to make his way, via Bokhara if possible, to Merv. He therefore politely declined the offer of an escort, but found himself instead provided with a guide, whose task it obviously was to ensure that he did not stray from the sleigh-route to Petro-Alexandrovsk. This man, it transpired, had served as guide to the Russian force which had conquered Khiva three years earlier. To someone as single-minded and resourceful as Burnaby, however, his presence was not to represent an insurmountable problem.

Khiva, Burnaby discovered, could best be reached by turning off the trail to Petro-Alexandrovsk at a point just two days short of the latter. On January 12, having hired horses for himself, his servant and the guide, and three camels to carry their baggage, including a
kibitka,
or Turcoman tent, he left Kazala, ostensibly bound for the Russian garrison town. ‘Although I had hired the camels as far as Petro-Alexandrovsk,’ he wrote afterwards, ‘I had not the slightest intention of going there if it could be avoided.’ He knew that the Russian garrison commander would find a dozen reasons why it was impossible for him to proceed to Khiva, let alone to Bokhara or Merv, and even if he did agree it would be under the strictest supervision. For a start, in order to get his servant on his side, he promised him a 100-rouble note the day they reached Bokhara or Merv, via Khiva. ‘The little Tartar’, wrote Burnaby, ‘was well aware that if we once entered Petro-Alexandrovsk he had but little chance of earning his promised reward.’ Nothing, however, was said to the guide.