The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (64 page)

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The Last Stand of the Turcomans

Had one been crossing the desert to the east of Isfahan, in central Persia, on the morning of October 1, 1880, one might have chanced upon a curious sight. At a lonely spot beside a disused well, a European of obvious military appearance and bearing was divesting himself of his clothes and struggling into those of an Armenian horse-trader. As he donned a long quilted coat and black lambskin hat, the two men with him watched in silence. They were similarly dressed, the only difference being that they were genuine Armenians while he was a British officer. Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Stewart of the 5th Punjab Infantry was preparing to set out, thus disguised, for a remote part of Persia’s north-eastern frontier. From there he hoped to monitor Russian troop movements in the empty Turcoman lands to the north, where lay the great oasis of Merv, known since ancient times as ‘the Queen of the World’.

For some months, intelligence had been reaching India that pointed to the likelihood of a major military initiative by the Russians in the region to the east of the Caspian – Transcaspia, as the geographers called it. For it was no secret that a powerful force was being prepared at Krasnovodsk under the formidable command of General Mikhail Skobelev, one of the Tsar’s most outstanding and colourful soldiers, who had risen to prominence during the recent war with Turkey. Nicknamed ‘the White General’ by his troops because he invariably rode into battle in a dazzling white uniform and on a white charger, he also had a reputation for ruthlessness and cruelty which had earned him the name of ‘old Bloody Eyes’ among the Turcomans. A leader of great daring, he had made a number of clandestine reconnaissances behind Turkish lines during the war, even secretly visiting Constantinople.

Skobelev’s presence in this strategically sensitive region was a matter of considerable concern to those responsible for India’s defence, for it was he who had prepared the master plan for its invasion during the Anglo-Russian crisis of 1878. Like every other soldier in the Russian army, he had been bitterly disappointed when it was called off, and still dreamed of driving the British out of India. Now, with the full blessing of the Tsar, he was proposing to march eastwards. Where, the British defence chiefs asked themselves, would he halt? To make things more difficult for them, Skobelev’s likely line of advance lay across some of the most inaccessible and least populated regions on earth. It might take days, if not weeks, for news of a Russian advance to reach the nearest British outpost. Indeed, as had happened before, very likely the first that would be known of it would be from the St Petersburg newspapers. The obvious solution would be to send British officers to sit it out on the spot, for Captain Napier had found the Turcomans to be friendly towards their hoped-for ally against the Russians. However, London had decreed otherwise following the abandonment of forward policies, fearing that any British activity in the region might provide the Russians with the pretext they needed to seize Merv. Provocation was to be avoided at all costs.

Such prohibitions on travel in sensitive regions by British officers and politicals were nothing new in the Great Game, and were rarely allowed to inhibit individual enterprise, as Moorcroft, Hayward, Shaw, Burnaby and others had demonstrated. Apart from knowing that they might incur official displeasure, or even be ordered out like Burnaby, there was nothing really to stop those on leave from going where they liked. Indeed, so long as they could be officially disowned if need be, the intelligence they brought back from ‘shooting leave’ or other such thinly disguised ventures was often extremely welcome to the military. Whether a nod and a wink had been given to Colonel Stewart’s enterprise, or perhaps even more, is uncertain, for there is no evidence either way in the archives of the time in the India Office Library. But what Stewart himself does admit is that part of the purpose of his disguise was to protect him from discovery by British diplomats in Teheran, who would have done everything in their power to stop him from proceeding. For there was a perpetual war between the Foreign Office, which was traditionally opposed to forward policies, and the military over anything which might conceivably upset St Petersburg. A somewhat similar conflict existed between the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Tsar’s generals, particularly the hawks in Tashkent and Tiflis.

Stewart reached the remote frontier town of Mahomadabad, which was to be his listening-post, on November 25. He told the Persian governor that he was an Armenian from Calcutta who had come to purchase the famed Turcoman horses of the region. In keeping with this pretence he began to inspect and acquire a number of horses from the governor’s own stud. At the same time he was making friends and contacts in the bazaar, for there, without arousing anyone’s suspicions, he was able to learn what was going on across the frontier from traders and other native travellers who came and went almost daily. But Colonel Stewart was not the only person intent on watching General Skobelev’s movements in southern Transcaspia. When he had been in Mahomadabad for several weeks, he learned to his astonishment that another Englishman had arrived in town. This turned out to be Edmund O’Donovan, special correspondent of the
Daily News,
hell-bent on witnessing the coming campaign against the Turcomans. His original intention had been to accompany Skobelev’s troops, but this had been blocked personally by the general. His aim now was to reach the Turcoman stronghold of Geok-Tepe before the Russians launched their attack on it, a move which appeared imminent. For after months of preparation, Skobelev’s great advance had begun. O’Donovan, delayed by Persian obstructiveness and by illness, was engaged in negotiations with Turcoman contacts at Mahomadabad for a safe passage to Geok-Tepe.

Although Stewart saw O’Donovan almost daily for the next three weeks, he decided not to reveal his true identity. His disguise must have been extremely convincing, for he was even congratulated by O’Donovan, a man more astute than most, on his mastery of English. To this Stewart replied quite truthfully: ‘Calcutta Armenians receive a very fair education’. In the end, before they parted, he confessed the truth to his friend, who refused to believe him until shown his passport. In O’Donovan’s subsequent account of his adventures,
The Merv Oasis: Travels and Adventures East of the Caspian,
he admits to being totally taken in by Stewart’s disguise. Finally, in January 1881, O’Donovan received word that he was welcome to visit Geok-Tepe. The Turcoman chiefs, who had little idea of what a newspaper correspondent’s functions really were, had got the idea that he had been sent by the British government to help them. O’Donovan at once set out across the frontier, hoping to reach Geok-Tepe before Skobelev. But the invitation had come too late, for he soon learned that the Russians had surrounded the fortress and begun to bombard it. He arrived just in time, however, to witness through binoculars from a nearby hilltop the flight of the defeated and panic-stricken Turcomans, and to hear survivors’ accounts of the pitiless and vengeful massacre which Skobelev had ordered. For the Russian troops had not forgotten the humiliation of their earlier defeat by Geok-Tepe’s defenders.

All this gave O’Donovan a wealth of material for a long and graphic dispatch on the fall of the desert fortress, which was to cause uproar in Europe. There had been 10,000 Turcoman troops inside its massive walls, most of them cavalry, as well as nearly 40,000 civilians. Skobelev himself had 7,000 infantry and cavalry, and 60 guns and rocket batteries. Resistance at first had been fierce and determined, and the Russians found themselves under heavy fire from the ramparts. The defences had been greatly strengthened, moreover, since the Russians’ earlier attempt to storm them, the work having been directed by a Turcoman who had studied Russian fortifications in the Caspian region. Although Skobelev’s artillery and rockets were wreaking devastation inside the fortress, they failed to make much impression on the walls. Fearing the arrival of Turcoman reinforcements if the siege was allowed to drag on, Skobelev realised that something drastic was called for. He ordered his engineers to tunnel to a point beneath the wall where a mine could be exploded, thereby breaching the defences. To hasten their progress, the general seated himself each day at the entrance to the tunnel and timed the teams as they worked. If they dug quickly, the officer in charge would be rewarded with vodka and champagne, and warmly embraced. If they dug too slowly, he would be violently abused in front of his men.

By January 17, as fierce fighting continued overhead, the sappers had got to within twenty-five yards of the wall without detection. Progress now began to slow, due to the difficulty of getting air to the diggers, but finally the tunnel was ready. Two tons of explosives were carried along it by volunteers to a position directly beneath the wall. Shortly before noon on January 24, as the storming parties waited in readiness, the mine was ignited. Simultaneously the full fury of Skobelev’s artillery and rocket batteries was turned against the same part of the wall. The result was an enormous explosion, which sent a huge column of earth and rubble skywards. Together with the artillery fire it blew a gap nearly fifty yards wide in the wall, instantly killing several hundred of the defenders. The Russian storming party now poured into the fortress, while at other points, using scaling ladders brought up under cover of darkness the previous night, Skobelev’s troops swarmed over the walls. Ferocious hand-to-hand fighting followed for possession of the fortress. Unprepared for the sudden appearance of the Russians in their midst, and still stunned by the violence of the explosion, the Turcomans soon began to give ground. Before long this had turned into a headlong flight as the defenders took to their horses and made off across the desert followed by thousands of terrified civilians and hotly pursued by Skobelev’s cavalry.

It was then that the real slaughter began, as the victors avenged their earlier defeat at the hands of the Turcomans. No one was spared, not even young children or the elderly. All were mercilessly cut down by Russian sabres. In all, 8,000 of the fugitives are said to have perished, while a further 6,500 bodies were counted inside the fortress itself. ‘The whole country was covered with corpses,’ an Armenian interpreter with the force later confided to a British friend. ‘I myself saw babies bayoneted or slashed to pieces. Many women were ravished before being killed.’ For three days, he said, Skobelev had allowed his troops, many of whom were drunk, to rape, plunder and slaughter. In justification for this afterwards, the general declared: ‘I hold it as a principle that the duration of peace is in direct proportion to the slaughter you inflict upon the enemy. The harder you hit them, the longer they remain quiet.’ It was, he claimed, a far more effective way of pacifying troublesome neighbours than the British method, employed by Roberts at Kabul, of publicly hanging the ringleaders, since that merely engendered hatred and not fear. Certainly the Turcomans, who for nearly two centuries had plundered Russian caravans, attacked their frontier posts and carried off the Tsar’s subjects into slavery, were never to give trouble again. Skobelev’s own losses he put at 268 killed and 669 wounded. The dead included a general, two colonels, a major and ten junior officers, while the wounded numbered forty other officers. Unofficial sources put Skobelev’s casualty figures higher, claiming that the Russians always understated their own losses and exaggerated the enemy’s.

As for the mysterious Colonel Stewart, he had hastily departed from Mahomadabad, his listening-post on the frontier, the moment word reached him of the fall of Geok-Tepe. Having gone to such lengths to be the first to hear the news, it seems almost certain that he passed it immediately to the British Mission in Teheran. If his visit to the frontier was unauthorised, he would now feel free to admit to it, since it was too late for the Foreign Office to do much about it, as he was already making his way home. Indeed, in Teheran, he visited the British Mission, reporting to the Minister, whom he had previously taken such pains to avoid. In his own account of the exploit, entitled
Through Persia in Disguise
and published many years later, Stewart is extremely circumspect about what he was really up to in this sensitive area disguised as an Armenian horse-trader. The Mission archives, today in the India Office Library in London, throw no further light on this. Certainly his clandestine and unauthorised (if indeed they were that) activities were to do his career no harm. For within a few months he was back on the Persian frontier, this time as a member of the Mission staff, on what was euphemistically termed ‘special duty’.

General Skobelev, the flamboyant victor of Geok-Tepe, was less fortunate. Following the outcry in Europe over the massacre of the Turcoman innocents, the Tsar was to relieve him of his command, moving him to Minsk, a backwater so far as any fighting soldier was concerned. Officially this was to appease European public opinion. However, according to some, the real reason was quite different. Skobelev, it was feared in St Petersburg, was suffering from delusions of grandeur and showing signs of political ambition. He even offered to meet Bismarck, the German Chancellor, whom he denounced as Russia’s greatest foe, in mortal combat before their two armies. Skobelev, who had outlived his usefulness, clearly had to be cut down to size. Not yet 40, and deprived of the chance of further glory, which was all that he lived for, Skobelev began to have nightmares about dying in his bed, and not on the battlefield. Within a year of his victory at Geok-Tepe those fears were to be realised, for he was found dead from a heart attack, sustained, it was whispered, during a visit to a Moscow brothel.