Page i

(After a drawing by ARCHER.)

"In addition to the general impression of his diminutiveness and fragility, one was struck with the peculiar beauty of his head and forehead, rising disproportionately high over his small wrinkly visage and gentle deep-set eyes."

DAVID MASSON

.

Page ii

DE QUINCEY'S

REVOLT OF THE TARTARS

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY

WILLIAM EDWARD SIMONDS, PH.D.

PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN KNOX COLLEGE

Page iii

BOSTON, U.S.A.

GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS

The Athenaeum Press

1899

Page iv

PREFACE.

In editing an English classic for use in the secondary schools, there is always opportunity for the expression of personal convictions and personal taste; nevertheless, where one has predecessors in the task of preparing such a text, it is difficult always, occasionally impossible, to avoid treading on their heels. The present editor, therefore, hastens to acknowledge his indebtedness to the various school editions of the Revolt of the Tartars, already in existence. The notes by Masson are so authoritative and so essential that their quotation needs no comment. De Quincey's footnotes are retained in their original form and appear embodied in the text. The other annotations suggest the method which the editor would follow in class-room work upon this essay.

The student's attention is called frequently to the form of expression; the discriminating use of epithets, the employment of foreign phrases, the allusions to Milton and the Bible, the structure of paragraphs, the treatment of incident, the development of feeling, the impressiveness of a present personality; all this, however, is with the purpose, not of mechanic exercise, nor merely to illustrate "rhetoric," but to illuminate De Quincey. It is with this intention, presumably, that the text is prescribed. There is little attractiveness, after all, in the idea of a style so colorless and so impersonal that the individuality of its victim is lost in its own perfection; this was certainly not the Opium-Eater's mind concerning literary form, nor does it appear to have been the Page vaim of any of our masters. Indeed, it may be well in passing to point out to pupils how fatal to success in writing is the attempt to imitate the style of any man, De Quincey included; it is always in order to emphasize the naturalness and spontaneity of the "grand style" wherever it is found. The teacher should not inculcate a blind admiration of all that De Quincey has said or done; there is opportunity, even in this brief essay, to exercise the pupil in applying the commonplace tests of criticism, although it should be seen to as well that a true appreciation is awakened for the real excellences of this little masterpiece.

Page vi

CONTENTS.

PAGE

Portrait of Thomas de Quincey.

(i)

INTRODUCTION.

(vii)

CRITICAL APPRECIATION.

(vii)

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

(x)

AUTHORITIES AND REFERENCES.

(xxii)

REVOLT OF THE TARTARS.

(1)

APPENDED NOTES BY MASSON.

(67)

NOTES, EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL.

(74)

Page vii

INTRODUCTION.

Thomas De Quincey is one of the eccentric figures in English literature. Popularly he is known as the English Opium-Eater and as the subject of numerous anecdotes which emphasize the oddities of his temperament and the unconventionality of his habits. That this man of distinguished genius was the victim--pitifully the victim--of opium is the lamentable fact; that he was morbidly shy and shunned intercourse with all except a few intimate, congenial friends; that he was comically indifferent to the fashion of his dress; that he was the most unpractical and childlike of men; that he was often betrayed, because of these peculiarities, into many ridiculous embarrassments, such as are described by Mr. Findlay, Mr. Hogg, and Mr. Burton,--of all this there can be no doubt; but these idiosyncrasies are, after all, of minor importance, the accidents, not the essentials in the life and personality of this remarkable man. The points that should attract our notice, the qualities that really give distinction to De Quincey, are the broad sweep of his knowledge, almost unlimited in its scope and singularly accurate in its details, a facility of phrasing and a word supply that transformed the mere power of discriminating expression into a fine art, and a style that, while it lapsed occasionally from the standard of its own excellence, was generally self-corrective and frequently forsook the levels of commonplace excellence for the highest reaches of impassioned prose. Nor is this all. His pages do not lack in humor--humor of the truest and most delicate type; and if De Quincey is at Page viiitimes impelled beyond the bounds of taste, even these excursions demonstrate his power, at least in handling the grotesque. His sympathies, however, are always genuine, and often are profound. The pages of his autobiographic essays reveal the strength of his affections, while in the interpretation of such a character as that of Joan of Arc, or in allusions like those to the pariahs,--defenceless outcasts from society, by whose wretched lot his heart was often wrung,--he writes in truest pathos.

Now sympathy is own child of the imagination, whether expressed in the language of laughter or in the vernacular of tears; and the most distinctive quality in the mental make-up of De Quincey was, after all, this dominant imagination which was characteristic of the man from childhood to old age. The Opium-Eater once defined the great scholar as "not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination, bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life." Such was De Quincey himself. He was a scholar born, gifted with a mind apt for the subtleties of metaphysics, a memory well-nigh inexhaustible in the recovery of facts; in one respect, at least, he was a great scholar, for his mind was dominated by an imagination as vigorous as that which created Macaulay's England, almost as sensitive to dramatic effect as that which painted Carlyle's French Revolution. Therefore when he wrote narrative, historical narrative, or reminiscence, he lived in the experiences he pictured, as great historians do; perhaps living over again the scenes of the past, or for the first time making real the details of occurrences with which he was only recently familiar.

The Revolt of the Tartars is a good illustration of his power. Attracted by the chance reading of an obscure Page ix French missionary and traveller to the dramatic possibilities of an episode in Russian history, De Quincey built from the bare notes thus discovered, supplemented by others drawn from a matter-of-fact German archaeologist, a narrative which for vividness of detail and truthfulness of local color belongs among the best of those classics in which fancy helps to illuminate fact, and where the imagination is invoked to recreate what one feels intuitively must have been real.

The Revolt of the Tartars, while not exhibiting the highest achievement of the author's power, nevertheless belongs in the group of writings wherein his peculiar excellences are fairly manifested. The obvious quality of its realism has been pointed out already; the masterly use of the principles of suspense and stimulated interest will hardly pass unnoticed. A negative excellence is the absence of that discursiveness in composition, that tendency to digress into superfluous comment, which is this author's one prevailing fault. De Quincey was gifted with a fine appreciation of harmonious sound, and in those passages where his spirit soars highest not the least of their beauties is found in the melodiousness of their tone and the rhythmic sweetness of their motion.

It is as a master of rhetoric that De Quincey is distinguished among writers. Some hints of his ability are seen in the opening and closing passages of this essay, but to find him at his best one must turn to the Confessions and to the other papers which describe his life, particularly those which recount his marvellous dreams. In these papers we find the passages where De Quincey's passion rises to the heights which few other writers have ever reached in prose, a loftiness and grandeur which is technically denominated as "sublime." In his Essay on Style, published in Blackwood's, 1840, he deprecates the usual indifference to form, on the part of English writers, "the tendency of the national Page xmind to value the matter of a book not only as paramount to the manner, but even as distinct from it and as capable of a separate insulation." As one of the great masters of prose style in this century, De Quincey has so served the interests of art in this regard, that in his own case the charge is sometimes reversed: his own works are read rather to observe his manner than to absorb his thought. Yet when this is said, it is not to imply that the material is unworthy or the ideas unsound; on the contrary, his sentiment is true and his ideas are wholesome; but many of the topics treated lie outside the deeper interests of ordinary life, and fail to appeal to us so practically as do the writings of some lesser men. Of the "one hundred and fifty magazine articles" which comprise his works, there are many that will not claim the general interest, yet his writings as a whole will always be recognized by students of rhetoric as containing excellences which place their author among the English classics. Nor can De Quincey be accused of subordinating matter to manner; in spite of his taste for the theatrical and a tendency to extravagance, his expression is in keeping with his thought, and the material of those passages which contain his most splendid flights is appropriate to the treatment it receives. One effective reason, certainly, why we take pleasure in the mere style of De Quincey's work is because that work is so thoroughly inspired with the Opium-Eater's own genial personality, because it so unmistakably suggests that inevitable "smack of individuality" which gives to the productions of all great authors their truest distinction if not their greatest worth.

Thomas De Quincey was born in Manchester, August 15, 1785. His father was a well-to-do merchant of literary taste, but of him the children of the household scarcely knew; he was an invalid, a prey to consumption, and during their Page xichildhood made his residence mostly in the milder climate of Lisbon or the West Indies. Thomas was seven years old when his father was brought home to die, and the lad, though sensitively impressed by the event, felt little of the significance of relationship between them. Mrs. De Quincey was a somewhat stately lady, rather strict in discipline and rigid in her views. There does not seem to have been the most complete sympathy between mother and son, yet De Quincey was always reverent in his attitude, and certainly entertained a genuine respect for her intelligence and character. There were eight children in the home, four sons and four daughters; Thomas was the fifth in age, and his relations to the other members of this little community are set forth most interestingly in the opening chapters of his Autobiographic Sketches.

De Quincey's child life was spent in the country; first at a pretty rustic dwelling known as "The Farm," and after 1792 at a larger country house near Manchester, built by his father, and given by his mother the pleasantly suggestive name of "Greenhay," hay meaning hedge, or hedgerow. The early boyhood of Thomas De Quincey is of more than ordinary interest, because of the clear light it throws upon the peculiar temperament and endowments of the man. Moreover, we have the best of authority in our study of this period, namely, the author himself, who in the Sketches already mentioned, and in his most noted work, The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, has told the story of these early years in considerable detail and with apparent sincerity. De Quincey was not a sturdy boy. Shy and dreamy, exquisitely sensitive to impressions of melancholy and mystery, he was endowed with an imagination abnormally active even for a child. It is customary to give prominence to De Quincey's pernicious habit of opium-eating, in attempting to explain the grotesque fancies and weird flights of his Page xiimarvellous mind in later years; yet it is only fair to emphasize the fact that the later achievements of that strange creative faculty were clearly foreshadowed in youth. For example, the earliest incident in his life that he could afterwards recall, he describes as "a remarkable dream of terrific grandeur about a favorite nurse, which is interesting to myself for this reason--that it demonstrates my dreaming tendencies to have been constitutional, and not dependent upon laudanum." [1] Again he tells us how, when six years old, upon the death of a favorite sister three years older, he stole unobserved upstairs to the death chamber; unlocking the door and entering silently, he stood for a moment gazing through the open window toward the bright sunlight of a cloudless day, then turned to behold the angel face upon the pillow. Awed in the presence of death, the meaning of which he began vaguely to understand, he stood listening to a "solemn wind" that began to blow--"the saddest that ear ever heard." What followed should appear in De Quincey's own words: "A vault seemed to open in the zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up forever. I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the shaft forever; and the billows seemed to pursue the throne of God; but that also ran on before us and fled away continually. The flight and the pursuit seemed to go on forever and ever. Frost gathering frost, some sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel me; some mighty relation between God and death dimly struggled to evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism between them; shadowy meanings even yet continued to exercise and torment, in dreams, the deciphering oracle within me. I slept--for how long I cannot say: slowly I recovered my self-possession; and, when I woke, found myself standing as before, close to my sister's bed." [2] Somewhat Page xiii similar in effect were the fancies that came to this dreamy boy on Sunday mornings during service in the fine old English church. Through the wide central field of uncolored glass, set in a rich framework of gorgeous color,--for the side panes of the great windows were pictured with the stories of saints and martyrs,--the lad saw "white fleecy clouds sailing over the azure depths of the sky." Straightway the picture changed in his imagination, and visions of young children, lying on white beds of sickness and of death, rose before his eyes, ascending slowly and softly into heaven, God's arms descending from the heavens that He might the sooner take them to Himself and grant release. Such are not infrequently the dreams of children. De Quincey's experience is not unique; but with him imagination, the imagination of childhood, remained unimpaired through life. It was not wholly opium that made him the great dreamer of our literature, any more than it was the effect of a drug that brought from his dying lips the cry of "Sister, sister, sister!"--an echo from this sacred chamber of death, where he had stood awed and entranced nearly seventy years before.

Not all of De Quincey's boyhood, however, was passed under influences so serious and mystical as these. He was early compelled to undergo what he is pleased to call his "introduction to the world of strife." His brother William, five years the senior of Thomas, appears to have been endowed with an imagination as remarkable as his own. "His genius for mischief," says Thomas, "amounted to inspiration." Very amusing are the chronicles of the little autocracy thus despotized by William. The assumption of the young tyrant was magnificent. Along with the prerogatives and privileges of seniority, he took upon himself as well certain responsibilities more galling to his half-dozen uneasy subordinates, doubtless, than the undisputed hereditary rights Page xivof age. William constituted himself the educational guide of the nursery, proclaiming theories, delivering lectures, performing experiments, asserting opinions upon subjects diverse and erudite. Indeed, a vigorous spirit was housed in William's body, and but for his early death, this lad also might have brought lustre to the family name.

A real introduction to the world of strife came with the development of a lively feud between the two brothers on the one side, and on the other a crowd of young belligerents employed in a cotton factory on the road between Greenhay and Manchester, where the boys now attended school. Active hostilities occurred daily when the two "aristocrats" passed the factory on their way home at the hour when its inmates emerged from their labor. The dread of this encounter hung like a cloud over Thomas, yet he followed William loyally, and served with all the spirit of a cadet of the house. Imagination played an important part in this campaign, and it is for that reason primarily that to this and the other incidents of De Quincey's childhood prominence is here given; in no better way can we come to an understanding of the real nature of this singular man.

In 1796 the home at Greenhay was broken up. The irrepressible William was sent to London to study art; Mrs. De Quincey removed to Bath, and Thomas was placed in the grammar school of that town; a younger brother, Richard, in all respects a pleasing contrast to William, was a sympathetic comrade and schoolmate. For two years De Quincey remained in this school, achieving a great reputation in the study of Latin, and living a congenial, comfortable life. This was followed by a year in a private school at Winkfield, which was terminated by an invitation to travel in Ireland with young Lord Westport, a lad of De Quincey's own age, an intimacy having sprung up between them a year earlier at Bath. It was in 1800 that the trip was made, and the Page xvperiod of the visit extended over four or five months. After this long recess De Quincey was placed in the grammar school at Manchester, his guardians expecting that a three years' course in this school would bring him a scholarship at Oxford. However, the new environment proved wholly uncongenial, and the sensitive boy who, in spite of his shyness and his slender frame, possessed grit in abundance, and who was through life more or less a law to himself, made up his mind to run away. His flight was significant. Early on a July morning he slipped quietly off--in one pocket a copy of an English poet, a volume of Euripides in the other. His first move was toward Chester, the seventeen-year-old runaway deeming it proper that he should report at once to his mother, who was now living in that town. So he trudged overland forty miles and faced his astonished and indignant parent. At the suggestion of a kind-hearted uncle, just home from India, Thomas was let off easily; indeed, he was given an allowance of a guinea a week, with permission to go on a tramp through North Wales, a proposition which he hailed with delight. The next three months were spent in a rather pleasant ramble, although the weekly allowance was scarcely sufficient to supply all the comforts desired. The trip ended strangely. Some sudden fancy seizing him, the boy broke off all connection with his friends and went to London. Unknown, unprovided for, he buried himself in the vast life of the metropolis. He lived a precarious existence for several months, suffering from exposure, reduced to the verge of starvation, his whereabouts a mystery to his friends. The cloud of this experience hung darkly over his spirit, even in later manhood; perceptions of a true world of strife were vivid; impressions of these wretched months formed the material of his most sombre dreams.

Rescued at last, providentially, De Quincey spent the next period of his life, covering the years 1803-7, in residence Page xviat Oxford. His career as a student at the university is obscure. He was a member of Worcester College, was known as a quiet, studious man, and lived an isolated if not a solitary life. With a German student, who taught him Hebrew, De Quincey seems to have had some intimacy, but his circle of acquaintance was small, and no contemporary has thrown much light on his stay. In 1807 he disappeared from Oxford, having taken the written tests for his degree, but failing to present himself for the necessary oral examination.

The year of his departure from Oxford brought to De Quincey a long-coveted pleasure--acquaintance with two famous contemporaries whom he greatly admired, Coleridge and Wordsworth. Characteristic of De Quincey in many ways was his gift, anonymously made, of PS300 to his hero, Coleridge. This was in 1807, when De Quincey was twenty-two, and was master of his inheritance. The acquaintance ripened into intimacy, and in 1809 the young man, himself gifted with talents which were to make him equally famous with these, took up his residence at Grasmere, in the Lake country, occupying for many years the cottage which Wordsworth had given up on his removal to ampler quarters at Rydal Mount. Here he spent much of his time in the society of the men who were then grouped in distinguished neighborhood; besides Wordsworth and Coleridge, the poet Southey was accessible, and a frequent visitor was John Wilson, later widely known as the "Christopher North" of Blackwood's Magazine. Nor was De Quincey idle; his habits of study were confirmed; indeed, he was already a philosopher at twenty-four. These were years of hard reading and industrious thought, wherein he accumulated much of that metaphysical wisdom which was afterward to win admiring recognition.

In 1816 De Quincey married Margaret Simpson, a farmer's daughter living near. There is a pretty scene painted by Page xviithe author himself, [3] in which he gives us a glimpse of his domestic life at this time. Therein he pictures the cottage, standing in a valley, eighteen miles from any town; no spacious valley, but about two miles long by three-quarters of a mile in average width. The mountains are real mountains, between 3000 and 4000 feet high, and the cottage a real cottage, white, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls, and clustering around the windows, through all the months of spring, summer, and autumn, beginning, in fact, with May roses and ending with jasmine. It is in the winter season, however, that De Quincey paints his picture, and so he describes a room, seventeen feet by twelve, and not more than seven and one-half feet high. This is the drawing-room, although it might more justly be termed the library, for it happens that books are the one form of property in which the owner is wealthy. Of these he has about 5000, collected gradually since his eighteenth year. The room is, therefore, populous with books. There is a good fire on the hearth. The furniture is plain and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of a scholar. Near the fire stands a tea table; there are only two cups and saucers on the tray. It is an "eternal" teapot that the artist would like us to imagine, for he usually drinks tea from eight o'clock at night to four in the morning. There is, of course, a companion at the tea table, and very lovingly does the husband suggest the pleasant personality of his young wife. One other important feature is included in the scene; upon the table there rests also a decanter, in which sparkles the ruby-colored laudanum.

De Quincey's experience with opium had begun while he was a student at the university, in 1804. It was first taken to obtain relief from neuralgia, and his use of the drug did not at once become habitual. During the period of residence Page xviiiat Grasmere, however, De Quincey became confirmed in the habit, and so thoroughly was he its victim that for a season his intellectual powers were well-nigh paralyzed; his mind sank under such a cloud of depression and gloom that his condition was pitiful in the extreme. Just before his marriage, in 1816, De Quincey, by a vigorous effort, partially regained his self-control and succeeded in materially reducing his daily allowance of the drug; but in the following year he fell more deeply than ever under its baneful power, until in 1818-19 his consumption of opium was something almost incredible. Thus he became truly enough the great English Opium-Eater, whose Confessions were later to fill a unique place in English literature. It was finally the absolute need of bettering his financial condition that compelled De Quincey to shake off the shackles of his vice; this he practically accomplished, although perhaps he was never entirely free from the habit. The event is coincident with the beginning of his career as a public writer. In 1820 he became a man of letters.

As a professional writer it is to be noted that De Quincey was throughout a contributor to the periodicals. With one or two exceptions all his works found their way to the public through the pages of the magazines, and he was associated as contributor with most of those that were prominent in his time. From 1821 to 1825 we find him residing for the most part in London, and here his public career began. It was De Quincey's most distinctive work which first appeared. The London Magazine, in its issue for September, 1821, contained the first paper of the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. The novelty of the subject was sufficient to obtain for the new writer an interested hearing, and there was much discussion as to whether his apparent frankness was genuine or assumed. All united in applause of the masterly style which distinguished the essay, also of the profundity and Page xix value of the interesting material it contained. A second part was included in the magazine for October. Other articles by the Opium-Eater followed, in which the wide scholarship of the author was abundantly shown, although the topics were of less general interest.

In 1826 De Quincey became an occasional contributor to Blackwood's Magazine, and this connection drew him to Edinburgh, where he remained, either in the city itself or in its vicinity, for the rest of his life. The grotesquely humorous Essay on Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts appeared in Blackwood's in 1827. In 1832 he published a series of articles on Roman History, entitled The Caesars. It was in July, 1837, that the Revolt of the Tartars appeared; in 1840 his critical paper upon The Essenes. Meanwhile De Quincey had begun contributions to Tait's Magazine, another Edinburgh publication, and it was in that periodical that the Sketches of Life and Manners from the Autobiography of an English Opium-Eater began to appear in 1834, running on through several years. These sketches include the chapters on Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, and Southey as well as those Autobiographic Sketches which form such a charming and illuminating portion of his complete works.

The family life was sadly broken in 1837 by the death of De Quincey's wife. He who was now left as guardian of the little household of six children, was himself so helpless in all practical matters that it seemed as though he were in their childish care rather than protector of them. Scores of anecdotes are related of his odd and unpractical behavior. One of his curious habits had been the multiplication of lodgings; as books and manuscripts accumulated about him so that there remained room for no more, he would turn the key upon his possessions and migrate elsewhere to repeat the performance later on. It is known that as many as four separate rents were at one and the same time being paid by Page xx this odd, shy little man, rather than allow the disturbance or contraction of his domain. Sometimes an anxious journey in search of a manuscript had to be made by author and publisher in conjunction before the missing paper could be located. The home life of this eccentric yet lovable man of genius seems to have been always affectionate and tender in spite even of his bondage to opium; it was especially beautiful and childlike in his latest years. His eldest daughter, Margaret, assumed quietly the place of headship, and with a discretion equal to her devotion she watched over her father's welfare. With reference to De Quincey's circumstances at this time, his biographer, Mr. Masson, says: "Very soon, if left to himself, he would have taken possession of every room in the house, one after another, and 'snowed up' each with his papers; but, that having been gently prevented, he had one room to work in all day and all night to his heart's content. The evenings, or the intervals between his daily working time and his nightly working time, or stroll, he generally spent in the drawing-room with his daughters, either alone or in company with any friends that chanced to be with him. At such times, we are told, he was unusually charming. 'The newspaper was brought out, and he, telling in his own delightful way, rather than reading, the news, would, on questions from this one or that one of the party, often including young friends of his children, neighbors, or visitors from distant places, illuminate the subject with such a wealth of memories, of old stories of past or present experiences, of humor, of suggestion, even of prophecy, as by its very wealth makes it impossible to give any taste of it.' The description is by one of his daughters; and she adds a touch which is inimitable in its fidelity and tenderness. 'He was not,' she says, 'a reassuring man for nervous people to live with, as those nights were exceptional on which he did not set something Page xxion fire, the commonest incident being for some one to look up from book or work, to say casually, Papa, your hair is on fire; of which a calm Is it, my love? and a hand rubbing out the blaze was all the notice taken.'" [4]

Of his personal appearance Professor Minto says:

"He was a slender little man, with small, clearly chiselled features, a large head, and a remarkably high, square forehead. There was a peculiarly high and regular arch in the wrinkles of his brow, which was also slightly contracted. The lines of his countenance fell naturally into an expression of mild suffering, of endurance sweetened by benevolence, or, according to the fancy of the interpreter, of gentle, melancholy sweetness. All that met him seem to have been struck with the measured, silvery, yet somewhat hollow and unearthly tones of his voice, the more impressive that the flow of his talk was unhesitating and unbroken."

The literary labors were continuous. In 1845 the beautiful Suspiria de Profundis (Sighs from the Depths) appeared in Blackwood's; The English Mail Coach and The Vision of Sudden Death, in 1849. Among other papers contributed to Tait's Magazine, the Joan of Arc appeared in 1847. During the last ten years of his life, De Quincey was occupied chiefly in preparing for the publishers a complete edition of his works. Ticknor & Fields, of Boston, the most distinguished of our American publishing firms, had put forth, 1851-55, the first edition of De Quincey's collected writings, in twenty volumes. The first British edition was undertaken by Mr. James Hogg, of Edinburgh, in 1853, with the co-operation of the author, and under his direction; the final volume of this edition was not issued until the year following De Quincey's death.

In the autumn of 1859 the frail physique of the now Page xxiifamous Opium-Eater grew gradually feeble, although suffering from no definite disease. It became evident that his life was drawing to its end. On December 8, his two daughters standing by his side, he fell into a doze. His mind had been wandering amid the scenes of his childhood, and his last utterance was the cry, "Sister, sister, sister!" as if in recognition of one awaiting him, one who had been often in his dreams, the beloved Elizabeth, whose death had made so profound and lasting an impression on his imagination as a child.

The authoritative edition of De Quincey's Works is that edited by David Masson and published in fourteen volumes by Adam and Charles Black (Edinburgh). For American students the Riverside Edition, in twelve volumes (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston), will be found convenient. The most satisfactory Life of De Quincey is the one by Masson in the English Men of Letters series. Of a more anecdotal type are the Life of De Quincey, by H.A. Page, whose real name is Alexander H. Japp (2 vols., New York, 1877), and De Quincey Memorials (New York, 1891), by the same author. Very interesting is the brief volume, Recollections of Thomas De Quincey, by John R. Findlay (Edinburgh, 1886), who also contributes the paper on De Quincey to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. De Quincey and his Friends, by James Hogg (London, 1895), is another volume of recollections, souvenirs, and anecdotes, which help to make real their subject's personality. Besides the editor, other writers contribute to this volume: Richard Woodhouse, John R. Findlay, and John Hill Burton, who has given under the name "Papaverius," a picturesque description of the Opium-Eater. The student should always remember that De Quincey's own chapters in the Autobiographic Sketches, and the Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, which are Page xxiiiamong the most charming and important of his writings, are also the most authoritative and most valuable sources of our information concerning him. In reading about De Quincey, do not fail to read De Quincey himself.

The best criticism of the Opium-Eater's work is found in William Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature (Ginn & Co.). A shorter essay is contained in Saintsbury's History of Nineteenth Century Literature. A very valuable list of all De Quincey's writings, in chronological order, is given by Fred N. Scott, in his edition of De Quincey's essays on Style, Rhetoric, and Language (Allyn & Bacon). Numerous magazine articles may be found by referring to Poole's Index. Page xxiv

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Autobiographic Sketches, Chap. I.

[2] Ibid.

[3]Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Part II.

[4] De Quincey (English Men of Letters), David Masson, p. 110.

HOW TO READ DE QUINCEY.

"De Quincey's sixteen volumes of magazine articles are full of brain from beginning to end. At the rate of about half a volume a day, they would serve for a month's reading, and a month continuously might be worse expended. There are few courses of reading from which a young man of good natural intelligence would come away more instructed, charmed, and stimulated, or, to express the matter as definitely as possible, with his mind more stretched. Good natural intelligence, a certain fineness of fibre, and some amount of scholarly education, have to be presupposed, indeed, in all readers of De Quincey. But, even for the fittest readers, a month's complete and continuous course of De Quincey would be too much. Better have him on the shelf, and take down a volume at intervals for one or two of the articles to which there may be an immediate attraction. An evening with De Quincey in this manner will always be profitable."

DAVID MASSON, Life of De Quincey, Chap. XI.

Page 1

REVOLT OF THE TARTARS;

OR, FLIGHT OF THE KALMUCK KHAN AND HIS PEOPLE

FROM THE RUSSIAN TERRITORIES TO THE

FRONTIERS OF CHINA.

There is no great event in modern history, or, perhaps

it may be said more broadly, none in all history, from its

earliest records, less generally known, or more striking to

the imagination, than the flight eastwards of a principal

Tartar nation across the boundless steppes of Asia in the 5

latter half of the last century. The terminus a quo of this

flight and the terminus ad quem are equally magnificent--the

mightiest of Christian thrones being the

one, the mightiest of pagan the other; and the grandeur of these

two terminal objects is harmoniously supported by the 10

romantic circumstances of the flight. In the abruptness

of its commencement and the fierce velocity of its execution

we read an expression of the wild, barbaric character

of the agents. In the unity of purpose connecting this

myriad of wills, and in the blind but unerring aim at a 15

mark so remote, there is something which recalls to the

mind those almighty instincts that propel the migrations of

the swallow and the leeming or the life-withering marches

of the locust. Then, again, in the gloomy vengeance of

Russia and her vast artillery, which hung upon the rear 20

and the skirts of the fugitive vassals, we are reminded of

Miltonic images--such, for instance, as that of the solitary

hand pursuing through desert spaces and through

ancient chaos a rebellious host, and overtaking with volleying

Page 2 thunders those who believed themselves already

within the security of darkness and of distance.

I shall have occasion, farther on, to compare this event

with other great national catastrophes as to the magnitude 5

of the suffering. But it may also challenge a comparison

with similar events under another relation,--viz. as to its

dramatic capabilities. Few cases, perhaps, in romance

or history, can sustain a close collation with this as to the

complexity of its separate interests. The great outline of 10

the enterprise, taken in connection with the operative

motives, hidden or avowed, and the religious sanctions

under which it was pursued, give to the case a triple

character: 1st, That of a conspiracy, with as close a unity

in the incidents, and as much of a personal interest in 15

the moving characters, with fine dramatic contrasts, as

belongs to "Venice Preserved" or to the "Fiesco" of

Schiller. 2dly, That of a great military expedition offering

the same romantic features of vast distances to be

traversed, vast reverses to be sustained, untried routes, 20

enemies obscurely ascertained, and hardships too vaguely

prefigured, which mark the Egyptian expedition of Cambyses--the

anabasis of the younger Cyrus, and the

subsequent retreat of the ten thousand, the Parthian

expeditions of the Romans, especially those of Crassus 25

and Julian--or (as more disastrous than any of them,

and, in point of space, as well as in amount of forces,

more extensive) the Russian anabasis and katabasis of

Napoleon. 3dly, That of a religious Exodus, authorized

by an oracle venerated throughout many nations of Asia, 30

--an Exodus, therefore, in so far resembling the great

Scriptural Exodus of the Israelites, under Moses and

Joshua, as well as in the very peculiar distinction of carrying

along with them their entire families, women, children,

slaves, their herd of cattle and of sheep, their horses and

Page 3 their camels.

This triple character of the enterprise naturally invests

it with a more comprehensive interest; but the dramatic

interest which we ascribed to it, or its fitness for a stage 5

representation, depends partly upon the marked variety

and the strength of the personal agencies concerned, and

partly upon the succession of scenical situations. Even

the steppes, the camels, the tents, the snowy and the sandy

deserts are not beyond the scale of our modern representative 10

powers, as often called into action in the theatres

both of Paris and London; and the series of situations

unfolded,--beginning with the general conflagration on

the Wolga--passing thence to the disastrous scenes of

the flight (as it literally was in its commencement)--to 15

the Tartar siege of the Russian fortress Koulagina--the

bloody engagement with the Cossacks in the mountain

passes at Ouchim--the surprisal by the Bashkirs and

the advanced posts of the Russian army at Torgau--the

private conspiracy at this point against the Khan--the 20

long succession of running fights--the parting massacres

at the Lake of Tengis under the eyes of the Chinese--and,

finally, the tragical retribution to Zebek-Dorchi at

the hunting lodge of the Chinese Emperor;--all these

situations communicate a scenical animation to the wild 25

romance, if treated dramatically; whilst a higher and a

philosophic interest belongs to it as a case of authentic

history, commemorating a great revolution, for good and

for evil, in the fortunes of a whole people--a people semi-barbarous,

but simple-hearted, and of ancient descent. 30

On the 21st of January, 1761, the young Prince Oubacha

assumed the sceptre of the Kalmucks upon the death

of his father. Some part of the power attached to this

dignity he had already wielded since his fourteenth year,

Page 4 in quality of Vice-Khan, by the express appointment and

with the avowed support of the Russian Government.

He was now about eighteen years of age, amiable in his

personal character, and not without titles to respect in his 5

public character as a sovereign prince. In times more

peaceable, and amongst a people more entirely civilized

or more humanized by religion, it is even probable that

he might have discharged his high duties with considerable

distinction; but his lot was thrown upon stormy 10

times, and a most difficult crisis amongst tribes whose

native ferocity was exasperated by debasing forms of

superstition, and by a nationality as well as an inflated

conceit of their own merit absolutely unparalleled; whilst

the circumstances of their hard and trying position under 15

the jealous surveillance of an irresistible lord paramount,

in the person of the Russian Czar, gave a fiercer edge to

the natural unamiableness of the Kalmuck disposition, and

irritated its gloomier qualities into action under the restless

impulses of suspicion and permanent distrust. No 20

prince could hope for a cordial allegiance from his subjects

or a peaceful reign under the circumstances of the

case; for the dilemma in which a Kalmuck ruler stood

at present was of this nature: wanting the support and

sanction of the Czar, he was inevitably too weak from 25

without to command confidence from his subjects or

resistance to his competitors. On the other hand, with

this kind of support, and deriving his title in any degree

from the favor of the Imperial Court, he became almost

in that extent an object of hatred at home and within the 30

whole compass of his own territory. He was at once an

object of hatred for the past, being a living monument of

national independence ignominiously surrendered; and an

object of jealousy for the future, as one who had already

advertised himself to be a fitting tool for the ultimate

Page 5 purposes (whatsoever those might prove to be) of the

Russian Court. Coming himself to the Kalmuck sceptre

under the heaviest weight of prejudice from the unfortunate

circumstances of his position, it might have been 5

expected that Oubacha would have been pre-eminently

an object of detestation; for, besides his known dependence

upon the Cabinet of St. Petersburg, the direct line

of succession had been set aside, and the principle of

inheritance violently suspended, in favor of his own 10

father, so recently as nineteen years before the era of his

own accession, consequently within the lively remembrance

of the existing generation. He, therefore, almost

equally with his father, stood within the full current of

the national prejudices, and might have anticipated the 15

most pointed hostility. But it was not so: such are the

caprices in human affairs that he was even, in a moderate

sense, popular--a benefit which wore the more cheering

aspect and the promises of permanence, inasmuch as he

owed it exclusively to his personal qualities of kindness 20

and affability, as well as to the beneficence of his government.

On the other hand, to balance this unlooked-for

prosperity at the outset of his reign, he met with a rival

in popular favor--almost a competitor--in the person of

Zebek-Dorchi, a prince with considerable pretensions to 25

the throne, and, perhaps it might be said, with equal pretensions.

Zebek-Dorchi was a direct descendant of the

same royal house as himself, through a different branch.

On public grounds, his claim stood, perhaps, on a footing

equally good with that of Oubacha, whilst his personal 30

qualities, even in those aspects which seemed to a philosophical

observer most odious and repulsive, promised

the most effectual aid to the dark purposes of an intriguer

or a conspirator, and were generally fitted to win a popular

support precisely in those points where Oubacha was

Page 6 most defective. He was much superior in external appearance

to his rival on the throne, and so far better

qualified to win the good opinion of a semi-barbarous

people; whilst his dark intellectual qualities of Machiavelian 5

dissimulation, profound hypocrisy, and perfidy which

knew no touch of remorse, were admirably calculated to

sustain any ground which he might win from the simple-hearted

people with whom he had to deal and from the

frank carelessness of his unconscious competitor. 10

At the very outset of his treacherous career, Zebek-Dorchi

was sagacious enough to perceive that nothing

could be gained by open declaration of hostility to the

reigning prince: the choice had been a deliberate act on

the part of Russia, and Elizabeth Petrowna was not the 15

person to recall her own favors with levity or upon slight

grounds. Openly, therefore, to have declared his enmity

toward his relative on the throne, could have had no effect

but that of arming suspicions against his own ulterior

purposes in a quarter where it was most essential to his 20

interest that, for the present, all suspicions should be

hoodwinked. Accordingly, after much meditation, the

course he took for opening his snares was this:--He

raised a rumor that his own life was in danger from the

plots of several Saissang (that is, Kalmuck nobles), who 25

were leagued together under an oath to assassinate him;

and immediately after, assuming a well-counterfeited alarm,

he fled to Tcherkask, followed by sixty-five tents.

From this place he kept up a correspondence with the

Imperial Court, and, by way of soliciting his cause more 30

effectually, he soon repaired in person to St. Petersburg.

Once admitted to personal conferences with the cabinet,

he found no difficulty in winning over the Russian councils

to a concurrence with some of his political views,

and thus covertly introducing the point of that wedge

Page 7 which was finally to accomplish his purposes. In particular,

he persuaded the Russian Government to make a

very important alteration in the constitution of the Kalmuck

State Council which in effect reorganized the whole 5

political condition of the state and disturbed the balance

of power as previously adjusted. Of this council--in

the Kalmuck language called Sarga--there were eight

members, called Sargatchi; and hitherto it had been the

custom that these eight members should be entirely subordinate 10

to the Khan; holding, in fact, the ministerial

character of secretaries and assistants, but in no respect

ranking as co-ordinate authorities. That had produced

some inconveniences in former reigns; and it was easy

for Zebek-Dorchi to point the jealousy of the Russian 15

Court to others more serious which might arise in future

circumstances of war or other contingencies. It was

resolved, therefore, to place the Sargatchi henceforward

on a footing of perfect independence, and, therefore (as

regarded responsibility), on a footing of equality with the 20

Khan. Their independence, however, had respect only

to their own sovereign; for toward Russia they were

placed in a new attitude of direct duty and accountability

by the creation in their favor of small pensions (300

roubles a year), which, however, to a Kalmuck of that 25

day were more considerable than might be supposed,

and had a further value as marks of honorary distinction

emanating from a great empress. Thus far the purposes

of Zebek-Dorchi were served effectually for the moment:

but, apparently, it was only for the moment; since, in 30

the further development of his plots, this very dependency

upon Russian influence would be the most serious

obstacle in his way. There was, however, another point

carried, which outweighed all inferior considerations, as

it gave him a power of setting aside discretionally whatsoever

Page 8 should arise to disturb his plots: he was himself

appointed President and Controller of the Sargatchi.

The Russian Court had been aware of his high pretensions 5

by birth, and hoped by this promotion to satisfy

the ambition which, in some degree, was acknowledged

to be a reasonable passion for any man occupying his

situation.

Having thus completely blindfolded the Cabinet of

Russia, Zebek-Dorchi proceeded in his new character to 10

fulfil his political mission with the Khan of the Kalmucks.

So artfully did he prepare the road for his favorable

reception at the court of this prince that he was at once

and universally welcomed as a public benefactor. The

pensions of the councillors were so much additional wealth 15

poured into the Tartar exchequer; as to the ties of dependency

thus created, experience had not yet enlightened

these simple tribes as to that result. And that he himself

should be the chief of these mercenary councillors was so

far from being charged upon Zebek as any offence or any 20

ground of suspicion, that his relative the Khan returned

him hearty thanks for his services, under the belief that

he could have accepted this appointment only with a view

to keep out other and more unwelcome pretenders, who

would not have had the same motives of consanguinity or 25

friendship for executing its duties in a spirit of kindness

to the Kalmucks. The first use which he made of his

new functions about the Khan's person was to attack the

Court of Russia, by a romantic villainy not easily to be

credited, for those very acts of interference with the 30

council which he himself had prompted. This was a

dangerous step: but it was indispensable to his farther

advance upon the gloomy path which he had traced out

for himself. A triple vengeance was what he meditated:

1, upon the Russian Cabinet, for having undervalued his

Page 9 own pretensions to the throne; 2, upon his amiable rival,

for having supplanted him; and 3, upon all those of the

nobility who had manifested their sense of his weakness

by their neglect or their sense of his perfidious character 5

by their suspicions. Here was a colossal outline of wickedness;

and by one in his situation, feeble (as it might

seem) for the accomplishment of its humblest parts, how

was the total edifice to be reared in its comprehensive

grandeur? He, a worm as he was, could he venture to 10

assail the mighty behemoth of Muscovy, the potentate

who counted three hundred languages around the footsteps

of his throne, and from whose "lion ramp" recoiled

alike "baptized and infidel"--Christendom on the one

side, strong by her intellect and her organization, and the 15

"barbaric East" on the other, with her unnumbered

numbers? The match was a monstrous one; but in its

very monstrosity there lay this germ of encouragement--that

it could not be suspected. The very hopelessness

of the scheme grounded his hope; and he resolved to 20

execute a vengeance which should involve as it were, in

the unity of a well-laid tragic fable, all whom he judged

to be his enemies. That vengeance lay in detaching from

the Russian empire the whole Kalmuck nation and breaking

up that system of intercourse which had thus far been 25

beneficial to both. This last was a consideration which

moved him but little. True it was that Russia to the

Kalmucks had secured lands and extensive pasturage;

true it was that the Kalmucks reciprocally to Russia had

furnished a powerful cavalry; but the latter loss would be 30

part of his triumph, and the former might be more than

compensated in other climates, under other sovereigns.

Here was a scheme which, in its final accomplishment,

would avenge him bitterly on the Czarina, and in the

course of its accomplishment might furnish him with

Page 10 ample occasions for removing his other enemies. It may

be readily supposed, indeed, that he who could deliberately

raise his eyes to the Russian autocrat as an antagonist 5

in single duel with himself was not likely to feel much

anxiety about Kalmuck enemies of whatever rank. He

took his resolution, therefore, sternly and irrevocably, to

effect this astonishing translation of an ancient people

across the pathless deserts of Central Asia, intersected

continually by rapid rivers rarely furnished with bridges, 10

and of which the fords were known only to those who

might think it for their interest to conceal them, through

many nations inhospitable or hostile: frost and snow

around them (from the necessity of commencing their

flight in winter), famine in their front, and the sabre, or 15

even the artillery of an offended and mighty empress

hanging upon their rear for thousands of miles. But what

was to be their final mark--the port of shelter after so

fearful a course of wandering? Two things were evident:

it must be some power at a great distance from Russia, 20

so as to make return even in that view hopeless, and it

must be a power of sufficient rank to insure them protection

from any hostile efforts on the part of the Czarina

for reclaiming them or for chastising their revolt. Both

conditions were united obviously in the person of Kien 25

Long, the reigning Emperor of China, who was further

recommended to them by his respect for the head of

their religion. To China, therefore, and, as their first

rendezvous, to the shadow of the Great Chinese Wall, it

was settled by Zebek that they should direct their flight. 30

Next came the question of time--when should the

flight commence? and, finally, the more delicate question

as to the choice of accomplices. To extend the knowledge

of the conspiracy too far was to insure its betrayal

to the Russian Government. Yet, at some stage of the

Page 11 preparations, it was evident that a very extensive confidence

must be made, because in no other way could the

mass of the Kalmuck population be persuaded to furnish

their families with the requisite equipments for so long a 5

migration. This critical step, however, it was resolved

to defer up to the latest possible moment, and, at all

events, to make no general communication on the subject

until the time of departure should be definitely

settled. In the meantime, Zebek admitted only three 10

persons to his confidence; of whom Oubacha, the reigning

prince, was almost necessarily one; but him, for his

yielding and somewhat feeble character, he viewed rather

in the light of a tool than as one of his active accomplices.

Those whom (if anybody) he admitted to an unreserved 15

participation in his counsels were two only: the

great Lama among the Kalmucks, and his own father-in-law,

Erempel, a ruling prince of some tribe in the neighborhood

of the Caspian Sea, recommended to his favor

not so much by any strength of talent corresponding to 20

the occasion as by his blind devotion to himself and

his passionate anxiety to promote the elevation of his

daughter and his son-in-law to the throne of a sovereign

prince. A titular prince Zebek already was: but this

dignity, without the substantial accompaniment of a sceptre, 25

seemed but an empty sound to both of these ambitious

rebels. The other accomplice, whose name was

Loosang-Dchaltzan, and whose rank was that of Lama,

or Kalmuck pontiff, was a person of far more distinguished

pretensions; he had something of the same 30

gloomy and terrific pride which marked the character of

Zebek himself, manifesting also the same energy, accompanied

by the same unfaltering cruelty, and a natural

facility of dissimulation even more profound. It was by

this man that the other question was settled as to the

Page 12 time for giving effect to their designs. His own pontifical

character had suggested to him that, in order to

strengthen their influence with the vast mob of simple-minded 5

men whom they were to lead into a howling

wilderness, after persuading them to lay desolate their

own ancient hearths, it was indispensable that they should

be able, in cases of extremity, to plead the express sanction

of God for their entire enterprise. This could only

be done by addressing themselves to the great head of 10

their religion, the Dalai-Lama of Tibet. Him they easily

persuaded to countenance their schemes: and an oracle

was delivered solemnly at Tibet, to the effect that no

ultimate prosperity would attend this great Exodus unless

it were pursued through the years of the tiger and the 15

hare. Now the Kalmuck custom is to distinguish their

years by attaching to each a denomination taken from one

of twelve animals, the exact order of succession being

absolutely fixed, so that the cycle revolves of course

through a period of a dozen years. Consequently, if the 20

approaching year of the tiger were suffered to escape

them, in that case the expedition must be delayed for

twelve years more; within which period, even were no

other unfavorable changes to arise, it was pretty well

foreseen that the Russian Government would take most 25

effectual means for bridling their vagrant propensities by

a ring-fence of forts or military posts; to say nothing of

the still readier plan for securing their fidelity (a plan

already talked of in all quarters) by exacting a large body

of hostages selected from the families of the most influential 30

nobles. On these cogent considerations, it was solemnly

determined that this terrific experiment should be

made in the next year of the tiger, which happened to fall

upon the Christian year 1771. With respect to the

month, there was, unhappily for the Kalmucks, even less

Page 13 latitude allowed to their choice than with respect to the

year. It was absolutely necessary, or it was thought so,

that the different divisions of the nation, which pastured

their flocks on both banks of the Wolga, should have the 5

means of effecting an instantaneous junction, because

the danger of being intercepted by flying columns of the

imperial armies was precisely the greatest at the outset.

Now, from the want of bridges or sufficient river craft

for transporting so vast a body of men, the sole means 10

which could be depended upon (especially where so many

women, children, and camels were concerned) was ice;

and this, in a state of sufficient firmness, could not be

absolutely counted upon before the month of January.

Hence it happened that this astonishing Exodus of a 15

whole nation, before so much as a whisper of the design

had begun to circulate amongst those whom it most interested,

before it was even suspected that any man's wishes

pointed in that direction, had been definitely appointed

for January of the year 1771. And almost up to the 20

Christmas of 1770 the poor simple Kalmuck herdsmen

and their families were going nightly to their peaceful

beds without even dreaming that the fiat had already

gone forth from their rulers which consigned those quiet

abodes, together with the peace and comfort which reigned 25

within them, to a withering desolation, now close at

hand.

Meantime war raged on a great scale between Russia

and the Sultan; and, until the time arrived for throwing

off their vassalage, it was necessary that Oubacha should 30

contribute his usual contingent of martial aid. Nay, it

had unfortunately become prudent that he should contribute

much more than his usual aid. Human experience

gives ample evidence that in some mysterious and

unaccountable way no great design is ever agitated, no

Page 14 matter how few or how faithful may be the participators,

but that some presentiment--some dim misgiving--is

kindled amongst those whom it is chiefly important to

blind. And, however it might have happened, certain it 5

is that already, when as yet no syllable of the conspiracy

had been breathed to any man whose very existence was

not staked upon its concealment, nevertheless some vague

and uneasy jealousy had arisen in the Russian Cabinet

as to the future schemes of the Kalmuck Khan: and 10

very probable it is that, but for the war then raging, and

the consequent prudence of conciliating a very important

vassal, or, at least, of abstaining from what would powerfully

alienate him, even at that moment such measures

would have been adopted as must forever have intercepted 15

the Kalmuck schemes. Slight as were the jealousies

of the Imperial Court, they had not escaped the

Machiavelian eyes of Zebek and the Lama. And under

their guidance, Oubacha, bending to the circumstances of

the moment, and meeting the jealousy of the Russian 20

Court with a policy corresponding to their own, strove by

unusual zeal to efface the Czarina's unfavorable impressions.

He enlarged the scale of his contributions, and

that so prodigiously that he absolutely carried to headquarters

a force of 35,000 cavalry, fully equipped: some 25

go further, and rate the amount beyond 40,000; but the

smaller estimate is, at all events, within the truth.

With this magnificent array of cavalry, heavy as well as

light, the Khan went into the field under great expectations;

and these he more than realized. Having the 30

good fortune to be concerned with so ill-organized and

disorderly a description of force as that which at all times

composed the bulk of a Turkish army, he carried victory

along with his banners; gained many partial successes;

and at last, in a pitched battle, overthrew the Turkish

Page 15 force opposed to him, with a loss of 5000 men left upon

the field.

These splendid achievements seemed likely to operate

in various ways against the impending revolt. Oubacha 5

had now a strong motive, in the martial glory acquired,

for continuing his connection with the empire in whose

service he had won it, and by whom only it could be fully

appreciated. He was now a great marshal of a great

empire, one of the Paladins around the imperial throne; 10

in China he would be nobody, or (worse than that) a mendicant

alien, prostrate at the feet, and soliciting the precarious

alms, of a prince with whom he had no connection.

Besides, it might reasonably be expected that the Czarina,

grateful for the really efficient aid given by the Tartar 15

prince, would confer upon him such eminent rewards as

might be sufficient to anchor his hopes upon Russia, and

to wean him from every possible seduction. These were

the obvious suggestions of prudence and good sense to

every man who stood neutral in the case. But they were 20

disappointed. The Czarina knew her obligations to the

Khan, but she did not acknowledge them. Wherefore?

That is a mystery perhaps never to be explained. So it

was, however. The Khan went unhonored; no ukase

ever proclaimed his merits; and, perhaps, had he even 25

been abundantly recompensed by Russia, there were

others who would have defeated these tendencies to

reconciliation. Erempel, Zebek, and Loosang the Lama

were pledged life-deep to prevent any accommodation;

and their efforts were unfortunately seconded by those of 30

their deadliest enemies. In the Russian Court there were

at that time some great nobles preoccupied with feelings

of hatred and blind malice toward the Kalmucks quite as

strong as any which the Kalmucks could harbor toward

Russia, and not, perhaps, so well founded. Just as much

Page 16 as the Kalmucks hated the Russian yoke, their galling

assumption of authority, the marked air of disdain, as

toward a nation of ugly, stupid, and filthy barbarians,

which too generally marked the Russian bearing and 5

language, but, above all, the insolent contempt, or even

outrages, which the Russian governors or great military

commandants tolerated in their followers toward the barbarous

religion and superstitious mummeries of the Kalmuck

priesthood--precisely in that extent did the ferocity 10

of the Russian resentment, and their wrath at seeing the

trampled worm turn or attempt a feeble retaliation, react

upon the unfortunate Kalmucks. At this crisis, it is probable

that envy and wounded pride, upon witnessing the

splendid victories of Oubacha and Momotbacha over the 15

Turks and Bashkirs, contributed strength to the Russian

irritation. And it must have been through the intrigues

of those nobles about her person who chiefly smarted

under these feelings that the Czarina could ever have

lent herself to the unwise and ungrateful policy pursued 20

at this critical period toward the Kalmuck Khan. That

Czarina was no longer Elizabeth Petrowna; it was Catharine II.--a

princess who did not often err so injuriously

(injuriously for herself as much as for others) in the measures

of her government. She had soon ample reason for 25

repenting of her false policy. Meantime, how much it

must have co-operated with the other motives previously

acting upon Oubacha in sustaining his determination to

revolt, and how powerfully it must have assisted the efforts

of all the Tartar chieftains in preparing the minds of their 30

people to feel the necessity of this difficult enterprise, by

arming their pride and their suspicions against the Russian

Government, through the keenness of their sympathy

with the wrongs of their insulted prince, may be readily

imagined. It is a fact, and it has been confessed by

Page 17 candid Russians themselves when treating of this great

dismemberment, that the conduct of the Russian Cabinet

throughout the period of suspense, and during the crisis

of hesitation in the Kalmuck Council, was exactly such 5

as was most desirable for the purposes of the conspirators;

it was such, in fact, as to set the seal to all their

machinations, by supplying distinct evidences and official

vouchers for what could otherwise have been at the most

matters of doubtful suspicion and indirect presumption. 10

Nevertheless, in the face of all these arguments, and

even allowing their weight so far as not at all to deny the

injustice or the impolicy of the imperial ministers, it is

contended by many persons who have reviewed the affair

with a command of all the documents bearing on the case, 15

more especially the letters or minutes of council subsequently

discovered in the handwriting of Zebek-Dorchi,

and the important evidence of the Russian captive, Weseloff,

who was carried off by the Kalmucks in their flight,

that beyond all doubt Oubacha was powerless for any 20

purpose of impeding or even of delaying the revolt. He

himself, indeed, was under religious obligations of the

most terrific solemnity never to flinch from the enterprise

or even to slacken in his zeal; for Zebek-Dorchi, distrusting

the firmness of his resolution under any unusual 25

pressure of alarm or difficulty, had, in the very earliest

stage of the conspiracy, availed himself of the Khan's

well-known superstition, to engage him, by means of previous

concert with the priests and their head, the Lama,

in some dark and mysterious rites of consecration, terminating 30

in oaths under such terrific sanctions as no Kalmuck

would have courage to violate. As far, therefore,

as regarded the personal share of the Khan in what was

to come, Zebek was entirely at his ease; he knew him to

be so deeply pledged by religious terrors to the prosecution

Page 18 of the conspiracy that no honors within the Czarina's

gift could have possibly shaken his adhesion; and then,

as to threats from the same quarter, he knew him to be

sealed against those fears by others of a gloomier character, 5

and better adapted to his peculiar temperament. For

Oubacha was a brave man, as respected all bodily enemies

or the dangers of human warfare, but was as sensitive and

timid as the most superstitious of old women in

facing the frowns of a priest or under the vague anticipations 10

of ghostly retributions. But had it been otherwise,

and had there been any reason to apprehend an unsteady

demeanor on the part of this prince at the approach

of the critical moment, such were the changes already

effected in the state of their domestic politics amongst 15

the Tartars by the undermining arts of Zebek-Dorchi, and

his ally the Lama, that very little importance would have

attached to that doubt. All power was now effectually

lodged in the hands of Zebek-Dorchi. He was the true

and absolute wielder of the Kalmuck sceptre; all measures 20

of importance were submitted to his discretion, and

nothing was finally resolved but under his dictation.

This result he had brought about, in a year or two, by

means sufficiently simple: first of all, by availing himself

of the prejudice in his favor, so largely diffused amongst 25

the lowest of the Kalmucks, that his own title to the

throne in quality of great-grandson in a direct line from

Ajouka, the most illustrious of all the Kalmuck Khans,

stood upon a better basis than that of Oubacha, who

derived from a collateral branch; secondly, with respect 30

to the sole advantage which Oubacha possessed above

himself in the ratification of his title, by improving this

difference between their situations to the disadvantage

of his competitor, as one who had not scrupled to accept

that triumph from an alien power at the price of his independence,

Page 19 which he himself (as he would have it understood)

disdained to court; thirdly, by his own talents

and address, coupled with the ferocious energy of his

moral character; fourthly--and perhaps in an equal 5

degree--by the criminal facility and good nature of

Oubacha; finally (which is remarkable enough, as illustrating

the character of the man), by that very new modelling

of the Sarga, or Privy Council, which he had used

as a principal topic of abuse and malicious insinuation 10

against the Russian Government, whilst, in reality, he

first had suggested the alteration to the Empress, and

he chiefly appropriated the political advantages which it

was fitted to yield. For, as he was himself appointed the

chief of the Sargatchi, and as the pensions of the inferior 15

Sargatchi passed through his hands, whilst in effect they

owed their appointments to his nomination, it may be

easily supposed that, whatever power existed in the state

capable of controlling the Khan, being held by the Sarga

under its new organization, and this body being completely 20

under his influence, the final result was to throw

all the functions of the state, whether nominally in the

prince or in the council, substantially into the hands of

this one man; whilst, at the same time, from the strict

league which he maintained with the Lama, all the thunders 25

of the spiritual power were always ready to come in

aid of the magistrate, or to supply his incapacity in cases

which he could not reach.

But the time was now rapidly approaching for the

mighty experiment. The day was drawing near on which 30

the signal was to be given for raising the standard of

revolt, and, by a combined movement on both sides of the

Wolga, for spreading the smoke of one vast conflagration

that should wrap in a common blaze their own huts and

the stately cities of their enemies over the breadth and

Page 20 length of those great provinces in which their flocks were

dispersed. The year of the tiger was now within one

little month of its commencement; the fifth morning of

that year was fixed for the fatal day when the fortunes 5

and happiness of a whole nation were to be put upon the

hazard of a dicer's throw; and as yet that nation was in

profound ignorance of the whole plan. The Khan, such

was the kindness of his nature, could not bring himself to

make the revelation so urgently required. It was clear, 10

however, that this could not be delayed; and Zebek-Dorchi

took the task willingly upon himself. But where

or how should this notification be made, so as to exclude

Russian hearers? After some deliberation the following

plan was adopted:--Couriers, it was contrived, should 15

arrive in furious haste, one upon the heels of another,

reporting a sudden inroad of the Kirghises and Bashkirs

upon the Kalmuck lands, at a point distant about 120

miles. Thither all the Kalmuck families, according to

immemorial custom, were required to send a separate representative; 20

and there, accordingly, within three days, all

appeared. The distance, the solitary ground appointed

for the rendezvous, the rapidity of the march, all tended

to make it almost certain that no Russian could be

present. Zebek-Dorchi then came forward. He did 25

not waste many words upon rhetoric. He unfurled an

immense sheet of parchment, visible from the outermost

distance at which any of this vast crowd could stand;

the total number amounted to 80,000; all saw, and many heard.

They were told of the oppressions of Russia; 30

of her pride and haughty disdain, evidenced toward them

by a thousand acts; of her contempt for their religion;

of her determination to reduce them to absolute slavery;

of the preliminary measures she had already taken by

erecting forts upon many of the great rivers of their neighborhood;

Page 21 of the ulterior intentions she thus announced

to circumscribe their pastoral lands, until they would all

be obliged to renounce their flocks, and to collect in

towns like Sarepta, there to pursue mechanical and servile 5

trades of shoemaker, tailor, and weaver, such as the free-born

Tartar had always disdained. "Then again," said

the subtle prince, "she increases her military levies upon

our population every year. We pour out our blood as

young men in her defence, or, more often, in support of 10

her insolent aggressions; and, as old men, we reap nothing

from our sufferings nor benefit by our survivorship

where so many are sacrificed." At this point of his

harangue Zebek produced several papers (forged, as it is

generally believed, by himself and the Lama), containing 15

projects of the Russian Court for a general transfer of

the eldest sons, taken en masse from the greatest Kalmuck

families, to the Imperial Court. "Now, let this be once

accomplished," he argued, "and there is an end of all

useful resistance from that day forwards. Petitions we 20

might make, or even remonstrances; as men of words,

we might play a bold part; but for deeds; for that sort

of language by which our ancestors were used to speak--holding

us by such a chain, Russia would make a jest of

our wishes, knowing full well that we should not dare to 25

make any effectual movement."

Having thus sufficiently roused the angry passions of his

vast audience, and having alarmed their fears by this

pretended scheme against their firstborn (an artifice

which was indispensable to his purpose, because it met 30

beforehand every form of amendment to his proposal

coming from the more moderate nobles, who would not

otherwise have failed to insist upon trying the effect of

bold addresses to the Empress before resorting to any

desperate extremity), Zebek-Dorchi opened his scheme of

Page 22 revolt, and, if so, of instant revolt; since any preparations

reported at St. Petersburg would be a signal for the

armies of Russia to cross into such positions from all

parts of Asia as would effectually intercept their march. 5

It is remarkable, however, that with all his audacity and

his reliance upon the momentary excitement of the Kalmucks,

the subtle prince did not venture, at this stage of

his seduction, to make so startling a proposal as that of

a flight to China. All that he held out for the present 10

was a rapid march to the Temba or some other great

river, which they were to cross, and to take up a strong

position on the farther bank, from which, as from a post

of conscious security, they could hold a bolder language

to the Czarina, and one which would have a better chance 15

of winning a favorable audience.

These things, in the irritated condition of the simple

Tartars, passed by acclamation; and all returned homeward

to push forward with the most furious speed the

preparations for their awful undertaking. Rapid and 20

energetic these of necessity were; and in that degree

they became noticeable and manifest to the Russians who

happened to be intermingled with the different hordes,

either on commercial errands, or as agents officially from

the Russian Government, some in a financial, others in a 25

diplomatic character.

Among these last (indeed, at the head of them) was a

Russian of some distinction, by name Kichinskoi--a man

memorable for his vanity, and memorable also as one of

the many victims to the Tartar revolution. This Kichinskoi 30

had been sent by the Empress as her envoy to overlook

the conduct of the Kalmucks. He was styled the

Grand Pristaw, or Great Commissioner, and was universally

known amongst the Tartar tribes by this title. His

mixed character of ambassador and of political surveillant,

Page 23 combined with the dependent state of the Kalmucks,

gave him a real weight in the Tartar councils, and might

have given him a far greater had not his outrageous

self-conceit and his arrogant confidence in his own 5

authority, as due chiefly to his personal qualities for

command, led him into such harsh displays of power,

and menaces so odious to the Tartar pride, as very soon

made him an object of their profoundest malice. He had

publicly insulted the Khan; and, upon making a communication 10

to him to the effect that some reports began to

circulate, and even to reach the Empress, of a design in

agitation to fly from the imperial dominions, he had ventured

to say, "But this you dare not attempt; I laugh at

such rumors; yes, Khan, I laugh at them to the Empress; 15

for you are a chained bear, and that you know." The

Khan turned away on his heel with marked disdain; and

the Pristaw, foaming at the mouth, continued to utter,

amongst those of the Khan's attendants who stayed

behind to catch his real sentiments in a moment of unguarded 20

passion, all that the blindest frenzy of rage could

suggest to the most presumptuous of fools. It was now

ascertained that suspicion had arisen; but, at the same

time, it was ascertained that the Pristaw spoke no more

than the truth in representing himself to have discredited 25

these suspicions. The fact was that the mere infatuation

of vanity made him believe that nothing could go on undetected

by his all-piercing sagacity, and that no rebellion

could prosper when rebuked by his commanding presence.

The Tartars, therefore, pursued their preparations, confiding 30

in the obstinate blindness of the Grand Pristaw as

in their perfect safeguard, and such it proved--to his

own ruin as well as that of myriads beside.

Christmas arrived; and, a little before that time, courier

upon courier came dropping in, one upon the very heels

Page 24 of another, to St. Petersburg, assuring the Czarina that

beyond all doubt the Kalmucks were in the very crisis of

departure. These dispatches came from the Governor

of Astrachan, and copies were instantly forwarded to 5

Kichinskoi. Now, it happened that between this governor--a

Russian named Beketoff--and the Pristaw

had been an ancient feud. The very name of Beketoff

inflamed his resentment; and no sooner did he see that

hated name attached to the dispatch than he felt himself 10

confirmed in his former views with tenfold bigotry, and

wrote instantly, in terms of the most pointed ridicule,

against the new alarmist, pledging his own head upon the

visionariness of his alarms. Beketoff, however, was not

to be put down by a few hard words, or by ridicule: he 15

persisted in his statements; the Russian ministry were

confounded by the obstinacy of the disputants; and some

were beginning even to treat the Governor of Astrachan

as a bore, and as the dupe of his own nervous terrors,

when the memorable day arrived, the fatal 5th of January, 20

which forever terminated the dispute and put a seal upon

the earthly hopes and fortunes of unnumbered myriads.

The Governor of Astrachan was the first to hear the news.

Stung by the mixed furies of jealousy, of triumphant

vengeance, and of anxious ambition, he sprang into his 25

sledge, and, at the rate of 300 miles a day, pursued his

route to St. Petersburg--rushed into the Imperial presence--announced

the total realization of his worst predictions;

and, upon the confirmation of this intelligence

by subsequent dispatches from many different posts on 30

the Wolga, he received an imperial commission to seize

the person of his deluded enemy and to keep him in strict

captivity. These orders were eagerly fulfilled; and the

unfortunate Kichinskoi soon afterwards expired of grief

and mortification in the gloomy solitude of a dungeon--a

Page 25 victim to his own immeasurable vanity and the blinding

self-delusions of a presumption that refused all warning.

The Governor of Astrachan had been but too faithful

a prophet. Perhaps even he was surprised at the suddenness 5

with which the verification followed his reports.

Precisely on the 5th of January, the day so solemnly

appointed under religious sanctions by the Lama, the

Kalmucks on the east bank of the Wolga were seen at

the earliest dawn of day assembling by troops and 10

squadrons and in the tumultuous movement of some great

morning of battle. Tens of thousands continued moving

off the ground at every half hour's interval. Women

and children, to the amount of two hundred thousand and

upward, were placed upon wagons or upon camels, and 15

drew off by masses of twenty thousand at once--placed

under suitable escorts, and continually swelled in numbers

by other outlying bodies of the horde,--who kept falling

in at various distances upon the first and second day's

march. From sixty to eighty thousand of those who 20

were the best mounted stayed behind the rest of the

tribes, with purposes of devastation and plunder more

violent than prudence justified or the amiable character

of the Khan could be supposed to approve. But in this,

as in other instances, he was completely overruled by the 25

malignant counsels of Zebek-Dorchi. The first tempest

of the desolating fury of the Tartars discharged itself

upon their own habitations. But this, as cutting off all

infirm looking backward from the hardships of their

march, had been thought so necessary a measure by all 30

the chieftains that even Oubacha himself was the first to

authorize the act by his own example. He seized a torch

previously prepared with materials the most durable as

well as combustible, and steadily applied it to the timbers

of his own palace. Nothing was saved from the general

Page 26 wreck except the portable part of the domestic utensils

and that part of the woodwork which could be applied

to the manufacture of the long Tartar lances. This

chapter in their memorable day's work being finished, 5

and the whole of their villages throughout a district of

ten thousand square miles in one simultaneous blaze, the

Tartars waited for further orders.

These, it was intended, should have taken a character of

valedictory vengeance, and thus have left behind to the 10

Czarina a dreadful commentary upon the main motives

of their flight. It was the purpose of Zebek-Dorchi that

all the Russian towns, churches, and buildings of every

description should be given up to pillage and destruction,

and such treatment applied to the defenceless inhabitants 15

as might naturally be expected from a fierce people

already infuriated by the spectacle of their own outrages,

and by the bloody retaliations which they must necessarily

have provoked. This part of the tragedy, however, was

happily intercepted by a providential disappointment at 20

the very crisis of departure. It has been mentioned

already that the motive for selecting the depth of winter

as the season of flight (which otherwise was obviously

the very worst possible) had been the impossibility of

effecting a junction sufficiently rapid with the tribes on 25

the west of the Wolga, in the absence of bridges, unless

by a natural bridge of ice. For this one advantage the

Kalmuck leaders had consented to aggravate by a thousand-fold

the calamities inevitable to a rapid flight over

boundless tracts of country with women, children, and 30

herds of cattle--for this one single advantage; and yet,

after all, it was lost. The reason never has been explained

satisfactorily, but the fact was such. Some have said

that the signals were not properly concerted for marking

the moment of absolute departure--that is, for signifying

Page 27 whether the settled intention of the Eastern Kalmucks

might not have been suddenly interrupted by adverse

intelligence. Others have supposed that the ice might

not be equally strong on both sides of the river, and 5

might even be generally insecure for the treading of

heavy and heavily laden animals such as camels. But

the prevailing notion is that some accidental movements

on the 3d and 4th of January of Russian troops in the

neighborhood of the Western Kalmucks, though really 10

having no reference to them or their plans, had been construed

into certain signs that all was discovered, and that

the prudence of the Western chieftains, who, from situation,

had never been exposed to those intrigues by which

Zebek-Dorchi had practised upon the pride of the Eastern 15

tribes, now stepped in to save their people from ruin.

Be the cause what it might, it is certain that the Western

Kalmucks were in some way prevented from forming the

intended junction with their brethren of the opposite

bank; and the result was that at least one hundred 20

thousand of these Tartars were left behind in Russia.

This accident it was which saved their Russian neighbors

universally from the desolation which else awaited them.

One general massacre and conflagration would assuredly

have surprised them, to the utter extermination of their 25

property, their houses, and themselves, had it not been

for this disappointment. But the Eastern chieftains did

not dare to put to hazard the safety of their brethren

under the first impulse of the Czarina's vengeance for so

dreadful a tragedy; for, as they were well aware of too many 30

circumstances by which she might discover the concurrence

of the Western people in the general scheme of revolt,

they justly feared that she would thence infer their concurrence

also in the bloody events which marked its outset.

Page 28

Little did the Western Kalmucks guess what reasons

they also had for gratitude, on account of an interposition

so unexpected, and which at the moment they so generally

deplored. Could they but have witnessed the thousandth

part of the sufferings which overtook their Eastern brethren 5

in the first month of their sad flight, they would have

blessed Heaven for their own narrow escape; and yet

these sufferings of the first month were but a prelude or

foretaste comparatively slight of those which afterward

succeeded. 10

For now began to unroll the most awful series of

calamities, and the most extensive, which is anywhere

recorded to have visited the sons and daughters of men. It

is possible that the sudden inroads of destroying nations,

such as the Huns, or the Avars, or the Mongol 15

Tartars, may have inflicted misery as extensive; but there

the misery and the desolation would be sudden, like the

flight of volleying lightning. Those who were spared at

first would generally be spared to the end; those who

perished would perish instantly. It is possible that the 20

French retreat from Moscow may have made some nearer

approach to this calamity in duration, though still a feeble

and miniature approach; for the French sufferings did

not commence in good earnest until about one month

from the time of leaving Moscow; and though it is true 25

that afterward the vials of wrath were emptied upon the

devoted army for six or seven weeks in succession, yet

what is that to this Kalmuck tragedy, which lasted for

more than as many months? But the main feature of

horror, by which the Tartar march was distinguished from 30

the French, lies in the accompaniment of women[5] and

children. There were both, it is true, with the French

Page 29 army, but so few as to bear no visible proportion to the

total numbers concerned. The French, in short, were

merely an army--a host of professional destroyers, whose

regular trade was bloodshed, and whose regular element 5

was danger and suffering. But the Tartars were a nation

carrying along with them more than two hundred and

fifty thousand women and children, utterly unequal, for

the most part, to any contest with the calamities before

them. The Children of Israel were in the same circumstances 10

as to the accompaniment of their families; but

they were released from the pursuit of their enemies in a

very early stage of their flight; and their subsequent residence

in the Desert was not a march, but a continued halt

and under a continued interposition of Heaven for their 15

comfortable support. Earthquakes, again, however comprehensive

in their ravages, are shocks of a moment's

duration. A much nearer approach made to the wide

range and the long duration of the Kalmuck tragedy may

have been in a pestilence such as that which visited 20

Athens in the Peloponnesian war, or London in the reign

of Charles II. There, also, the martyrs were counted by

myriads, and the period of the desolation was counted

by months. But, after all, the total amount of destruction

was on a smaller scale; and there was this feature of 25

alleviation to the conscious pressure of the calamity--that

the misery was withdrawn from public notice into private

chambers and hospitals. The siege of Jerusalem by

Vespasian and his son, taken in its entire circumstances,

comes nearest of all--for breadth and depth of suffering, 30

for duration, for the exasperation of the suffering from

without by internal feuds, and, finally, for that last most

Page 30 appalling expression of the furnace heat of the anguish in

its power to extinguish the natural affections even of

maternal love. But, after all, each case had circumstances

of romantic misery peculiar to itself--circumstances 5

without precedent, and (wherever human nature is ennobled

by Christianity), it may be confidently hoped, never

to be repeated.

The first point to be reached, before any hope of repose

could be encouraged, was the River Jaik. This was not 10

above 300 miles from the main point of departure on the

Wolga; and, if the march thither was to be a forced one

and a severe one, it was alleged, on the other hand, that

the suffering would be the more brief and transient;

one summary exertion, not to be repeated, and all was 15

achieved. Forced the march was, and severe beyond

example: there the forewarning proved correct; but the

promised rest proved a mere phantom of the wilderness--a

visionary rainbow, which fled before their hope-sick

eyes, across these interminable solitudes, for seven months 20

of hardship and calamity, without a pause. These sufferings,

by their very nature and the circumstances under

which they arose, were (like the scenery of the steppes)

somewhat monotonous in their coloring and external

features; what variety, however, there was, will be most 25

naturally exhibited by tracing historically the successive

stages of the general misery exactly as it unfolded itself

under the double agency of weakness still increasing from

within and hostile pressure from without. Viewed in this

manner, under the real order of development, it is remarkable 30

that these sufferings of the Tartars, though under

the moulding hands of accident, arrange themselves

almost with a scenical propriety. They seem combined

as with the skill of an artist; the intensity of the misery

advancing regularly with the advances of the march, and

Page 31 the stages of the calamity corresponding to the stages

of the route; so that, upon raising the curtain which

veils the great catastrophe, we behold one vast climax of

anguish, towering upward by regular gradations as if constructed 5

artificially for picturesque effect--a result which

might not have been surprising had it been reasonable to

anticipate the same rate of speed, and even an accelerated

rate, as prevailing through the latter stages of the expedition.

But it seemed, on the contrary, most reasonable to 10

calculate upon a continual decrement in the rate of motion

according to the increasing distance from the headquarters

of the pursuing enemy. This calculation, however, was

defeated by the extraordinary circumstance that the Russian

armies did not begin to close in very fiercely upon 15

the Kalmucks until after they had accomplished a distance

of full 2000 miles: 1000 miles farther on the assaults

became even more tumultuous and murderous: and already

the great shadows of the Chinese Wall were dimly descried,

when the frenzy and acharnement of the pursuers and the 20

bloody desperation of the miserable fugitives had reached

its uttermost extremity. Let us briefly rehearse the main

stages of the misery and trace the ascending steps of the

tragedy, according to the great divisions of the route

marked out by the central rivers of Asia. 25

The first stage, we have already said, was from the

Wolga to the Jaik; the distance about 300 miles; the time

allowed seven days. For the first week, therefore, the

rate of marching averaged about 43 English miles a day.

The weather was cold, but bracing; and, at a more 30

moderate pace, this part of the journey might have been

accomplished without much distress by a people as hardy

as the Kalmucks: as it was, the cattle suffered greatly

from overdriving; milk began to fail even for the children;

the sheep perished by wholesale; and the children themselves

Page 32 were saved only by the innumerable camels.

The Cossacks who dwelt upon the banks of the Jaik

were the first among the subjects of Russia to come into

collision with the Kalmucks. Great was their surprise at 5

the suddenness of the irruption, and great also their consternation;

for, according to their settled custom, by far

the greater part of their number was absent during the

winter months at the fisheries upon the Caspian. Some

who were liable to surprise at the most exposed points 10

fled in crowds to the fortress of Koulagina, which was

immediately invested and summoned by Oubacha. He

had, however, in his train only a few light pieces of

artillery; and the Russian commandant at Koulagina,

being aware of the hurried circumstances in which the 15

Khan was placed, and that he stood upon the very edge,

as it were, of a renewed flight, felt encouraged by these

considerations to a more obstinate resistance than might

else have been advisable with an enemy so little disposed

to observe the usages of civilized warfare. The period of 20

his anxiety was not long. On the fifth day of the siege

he descried from the walls a succession of Tartar

couriers, mounted upon fleet Bactrian camels, crossing

the vast plains around the fortress at a furious pace and

riding into the Kalmuck encampment at various points. 25

Great agitation appeared immediately to follow: orders

were soon after dispatched in all directions; and it became

speedily known that upon a distant flank of the Kalmuck

movement a bloody and exterminating battle had been

fought the day before, in which one entire tribe of the 30

Khan's dependents, numbering not less than 9000 fighting

men, had perished to the last man. This was the

ouloss, or clan, called Feka-Zechorr, between whom and

the Cossacks there was a feud of ancient standing. In

selecting, therefore, the points of attack, on occasion of

Page 33 the present hasty inroad, the Cossack chiefs were naturally

eager so to direct their efforts as to combine with

the service of the Empress some gratification to their own

party hatreds, more especially as the present was likely 5

to be their final opportunity for revenge if the Kalmuck

evasion should prosper. Having, therefore, concentrated

as large a body of Cossack cavalry as circumstances

allowed, they attacked the hostile ouloss with a precipitation

which denied to it all means for communicating with 10

Oubacha; for the necessity of commanding an ample range

of pasturage, to meet the necessities of their vast flocks

and herds, had separated this ouloss from the Khan's

headquarters by an interval of 80 miles; and thus it was,

and not from oversight, that it came to be thrown entirely 15

upon its own resources. These had proved insufficient:

retreat, from the exhausted state of their horses and

camels, no less than from the prodigious encumbrances

of their live stock, was absolutely out of the question:

quarter was disdained on the one side, and would not 20

have been granted on the other: and thus it had happened

that the setting sun of that one day (the thirteenth from

the first opening of the revolt) threw his parting rays upon

the final agonies of an ancient ouloss, stretched upon a

bloody field, who on that day's dawning had held and 25

styled themselves an independent nation.

Universal consternation was diffused through the wide

borders of the Khan's encampment by this disastrous

intelligence, not so much on account of the numbers

slain, or the total extinction of a powerful ally, as because 30

the position of the Cossack force was likely to put

to hazard the future advances of the Kalmucks, or at

least to retard and hold them in check until the heavier

columns of the Russian army should arrive upon their

flanks. The siege of Koulagina was instantly raised;

Page 34 and that signal, so fatal to the happiness of the women

and their children, once again resounded through the

tents--the signal for flight, and this time for a flight

more rapid than ever. About 150 miles ahead of their 5

present position, there arose a tract of hilly country,

forming a sort of margin to the vast, sealike expanse of

champaign savannas, steppes, and occasionally of sandy

deserts, which stretched away on each side of this margin

both eastwards and westwards. Pretty nearly in the 10

centre of this hilly range lay a narrow defile, through

which passed the nearest and the most practicable route

to the River Torgau (the farther bank of which river

offered the next great station of security for a general

halt). It was the more essential to gain this pass before 15

the Cossacks, inasmuch as not only would the delay in

forcing the pass give time to the Russian pursuing

columns for combining their attacks and for bringing

up their artillery, but also because (even if all enemies in

pursuit were thrown out of the question) it was held, by 20

those best acquainted with the difficult and obscure geography

of these pathless steppes--that the loss of this one

narrow strait amongst the hills would have the effect of

throwing them (as their only alternative in a case where

so wide a sweep of pasturage was required) upon a circuit 25

of at least 500 miles extra; besides that, after all, this

circuitous route would carry them to the Torgau at a point

unfitted for the passage of their heavy baggage. The

defile in the hills, therefore, it was resolved to gain; and

yet, unless they moved upon it with the velocity of light 30

cavalry, there was little chance but it would be found

preoccupied by the Cossacks. They, it is true, had

suffered greatly in the recent sanguinary action with the

defeated ouloss; but the excitement of victory, and the

intense sympathy with their unexampled triumph, had

Page 35 again swelled their ranks, and would probably act with

the force of a vortex to draw in their simple countrymen

from the Caspian. The question, therefore, of preoccupation

was reduced to a race. The Cossacks were marching 5

upon an oblique line not above 50 miles longer than

that which led to the same point from the Kalmuck

headquarters before Koulagina; and therefore, without

the most furious haste on the part of the Kalmucks, there

was not a chance for them, burdened and "trashed"[6] as 10

they were, to anticipate so agile a light cavalry as the

Cossacks in seizing this important pass.

Dreadful were the feelings of the poor women on hearing

this exposition of the case. For they easily understood

that too capital an interest (the summa rerum) 15

was now at stake to allow of any regard to minor interests,

or what would be considered such in their present

circumstances. The dreadful week already passed--their

inauguration in misery--was yet fresh in their

remembrance. The scars of suffering were impressed 20

not only upon their memories, but upon their very persons

and the persons of their children; and they knew that,

where no speed had much chance of meeting the cravings

of the chieftains, no test would be accepted, short of

absolute exhaustion, that as much had been accomplished 25

as could be accomplished. Weseloff, the Russian captive,

has recorded the silent wretchedness with which the

women and elder boys assisted in drawing the tent ropes.

On the 5th of January all had been animation and the

joyousness of indefinite expectation; now, on the contrary, 30

a brief but bitter experience had taught them to

Page 36 take an amended calculation of what it was that lay

before them.

One whole day and far into the succeeding night had

the renewed flight continued; the sufferings had been 5

greater than before, for the cold had been more intense,

and many perished out of the living creatures through

every class except only the camels--whose powers of

endurance seemed equally adapted to cold and heat.

The second morning, however, brought an alleviation to 10

the distress. Snow had begun to fall; and, though not

deep at present, it was easily foreseen that it soon would

be so, and that, as a halt would in that case become

unavoidable, no plan could be better than that of staying

where they were, especially as the same cause would 15

check the advance of the Cossacks. Here, then, was the

last interval of comfort which gleamed upon the unhappy

nation during their whole migration. For ten days the

snow continued to fall with little intermission. At the

end of that time, keen, bright, frosty weather succeeded; 20

the drifting had ceased. In three days the smooth expanse

became firm enough to support the treading of the

camels; and the flight was recommenced. But during

the halt much domestic comfort had been enjoyed; and,

for the last time, universal plenty. The cows and oxen 25

had perished in such vast numbers on the previous

marches that an order was now issued to turn what

remained to account by slaughtering the whole, and

salting whatever part should be found to exceed the

immediate consumption. This measure led to a scene 30

of general banqueting, and even of festivity amongst all

who were not incapacitated for joyous emotions by distress

of mind, by grief for the unhappy experience of the

few last days, and by anxiety for the too gloomy future.

Page 37 Seventy thousand persons of all ages had already perished,

exclusively of the many thousand allies who had been cut

down by the Cossack sabre. And the losses in reversion

were likely to be many more. For rumors began now to

arrive from all quarters, by the mounted couriers whom 5

the Khan had dispatched to the rear and to each flank as

well as in advance, that large masses of the imperial troops

were converging from all parts of Central Asia to the fords

of the River Torgau, as the most convenient point for

intercepting the flying tribes; and it was already well 10

known that a powerful division was close in their rear,

and was retarded only by the numerous artillery which

had been judged necessary to support their operations.

New motives were thus daily arising for quickening the

motions of the wretched Kalmucks, and for exhausting 15

those who were previously but too much exhausted.

It was not until the 2d day of February that the

Khan's advanced guard came in sight of Ouchim, the

defile among the hills of Moulgaldchares, in which they

anticipated so bloody an opposition from the Cossacks. 20

A pretty large body of these light cavalry had, in fact,

preoccupied the pass by some hours; but the Khan,

having two great advantages--namely, a strong body of

infantry, who had been conveyed by sections of five on

about two hundred camels, and some pieces of light 25

artillery which he had not yet been forced to abandon--soon

began to make a serious impression upon this

unsupported detachment; and they would probably at any

rate have retired; but, at the very moment when they

were making some dispositions in that view, Zebek-Dorchi 30

appeared upon their rear with a body of trained riflemen,

who had distinguished themselves in the war with Turkey.

These men had contrived to crawl unobserved over the

cliffs which skirted the ravine, availing themselves of the

dry beds of the summer torrents and other inequalities of

Page 38 the ground to conceal their movement. Disorder and

trepidation ensued instantly in the Cossack files; the

Khan, who had been waiting with the elite of his heavy

cavalry, charged furiously upon them. Total overthrow 5

followed to the Cossacks, and a slaughter such as in some

measure avenged the recent bloody extermination of their

allies, the ancient ouloss of Feka-Zechorr. The slight

horses of the Cossacks were unable to support the weight

of heavy Polish dragoons and a body of trained cameleers 10

(that is, cuirassiers mounted on camels); hardy they were,

but not strong, nor a match for their antagonists in weight;

and their extraordinary efforts through the last few days

to gain their present position had greatly diminished their

powers for effecting an escape. Very few, in fact, did 15

escape; and the bloody day of Ouchim became as memorable

among the Cossacks as that which, about twenty

days before, had signalized the complete annihilation of

the Feka-Zechorr.[7]

The road was now open to the River Igritch, and as yet 20

even far beyond it to the Torgau; but how long this

state of things would continue was every day more

doubtful. Certain intelligence was now received that a

Page 39 large Russian army, well appointed in every arm, was

advancing upon the Torgau under the command of

General Traubenberg. This officer was to be joined on

his route by ten thousand Bashkirs, and pretty nearly the 5

same amount of Kirghises--both hereditary enemies of

the Kalmucks--both exasperated to a point of madness

by the bloody trophies which Oubacha and Momotbacha

had, in late years, won from such of their compatriots as

served under the Sultan. The Czarina's yoke these wild 10

nations bore with submissive patience, but not the hands

by which it had been imposed; and accordingly, catching

with eagerness at the present occasion offered to their

vengeance, they sent an assurance to the Czarina of their

perfect obedience to her commands, and at the same time 15

a message significantly declaring in what spirit they meant

to execute them--viz. "that they would not trouble her

Majesty with prisoners."

Here then arose, as before with the Cossacks, a race

for the Kalmucks with the regular armies of Russia, and 20

concurrently with nations as fierce and semi-humanized

as themselves, besides that they were stung into threefold

activity by the furies of mortified pride and military

abasement, under the eyes of the Turkish Sultan. The

forces, and more especially the artillery, of Russia were 25

far too overwhelming to permit the thought of a regular

opposition in pitched battles, even with a less dilapidated

state of their resources than they could reasonably expect

at the period of their arrival on the Torgau. In their

speed lay their only hope--in strength of foot, as before, 30

and not in strength of arm. Onward, therefore, the Kalmucks

pressed, marking the lines of their wide-extending

march over the sad solitudes of the steppes by a never-ending

chain of corpses. The old and the young, the

sick man on his couch, the mother with her baby--all

Page 40 were left behind. Sights such as these, with the many

rueful aggravations incident to the helpless condition of

infancy--of disease and of female weakness abandoned

to the wolves amidst a howling wilderness--continued to 5

track their course through a space of full two thousand

miles; for so much at the least it was likely to prove,

including the circuits to which they were often compelled

by rivers or hostile tribes, from the point of starting on

the Wolga until they could reach their destined halting 10

ground on the east bank of the Torgau. For the first

seven weeks of this march their sufferings had been imbittered

by the excessive severity of the cold; and every

night--so long as wood was to be had for fires, either

from the lading of the camels, or from the desperate sacrifice 15

of their baggage wagons, or (as occasionally happened)

from the forests which skirted the banks of the many

rivers which crossed their path--no spectacle was more

frequent than that of a circle, composed of men, women,

and children, gathered by hundreds round a central fire, 20

all dead and stiff at the return of morning light. Myriads

were left behind from pure exhaustion, of whom none

had a chance, under the combined evils which beset

them, of surviving through the next twenty-four hours.

Frost, however, and snow at length ceased to persecute; 25

the vast extent of the march at length brought them into

more genial latitudes, and the unusual duration of the

march was gradually bringing them into more genial

seasons of the year. Two thousand miles had at least

been traversed; February, March, April, were gone; the 30

balmy month of May had opened; vernal sights and

sounds came from every side to comfort the heart-weary

travellers; and at last, in the latter end of May, crossing

the Torgau, they took up a position where they hoped to

find liberty to repose themselves for many weeks in comfort

Page 41 as well as in security, and to draw such supplies from

the fertile neighborhood as might restore their shattered

forces to a condition for executing, with less of wreck

and ruin, the large remainder of the journey. 5

Yes; it was true that two thousand miles of wandering

had been completed, but in a period of nearly five

months, and with the terrific sacrifice of at least two hundred

and fifty thousand souls, to say nothing of herds and

flocks past all reckoning. These had all perished: ox, 10

cow, horse, mule, ass, sheep, or goat, not one survived--only

the camels. These arid and adust creatures, looking

like the mummies of some antediluvian animals, without

the affections or sensibilities of flesh and blood--these

only still erected their speaking eyes to the eastern 15

heavens, and had to all appearance come out from this

long tempest of trial unscathed and hardly diminished.

The Khan, knowing how much he was individually

answerable for the misery which had been sustained,

must have wept tears even more bitter than those of 20

Xerxes when he threw his eyes over the myriads whom

he had assembled: for the tears of Xerxes were

unmingled with compunction. Whatever amends were in

his power, the Khan resolved to make, by sacrifices to

the general good of all personal regards; and, accordingly, 25

even at this point of their advance, he once more deliberately

brought under review the whole question of the

revolt. The question was formally debated before the

Council, whether, even at this point, they should untread

their steps, and, throwing themselves upon the Czarina's 30

mercy, return to their old allegiance. In that case,

Oubacha professed himself willing to become the scapegoat

for the general transgression. This, he argued, was

no fantastic scheme, but even easy of accomplishment;

for the unlimited and sacred power of the Khan, so well

Page 42 known to the Empress, made it absolutely iniquitous to

attribute any separate responsibility to the people. Upon

the Khan rested the guilt--upon the Khan would

descend the imperial vengeance. This proposal was 5

applauded for its generosity, but was energetically opposed

by Zebek-Dorchi. Were they to lose the whole

journey of two thousand miles? Was their misery to

perish without fruit? True it was that they had yet

reached only the halfway house; but, in that respect, 10

the motives were evenly balanced for retreat or for

advance. Either way they would have pretty nearly

the same distance to traverse, but with this difference--that,

forwards, their route lay through lands comparatively

fertile; backwards, through a blasted wilderness, 15

rich only in memorials of their sorrow, and hideous to

Kalmuck eyes by the trophies of their calamity. Besides,

though the Empress might accept an excuse for the past,

would she the less forbear to suspect for the future?

The Czarina's pardon they might obtain, but could they 20

ever hope to recover her confidence? Doubtless there

would now be a standing presumption against them, an

immortal ground of jealousy; and a jealous government

would be but another name for a harsh one. Finally,

whatever motives there ever had been for the revolt 25

surely remained unimpaired by anything that had occurred.

In reality the revolt was, after all, no revolt,

but (strictly speaking) a return to their old allegiance;

since, not above one hundred and fifty years ago (viz. in

the year 1616), their ancestors had revolted from the 30

Emperor of China. They had now tried both governments;

and for them China was the land of promise, and

Russia the house of bondage.

Spite, however, of all that Zebek could say or do, the

yearning of the people was strongly in behalf of the

Page 43 Khan's proposal; the pardon of their prince, they persuaded

themselves, would be readily conceded by the

Empress: and there is little doubt that they would at

this time have thrown themselves gladly upon the imperial 5

mercy; when suddenly all was defeated by the arrival of

two envoys from Traubenberg. This general had reached

the fortress of Orsk, after a very painful march, on the

12th of April; thence he set forward toward Oriembourg,

which he reached upon the 1st of June, having been 10

joined on his route at various times through the month

of May by the Kirghises and a corps of ten thousand

Bashkirs. From Oriembourg he sent forward his official

offers to the Khan, which were harsh and peremptory,

holding out no specific stipulations as to pardon or 15

impunity, an exacting unconditional submission as the

preliminary price of any cessation from military operations.

The personal character of Traubenberg, which

was anything but energetic, and the condition of his

army, disorganized in a great measure by the length and 20

severity of the march, made it probable that, with a little

time for negotiation, a more conciliatory tone would have

been assumed. But, unhappily for all parties, sinister

events occurred in the meantime such as effectually put

an end to every hope of the kind. 25

The two envoys sent forward by Traubenberg had

reported to this officer that a distance of only ten days'

march lay between his own headquarters and those of

the Khan. Upon this fact transpiring, the Kirghises, by

their prince Nourali, and the Bashkirs, entreated the 30

Russian general to advance without delay. Once having

placed his cannon in position, so as to command the

Kalmuck camp, the fate of the rebel Khan and his

people would be in his own hands, and they would

themselves form his advanced guard. Traubenberg, however

Page 44 (why has not been certainly explained), refused to

march; grounding his refusal upon the condition of his

army and their absolute need of refreshment. Long

and fierce was the altercation; but at length, seeing no 5

chance of prevailing, and dreading above all other events

the escape of their detested enemy, the ferocious Bashkirs

went off in a body by forced marches. In six days

they reached the Torgau, crossed by swimming their

horses, and fell upon the Kalmucks, who were dispersed 10

for many a league in search of food or provender for

their camels. The first day's action was one vast succession

of independent skirmishes, diffused over a field

of thirty to forty miles in extent; one party often breaking

up into three or four, and again (according to the 15

accidents of ground) three or four blending into one;

flight and pursuit, rescue and total overthrow, going on

simultaneously, under all varieties of form, in all

quarters of the plain. The Bashkirs had found themselves obliged,

by the scattered state of the Kalmucks, to split up into 20

innumerable sections; and thus, for some hours, it had

been impossible for the most practised eye to collect the

general tendency of the day's fortune. Both the Khan

and Zebek-Dorchi were at one moment made prisoners,

and more than once in imminent danger of being cut 25

down; but at length Zebek succeeded in rallying a

strong column of infantry, which, with the support of the

camel corps on each flank, compelled the Bashkirs to

retreat. Clouds, however, of these wild cavalry continued

to arrive through the next two days and nights, followed 30

or accompanied by the Kirghises. These being viewed

as the advanced parties of Traubenberg's army, the

Kalmuck chieftains saw no hope of safety but in flight;

and in this way it happened that a retreat, which had so

recently been brought to a pause, was resumed at the

Page 45 very moment when the unhappy fugitives were anticipating

a deep repose, without further molestation, the whole

summer through.

It seemed as though every variety of wretchedness 5

were predestined to the Kalmucks, and as if their sufferings

were incomplete unless they were rounded and

matured by all that the most dreadful agencies of summer's

heat could superadd to those of frost and winter.

To this sequel of their story we shall immediately revert, 10

after first noticing a little romantic episode which occurred

at this point between Oubacha and his unprincipled

cousin, Zebek-Dorchi.

There was, at the time of the Kalmuck flight from the

Wolga, a Russian gentleman of some rank at the court 15

of the Khan, whom, for political reasons, it was thought

necessary to carry along with them as a captive. For

some weeks his confinement had been very strict, and in

one or two instances cruel; but, as the increasing distance

was continually diminishing the chances of escape, 20

and perhaps, also, as the misery of the guards gradually

withdrew their attention from all minor interests to their

own personal sufferings, the vigilance of the custody

grew more and more relaxed; until at length, upon a

petition to the Khan, Mr. Weseloff was formally restored 25

to liberty; and it was understood that he might use his

liberty in whatever way he chose; even for returning

to Russia, if that should be his wish. Accordingly, he

was making active preparations for his journey to St.

Petersburg, when it occurred to Zebek-Dorchi that not 30

improbably, in some of the battles which were then anticipated

with Traubenberg, it might happen to them to

lose some prisoner of rank,--in which case the Russian

Weseloff would be a pledge in their hands for negotiating

an exchange. Upon this plea, to his own severe affliction,

Page 46 the Russian was detained until the further pleasure

of the Khan. The Khan's name, indeed, was used

through the whole affair, but, as it seemed, with so little

concurrence on his part, that, when Weseloff in a private 5

audience humbly remonstrated upon the injustice done

him and the cruelty of thus sporting with his feelings by

setting him at liberty, and, as it were, tempting him into

dreams of home and restored happiness only for the purpose

of blighting them, the good-natured prince disclaimed 10

all participation in the affair, and went so far in

proving his sincerity as even to give him permission to

effect his escape; and, as a ready means of commencing

it without raising suspicion, the Khan mentioned to Mr.

Weseloff that he had just then received a message from 15

the Hetman of the Bashkirs, soliciting a private interview

on the banks of the Torgau at a spot pointed out. That

interview was arranged for the coming night; and Mr.

Weseloff might go in the Khan's suite, which on either

side was not to exceed three persons. Weseloff was a 20

prudent man, acquainted with the world, and he read

treachery in the very outline of this scheme, as stated by

the Khan--treachery against the Khan's person. He

mused a little, and then communicated so much of his

suspicions to the Khan as might put him on his guard; 25

but, upon further consideration, he begged leave to

decline the honor of accompanying the Khan. The fact

was that three Kalmucks, who had strong motives for

returning to their countrymen on the west bank of the

Wolga, guessing the intentions of Weseloff, had offered 30

to join him in his escape. These men the Khan would

probably find himself obliged to countenance in their

project, so that it became a point of honor with Weseloff

to conceal their intentions, and therefore to accomplish

the evasion from the camp (of which the first steps only

Page 47 would be hazardous) without risking the notice of the

Khan.

The district in which they were now encamped

abounded through many hundred miles with wild horses 5

of a docile and beautiful breed. Each of the four fugitives

had caught from seven to ten of these spirited

creatures in the course of the last few days. This

raised no suspicion, for the rest of the Kalmucks had

been making the same sort of provision against the coming 10

toils of their remaining route to China. These horses

were secured by halters, and hidden about dusk in the

thickets which lined the margin of the river. To these

thickets, about ten at night, the four fugitives repaired.

They took a circuitous path, which drew them as little as 15

possible within danger of challenge from any of the outposts

or of the patrols which had been established on the

quarters where the Bashkirs lay; and in three-quarters of

an hour they reached the rendezvous. The moon had

now risen, the horses were unfastened; and they were 20

in the act of mounting, when the deep silence of the

woods was disturbed by a violent uproar and the clashing

of arms. Weseloff fancied that he heard the voice of

the Khan shouting for assistance. He remembered

the communication made by that prince in the morning; and, 25

requesting his companions to support him, he rode off in

the direction of the sound. A very short distance brought

him to an open glade in the wood, where he beheld four

men contending with a party of at least nine or ten.

Two of the four were dismounted at the very instant of 30

Weseloff's arrival. One of these he recognized almost

certainly as the Khan, who was fighting hand to hand,

but at great disadvantage, with two of the adverse horsemen.

Seeing that no time was to be lost, Weseloff fired

and brought down one of the two. His companions discharged

Page 48 their carabines at the same moment; and then all

rushed simultaneously into the little open area. The

thundering sound of about thirty horses, all rushing at

once into a narrow space, gave the impression that a 5

whole troop of cavalry was coming down upon the assailants,

who accordingly wheeled about and fled with one

impulse. Weseloff advanced to the dismounted cavalier,

who, as he expected, proved to be the Khan. The man

whom Weseloff had shot was lying dead; and both were 10

shocked, though Weseloff at least was not surprised, on

stooping down and scrutinizing his features, to recognize

a well-known confidential servant of Zebek-Dorchi.

Nothing was said by either party. The Khan rode off,

escorted by Weseloff and his companions; and for some 15

time a dead silence prevailed. The situation of Weseloff

was delicate and critical. To leave the Khan at this point

was probably to cancel their recent services; for he might

be again crossed on his path, and again attacked, by the

very party from whom he had just been delivered. Yet, on 20

the other hand, to return to the camp was to endanger the

chances of accomplishing the escape. The Khan, also, was

apparently revolving all this in his mind; for at length he

broke silence and said: "I comprehend your situation;

and, under other circumstances, I might feel it my duty to 25

detain your companions, but it would ill become me to do

so after the important service you have just rendered me.

Let us turn a little to the left. There, where you see the

watch fire, is an outpost. Attend me so far. I am then

safe. You may turn and pursue your enterprise; for 30

the circumstances under which you will appear as my

escort are sufficient to shield you from all suspicion for

the present. I regret having no better means at my disposal

for testifying my gratitude. But tell me before we

part--was it accident only which led you to my rescue?

Page 49 Or had you acquired any knowledge of the plot by which

I was decoyed into this snare?" Weseloff answered very

candidly that mere accident had brought him to the spot

at which he heard the uproar; but that, having heard it, 5

and connecting it with the Khan's communication of the

morning, he had then designedly gone after the sound in

a way which he certainly should not have done, at so

critical a moment, unless in the expectation of finding

the Khan assaulted by assassins. A few minutes after 10

they reached the outpost at which it became safe to

leave the Tartar chieftain; and immediately the four

fugitives commenced a flight which is, perhaps, without a

parallel in the annals of travelling. Each of them led

six or seven horses besides the one he rode; and by 15

shifting from one to the other (like the ancient Desultors

of the Roman circus), so as never to burden the same

horse for more than half an hour at a time, they continued

to advance at the rate of 200 miles in the twenty-four

hours for three days consecutively. After that time, 20

considering themselves beyond pursuit, they proceeded

less rapidly; though still with a velocity which staggered

the belief of Weseloff's friends in after years. He was,

however, a man of high principle, and always adhered

firmly to the details of his printed report. One of the 25

circumstances there stated is that they continued to pursue

the route by which the Kalmucks had fled, never for

an instant finding any difficulty in tracing it by the skeletons

and other memorials of their calamities. In particular,

he mentions vast heaps of money as part of the 30

valuable property which it had been necessary to sacrifice.

These heaps were found lying still untouched in

the deserts. From these Weseloff and his companions

took as much as they could conveniently carry; and this

it was, with the price of their beautiful horses, which they

Page 50 afterward sold at one of the Russian military settlements

for about PS15 apiece, which eventually enabled them to

pursue their journey in Russia. This journey, as regarded

Weseloff in particular, was closed by a tragical catastrophe. 5

He was at that time young and the only child

of a doting mother. Her affliction under the violent abduction

of her son had been excessive, and probably had

undermined her constitution. Still she had supported it.

Weseloff, giving way to the natural impulses of his filial 10

affection, had imprudently posted through Russia to his

mother's house without warning of his approach. He

rushed precipitately into her presence; and she, who had

stood the shocks of sorrow, was found unequal to the

shock of joy too sudden and too acute. She died upon 15

the spot.

We now revert to the final scenes of the Kalmuck

flight. These it would be useless to pursue circumstantially

through the whole two thousand miles of suffering

which remained; for the character of that suffering was 20

even more monotonous than on the former half of the

flight, but also more severe. Its main elements were

excessive heat, with the accompaniments of famine and

thirst, but aggravated at every step by the murderous

attacks of their cruel enemies, the Bashkirs and the 25

Kirghises.

These people, "more fell than anguish, hunger, or

the sea," stuck to the unhappy Kalmucks like a swarm of

enraged hornets. And very often, while they were

attacking them in the rear, their advanced parties and 30

flanks were attacked with almost equal fury by the people

of the country which they were traversing; and with good

reason, since the law of self-preservation had now obliged

the fugitive Tartars to plunder provisions and to forage

Page 51 wherever they passed. In this respect their condition

was a constant oscillation of wretchedness; for sometimes,

pressed by grinding famine, they took a circuit of

perhaps a hundred miles, in order to strike into a land 5

rich in the comforts of life; but in such a land they were

sure to find a crowded population, of which every arm

was raised in unrelenting hostility, with all the advantages

of local knowledge, and with constant preoccupation of

all the defensible positions, mountain passes, or bridges. 10

Sometimes, again, wearied out with this mode of suffering,

they took a circuit of perhaps a hundred miles, in

order to strike into a land with few or no inhabitants.

But in such a land they were sure to meet absolute

starvation. Then, again, whether with or without this 15

plague of starvation, whether with or without this plague

of hostility in front, whatever might be the "fierce varieties"

of their misery in this respect, no rest ever came

to their unhappy rear; post equitem sedet atra cura: it

was a torment like the undying worm of conscience. 20

And, upon the whole, it presented a spectacle altogether

unprecedented in the history of mankind. Private and

personal malignity is not unfrequently immortal; but rare

indeed is it to find the same pertinacity of malice in

a nation. And what imbittered the interest was that the 25

malice was reciprocal. Thus far the parties met upon

equal terms; but that equality only sharpened the sense

of their dire inequality as to other circumstances. The

Bashkirs were ready to fight "from morn till dewy eve."

The Kalmucks, on the contrary, were always obliged to 30

run. Was it from their enemies as creatures whom they

feared? No; but towards their friends--towards that

final haven of China--as what was hourly implored by

the prayers of their wives and the tears of their children.

But, though they fled unwillingly, too often they fled in

Page 52 vain--being unwillingly recalled. There lay the torment.

Every day the Bashkirs fell upon them; every

day the same unprofitable battle was renewed; as a

matter of course, the Kalmucks recalled part of their 5

advanced guard to fight them; every day the battle raged

for hours, and uniformly with the same result. For, no

sooner did the Bashkirs find themselves too heavily

pressed, and that the Kalmuck march had been retarded

by some hours, than they retired into the boundless 10

deserts, where all pursuit was hopeless. But if the Kalmucks

resolved to press forwards, regardless of their enemies--in

that case their attacks became so fierce and

overwhelming that the general safety seemed likely to be

brought into question; nor could any effectual remedy 15

be applied to the case, even for each separate day, except

by a most embarrassing halt and by countermarches

that, to men in their circumstances, were almost worse

than death. It will not be surprising that the irritation

of such a systematic persecution, superadded to a previous, 20

and hereditary hatred, and accompanied by the

stinging consciousness of utter impotence as regarded all

effectual vengeance, should gradually have inflamed the

Kalmuck animosity into the wildest expression of downright

madness and frenzy. Indeed, long before the 25

frontiers of China were approached, the hostility of both

sides had assumed the appearance much more of a

warfare amongst wild beasts than amongst creatures

acknowledging the restraints of reason or the claims of a

common nature. The spectacle became too atrocious; it 30

was that of a host of lunatics pursued by a host of fiends.

On a fine morning in early autumn of the year 1771,

Kien Long, the Emperor of China, was pursuing his

amusements in a wild frontier district lying on the outside

Page 53 of the Great Wall. For many hundred square

leagues the country was desolate of inhabitants, but rich

in woods of ancient growth, and overrun with game of

every description. In a central spot of this solitary 5

region the Emperor had built a gorgeous hunting lodge,

to which he resorted annually for recreation and relief

from the cares of government. Led onwards in pursuit of

game, he had rambled to a distance of 200 miles or

more from his lodge, followed at a little distance by a 10

sufficient military escort, and every night pitching his

tent in a different situation, until at length he had arrived

on the very margin of the vast central deserts of Asia.[8]

Here he was standing by accident, at an opening of his

pavilion, enjoying the morning sunshine, when suddenly 15

to the westward there arose a vast, cloudy vapor, which

by degrees expanded, mounted, and seemed to be slowly

diffusing itself over the whole face of the heavens. By

and by this vast sheet of mist began to thicken toward

the horizon and to roll forward in billowy volumes. The 20

Emperor's suite assembled from all quarters; the silver

trumpets were sounded in the rear; and from all the

glades and forest avenues began to trot forwards towards

the pavilion the yagers--half cavalry, half huntsmen--who

composed the imperial escort. Conjecture was on 25

the stretch to divine the cause of this phenomenon; and

the interest continually increased in proportion as simple

curiosity gradually deepened into the anxiety of uncertain

danger. At first it had been imagined that some vast

troops of deer or other wild animals of the chase had

Page 54 been disturbed in their forest haunts by the Emperor's

movements, or possibly by wild beasts prowling for prey,

and might be fetching a compass by way of re-entering

the forest grounds at some remoter points, secure from 5

molestation. But this conjecture was dissipated by the

slow increase of the cloud and the steadiness of its

motion. In the course of two hours the vast phenomenon

had advanced to a point which was judged to be

within five miles of the spectators, though all calculations 10

of distance were difficult, and often fallacious, when

applied to the endless expanses of the Tartar deserts.

Through the next hour, during which the gentle morning

breeze had a little freshened, the dusty vapor had developed

itself far and wide into the appearance of huge 15

aerial draperies, hanging in mighty volumes from the sky

to the earth; and at particular points, where the eddies

of the breeze acted upon the pendulous skirts of these

aerial curtains, rents were perceived, sometimes taking the

form of regular arches, portals, and windows, through 20

which began dimly to gleam the heads of camels "indorsed"[9]

with human beings, and at intervals the moving

of men and horses in tumultuous array, and then through

other openings, or vistas, at far-distant points, the flashing

of polished arms. But sometimes, as the wind slackened 25

or died away, all those openings, of whatever form,

in the cloudy pall, would slowly close, and for a time the

whole pageant was shut up from view; although the

growing din, the clamors, the shrieks, and groans ascending

from infuriated myriads, reported, in a language not 30

to be misunderstood, what was going on behind the

cloudy screen.

It was, in fact, the Kalmuck host, now in the last Page 55 extremities of their exhaustion, and very fast approaching

to that final stage of privation and killing misery beyond

which few or none could have lived, but also, happily for

themselves, fast approaching (in a literal sense) that final 5

stage of their long pilgrimage at which they would meet

hospitality on a scale of royal magnificence and full protection

from their enemies. These enemies, however, as

yet, still were hanging on their rear as fiercely as ever,

though this day was destined to be the last of their hideous 10

persecution. The Khan had, in fact, sent forward

couriers with all the requisite statements and petitions,

addressed to the Emperor of China. These had been

duly received, and preparations made in consequence to

welcome the Kalmucks with the most paternal benevolence. 15

But as these couriers had been dispatched from

the Torgau at the moment of arrival thither, and before

the advance of Traubenberg had made it necessary

for the Khan to order a hasty renewal of the flight, the

Emperor had not looked for their arrival on his frontiers 20

until full three months after the present time. The Khan

had, indeed, expressly notified his intention to pass the

summer heats on the banks of the Torgau, and to recommence

his retreat about the beginning of September. The

subsequent change of plan being unknown to Kien Long, 25

left him for some time in doubt as to the true interpretation

to be put upon this mighty apparition in the desert:

but at length the savage clamors of hostile fury and

clangor of weapons unveiled to the Emperor the true

nature of those unexpected calamities which had so prematurely 30

precipitated the Kalmuck measure.

Apprehending the real state of affairs, the Emperor

instantly perceived that the first act of his fatherly care

for these erring children (as he esteemed them), now

returning to their ancient obedience, must be--to deliver

Page 56 them from their pursuers. And this was less difficult

than might have been supposed. Not many miles in the

rear was a body of well-appointed cavalry, with a strong

detachment of artillery, who always attended the Emperor's 5

motions. These were hastily summoned. Meantime

it occurred to the train of courtiers that some danger

might arise to the Emperor's person from the proximity

of a lawless enemy, and accordingly he was induced to

retire a little to the rear. It soon appeared, however, to 10

those who watched the vapory shroud in the desert, that

its motion was not such as would argue the direction of

the march to be exactly upon the pavilion, but rather in

a diagonal line, making an angle of full 45 degrees with

that line in which the imperial cortege had been standing, 15

and therefore with a distance continually increasing.

Those who knew the country judged that the Kalmucks

were making for a large fresh-water lake about seven or

eight miles distant. They were right; and to that point

the imperial cavalry was ordered up; and it was precisely 20

in that spot, and about three hours after, and at noonday

on the 8th of September, that the great Exodus of the

Kalmuck Tartars was brought to a final close, and with a

scene of such memorable and hellish fury as formed an

appropriate winding up to an expedition in all its parts 25

and details so awfully disastrous. The Emperor was not

personally present, or at least he saw whatever he did see

from too great a distance to discriminate its individual

features; but he records in his written memorial the

report made to him of this scene by some of his own 30

officers.

The Lake of Tengis, near the frightful Desert of Kobi,

lay in a hollow amongst hills of a moderate height, ranging

generally from two to three thousand feet high. About

eleven o'clock in the forenoon, the Chinese cavalry

Page 57 reached the summit of a road which led through a cradle-like

dip in the mountains right down upon the margin of

the lake. From this pass, elevated about two thousand

feet above the level of the water, they continued to 5

descend, by a very winding and difficult road, for an hour

and a half; and during the whole of this descent they were

compelled to be inactive spectators of the fiendish spectacle

below. The Kalmucks, reduced by this time from

about six hundred thousand souls to two hundred and 10

sixty thousand, and after enduring for two months and a

half the miseries we have previously described--outrageous

heat, famine, and the destroying scimiter of the

Kirghises and the Bashkirs--had for the last ten days

been traversing a hideous desert, where no vestiges were 15

seen of vegetation, and no drop of water could be found.

Camels and men were already so overladen that it was a

mere impossibility that they should carry a tolerable sufficiency

for the passage of this frightful wilderness. On

the eighth day the wretched daily allowance, which had 20

been continually diminishing, failed entirely; and thus, for

two days of insupportable fatigue, the horrors of thirst

had been carried to the fiercest extremity. Upon this

last morning, at the sight of the hills and the forest

scenery, which announced to those who acted as guides 25

the neighborhood of the Lake of Tengis, all the people

rushed along with maddening eagerness to the anticipated

solace. The day grew hotter and hotter, the people more

and more exhausted; and gradually, in the general rush

forward to the lake, all discipline and command were lost--all 30

attempts to preserve a rear guard were neglected--the

wild Bashkirs rode on amongst the encumbered people

and slaughtered them by wholesale, and almost

without resistance. Screams and tumultuous shouts proclaimed

the progress of the massacre; but none heeded--none

Page 58 halted; all alike, pauper or noble, continued to rush

on with maniacal haste to the waters--all with faces

blackened by the heat preying upon the liver and with

tongue drooping from the mouth. The cruel Bashkir was 5

affected by the same misery, and manifested the same

symptoms of his misery, as the wretched Kalmuck; the

murderer was oftentimes in the same frantic misery as his

murdered victim--many, indeed (an ordinary effect of

thirst), in both nations had become lunatic, and in this 10

state, whilst mere multitude and condensation of bodies

alone opposed any check to the destroying scimiter and

the trampling hoof, the lake was reached; and to that

the whole vast body of enemies rushed, and together

continued to rush, forgetful of all things at that moment 15

but of one almighty instinct. This absorption of the

thoughts in one maddening appetite lasted for a single

half hour; but in the next arose the final scene of parting

vengeance. Far and wide the waters of the solitary lake

were instantly dyed red with blood and gore: here rode a 20

party of savage Bashkirs, hewing off heads as fast as the

swaths fall before the mower's scythe; there stood unarmed

Kalmucks in a death grapple with their detested foes,

both up to the middle in water, and oftentimes both sinking

together below the surface, from weakness or from 25

struggles, and perishing in each other's arms. Did the

Bashkirs at any point collect into a cluster for the sake

of giving impetus to the assault? Thither were the camels

driven in fiercely by those who rode them, generally

women or boys; and even these quiet creatures were 30

forced into a share in this carnival of murder by trampling

down as many as they could strike prostrate with the

lash of their fore-legs. Every moment the water grew

more polluted; and yet every moment fresh myriads came

up to the lake and rushed in, not able to resist their

Page 59 frantic thirst, and swallowing large draughts of water,

visibly contaminated with the blood of their slaughtered

compatriots. Wheresoever the lake was shallow enough

to allow of men raising their heads above the water, there, 5

for scores of acres, were to be seen all forms of ghastly

fear, of agonizing struggle, of spasm, of death, and the

fear of death--revenge, and the lunacy of revenge--until

the neutral spectators, of whom there were not a

few, now descending the eastern side of the lake, at length 10

averted their eyes in horror. This horror, which seemed

incapable of further addition, was, however, increased

by an unexpected incident. The Bashkirs, beginning to

perceive here and there the approach of the Chinese

cavalry, felt it prudent--wheresoever they were sufficiently 15

at leisure from the passions of the murderous

scene--to gather into bodies. This was noticed by the

governor of a small Chinese fort built upon an eminence

above the lake; and immediately he threw in a broadside,

which spread havoc among the Bashkir tribe. As often 20

as the Bashkirs collected into globes and turms as their

only means of meeting the long line of descending

Chinese cavalry, so often did the Chinese governor of the

fort pour in his exterminating broadside; until at length

the lake, at its lower end, became one vast seething 25

caldron of human bloodshed and carnage. The Chinese

cavalry had reached the foot of the hills; the Bashkirs,

attentive to their movements, had formed; skirmishes had

been fought; and, with a quick sense that the contest was

henceforward rapidly becoming hopeless, the Bashkirs 30

and Kirghises began to retire. The pursuit was not as

vigorous as the Kalmuck hatred would have desired.

But, at the same time, the very gloomiest hatred could

not but find, in their own dreadful experience of the

Asiatic deserts, and in the certainty that these wretched

Page 60 Bashkirs had to repeat that same experience a second

time, for thousands of miles, as the price exacted by a

retributary Providence for their vindictive cruelty--not

the very gloomiest of the Kalmucks, or the least reflecting, 5

but found in all this a retaliatory chastisement more

complete and absolute than any which their swords and

lances could have obtained or human vengeance could

have devised.

Here ends the tale of the Kalmuck wanderings in the 10

Desert; for any subsequent marches which awaited them

were neither long nor painful. Every possible alleviation

and refreshment for their exhausted bodies had been

already provided by Kien Long with the most princely

munificence; and lands of great fertility were immediately 15

assigned to them in ample extent along the River Ily, not

very far from the point at which they had first emerged

from the wilderness of Kobi. But the beneficent attention

of the Chinese Emperor may be best stated in his own

words, as translated into French by one of the Jesuit 20

missionaries: "La nation des Torgotes (savoir les Kalmuques)

arriva a Ily, toute delabree, n'ayant ni de quoi vivre, ni de quoi

se vetir. Je l'avais prevu; et j'avais

ordonne de faire en tout genre les provisions necessaires

pour pouvoir les secourir promptement: c'est ce qui a ete 25

execute. On a fait la division des terres: et on a assigne

a chaque famille une portion suffisante pour pouvoir servir

a son entretien, soit en la cultivant, soit en y nourissant

des bestiaux. On a donne a chaque particulier des etoffes

pour l'habiller, des grains pour se nourrir pendant l'espace 30

d'une annee, des ustensiles pour le menage et d'autres

choses necessaires: et outre cela plusieurs onces d'argent,

pour se pourvoir de ce qu'on aurait pu oublier. On a

designe des lieux particuliers, fertiles en paturages; et on

Page 61 leur a donne des boeufs, moutons, etc., pour qu'ils pussent

dans la suite travailler par eux-memes a leur entretien et

a leur bien-etre."

These are the words of the Emperor himself, speaking 5

in his own person of his own paternal cares; but another

Chinese, treating the same subject, records the munificence

of this prince in terms which proclaim still more

forcibly the disinterested generosity which prompted, and

the delicate considerateness which conducted, this extensive 10

bounty. He has been speaking of the Kalmucks,

and he goes on thus:--"Lorsqu'ils arriverent sur nos

frontieres (au nombre de plusieurs centaines de mille,

quoique la fatigue extreme, la faim, la soif, et toutes les

autres incommodites inseparables d'une tres-longue et 15

tres-penible route en eussent fait perir presque autant),

ils etaient reduits a la derniere misere; ils manquaient

de tout. Il" (viz. l'empereur, Kien Long) "leur fit preparer

des logemens conformes a leur maniere de vivre;

il leur fit distribuer des alimens et des habits; il leur fit 20

donner des boeufs, des moutons, et des ustensiles, pour

les mettre en etat de former des troupeaux et de cultiver

la terre, et tout cela a ses propres frais, qui se sont

montes a des sommes immenses, sans compter l'argent

qu'il a donne a chaque chef-de-famille, pour pouvoir a la 25

subsistance de sa femme et de ses enfans."

Thus, after their memorable year of misery, the Kalmucks

were replaced in territorial possessions, and in

comfort equal, perhaps, or even superior, to that which

they had enjoyed in Russia, and with superior political 30

advantages. But, if equal or superior, their condition

was no longer the same; if not in degree, their social

prosperity had altered in quality; for, instead of being a

purely pastoral and vagrant people, they were now in

circumstances which obliged them to become essentially

Page 62 dependent upon agriculture; and thus far raised in social

rank that, by the natural course of their habits and the

necessities of life, they were effectually reclaimed from

roving and from the savage customs connected with a half 5

nomadic life. They gained also in political privileges,

chiefly through the immunity from military service which

their new relations enabled them to obtain. These were

circumstances of advantage and gain. But one great

disadvantage there was, amply to overbalance all other 10

possible gain: the chances were lost, or were removed to

an incalculable distance, for their conversion to Christianity,

without which in these times there is no absolute

advance possible on the path of true civilization.

One word remains to be said upon the personal interests 15

concerned in this great drama. The catastrophe in this

respect was remarkable and complete. Oubacha, with all

his goodness and incapacity of suspecting, had, since the

mysterious affair on the banks of the Torgau, felt his

mind alienated from his cousin; he revolted from the man 20

that would have murdered him; and he had displayed his

caution so visibly as to provoke a reaction in the bearing

of Zebek-Dorchi and a displeasure which all his dissimulation

could not hide. This had produced a feud, which,

by keeping them aloof, had probably saved the life of 25

Oubacha; for the friendship of Zebek-Dorchi was more

fatal than his open enmity. After the settlement on the

Ily this feud continued to advance, until it came under

the notice of the Emperor, on occasion of a visit which

all the Tartar chieftains made to his Majesty at his hunting 30

lodge in 1772. The Emperor informed himself accurately

of all the particulars connected with the transaction--of

all the rights and claims put forward--and of the

way in which they would severally affect the interests of

the Kalmuck people. The consequence was that he

Page 63 adopted the cause of Oubacha, and repressed the pretensions

of Zebek-Dorchi, who, on his part, so deeply

resented this discountenance to his ambitious projects

that, in conjunction with other chiefs, he had the presumption 5

even to weave nets of treason against the Emperor

himself. Plots were laid, were detected, were baffled;

counter-plots were constructed upon the same basis,

and with the benefit of the opportunities thus offered.

Finally, Zebek-Dorchi was invited to the imperial lodge, 10

together with all his accomplices; and, under the skilful

management of the Chinese nobles in the Emperor's

establishment, the murderous artifices of these Tartar

chieftains were made to recoil upon themselves, and the

whole of them perished by assassination at a great imperial 15

banquet. For the Chinese morality is exactly of

that kind which approves in everything the lex talionis:

"... Lex nec justior ulla est [as they think]

Quam necis artifices arte perire sua."

So perished Zebek-Dorchi, the author and originator of 20

the great Tartar Exodus. Oubacha, meantime, and his

people were gradually recovering from the effects of their

misery, and repairing their losses. Peace and prosperity,

under the gentle rule of a fatherly lord paramount,

redawned upon the tribes: their household lares, after so 25

harsh a translation to distant climates, found again a

happy reinstatement in what had, in fact, been their

primitive abodes: they found themselves settled in quiet

sylvan scenes, rich in all the luxuries of life, and endowed

with the perfect loveliness of Arcadian beauty. But from 30

the hills of this favored land, and even from the level

grounds as they approach its western border, they still

look out upon that fearful wilderness which once beheld Page 64

a nation in agony--the utter extirpation of nearly half a

million from amongst its numbers, and for the remainder

a storm of misery so fierce that in the end (as happened

also at Athens during the Peloponnesian war from a different 5

form of misery) very many lost their memory; all

records of their past life were wiped out as with a sponge

--utterly erased and cancelled: and many others lost

their reason; some in a gentle form of pensive melancholy,

some in a more restless form of feverish delirium 10

and nervous agitation, and others in the fixed forms of

tempestuous mania, raving frenzy, or moping idiocy.

Two great commemorative monuments arose in after

years to mark the depth and permanence of the awe--

the sacred and reverential grief, with which all persons

looked back upon the dread calamities attached to the 15

year of the tiger--all who had either personally shared

in those calamities and had themselves drunk from that

cup of sorrow, or who had effectually been made witnesses

to their results and associated with their relief: two great

monuments; one embodied in the religious solemnity, 20

enjoined by the Dalai-Lama, called in the Tartar language

a Romanang--that is, a national commemoration, with

music the most rich and solemn, of all the souls who

departed to the rest of Paradise from the afflictions of the

Desert (this took place about six years after the arrival 25

in China); secondly, another, more durable, and more

commensurate to the scale of the calamity and to the

grandeur of this national Exodus, in the mighty columns

of granite and brass erected by the Emperor, Kien Long,

near the banks of the Ily. These columns stand upon 30

the very margin of the steppes, and they bear a short but

emphatic inscription[10] to the following effect:--

Page 65

By the Will of God,

Here, upon the Brink of these Deserts,

Which from this point begin and stretch away,

Pathless, treeless, waterless,

For thousands of miles, and along the margins of many mighty 5

Nations,

Rested from their labors and from great afflictions

Under the shadow of the Chinese Wall,

And by the favor of KIEN LONG, God's Lieutenant upon Earth,

The ancient Children of the Wilderness--the Torgote Tartars-- 10

Flying before the wrath of the Grecian Czar,

Wandering Sheep who had strayed away from the Celestial Empire

in the year 1616,

But are now mercifully gathered again, after infinite sorrow,

Into the fold of their forgiving Shepherd. 15

Hallowed be the spot

and

Hallowed be the day--September 8, 1771!

Amen.

FOOTNOTES:

[5]Singular it is, and not generally known, that Grecian women accompanied the anabasis of the younger Cyrus and the subsequent retreat of the Ten Thousand. Xenophon affirms that there were "many" women in the Greek army--pollai esan etairai en to strateumati; and in a late stage of that trying expedition it is evident that women were amongst the survivors.

[6] "Trashed." This is an expressive word used by Beaumont and Fletcher in their "Bonduca," etc., to describe the case of a person retarded or embarrassed in flight, or in pursuit, by some encumbrance, whether thing or person, too valuable to be left behind.

[7] There was another ouloss equally strong with that of Feka-Zechorr, viz. that of Erketunn under the government of Assarcho and Machi, whom some obligations of treaty or other hidden motives drew into the general conspiracy of revolt. But fortunately the two chieftains found means to assure the Governor of Astrachan, on the first outbreak of the insurrection, that their real wishes were for maintaining the old connection with Russia. The Cossacks, therefore, to whom the pursuit was intrusted, had instructions to act cautiously and according to circumstances on coming up with them. The result was, through the prudent management of Assarcho, that the clan, without compromising their pride or independence, made such moderate submissions as satisfied the Cossacks; and eventually both chiefs and people received from the Czarina the rewards and honors of exemplary fidelity.

[8] All the circumstances are learned from a long state paper on the subject of this Kalmuck migration drawn up in the Chinese language by the Emperor himself. Parts of this paper have been translated by the Jesuit missionaries. The Emperor states the whole motives of his conduct and the chief incidents at great length.

[9] Camels "indorsed" "and elephants indorsed with towers."--MILTON in Paradise Regained.

[10] This inscription has been slightly altered in one or two phrases, and particularly in adapting to the Christian era the Emperor's expressions for the year of the original Exodus from China and the retrogressive Exodus from Russia. With respect to the designation adopted for the Russian Emperor, either it is built upon some confusion between him and the Byzantine Caesars, as though the former, being of the same religion with the latter (and occupying in part the same longitudes, though in different latitudes), might be considered as his modern successor; or else it refers simply to the Greek form of Christianity professed by the Russian Emperor and Church.

Page 66

ROUTE OF THE TARTARS IN THEIR FLIGHT.

Page 67

NOTES.

THE ORIGINAL SOURCES.

In Professor Masson's edition of De Quincey, Vol. VII, p. 8, is the following discussion of the author's original sources:

"A word or two on De Quincey's authorities for his splendid sketch called The Revolt of the Tartars:--One authority was a famous Chinese state-paper purporting to have been composed by the Chinese Emperor, Kien Long himself (1735--1796), of which a French translation, with the title Monument de la Transmigration des Tourgouths des Bords de la Mer Caspienne dans l'Empire de la Chine, had been published in 1776 by the French Jesuit missionaries of Pekin, in the first volume of their great collection of Memoires concernant les Chinois. The account there given of so remarkable an event of recent Asiatic history as the migration from Russia to China of a whole population of Tartars had so much interested Gibbon that he refers to it in that chapter of his great work in which he describes the ancient Scythians. De Quincey had fastened on the same document as supplying him with an admirable theme for literary treatment. Explaining this some time ago, while editing his Revolt of the Tartars for a set of Selections from his Writings, I had to add that there was much in the paper which he could not have derived from that original, and that, therefore, unless he invented a great deal, he must have had other authorities at hand. I failed at the time to discover what these other authorities were,--De Quincey having had a habit of secretiveness in such matters; but since then an incidental reference of his own, in his Homer and the Homeridae,[11] has given me the clue. The author from whom he chiefly drew such of his materials as were not supplied by the French edition of Kien Long's narrative, was, it appears from that reference, the German traveller, Benjamin Bergmann, whose Nomadische Streifereien unter den Kalmuken in den Jahren 1802 und 1803 came forth from a Riga press, in four parts or volumes, in 1804-1805. The book consists of a series of letters Page 68written by Bergmann from different places during his residence among the Tartars, with interjected essays or dissertations of an independent kind on subjects relating to the Tartars,--one of these occupying 106 pages, and entitled Versuch zur Geschichte der Kalmukenflucht von der Wolga ("Essay on the History of the Flight of the Kalmucks from the Volga"). A French translation of the Letters, with this particular Essay included, appeared in 1825 under the title Voyage de Benjamin Bergmann chez les Kalmuks: Traduit de l'Allemand par M. Moris, Membre de la Societe Asiatique. Both works are now very scarce; but having seen copies of both (the only copies, I think, in Edinburgh, and possibly the very copies which De Quincey used), I have no doubt left that it was Bergmann's Essay of 1804 that supplied De Quincey with the facts, names, and hints he needed for filling up that outline-sketch of the history of the Tartar Transmigration of 1771 which was already accessible for him in the Narrative of the Chinese Emperor, Kien Long, and in other Chinese State Papers, as these had been published in translation, in 1776, by the French Jesuit missionaries. At the same time, no doubt is left that he passed the composite material freely and boldly through his own imagination, on the principle that here was a theme of such unusual literary capabilities that it was a pity it should be left in the pages of ordinary historiographic summary or record, inasmuch as it would be most effectively treated, even for the purpose of real history, if thrown into the form of an epic or romance. Accordingly he takes liberties with his authorities, deviating from them now and then, and even once or twice introducing incidents not reconcilable with either of them, if not irreconcilable also with historical and geographical possibility. Hence one may doubt sometimes whether what one is reading is to be regarded as history or as invention. On this point I can but repeat words I have already used: as it is, we are bound to be thankful. In quest of a literary theme, De Quincey was arrested somehow by that extraordinary transmigration of a Kalmuck horde across the face of Asia in 1771, which had also struck Gibbon; he inserted his hands into the vague chaos of Asiatic inconceivability enshrouding the transaction; and he tore out the connected and tolerably conceivable story which we now read. There is no such vivid version of any such historical episode in all Gibbon, and possibly nothing truer essentially, after all, to the substance of the facts as they actually happened."

Professor Masson's Appended Editorial Note on the Chinese Accounts of the Migration (Vol. VII, pp. 422-6):

"As has been mentioned in the Preface, these appeared, in translated form, in 1776, in Vol. I of the great collection of Memoires concernant Page 69les Chinois, published at Paris by the enterprise of the French Jesuit missionaries at Pekin. The most important of them, under the title Monument de la Transmigration des Tourgouths des Bords de la Mer Caspienne dans l'Empire de la Chine, occupies twenty-seven pages of the volume, and purports to be a translation of a Chinese document drawn up by the Emperor Kien Long himself. This Emperor, described by the missionaries as 'the best-lettered man in his Empire,' had special reasons for so commemorating, as one of the most interesting events of his reign, the sudden self-transference in 1771 of so large a Tartar horde from the Russian allegiance to his own. Much of the previous part of his reign had been spent in that work of conquering and consolidating the Tartar appendages of his Empire which had been begun by his celebrated grandfather, the Emperor Kang Hi (1661-1721); and it so chanced that the particular Tartar horde which now, in 1771, had marched all the way from the shores of the Caspian to appeal to him for protection and for annexation to the Chinese Empire were but the posterity of a horde who had formerly belonged to that Empire, but had detached themselves from it, in the reign of Kang Hi, by a contrary march westward to annex themselves to the Russian dominions. The event of 1771, therefore, was gratifying to Kien Long as completing his independent exertions among the Tartars on the fringes of China by the voluntary re-settlement within those fringes, and return to the Chinese allegiance, of a whole Tartar population which had been astray, and under unfit and alien rule, for several generations. With this explanation the following sentences from Kien Long's Memoir, containing all its historical substance, will be fully intelligible:

"'All those who at present compose the nation of the Torgouths, unaffrighted by the dangers of a long and painful march, and full of the single desire of procuring themselves for the future a better mode of life and a more happy lot, have abandoned the parts which they inhabited far beyond our frontiers, have traversed with a courage proof against all difficulties a space of more than ten thousand lys, and are come to range themselves in the number of my subjects. Their submission, in my view of it, is not a submission to which they have been inspired by fear, but is a voluntary and free submission, if ever there was one.... The Torgouths are one of the branches of the Eleuths. Four different branches of people formed at one time the whole nation of the Tchong-kar. It would be difficult to explain their common origin, respecting which indeed there is no very certain knowledge. These four branches separated from each other, so that each became a nation apart. That of the Eleuths, the chief of them all, gradually Page 70subdued the others, and continued till the time of Kang Hi to exercise this usurped pre-eminence over them. Tse-ouang-raptan then reigned over the Eleuths, and Ayouki over the Torgouths. These two chiefs, being on bad terms with each other, had their mutual contests; of which Ayouki, who was the weaker, feared that in the end he would be the unhappy victim. He formed the project of withdrawing himself forever from the domination of the Eleuths. He took secret measures for securing the flight which he meditated, and sought safety, with all his people, in the territories which are under the dominion of the Russians. These permitted them to establish themselves in the country of Etchil [the country between the Volga and the Jaik, a little to the north of the Caspian Sea].... Oubache, the present Khan of the Torgouths, is the youngest grandson of Ayouki. The Russians never ceasing to require him to furnish soldiers for incorporation into their armies, and having at last carried off his own son to serve them as a hostage, and being besides of a religion different from his, and paying no respect to that of the Lamas, which the Torgouths profess, Oubache and his people at last determined to shake off a yoke which was becoming daily more and more insupportable. After having secretly deliberated among themselves, they concluded that they must abandon a residence where they had so much to suffer, in order to come and live more at ease in those parts of the dominion of China where the religion professed is that of Fo. At the commencement of the eleventh month of last year [December, 1770] they took the road, with their wives, their children, and all their baggage, traversed the country of the Hasaks [Cossacks], skirted Lake Palkache-nor and the adjacent deserts; and, about the end of the sixth month of this year [in August, 1771], after having passed over more than ten thousand lys during the space of the eight whole months of their journey, they arrived at last on the frontiers of Charapen, not far from the borders of Ily. I knew already that the Torgouths were on the march to come and make submission to me. The news was brought me not long after their departure from Etchil. I then reflected that, as Ileton, general of the troops that are at Ily, was already charged with other very important affairs, it was to be feared that he would not be able to regulate with all the requisite attention those which concerned these new refugees. Chouhede, one of the councillors of the general, was at Ouche, charged with keeping order among the Mahometans there. As he found it within his power to give his attention to the Torgouths, I ordered him to repair to Ily and do his best for their solid settlement.... At the same time I did not neglect any of the precautions that seemed to me necessary. I ordered Page 71Chouhede to raise small forts and redoubts at the most important points, and to cause all the passes to be carefully guarded; and I enjoined on him the duty of himself getting ready the necessary provisions of every kind inside these defences.... The Torgouths arrived, and on arriving found lodgings ready, means of sustenance, and all the conveniences they could have found in their own proper dwellings. This is not all. Those principal men among them who had to come personally to do me homage had their expenses paid, and were honorably conducted, by the imperial post-road, to the place where I then was. I saw them; I spoke to them; I invited them to partake with me in the pleasures of the chase; and, at the end of the number of days appointed for this exercise, they attended me in my retinue as far as to Ge-hol. There I gave them a ceremonial banquet and made them the customary presents.... It was at this Ge-hol, in those charming parts where Kang Hi, my grandfather, made himself an abode to which he could retire during the hot season, at the same time that he thus put himself in a situation to be able to watch with greater care over the welfare of the peoples that are beyond the western frontiers of the Empire; it was, I say, in those lovely parts that, after having conquered the whole country of the Eleuths, I had received the sincere homages of Tchering and his Tourbeths, who alone among the Eleuths had remained faithful to me. One has not to go many years back to touch the epoch of that transaction. The remembrance of it is yet recent. And now--who could have predicted it?--when there was the least possible room for expecting such a thing, and when I had no thought of it, that one of the branches of the Eleuths which first separated itself from the trunk, those Torgouths who had voluntarily expatriated themselves to go and live under a foreign and distant dominion, these same Torgouths are come of themselves to submit to me of their own good will; and it happens that it is still at Ge-hol, not far from the venerable spot where my grandfather's ashes repose, that I have the opportunity, which I never sought, of admitting them solemnly into the number of my subjects.'

"Annexed to this general memoir there were some notes, also by the Emperor, one of them being that description of the sufferings of the Torgouths on their march, and of the miserable condition in which they arrived at the Chinese frontier, which De Quincey has quoted at p. 417. Annexed to the Memoir there is also a letter from P. Amiot, one of the French Jesuit missionaries, dated 'Pe-king, 15th October, 1773,' containing a comment on the memoir of a certain Chinese scholar and mandarin, Yu-min-tchoung, who had been charged by the Emperor with Page 72the task of seeing the narrative properly preserved in four languages in a monumental form. It is from this Chinese comment on the Imperial Memoir that there is the extract at p. 418 as to the miserable condition of the fugitives.

"On a comparison of De Quincey's splendid paper with the Chinese documents, several discrepancies present themselves; the most important of which perhaps are these:--(1) In De Quincey's paper it is Kien Long himself who first descries the approach of the vast Kalmuck horde to the frontiers of his dominions. On a fine morning in the early autumn of 1771, we are told, being then on a hunting expedition in the solitary Tartar wilds on the outside of the great Chinese Wall, and standing by chance at an opening of his pavilion to enjoy the morning sunshine, he sees the huge sheet of mist on the horizon, which, as it rolls nearer and nearer, and its features become more definite, reveals camels, and horses, and human beings in myriads, and announces the advent of, etc. etc.! In Kien Long's own narrative he is not there at all, having expected indeed the arrival of the Kalmuck host, but having deputed the military and commissariat arrangements for the reception of them to his trusted officer, Chouhede; and his first sight of any of them is when their chiefs are brought to him, by the imperial post-road, to his quarters a good way off, where they are honorably entertained, and whence they accompany him to his summer residence of Ge-hol. (2) De Quincey's closing account of the monument in memory of the Tartar transmigration which Kien Long caused to be erected, and his copy of the fine inscription on the monument, are not in accord with the Chinese statements respecting that matter. 'Mighty columns of granite and brass erected by the Emperor Kien Long near the banks of the Ily' is De Quincey's description of the monument. The account given of the affair by the mandarin Yu-min-tchoung, in his comment on the Emperor's Memoir, is very different. 'The year of the arrival of the Torgouths,' he says, 'chanced to be precisely that in which the Emperor was celebrating the eightieth year of the age of his mother the Empress-Dowager. In memory of this happy day his Majesty had built on the mountain which shelters from the heat (Pi-chou-chan) a vast and magnificent miao, in honor of the reunion of all the followers of Fo in one and the same worship; it had just been completed when Oubache and the other princes of his nation arrived at Ge-hol. In memory of an event which has contributed to make this same year forever famous in our annals, it has been his Majesty's will to erect in the same miao a monument which should fix the epoch of the event and attest its authenticity; he himself composed the words for Page 73the monument and wrote the characters with his own hand. How small the number of persons that will have an opportunity of seeing and reading this monument within the walls of the temple in which it is erected!' Moreover the words of the monumental inscription in De Quincey's copy of it are hardly what Kien Long would have written or could have authorized. 'Wandering sheep who have strayed away from the Celestial Empire in the year 1616' is the expression in De Quincey's copy for that original secession of the Torgouth Tartars from their eastern home on the Chinese borders for transference of themselves far west to Russia, which was repaired and compensated by their return in 1771 under their Khan Oubache. As distinctly, on the other hand, the memoir of Kien Long refers the date of the original secession to no farther back than the reign of his own grandfather, the Emperor Kang Hi, when Ayouki, the grandfather of Oubache, was Khan of the Torgouths, and induced them to part company with their overbearing kinsmen the Eleuths, and seek refuge within the Russian territories on the Volga. In the comment of the Chinese mandarin on the Imperial Memoir the time is more exactly indicated by the statement that the Torgouths had remained 'more than seventy years' in their Russian settlements when Oubache brought them back. This would refer us to about 1700, or, at farthest, to between 1690 and 1700, for the secession under Ayouki.

"The discrepancies are partly explained by the fact that De Quincey followed Bergmann's account,--which account differs avowedly in some particulars from that of the Chinese memoirs. In Bergmann I find the original secession of the ancestors of Oubache's Kalmuck horde from China to Russia is pushed back to 1616, just as in De Quincey. But, though De Quincey keeps by Bergmann when he pleases, he takes liberties with Bergmann too, intensifies Bergmann's story throughout, and adds much to it for which there is little or no suggestion in Bergmann. For example, the incident which De Quincey introduces with such terrific effect as the closing catastrophe of the march of the fugitive Kalmucks before their arrival on the Chinese frontier,--the incident of their thirst-maddened rush into the waters of Lake Tengis, and their wallow there in bloody struggle with their Bashkir pursuers,--has no basis in Bergmann larger than a few slight and rather matter-of-fact sentences. As Bergmann himself refers here and there in his narrative to previous books, German or Russian, for his authorities, it is just possible that De Quincey may have called some of these to his aid for any intensification or expansion of Bergmann he thought necessary. My impression, however, is that he did nothing Page 74of the sort, but deputed any necessary increment of his Bergmann materials to his own lively imagination."

1 1. The first three paragraphs of the essay, comprising the formal introduction, are intentionally rather more picturesque and vivacious in style than the ordinary narrative that follows. If these paragraphs be read consecutively aloud, the student will surely feel the sweep and power of De Quincey's eloquence. Attention may well be directed to the author's own apparent interest in his subject because of its appeal to the imagination (p. 1, l. 4), of the romantic circumstances (p. 1, l. 11), of its dramatic capabilities (p. 2, l. 8), of its scenical situations (p. 3, l. 8). Throughout the essay effort should be made to excite appreciation of the significance of words, and De Quincey's mastery in the use of words may be continually illustrated. In paragraph 1, note the fitness of the word velocity (l. 12) and the appropriateness of the epithets in almighty instincts (l. 17), life-withering marches (l. 18), gloomy vengeance (l. 19), volleying thunders (p. 2, l. 1).

1 5. Tartar. Originally applied to certain tribes in Chinese Tartary, but here used for Mongolian. Look up etymology and trace relation of the word to Turk.--steppes. A Russian word indicating large areas more or less level and devoid of forests; these regions are often similar in character to the American prairie, and are used for pasturage.

1 6,7. terminus a quo, terminus ad quem. The use of phrases quoted from classic sources is frequent in De Quincey's writings. Note such phrases as they occur, also foreign words. Is their use to be justified?

1 18. leeming. The lemming, or leming. A rodent quadruped. "It is very prolific, and vast hordes periodically migrate down to the sea, destroying much vegetation in their path."--Century Dictionary.

1 22. Miltonic images. "Miltonic" here characterizes not only images used by Milton, but images suggestive of his as well. Yet compare:

Or from above

Should intermitted vengeance arm again

His red right hand to plague us?

--Paradise Lost, II, 172-4.

Or, with solitary hand

Reaching beyond all limit, at one blow

Unaided could have finished thee.

--Paradise Lost, VI, 139-41.

2 12. sanctions. The word here means not permission, nor recognition merely, but the avowal of something as sacred, hence obligatory; a thing ordained.

2 13,14. a triple character. De Quincey is fond of thus analyzing Page 75 the facts he has to state. Notice how this method of statement, marked by "1st," "2dly," "3dly," contributes to the clearness of the paragraph.

2 17. "Venice Preserved." A tragedy by Thomas Otway, one of the Elizabethan dramatists (1682).--"Fiesco." A tragedy by the great German dramatist Friedrich Schiller (1783), the full title of which is The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa.

2 22. Cambyses, the Third (529-522 B.C.). He was king of Persia and led an expedition into Ethiopia, which ended disastrously for him.

2 23. anabasis. The word itself means "a march up" into the interior.--katabasis (l. 28) means "a march down,"--in this case the retreat of the Greeks. The Anabasis of the Greek historian Xenophon is the account of the expedition of Cyrus the Younger against Artaxerxes, which ended with the death of Cyrus at the battle of Cunaxa (401 B.C.).

2 25. Crassus. A Roman general who led an army into Parthia (or Persia) (54 B.C.). He was defeated and put to death by torture.--Julian (l. 26), the Apostate, lost his life while invading Persia (363 A.D.).

2 28. the Russian anabasis, etc. The historic invasion of Russia by the armies of Napoleon in 1812, followed by the terrible retreat from Moscow.

3 3. This triple character, etc. Note this method of making clear the connection between paragraphs. Make close study of these paragraphs; analyze their structure. Compare the manner of introducing subsequent paragraphs.

3 14. Wolga. The German spelling. The Volga is the longest river in Europe. It is difficult to locate with certainty all the points here mentioned.

3 16. Koulagina was a fort somewhere on the Ural river; perhaps to be identified with Kulaschinskaja, or Kologinskaia.

3 17. Cossacks. A people of mixed origin, but of Russian rather than Tartar stock. There are two branches, the Ukraine and the Don Cossacks. This people is first heard of in the tenth century. The title of the leader was Hetman; the office was elective and the government was democratic. The Cossacks have been noted always as fierce fighters and are valuable subjects of the czar. The Bashkirs (l. 18) are Mongolians and nomadic in their habits.

3 18. Ouchim was evidently a mountain pass in the Ural range (compare p. 37, l. 18).

3 19. Torgau, spelled also Torgai by De Quincey, though elsewhere Page 76 Turgai, indicates a district east of the Ural mountains; it is also the name of the principal city of that district.

3 20. Khan. A Tartar title meaning chief or governor.

3 22. Lake of Tengis. Lake Balkash is meant. Compare p. 56, l. 18, and note thereon.

3 23. Zebek-Dorchi. One of the principal characters in the following narrative.

3 32. Kalmucks. A branch of the Mongolian family of peoples, divided into four tribes, and dwelling in the Chinese Empire, western Siberia, and southeastern Russia. They were nomads, adherents of a form of Buddhism, and number over 200,000.--Century Cyclopedia of Names.

4 12. exasperated. As an illustration of the discriminating use of words, explain the difference in meaning of exasperated and irritated (l. 19); also point out the fitness of the word inflated in the phrase (l. 13).

5 23. rival. Why "almost a competitor"? What is the meaning of each word?

5 32. odius. Is there any gain in force by adding repulsive?

6 5. Machiavelian. Destitute of political morality. A term derived from the name of Niccolo Machiavelli, an Italian statesman and writer (1469-1527), who, in a treatise on government entitled "The Prince," advocated, or was interpreted to advocate, the disregard of moral principle in the maintenance of authority. In this sentence discriminate between the apparent synonyms dissimulation, hypocrisy, perfidy.

6 15. Elizabeth Petrowna. Daughter of Peter the Great and Catharine I. Empress of Russia 1741-1762.

6 28. Tcherkask. An important city of the Cossacks, near the mouth of the Don.--tents. A common method of counting families among nomads. What figure of speech does this illustrate?

7 25. roubles. A rouble is the Russian unit of value, worth seventy-seven cents. The word is etymologically connected with the Indian rupee.

7 28. Thus far, etc. Notice the care with which De Quincey analyzes the situation.

8 19. mercenary. Look up origin of the word. How is it appropriate here?

8 29. romantic. What are the qualities indicated by this adjective? How did the word, derived from Roman, get its present significance?

8 34. A triple vengeance. Compare with the similar analysis p. 2, l. 13.

9 11. behemoth. A Hebrew word meaning "great beast." It was Page 77 used probably of the hippopotamus. See Job, xl, 15-24. In the work by Bergmann, which furnished De Quincey with much of his material, the figure used is that of a giant and a dwarf.--Muscovy. An old name of Russia, derived from Moscow.

9 13. "lion ramp." Quoted from Milton:

The bold Ascalonite

Fled from his lion ramp.

--Samson Agonistes, 139.

"Baptized and infidel" and "barbaric East" are also borrowings from Milton.

9 16. unnumbered numbers. Notice how effectively in this and the following sentences De Quincey utilizes suggested words: monstrous, monstrosity; hopelessness, hope.

9 22. fable. Here used for plot; the idea being that the story of the Revolt has all the compactness and unity of design to be found in the plot of a classic tragedy, which could admit the introduction of no external incidents or episodes to confuse the thread of the main action.

10 8. translation. Note the etymology of this word, which is here used in its literal sense.

10 17. But what, etc. See with what art, as well as with what evident interest, De Quincey catches the very spirit of the plot. How does the interrogation add strength?

10 25, 26. Kien Long. "Emperor of China from 1735 to 1796, was the fourth Chinese emperor of the Mantchoo-Tartar dynasty, and a man of the highest reputation for ability and accomplishment."--MASSON.

10 28. religion. Lamaism. "A corrupted form of Buddhism prevailing in Tibet and Mongolia, which combines the ethical and metaphysical ideas of Buddhism with an organized hierarchy under two semi-political sovereign pontiffs, an elaborate ritual, and the worship of a host of deities and saints."--Century Dictionary.

10 29. Chinese Wall. This famous wall was built for defence against the northern Mongols in the third century. It is 1400 miles in length and of varying height. In what sense is the phrase used figuratively?

11 17. great Lama. "Lama, a celibate priest or ecclesiastic belonging to that variety of Buddhism known as Lamaism. There are several grades of lamas, both male and female. The dalai-lama and the tesho-or bogdo-lama are regarded as supreme pontiffs. They are of equal Page 78authority in their respective territories, but the former is much the more important, and is known to Europeans as the Grand Lama,"--Century Dictionary.

The Dalai-Lama (p. 12, l. 11) resides at Lassa in Tibet.

12 34. With respect to the month. Notice the extreme care with which the author develops the following details, and the touch of sympathy with which this paragraph closes.

13 28. war raged. "The war was begun in 1768 when Mustapha III. was Sultan of Turkey; and it was continued till 1774."--MASSON.

13 33. Human experience, etc. It is a favorite device of this writer to develop a concrete fact into an abstraction of general application. Do you believe that this is true? Can you give any illustration?

15 1. a pitched battle. "It will be difficult, I think, to find record, in the history of the Russo-Turkish war of 1768, of any battle answering to this."--MASSON.

15 10. Paladins. A term used especially to designate the famous knightly champions who served the Frankish Charlemagne. Look up the etymology of the word and trace its present meaning.

15 24. ukase. "An edict or order, legislative or administrative, emanating from the Russian government."--Century Dictionary.

16 9. mummeries. Find the original meaning of this word.

16 22. Catharine II. "Elizabeth had been succeeded in 1762 by her nephew Peter III., who had reigned but a few months when he was dethroned by a conspiracy of Russian nobles headed by his German wife Catharine. She became Empress in his stead, and reigned from 1762 to 1796 as Catharine II."--MASSON.

17 10. doubtful suspicion and indirect presumption. Note the additional force given to the nouns by the adjectives.

17 18. Weseloff. This gentleman is referred to again at more length in pages 45-50.

17 31. sanctions. Compare the note on p. 2, l. 12. The sense in which the word is used justifies the use of violate in the next line.

18 24. first of all. Again see how, by use of this phrase, followed later by secondly, thirdly, etc., De Quincey gains greater clearness for his various points.

19 29. But the time, etc. Here is the first general division point in the main narrative. The genesis of the plot has been described; now follow the active preliminaries to the flight.

19 33. one vast conflagration. Compare the account, p. 25.

20 12, 13. But where or how, etc. Note again the effective use of interrogation. How does it stimulate interest?

20 17. Kirghises. The spelling Kirghiz is more familiar. Like the Page 79Bashkirs, nomads of the Mongolian-Tartar race, perhaps the least civilized of those inhabiting the steppes.

20 26. rhetoric. In what sense used here? Is this use correct?

21 5. Sarepta. Locate this town; it is on a small river that empties into the Volga. "The point of the reference to this particular town is that it was a colony of industrious Germans, having been founded in 1764 or 1765 by the Moravian Brothers."--BALDWIN.

22 11. Temba. The Jemba.

22 28. Kichinskoi. Notice the vividness of the character portrait that follows; compare it with the portraitures of Zebek and Oubacha previously given.

23 1. surveillant. Here used for watchman or spy. What derivatives have we from this French expression?

23 34. Christmas arrived. Another division point in the analysis.

24 5. Astrachan. Also spelled Astrakhan. The name of a large and somewhat barren district comprising more than 90,000 square miles of territory in southeastern Europe; its capital city, having the same name, is situated on the Volga near its mouth.

24 26. at the rate of 300 miles a day. By no means an incredible speed; in Russia such sledge flights are not uncommon. Compare what De Quincey has to say of the glory of motion in The English Mail-Coach,--"running at the least twelve miles an hour."

25 26. malignant counsels. What is the full effect of this epithet?

26 10. valedictory vengeance. Note again the force of the epithet.

26 28. aggravate. What is the literal significance of this word? As synonymous with what words is it often incorrectly used?

28 11. For now began to unroll. Does this paragraph constitute a digression, or is it a useful amplification of the narrative? Does De Quincey exaggerate when he terms these experiences of the Tartars "the most awful series of calamities anywhere recorded"?

28 14. sudden inroads. "The inroads of the Huns into Europe extended from the third century into the fifth; those of the Avars from the sixth century to the eighth or ninth; the first great conquests of the Mongol Tartars were by Genghis-Khan, the founder of a Mongol empire which stretched, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, from China to Poland."--MASSON.

28 18. volleying lightning. Compare p. 2, l. 1, where De Quincey uses a somewhat similar phrase. Why is the phrase varied, do you suppose?

28 21. the French retreat. It would be interesting to Page 80 compare the incidents and figures of this retreat, as furnished by biographers and historians. Sloane's Life of Napoleon is a recent authority.

28 26. vials of wrath. Compare Revelation, xv, 7, and xvi, 1. If De Quincey had used the Revised Version he would have written bowls instead of vials. Such borrowings of phrase or incident are called "allusions." Make a list of the scriptural allusions found in the essay,--of those suggested by Milton.

29 16. Earthquakes. "De Quincey here refers to such destructive shocks as that which occurred at Sparta, 464 B.C., in which, according to Thirlwall, 20,000 persons perished; that which Gibbon speaks of during the reign of Valentinian, 365 A.D., in which 50,000 persons lost their lives at Alexandria alone; that in the reign of Justinian, 526 A.D., in which 250,000 persons were crushed by falling walls; others in Jamaica, 1692 A.D.; at Lisbon, 1755 A.D., with loss of 30,000 lives; and in Venezuela, 1812 A.D., when Caraccas was destroyed, and 20,000 souls perished."--WAUCHOPE.

29 20. pestilence. Described by Thucydides; see also Grote's History of Greece, Chap. XLIX. Of the great plague of London (1665) the most realistic description is Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year.

29 28. The siege of Jerusalem. Read Josephus, The Jewish War, Bks. V and VI.

29 31. exasperation. Compare note on p. 26, l. 28.

30 3, 4. even of maternal love. The reference is to an incident mentioned by Josephus (The Jewish War, Bk. VI, Chap. III), in which a mother is described as driven by the stress of famine to kill and devour her own child.

30 5. romantic misery. How romantic? Compare this phrase with similar uses of the word romantic.

30 10. River Jaik. The Ural.

30 33. scenical propriety. Compare the statement with similar ones made by the author elsewhere.

31 11. decrement. Compare with its positive correspondent, increment.

31 20. acharnement. Fury.

31 26. The first stage, etc. A time mark in the essay.

32 10. liable. Another instance of a word often misused, correctly employed in the text. Compare note on aggravate, p. 26, l. 28.

32 23. Bactrian camels. There are two species of camel, the dromedary, single humped, and the Bactrian, with two humps. The former is native to Arabia, the latter to central Asia. The dromedary is the Page 81swifter of the two. Bactria is the ancient name of that district now called Balkh, in Afghanistan.

33 7. evasion. Compare with its positive correspondent invasion; compare decrement, p. 31, l. 11.

34 8. champaign savannas. Both words mean about the same, an open, treeless country, nearly level. What is the linguistic source of both words?

37 19. hills of Moulgaldchares. Spurs of the Urals running southwest.

38 10. Polish dragoons. "The adjective refers not to the nationality, but to the equipment of the cavalry. Thus there was at one time in the French army a corps called Chasseurs d'Afrique, and in both the French and that of the Northern troops in our own Civil War a corps of Zouaves. Similarly at p. 53, l. 24, De Quincey speaks of yagers among the Chinese troops. Perhaps both Polish dragoon and yager were well-known military terms in 1837. At any rate there is no gain in scrutinizing them too closely, since the context in both cases seems to be pure invention."--BALDWIN.

38 11. cuirassiers. From the French. Soldiers protected by a cuirass, or breastplate, and mounted.

38 20. River Igritch. The Irgiz-koom.

39 21. concurrently. Etymology?

39 33. sad solitudes, etc. Notice this as one of the points in a very effective paragraph.

40 3. aggravations. Compare note on p. 26, l. 28.

40 5. howling wilderness. Why so called? Compare with a previous use of the same expression (p. 12, l. 5).

40 18. spectacle. Compare with other references to the theatrical quality of the Flight.

40 21. myriads. Is this literal? Notice the contrast in tone between this sentence and those which close the paragraph.

41 12. adust. "Latin, adustus, burned. Looking as if burned or scorched."--Century Dictionary.

41 15. erected their speaking eyes. Study this expression until its forcefulness is felt. The camel is notorious for its unresponsive dullness; indeed its general apathy to its surroundings is all that accounts for its apparent docility. De Quincey, therefore, is speaking by the book when he describes these brutes as "without the affections or sensibilities of flesh and blood." Their very submissiveness is due to their stupidity.

41 20. those of Xerxes. See Crete's History of Greece, Chap. XXXVIII.

41 29. untread. A dictionary word, but uncommon. Recall Page 82 similar words used by De Quincey which add picturesqueness in part because of their novelty.

41 31. their old allegiance. 1616. See the close of this paragraph.

41 33. scapegoat. Leviticus, xvi, 7-10; 20-22.

42 32, 33. land of promise ... house, etc. Deuteronomy, viii, 14; ix, 28.

43 8. Orsk. Upon the river Or.

43 9. Oriembourg. A fort.

43 23. sinister. Etymology?

43 29. transpiring. Like aggravate and liable, a word often misused. What does it mean?

44 10. were dispersed. Note the variety of phrases in the following ten lines used to indicate separation.

46 16. Hetman. Chief. Compare Germ. Hauptmann, Eng. captain, Fr. chef.

47 1. evasion. See previous note on p. 33, l. 7.

48 2. carabines. Old-fashioned spelling. Short rifles adapted to the use of mounted troops.

49 13. without a parallel. As has been seen, De Quincey is fond of superlative statements. A writer may or may not be true in his claims; the habitual assumption, however, predisposes his reader to doubt his judgment.

49 16. Desultors. This word is not in common use, but desultory is. Look up the derivation and note the metaphor concealed in the latter word.

49 19. at the rate of 200 miles. Compare preceding note on p. 24, 1. 26.

50 27. "more fell," etc. From the last speech in Shakespeare's Othello, addressed to Iago:

O Spartan dog,

More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea!

Look on the tragic loading of this bed;

This is thy work.

51 17. "fierce varieties.". Misquoted. See Paradise Lost, II, 599; VII, 272.

51 19. post equitem, etc.:

Behind the horseman sits black care.

--Horace's Odes, III, 1, 40.

51 20. undying worm. Isaiah, lxvi, 24.

51 29. "from morn till dewy eve." Paradise Lost, I, 742. Page 83

52 33. On a fine morning. Study this paragraph carefully with reference to the rhetorical effect. The entire scene is the product of De Quincey's imagination; do you consider it truthful?

53 24. yagers. German Jager; used of a huntsman or a forester, also in parts of Germany and Austria used to indicate light infantry or cavalry. Compare with Polish dragoons, p. 38, l. 10.

54 21. indorsed. Look up the etymology. Has De Quincey, in his note, quoted Milton accurately? See Paradise Regained, III, 329.

56 13. rather in a diagonal. This is another characteristic of De Quincey; he is sometimes tediously exact in his details; perhaps the minuteness is justifiable in this instance, as the statement increases the realistic effect of an imaginary scene.

56 18. a large fresh-water lake. The Lake of Tengis here referred to, mentioned by name in the paragraph following this, is evidently Lake Balkash, into which flows the river Ily. It is one of the largest lakes in the steppes, but its water is really salt.

59 21. globes and turms. Latinisms. Milton uses globe in Paradise Lost, II, 512, and turms in Paradise Regained, IV, 66.

60 4. retributary. What more common form is used synonymously?

60 21. "La nation des Torgotes," etc. "'The nation of the Torgouths (to wit the Kalmucks) arrived at Ily wholly shattered, having neither victuals to live on [sic] nor clothes to wear. I had foreseen this, and had given orders for making every kind of preparation necessary for their prompt relief; which was duly done. The distribution of lands was made; and there was assigned to each family a portion sufficient to serve for its support, whether by cultivating it or by feeding cattle on it [sic]. There were given to each individual materials for his clothing, corn for his sustenance for the space of one year, utensils for household purposes, and other things necessary; besides some ounces of silver wherewith to provide himself with anything that might have been forgotten. Particular places were marked out for them, fertile in pasture; and cattle and sheep, etc., were given them, that they might be able for the future to work for their own support and well-being.'--This is a note of Kien Long subjoined to his main narrative; and De Quincey, I find, took the above transcript of it from the French translation of Bergmann's book. That transcript, it is worth observing, is not quite exact to the original French text of the Pekin missionaries."--MASSON.

61 12. "Lorsqu'ils arriverent," etc. "'When they arrived on our frontiers (to the number of some hundreds of thousands, although Page 84 nearly as many more had perished by the extreme fatigue, the hunger, the thirst, and all the other hardships inseparable from a very long and very toilsome march), they were reduced to the last misery, they were in want of everything. The Emperor supplied them with everything. He caused habitations to be prepared for them suitable for their manner of living; he caused food and clothing to be distributed among them; he had cattle and sheep given them, and implements to put them in a condition for forming herds and cultivating the earth; and all this at his own proper charges, which mounted to immense sums, without counting the money which he gave to each head of a family to provide for the subsistence of his wife and children.'

"This is from a eulogistic abstract of Kien Long's own narrative by one of his Chinese ministers, named Yu Min Tchoung, a translation of which was sent to Paris by the Jesuit missionary, P. Amiot, together with the translation of the imperial narrative itself. The transcript is again by the French translator of Bergmann, and is again rather inaccurate."--MASSON.

63 17. lex talionis. Law of retaliation.

63 18. "lex nec justior," etc. "Nor is there any law more just than that the devisers of murder should perish by their own device."--OVID, Ars Amatoria, I, 655.

63 25. lares. The minor deities of a Roman household.

63 30. Arcadian beauty. Arcadian is synonymous with rural simplicity and beauty. Arcadia, the central province of Greece, was a pastoral district and lacked the vices--as well as some of the virtues--of the surrounding states.

64 1. extirpation. Etymology?

64 23. music. One who has listened to Mongolian attempts at harmony must suspect that De Quincey is again inspired by his imagination when he characterizes this part of the commemoration as "rich and solemn."

64 28. columns of granite and brass. This feature of the narrative, as well as many other details of apparent fact, including the entire inscription said to have been placed upon the monument, are evidently the pure invention of De Quincey's fancy, no mention of these details being found in his historical sources.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] "Some years ago I published a paper on the Flight of the Kalmuck Tartars from Russia. Bergmann, the German from whom that account was chiefly drawn, resided a long time among the Kalmucks," etc.--Essay on Homer and the Homeridae.

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