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Updated: May 3, 2025
The vicissitudes of the war in the Caucasus of late have been surprising enough to awaken the interest of Western Europe, even amidst her own nearer anxieties. Last year it was said that the conquest of Achulgo, the stronghold of the redoubtable Schamyl, had effectually broken the power of that daring leader.
Napoleon III was at war with Austria as the ally of Italy, where King Emmanuel II and Cavour were laying the foundations of their country's unity. Russia, after defeating Schamyl, the hero of the Caucasus, was pursuing her policy of penetration in Central Asia. In Prussia the unrest was chiefly domestic.
There was now no escape for the faithful few who still adhered to the cause of Khasi-Mollah, among whom was Schamyl. The artillery under the direction of General Williaminoff soon brought down the towers of loose stones over the devoted heads of the murids in Himri. But they met their fate chanting verses from the Koran.
There is no evil, however great, without some good; and to the Circassian trade in female slaves is to be traced the superiority, both of physiognomy and of blood, which belongs to the modern Turk above the Tartar of the steppe and of the desert. The society of which Schamyl on reaching the age of manhood became a member in full was a free democracy.
Point after point was gained, and at length, in late August, the crisis came. A sudden charge carried them into the fort, and the defenders died where they stood, leaving only women and children to fall as prisoners into the Russians' hands. But Schamyl had disappeared. Seek as they would, the chief was not to be found.
It is indeed a proud day for the youngster, because it is his putting on of the toga. Thenceforward, if not fully a man, he is at least a mad-cap or deli-kan. Schamyl, now become a deli-kan, is said to have been so ambitious of the palm in all youthful games that whenever defeated he would brood for days together over his disgrace in silent chagrin.
She returned to France, which she had become attached to, and shut herself up in the villa of Maisons-Lafitte, letting old Vogotzine install himself there as a sort of Mentor, more obedient than a servant, and as silent as a statue; and this strange guardian, who had formerly fought side by side with Schamyl, and cut down the Circassians with the sang-froid of a butcher's boy wringing the neck of a fowl, and who now scarcely dared to open his lips, as if the entire police force of the Czar had its eye upon him; this old soldier, who once cared nothing for privations, now, provided he had his chocolate in the morning, his kummel with his coffee at breakfast, and a bottle of brandy on the table all day left Marsa free to think, act, come and go as she pleased.
In this formidable movement the highlander's natural freedom is fanned into a blaze by a religious zeal like that which once led the armies of Islam over one half of Asia and Europe. Although it reached its highest energy and a more consummate development under Schamyl, it was begun by his predecessors.
At once chivalrous and cruel, pious and pitiless, brave and bigoted, meek and merciless, the Curé of Santa Cruz had embodied in himself all that was brightest and darkest in the Spanish character, and his name had become a word to conjure by a word of power like that of Garibaldi in Italy, Schamyl in Circassia, or Stonewall Jackson in America.
"A fortress built in Chunsach; all Avaria pacified; a number of previously unconquered mountain tribes subjected; many aouls and fortified places destroyed; Tiletli taken by storm; and Schamyl so hard pressed as to be obliged to swear fealty to the emperor forever and ever." Accordingly in Tiflis and St.
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