Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 | Page 2

his attention to the country bordering upon the southern shores of the Caspian Sea; taking advantage of Persian embarrassments, with the consent of the Shah and of the Sultan he acquired, in 1722-3, the provinces of Gilan, Mazanderan, and Asterabad; but the great expense of maintaining a large garrison so remote from Russia, and the unhealthiness of the locality, induced the Russian Government, in 1732, to restore the districts to Persia. In the same year Abul-Khair, the Khan of the Little Kirghiz Horde, voluntarily submitted to Russia. Twenty years later a small strip of the kingdom of Djungaria, on the Irtish, was absorbed, and toward the commencement of the reign of Catharine II, Russian authority was asserted and maintained over the broad tract from the Altai to the Caspian. This occupation was limited to a line of outposts along the Ural, the Irtish, and in the intervening district. During Catharine's reign the frontier nomads became reduced in numbers, by the departure from the steppe between the Ural and Volga of the Calmucks, who fled into Djungaria, and were nearly destroyed on the road, by the Kirghiz.
The connection between Russia and Central Asia at this time assumed another character, that of complete tranquillity, in consequence of the development of trade through Orenburg and to some extent through Troitsk and Petropaulovsk. The lines along the Ural and Irtish gradually acquired strength; the robber-raids into European Russia and Western Siberia almost entirely ceasing. The allegiance of the Kirghiz of the Little and Central Hordes was expressed in the fact that their Khans were always selected under Russian influence and from time to time appeared at St. Petersburg to render homage. With the Central Asian khanates there was no connection except that of trade, but as regarded the Turcomans, who, it is said, had frequently asked for Russian protection, intercourse was discouraged, as they could not be trusted "within the lines," being simply bandits.
The Emperor Paul imagined that the steppes offered a good road to Southern Asia, and desiring to expel the English from India, in the year 1800 he despatched a large number of Don Cossacks, under Orloff, through the districts of the Little Horde. At the time a treaty was concluded with Napoleon, then First Consul, by virtue of which a combined Russo-French army was to disembark at Asterabad and march from thence into India by way of Khorassan and Afghanistan. The death of the Emperor of Russia put an end to this plan.
During the reign of Alexander I, Central Asia was suffered to rest, and even the Chinese made raids into Russian territory without interruption. In the third decade of the present century, however, several advanced military settlements of Cossacks were founded. "Thus," says M. Veniukoff, "was inaugurated the policy which afterward guided us in the steppe, the foundation of advanced settlements and towns (at first forts, afterwards stanitsas [Footnote: Cossack settlements.]) until the most advanced of them touches some natural barrier."
About 1840, it was discovered that the system of military colonization was more effectual in preserving order in the Orenburg district than by flying detachments sent, as occasion required, from Southern Russia; and in 1845-6 the Orenburg and Ural (or Targai and Irgiz) forts were established. In 1846 the Great Kirghiz Horde acknowledged its subjection to Russia on the farther side of the Balkash, while at the same time a fort was constructed on the lower Yaxartes.
In 1847 the encroachments of Russia in Central Asia had brought her upon the borders of the important khanates of Khiva and Khokand, and, like some huge boa-constrictor, she prepared to swallow them. In 1852 the inevitable military expedition was followed by the customary permanent post. Another row of forts was planted on the Lower Yaxartes, and in 1854 far to the eastward, in the midst of the Great Horde, was built Fort Vernoye--the foundation of a new line, more or less contiguous to natural boundaries (mountains and rivers), but not a close line. Between Perovsky and Vernoye there were upwards of four hundred and fifty miles of desert open to the incursions of brigands, and between the Aral and Caspian seas there was a gap, two hundred miles in width, favorable for raids into the Orenburg Steppe from the side of Khiva. Finally, under the pretext of closing this gap, a general convergent movement of the Siberian and Orenburg forces commenced, culminating under General Tchernayeff in the capture of Aulieata and Chemkent in 1864, and of Tashkent in 1865.
Here, M. Veniukoff says: "The Government intended to halt in its conquests, and, limiting itself to forming a closed line on the south of the Kirghiz steppes, left it to the sedentary inhabitants of Tashkent to form a separate khanate from the Khokand so hostile to us." And this historian tells us that the Tashkendees