Among the various Asiatic nations which force and diplomacy are striving to subject to the Muscovite sceptre, there is one against which the whole might of Russia has hitherto been put forth in vain. The warlike tribes of the Caucasus have victoriously maintained their national independence; and in thus separating the trans-Caucasian provinces from the rest of the empire, they have protected Persia and Asiatic Turkey, and postponed indefinitely all thoughts of a Russian invasion of India. The cabinets of Europe have generally overlooked the importance of the Caucasus, and the part which its tribes are destined to play soon or late in eastern questions. Great Britain alone, prompted by her commercial instinct and her restless jealousy, protested for a time against the encroaching career of the tzars; but the singular manifestation of the Vixen produced no slackening of the operations of Russia. The war has now been going on for sixteen years, yet few exact notions of its character and details are as yet possessed by Europe. Let us endeavour to complete as far as possible what we already know respecting the situation of the Russians in the Caucasus, and to see what may be the general results, political and commercial, of the occupation or independence of that region.
We know that one of Peter the Great's most cherished schemes, the dream of his whole life, was to re-establish the trade of the East on its old footing, and to secure to himself a port on the Black Sea, in order to make it the link between the two continents. The genius of that sovereign must surely have been most enterprising to conceive such a project, at a time when its realisation required that the southern frontiers of the empire should first be pushed forward from 150 to 200 leagues, as they have since been. Peter began his new political career by the taking of Azof and the foundation of the port of Taganrok in 1695. The fatal campaign of the Pruth retarded the accomplishment of his designs; but when circumstances allowed him to return to them, he began again to pursue them in the direction of Persia and the Caspian. The restitution of Azof, and the destruction of Taganrok, stipulated in the treaty of the Pruth, thus became the primary cause of the Russian expeditions against the trans-Caucasian provinces.