The Caucasus has also become a place of exile for a great number of Poles. After the revolution of 1831, the Russian government committed the blunder of sending to the Kouban most of the regiments compromised in that ill-fated effort. The result was very easy to foresee; desertion soon began in the ranks of the outlaws, and it is now known beyond a doubt that the Tcherkesses have Poles among them, who instruct them in the art of war, endeavour to create an artillery for them with the pieces captured from the Russians, and labour actively to allay the dissensions between the various tribes. General Grabe himself assured me that he had seen in several places fortifications which he recognised as quite modern. He had also in his campaign of 1840 remarked a more compact and better concerted resistance on the part of the Circassians, and often a remarkable degree of combined action in their attacks.
We have not much to say about the military tactics employed by Russia in this war; in point of science it presents no very striking features, but on the contrary, cannot but give a very low idea of the merit of the imperial generals. At first it was expected that the conquest would be effected by hemming in the mountaineers with military lines, and gradually encroaching on their territory; but this very costly system seems to me quite impracticable in a country in which the forts are always solitary, and cannot protect each other, or cross their fires. I do not know, however, whether it has been quite given up.
Attempts were made in 1837 to set fire to the forests of the Caucasus by means of pitch. Three years afterwards it was hoped to effect their destruction by arming the men of the 15th division with axes; but these strange expedients only produced useless expenditure. I know a general of the highest personal courage, who calls in the aid of natural philosophy to beguile or awe the mountaineers. Whenever he receives a visit from chiefs whose fidelity he is inclined to suspect, he sets an electrical machine in play. His visitors feel violent shocks, they know not how, their beards and hair stand on end, and in the bewilderment caused by these mysterious visitations, they sometimes let out an important secret, and betray themselves to their enemy.
An officer of engineers told me an anecdote of this same general which is worth recording. A mosque which the Russian government had built at its own expense for a tribe of Little Kabarda was to be inaugurated, and as usual there was a grand military parade in honour of the occasion. When the Kabardians had displayed all their address in horsemanship and shooting, the Russian general proceeded to give a sample of what he could do, and to strike the assembled tribes with amazement. He called for his double-barrelled gun, and having himself charged one of the barrels with ball, he ordered a pigeon to be let loose, which he instantly brought down, to the astonishment of the beholders. "That is not all," said he to the chiefs near him; "to shoot a pigeon flying is no very extraordinary feat; but to cut off his head with the ball is what I call good shooting." Then turning to his servant, he said something to him in German. The man went and picked up the bird, and when he held it out to view, it was seen to be beheaded just as the general had said. Unbounded was the admiration of the simple mountaineers; they looked on the general as a supernatural being, and nothing was talked of for many a day in the aouls, but the beheaded pigeon and the wonderful Russian marksman.
Now to explain the enigma. The inhabitants of the Caucasus are ignorant of the use of small shot, and it was with this the general had accomplished his surprising exploit, having previously loaded one barrel with it. As for the pigeon's head, it was adroitly whipped off by the servant, who had received his orders to that effect in German.
But it would be idle to expect that the shrewd good sense of the mountaineers will long be imposed on by the scientific accomplishments of the Russian generals; on the contrary, these curious expedients only give them increased confidence in their own strength. Yermoloff appears to us to have been the only governor who understood the nature of the war in the Caucasus, and who conducted affairs with the dignified and inflexible vigour which were fitted to make an impression on the tribes. Several commanders-in-chief have succeeded him in turns: Rosen, Golovin, Grabe, Raiefsky, Anrep, Neughart; but the government has gained nothing by all these changes.