i i \i \,_^. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 Chap. Copyright No..._i_\_*_. 
 
 Shelf.. .i^_a/S- -^V- 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
^c^< 
 
 o 
 
 Oitu<l£^ 
 
 (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." 
 
 Uavid Masson. 
 
DE QUINCEY'S 
 
 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS 
 
 Edited 
 With Introduction and Notes 
 
 WILLIAM EDWARD 'SIMONDS, Ph.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND 
 LITERATURE IN KNOX COLLEGE 
 
 ^ 
 
 / . 
 
 ; BOSTON, U^S.A. 
 GINN .^' COMrAW. i't^ni.lSHERS 
 
 1898 
 
^^'% 
 
 \^ 
 
 fv 
 
 • 16876 
 
 Coi'V RIGHT, 1898, BY 
 
 WILLIAM EDWARD SIMONDS 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 WOCePtESRECIIVEB. 
 1893. 
 
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 ih^form of 
 expression; the discriminating use of epithets, the employ- 
 ment 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, presum- 
 ably, that the text is prescribed. There is little attractive- 
 ness, 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 vs^as certainly not the Opium- Eater's mind 
 concerning literary form, nor does it appear to have been the 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 aim of any of our masters. Indeed, it maybe 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 spon- 
 taneity 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 common- 
 place 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. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction : 
 
 CRITICAL APPRECIATION vii 
 
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH X 
 
 AUTHORITIES AND REFERENCES xxii 
 
 The Revolt of the Tartars i 
 
 Appended Notes by Masson (^-^ 
 
 notes, explanatory and critical .... 74 
 
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 distin- 
 guished 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 peculiari- 
 ties, 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 essen- 
 tials 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 accu- 
 rate 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. 
 Xor is this all. His pages do not lack in humor — humor of 
 the truest and most delicate type; and if De Quincey is at 
 
Vlll INTR on UC TION. 
 
 times impelled beyond the bounds of taste, even these excur- 
 sions demonstrate his power, at least in handling the gro- 
 tesque. 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 interpreta- 
 tion 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 
 Fre7ich Revolution. Therefore when he wrote narrative, his- 
 torical 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 
 
INTRODUCTION. 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 prin- 
 ciples 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 distin- 
 guished 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 Cofifessmis 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 Black- 
 woocVs, 1840, he deprecates the usual indifference to form, on 
 the part of English writers, " the tendency of the national 
 
X INTR on UC TION. 
 
 mind 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 senti- 
 ment 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 maga- 
 zine 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 sub- 
 ordinating 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 pas- 
 sages 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 unmis- 
 takably 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 
 
INTRODUCTION. xi 
 
 childhood 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 signifi- 
 cance 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 Autobio- 
 graphic 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 
 ail EiigUsh 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, exqui- 
 sitely 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 attempt- 
 ing to explain the grotesque fancies and weird flights of his 
 
Xll INTR OD UC TION. 
 
 marvellous mind in later years ; yet it is only fair to empha- 
 size 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 after- 
 wards 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."^ 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 for- 
 ever ; 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 my- 
 self standing as before, close to my sister's bed."^ Some- 
 
 1 Autobiographic Sketches, Chap. I. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
INTR OD UC TION. xiu 
 
 what 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 imagi- 
 nation, 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 preroga- 
 tives and privileges of seniority, he took upon himself as well 
 certain responsibihties more galling to his half-dozen uneasy 
 subordinates, doubtless, than the undisputed hereditary rights 
 
XIV INTR on UC TION. 
 
 of 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 under- 
 standing of the real nature of this singular man. 
 
 In 1796 the home at Greenhay was broken up. The irre- 
 pressible 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 sympa- 
 thetic 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 
 
INTR OD UC TION. x v 
 
 period 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, pi evidentially, De Quincey spent the next 
 period of his life, covering the years 1803-7, in residence 
 
XVI INTR OD UC TION. 
 
 at 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 ^300 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 Words- 
 worth 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 Magazme. Nor was De Quincey idle ; his habits 
 of study were confirmed; indeed, he was already a philoso- 
 pher 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 18 16 De Quincey married Margaret Simpson, a farmer's 
 daughter living near. There is a pretty scene painted by 
 
INTR OD UC TION. xvii 
 
 the author himself/ 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 spa- 
 cious 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 
 
 1 Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Part II. 
 
XVlli INTRODUCTION'. 
 
 at 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 mar- 
 riage, 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 
 18 18-19 ^is consumption of opium was something almost 
 incredible. Thus he became truly enough the great English 
 Opium-Eater, whose Co?ifessio?is 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 182 1 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, 182 1, con- 
 tained the first paper of the Confessiojis 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 
 
INTR OD UC TION. 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 humor- 
 ous 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 Ccesars. 
 It was in July, 1837, that the Revolt of the Tartars appeared; 
 in 1840 his critical paper upon The Essejies. Meanwhile 
 De Quincey had begun contributions to Taifs Magazine, 
 another Edinburgh publication, and it was in that periodical 
 that the Sketches of Life and Manners from the Autobiography 
 of an English Opiu7n-Eater began to appear in 1834, run- 
 ning 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 
 
XX INTR OD UC TION. 
 
 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 inimi- 
 table 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 
 
INTR OD UC TION. xxi 
 
 on 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 1 and a hand rubbing 
 out the blaze was all the notice taken.' " ^ 
 
 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 fore- 
 head. 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 expres- 
 sion of mild suffering, of endurance sweetened by benevo- 
 lence, 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 beauti- 
 ful 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 Taifs Magazine, the Joart 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 col- 
 lected 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 
 1 De Quincey {English Men of Letters), David Masson, p. no. 
 
xxu INTRODUCTION. 
 
 famous Opium-Eater grew gradually feeble, although suffer- 
 ing 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 pubhshed 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 Qnincey, 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 
 EncyclopcEdia Britantiica. De Quincey and his Friends, by 
 James Hogg .(London, 1895), is another volume of recollec- 
 tions, 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 
 
INTK on UC TION. xxill 
 
 among 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 Ma7iiial of English Prose Lite?'atiire (Ginn 
 & Co.). A shorter essay is contained in Saintsbury's 
 History of Nifieteenth Cejitury 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 (AUyn & Bacon). 
 Numerous magazine articles may be found by referring to 
 Poole's Index. 
 
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 ex- 
 pended. 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 
 sti-etched. 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 Qjihicey, Chap. XI. 
 
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 tei-minus a quo of this 
 flight and the terminus ad quein 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 execu- 
 tion 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 soli- 
 tary hand pursuing through desert spaces and through 
 
2 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 ancient chaos a rebellious host, and overtaking with vol- 
 leying thunders those who believed themselves already 
 within the security of darkness and of distance. 
 
 I shall have occasion, farther on, to compare this event 
 5 with other great national catastrophes as to the magnitude 
 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 
 
 lo co77tplexity of its separate interests. The great outline of 
 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: ist, That of a conspiracy, with as close a unity 
 
 15 in the incidents, and as much of a personal interest in 
 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 offer- 
 ing the same romantic features of vast distances to be 
 
 20 traversed, vast reverses to be sustained, untried routes, 
 enemies obscurely ascertained, and hardships too vaguely 
 prefigured, which mark the Egyptian expedition of Cam- 
 byses — the anabasis of the younger Cyrus, and the 
 subsequent retreat of the ten thousand, the Parthian 
 
 25 expeditions of the Romans, especially those of Crassus 
 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 
 
 30 by an oracle venerated throughout many nations of Asia, 
 — 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 carry- 
 ing along with them their entire families, women, children, 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 3 
 
 slaves, their herd of cattle and of sheep, their horses and 
 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 represent- 10 
 ative 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) — 15 
 to 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, commemoratihg 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 2istof 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 
 
4 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 dignity he had already wielded since his fourteenth year, 
 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 
 5 personal character, and not without titles to respect in his 
 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 consider- 
 
 lo able distinction ; but his lot was thrown upon stormy 
 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 
 
 15 the circumstances of their hard and trying position under 
 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 rest- 
 
 20 less impulses of suspicion and permanent distrust. No 
 prince could hope for a cordial allegiance from his sub- 
 jects 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 
 
 25 sanction of the Czar, he was inevitably too weak from 
 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 
 
 30 in that extent an object of hatred at home and within the 
 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 5 
 
 advertised himself to be a fitting tool for the ultimate 
 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 unfor- 
 tunate 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 depend- 
 ence 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 remem- 
 brance 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 govern- 
 ment. 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 pre- 
 tensions. 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 philo- 
 sophical 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 
 
6 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 support precisely in those points where Oubacha was 
 most defective. He was much superior in external ap- 
 pearance to his rival on the throne, and so far better 
 qualified to win the good opinion of a semi-barbarous 
 5 people ; whilst his dark intellectual qualities of Machiavel- 
 ian 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 
 
 10 frank carelessness of his unconscious competitor. 
 
 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 
 
 15 the part of Russia, and Elizabeth Petrowna was not the 
 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 
 
 20 purposes in a quarter where it was most essential to his 
 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 
 
 25 plots of several Saissang (that is, Kalmuck nobles), who 
 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 
 
 30 Imperial Court, and, by way of soUciting his cause more 
 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 coun- 
 cils to a concurrence with some of his political views, 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 7 
 
 and thus covertly introducing the point of that wedge 
 which was finally to accomplish his purposes. In partic- 
 ular, he persuaded the Russian Government to make a 
 very important alteration in the constitution of the Kal- 
 muck 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 sub- 10 
 ordinate 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 3° 
 the further development of his plots, this very depend- 
 ency upon Russian influence would be the most serious 
 obstacle in his way. There was, however, another point 
 carried, which outweisrhed all inferior considerations, as 
 
8 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 it gave him a power of setting aside discretionally what- 
 soever 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 preten- 
 5 sions 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 
 
 lo Russia, Zebek-Dorchi proceeded in his new character to 
 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 
 
 15 pensions of the councillors were so much additional wealth 
 poured into the Tartar exchequer ; as to the ties of depend- 
 ency 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 
 
 20 far from being charged upon Zebek as any offence or any 
 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 
 
 25 would not have had the same motives of consanguinity or 
 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 
 
 30 credited, for those very acts of interference with the 
 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 : 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 9 
 
 I, upon the Russian Cabinet, for having undervalued his 
 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 wick- 
 edness ; 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 foot- 
 steps 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 break- 
 ing 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 
 
10 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 course of its accomplishment might furnish him with 
 ample occasions for removing his other enemies. It may 
 be readily supposed, indeed, that he who could deliber- 
 ately raise his eyes to the Russian autocrat as an antago- 
 5 nist 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 
 
 lo continually by rapid rivers rarely furnished with bridges, 
 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 
 
 15 flight in winter), famine in their front, and the sabre, or 
 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 : 
 
 20 it must be some power at a great distance from Russia, 
 so as to make return even in that view hopeless, and it 
 must be a power of sufficient rank to insure them protec- 
 tion from any hostile efforts on the part of the Czarina 
 for reclaiming them or for chastising their revolt. Both 
 
 25 conditions were united obviously in the person of Kien 
 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 
 
 30 was settled by Zebek that they should direct their flight. 
 Next came the question of time — ivheit should the 
 flight commence ? and, finally, the more delicate question 
 as to the choice of accomplices. To extend the knowl- 
 edge of the conspiracy too far was to insure its betrayal 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 11 
 
 to the Russian Government. Yet, at some stage of the 
 preparations, it was evident that a very extensive confi- 
 dence 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 sub- 
 ject 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 reign- 
 ing 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 accom- 
 plices. Those whom (if anybody) he admitted to an un- 15 
 reserved 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 neigh- 
 borhood 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 seep- 25 
 tre, seemed but an empty sound to both of these ambi- 
 tious 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 distin- 
 guished pretensions ; he had something of the same 30 
 gloomy and terrific pride which marked the character of 
 Zebek himself, manifesting also the same energy, accom- 
 panied by the same unfaltering cruelty, and a natural 
 facility of dissimulation even more profound. It was by 
 
12 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 this man that the other question was settled as to the 
 time for giving effect to their designs. His own pontifi- 
 cal character had suggested to him that, in order to 
 strengthen their influence with the vast mob of simple- 
 5 minded 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 sanc- 
 tion of God for their entire enterprise. This could only 
 
 10 be done by addressing themselves to the great head of 
 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 eft'ect that no 
 ultimate prosperity would attend this great Exodus unless 
 
 15 it were pursued through the years of the tiger and the 
 ha?-e. 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 
 
 20 through a period of a dozen years. Consequently, if the 
 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 
 
 25 foreseen that the Russian Government would take most 
 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 
 
 30 of hostages selected from the families of the most influen- 
 tial nobles. On these cogent considerations, it was sol- 
 emnly 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 13 
 
 month, there was, unhappily for the Kalmucks, even less 
 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 inter- 
 ested, 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 con- 
 tribute much more than his usual aid. Human experi- 
 ence gives ample evidence that in some mysterious and 
 
14 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 unaccountable way no great design is ever agitated, no 
 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 
 5 blind. And, however it might have happened, certain it 
 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 
 
 lo as to the future schemes of the Kalmuck Khan : and 
 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 power- 
 fully alienate him, even at that moment such measures 
 
 15 would have been adopted as must forever have inter- 
 cepted the Kalmuck schemes. Slight as were the jeal- 
 ousies 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 
 
 20 the moment, and meeting the jealousy of the Russian 
 Court with a policy corresponding to their own, strove by 
 unusual zeal to efface the Czarina's unfavorable impres- 
 sions. He enlarged the scale of his contributions, and 
 that so prodigiously that he absolutely carried to head- 
 
 25 quarters a force of 35,000 cavalry, fully equipped: some 
 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 expecta- 
 
 30 tions ; and these he more than realized. Having the 
 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 ; 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 15 
 
 and at last, in a pitched battle, overthrew the Turkish 
 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 men- 
 dicant alien, prostrate at the feet, and soliciting the pre- 
 carious alms, of a prince with whom he had no connection. 
 Besides, it might reasonably be expected that the Czar- 
 ina, 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 
 
16 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 Russia, and not, perhaps, so well founded. Just as much 
 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, 
 5 which too generally marked the Russian bearing and 
 language, but, above all, the insolent contempt, or even 
 outrages, which the Russian governors or great military 
 commandants tolerated in their followers toward the bar- 
 barous religion and superstitious mummeries of the Kal- 
 
 10 muck priesthood — precisely in that extent did the ferocity 
 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 prob- 
 able that envy and wounded pride, upon witnessing the 
 
 15 splendid victories of Oubacha and Momotbacha over the 
 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 
 
 20 lent herself to the unwise and ungrateful policy pursued 
 at this critical period toward the Kalmuck Khan. That 
 Czarina was no longer Elizabeth Petrowna ; it was Cath- 
 arine II. — a princess who did not often err so injuriously 
 (injuriously for herself as much as for others) in the meas- 
 
 25 ures of her government. She had soon ample reason for 
 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 
 
 30 of all the Tartar chieftains in preparing the minds of their 
 people to feel the necessity of this difficult enterprise, by 
 arming their pride and their suspicions against the Rus- 
 sian Government, through the keenness of their sympathy 
 with the wrongs of their insulted prince, may be readily 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 17 
 
 imagined. It is a fact, and it has been confessed by 
 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 conspira- 
 tors ; 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 subse- 
 quently discovered in the handwriting of Zebek-Dorchi, 
 and the important evidence of the Russian captive, Wesel- 
 off, 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, dis- 
 trusting 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 pre- 
 vious concert with the priests and their head, the Lama, 
 in some dark and mysterious rites of consecration, termi- 30 
 nating in oaths under such terrific sanctions as no Kal- 
 muck 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 
 
18 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 be so deeply pledged by religious terrors to the prosecu- 
 tion 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 
 
 5 sealed against those fears by others of a gloomier charac- 
 ter, and better adapted to his peculiar temperament. For 
 Oubacha was a brave man, as respected all bodily ene- 
 mies or the dangers of human warfare, but was as sensi- 
 tive and timid as the most superstitious of old women in 
 
 lo facing the frowns of a priest or under the vague anticipa- 
 tions 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 
 
 15 effected in the state of their domestic politics amongst 
 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 
 
 20 and absolute wielder of the Kalmuck sceptre ; all meas- 
 ures 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 
 
 25 of the prejudice in his favor, so largely diffused amongst 
 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 
 
 30 derived from a collateral branch ; secondly, with respect 
 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 19 
 
 that triumph from an alien power at the price of his inde- 
 pendence, which he himself (as he would have it under- 
 stood) 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 illus- 
 trating the character of the man), by that very new mod- 
 elling 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 com- 20 
 pletely 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 thun- 25 
 ders 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, an.d, 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 
 
20 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 the Stately cities of their enemies over the breadth and 
 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 
 5 that year was fixed for the fatal day when the fortunes 
 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 
 
 10 make the revelation so urgently required. It was clear, 
 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 
 
 15 plan was adopted: — Couriers, it was contrived, should 
 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 
 
 20 immemorial custom, were required to send a separate rep- 
 resentative ; 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 
 
 25 present. Zebek-Dorchi then came forward. He did 
 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 
 
 30 heard. They were told of the oppressions of Russia ; 
 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 21 
 
 erecting forts upon many of the great rivers of their neigh- 
 borhood ; 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 noth- 
 ing 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 
 
22 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 desperate extremity), Zebek-Dorchi opened his scheme of 
 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 
 5 parts of Asia as would effectually intercept their march. 
 It is remarkable, however, that with all his audacity and 
 his reliance upon the momentary excitement of the Kal- 
 mucks, the subtle prince did not venture, at this stage of 
 his seduction, to make so startling a proposal as that of 
 
 10 a flight to China. All that he held out for the present 
 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 
 
 15 to the Czarina, and one which would have a better chance 
 of winning a favorable audience. 
 
 These things, in the irritated condition of the simple 
 Tartars, passed by acclamation ; and all returned home- 
 ward to push forward with the most furious speed the 
 
 20 preparations for their awful undertaking. Rapid and 
 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 
 
 25 the Russian Government, some in a financial, others in a 
 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 
 
 30 the many victims to the Tartar revolution. This Kichin- 
 skoi had been sent by the Empress as her envoy to over- 
 look the conduct of the Kalmucks. He was styled the 
 Grand Pristaw, or Great Commissioner, and was univer- 
 sally known amongst the Tartar tribes by this title. His 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 23 
 
 mixed character of ambassador and of political surveillant, 
 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 commu- 10 
 nication to him to the effect that some reports began to 
 circulate, and even to reach the Empress, of a design in 
 agitation to fiy from the imperial dominions, he had ven- 
 tured 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 un- 20 
 guarded 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 un- 
 detected by his all-piercing sagacity, and that no rebellion 
 could prosper when rebuked by his commanding presence. 
 The Tartars, therefore, pursued their preparations, con- 30 
 fiding 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 
 
24 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 upon courier came dropping in, one upon the very heels 
 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 
 5 of Astrachan, and copies were instantly forwarded to 
 Kichinskoi. Now, it happened that between this gov- 
 ernor : — 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 
 
 10 hated name attached to the dispatch than he felt himself 
 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 
 
 15 to be put down by a few hard words, or by ridicule : he 
 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, 
 
 20 when the memorable day arrived, the fatal 5th of January, 
 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 
 
 25 vengeance, and of anxious ambition, he sprang into his 
 sledge, and, at the rate of 300 miles a day, pursued his 
 route to St. Petersburg — rushed into the Imperial pres- 
 ence — announced the total realization of his worst pre- 
 dictions ; and, upon the confirmation of this intelligence 
 
 30 by subsequent dispatches from many different posts on 
 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 25 
 
 and mortification in the gloomy solitude of a dungeon — 
 a 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 sud- 5 
 denness with which the verification followed his reports. 
 Precisely on the 5 th 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 
 
26 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 of his own palace. Nothing was saved from the general 
 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 
 5 chapter in their memorable day's work being finished, 
 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 
 
 lo valedictory vengeance, and thus have left behind to the 
 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, 
 
 IS and such treatment applied to the defenceless inhabi- 
 tants 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 
 
 20 happily intercepted by a providential disappointment at 
 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 
 
 25 effecting a junction sufficiently rapid with the tribes on 
 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 thou- 
 sand-fold the calamities inevitable to a rapid flight over 
 
 30 boundless tracts of country with women, children, and 
 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 27 
 
 the moment of absolute departure — that is, for signify- 
 ing 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 con- 
 strued into certain signs that all was discovered, and that 
 the prudence of the Western chieftains, who, from situa- 
 tion, 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 concur- 
 rence also in the bloody events which marked its outset. 
 
28 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 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 
 5 part of the sufferings which overtook their Eastern breth- 
 ren 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 
 
 10 succeeded. 
 
 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 
 
 15 nations, such as the Huns, or the Avars, or the Mongol 
 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 
 
 20 perished would perish instantly. It is possible that the 
 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 
 
 25 from the time of leaving Moscow ; and though it is true 
 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 
 
 30 horror, by which the Tartar march was distinguished from 
 the French, lies in the accompaniment of women ^ and 
 
 1 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 29 
 
 children. There were both, it is true, with the French 
 army, but so few as to bear no visible proportion to the 
 total numbers concerned. The P'rench, 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 circum- 10 
 stances 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 resi- 
 dence 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 com- 
 prehensive 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 
 
 " many " women in the Greek army — TroXXat ^crai' kraXpai kv tc^ 
 arpaTei/iiaTi; and in a late stage of that trying expedition it is evident 
 that women were amongst the survivors. 
 
30 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 without by internal feuds, and, finally, for that last most 
 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 
 5 of romantic misery peculiar to itself — circumstances 
 without precedent, and (wherever human nature is enno- 
 bled by Christianity), it may be confidently hoped, never 
 to be repeated. 
 
 The first point to be reached, before any hope of repose 
 
 lo could be encouraged, was the River Jaik. This was not 
 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 ; 
 
 15 one summary exertion, not to be repeated, and all was 
 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 
 
 20 eyes, across these interminable solitudes, for seven months 
 of hardship and calamity, without a pause. These suffer- 
 ings, 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 
 
 25 features ; what variety, however, there was, will be most 
 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 
 
 30 manner, under the real order of development, it is remark- 
 able 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 31 
 
 advancing regularly with the advances of the march, and 
 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 con- s 
 structed 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 expedi- 
 tion. But it seemed, on the contrary, most reasonable to lo 
 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 Rus- 
 sian 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; 
 
32 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 the sheep perished by wholesale ; and the children them- 
 selves 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 
 
 5 collision with the Kalmucks. Great was their surprise at 
 the suddenness of the irruption, and great also their con- 
 sternation ; 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 
 
 10 who were liable to surprise at the most exposed points 
 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, 
 
 15 being aware of the hurried circumstances in which the 
 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 
 
 20 to observe the usages of civilized warfare. The period of 
 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 
 
 25 riding into the Kalmuck encampment at various points. 
 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 
 
 30 fought the day before, in which one entire tribe of the 
 Khan's dependents, numbering not less than 9000 fight- 
 ing 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 33 
 
 selecting, therefore, the points of attack, on occasion of 
 the present hasty inroad, the Cossack chiefs were natu- 
 rally 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 oicloss with a precipita- 
 tion 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 be- 30 
 cause 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 
 
34 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 flanks. The siege of Koulagina was instantly raised ; 
 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 
 5 more rapid than ever. About 150 miles ahead of their 
 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 
 
 10 both eastwards and westwards. Pretty nearly in the 
 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 
 
 15 halt). It was the more essential to gain this pass before 
 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 
 
 20 pursuit were thrown out of the question) it was held, by 
 those best acquainted with the difficult and obscure geog- 
 raphy 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 
 
 25 so wide a sweep of pasturage was required) upon a circuit 
 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 
 
 30 yet, unless they moved upon it with the velocity of light 
 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 oiiloss; but the excitement of victory, and the 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 35 
 
 intense sympathy with their unexampled triumph, had 
 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 preoccu- 
 pation was reduced to a race. The Cossacks were march- 5 
 ing 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"^ 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 hear- 
 ing this exposition of the case. For they easily under- 
 stood that too capital an interest (the summa reruni) 15 
 was now at stake to allow of any regard to minor inter- 
 ests, 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 con- 30 
 
 1 " Trashed." This is an expressive word used by Beaumont and 
 Fletcher irt 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. 
 
36 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 trary, a brief but bitter experience had taught them to 
 take an amended calculation of what it was that lay 
 before them. 
 
 One whole day and far into the succeeding night had 
 5 the renewed flight continued ; the sufferings had been 
 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. 
 
 10 The second morning, however, brought an alleviation to 
 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 
 
 15 where they were, especially as the same cause would 
 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 
 
 20 end of that time, keen, bright, frosty weather succeeded ; 
 the drifting had ceased. In three days the smooth ex- 
 panse 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, 
 
 25 for the last time, universal plenty. The cows and oxen 
 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 
 
 30 immediate consumption. This measure led to a scene 
 of general banqueting, and even of festivity amongst all 
 who were not incapacitated for joyous emotions by dis- 
 tress of mind, by grief for the unhappy experience of the 
 few last days, and by anxiety for the too gloomy future. 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 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 
 
38 ■ REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 dry beds of the summer torrents and other inequalities of 
 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 
 
 5 cavalry, charged furiously upon them. Total overthrow 
 followed to the Cossacks, and a slaughter such as in some 
 measure avenged the recent bloody extermination of their 
 allies, the ancient oiiloss of Feka-Zechorr. The slight 
 horses of the Cossacks were unable to support the weight 
 
 lo of heavy Polish dragoons and a body of trained cameleers 
 (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 
 
 15 powers for effecting an escape. Very few, in fact, did 
 escape ; and the bloody day of Ouchim became as memo- 
 rable among the Cossacks as that which, about twenty 
 days before, had signalized the complete annihilation of 
 the Feka-Zechorr.^ 
 
 20 The road was now open to the River Igritch, and as yet 
 even far beyond it to the Torgau ; but how long this 
 state of things would continue was every day more 
 
 1 There was another oiiloss 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, there- 
 fore, 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. 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 39 
 
 doubtful. Certain intelligence was now received that a 
 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, catch- 
 ing 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, 3° 
 and not in strength of arm. Onward, therefore, the Kal- 
 mucks 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 
 
40 RKVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 sick man on liis coucli, the molhcr with her baby — all 
 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 
 5 to tlie wolves amidst a howling wilderness — continued to 
 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 
 
 lo the Wolga until they could reach their destined halting 
 ground on the east bank of the Torgau. For the first 
 seven weeks of this march their sufferings had been im- 
 bittered by the excessive severity of the cold ; and every 
 night — so long as wood was to be had for fires, either 
 
 15 from the lading of the camels, or from the desperate sacri- 
 fice 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, 
 
 20 and children, gathered by hundreds round a central fire, 
 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. 
 
 25 Frost, however, and snow at length ceased to persecute ; 
 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 
 
 30 been traversed ; February, March, April, were gone ; the 
 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 
 
KEi'oi/r or rill': rARiwrs. 41 
 
 fiiul liberty to repose themselves for ni;iny weeks in eoin 
 fort as well as in security, and to draw such sui)|)lics fioni 
 the fertile neighborhood as nii<;ht 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 comi^leted, but in a period of nearly five 
 months, and with the terrific sacrifice of at least two hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand souls, to say nothing of herds and 
 Hocks 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, look- 
 ing like the mummies of some antediluvian animals, with- 
 out 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 delib- 
 erately 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 ('zarina's 30 
 mercy, return to their old allegiance, in that case, 
 Oubacha^ professed himself willing to become the scape- 
 goat for the general transgression. This, he argued, was 
 no fantastic scheme, but even easy of accomplishment; 
 
42 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 for the unlimited and sacred power of the Khan, so well 
 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 
 
 5 descend the imperial vengeance. This proposal was 
 applauded for its generosity, but was energetically op- 
 posed 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 
 
 lo reached only the halfway house ; but, in that respect, 
 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 compara- 
 
 15 tively fertile ; backwards, through a blasted wilderness, 
 rich only in memorials of their sorrow, and hideous to 
 Kalmuck eyes by the trophies of their calamit)^ Besides, 
 though the Empress might accept an excuse for the past, 
 would she the less forbear to suspect for the future ? 
 
 20 The Czarina's pardon they might obtain, but could they 
 ever hope to recover her confidence 'l 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, 
 
 25 whatever motives there ever had been for the revolt 
 surely remained unimpaired by anything that had oc- 
 curred. 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 
 
 30 the year 16 16), their ancestors had revolted from the 
 Emperor of China. They had now tried both govern- 
 ments ; 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 43 
 
 yearning of the people was strongly in behalf of the 
 Khan's proposal ; the pardon of their prince, they per- 
 suaded 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 ist 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 opera- 
 tions. 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 
 
44 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 themselves form his advanced guard. Traubenberg, how 
 ever {why has not been certainly explained), refused t( 
 march ; grounding his refusal upon the condition of hi; 
 army and their absolute need of refreshment. Lon^ 
 5 and fierce was the altercation ; but at length, seeing nc 
 chance of prevailing, and dreading above all other event; 
 the escape of their detested enemy, the ferocious Bash 
 kirs went off in a body by forced marches. In six day; 
 they reached the Torgau, crossed by swimming thei] 
 
 lo horses, and fell upon the Kalmucks, who were dispersec 
 for many a league in search of food or provender foi 
 their camels. The first day's action was one vast sue 
 cession of independent skirmishes, diffused over a fielc 
 of thirty to forty miles in extent ; one party often break 
 
 15 ing up into three or four, and again (according to th( 
 accidents of ground) three or four blending into one 
 flight and pursuit, rescue and total overthrow, going or 
 simultaneously, under all varieties of form, in all quarters 
 of the plain. The Bashkirs had found themselves obliged, 
 
 20 by the scattered state of the Kalmucks, to split up intc 
 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, 
 
 25 and more than once in imminent danger of being cut 
 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 
 
 30 to arrive through the next two days and nights,, followed 
 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 45 
 
 recently been brought to a pause, was resumed at the 
 very moment when the unhappy fugitives were anticipat- 
 ing 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 suffer- 
 ings were incomplete unless they were rounded and 
 matured by all that the most dreadful agencies of sum- 
 mer'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 dis- 
 tance 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 antici- 
 pated 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 
 
46 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 an exchange. Upon this plea, to his own severe afflic- 
 tion, 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 
 
 5 concurrence on his part, that, when Weseloff in a private 
 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 pur- 
 
 10 pose of blighting them, the good-natured prince dis- 
 claimed 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. 
 
 15 Weseloff that he had just then received a message from 
 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 
 
 20 side was not to exceed three persons. Weseloff was a 
 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 
 
 25 suspicions to the Khan as might put him on his guard ; 
 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 
 
 30 Wolga, guessing the intentions of Weseloff, had offered 
 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 47 
 
 the evasion from the camp (of which the first steps only 
 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 fugi- 
 tives 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 com- 10 
 ing 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 out- 
 posts 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 clash- 
 ing 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 horse- 
 men. Seeing that no time was to be lost, Weseloff fired 
 
48 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 and brought down one of the two. His companions dis- 
 charged 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 
 5 once into a narrow space, gave the impression that a 
 whole troop of cavalry was coming down upon the assail- 
 ants, 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 
 
 10 whom Weseloff had shot was lying dead ; and both were 
 shocked, though Weseloff at least was not surprised, on 
 stooping down and scrutinizing his features, to recog- 
 nize a well-known confidential servant of Zebek-Dorchi. 
 Nothing was said by either party. The Khan rode off, 
 
 15 escorted by Weseloff and his companions; and for some 
 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 
 
 20 very party from whom he had just been delivered. Yet, on 
 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; 
 
 25 and, under other circumstances, I might feel it my duty to 
 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 
 
 30 safe. You may turn and pursue your enterprise ; for 
 the circumstances under which you wdll appear as my 
 escort are sulBcient to shield you from all suspicion for 
 the present. I regret having no better means at my dis- 
 posal for testifying my gratitud^ But tell me before we 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 49 
 
 part — was it accident only which led you to my rescue ? 
 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 con- 
 tinued 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 pur- 
 sue the route by which the Kalmucks had fled, never for 
 an instant finding any difficulty in tracing it by the skele- 
 tons and other memorials of their calamities. In par- 
 ticular, he mentions vast heaps of money as part of the 30 
 valuable property which it had been necessary to sacri- 
 fice. 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 
 
50 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 it was, with tlie price of their beautiful horses, whicli they 
 afterward sold at one of the Russian military settlements 
 for about ^15 apiece, which eventually enabled them to 
 pursue their journey in Russia. This journey, as regarded 
 5 Weseloif in particular, was closed by a tragical catas- 
 trophe. He was at that time young and the only child 
 of a doting mother. Her affliction under the violent ab- 
 duction of her son had been excessive, and probably had 
 undermined her constitution. Still she had supported it. 
 
 10 Weseloff, giving way to the natural impulses of his filial 
 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 
 
 15 shock of joy too sudden and too acute. She died upon 
 the spot. 
 
 We now revert to the final scenes of the Kalmuck 
 flight. These it would be useless to pursue circumstan- 
 tially through the whole two thousand miles of suffering 
 
 20 which remained ; for the character of that suffering was 
 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 
 
 25 attacks of their cruel enemies, the Bashkirs and the 
 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 
 
 30 attacking them in the rear, their advanced parties and 
 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 51 
 
 the fugitive Tartars to plunder provisions and to forage 
 wherever they passed. In this respect their condition 
 was a constant oscillation of wretchedness ; for some- 
 times, 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 suffer- 
 ing, 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 vari- 
 eties " of their misery in this respect, no rest ever came 
 to their unhappy rear ; post cqiiite?n sedei 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. 
 
52 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 But, though they fled unwillingly, too often they fled in 
 vain — being unwillingly recalled. There lay the tor- 
 ment. Every day the Bashkirs fell upon them ; every 
 day the same unprofitable battle was renewed ; as a 
 5 matter of course, the Kalmucks recalled part of their 
 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 
 
 10 by some hours, than they retired into the boundless 
 deserts, where all pursuit was hopeless. But if the Kal- 
 mucks resolved to press forwards, regardless of their ene- 
 mies — in that case their attacks became so fierce and 
 overwhelming that the general safety seemed likely to be 
 
 15 brought into question ; nor could any effectual remedy 
 be applied to the case, even for each separate day, ex- 
 cept 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 
 
 20 of such a systematic persecution, superadded to a previ- 
 ous 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 down- 
 
 25 right madness and frenzy. Indeed, long before the 
 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 
 
 30 common nature. The spectacle became too atrocious ; it 
 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 53 
 
 amusements in a wild frontier district lying on the out- 
 side 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 ^ 
 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.^ 
 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 
 
 1 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. 
 
54 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 troops of deer or other wild animals of the chase had 
 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 
 5 the forest grounds at some remoter points, secure from 
 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 phenome- 
 non had advanced to a point which was judged to be 
 
 lo within five miles of the spectators, though all calcula- 
 tions 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 devel- 
 
 15 oped itself far and wide into the appearance of huge 
 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 
 
 20 form of regular arches, portals, and windows, through 
 which began dimly to gleam the heads of camels " in- 
 dorsed " ^ 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 flash- 
 
 25 ing of polished arms. But sometimes, as the wind slack- 
 ened 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 ascend- 
 
 30 ing from infuriated myriads, reported, in a language not 
 to be misunderstood, what was going on behind the 
 cloudy screen. 
 
 1 Camels '■'■indorsed'''' "and elephants indorsed with towers." — 
 Milton in Paradise Regained, 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 55 
 
 It was, in fact, the Kalmuck host, now in the last 
 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 pro- 
 tection 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 hid- 10 
 eous 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 benevo- 15 
 lence. 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 recom- 
 mence 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 interpreta- 
 tion 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 pre- 30 
 maturely 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 
 
56 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 returning to their ancient obedience, must be — to deliver 
 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 
 5 detachment of artillery, who always attended the Em- 
 peror's motions. These were hastily summoned. Mean- 
 time 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 
 
 lo retire a little to the rear. It soon appeared, however, to 
 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 
 
 15 that line in which the imperial cortege had been standing, 
 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 
 
 20 the imperial cavalry was ordered up ; and it was precisely 
 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 
 
 25 appropriate winding up to an expedition in all its parts 
 and details so awfully disastrous. The Emperor was not 
 personally present, or at least he saw whatever he did s^e 
 from too great a distance to discriminate its individual 
 features ; but he records in his written memorial the 
 
 30 report made to him of this scene by some of his own 
 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 57 
 
 eleven o'clock in the forenoon, the Chinese cavalry 
 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 spec- 
 tacle 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 — outra- 
 geous 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 suffi- 
 ciency 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 30 
 
 — all 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 pro- 
 
58 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 claimed the progress of the massacre; but none heeded — 
 none 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 
 5 tongue drooping from the mouth. The cruel Bashkir was 
 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 
 
 lo thirst), in both nations had become lunatic, and in this 
 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 
 
 IS continued to rush, forgetful of all things at that moment 
 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 
 
 20 were instantly dyed red with blood and gore : here rode a 
 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 sink- 
 
 25 ing together below the surface, from weakness or from 
 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 
 
 3° women or boys ; and even these quiet creatures were 
 forced into a share in this carnival of murder by tram- 
 pling 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 59 
 
 up to the lake and 'rushed in, not able to resist their 
 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 suffi- 15 
 ciently 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 turins 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 3° 
 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 
 
60 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 Asiatic deserts, ?nd in the certainty that these wretched 
 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 
 5 the very gloomiest of the Kalmucks, or the least reflecting, 
 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. 
 
 10 Here ends the tale of the Kalmuck wanderings in the 
 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 
 
 15 munificence; and lands of great fertility were immediately 
 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 
 
 20 words, as translated into French by one of the Jesuit 
 missionaries : " La nation des Torgotes (savoir ks Kal- 
 miiques) arriva a Ily, toute delabree, n'ayant ni de quoi 
 vivre, ni de quoi se vetir. Je I'avais pre'vu ; et j 'avals 
 ordonne de faire en tout genre les provisions necessaires 
 
 25 pour pouvoir les secourir promptement : c'est ce qui a ete 
 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 
 
 30 pour I'habiller, des grains pour se nourrir pendant I'espace 
 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 61 
 
 designe des lieux particuliers, fertiles en paturages; et on 
 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 munifi- 
 cence of this prince in terms which proclaim still more 
 forcibly the disinterested generosity which prompted, and 
 the delicate considerateness which conducted, this exten- 10 
 sive 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. II " (viz. I'empereur, Kien Long) " leur fit pre- 
 parer des logemens conform.es 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 I'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 Kal- 
 mucks 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 
 
62 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 circumstances which obliged them to become essentially 
 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 
 
 S roving and from the savage customs connected with a half 
 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 
 
 lo disadvantage there was, amply to overbalance all other 
 possible gain : the chances were lost, or were removed to 
 an incalculable distance, for their conversion to Chris- 
 tianity, without which in these times there is no absolute 
 advance possible on the path of true civilization. 
 
 15 One word remains to be said upon the /^-''J"^;z<^/ interests 
 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 
 
 20 mind alienated from his cousin ; he revolted from the man 
 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 dissimu- 
 lation could not hide. This had produced a feud, which, 
 
 25 by keeping them aloof, had probably saved the life of 
 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 
 
 30 all the Tartar chieftains made to his Majesty at his hunt- 
 ing lodge in 1772. The Emperor informed himself accu- 
 rately 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 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 63 
 
 the Kalmuck people. The consequence was that he 
 adopted the cause of Oubacha, and repressed the pre- 
 tensions 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 presump- 5 
 tion 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 im- 15 
 perial banquet. For the Chinese morality is exactly of 
 that kind which approves in everything the lex talmiis : 
 
 "... Lex nee justior uUa 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 la7'es, 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 
 
64 REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 
 
 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 dif- 
 5 ferent 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 melan- 
 choly, 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 
 
 15 looked back upon the dread calamities attached to the 
 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 
 
 20 monuments ; one embodied in the religious solemnity, 
 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 
 
 25 Desert (this took place about six years after the arrival 
 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, 
 
 30 near the banks of the Ily. These columns stand upon 
 the very margin of the steppes, and they bear a short but 
 emphatic inscription ^ to the following effect : — 
 
 1 This inscription has been slightly altered in one or two phrases, 
 and particularly in adapting to the Christian era the Emperor's 
 
REVOLT OF THE TARTARS. 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 
 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 — 
 
 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. 
 
 Hallowed be the spot forever, 
 
 and 
 
 Hallowed be the day — September 8, 1771! 
 
 Amen. 
 
 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 con- 
 fusion 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. 
 
NOTES 
 
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 Eong himself (1735-1796), of which a French translation, 
 with the title Monument de la Transmigration des Toiirgozcths des Bords 
 de la Mer Caspiemie dans V 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 Meinoires 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 Writ- 
 ings, 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 Homeridcc} 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 Eong's 
 narrative, was, it appears from that reference, the German traveller, 
 Benjamin Bergmann, whose Nomadtsche Streifereien tatter den Kalmiiken 
 in de?i Jahren 1802 nnd i8oj came forth from a Riga press, in four 
 parts or volumes, in 1804-1805. The book consists of a series of letters 
 
 1 " 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 Homer idee. 
 
68 NOTES. 
 
 written 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 io6 
 pages, and entitled Versuch zur Geschichte der ^Kalmukenjiucht 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 
 Bergtnami chez les Kalmiiks : Traduit de VAllemand par M. Moris, 
 Menibre 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 trans- 
 lation, 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 his- 
 tory, 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 geographi- 
 cal 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 some- 
 how by that extraordinary transmigration of a Kalmuck horde across 
 the face of Asia in 177 1, 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 Menioires concei-nant 
 
NOTES. 69 
 
 les 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 V Evipire 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 177 1 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 formeriy 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 177 1, 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, con- 
 taining 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 inhab- 
 ited 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 sub- 
 mission, 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 
 
70 NOTES. 
 
 subdued 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 c<f 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, 177 1], after havhig 
 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 Tleton, 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 atten- 
 tion 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 
 
NOTES. 71 
 
 Chouhede 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 pro- 
 visions 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 dwell- 
 ings. 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 con- 
 quered 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 
 
72 NOTES. 
 
 the 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 con- 
 dition of the fugitives. 
 
 " On a comparison of De Quincey's splendid paper with the Chinese 
 documents, several discrepancies present themselves ; the most impor- 
 tant of which perhaps are these : — (i) 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 177 1, we are told, being then on a hunting expedition 
 in the soHtary 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 
 
NOTES. 73 
 
 the 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 Torgoutli Tartars from 
 their eastern home on the Chinese borders for transference of them- 
 selves far west to Russia, which was repaired and compensated by their 
 return in 177 1 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 161 6, 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 w^hich 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 
 
74 NOTES. 
 
 of 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. i, 1. 4), of the roma7ttic circtwi stances (p. i, 1. 11), 
 of its dramatic capabilities (p. 2,1. 8), of its scenical situations (p. 3, 1. 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 i, note the fitness of the 
 word velocity (1. 12) and the appropriateness of the epithets in almighty 
 instincts (1. 17), life-withering marches (1. iS), gloomy vengeance (1. 19), 
 volleying thunders (p. 2, 1. i). 
 
 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 recog- 
 nition merely, but the avowal of something as sacred, hence obligatory ; 
 a thing ordained. 
 
MOTES. 75 
 
 2 13, 14. a triple character. De Quincey is fond of thus analyzing 
 the facts he has to state. Notice how this method of statement, 
 marked by " ist," " 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 TAe Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa. 
 
 2 22. Cambyses, the Third (529-522 e.g.). 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 (1. 28) means "a march down," — in this case 
 the retreat of the Greeks. The Anabasis of the Greek historian Xeno- 
 phon 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 (1. 26), the Apostate, lost his life while invading Persia {-^^1^ 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 para- 
 graphs ; 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 Hettnan ; 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 (1. 18) are 
 Mongolians and nomadic in their habits. 
 
 3 18. Ouchim was evidently a mountain pass in the Ural range 
 (compare p. 37, 1. 18). 
 
76 NOTES. 
 
 3 19. Torgau, spelled also Torgai by De Quincey, though elsewhere 
 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, 
 1. 18, and note thereon. 
 
 3 23. Zebek-Dorchi. One of the principal characters in the follow- 
 ing 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 
 (1. 19) ; also point out the fitness of the word inflated in the phrase 
 
 (1- 13)- 
 
 5 23. rival, '^h.y '^ 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 prin- 
 ciple 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 appro- 
 priate here.-* 
 
 829. 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, 1. 13. 
 
NOTES. 77 
 
 9 11. behemoth. A Hebrew word meaning "great beast." It was 
 used probably of the hippopotamus. wSee Job, xl, 1 5-24. 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 Agonisies, 139. 
 
 '•'■ Baptized a7id infidel '''' 2in6. " baj- baric East" dixe also borrowings from 
 Milton. 
 
 9 16. unnumbered numbers. Notice how effectively in this and the 
 following sentences De Quincey utilizes suggested words: inojistrous, 
 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 w^ell 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 ^79^^ 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 pre- 
 vailing in Tibet and Mongolia, which combines the ethical and meta- 
 physical 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 Dictionaiy. 
 
 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 belong- 
 ing 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 
 
78 NOTES. 
 
 authority 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, 1. 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 sym- 
 pathy with which this paragraph closes. 
 
 13 28. war raged. "The war was begun in 1768 when Mustapha 
 III. was Sultan of Turkey ; audit 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 Prankish 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 29. 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 45-5°- 
 
 17 31. sanctions. Compare the note on p. 2,1. 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 secojidly, 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 .'* 
 
NOTES. 79 
 
 20 17. Kirghises. The spelling Kirghiz is more familiar. Like the 
 Bashkirs, 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 deriva- 
 tives 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. W^hat 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, 1. i, where De Quincey 
 uses a somewhat similar phrase. Why is the phrase varied, do you 
 suppose ? 
 
80 NOTES. 
 
 28 21. the French retreat. It would be interesting to 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 v/rath. Compare Revelation, xv, 7, and xvi, i. 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, 181 2 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 Tieioe's Journal of the Plague Year. 
 
 29 28. The siege of Jerusalem. Read Josephus, The Jewish JVar, 
 Bks. V and VI. 
 
 29 31. exasperation. Compare note on p. 26, 1. 28. 
 
 30 3, 4. even of maternal love. The reference is to an incident 
 mentioned by Josephus {The Jewish War, Bk. VI, Chap. Ill), 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, ijtcre- 
 ment. 
 
 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, 1. 28. 
 
 32 23. Bactrian camels. There are two species of camel, the drome- 
 dary, single humped, and the Bactrian, with two humps. The former 
 is native to Arabia, the latter to central Asia. The dromedary is the 
 
NOTES. 81 
 
 swifter of the two. Bactria is the ancient name of that district now 
 called Balkh, in Afghanistan. 
 
 ZZ 7. evasion. Compare with its positive correspondent invasioji ; 
 compare decrement, p. 31, 1. 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 south- 
 west. 
 
 38 10. Polish dragoons. "The adjective refers not to the nation- 
 aUty, but to the equipment of the cavalry. Thus there was at one time 
 in the French army a corps called Chasseurs d'Afriqiie, and in both the 
 French and that of the Northern troops in our own Civil War a corps 
 of Zouaves. Similarly at p. 53, 1. 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, 1. 28. 
 
 40 5. howling wilderness. Why so called.? Compare with a 
 previous use of the same expression (p. 12, 1. 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 dull- 
 ness; 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 Grote's History of Greece, Chap. 
 XXXVIII. 
 
82 NOTES. 
 
 41 29. untread. A dictionary word, but uncommon. Recall similar 
 words used by De Quincey which add picturesqueness in part because 
 of their novelty. 
 
 41 31. their old allegiance. i6i6. See the close of this paragraph. 
 
 41 32. scapegoat. Leviticus, x\\, j-io; 20-22. 
 
 42 32, 33. land of promise . . . house, etc. Deuteronotiiy, 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 mis- 
 used. What does it mean "i 
 
 44 10. were dispersed. Note the variety of phrases in the following 
 ten lines used to indicate separation. 
 
 46 16. Hetman. Chief. Compare Germ. Haiiptmann, Eng. captain, 
 Fr. chef. 
 
 47 1. evasion. See previous note on p. 33, 1. 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 lago : 
 
 O Spartan dog, 
 More fell than anguish, hunger, or the sea ! 
 Look on the tragic loading of this bed ; 
 This is thy work. 
 
 5117. "fierce varieties." Misquoted. '$>&% Paradise Lost, \\, ^^<^\ 
 VII, 272. 
 
 51 19. post equitem, etc. : 
 
 Behind the horseman sits black care. 
 
 — Horace's Odes, III, i, 40, 
 
 51 20. undying worm. Isaiah, Ixvi, 24. 
 
NOTES. 83 
 
 51 29. ** from morn till dewy eve." Paradise Lost, I, 742. 
 
 52 32. 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 Jdger ; 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, 1. 10. 
 
 54 21. indorsed. Look up the etymology. Has De Quincey, in 
 his note, quoted Milton accurately? See Paradise Regaijted, III, 329. 
 
 56 ]3. 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 Para- 
 dise 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 Tor- 
 gouths {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 neces- 
 sary for their prompt relief; which was duly done. The distribution of 
 lands was made ; and there was assigned to each family a portion suffi- 
 cient 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 ow^n 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 trans- 
 lation 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 
 
84 NOTES. 
 
 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 nee 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 sim- 
 plicity 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 2.3. music. One who has listened to Mongolian attempts at 
 harmony must suspect that De Quincey is again inspired by his imagi- 
 nation 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. 
 
ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
HUDSON'S SHAKESPEARE 
 
 For School and Home Use. 
 
 By henry N. HUDSON, LL.D., 
 
 A uthor of ' ' The L ife, A rt, and Characters of Shakespeare^^ 
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