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Page 18
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;
the sheep perished by wholesale; and the children themselves
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
collision with the Kalmucks. Great was their surprise at 5
the suddenness of the irruption, and great also their consternation;
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
who were liable to surprise at the most exposed points 10
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,
being aware of the hurried circumstances in which the 15
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
to observe the usages of civilized warfare. The period of 20
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
riding into the Kalmuck encampment at various points. 25
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
fought the day before, in which one entire tribe of the 30
Khan's dependents, numbering not less than 9000 fighting
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
selecting, therefore, the points of attack, on occasion of
the present hasty inroad, the Cossack chiefs were naturally
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 _ouloss_ with a precipitation
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 because 30
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
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
more rapid than ever. About 150 miles ahead of their 5
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
both eastwards and westwards. Pretty nearly in the 10
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
halt). It was the more essential to gain this pass before 15
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
pursuit were thrown out of the question) it was held, by 20
those best acquainted with the difficult and obscure geography
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
so wide a sweep of pasturage was required) upon a circuit 25
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
yet, unless they moved upon it with the velocity of light 30
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 _ouloss_; but the excitement of victory, and the
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 preoccupation
was reduced to a race. The Cossacks were marching 5
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"[6] as 10
they were, to anticipate so agile a light cavalry as the
Cossacks in seizing this important pass.
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