Russian-Muslim Confrontation in the Caucasus by Hamburg Gary; Sanders Thomas; Tucker Ernest

Author:Hamburg, Gary; Sanders, Thomas; Tucker, Ernest
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 200553
Publisher: Routledge

XVI

In January 1852, in immediate response to Nicholas Pavlovich’s instructions, the authorities organized a raid deep into Chechnia.

The detachment detailed for the raid consisted of four infantry battalions, two companies of Cossacks, and eight cannon. The column proceeded along a road. On both sides of the column, in an unbroken chain moving first up, then down gullies, marched riflemen in high boots, sheepskin coats, and Caucasian fur hats, their rifles on their shoulders and cartridges in their bandoliers.

As always, the detachment moved through enemy territory observing strict silence. Only occasionally, as they bumped across ditches, their guns jingled, or an artillery horse, not understanding the order for silence, snorted or neighed, or an angry commander in hoarse but restrained voice shouted at his men that the line was too extended or was too close to or too far from the column. Only once was the silence broken when there bounded out of a small briar patch that fell between the line and column a white-bellied, gray-backed female goat and an identically-colored ram with small horns sweeping back toward his spine. The beautiful, startled creatures, curling their front legs up against their chests, flew in huge bounds so close by the column that several soldiers, shouting and laughing, ran after them intending to stick them with their bayonets, but the goats reversed directions, bounded back across the line, then, followed by several cavalrymen and company dogs, hurtled themselves away into the mountains.

Although it was still winter, the sun had already begun to climb higher in the sky; by noon, when the company, which had set out early in the morning, had already covered about three miles, the air had warmed up considerably, and the sun’s rays were so bright that it hurt one’s eyes to look at the steel of the bayonets or at the bright spots that suddenly flared up, like little suns, on the bronze of the cannons.

Behind the troops was the clear, rapid stream the detatchment had just crossed, ahead were tilled fields and meadows intersected by shallow gullies, even further ahead were mysterious black mountains covered with forest, while beyond the black mountains were jutting rock faces, and on the lofty horizon were eternally wondrous, eternally changing snow-capped peaks dancing in the shifting light like uncut diamonds.

Leading the Fifth Company, in a black uniform and Caucasian fur cap, with his sword slung across his shoulder marched a recent transferee from the Guards Regiment, the tall and handsome officer Butler, who at that moment was feeling acutely the joy of life but also the proximity of death, the desire for action and the consciousness of belonging to an enormous whole directed by a single will. Now going out on his second mission, Butler rejoiced to think that any minute now the enemy would open fire and that he would neither duck his head to avoid the incoming cannon-ball nor pay attention to the whistle of the bullets, but rather, as he had previously done, would raise his head

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