guarded only by the disease which prostrated him and his followers, and suffering under privation of every kind, he lingered on till he could perceive no further hope of rescue or return. Then, at length, he resolved on the course which every Hindoo abhors,—expatriation. He and such leaders as remained cut off each a little finger, to leave behind as a representative of their entire selves as inhabiting Holy India, and passed over the Himalaya into Thibet. What he will do there—whether he will adopt a freebooting life on the steppes, amidst a climate which must be to him like that of the poles, or whether he will turn eastwards into China, or westwards into Bokhara, or whether he will be enslaved by Turcomans; or whether he will attempt to drop down into India from the region of snows, there is no conjecturing. What we can conjecture is the mood of mind in which an outcast like Nana Sahib, conscious of the reprobation of the ruling race in his own country, and of the bitter hatred of the Hindoos and Moslems whom he misled,—a grandee in his way, a despot, a sensualist, and in some sort a cultivated man—is now wandering in the wilds, without comfort in the present, solace in the past, or hope in the future. Let us hope that the world will hear of him no more.
In a life as wild as we can find in India we next light upon a hero as genuine as any old Greek, braving the forces of Persia, or any Crusader of the Middle Ages, warring for his faith and the Sepulchre.
The people of the Caucasus have been made heroic and interesting by persecution, as has often been the case with individuals in all societies. The mountain tribes of that region were once mere banditti, continually afflicting neighbouring states by their raids. The Russian sovereigns have chosen to educate them into patriotism by a severe discipline, and to engage the sympathies of the world on their behalf. Peter the Great was bent on obtaining the two great routes to India, one of which lay through the Caucasus, Georgia, Persia, and Herat. As we know, he did not succeed; but he annexed a good deal of territory, and united the mountain tribes by their common fear of Russia. As the Greek Church appeared wherever the new frontier extended, the opposition to the invader naturally took the form of a religious war. A Moslem dervish roused the whole population between the Black Sea and the Caspian, as Peter the Hermit once roused Christendom; and, from the time of his agitation against Russia, the people of the Caucasus had a country and a cause to which to devote their valour, and on which to nourish their patriotic growth. It was about eighty years ago that Sheik Mansur, the dervish, was reciting the Kuran, and declaiming pious verses (to the number of 20,000) on the steppes of the Don and the shores of the Caspian: and when he was captured, and was known to have died in a Russian fortress, his followers were like sheep without a shepherd. It was necessary to them to have a religious leader; and till Schamyl, the prophet chief, presented himself, they could do little more than worry the enemy by incursions, in which they burned the Russian posts and carried off prisoners.
Schamyl’s career began with a miracle—not invented by himself, but assumed by those about him. The great Moslem priest who was his instructor, and the voice of all the tribes in their protest against the invader, was shot dead while kneeling, and stretching out his hand to heaven on behalf of his country. His pupil lay dead before him, we are told; and his body was left lying when the Russians carried off that of his master, to be paraded before the troops. Yet Schamyl reappeared ere long, in full vigour; and it never became known how he was restored. This was in 1832. More than one singular escape followed; and in 1834 he was acknowledged as Sultan of the Eastern Caucasus and the Second Prophet of Allah.
He was at once seen to be one of Nature’s kings. Not by original strength of body; for his fair complexion, small features, and moderate stature correspond with his original delicacy of health: but by indomitable strength of will, shown in the control of himself as much as of others. He was a dreamer in his childhood; lonely, meditative, and proud in his youth; and a patriot enthusiast always. He is a fatalist of the most positive type; a believer in his own inspiration to the full extent that fatalism requires; and so eloquent that others may naturally regard him as a prophet. Such an antagonism as his and the Russians, a quarter of a century ago, is something quite out of the common way. He believed the Russians not to be men, but feræ naturæ—wild beasts more resembling men than others do: and, at the same time, the Russian General Williamineff was sending forth a proclamation to the tribes under Schamyl which said, “Do you not know that there are two rulers of the universe—God in heaven, and the Czar on earth? Do you not know that the heavens themselves would fall, if they were not upheld by Russian bayonets?” We may imagine what the warfare was like between foes who so regarded each other and themselves.
It was a memorable war; and it will be so regarded by future generations. For nearly a quarter of a century, Schamyl kept at arms’ length the power of the largest and most purely military empire in the world. He learned the art of war by experience. If, nearly every year, the Russians cut down more of the sheltering woods which the natives could ill spare, Schamyl dug more trenches and raised more palisades. The children of exiled Poles, or young Polish exiles themselves, have been sent by the Czar to serve, or learn the military art, in Georgia or the Caucasus. Many of them were willing prisoners, or deserters, to Schamyl; and from them he learned many arts of war. His enemy could never attain the hardihood by means of which he and his troops could keep the passes in stormy seasons, and live in caverns when the Russians were crouching over the stoves in their forts. Now and then the enemy remained quiet for a year; and then there was sure to be a proclamation from Schamyl to his followers at the opening of the next season that the pack of “flax-haired Christian dogs” was coming down upon them. The struggle became more deadly and barbarous as the passions of both parties became more exasperated. The Russians burned