ations of regular troops in
the background. On the south of the central mountain ranges the
Russians held Georgia, inhabited by Christian races whom the Russians
had liberated from the Turkish or Persian yoke before the close of the
eighteenth century, and who ever afterwards remained loyal subjects of
the Czar. The Georgian road which traversed the whole Caucasian region
from north to south, formed a most important line of communication
which was never seriously interrupted. To the south-east, when the
nineteenth century opened, lay Mohammedan khanates, vassals of Persia;
on the south-west were the semi-independent pachaliks of the Ottoman
empire.

We must pass over, reluctantly, Mr. Baddeley's very interesting sketch
of the gradual approach made by Russia toward the Caucasus during the
eighteenth century, which may be said to have begun in earnest with
the expedition of Peter the Great, who led an army to the Caspian
shore and captured Derbend about 1722. This threatening movement upon
the confines of Asia inevitably involved Russia in war with the Turks
and with the Persians, for whom the Caucasian mountains represented a
great fortress, barring the onward march of a powerful Christian
empire toward their dominions. For the Russians, on their side, it
became of vital importance to break through the barrier that separated
them from Georgia, to occupy the country between the two seas, and to
make an end of the perpetual warfare with the tribes, who kept their
frontier on the Cossack line in unceasing agitation and disorder, and
were a standing menace to the Christian population of Georgia. It
should be understood, however, that the Cossacks discharged their
duties of watch and ward after a very rough fashion, raiding and
fighting on their own account, making incursions upon their Mohammedan
neighbours in retaliation for attacks and forays, and laying waste the
enemy's country with the bitter vindictiveness of antagonistic races
and religions.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century Georgia and some other
Christian principalities in Trans-Caucasia--that is, on the southern
border of the mountains--had been absorbed into the Russian empire,
which now held continuous territory on this line from the Black Sea to
the Caspian. Along the Caspian shore the vassal States of Persia had
been reduced to submission, while the Turks had been driven back from
their fortified posts on the Black Sea. The Turkish and Persian
gove