n twice beaten off by Shamil: he had been
repulsed, and had nearly lost his army in the forests; his troops had
been hurled back with slaughter from the mountain fort. Next year he
despatched another large army, furnished with heavy artillery, against
Ghergebil, which drove out the Murid garrison by a tremendous
bombardment, but retired without occupying the place. During the next
few years, though wild work went on as usual along the border, where a
sharp guerilla warfare was kept up, neither Shamil nor Vorontzoff
attempted to strike any decisive blow. But the lowlands were
devastated by perpetual incursions and reprisals, and the forest
tribes, placed between two fires, driven to choose between the Murids
and the Russians, gradually transferred their allegiance to the side
best able to protect them, and migrated northward across the Russian
line. The uninhabited woodlands became a kind of neutral ground which
neither side cared to occupy; and from this time Shamil's sphere of
action was confined to the mountains of Daghestan. Then, in 1854,
began the war in the Crimea, when according to Mr. Baddeley the Allies
might have ruined Russia in the Caucasus by making common cause with
Shamil and supporting him vigorously. But England and France were
absorbed in besieging Sebastopol, and Omar Pasha's Transcaucasian
campaign was undertaken too late for any effective result. Mr.
Baddeley considers that in neglecting their opportunity of backing
Shamil the Allies made a strategic blunder; yet we agree with him that
this is not to be regretted. For the credit of civilisation it is well
that they did not let loose the savage Mohammedan fanatics upon
Christian Georgia and the peaceful Russian settlements beyond the
frontier, to their own dishonour, and to the misery of the people whom
Russia was protecting. Shamil did make one foray into Georgia, when a
party of his men carried off two Georgian princesses, the wife and
sister of the Viceroy, who were kept by Shamil in rigorous captivity
and treated cruelly for eight months while negotiations went on for
their release. His object was to exchange them for his son, who had
been captured by the Russians some fourteen years earlier, had been
brought up from childhood among them, and at this time was a
lieutenant in a Russian lancer regiment. As Shamil demanded not only
his son but a large ransom for the princesses, there was long haggling
over the money, but this point was at last settle