YAKOOB BEG, OF KASHGAR.*
Tins is a valuable book, and one which it would hardly be fair to criticise in the ordinary way. The writer is evidently one of those men who, having taken up an out-of-the-way subject of study, become possessed by it, and gradually accumulate more information than they quite know what to do with. Their talk is apt to be fuller of instruction than of interest, and their books make the literary fortunes of others than themselves. Mr. Boulger writes in a blamably slipshod style, sometimes omitting words essential to make his meaning clear ; he frequently supposes in his readers knowledge they are quite sure not to possess ; and he occasionally tumbles his facts before his reader rather to disburden himself, than to improve the road. Nevertheless, the reader who will steadily plod through Mr. Boulger's book will find that he has gained much more than he expected, that he has acquired
ideas as well as facts, and that his whole conception of Central Asia and its political situation has been made clearer and more definite. Not only will he recognise that he had misunderstood Yakoob Beg and his position in Kashgar, but that he had for- gotten to reckon up all the great forces at work in Central Asia, and more especially the Chinese, of whose ability in government, ruthless cruelty, and persistent determination to keep all they have ever gained, the author gives an account, all the more striking because he does not apparently see how terrible it is. He states the evidence of Chinese ruthlessness as fairly as the evidences of Chinese business-wisdom, but while he greatly admires the latter, he treats the former too much as if the slaughter of all armed males after submission were a regular operation of war. It may be, however, that he thought this style essential to impartiality, as he points out, with cold accuracy, that it was the Chinese cruelty that originally cost them Kashgar. Impartiality, indeed, is his strong point, the very object of his book being to dissolve the great mythus with which Englishmen have surrounded his hero.
Yakoob Beg, of Kashgar, the Prince who for some years loomed in English vision like a second Prester John, was by birth nobody, not even a Tartar. His father was a Tajik, that
is, a man of Persian descent, who had settled in Khokand, and had been appointed Kazi of the little town of Piske,nt,—that
is, was a respectable, but not eminent person, who intended his eldest son to be a Moollah. Yakoob was born in 1820, and at the age of twenty-five was appointed commandant of a battalion of five hundred men ; and two years later, 1847, was entrusted with the charge of the Ak Musjid, a fortress on the Syr Darya. He was suspected of selling this place to the Russians, probably unjustly, but at all events, he lost it, and up to 1864 was known only as a gallant, but unsuccessful, young soldier. In that year, however, being then a short, strong man of great daring and some experi- ence in war, bred among Moollahs, and devoted to Islam, he was selected by Buzurg Khan, last representative of the Khojas of Kashgar, to command, under him, an invasion of that province, or rather of East Turkestan, the region bounded on the north by Siberia or its frontier desert, on the west by the Pamir steppe, on the south-west by Cashmere, and on the south and east by China. These Khojas belonged to a family remotely descended from Timour, but immediately from Hadayatulla, a ruler in Kashgar, who had acquired among Mussulmans the reputation of a great saint, as well as a just prince. In 1859 the Chinese, who had governed Kashgar since 1765, and on the whole governed it well, though occasionally with savage cruelty, were suddenly assailed by the Chinese Mahommedan population, who, aware of the success of the Mussulmans in Yunnan, and perhaps seized with an access of religious zeal, massacred their fellow-countrymen the Bud- hists by surprise, expelled the Chinese Governors, and aided by immigrants from Khokand, set up a government of their own. The fall of the Chinese "Governor," or " Amban," was marked by an incident which Mr. Boulger justly thinks characteristic of the iron determination which is, to him, the specialty of the Chinese :—
" Then occurred one of those deeds, which, if Europe instead of Asia had been the scene, would have been handed down to posterity as a rare example of military devotion and courage, but which, although not unique oven in the annals of the campaign we are entering upon, having occurred in little-known Eastern Turkestan, is not realised as an event that has actually taken place. It is a myth of the myth-land to which it belongs. And yet when we read how the Amban summoned all his officers to his chamber, where he sat in state surrounded by his wives, his family, and his servants ; how all were silent, and yet sedate and pre- pared ; how at the given signal that all were present, and that the toe was at the gate, the aged war, ior dropped his lighted pipe into the mine beneath; how the exulting foe won after all but a barren triumph; and • Yakoob Beg. Kashgar. By D. 0. Boulger. London W. H. Allen and Co.
how the Khitay taught the natives that if they had forgotten how to conquer they had not how to die, we feel that there is an undercurrent throughout the story that, apart from the admiration it must command, has claims to our own special sympathy. The Chinese, as we did in India in the dark honrs of 1857, asserted their superiority over the semi- barbarous races under their sway, even when all hopes of a recovery seemed to be abandoned."
Buzurg Khan, as representative of the Kbojas, felt that his time had arrived, and in January, 1865, with Yakoob Beg for com- mander-in-chief, but only 68 followers, he left Khokand for Kash- gar, where he was at once acknowledged as rightful Sovereign, and established his Court. Yakoob Beg, calling all true Mussul- mans to his standard, and avowing himself then, as always, Athalik Ghazi, Champion Father of the Faithful, defeated the remnants of the Buddhist Chinese ; crushed the Mahommedan Chinese, who were jealous of him, as a Khokandee, and enlisted them in his army ; and partly by good generalship, partly by a luck which was, for a time, conspicuous in his career, found him- self towards the end of 1865 powerful enough to exile his master, Buzurg Khan, and declare himself independent Sovereign of Kashgar.
He reigned over his territory for twelve years, but not exactly in the position which the English imagined for him. He crushed all local enemies, and was obeyed up to the Chinese frontier ; but he was never a ruler at rest, never anything but the chief of a small dominant caste, bound together chiefly by what is called in Western Asia, Wahabee feeling. The religious Mahommedans through- out Central Asia looked to him as their leader and hope ; but the religious Mahommedans in that region are few, and they were his only sincere supporters. He was obliged, in order to secure them,
to affront all other classes of his subjects by too rigid a religious and moral discipline. The Buddhist Kashgarees, who were half the population, longed for their Chinese brethren ; the Tunganis, or Chinese Mahommedans, were Sadducees, and thought about him pretty much as Cavalier Christians thought about their Puritan brethren in the faith ; even the Khokandees did not cordially like his over-strict rule. He never had above 17,000 troops of any kind, of whom only 10,000 were drilled soldiers ; he had a difficulty in finding competent lieutenants to govern so vast an area of thinly-
peopled country, and he had no hold through pedigree, prescription, or general renown. He was compelled, therefore, to multiply him- self, to be everywhere at once, to establish a strict political police, and to govern in the Wahabee way,—that is, by inces- sant interference in the domain of private life and morals. There is evidence that he was hated by his own officers for his moral rigour ; he had little genuine popular support even among Mussulmans, and he was compelled everywhere to employ the Buddhist Chinese, who, after the manner of their nation, served him, while regarding him as a dog who would be thrown into a ditch some day. He laboured, too, under the insuperable Mussnlman difficulty. He never could get a revenue. The Chinese, who opened mines, sold jade, dug coal, encouraged trade, and taught agriculture, could get money readily enough ; but he could not, and he was never able, therefore, to form a regular army. In vain he established a Court, with the strictest etiquette in the world. In vain he made treasonable talk a most dangerous offence. In vain he made himself the champion and exponent of Mussulman religious ideas. In vain he organised a stern and, in its way, efficient urban and rural administration, under which no man could move without his cognisance and consent. He remained a military adventurer, dwelt in a barrack, ready for instant defence, and never acquired the smallest genuine hold upon his country. The Russians were afraid of him, it is true, for a reason which we think Mr. Boulger does not quite see. The one thing they fear, as their agents confess in the Grey Book, is a religious rising, and Yakoob Beg, had he turned Westward, might have headed such a rising ; but he did not ; and when the Chinese, freed from internal diffi- culties, set themselves to regain their province, he was beaten before he had fought. In August, 1876, the Chinese Generals, with two armies, one of 50,000 and one of 10,000 men, commenced their victories by the capture of Urumtsi, and on September 2nd they carried Manes, which had been bravely defended by the Tunganis, who, under deceitful promises, were lured out of the city, attacked, and put to death "with the extremity of torture." Every able- bodied man in the city was put to death, and the army rolled forward to meet Yakoob Beg, who hastened to defend his fron- tier. About April, 1877, he met the invaders, was defeated twice, with a loss of 20,000 men, saw numbers of his followers go over to the enemy, and then retreating to Korla, disappeared from history. It is as nearly certain as anything in Central Asia can be, that he was murdered by his legitimate Sovereign, according to Central-Asian ideas, the son of Buzurg Khan, the master whom he had sent into exile ; but there is no proof of the execution, and many Russians believed that he died of fever. At all events, he passed out of the scene, and the Chinese, by long, rapid marches, and a little severe fighting, made easier by the small numbers of the regular Kashgari soldiery, possessed themselves by December, 1877, of the entire territory. They found everywhere numbers of Bud- dhist Chinese, who were willing agents, and their habit of creating regular government at once stood them in good stead :—
"A cldt ot was formed at Kuehn, and a large body of troops remained there as a garrison ; but the principal administrative measures were- directed to the task of improving the position of the Turki-Mussultnan population. A board of administration was instituted, for the purpose of providing means of subsistence for the destitute, and for the distri- bution of seed-corn for the benefit of the whole community. It had also to supervise the construction of roads, and the establishment of ferry-boats, and of post-houses, in order to facilitate the movements of trade and travel, and to expedite the transmission of mails. Magis- trates and prefects were appointed to all the cities, and special precau- tions were taken against the outbreak of epidemic or of famine. All these wise precautions were carried out promptly, and in the most matter-of-fact manner, just as if the legislation and administration of alien States were the daily avocations of Chinamen. There is ne reason to believe that in the vast region from Turfan to Kuehn the Chinese have departed from the statesmanlike and beneficent schemes which marked their reinstallation as rulers ; and whatever harshness or cruelty they manifested towards the Tungani rebels and the Kash- garian soldiers, was more than atoned for by the mildness of their treat- ment of the people."
Kashgar, the capital, fell on December 17th, the remaining soldiers retreated into Russian territory, and the Chinese, having
killed all armed males, were left in full and undisturbed posses- sion of a country from which Yakoob Beg, his Court, his army, and his Khokandian followers have passed away as utterly as if they had lived two hundred years ago. The body of the army is advancing to Kuldja, to rescue it from the Russians. The Chinese Deputy-Viceroy of Kasligar, with the remainder, is doubt- less organising a government in the Chinese style. All markets will be reopened, jade will again be sold, gold will again be searched for, roads will be repaired, there will be tolerant government in all commercial places, and as long as there is no rebellion, every- body will be at liberty to be comfortable. When there is, all males not Chinese will be slaughtered out at once, with no more compunction, or hesitation, or feeling than if they were so many flies. The Chinese are, in fact, in Central Asia logical Jingoes,—devoid of the embarrassing conscience which English Jingoes are unable to subdue.
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