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| The Tournament of Shadows | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 19 2015, 12:10 AM (550 Views) | |
| Nentsia | Jun 19 2015, 12:10 AM Post #1 |
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Ya Basta!
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Napoleon's Grand Army was broken by the Russians. In Britain, allies of Russia in their fight against Napoleon Bonaparte, the Russian victory both surprised and shocked politicians. As happy as they were with Napoleon's defeat, so worried were they about the true power of Russia. No one had expected that this seemingly weak and backwards empire would break the spine of the mightiest conquering army in Europe... What more was to be expected from the Russians? Napoleon and Tsar Alexander had briefly been allies. Napoleon needed Russia to invade Persia, march through the land of the Afghans, and take India from the British - the backbone of British power. Napoleon was gone, but the Russians were still there. The British thus set out to try and discover what the Russians were up to, and how they could secure the ancient route to India from where so many invaders had taken Delhi in the past 2,000 years. St. Petersburg, alarmed by British activities in Asia and the Caucasus aimed at undermining the Russians - even during their supposed ''alliance'' against Napoleon, dispatched their own agents into Central Asia to secure Russian interests. A great power rivalry was being fought in the shadows of the mountains of High Asia for almost a century. The British called it ''The Great Game''. The Russians referred to it as the ''Tournament of Shadows''. Afghanistan, the Heart of Asia and the Gate to India, became the most important stage of this most epic rivalry where the players of the game met face to face. The players knew very well that the game they were playing was one of life and death... PART I ''Great Suspicions'' The Kuh-e-Shah Jahan Mountains, Khorasan, Eastern Persia October 1837 The bright sun above the notorious and unknown Kuh-e-Shah mountains was burning the scarred flesh of the back of a young officer who went by several false names, including Ivan Vitkevich. Scars that reminded him of his youthful stupidity: resisting the iron fist of the Tsar in St. Petersburg. Born to a noble family of ''Litvins'', in Vilno, Vitkevich participated as a student in a secret society aimed at ending the Russian occupation of their country. They were discovered and sentenced to death. Vitkevich would have been executed if it wasn't for the Tsar's brother, acting as regent of Poland, who intervened and turned the sentence into forced labor for the rest of their lives. This was the idea of 'mercy'. It was so merciful that Vitkevich's fellow conspirators committed suicide one after another. Vitkevich was sent to work at a fortress not far from the Kazakh steppes where Kirgyz raids were a permanent danger. Plans to escape through the steppe, over the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan to India - British-controlled territory, failed miserably. Should it have worked, the British would surely welcomed him with open arms: Britain hosted the Polish government-in-exile and above all, they would probably want to know everything about his experiences and impressions of his journey through Central Asia. But it was all nothing more than a dream of freedom. Vitkevich, and many of those who shared his fate, gave up on futile attempts to regain the lost freedom and reconciled himself with his situation. He denounced his Polish name, or rather Russified it from 'Jan Witkiewicz' to Ivan Vitkevich, and began to study the peoples that lived on the other side of the Orenburg line where he was exiled to. He befriended Kazakhs, learned their manners, studied Kazakh and Chagatai languages and he learned the Koran from his head. His reputation as a talented man would soon bring him into contact with his greatest idol. Vitkevich was not just interested in the peoples of the steppe, he was interested in explorations, geography and nature as well. The Commandant of the Orsk fortress, who had hired Vitkevich to educate his children, knew that Vitkevich venerated the explorer Alexander von Humboldt, who was probably the greatest scientist of their days. In 1830, Alexander von Humboldt passed through Orenburg on return from an exploration through Siberia. While staying there, Vitkevich - who had read everything about Humboldt's explorations of South America - was introduced to his hero, who was deeply impressed by this young Polish officer living in exile. So impressed was Von Humboldt even, that he went to the governor Count Pavel Suhktelen and requested to lighten the young Pole's suffering. Vitkevich was then added as an interpreter to a Cossack regiment, although he would later come to work as an agent operating independently. Thanks to Humboldt, Vitkevich had a career in the service of St. Petersburg - which he embraced out of pragmatism. But his hatred of the Russian Empire would never go away. But Vitkevich had another hero, who was in many ways like him, and who was the reason that he was now riding in the sun with a band of Cossacks through the Khorasan en route to the Afghan border. This other hero was in fact his British counterpart: Alexander Burnes. In a certain way, it was the young British Alexander Burnes who ignited the Great Game in these mountains, which had already claimed a number of lives - and would claim more lives on both sides in the near future. Alexander Burnes, a young Highland Scot, worked as a British intelligence officer and was stationed in India. Lord Ellenbrough - serving in the cabinet of the Duke of Wellington, and an ardent Russophobe, had appointed him in 1830, to explore the route from India through Afghanistan to Bokhara - and observe everything that had military-strategic significance. Doing this was no easy job, for any tribe, khan or shah in the entire region would see the presence of a British person as a warning sign that, after India, they were next to be colonized. So Alexander Burnes had to make use of all his talents and the skills he had developed during the decade that he had lived in Bombay to transform himself into a master of disguise. Discovery as a British agent would mean certain death. Burnes posed as a horse trader at the court of the Sikh leader Ranjit Singh - Lion of the Punjab - in Lahore, playing on his love for horses. Some years before, Ranjit Singh had taken the famous Koh-i-Noor from the Afghan Shah, which was the largest diamond known to man and once belonged to the Mughals until Delhi was sacked by Nadir Shah of Persia. Burnes eventually, miraculously, reached Bukhara and published a book about his epic journey. The book became an immediate bestseller, and was even published in Russia. There it alarmed the court in St. Petersburg of the fact that the British were active in Afghanistan. While the British needed Afghanistan to secure their Indian domains from invaders, the Russians in a likewise manner thought of Afghanistan as a potential route for a British army going from India to Russia. It was because of the splendid writings of Alexander Burnes that Ivan Vitkevich was sent on a mission to explore the routes to Kabul. The tensions between London and St. Petersburg were reaching new heights. Not only were they now exploring the roads to Afghanistan, a move that each side perceived as a threat, but also the influence of the Russians on the Persian court raised suspicions. The British had appointed an ardent Russophobe as ambassador to Persia, while the Russians in their turn appointed an equally Anglophobe as their ambassador to Tehran. The mood was further ruined in Europe by British public outcries at the crushing of the Polish November Uprising by Tsarist troops. Adam Czartoryski, the Polish prime minister, was also serving as a Russian minister at the time of the uprising, and thus found himself in the unique position of being a government minister in two countries that were at war with each other. He eventually fled to Britain, setting up a Polish government in exile, and warned foreign secretary Lord Palmerston of Russia's ambitions in Asia. Palmerston appointed the anti-Russian Stratford Canning as ambassador to St. Petersburg. The Tsar, so offended by this, plainly refused the ambassador. That same Stratford Canning had later been appointed to help the pro-British Ottoman foreign minister, Reshid Pasha, bring modernising reforms to the Ottoman Empire in an attempt to counter Russian influence. To make matters worse, the British Consul-General in Baghdad Henry Rawlinson transmitted aid to the Chechen and Dagestani rebels in the Caucasus, who under the leadership of the charismatic and death-defying Imam Shamil lured vast Russian armies into their mountains since 1834. The Russians in their turn aroused British and French fears when the Tsar unilaterally intervened in 1833 on behalf of the Ottoman Sultan to fight the uprising of Mehmet Ali Pasha, the governor of Egypt who rose up against the Porte in Constantinople. When Mehmet Ali's troops - trained by the French - swept away the Ottoman armies and the road to Constantinople was open, the Sultan requested French and British support. But both the French and British had done good business in Egypt thanks to Mehmet Ali's reforms, and they did nothing. The Sultan was forced to humiliate himself and turn to his great arch enemy for help: St. Petersburg. Tsar Nicholas sent him a fleet and 40,000 troops. Only then were the British and the French ready to act. They moved in their fleets as well and enforced a compromise on the Sultan and Mehmet Ali. The Russians signed a secret treaty with the Ottomans, which gave Russia the right to order the Turks to close off the Black Sea for the British Royal Navy. Turkish officials leaked this secret treaty to the British and the French, who denounced it as a treaty transforming the Black Sea into a Russian lake. In response, the British and the French fleets assembled and prepared to ''defend Constantinople'' if necessary. After the sabre-rattling of 1833, Britain followed an openly anti-Russian foreign policy under Lord Palmerston. It was this earlier mentioned Henry Rawlinson, who in his dreams wanted to send British-Indian troops to the Caucasus to liberate Nakhichevan, Erivan and Georgia from Russian occupation, who was in Persia as well in october 1837. Now part of the British embassy to the Persian Shah, Lieutenant Henry Rawlinson had the task of training Persian regiments. The Persian Shah himself was currently leading a siege of the Afghan city Herat, the Pearl of Asia, which Rawlinson believed he was ordered to do by the Russian ambassador Count Ivan Simonich. Rawlinson was on his way to a military camp in the Khorasan, the inhospitable north-eastern region of Persia. On his way however, he spotted a band of horsemen in the mountains. This was an unusual sighting, and he decided to follow them. They were Cossacks. Rawlinson knew this meant trouble. After having followed the Russian cossacks for a while, the group dismounted their horses and set up their camp to eat and rest. Rawlinson, tasked to gather intelligence, decided to find out more and approached the Russians. Ivan Vitkevich at that point immediately knew that their presence near the Afghan border was now no longer a secret. |
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a.k.a Don Durito Politically incorrect history student JOURNALIST: ''May the best team win...'' NEREO ROCCO: ''I hope not.'' Kick everything that moves, if it is the ball, even better. - Nereo Rocco, the God of Catenaccio In Italy, we have never heard of fair play. - Gianni Brera He who plays for himself plays for the opposition. He who plays for the team, plays for himself. - Helenio 'Il Mago' Herrera It would be incredibly boring if the best team always won. - Gianni Brera Estudiantes go out to destroy, to dirty, to irritate, to deny the show, to use all the illegal subterfuges in football… If it is good to win, it must be good. - Osvaldo Ardizzone | |
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| Nentsia | Jun 19 2015, 08:02 PM Post #2 |
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Ya Basta!
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PART II ''Land of Rebellion'' The Kuh-e-Shah Jahan Mountains, Khorasan, Eastern Persia October 1837 Ivan Vitkevich, who was sitting with his fellow officers by a stream eating, stood up as European men approached them. They had been discovered. Europeans were called ''Ferangi'' by the Persians, a word that still directly traced its origins to the Arab ''Firangi'', which was Arab for ''Franks'' and dated back to the times of the Crusades. The men who greated them were obviously British officers, which meant very bad news. Vitkevich would do all the talking. It was now of great importance to conceal their true purposes here in the desert of Khorasan in order to keep the British policymakers in London and Calcutta largely in the dark. Vitkevich therefore pretended not to speak French - the European lingua franca in Asia. In reality, Vitkevich spoke many languages. Lt. Henry Rawlinson then tried to communicate in English with the Russians, but that didn't work either. He spoke no Russian, so he tried Persian. Vitkevich, fluent in Persian, continued to pretend he didn't know the language. Vitkevich then began to speak in Turcoman to Rawlinson - a language of which he knew that most Englishmen had not quite mastered yet. Rawlinson knew the basics of Turcoman language, so now they could communicate. But he regretted that he couldn't speak Turcoman well enough to really inquire after the purposes of these men here. ''What do you seek in those dangerous lands?'', Rawlinson asked. It took a while before he received an answer. The Russians were rather cool towards the British officer. ''We are carrying presents of the Tsar to Mohammed Shah of Persia to congratulate him with his ascendency on the Persian throne. We are on our way to the Shah's military camp near Herat.'' explained Vitkevich, who knew he was telling a lie. Rawlinson realized he was probably being lied to. But he wasn't quite sure. Their story was plausible. Mohammad Shah was new on the Persian throne, and he currently resided in a camp near Herat - in the Afghan borderlands. In fact, Rawlinson himself was on his way to the Shah as well - so his sighting of the Russians could indeed suggest that they too were on their way to the Shah. Vitkevich and Rawlinson smoked a pipe while Vitkevich, trying to deceive the Englishman, continued to rattle in Chagatai and Uzbek as fast as he could - knowing that Rawlinson barely understood a word of what he said. Realizing he had to find out if the story was true as soon as possible, Rawlinson said farewell to the Russians and continued his path to the Shah as fast as his tired horse could. So Rawlinson rode for days and nights on his horse through the rough terrain where no living creature voluntarily lived. It was a barren land with low hills, a place where a man could easily get lost. The terrain was arid. The only animals were hawks flying through the sky, looking down at the men below them who were playing a great game. After several days, Rawlinson arrived at the camp of Mohammed Shah Qajar and entered the royal tent to inform the Shah that he had spotted a young Russian officer claiming to be on his way to the Shah with gifts from St. Petersburg. The Shah shook his head. ''Bringing presents for me? You are mistaken. The gifts they carry are not for me. They are for Dost Mohammed Khan, the Emir of Afghanistan in Kabul. They asked me access to travel through my domains unharmed and I granted them this right.'' Upon hearing that news, Rawlinson knew that all the tables had just turned. For the first time, the British now had the evidence that the Russians were trying to get into Afghanistan - which could have only one purpose: invading India. For the first time British suspicions had now been confirmed. Once this news would reach Calcutta and London, it would sound all the alarms there. The British had been in Kabul first. A few years earlier it was Alexander Burnes who stayed at the court in Kabul for a while, and he left a good impression on Dost Mohammed Khan and his brothers - who had quite a reputation in cutting off ears, hands, tongues, noses, eyes and heads of people they had a quarrel with. In 1817, for example, Dost Mohammed Khan played a key role in the eruption of another tribal feud between the two great tribes of Afghanistan: the Sadozai tribe and the Barakzai tribe. Dost Mohammed was then still a prince. Dost Mohammed Khan, son to a Qizilbashi mother and the head of the Barakzai clan, was sent along with his older brother Fatteh Khan to restore order by Prince Kamran, the son of Shah Mahmoud Sadozai. Dost Mohammed and Fatteh Khan easily took Herat, but during the subsequent looting their troops also stripped the wife of the governor, who happened to be a Sadozai princess - Shah Mahmoud's niece to be precise. When this news reached Kabul, prince Kamran Sadozai set up a plan to avenge restore the honour of his clan. Kamran came to Herat in person to throw a party for Fatteh Khan and Dost Mohammed to celebrate their victory in taking Herat. By the time Fatteh was quite drunk, Kamran gave the sign and his men, present at the party, seized Fatteh Khan. They poked out Fatteh's eyes with their daggers, then they scalped him. Fatteh's enemies then one by one took their personal revenge. One cut off his ear, another cut off the other. Then his nose was cut off, then his both hands, then his feet and then they shaved off his beard - the ultimate humiliation. After that, they cut Fatteh's throat. The other Barakzai's that night fled Herat - leaving everything behind, even their clothes. They escaped on their horses through the desert that night and regrouped in Ghazni to launch an insurrection against the Sadozais. It was this rebellion in ''Yaghistan'', Land of Rebellion, that formed the beginning of Dost Mohammed Khan's rise to power in Afghanistan. It was to this man's court that Alexander Burnes was a guest when he travelled through Kabul on his intelligence mission for the British in 1832. Great men had already warned Burnes for the cruel nature of Dost Mohammed and the Barakzais. Burnes had been warned by Ranjit Singh already, and he also briefly spoke to Shah Shujah - the Sadozai Shah who ruled over Afghanistan until he was deposed in 1809, by among others, Dost Mohammed Khan. Shah Shuja now lived under British protection in India, but he had never given up on his ambitions to take back Kabul. When Alexander Burnes got there, dressed as an Afghan, he immediately fell in love with the city that reminded him of England with its many gardens. ''There were also nightingales, blackbirds, thrushes, and doves ...and chattering magpies on almost every tree'', Burnes wrote in his diary. Burnes discovered that Dost Mohammed Khan was a modest man, unlike Ranjit Singh who exploited every opportunity to expand his richess. Dost Mohammed invited Burnes to the Bala Hissar fortress where he had his palace. Together they sat down on a carpet. Burnes was impressed by the skills and virtues of the still relatively young ruler of Afghanistan. But as good as Dost Mohammed was as a commander and as benevolent a ruler he was, they knew that he was just as skilled in treachery, cruelty and murder. For no Afghan sits on the throne in Kabul for that long without those qualities as well. It proved impossible for the charming Burnes to attract Dost Mohammed into the British zone of influence, because Dost Mohammed had plainly asked Burnes if the British wanted to help him overthrow the Sikh leader, Ranjit Singh. This was impossible: Singh was a friend of Britain - and Calcutta wouldn't trade an old friend for a new one. Calcutta wanted friends both in Lahore and in Kabul... Henry Rawlinson, upon realizing that the Russians had lied to him and were on their way to Kabul with gifts from the Tsar for Dost Mohammed Khan, needed to get to Tehran as fast as he could. He needed to reach the embassy, headed by Sir John MacNeill, and inform his superiors of this alarming news. But before Rawlinson could leave the Shah's camp on a long journey to Tehran, the Russians had entered the camp as well. He recognized the young, blonde man he had spoken earlier to. Captain Ivan Vitkevich, who called himself ''Omar Beg'' to the Persians approached Lt. Rawlinson and apologized for his earlier coolness in fluent French. ''It would not do to be too familiar with strangers in the desert'', Vitkevich explained. That same night, Rawlinson who was a formiddable rider and the son of a racehorse breeder, mounted his horse and set his course to Tehran, where he arrived on the first of november, 1837. From Tehran, messengers were sent to Lord Palmerston in London and Lord Auckland in Calcutta, informing them of the news that Cossacks were spotted near Herat and that they were heading to Kabul with gifts. The concerns in Britain were great: if Herat were to fall to the Persians, it would give the Russians a foothold in Afghanistan. And their mission to Kabul was now suggesting that their ambitions reached beyond that. They wanted Afghanistan in whole. The Gate to India was threatened. The British still had time though. Vitkevich still had to get to Kabul alive, and they had their own man in Kabul with far better connections to Dost Mohammed Khan: Alexander Burnes. Since september 1837 Alexander Burnes had returned to the Emir's court in the Bala Hissar in Kabul, much to the delight of the Emir. Especially because Burnes rode into the fortress on the back of an elephant. |
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a.k.a Don Durito Politically incorrect history student JOURNALIST: ''May the best team win...'' NEREO ROCCO: ''I hope not.'' Kick everything that moves, if it is the ball, even better. - Nereo Rocco, the God of Catenaccio In Italy, we have never heard of fair play. - Gianni Brera He who plays for himself plays for the opposition. He who plays for the team, plays for himself. - Helenio 'Il Mago' Herrera It would be incredibly boring if the best team always won. - Gianni Brera Estudiantes go out to destroy, to dirty, to irritate, to deny the show, to use all the illegal subterfuges in football… If it is good to win, it must be good. - Osvaldo Ardizzone | |
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| Nentsia | Jun 20 2015, 06:31 PM Post #3 |
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Ya Basta!
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PART III ''Showdown in Kabulistan'' The Bala Hissar, Kabul, Afghanistan December 1837 It was only a few months ago when Alexander Burnes had made a grand entrance to Kabul, riding on the back of an elephant, escorted by Akbar Khan - the most talented of sons of Amir Dost Mohammed Khan. Alexander Burnes had been received as an old friend to the Amir's durbar. Now in december, the first Afghan snow had begun to appear. Dost Mohammed Khan was unaware that a Russian mission was on its way to offer him Russian friendship, but Alexander Burnes had better sources of information. Not only did he get information from Persia via India, he also had connections with a brave man named Eldred Pottinger. Eldred Pottinger had been travelling through Afghanistan disguised as a Muslim horse-trader and later as a holy man, a sayyid. This was a most dangerous disguise if one had no thorough knowledge of the Arab language and the teachings of the Koran and the Hadiths. The Afghans, as well as the Persians and the Baluchis, had the habit of overloading Sayyids with questions whenever they saw one. The villagers were often bored to death, their discussions among eachother were quite silly, so when a foreign Sayyid came by they needed him to settle for once and for all who had been right all the time. Or the local khan would request the sayyid to lead the prayer in the Mosque. Eldred Pottinger however had managed to evade trouble until now. It wasn't that hard to disguise as a Muslim either. Once a European had put on Muslim clothes, learned the language - at least 2 languages for every Muslim man could speak 2 - and his skin had darkened a bit by exposure to the elements, it was hard for the Muslims to recognize a European - if only because most of them had never seen one and simply didn't know what Europeans looked like. If questions were asked where one came from, one could always pose as a travelling pilgrim coming from a remote spot in India, or pretend to be a Muslim trader from the Caucasus or North Africa. Hence Ivan Vitkevich presented himself as ''Omar Beg'' to the Persians. This was a Chagatai name which would confirm his disguise as a ''Muslim from Russia''. He could also easily switch to a disguise as a Tatar trader from the Volga - Few Persians and Afghans probably had ever been north of the Kazakh Steppe, so they wouldn't know what Volga Tatars looked like. Eldred Pottinger however, found himself in trouble due to some unforseen events. While he was in Herat, the Persians had arrived to besiege the city. There was no way for Pottinger to get out - not that he wanted to. He was now functioning as the British eyes and ears on the ground in the middle of that siege. Thanks to Pottinger, the British knew exactly how the siege was going, and for example, that there were many Russian irregulars participating in it. News coming from Herat, from Pottinger, had by now reached Alexander Burnes in Kabul that the Persians were stepping up their efforts and that Herat would not hold out very long anymore. It's citizens, Sunni's, were determined to defend their city against the Shiite invader, but the Persian forces were simply superior. Alexander Burnes was now also aware of the coming of a Russian mission to Kabul. He was very worried. The previous time he was in Kabul, his primary goal was to reach Bokhara and to map the region. Now it was his purpose to use his charm to ensure that Dost Mohammed Khan wouldn't turn to the Tsar for help in fighting his big enemy, Ranjit Singh. In fact, Burnes was given the impossible task of reconciling Dost Mohammed Khan and Ranjit Singh and have them both as allies of Britain. Ivan Vitkevich knew about Alexander Burnes' presence in Kabul as well. In many ways he admired Burnes, who was an example to him as an explorer. Now they were going to meet each other in Kabul, as colleagues, but also as two rivals in the struggle for Afghanistan. Vitkevich had been given the task by Count Karl Nesselrode in St. Petersburg to undermine the British influence in Kabul and to conclude a friendship with Dost Mohammed Khan. Nesselrode had come to that plan when he received a letter from Dost Mohammed Khan, a few years ago, in which Dost Mohammed requested Russian military assistance of the same kind they had given the Persian Shah. Although Afghanistan was far away for the Russians, they were interested in setting up an Asian ''triangle'' together with Persia and Afghanistan. This would bloc the further expansion of British influences in Asia via the Ottoman Empire and India and it would secure Russia's soft underbelly from British invasion. So when Ivan Vitkevich arrived in Kabul, the atmosphere became rather chilly - if it wasn't for the winter. Vitkevich delivered a letter to Dost Mohammed Khan in which Russia declared its support for Dost Mohammed's fight against Ranjit Singh and the Sikhs and promised to offer the Amir money for that. Burnes was outraged by that. But because he was a gentleman, he invited Vitkevich over to dinner. In fact, it was a Christmas dinner - between two rival agents in Kabul. No better way to celebrate Christmas than with your bitter enemies. But the dinner conversation was not awkward at all. Burnes and Vitkevich got along quite well, exactly because they were so much alike. They shared the same interests, roughly the same age, the same personality even. Both had been to Bokhara, a magical city in Burnes' eyes, but overrated according to Vitkevich. So the fine gentlemen, one dressed in Afghan garb, the other in a Cossack uniform, discussed a lot about their experiences in Bokhara. Above all, Bokhara enabled the men to speak about something that wasn't politically sensitive. Vitkevich in his turn expressed his amazement that Burnes' research in Asia had been published as a book. ''In Russia, we would never publish our research about a foreign country to the public!'' After this dinner, a new friendship would have been born if politics hadn't gotten in the way. ''I regret to say I found it impossible to follow the dictates of my personal feelings of friendship towards him, as the public service required the strictest watch''. Burnes' position became increasingly difficult through january and february. While Vitkevich gave Dost Mohammed one present from the Tsar after another, Burnes basically had nothing to offer. He could not give Dost Mohammed British support against Ranjit Singh - Lord Auckland had forbidden that. And if that wasn't enough, Lord Auckland in Calcutta was now relying on another source of information in Kabul - someone who was much less reliable: Charles Masson. Charles Masson was a shady figure who had been roaming through Afghanistan for years and eventually settled in the Armenian quarter of Kabul. Masson claimed he was an American from Kentucky. In reality he was a deserter from the British East India Company, and Burnes knew this. The only thing keeping the British in the game at this point was that Burnes still hadn't entirely ruled out British support against the Sikhs to Dost Mohammed, and because Dost Mohammed preferred British support over Russian support as well. Dost Mohammed must have known too that Russia was too far away to come to Kabul's aid in case of war. In order to solve the rivalry between the Afghans and the Sikhs, Burnes worked out a compromise. Peshawar, the city that the Sikhs once took from the Afghans, was to be granted to Dost Mohammed Khan after Ranjit Singh's death, which could come any moment now. Lord Auckland, the governor-general, turned this plan down. Auckland, who almost exclusively relied on the information of Charles Masson, failed to understand just how close the Russians were to converting Kabul into their vassal. In fact, Auckland didn't even know that Vitkevich was already in Kabul. Burnes now resorted to begging his superiors to help him out, to give him something that he could offer the Amir of Kabulistan. ''Under all these circumstances it may be naturally expected how I look for the commands of the government to guide me.'' Vitkevich was not in an easy position either. The Afghans kept him under house arrest, watched his every move, and he was not allowed to meet Dost Mohammed Khan in person. On top of that, the Afghans treated him with a certain coolness because of the alleged Russian involvement in the Persian siege of Herat. Burnes in his turned, promised Dost Mohammed Khan money to defend himself should Herat fall into Persian hands. But it was in the end Lord Auckland in Calcutta who destroyed all the work of his own agent Burnes. By the time Auckland finally discovered Vitkevich was in Kabul, and how terrible the British mission was going, Auckland sent a direct letter to Dost Mohammed Khan in which he threatened him that if he entered an alliance with the Russians, a British army would come to knock him off the throne. This reminded Dost Mohammed Khan of how fragile his own legitimacy was: he was the one who had knocked Shah Shujah off the throne in 1809, and the British now threatened to restore him. He also threatened that the British would no longer hold back the Sikhs to expand further into Afghan lands. The poor Alexander Burnes, who got along so well with Dost Mohammed, was now obliged to hand over this suicidal letter from Lord Auckland. Burnes remained in Kabul until late april 1838. He and Dost Mohammed Khan remained friends until the end. When Burnes met with Dost Mohammed for one last time before he left, the Amir assured Burnes that he would continue to think highly of him - despite the politics and all that happened. Burnes then left Kabul and returned to India, to report that the mission had failed. But it wasn't the end of the affair. Burnes would soon be back in Kabul. And the tensions between Britain and Russia would reach new, unprecedented heights. While the battle of Kabul seemed to have been won by the Russians, in the person of Ivan Vitkevich, Herat has still not fallen into Persian hands. Both sides now concentrated their efforts at the Siege of Herat. Both the British ambassador MacNeill and the Russian ambassador, Count Simonich, had joined the Shah's camp from where he led the siege. The Russians needed the city to fall as soon as possible, while the British wanted to buy as much time as they could. Eldred Pottinger, their man inside Herat, now became the key player in the Great Game. |
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a.k.a Don Durito Politically incorrect history student JOURNALIST: ''May the best team win...'' NEREO ROCCO: ''I hope not.'' Kick everything that moves, if it is the ball, even better. - Nereo Rocco, the God of Catenaccio In Italy, we have never heard of fair play. - Gianni Brera He who plays for himself plays for the opposition. He who plays for the team, plays for himself. - Helenio 'Il Mago' Herrera It would be incredibly boring if the best team always won. - Gianni Brera Estudiantes go out to destroy, to dirty, to irritate, to deny the show, to use all the illegal subterfuges in football… If it is good to win, it must be good. - Osvaldo Ardizzone | |
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| Nentsia | Jun 25 2015, 12:00 AM Post #4 |
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Ya Basta!
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PART IV ''Britannia Rules the Waves'' Shimla, Kashmir, Northern India May 1838 The British had been defeated in Kabul. They had been defeated by Ivan Vitkevich, who beat his role-model and rival, Alexander Burnes, at his own game. The British were furious about this defeat, and their response would come within months. The most powerful country in the world now planned to show its teeth and let the Russians know they were the boss in this corner of the world. The British would strike back within months, and they would strike the Russians three major times in a row. A clear message was to be sent to the Tsar that Great Britain had enough of his actions. In St. Petersburg, the man in charge of dealing with the West was Count Karl Nesselrode. At the Russian court, especially since the reign of Nicholas I, there was an increasingly distanced view of what they called the ''West'' or ''Europe'', with a certain disdain to it. Therefore, a Westerner was put in charge of dealing with the West. Born in Lisbon, the son of a German catholic father and a Jewish protestant mother, baptized in the Church of England, Nesselrode was the perfect sort of man to handle the Empire's foreign relations. Before, Nesselrode had been the ambassador in The Hague to Holland. Politically seemingly unimportant, but the Dutch bankers were the biggest creditors to the Russian government. Nesselrode never identified as a Russian. He could not even speak the language. No, in his own mind, he was a cosmopolitan - a member of the European aristocracy, in the service of the Tsar. His cold and cautious approach to international affairs has led people to conclude he was a conservative, but that would suggest this man pursued some kind of political agenda driven by self-preservation. Nesselrode was utterly rational and utterly pragmatic. He served the interests of the Tsars as best as he could - that was his life goal - and he was immune to emotional feelings such as hostility, fear or ambition. His British counterpart Lord Palmerston was frequently driven by public opinion, sensational headlines in the newspapers and personal feelings of deep fear of the Russian bear. But Nesselrode never let his emotions gain the upper hand. When Vitkevich won the showdown in Kabul against the British, Nesselrode expressed neither joy or pride. He simply carried on with his work, work that he'd been doing for more than 20 years. Palmerston, who was ten years in service as foreign minister, was still a rookie compared to Nesselrode. In Europe, Nesselrode remained faithful to the Concert of Europe, believing that the great powers in Europe had a common interest. But he never lost Russian national interests out of sight, and when necessary, he was willing to act unilaterally without the approval of the other powers. In Asia, it had been his plan to maintain a weakened Ottoman Empire, and he was actively trying to bring both Persia and Afghanistan in the Russian sphere of influence to act as a land buffer against the British Empire. But like Vitkevich and Burnes, the rookie - the new kid on the bloc - would eventually defeat the master himself. Nesselrode, now confident about Russia's position in Asia with the victory in Kabul, was about to overplay his hand. The matter had still not been entirely settled yet when Alexander Burnes, defeated, withdrew from Kabul in april 1838. The Persian siege of Herat was still not over. The British had one of their agents, Eldred Pottinger - disguised as a Muslim horse-trader - right in the middle of it. Upon his shoulders rested the heavy task of turning the siege into a defeat for the Persians and the Russians. The circumstances were not in his favor at all. But the tide would change soon. In a remote town in the Himalaya mountains of Kashmir, Shimla, Governor-General George Eden, Earl of Auckland read over a letter from Sir John MacNeill, the British ambassador to Persia. Shimla was where Auckland felt home again. The town had a typical British town center, the climate was rather cold as well. Auckland felt as if he was in England again whenever he was in Shimla. It was from here that a British counterattack was prepared. Auckland had realized he had made serious errors in his estimations of the Russian mission to Kabul and the Russian agent, Vitkevich. MacNeill wrote in his letters to Auckland about the terrible situation of Herat. The city, with 70,000 inhabitants, had been under siege since november 1837 by 30,000 Persian troops with Russian military advisers. Several attempts to breach the city walls had failed - only barely - resulting in the massacres of Persian soldiers whose heads were cut off and displayed on the city walls with ears and noses removed. Any Afghan who was captured by the Persians was brutally interrogated, killed, and disembowled. Herat was being bombed every day with mortars. The population itself was starving, if they weren't killed in the bombardments. There were more bodies than people to bury them. The stench of rotten corpses was everywhere. Count Simonich, the Russian ambassador to Persia, had blatantly taken over the command of the Persian troops in the siege because the Persian commanders were failing. The Russians weren't even pretending to be neutral anymore. They were waging a war here. MacNeill therefore wrote in one of his letters to Auckland that he should ''declare that he who is not with us is against us, and shall be treated accordingly. If the Shah should take Herat we shall not have a moment to lose, and the stake will in my opinion be the highest we have yet played for... We must secure Afghanistan.'' Auckland would not repeat the same mistakes again. This time he took the advice of his ambassadors on the ground very seriously. Auckland ordered the Royal Navy in Bombay to set sail to the Persian Gulf... In Herat, the morale among the population to continue the resistance began to drop. What had kept the city's defences standing so far was partly the work of a single British officer, Eldred Pottinger. Eldred Pottinger was the nephew of the honorable Sir Henry Pottinger. Henry Pottinger had, in his youth, explored the Sind, Baluchistan and Eastern Persia while he was disguised as a Tatar horse-trader. His explorations, that took place in 1810, had everything to do with Napoleons ambitions to invade India. This was the start of an impressive career. Eldred Pottinger would soon enjoy a heroic status in Britain as well thanks to his actions in Herat. When the city was attacked by the Persians, Pottinger went to Prince Kamran and his Wazir, dropped his disguise, and offered his help to organize the defence of the city. Although the Afghans needed no encouragement to fight against the Shiite Persians, Pottinger ensured at crucial moments that the morale did not drop. When Count Simonich had assumed control over the siege, and a new storming of the city gates was ordered, the Heratis began to despair and give up all hope. Even the Herati commanders began to retreat in the face of the Persian hordes running through the city streets. But it was Pottinger who literally dragged them by their arms, kicking and screaming, back to the battle. And with his determination to carry on the fight, the Herati soldiers - in a moment of doubt - decided to fight as well instead of fleeing. Upon hearing of the role of Eldred Pottinger inside Herat, the Russians and Persians were so furious that they demanded from MacNeill that he ordered Pottinger to leave the city. MacNeill, with a triumphant smile, denied and explained that Pottinger was there on his own account. After this, help was underway from India. Supplies, food and fuel from India was being smuggled into the city. More importantly however, was the arrival of the British Royal Navy. It was time for classical British gunboat diplomacy. On the 19th of June the British troops took Kharg Island from the Persians, an island located in the Persian Gulf. Rumors spread that the British had also invaded mainland Persia with a massive army and that they were heading to Tehran. This was not the case. But MacNeill, who had by now withdrawn himself to Tehran, had sent an envoy to the Persian Shah with a letter of British demands. ''The British government looks upon this enterprise in which your Majesty is engaged against the Afghans as being undertaken in a spirit of histility towards British India.'' The Shah understood very well what the message was. If he carried on his siege of Herat, the British would attack Persia. The British also demanded that the Shah would no longer listen to the advice of the Russian ambassador, Count Simonich. The Shah, after taking the demands into consideration for a few days, accepted all the demands. He ended the siege and withdrew his army. ''The Shah has mounted his horse... and is gone'', the reports to London said. This time, it was a total victory for the British and a humiliating defeat for the Russians. But that was just the first strike of the British counterattack. In London, Lord Palmerston had summoned the Russian ambassador. The British Lion now went for the full confrontation with Russia. Palmerston accused the Russians of pursuing a hostile policy, and confronted their ambassador with the fact that Count Simonich, Russian ambassador in Tehran, had in fact been in charge of a supposedly Persian siege of Herat. In St. Petersburg, there was panic. The British accusations were so serious that Karl Nesselrode allowed the British ambassador to look with his own eyes into the confidential books containing all the instructions to Count Simonich. The Russians said that they had never given Simonich instructions to support the siege, and they pointed that they had even tried to discourage the Shah from starting the siege in the first place. Palmerston now knew for sure that the Russians were messing with him. Either Simonich had been acting on his own, against orders from St. Petersburg, or they had given him unofficial instructions to support the siege. The British were convinced this was a trick. They didn't know that it was in fact not that uncommon for Russian officers to act on their own - even in opposition to Tsarist instructions. It happened all the time actually. Nevertheless, Palmerston knew that both explanations were a big embarassment to the Tsar. He demanded that both Simonich and Vitkevich would be recalled from Persia and Afghanistan. The Russians accepted it. Vitkevich had returned to St. Petersburg in the spring of 1839. Count Simonich was blamed for everything by the authorities. Vitkevich was received by Nesselrode only once. Nesselrode recognized his achievements, but also distanced himself from Vitkevich, who was now associated with a humiliating diplomatic scandal. Shortly after his de-briefing with Nesselrode, Vitkevich returned to his hotel room where he was found dead the next day. He had apparently blown out his brains. His papers, reports, and intelligence papers had been burned. There was only a little farewell note. Was it a suicide? Or did someone want to make it look like a suicide? It would not be entirely unthinkable that Vitkevich' death, and the destruction of all his intelligence work, was the work of a British agent in St. Petersburg to ensure that this talented player of the Tournament of Shadows would never again threaten the British chances at winning. The final and most fateful British blow against Russia was Auckland's plan to evict Dost Mohammed Khan from the throne in Kabul, and have him replaced with the Shah Shujah, who had been residing in Ludhiana. The British were preparing for an invasion of Afghanistan. Everything was permitted now. |
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a.k.a Don Durito Politically incorrect history student JOURNALIST: ''May the best team win...'' NEREO ROCCO: ''I hope not.'' Kick everything that moves, if it is the ball, even better. - Nereo Rocco, the God of Catenaccio In Italy, we have never heard of fair play. - Gianni Brera He who plays for himself plays for the opposition. He who plays for the team, plays for himself. - Helenio 'Il Mago' Herrera It would be incredibly boring if the best team always won. - Gianni Brera Estudiantes go out to destroy, to dirty, to irritate, to deny the show, to use all the illegal subterfuges in football… If it is good to win, it must be good. - Osvaldo Ardizzone | |
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7:02 PM Jul 11