The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia by Peter Hopkirk Page A
Authors: Peter Hopkirk
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their men for whom they had formed a strong attachment. They tried desperately therefore to rally their troops, and for a whole day managed to hold off the fierce Russian attacks, even driving them back. But that night Kotliarevsky’s troops struck again in the darkness, causing the Persians to fire into their own ranks in the confusion. Abbas Mirza, convinced that all was now lost, ordered his men to retreat. When Christie ignored this order, Abbas himself galloped up, seized the colours, and again called upon his men to abandon the position. In the chaos which ensued, Christie fell, shot through the neck by a Russian bullet.
Such was his men’s devotion to him, according to the account of another member of Malcolm’s mission, Lieutenant William Monteith, that ‘more than half the battalion he had raised and disciplined himself were killed or wounded trying to get him off the battlefield to safety. Their efforts were in vain, however. The next morning a Russian patrol found the British officer lying mortally wounded. ‘He had determined never to be taken alive,’ Monteith reported. If he was to face court martial for disobeying orders, he was reported to have said, ‘it should be for fighting and not for running away.’ A man of immense strength, Christie promptly cut down the unfortunate Russian officer who tried to raise him.
Word was hurriedly sent to Kotliarevsky that there was a severely wounded British officer lying out on the battlefield who was refusing to surrender. Orders came back that, whatever the risk to his captors, he was to be disarmed and secured. ‘Christie made a most desperate resistance,’ Monteith tells us, ‘and is said to have killed six men before he was dispatched, being shot by a Cossack.’ His body was later found by the mission’s British doctor who buried him where he lay. ‘Thus fell as brave an officer and amiable a man as ever existed,’ Monteith concludes, though the Russians had seen little of this amiability during their brief encounter with him. Abbas Mirza’s complacency, which had allowed his troops to be taken by surprise, cost 10,000 Persian lives, according to one account, while the Russians lost only 124 men and 3 officers. In addition to annihilating the Persian army, Kotliarevsky captured a dozen of Lieutenant Lindsay’s fourteen precious guns, each ornately inscribed (or so the Russians claimed): ‘From the King of Kings to the Shah of Shahs’. The earlier Russian defeat had been more than amply avenged.
The victorious Kotliarevsky now marched eastwards through the snow towards the Caspian where stood the great Persian stronghold of Lenkoran, only 300 miles from Teheran, and recently rebuilt along modern lines by British engineers. Believing it now to be siege-proof, the Persian defenders ignored Kotliarevsky’s call to them to surrender, and drove back his first assault with considerable loss of life. But finally, after five days of bloody fighting, and with Kotliarevsky at the head of his troops, the Russians succeeded in breaking through the defences. Having turned down the Russian offer of an honourable surrender, the Persians were slaughtered to a man. Even so, Kotliarevsky lost nearly two-thirds of his troops, and was himself found semi-conscious and suffering from severe head wounds among the heaps of Russian and Persian dead beneath the breach his sappers had blown in the wall. Later, from his hospital bed, he reported to Alexander: ‘The extreme exasperation of the soldiers at the obstinacy of the defence caused them to bayonet every one of the 4,000 Persians, not a single officer or man escaping.’
General Kotliarevsky himself never fought again, so grave were his injuries. Regretfully he had to turn down the Tsar’s offer of the command of all Russian troops in the Caucasus, one of the greatest prizes to which a soldier could aspire. But for his victory, costly as it had been, he was to receive the highest award the Tsar could bestow, the
Such was his men’s devotion to him, according to the account of another member of Malcolm’s mission, Lieutenant William Monteith, that ‘more than half the battalion he had raised and disciplined himself were killed or wounded trying to get him off the battlefield to safety. Their efforts were in vain, however. The next morning a Russian patrol found the British officer lying mortally wounded. ‘He had determined never to be taken alive,’ Monteith reported. If he was to face court martial for disobeying orders, he was reported to have said, ‘it should be for fighting and not for running away.’ A man of immense strength, Christie promptly cut down the unfortunate Russian officer who tried to raise him.
Word was hurriedly sent to Kotliarevsky that there was a severely wounded British officer lying out on the battlefield who was refusing to surrender. Orders came back that, whatever the risk to his captors, he was to be disarmed and secured. ‘Christie made a most desperate resistance,’ Monteith tells us, ‘and is said to have killed six men before he was dispatched, being shot by a Cossack.’ His body was later found by the mission’s British doctor who buried him where he lay. ‘Thus fell as brave an officer and amiable a man as ever existed,’ Monteith concludes, though the Russians had seen little of this amiability during their brief encounter with him. Abbas Mirza’s complacency, which had allowed his troops to be taken by surprise, cost 10,000 Persian lives, according to one account, while the Russians lost only 124 men and 3 officers. In addition to annihilating the Persian army, Kotliarevsky captured a dozen of Lieutenant Lindsay’s fourteen precious guns, each ornately inscribed (or so the Russians claimed): ‘From the King of Kings to the Shah of Shahs’. The earlier Russian defeat had been more than amply avenged.
The victorious Kotliarevsky now marched eastwards through the snow towards the Caspian where stood the great Persian stronghold of Lenkoran, only 300 miles from Teheran, and recently rebuilt along modern lines by British engineers. Believing it now to be siege-proof, the Persian defenders ignored Kotliarevsky’s call to them to surrender, and drove back his first assault with considerable loss of life. But finally, after five days of bloody fighting, and with Kotliarevsky at the head of his troops, the Russians succeeded in breaking through the defences. Having turned down the Russian offer of an honourable surrender, the Persians were slaughtered to a man. Even so, Kotliarevsky lost nearly two-thirds of his troops, and was himself found semi-conscious and suffering from severe head wounds among the heaps of Russian and Persian dead beneath the breach his sappers had blown in the wall. Later, from his hospital bed, he reported to Alexander: ‘The extreme exasperation of the soldiers at the obstinacy of the defence caused them to bayonet every one of the 4,000 Persians, not a single officer or man escaping.’
General Kotliarevsky himself never fought again, so grave were his injuries. Regretfully he had to turn down the Tsar’s offer of the command of all Russian troops in the Caucasus, one of the greatest prizes to which a soldier could aspire. But for his victory, costly as it had been, he was to receive the highest award the Tsar could bestow, the
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