C H A P T E R IX.
H IS TO R IC A L S K E T C H OF TH E R U S S IA N O C CU P A T IO N
O F TH E IRTISH.
General history of Central A s ia .— Russian occupation of the Irtish.—
Yermak’ s victories, conquests, and death.— Submission of Bara-
binski Tatars.— Consolidation of Russian power by arms, mediation,
and trade.—Baikof’ s mission through Sungaria.— History of
Kalmuks : their opposition and submission.— Origin of forts alongthe
Irtish.— Aggressive designs of Peter the Great.—'Treaties with the
Kalmuks.— Extinction of Sungarian kingdom.— Russian frontier
fortified against the Chinese.— Trading places of Bukhtarminsk,
Ust-Kamenogorsk, and Semipolatinsk|j^Growth of commerce with
Chinese.— -Russian administration of new territory.
TH E history of Russian Central Asia may be conveniently
treated under the general divisions of
ancient and modern. Its ancient history includes the
struggles of Asiatics, whose rude conquerors approaching
the fray, whether from the highlands of the east,
or from the lowlands of the west, brought to the conquered
a method of warfare, and manners and customs,
not greatly dissimilar to their own. What these were
the reader will better understand and appreciate when
in the course of our narrative we have travelled further
south.
The modern history of Central Asia, however, brings
on the scene a conqueror from the north, a European,
with a strange language and a new mode of warfare,
who advances not at the head of a devastating cavalry
column, but in the persons of, at first, a mere handful
of Cossacks, who make their way up the rivers, building
forts as they go, engaging in trade, and so turning
to their own advantage the internal feuds of the enemy,
that he is at length surrounded and bidden to surrender.
In this chapter I purpose to treat of so much of the
modern history of Central Asia as will cover the
Russian occupation of the Irtish, or, in other words, the
country through which, thus far, we have travelled.
The history of the Russian occupation of the Irtish
commenced with the conquest of the Tatars, about the
mouths of the Tura and Tobol, and was followed by
the series of events that brought the Russians in
contact successively with the Kalmuks of Sungaria, the
Chinese of Western Mongolia, and to some extent the
Kazaks of the Steppe.
It was in 1579, during the reign of John the
Terrible, that Yermak crossed the Urals, to find himself
opposed by Kuchum Khan, ruler of the Siberian
hordes of the Irtish, Tobol, and Barabinski Tatars, a
lineal" descendant of Jinghis Khan, and a prince of
some note, who had been the first systematically to
introduce Muhammadanism into Siberia. This ruler
Yermak conquered, in 1581, in a series of battles, one
with three petty Tatar princes near the mouth of the
Tura, another near the mouth of the Tobol, and a
third on the Irtish, after which Kuchum fled from his
fort Sibir, and on the 7th of November Yermak took
possession of his capital.
Several of the surrounding chiefs tendered their
submission, and the Russians sailed down the Irtish,
capturing numerous forts; but in the. spring of 1584
the enemy besieged the invaders in Sibir. Yermak
defeated them, and then sailed up the Irtish, where