doubtless, encouraged all the marauders in the neighbourhood to continue their depredations against the Russian caravans, should be wrested from the hands of its owners, and either razed to the ground or converted into a Russian stronghold. General Perovsky was entrusted with this undertaking. The distance from Kazalinsk, or Fort No. 1, to Ak Musjid is not much over 200 miles, along the banks of the Syr Darya. Not many commissariat arrangements were necessary, nor did the distance to march require much time to delay the Russian officer in beginning his operations against the fort. The army with which he appeared before the walls may not have been large in numbers when compared with the armies of modern times, but, in all that makes a disciplined force formidable, it was exceptionally well supplied. The artillery was in greater strength than is usually considered necessary, and the expedition was still more efficient in engineers and cavalry. The garrison of Ak Musjid was, on the other hand, ill supplied, both in provisions and in ammunition, and the fort itself presented, neither in its position nor in its construction, any feature that an engineer officer would have considered calculated to make it capable of sustaining the attack of artillery for twenty-four hours. The Russian lines were constructed in the most approved method; but twice were their approaches destroyed, and twice their mines counter-mined. During twenty-six days the Russian bombardment was fast and furious, and during all that time the Khokandian defence was stubborn and persistent. But all the efforts of the garrison to break through the beleaguering lines were unavailing, and after so long a cannonade little more resistance could be expected from ramparts which were pierced in several places by wide and gaping breaches. The resolute commandant, who had done everything required by the most exacting code of military honour, confessed that there was nothing to be gained by a continued defence, and as it was known that the Russians were making preparations for an early assault, a messenger was despatched without delay to the Russian commander, expressing the willingness of the garrison to capitulate on honourable terms. General Perovsky, who had expected an easy triumph here, and possibly some more extended triumph in farther regions, was indignant at the resistance opposed to him by a paltry place like Ak Musjid, and received the messenger from the fort with ill-concealed impatience. Scarcely bestowing any attention on the letter, couched in humble terms as it was, of the commandant, General Perovsky petrified the astonished emissary with the declaration that on the morrow the fort would be taken by assault. This arbitrary assertion of his power, which was carried into practice, of course successfully, the next day, on an occasion when magnanimity ought to have been shown by the successful general, does not redound to the credit of the officer in question, and throws an instructive light on the latitude left to Russian generals in their instructions, and on the opinion felt for Central Asiatics by the civilizing representatives of the White Czar. To say that General Perovsky was urged to this act of gratuitous tyranny by a desire to obtain a cross of either St. Anne or St. George, is, after all, only to magnify the offence, and that Ak Musjid has taken the name of its conqueror, Fort Perovsky, is the means of perpetuating, not his fame, but his infamy, and the courageous conduct of the defenders. In the winter following its fall Yakoob Beg, with Sahib Khan, brother of the Khan of Khokand, attempted to retake the fort, but the coup proved abortive, and the Russians have never receded from their new acquisition.
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