So stretched were the Russians’ defences, and so frightened were they that the allies would break through, that plans were made for a partisan war on the lines of 1812. A secret memorandum (‘On National Resistance in the Event of the Enemy’s Invasion of Russia’) was drawn up by General Gorchakov in February. Gorchakov was worried by the build-up of the allied European armies for a new offensive in the spring, and feared that Russia would not have enough forces to defend all its borders against them. Like Paskevich and Tsar Nicholas, he was most afraid of an Austrian invasion through Poland and Ukraine, where the largest Russian forces were deployed, because of the ethnic and religious composition of these borderlands: if the Austrians broke through, they were likely to be joined, not only by the Poles, but by the Catholic Ruthenians in Volhynia and Podolia. Gorchakov proposed that Russia’s line of partisan defence should be drawn up on religious lines in areas behind these borderlands, in Kiev and Kherson provinces, where the population was Orthodox and might be persuaded by their priests to join partisan brigades. Under the command of the Southern Army, the brigades would destroy bridges, crops and cattle, following the scorched-earth policies of 1812, and then take to the forests, from which they would ambush the invading troops. Approved by Alexander, Gorchakov’s proposals were put into operation during March. Priests were sent to the Ukraine. Armed with copies of a manifesto written by the Tsar on his deathbed, they called on the Orthodox peasants to wage a ‘holy war’ against the invaders. This initiative was not a success. Bands of peasants did appear in the Kiev area, some of them with as many as 700 men, but most were under the impression that they would be fighting for their liberation from serfdom, not against a foreign enemy. They marched with their pitchforks and hunting guns against the local manors, where they had to be dispersed by soldiers from the garrisons.12
Meanwhile the allies discussed where to direct new offensives in the spring. Many British leaders pinned their hopes on a campaign in the Caucasus, where the Muslim rebel tribes under the command of the Imam Shamil had already linked up with the Turkish army to attack the Russians in Georgia and Circassia. In July 1854, Shamil had launched a large-scale assault on the Russian positions in Georgia. With 15,000 cavalry and troops, he had advanced to within 60 kilometres of Tbilisi, at that time defended by only 2,000 Russian troops. But the Turks had failed to move their forces up from Kars to join in his attack on the tsarist military headquarters, so he had retreated into Daghestan. Some of Shamil’s forces under the command of his son Gazi Muhammed attacked the summer house of the Georgian Prince Chavchavadze in Tsinandali, taking off as prisoners the Prince’s wife and her sister (granddaughters of the last Georgian king) with their children and their French governess. Shamil had hoped to exchange them for his son Jemaleddin, a prisoner in St Petersburg, but news of their capture caused an international sensation, and French and British representatives demanded their unconditional release. But by the time their letters reached Shamil, in March 1855, the Imam had in fact successfully exchanged the women and their children for Jemaleddin and 40,000 silver roubles from the Russian court.13
The British had been running guns and ammunition to the rebel Muslim tribes since 1853, but so far they had been reluctant to commit wholeheartedly to Shamil’s army or indeed to the Turks in the Caucasus, both of whom they looked on with colonial contempt. The capture of the princesses did not win Shamil any friends in London. But in the spring of 1855, prompted by the hunt for new ways to bring Russia to its knees, the British and the French began to explore the possibility of developing relations with the Caucasian tribes. In April the British government sent a special agent, John Longworth, its former consul in Monastir and a close associate of David Urquhart, the Turcophile supporter of the Circassians, on a secret mission to make contact with Shamil and encourage him to unite the Muslim tribes in a ‘holy war’ against Russia by promising British military support. The French government sent its own agent, Charles Champoiseau, its viceconsul in Redutkale, on a separate mission to the Circassian tribes around Sukhumi in Georgia.14
