§ LORD STRATHNAIRNasked the Under Secretary of State for India, Whether Her Majesty's Government have received information of the annexation by Russia of Askabad, and its occupation by Russian troops? The noble and gallant Lord observed that he had placed this Question on the Notice Paper; but he also wished to ask the Government whether a railroad had been constructed, or was in progress of construction, from Askabad to Michaeloff, a new port, near the centre of the east coast of the Caspian, which frequently had been the intended or actual base of Rusaian operations 15 against Central Asia? Askabad was an old Turcoman fort, about 200 miles south-east of Michaeloff, and stood on the junction of the Khiva caravan road with the Michaeloff and Herat road, which left Merv 80 miles east of its nearest point. It appeared by a debate in "another place" that Her Majesty's Chargé d'Affaires at St. Petersburg had informed Her Majesty's Government that this annexation and military occupation had taken place, but seemingly without the consent of Her Majesty's Government. Askabad was important as belonging to the vast region called Central Asia, which ran between and inarched with India and Afghanistan to its south, and Russia to the north. Roughly speaking, it was of great political interest to both Powers, who, therefore, for the sake of their mutual rights and a good understanding between themselves, established a balance of power in Central Asia, of which Count Nessel-rode often said England and Russia were the arbiters, and England and Russia had officially promised to uphold its integrity. Russia in possession of Askabad was sure to connect it by rail with Michaeloff, and by another rail with Herat and Merv. It was, he contended, impossible to argue that the annexation and military occupation of Askabad and its district by Russia, without the consent of Her Majesty's Government, was not a very dangerous disturbance of the Central Asian balance of power. Astrakan, at the head of the Caspian, stood at the mouths of the Volga, and the operation against Herat by Michaeloff was 300 miles shorter than that of the operation formerly intended by Russia by the line from Astrakan of the Attrek River and Valley, with the further advantage that it would not awaken the susceptibilities of Persia as to any interference with her territorial rights on the Attrek Valley. Those susceptibilities were so strong that when we were on good terms with Persia we obtained an engagement from Russia that she would respect these rights for a considerable distance up the course of the River Attrek. In the Eastern Question and Afghanistan debates it was not the policy of Her Majesty's Government to contemplate Russia's present policy by the light of the past, but to keep Russia in the background, although she was the great actor in both dramas, from the 16 end of the 17th century. The question of Askabad could not be properly appreciated without a brief reference to past history, in which he hoped their Lordships would accompany him. In 1711 Russia, signally defeated in her attempt to invade the Bosphorus and Constantinople from the Black Sea and line of the Pruth, as shown by the Treaty of Falcksen, turned her thoughts of aggrandizement to the Caspian Sea as a base of operations against Persia and Central Asia, through which she wished to conduct her mercantile military caravan route from Orenburg or Siberia to the mouths of the Amoor River and the China Ocean. Fortune favoured her. The Afghans had invaded and overrun Persia, and the Shah had fled to Ispahan, and, in despair, entreated the Czar to aid him with an Army against the Afghans. The Czar consented, but on the condition that Persia should cede him her fairest Provinces on the southeast of the Caspian. Under the influence of a treacherous Prime Minister, the Shah, in a Treaty bearing the Minister's dishonoured name—the Treaty of Ismail Bey—ceded the Provinces; but Peter the Great, with protestations of his unceasing friendship for his faithful ally and good friend the Shah, declined to fulfil the Treaty promises of military aid. From this time to 1838 Russia's annexations from north to south and west to east were too well known to require description; but they mostly were in the direction he had stated. In that year Count Nesselrode had promised formally to Lord Palmerston that if Her Majesty's Government would agree to the ascent to the Throne of one of the Persian Princes, not the heir, he engaged the Emperor's word that he should not undertake any war or re-conquest, especially of Herat, the key of Afghanistan, which was the gate of India. But the Prince had hardly become Shah before he, with the consent and assistance of General Simonich, Russian Minister at Teheran, organized the most formidable army that had ever been set on foot since Nadir Shah, and, in spite of all our Government's and Lord Palmerston's energetic protests, besieged Herat, accompanied by the Russian and English Ministers. From the Shah's camp the Russian Minister called on the Governor of Herat to surrender it to the Shah, or he would bring 17 up an Army to besiege it, and on Khamran Khan, backed up by a gallant British Artillery officer, Captain Pottinger, refusing to do so, General Simonich borrowed from the Shah 2,000 Russian deserters, and with a Persian division attacked the main redoubt of Herat, and was severely wounded and repulsed. In the meantime, General Simonich had detached to Cabul his Military Attaché, Captain Vicovich, to seduce Dost Mahomed, the Ameer of Afghanistan, from our alliance, and to persuade him, by a secret Treaty, to give up Candahar to Persia. Captain Vicovich succeeded in both attempts, of which the results were war between India and Afghanistan, the flight of Dost Mahomed from Cabul, and the English occupation of Cabul by Lord Keane. There was another fatal consequence of Dost Mahomed's rupture with India, effected by Russian agency—the retreat from Cabul. Under an inefficient leader, the column retired in disorder, encumbered by a helpless crowd of women and children, in frost and snow, with a scanty commissariat, with no precautions in the dangerous Passes of the Suliman ranges, with no advance or rear-guard, no reconnoitring, no crowning of heights. The English troops were attacked on all sides, and, with the exception of one or two individuals, destroyed by the savage and warlike tribes who inhabited and held the Suliman ranges and their dangerous Passes, except one, the Golowrie Pass, further down. These ranges branched off from the Himalayas, opposite Peshawur, in a southerly direction, and divided India from Afghanistan to the meeting of the five rivers at Mittunkote. Their inhabitants were so aggressive that India, at a great expense, was obliged to maintain a small army of all arms, with a line of forts, to protect our Trans-Indus and Punjab possessions from their devastations. So fanatical were these people that it was death to a British subject to enter their mountains. Over such subjects the Ameer, their religious head, held a sort of suzerainty, half feudal, half religious, paying them £70,000 a-year, instead of their paying him taxes. And he had no power over them for good, but only for the worst purposes, such as a cruel Jehad which the Ameer meditated against India in 1857 to relieve Islamism in danger before 18 Delhi; and if he had done so, we, in the opinion of the most competent judges, should have lost India. Such were the irregular soldiery of the Ameer of United Afghanistan, who had also at his disposal a fairly organized Regular Army, for the East, of all arms of from 45,000 to 50,000 men; but it might be said that the better organized they were the more dangerous they were, for they had a disagreeable quality of deserting to the enemy in a body. As regarded the present Ameer, surely no one could believe that he was of the slightest use, with Ayoob Khan in possession of Candahar, and the tribes of the Suliman ranges ready to rise in his support, should he march on Cabul. And it was equally certain that, as Afghanistan was no longer part of our balance of power in Central Asia, to intrust the defences of our North-West Frontier to troops who would have to take the field in the deadly climate of Peshawur would be a useless sacrifice of them.
VISCOUNT ENFIELDHer Majesty's Chargé d'Affaires at St. Petersburg has been informed that the country immediately surrounding Askabad is the southern boundary of the Tekke Oasis, which has been annexed to Russia; that the head-quarters of General Rohrberg, the successor of General Skobeleff, are at Askabad, but that there might be a few troops at Girvan; that some troops have advanced as far as Luftabad, but had returned. Until Her Majesty's Government receives more exact information, it cannot express an opinion as to the extent to which the Russian advances may trench, if they trench at all, upon what has been considered to be Persian territory.
§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURYsuggested that the noble Earl opposite (Earl Granville) should state whether his information on this subject was exactly similar to that which had reached the India Office. It was most important to know the exact position of the Russian Forces on the borders of the Persian Empire. Of course, he was quite prepared to be told that the information received at the Foreign Office was not such as could be communicated at present to the House; but he should like, if possible, to know what information the noble Earl possessed on this subject—whether Persia was a consenting party to the presence of Russian 19 troops on the ground they occupied; and whether there was any ground for connecting the operations of Russia with those of Ayoob Khan? He asked these questions, which might appear to the noble Earl indiscreet, because it seemed to him—he said so with hesitation, and he hoped the noble Viscount would not consider it a personal reflection—that cold water was being thrown upon this subject. At all events, the importance of it in relation to English interests seemed to be somewhat depreciated by the noble Earl disdaining to take notice of it.
§ EARL GRANVILLEI agree with the noble Marquess that perhaps I ought to have answered this Question. The reason I did not is this—In the first instance, the noble and gallant Lord (Lord Strathnairn) gave Notice of his intention to address his Question to the Undersecretary of State for India; then he wrote to me, requesting me to be in my place in order that I might answer it. I came down to the House accordingly; but the noble and gallant Lord did not appear till a late hour, and his Question was postponed. Then he gave public Notice that he wished to put it to the noble Viscount. In these circumstances I did not think it necessary to publicly interfere; but I furnished my noble Friend with the answer I should myself have given. I, therefore, do not think I am altogether open to the charge of the noble Marquess. On the other hand, there is some inconvenience in the noble Marquess the late Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs starting up and putting a whole string of questions on this subject, some of which I cannot at this moment remember, without giving the slightest Notice of his intention. As far as I can gather these questions I do not think I am in a position to give an affirmative answer to any of them; but if the noble Marquess will repeat them—say on Thursday—I shall be glad to give him all the information we possess.