Talk:Rusudan
| Information about this edition | |
|---|---|
| Edition: | Extracted from Adventure, 1 May 1927, pp. 84–164. |
| Source: | https://archive.org/details/adventure-v-062-n-04-1927-05-01 |
| Contributor(s): | ragpicker |
| Notes: | Accompanying illustrations may be omitted |
| Proofreaders: | ragcleaner |
From the "Camp-Fire" section of the magazine, pp. 182, 183.
SOMETHING about the Georgians from Harold Lamb, in connection with his long complete novelette in this issue.
I would like to say a word on behalf of the Georgians, for two reasons. History has little record of them, and they are worth knowing.
They are a real people, and form today a small republic in their native mountains, the southern part of the Caucasus. They are one of the oldest of peoples—having lived in the high valleys of the Caucasus between the Black Sea and the Caspian for a matter of some five thousand years. It is not certain where they came from originally. They have always been Georgians—mountaineers, makers and drinkers of wine, herders of sheep, clansmen like the Scots. They are warriors, even today, with traditions extending back to the days when Pompey camped with his legions under their cliffs, and the tide of wild Arabs surged up against them. Indeed, they held the fastnesses of the Caucasus when the great Persian kings were masters of near-Asia.
Rome knew them as the Iberians, and sought their women, who have always been noted for beauty—as have their neighbours, the Circassians. They call themselves—or they did once—Karthlians, and name their country Gurgistán, hence our Georgia.
These warrior mountaineers were converted to Christianity about the time of Constantine, and they have been faithful to it for some sixteen hundred years, in spite of Arab and Turk. Isolated, except for the Armenians, from other Christian peoples, they built their own churches in the forests of the Kour, and the valley of Tphilis (our Tiflis). Their one source of contact with the western world was through the Greek empire, and for a long time they served the emperors of Constantinople. The story here is the usual and rather pitiable one of a frontier people ignorant of the decadence of the capital, pawns in the game played by ministers of the empire.
They were not at all like the Armenians, their neighbours on the west. The Georgians were more than willing to fight for their liberty. Early in the twelfth century their boundaries extended beyond Erzerum and Kars—south into the Kohistan of Persia, and as far as Trebizond upon the Black Sea.
Now happened a curious thing. A Syrian bishop told at Rome tales of the splendor of the court and the power of the host of a Christian king far in the East, Magnificus Rex Indorum of India and Armenia. To this king he gave the name Prester John, adding that this unknown Christian monarch intended to advance with his host to rescue Jerusalem from the Saracens.
At that time the leader of the Georgian army was the high constable Ivan or John, and undoubtedly this foe of the Saracens gave rise to the stories of Prester John that flooded Europe when the crusades were launched. To the wonders related of Prester John were added myths of far Cathay and a good deal that was true of the Mongols.
Then came the crusades. But the splendid hosts that mustered in the fields of France and the shores of Italy melted away in the barrens of Palestine; leaders disagreed, cities were conquered and lost. One of the blackest chapters of the crusades is the fate of the Christian Armenians who had looked for ward to the coming of the Franks with vast hope, and were bitterly disappointed.
“After more than a century's experience, the Armenians could not trust their Latin neighbours as allies. Haithon (king of Armenia) put his trust in the heathen Mongols, who for half a century were to prove the best friends Armenia ever had”—thus the Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. IV, p. 175.
With the Armenians and Georgians as allies the pagan Mongols broke the Saracens, took Damascus and Aleppo and Bagdad and marched on Jerusalem. But at the first coming of the Mongol horde, the Georgians stood on the defensive, and the impact of Subotai's victorious Mongols upon these unconquered Christians of the Caucasus—the host of the so-called Prester John—forms the story of Rusudan.
Rusudan herself was very much alive at the time of the story. Between the brief lines of the Georgian Chronicle and the annals of the Mongols, we catch an impression of her high courage and beauty. Her restless spirit made no end of trouble for her, but her devotion to her people is unmistakable. Perhaps she was the only woman in the thirteenth century to face the Mongols squarely, on the battlefield and—after the Georgian alliance with the Mongols—in council. Or, for that matter almost the only ruler west of the Gobi who braved them and survived.
Haithon, King of Armenia, followed her example and went to the great Khan to render allegiance.
We wish that more were known about Rusudan. I have sketched the young queen and her people from the very few available facts at hand. Ivan the Constable, like Rusudan, is a famous character of the Caucasus mountain people. “Their annals,” says Brosset, the translator of the Georgian Chronicle, “were long and glorious, but lacked a commentator.”
TWO liberties have been taken in the story with the main facts of history. Rusudan did not actually become queen until 1223, while the events of the story are some two years earlier; and Theodore Lascaris, whose domain was the coasts of the Black Sea, the Greek Empire, apparently died on the southern coast, not in the Chersonese.
The Chersonese is the modern Crimea. Chersonese means simply “peninsular” and the term “Golden Chersonese” was given more often to the Malay peninsular in the far east. The Crimea was known as the Tauric Chersonese, but was called Altyn or Golden by the Mongols who were struck by the bright yellow sand and clay of its coasts.
The pleasure city of the emperor I have called simply the Chersonese, to avoid confusion in names. It was known by so many in the early centuries— Theodosia, in Roman days, the seat of the Pontic or Sea Kings in the time of Mithradates.
DURING their march to the west, the Mongols sent a detachment south from the Don, across the steppes, through the hills of the Crimea. This detachment made its way direct to the Genoese port as in the story—stormed and sacked it and departed into the steppes again. “It was,” says one historian, “the most singular junket in the world.”
Obviously, the Mongols started off with the idea of reaching the Chersonese. The historian quoted above—Leon Cahun, Conservateur of the Mazarin Library—explains it ingeniously by surmising that the Mongols had a friendly understanding already with the Venetians, and obliged them by dealing a blow at the Genoese and Greeks. But this is surmising a good deal. The Mongols of Genghis Khan were not inclined to trouble themselves about the quarrels of Europe. More likely, they had heard of the riches in the Chersonese—got them a guide and made the raid as in the story.
The Road of the Warriors exists in the Caucasus today, and I have heard it called the Road of the Crusaders. We have no record of any force of crusaders journeying to Palestine by way of the Caucasus. It would be a most difficult and extraordinary route, when easier ones were at hand. But it is very likely that some crusaders filtered back to Constantinople and thence to Europe by way of the Christian Armenians and Georgians. Being the first of their race to appear in the Caucasus the event would have made an impression on the Georgians and the name might have stuck. Today, it is one of the Russian military roads.
In the story of Rusudan I have tried to show the scene at the end of the crusades. The first capture of Jerusalem, the spectacular storming of Acre by Richard of England, the disastrous attempt on Egypt by St. Louis were events well known to us. But the political grasp of the crusading barons on the Holy Land was brief and chaotic. The main purpose of the crusades was never achieved, and failure was written large over all the efforts of the mailed hosts of Europe.
A more vital effect of the crusades was upon the men of Europe, who set out with the Cross sewn upon their shoulders, in high hope and confidence in their leaders, only to experience all manner of hardship and disaster, and to return to Europe with far different ideas. Many, like Sir Hugh chose rather to stay in Asia. Little is known about them, and to understand what they went through, the reader must place himself in unfamiliar scenes and amid strange peoples.
Difficult as it is to follow their fortunes, and the deeds of the Georgians, it seemed worth while to try to tell the story of Sir Hugh, and of the men as they really were—to look, one might, say, behind the scenes of the crusades. This is the explanation of “Rusudan.”—Harold Lamb.