Читать книгу: «The Life of Yakoob Beg; Athalik Ghazi, and Badaulet; Ameer of Kashgar», страница 7

CHAPTER VII.
THE INVASION OF KASHGAR BY BUZURG KHAN AND YAKOOB BEG

The Chinese were on several occasions, as we have seen, threatened in Eastern Turkestan by the pretensions of the Khojas, and the secret or open machinations of Khokand. But they had at all times triumphed over every combination of circumstances, so long as they themselves were united. The temporary success of Jehangir Khan was obliterated by the excesses which characterized his occupation of the country, and by the energy and large display of force, with which the Chinese pacified the state on his flight; and the last, under Wali Khan, can scarcely be dignified by any other appellation than that of a marauding incursion. But a great and important change had occurred in the few years that had elapsed since 1859. The Chinese no longer presented a collected force to the onslaught of an assailant. In every quarter of their empire, victorious rebels had established themselves, and had detracted in an immeasurable degree from the effective strength of the Government. A Mahomedan ruler swayed over the Panthays, in Yunnan, from his capital at Ta-li-foo; the Taepings round Nankin were at the summit of their career, just before the appearance of Colonel Gordon, when, in 1862, a fresh danger broke out in the provinces of Kansuh and Shensi. From a remote period there had been extensive Mussulman settlements in these provinces, and so early as the seventeenth century they had been the cause of trouble to the great Kanghi. The Emperor Keen-Lung, indeed, at one time attempted to settle the question for ever by ordering the massacre of every Mahomedan over fifteen years of age. Even this sweeping measure did not have the desired effect, and whether persecution was the means or not of giving vitality to the cause, it is certain that they had become more numerous, more resolute, and more confident in their own superiority to the other Chinese by the middle of the present century. These Mahomedans were known as Tungani, Dungani, or Dungans, while the Buddhist Chinese are spoken of as Khitay. Many writers are not satisfied with this simple explanation of the name Tungani, and will have it that they were a distinct race, who were either transported to China at some period of Chinese conquest, or were compelled to seek refuge there by some advancing barbarian horde. They even assert that they can trace the name and origin of this people to a tribe dwelling in the country of the lower waters of the Amoor; but while there is complete uncertainty on the subject it seems simpler to accept the signification that the word Tungani conveys to the Chinese, and that is Mahomedan. We know, for certain, that these people had resided in Kansuh and its neighbouring province for centuries – that they were remarkable for a superiority in strength and activity over the Khitay, and that they possessed the virtues of sobriety and honesty. They were also not infected by the disease of opium smoking, and we should imagine them to have been a quiet, contented, and agreeable people at their most prosperous period. Their physical superiority to the Khitay would probably be owing to their abstention from "bang" and opium, and we need not suppose that they were the descendants of a stronger race, who had issued from the frigid north, when we have an explanation so much simpler and more natural at hand. They were found by their Khitay rulers to form excellent soldiers, policemen, and other Government servants, such as carriers, &c. In this last employment many found their way to Hamil, thence to Turfan and Urumtsi, and their numbers were increased by discharged soldiers, who remained as military settlers sooner than return to Kansuh. In the course of a few generations their numbers became much greater, until, at last, in the cities we have named, they formed the majority of the inhabitants. In Kuldja, too, they were very numerous, but south of the Tian Shan they do not seem to have advanced westward of Kucha in any great force. At Aksu the Andijan influence, supreme in Western Kashgar, presented an impassable barrier to the Tungani, who, it must be remembered, had no sympathy with Khokand. The Tungani were, therefore, Mahomedan subjects of China, originating in Kansuh, but who had also, in the course of time, spread westward into Chinese Turkestan and Jungaria. They were employed in the service of the country without restriction, nor can we find that they were subjected to any unfair usage, after the measures taken against them in the earlier days of Keen-Lung. They may not have been as highly favoured as the Sobo tribes, and they may have been subjected to some ridicule in Kansuh; but in Jungaria they were on an equality with all the other Chinese, and immeasurably better placed in the political scale than the Andijanis or Tarantchis. The Chinese had just grounds for believing that no danger to their rule in Eastern Turkestan or Jungaria would ever be caused by the Tungani, and it is not easy to explain how their reasonable anticipations were falsified. The Tungani were fervent, if not the most orthodox in form of, Mahomedans, and it would appear that they were not free from a belief in their own superiority to the Khitay. This feeling was fostered by the "mollahs," or priests, who became very active within the Chinese dominions, when these had been extended by conquest into the heart of Asia. As if in retaliation for a Khitay conquest the Mahomedan religion was undermining the outworks of its rival's power slowly, but surely. The impulse given to trade by the security and patronage that accompanied Chinese rule was, at least from a purely Chinese point of view, neutralized as an advantage by the admission into the empire of energetic and eloquent preachers of the superior merits of Mahomedanism. It required many generations before the effect of their efforts became perceptible, and it was not until the power of China fell into an extraordinary decline – a decline which many thought, with some show of reason, was to herald the fall, but which later events have seemed to make but the prelude to a more vigorous life than ever – that these Mahomedan missionaries among the Tungani knew that the time to reap what they had sown with patience and persistency was at hand. It is impossible not to connect this event in some degree with that unaccountable revival of fanaticism among Mahomedans, which has produced so many important events during the last thirty years, and of which we are now witnessing some of the most striking results.

In 1862, a riot occurred in a small village of Kansuh; it was suppressed with some loss of life, and people were beginning to suppose that it possessed no significance, when a disturbance broke out on a large scale at Houchow, or Salara. The Tungani had risen, and the unfortunate unarmed Khitay were massacred right and left. The rising soon assumed the proportions of a civil war, and the infection spread to the neighbouring province of Shensi. Then ensued scenes of the most atrocious barbarity. The Khitay, who all their lives had lived at peace and as neighbours with the Tungani, were butchered without mercy. The Mahomedan priests seized all the governing power into their own hands, and set their followers the example of unscrupulous ferocity. The movement, even if we make allowance for the difficulties besetting the government in other regions, must be considered to have been attended by unexpected success. It can only be accounted for by the supposition that the Khitay were taken completely by surprise, and realized neither the extent nor the nature of the danger to which they were exposed. Before the end of 1862, a Tungan government was established in Kansuh, and its jurisdiction was for a time acknowledged in Shensi. The priests formed an administration amongst themselves, and set themselves to the task of consolidating what they had won, and of preparing for the time when the Chinese should come for vengeance. The events happening in Kansuh were naturally of interest to the Tungani in the country lying beyond it, and it was not long before the example set them was followed in Hamil, Turfan, Urumtsi, Manas, and other cities of that district. The same success attended the movement here as in Kansuh. The Chinese power was subverted, the Khitay massacred with greater circumstances of cruelty, if possible, and a new Tungan state was formed in those cities. Each district retained a nominal independence, under the headship of a priest, or body of priests, or of one of the native Tungan princes, and then the movement spread with irresistible strides to Karashar, Kucha, and Aksu. There it stopped, and south of the Tian Shan the Tungan revolt proper never extended west of Aksu.

In Altyshahr and Kuldja for some months longer the Chinese maintained the external show of power, but all their communications with China were cut off, and neither in numbers nor resources had they sufficient means to cope with the Tungani unaided. They would have accomplished as much as could have been expected from them if they succeeded in keeping possession of that which they still occupied. The Tungan element in Kucha and Aksu was not predominant. It had to share power with the Khojas, and, as we shall see later on, the Khojas of these two cities seized the governing power for themselves. It was the appearance of the Tungan sedition in these cities, which occupy a middle relation to the purely Chinese cities of Hamil and Urumtsi, and the almost totally Khokandian cities of Yarkand and Kashgar, that roused the Kashgari to a full appreciation of the importance to themselves of this movement, and the Chinese garrisons and settlers to an equally just realization of their own danger. The Kashgari, not free from the fanaticism of all their co-religionists, and naturally elated at the successes of the Tungani, forgot, with their well proved fickleness, all the benefits they had received from the Chinese, and waited eagerly for a favourable opportunity to come for them to imitate the example set them by their eastern neighbours. Nor had they long to wait, although it was not from them that came the first spark that lighted the firebrand of civil war and anarchy throughout the length and breadth of Altyshahr.

It will be remembered that the Khokandian government had the right to nominate in each city, where they received dues on Mahomedan merchandise, an agent or tax-collector to look after the proper levy of the tax. In some of the larger cities this official would require a considerable staff of assistants, and thus a certain number of skilled Khokandian officials were permanently located on Kashgarian or Chinese territory. After the failure of the expedition of Wali Khan, in which these officials seem to have disappeared, either having become merged in the body of his partisans or sacrificed during the massacres of that time, a fresh batch of Khokandians was installed, and occupied, in a legal sense, the same position as their predecessors. It would appear, however, that the natural result of their aid to Wali Khan followed, and that the Chinese Ambans regarded their presence with scarcely concealed dislike, and proclaimed that these Khokandian tax-gatherers were devoting more of their attention to the propagation of heretical religious and political doctrines than to the collection of dues on silk and other articles of commerce. It would require but the slightest untoward circumstance to fan this ill-feeling into the most insatiate hatred and hostility. The danger was rendered the more serious when the Chinese Ambans perceived for the first time that the sympathies of a large portion of their Tungan soldiery were estranged from them. It was doubtful whether the Tungan regiments could be relied on against a fresh Khoja revolt, and it was certain that they would not combine in any repression of the Mahomedan religion, even though the sufferers should only be Andijanis. Such was the state of the public mind in Altyshahr in 1862, when the Tungani revolted and obtained success in Kansuh and Shensi.

As early as 1859 the hostility of the Chinese Ambans to the Andijani tax-collectors received a forcible illustration in the town of Yarkand. At that time Afridun Wang was governor, and, whether there was any personal enmity at the root of the action or not, he found little difficulty in convincing both himself and the other Chinese residents that the Andijani agent had been stirring up discontent against them in the town. Accordingly, as self-preservation is the first law of nature, this Khokandian official, with his attendant, was arrested and executed. There may have been some foundation for the accusations made by Afridun Wang against his rival: more probably there was none; but on referring the matter to the Viceroy of Ili for decision it was decided that the governor should be removed. The Khokandian government sent fresh agents, and it is not stated that any reparation was given to the families of the sufferers. From this it would appear that the post of tax-collector in Altyshahr for His Highness the Khan of Khokand was not a very desirable position. Afridun Wang retired to his native town of Turfan, where, three years later on, he contributed more than any one else to the success of the Tungan movement. His policy, if anti-Khokandian, was pro-Mahomedan or Tungan, and his case is very typical of the nature of this rising. In Turfan he continued to be one of the chief men, until, six years later on, it fell to the Athalik Ghazi.

His successor in the governorship of Yarkand did not interfere with the Khokandian officials, but for this moderation he made up by the exactions he committed on the residents, more particularly on the Mahomedan portion of them. His extortions and cruelties had the effect as much of disgusting his own followers as of rousing a spirit of opposition among the oppressed. It was while things were in this uncertain state at Yarkand that the governor received secret notice of the Tungan revolt in Kansuh, and he at once perceived that, when this important intelligence became known, not only would his own Tungan troops become more openly mutinous, but that the Khojas might seize the opportunity to assert their claim to the country once more. In this special case, in addition to the general apprehension that would be felt by any Chinese governor at the aspect of affairs, there was personal fear for the unjustifiable acts of his government, and the Amban, in his trepidation, resolved on the most strenuous precautions to avert the danger from himself. He summoned a council of war of his Buddhist lieutenants, and stated the exact position to them; how the Tungan portion of their forces could not be depended on; how the Tungan settlers would join them; and how the Andijani agents would do their utmost to unite in one cause against themselves all those who followed the teaching of Islam; and how all these events, which before were possible, had been rendered probable by the Tungan successes in the east. He dwelt on the fact that no time was to be lost in the execution of such precautions as they thought necessary; that at any moment the news might arrive, and then they would be in a minority; and he did not attempt to conceal the purport of his address – that he was in favour of sharp measures, of going to the root of the evil at once, and of massacring every Mussulman in the town. The council of war was not prepared to endorse such a violent proceeding without careful consideration. There were many dissentients, and the meeting was adjourned. It reassembled, and, on this occasion, although the supporters of more moderate measures had decreased, it adjourned once more before deciding. The danger evidently appeared more appalling to the governor than to his subordinates; perhaps also there was some personal dislike for their chief even among his Khitay following. At the second meeting they seemed, indeed, more willing to acquiesce in his proposed strong measures, and this may have been caused by their observation of the state of public opinion in the interval. But even then no final decision could be arrived at, and the Khitay never had a chance after that of making any defence in Yarkand. The Tungan troops were not long in hearing, through their chief officer, Mah Dalay, that there was a plot on foot among the Khitay to disarm, or, as others said, to massacre them, and they then learnt of the Mahomedan revolt in China and along the road thither. They immediately determined to be beforehand with the Amban and his lukewarm council, and no weak hesitation marred the execution of their plot, as it had that of the Chinese governor.

The Khitay troops, unarmed, were surprised during the night, and cut down without quarter, and the small body of survivors sought refuge in the Yangyshahr fort. This was in August, 1863, and no fewer than 7,000 Khitay soldiers are computed to have fallen on this single occasion. The Tungan troops were thereupon joined by the townspeople, and the question then to be decided was, who was to be supreme, the Tungani or the Andijan-Kashgari Mahomedans. The former were simply an unlettered and rather savage soldiery; the latter possessed keen intellects for manipulating a fanatical people, and for improvising an administration of a superficial character. The balance of power was evenly distributed until reinforcements arrived from Aksu and Kucha to the anti-Tungan party. Two Khojas who had been banished from Kucha, for endeavouring to promote their own interests in the name of Khokand, had fled to Aksu, where they met the same fate. In this latter flight many of similar principles joined them, so that when they reached Yarkand they had a numerous force at their back. The Khojas in the first place joined their forces to the Tungani, to storm the remaining Khitay in the Yangyshahr. The Khitay after a gallant resistance perceived that further opposition was impossible. Then occurred one of those deeds, which, if Europe instead of Asia had been the scene, would have been handed down to posterity as a rare example of military devotion and courage, but which, although not unique even in the annals of the campaign we are entering upon, having occurred in little-known Eastern Turkestan, is not realized as an event that has actually taken place. It is a myth of the myth-land to which it belongs. And yet, when we read how the Amban summoned all his officers to his chamber, where he sat in state surrounded by his wives, his family, and his servants; how all were silent, and yet sedate and prepared; how, at the given signal that all were present, and that the foe was at the gate, the aged warrior dropped his lighted pipe into the mine beneath; how the exulting foe won after all but a barren triumph; and how the Khitay taught the natives that if they had forgotten how to conquer they had not how to die, we feel that there is an under-current throughout the story, that, apart from the admiration it must command, has claims to our own special sympathy. The Chinese, as we did in India in the dark hours of 1857, asserted their superiority over the semi-barbarous races under their sway, even when all hopes of a recovery seemed to be abandoned. After the fall of the citadel the Khoja element was supreme in Yarkand, and a priest named Abderrahman was set up as king.

The other cities of Altyshahr promptly followed the example of Yarkand, and the Chinese power was completely subverted on all hands. The Khitay were massacred whenever they fell into the hands of the Mahomedans, and the only places that still held out were the citadels, notably the Yangyshahr of Kashgar. The inhabitants of this city appear to have been unable to keep their advantage over the Chinese, for they appealed to the Kirghiz to come in and assist them. These nomads, under their chief, Sadic Beg, were nothing loth to join in expelling the Chinese, as such a change could only increase their advantages by substituting an unsettled for a settled government. Siege was accordingly laid to the citadel of Kashgar, but the irregular troops of the new allies were unable to make any impression on the fort, defended as it was by a large Khitay garrison. If the Chinese commander had assumed a more active policy, he might have destroyed his opponents, but he was waiting for the arrival of reinforcements, which he expected before many months. In not relying solely on his own resources he proved himself unable to read the changed signs of the time; if, indeed, he was not already meditating that surrender, which he ultimately concluded with Yakoob Beg. Sadic Beg, finding himself unable to take the fort, and knowing that it was uncertain how long the Kashgari would remain friendly to himself, resolved to play the part of king-maker, and sent the embassy to Tashkent for a Khoja to come and rule Kashgar, only he omitted to say that Kashgar was not conquered.

We can now return to Buzurg Khan and his commander-in-chief. When they left Tashkent they had only a following of six, among whom were Abdulla, Pansad; Mahomed Kuli, Shahawal; and Khoja Kulan, Hudaychi. All of these played a very prominent part under Yakoob Beg. From Tashkent they went to Khokand, where their numbers rose to sixty-eight. Here the final preparations were made, and during the first days of January, 1865, this band of adventurers crossed the Khokand frontier into Eastern Turkestan. The mountain forts seem to have been deserted, for no opposition was encountered in the passage of the Terek defile. Several small bodies of troops joined them, and they reached Mingyol in the neighbourhood of Kashgar with increased numbers and confidence. Sadic Beg had conceived a more sanguine view of his situation by this time, and half repented that he had invited the Khojas in at all, more particularly when he found that the Khoja had a following of his own, and a skilled commander and minister in Yakoob Beg. He then strove to dissuade Buzurg Khan from proceeding further with an enterprise fraught with great peril, for he represented the Chinese as sure to return, when summary vengeance would be exacted. But his arguments were unavailing. Either Buzurg Khan or his adviser, Yakoob Beg, was deaf to all entreaty. The enterprise they had embarked on must be continued to the bitter end. They could not think of returning to Khokand with nothing accomplished, with the stigma attaching to them of a retreat when there had been no foe. Sadic Beg could not but submit with the best grace possible; and Buzurg Khan was accordingly placed on the throne of his ancestors.

In his "orda" or palace he administered justice and received the congratulations of his own followers and of the Andijani townspeople. The court rules were drawn up on the model of those in use in Khokand, and while the expedition had but established itself, in an uncertain manner, in one city it was thought necessary that etiquette should be as strictly defined and enforced as if all this were taking place in a brilliant and luxurious capital. In a few days Sadic Beg, on finding that he played but a secondary part, revolted, and set himself up as ruler at Yangy Hissar. It was now that Yakoob Beg came to the front, and assumed the control of affairs until the fall of the contemptible Buzurg. With great difficulty after the desertion of their Kirghiz allies was a force of 3,000 men collected around the new Khoja in Kashgar. Sadic Beg advanced on the capital with a much larger army, and Yakoob Beg had for a time to remain on the defensive. Each day, however, brought in recruits to his camp, while, the army of the Kirghiz leader presenting no object of sympathy to the people, his rival's remained stationary, if it did not decrease. An encounter at last commenced between the two forces which was made general by the intrepidity of Abdulla. The Kirghiz levies of Sadic were unable to withstand the vigorous charges that were led against them, and broke after a short combat into headlong flight. In the mountains the Kirghiz gathered around their chieftain in force, and, hovering on the northern districts of Kashgar, presented a danger that must be removed by Yakoob Beg before he could advance farther. His troops were therefore directed to proceed against the Kirghiz in their fastnesses, and it was not long before the Kirghiz, driven into a corner, turned at bay on their pursuer. The forces on either side were about equal, some 5,000 men in either army. But, as is customary in the East, the Kirghiz army put forth a champion, Suranchi by name, who had obtained great renown for his extraordinary height and strength. The challenge did not remain unanswered, for Abdulla stepped forward to the encounter. The fight, though furious, was short, and the smaller Khokandian warrior was victorious over his more ponderous antagonist. The Kirghiz power after this reverse was broken up, and Sadic Beg took refuge with Alim Kuli at Tashkent. Yakoob Beg's first campaign against the Kirghiz, who had sworn alliance with him, and by whose invitation he was present in Kashgar, had thus ended victoriously, and he was now able to resume the main purpose of conquering Kashgar. Having rendered Kashgar secure from surprise on the north, and leaving a force to maintain their hold on it, and to keep in check the Khitay garrison, Buzurg and Yakoob proceeded south to occupy Yangy Hissar. The town was occupied without difficulty, but an attempt to storm the citadel in which the Khitay had taken refuge was repulsed with loss. Sending Buzurg Khan back to Kashgar, Yakoob Beg resolved to go on to Yarkand and endeavour to bring that city under their immediate influence.

At this period he loudly proclaimed that there should be no differences among the Tungani, or Mahomedans, in their war with the Buddhists, and that Khojas and Tungani had but one interest in common. As we have seen, the Tungan disturbances broke out first in Yarkand of any city of Altyshahr, and accordingly an earlier settlement founded on a compromise had been attained there, than was the case in its northern neighbours, Kashgar and Yangy Hissar, where an ambitious Kirghiz chief had sought to carve a kingdom for himself. After Abderrahman Khoja had been made king or ruler in Yarkand, and after the Khitay had been destroyed with their citadel, a fresh arrangement was agreed upon between the Tungani and the Khoja party. By its terms the Tungani maintained possession of the citadel, and the Khojas held jurisdiction in the city. Neither of them would be disposed to view with any friendly eye the appearance of a claimant to supremacy in the person of a Khoja sovereign of the whole country, and it was as the representative of such a person that Yakoob Beg resolved to visit Yarkand. His march was delayed as much as possible, and it was not without some difficulty that he at last obtained admittance with his small following into the city. Yakoob Beg was naturally incensed at this inimical treatment from his fellow-religionists, and he soon set himself to the task of humbling the dominant Khojas of Yarkand. During a street riot that was probably instigated by the wily Khokandian, the leading Khojas were seized, and their followers expelled from the city. With a force of only a few hundred men, Yakoob Beg had established himself as master in the largest city of the country; his success on this occasion was very temporary. As ill fortune would have it for him, a fresh army of 2,000 men from Kucha had arrived at Tagharchi, and, there joined by the forces from Yarkand and the neighbourhood, presented a very formidable appearance. They marched on the city at once with complete confidence in their superior numbers, and Yakoob Beg, always in favour of the boldest course, marched out to meet them. In a skirmish, however, the detachment under Abdulla was badly cut up owing to the rashness of that officer, and Yakoob Beg at once recognized the necessity for a prompt retreat. During the following night he made a forced march and arrived the next day at Yangy Hissar with no very great loss in men, but without any baggage whatever. The enterprise to Yarkand then appeared in its true light as a rash venture.

The Khitay in the fort of Yangy Hissar still held out, and Yakoob Beg resolved to overcome them before he attempted any fresh enterprise. He called up reinforcements from Kashgar, and pressed the siege with renewed vigour, and alter strictly environing it for forty days the garrison surrendered. Although Yakoob Beg himself seemed desirous of showing moderation to the prisoners, more than 2,00 °Chinese were massacred. During all these petty events, which had not produced even the results of past Khoja enterprises, there had been discontent and division within, as well as opposition from without. At this time a fresh danger was appearing on the horizon. A Badakshi army was advancing with hostile intent on Sirikul, and although Yakoob Beg disregarded its approach while he pressed on the works against the citadel of Yangy Hissar, when that fort fell it attracted his attention once more. The Khitay garrison in the Yangyshahr of Kashgar was also a source of danger to the newly founded dynasty, and, although its inactivity had continued for a long period, it was uncertain at what moment it might pass off. We can only account for the extraordinary lethargy of the Chinese commander by supposing that he was in complete ignorance of what was passing in the country. At many moments it must seem to an observer of the facts that the Chinese governor, who had under him 6,000 or 7,000 disciplined troops, could have crushed all the opposition of such heterogeneous crowds as those fighting under or against Yakoob Beg were up to this time. With the destruction of the Yangy Hissar garrison the prospects of Yakoob Beg greatly improved, and less opportunity was left to the Chinese governor for assuming the offensive, than when he possessed an ally in so close a position as Yangy Hissar. Yakoob Beg also resolved to press the Khitay still more in this their last stronghold, and before he encountered other opponents to crush the Khitay, as he already had the Kirghiz. At this point Sadic Beg reappears in Kashgar at the head of a Kirghiz force to oppose Yakoob Beg, and for a moment it seemed as if he were to have better fortune on this occasion. But Abdulla, the most trusted as well as the most courageous of Yakoob Beg's lieutenants, collected such forces as he could, boldly threw himself in his path, and, having routed Sadic in a sanguinary engagement, prepared to press that unfortunate chieftain into flight or ruin. Yakoob Beg, in want of allies and soldiers however, interfered and suggested an alliance instead of a war à outrance. The thwarted Sadic was only too glad to get off on such favourable terms, and joined his forces to those of his late enemy now besieging the Khitay with renewed vigour. This merciful termination of a difficulty, that might have become serious had it not been cured in time, was a performance very creditable in a diplomatic sense to Yakoob Beg. In a small way it may be compared with Frederick the Great's action at Pirna, where he received the services of 40,000 Saxon troops. But, perhaps, still more remarkable was the manner in which Yakoob Beg averted the danger from the Badakshi army. The Badakshi, like their kinsmen the Afghans, may be considered, cæteris paribus, to be superior soldiers, on account of their larger build and more active habits, to other Asiatics, so that Yakoob Beg with his half-disciplined followers would have had some difficulty and must have incurred considerable loss in overcoming these new invaders. He made overtures to them, and the Badakshi, seeing that he was likely to give them exciting and profitable employment, entered into negotiations with him. The result was that they took service under him; and Yakoob Beg for the first time found himself at the head of a large army, composed of Khokand, Kashgar, Kirghiz, and Badakshan levies. It was fortunate for himself that he had been able to arrange his affairs so satisfactorily, for a fresh danger was approaching from the east.