The Conquest Of Siberia
In the year 1558 a family of wealthy merchants, Stroganof by name, began
to barter with the Tartar tribes dwelling east of the Ural Mountains.
Ivan IV. had granted to this family the desert districts of the Kama,
with great privileges in trade, and the power to levy troops and build
forts--at their own expense--as a security against the robbers who
crossed the Urals to prey upon their settled neighbors to the west. In
eturn the Stroganofs were privileged to follow their example in a more
legal manner, by the brigandage of trade between civilization and
barbarism.
These robbers came from the region now known as Siberia, which extends
to-day through thousands of miles of width, from the Urals to the
Pacific. Before this time we know little about this great expanse of
land. It seems to have been peopled by a succession of races, immigrants
from the south, each new wave of people driving the older tribes deeper
into the frozen regions of the north. Early in the Christian era there
came hither a people destitute of iron, but expert in the working of
bronze, silver, and gold. They had wide regions of irrigated fields, and
a higher civilization than that of those who in time took their place.
People of Turkish origin succeeded these tribes about the eleventh
century. They brought with them weapons of iron and made fine pottery.
In the thirteenth century, when the great Mongol outbreak took place
under Genghis Khan, the Turkish kingdom in Siberia was destroyed and
Tartars took their place. Civilization went decidedly down hill. Such
was the state of affairs when Russia began to turn eyes of longing
towards Siberia.
The busy traders of Novgorod had made their way into Siberia as early as
the eleventh century. But this republic fell, and the trade came to an
end. In 1555, Khan Ediger, who had made himself a kingdom in Siberia,
and whose people had crossed swords with the Russians beyond the Urals,
sent envoys to Moscow, who consented to pay to Russia a yearly tribute
of a thousand sables, thus acknowledging Russian supremacy.
This tribute showed that there were riches beyond the mountains. The
Stroganofs made their way to the barrier of the hills, and it was not
long before the trader was followed by the soldier. The invasion of
Siberia was due to an event which for the time threatened the total
overthrow of the Russian government. A Cossack brigand, Stepan Rozni by
name, had long defied the forces of the czar, and gradually gained in
strength until he had an army of three hundred thousand men under his
command. If he had been a soldier of ability he might have made himself
lord of the empire. Being a brigand in grain, he was soon overturned and
his forces dispersed.
Among his followers was one Yermak, a chief of the Cossacks of the Don,
whom the czar sentenced to death for his love of plunder, but afterwards
pardoned. Yermak and his followers soon found the rule of Moscow too
stringent for their ideas of personal liberty, and he led a Cossack band
to the Stroganof settlements in Perm.
Tradition tells us that the Stroganof of that date did not relish the
presence of his unruly guests, with their free ideas of property rights,
and suggested to Yermak that Siberia offered a promising field for a
ready sword. He would supply him with food and arms if he saw fit to
lead an expedition thither.
The suggestion accorded well with Yermak's humor. He at once began to
enlist volunteers for the enterprise, adding to his own Cossack band a
reinforcement of Russians and Tartars and of German and Polish prisoners
of war, until he had sixteen hundred and thirty-six men under his
command. With these he crossed the mountains in 1580, and terrified the
natives to submission with his fire-arms, a form of weapon new to them.
Making their way down the Tura and Taghil Rivers, the adventurers
crossed the immense untrodden forests of Tobol, and Kutchum, the Tartar
khan, was assailed in his capital town of Ister, near where Tobolsk now
stands.
Many battles with the Tartars were fought, Ister was taken, the khan
fled to the steppes, and his cousin was made prisoner by the
adventurers. Yermak now, having added by his valor a great domain to the
Russian empire, purchased the favor of Ivan IV. by the present of this
new kingdom. He made his way to the Irtish and Obi, opened trade with
the rich khanate of Bokhara, south of the desert, and in various ways
sought to consolidate the conquest he had made. But misfortune came to
the conqueror. One day, being surprised by the Tartars when unprepared,
he leaped into the Irtish in full armor and tried to swim its rapid
current. The armor he wore had been sent him by the czar, and had served
him well in war. It proved too heavy for his powers of swimming, bore
him beneath the hungry waters, and brought the career of the victorious
brigand to an end. After his death his dismayed followers fled from
Siberia, yielding it to Tartar hands again.
Yermak--in his way a rival of Cortez and Pizarro--gained by his conquest
the highest fame among the Russian people. They exalted him to the level
of a hero, and their church has raised him to the rank of a saint, at
whose tomb miracles are performed. As regards the Russian saints, it may
here be remarked that they have been constructed, as a rule, from very
unsanctified timber, as may be seen from the examples we have heretofore
given. Not only the people and the priests but the poets have paid their
tribute to Yermak's fame, epic poems having been written about his
exploits and his deeds made familiar in popular song.
Though the Cossacks withdrew after Yermak's death, others soon succeeded
them. The furs of Siberia formed a rich prize whose allurement could not
be ignored, and new bands of hunters and adventurers poured into the
country, sustained by regular troops from Moscow. The advance was made
through the northern districts to avoid the denser populations of the
south. New detachments of troops were sent, who built forts and settled
laborers around them, with the duty of supplying the garrisons with
food, powder, and arms. By 1650 the Amur was reached and followed to the
Pacific Ocean.
It was a brief period in which to conquer a country of such vast extent.
But no organized resistance was met, and the land lay almost at the
mercy of the invaders. There was vigorous opposition by the tribes, but
they were soon subdued. The only effective resistance they met was that
of the Chinese, who obliged the Cossacks to quit the Amur, which river
they claimed. In 1855 the advance here began again, and the whole course
of the river was occupied, with much territory to its south. Siberia,
thus conquered by arms, is being made secure for Russia by a
trans-continental railroad and hosts of new settlers, and promises in
the future to become a land of the greatest prosperity and wealth.