Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan by William Dalrymple Read Free Book Online Page A

‘revolutionary-national’ resistance movement begun by a group of Polish and Lithuanian students intent on fighting the Russian occupation of their country. In 1823, the Brothers were exposed after they wrote anti-Russian letters to the principal and teachers of the Gymnasium, and began posting revolutionary slogans and verses on prominent public buildings in the town. Witkiewicz and the five other ringleaders were arrested and interrogated. On 6 February 1824, in an attempt to stamp out any further democratic aspirations among Polish students, three were sentenced to death and three to flogging followed by life exile to the steppe. At the time, Witkiewicz had just celebrated his fourteenth birthday.
    At the last minute, thanks to the intervention of the Grand Duke Pavlovitch, the Regent of Poland, the death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment with hard labour in the Bobruisk Fortress, where one of the boys eventually went mad and died in jail. Witkiewicz and two others were stripped of their titles and rank in the nobility and sent to different fortresses on the Kazakh steppe as common soldiers, without the right to promotion. They were forbidden all further contact with their families for ten years, and sent off on the long march south on foot and in chains. 15
    Immediately after his arrival on the steppe, Jan made a plan to escape. With one of his Black Brother colleagues, Aloizy Peslyak, he plotted a route south to India over the Hindu Kush; but the escape plan was exposed and the plotters severely punished. 16 In the years that followed, Peslyak nearly shot himself, while another of their fellow Polish exiles actually did so. But Witkiewicz resigned himself to his fate and decided to make the best of his situation. He learned Kazakh and Chagatai Turkish, and allowed his name to be changed to the more Russian-sounding Ivan Viktorovitch Vitkevitch.
    One of his later patrons subsequently wrote:
     
    Exiled to a remote garrison on the Orenburg line, Vitkevitch served as a private soldier for over 10 years and, placed under the command of drunken and debauched officers, he managed to preserve a pure and noble soul and, moreover, to develop and educate his intelligence; he learned oriental languages and so familiarized himself with the steppe that one can positively claim that ever since the Orenburg District came into being, no one around here knew the Kazakhs better than he does . . . all the Kazakhs respect him for his upright behaviour and for the hardiness he has shown more than once on his outings into the steppe. 17
     
    Soon Vitkevitch had memorised the entire Koran by heart, and began inviting the nomadic Kazakh elders back to his lodgings, giving them tea, pilaf and lamb, and learning from them their customs and manners as well as the rich idiom of their language. He also collected books, especially about the steppe and exploration, and it was this that finally began his rise through the ranks of the Russian military.
    Vitkevitch’s love of literature had attracted the attention of the Commandant of the fortress of Orsk, on the Ural River, who invited him to become a tutor to his children. In 1830, the Commandant hosted the celebrated German explorer Alexander von Humboldt, who was amazed to see his most recent book, Tableaux de la Nature , about his travels in Latin America, lying on a table in the house. When he asked how it had got to be there, he was told about the young Pole who had a complete collection of the great traveller’s works, and Humboldt asked to meet him. Vitkevitch was brought in:
     
    The young man’s pleasant appearance despite the rough private soldier’s overcoat, his good looks, modest manner and learnedness all impressed the great scientist. Upon his return from his Siberian journey to Orenburg, he immediately informed the Governor, Count Pavel Suhktelen, of the deplorable position of Vitkevich and asked the Count to lighten the young man’s lot. The Count summoned Vitkevich