indignant at the resistance opposed to him by a paltry place like Ak Musjid, and received the messenger from the fort with ill-concealed impatience. Scarcely bestowing any attention on the letter, couched in humble terms as it was, of the commandant, General Perovsky petrified the astonished emissary with the declaration that on the morrow the fort would be taken by assault. This arbitrary assertion of his power, which was carried into practice, of course successfully, the next day, on an occasion when magnanimity ought to have been shown by the successful general, does not redound to the credit of the officer in question, and throws an instructive light on the latitude left to Russian generals in their instructions, and on the opinion felt for Central Asiatics by the civilizing representatives of the White Czar. To say that General Perovsky was urged to this act of gratuitous tyranny by a desire to obtain a cross of either St. Anne or St. George, is, after all, only to magnify the offence, and that Ak Musjid has taken the name of its conqueror, Fort Perovsky, is the means of perpetuating, not his fame, but his infamy, and the courageous conduct of the defenders. In the winter following its fall Yakoob Beg, with Sahib Khan, brother of the Khan of Khokand, attempted to retake the fort, but the
coup proved abortive, and the Russians have never receded from their new acquisition.
