Communism -- Soviet Union; Mongolia -- Description and travel
The next day we received very unexpected aid. A young Mongol galloped in
from Urga, his overcoat torn, his hair all dishevelled and fallen to
his shoulders and a revolver prominent beneath his girdle. Proceeding
directly to the market where the Mongols are always gathered, without
leaving his saddle he cried out:
“Urga is captured by our Mongols and Chiang Chun Baron Ungern! Bogdo
Hutuktu is once more our Khan! Mongols, kill the Chinese and pillage
their shops! Our patience is exhausted!”
Through the crowd rose the roar of excitement. The rider was surrounded
with a mob of insistent questioners. The old Mongol Sait, Chultun Beyli,
who had been dismissed by the Chinese, was at once informed of this news
and asked to have the messenger brought to him. After questioning the
man he arrested him for inciting the people to riot, but he refused to
turn him over to the Chinese authorities. I was personally with the
Sait at the time and heard his decision in the matter. When the Chinese
Commissioner, Wang Tsao-tsun, threatened the Sait for disobedience to
his authority, the old man simply fingered his rosary and said:
“I believe the story of this Mongol in its every word and I apprehend
that you and I shall soon have to reverse our relationship.”
I felt that Wang Tsao-tsun also accepted the correctness of the Mongol’s
story, because he did not insist further. From this moment the Chinese
disappeared from the streets of Uliassutai as though they never had
been, and synchronously the patrols of the Russian officers and of
our foreign colony took their places. The panic among the Chinese was
heightened by the receipt of a letter containing the news that the
Mongols and Altai Tartars under the leadership of the Tartar officer
Kaigorodoff pursued the Chinese who were making off with their booty
from the sack of Kobdo and overtook and annihilated them on the borders
of Sinkiang. Another part of the letter told how General Bakitch and
the six thousand men who had been interned with him by the Chinese
authorities on the River Amyl had received arms and started to join with
Ataman Annenkoff, who had been interned in Kuldja, with the ultimate
intention of linking up with Baron Ungern. This rumour proved to be
wrong because neither Bakitch nor Annenkoff entertained this intention,
because Annenkoff had been transported by the Chinese into the Depths of
Turkestan. However, the news produced veritable stupefaction among the
Chinese.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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