Richard Halliburton was American adventurer and writer who, in the 1920s and 1930s, had traveled widely in Europe and Asia. In the early 1930s he visited the newly established Soviet Union and traveled to Georgia, where he paid a visit to the Khevsureti (historical-ethnographic region in the mountains on eastern Georgia) hearing about the chain-mail clad warriors living there. In his book, "Seven League Boots" (published in 1935), he devoted an entire chapter to the Khevsurs, opening it with the legend of the Khevsurs being descended from Crusaders who became separated from the main Christian forces they were accompanying and ended up establishing themselves in the Caucasus. Despite its overt orientalism, Halliburton's narrative still provides interesting insights into the early 20th century Khevsureti.
The city of Tiflis, capital of the state of Georgia in Caucasia, has long prided itself upon its advanced ideas, its broad boulevards, its modern architecture, and its progressive-minded citizens.
People's eyes almost popped out of their heads. Obviously there was no cinema company going on location. These were Crusaders—or their ghosts. The incredible troop clanked up to the governor's palace. 'Where's the war?' they asked. 'We hear there's a war.'
They had heard in April 1915 that there was a war. It had been declared in September 1914. The news took seven months to reach the last of the Crusaders.
And you wouldn't be surprised, if you tried, as Fritz and I did, to find the behind-the-beyond country in which these twelfth-century people live.
One of the most curious and romantic legends of the Caucasus tells the story of the origin of this armoured tribe. And as yet no historian has found any reason to believe that the legend is not based entirely on fact. The story declares that this race came, eight hundred years ago, from Lorraine, more than two thousand miles away. The argument is borne out by the fact that their chain armour is in the French sty;e, while their otherwise incomprehensible speech still contains six or eight good German words.
When they left Lorraine, so goes the legend, the last thing they had in mind was the colonization of the frosty peaks of the Caucasus Moutnaints, for they were followers of Godfrey de Bouillon and planned to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the Moslem [Muslim] infidels.
But during the thousand-mile march across what is now Asiatic Turkey, this particular band of Crusaders somehow got detached from the main army, and were prevented by the Saracens from rejoining it. Whether they took a northern course of their own accord, and continued on across Armenia and Georgia to the Caucasus as pioneers, or whether they were fleeing for their lives with Moslem scimitars swishing around their ears, the legend does not say. But we do know that they called a halt in one of the most rugged and unapproachable corners of the Caucasus... and didn't emerge again in force till 1915 when the rumours of a worth-while war brought them, wearing their ancestors' coats of mail, into Tiflis.
These strange people, called Khevsoors, have continued to occupy their hidden corner for over eight centuries. But not one inch have they advanced in general culture, In fact they have lost whatever of the arts they brought with them from Lorraine, and nearly all the crafts.
Only their Crusader chain armor, more or less indestructible, they still have, and the letters A.M.D. - Ave Mater Dci, the motto of the Crusaders — carved on their shields, and the Crusader crosses which adorn the handles of their broadswords and are embroidered in a dozen places on their home-made garments. At the same time, the Khevsoors have developed a crude culture of their own that makes them, to me, the most interesting “foreign” race in all Russia.
Maintaining their independence unbroken for the last eight hundred years, they were walled off from the world by barriers of mountains and canyons. A highway extending ninety miles. north of Tiflis approaches to within twenty miles of one of their villages. But the single cliff-cut trail that leads off to it is traversable only on foot, or with horses that can climb, slide and swim. Even this trail is closed by ice and snow in December and remains closed till May. During these five months no one can enter and no one can depart from Khevsooria.
To visit this archaic, clan, this lost world, Fritz and I, having traveled inland from the Black Sea to Tiflis and motored to the starting point of the only trail into Khevsooria, made what was perhaps the last trail-passage of the season. Iron crampons on our shoes were necessary for already ice covered everything. It was explained clearly to us before starting that one more fall of snow, after we had reached our destination, would make our return extremely difficult - we might even have to remain in the village five months, as much prisoners as our hosts.
We took the risk, but watched the sky with anxious eyes as we advanced. Our luck held. It didn’t snow, nor did we slide off the cliff-face into the frozen river below. Terrific peaks, completely sheathed in ice, rose on all sides of us. I had been used to thinking, carelessly, that Mont Blanc is the highest mountain in Europe. But the range along whose slopes we climbed includes nine peaks higher, and a score more that topped the Matterhorn. Elbrus, the highest of the range, overtops Mont Blane by nearly three thousand feet. After six hours on the steep and slippery trail we descended into a valley, and saw the first Khevsoor village, a collection of rude stone huts, in which sheep, goats, pigs, cows and Khevsoors have been living happily together for eight hundred years.
The entire population of the village — some three hundred — came to look at us, the first foreign visitors in two months.
It was immediately evident that the Khevsoors have developed a communal life completely unmodified by any changes that may have occurred in the world outside. If at the end of their five months’ imprisonment they found that all life at the other end of the trail had been destroyed by a passing comet, they would continue t0 have no more and no less than before. Their houses and all the articles in them are home made - the furniture, the cradle, the cooking pots. They weave their own cloth from wool their sheep provide. They have no wheeled transport, only crude sleds made by their own hands. Cartridges [for firearms] they would lack, but these have never been of any great importance anyhow in this sword-conscious community.
Everybody works, raising barley, shepherding the sheep and goats; and the produce of their common labor is shared by all. No man is richer than his neighbor. No house is better than any other. Money they do not understand and do not want. Before I’d been in the village an hour I decided that personal beauty in Khevsooria is rare and brief. The eternal struggle to sustain life in this rugged country soon destroys their youth. The women looked old at thirty though they sometimes live to be a hundred. All women, obviously, were considered very inferior beings. They ate what the men had left, and slept together on the floor downstairs; the men in beds upstairs.
One particularly cruel custom, handed down from the darkest ages, shocks anyone who comes to Khevsooria. For ten days before an expectant mother is delivered of a child (she may have married at fifteen), she must retire from the community and hide, an outcast and unclean, in an animal shed outside the village. She must never show herself. No one must be seen approaching I her. Absolutely alone she must bear her baby——in the dark, beside the goats. If her cries reach the village, her husband is allowed to go and fire his rifle from the shed’s roof in order to frighten away the evil spirits tormenting his wife. But he must not, even if she’s dying’ ' go inside.
Fortunately the Khevsoor women are as tough as goats whose apartment they are using, and give birth to their young with about the same amount of trouble.
Cruel to their women. And also cruel to their horses. While master lives, the horse is treated like a son, loved and protected. But when the master dies, the horse must die too. As the owner's corpse is bveing borne to the cemetery, an expert horseman mounts the animal and rides it down canyons, across rivers, up hills, at the swiftest possible speed, spurring and spurring it - to death. The corpse of the horse is left where it falls for the vultures to dispose of.
Meanwhile the greatest possible gayety is taking place at the dead man’s house. His family must make any sacrifice to provide a banquet for the village. Nobody mourns. Instead, everyone drinks as much home brew as possible and eats himself sick on all the sweetmeats that have been saved up since the illness began to look fatal.
It is the one event in the social life of Khevsooria to which everybody looks forward. I asked my hosts if they had any religion . . . how much of their twelfth-century Christianity had they preserved?
Yes, they were still Christians. They even had a church. The church proved to be only a shrine in the woods, containing an altar decorated with a cross, bronze bells, and the antlers of deer - symbols both Christian and Pagan. All meaning of Christianity has long since been forgotten. Christ is only a vague name to them, nor have they any idea why they wear a cross around their necks and on their swords and shields.
But they do have a code of ethics and conduct that is as rigid as iron. One clause in this code concerning the honor of the clan - has caused more bloodshed than all their wars put together.
If for any reason a Khevsoor is killed by Khevsoor, the heirs of the dead man are honor bound to kill the killer. That the killing may have been in self defense doesn’t matter. And then when this second assassination has been accomplished, the latest victim's heirs must kill his killer. And on and on, not for generations but for centuries, these vendettas continue, spreading and spreading until families not at first remotely connected with the feud are driven into it, and the original occasion completely forgotten.
If the feud is between families of separate villages, each village spurs on its champion. The honor of the village is at stake. The appointed executioner probably has no quarrel whatsoever with the man he must kill, may scarcely even know him. That doesn’t matter. Honor must be served. If the ranking relative of the latest victim does not seek vengeance he is despised and spat upon. The men will not eat or work with him. The women will not speak to him except to jeer. His own children and family are made to suffer. The poor fellow, hating to continue the bloody and useless cycle, is driven to it by the Khevsoor code, knowing full well it means, soon or later, his own death in turn.
Over one hundred Khevsoors have been sacrificed in the last thirty years to this insane custom.
On first reaching the land of the lost Crusaders, I had hoped to find every man wearing his famous coat of mail. I didn't find a single one. Instead they all wore a homespun cross-embroidered shirt over baggy trousers. But on the wall in every house, the armor hung beside the shield and gun. The sword itself, varying from twelve to thirty inches in length, each man carries constantly. It is as much part of his dress as his sheepskin hat, or the ornamental row of cartridges across his chest.
Seeing how interested we were in the chain armor, the village elders took half a dozen suits and let me examine them and try one on. The entire outfit, including shield and sword, weighs about thirty pounds.
Each mesh coat is made of some twenty thousand tiny iron rings and goes on like a night shirt. The sleeves are short, but mesh gauntlets cover the forearms. With each suit goes a bag-like chain helmet with a hole cut out for the face. A flap folds over, so that the entire head can be protected. For the shins there are likewise mesh greaves. Consequently when completely arrayed, the only parts of the body vulnerable are the knees and thighs. The original mesh is terribly rusty, as the owners no longer understand how to preserve it. The newer coats are made from copper wire stolen from the telegraph line along the highroad. It is both cleaner and lighter than the iron but offers by no means as good protection.
The Khevsoors have not worn their coats of mail into battle since their famous march into Tiflis in 1915. The chief reason is that those who finally did join the Czar's army found that modern bullets have no respect for copper wire mesh.
But for dueling, which remains an accepted way for settling all disputes, the contestants still clothe themselves in their armor. Also they enjoy fighting for fun. Like their forefathers, the Crusader knights, they have a passion for putting on their iron shirts and going at each other with broadswords. Fighting, both in good and bad humor, in this land where books are unknown and where other forms of sport or diversion simply do not exist, is the only means they have of expressing themselves.
Sunday is reserved for getting drunk and dueling.
For our benefit two of the Khevsoor braves decided to put on a show. We all went to a little plateau outside the village where the duelists faced each other. There is no referee, as everybody has known and followed the rules for centuries. Unlike the jousting in the Middle Ages, when ladies were such important features in the tournament, the Khevsoorian duelists permit only men to watch. However, there is an age-old custom that permits a woman to stop a duel at her pleasure by appearing on the scene and tossing her handkerchief between the two combatants.
The fighters crouch with one knee bent almost to the ground. Their small round shields, embossed with a big cross, are used to parry rather than receive the blows of the opponent's sword. The duelists jump about with astonishing agility, circling and jockeying for position like fighting cocks.
Recklessly, the swords thud on leather shields, crunch on chain armor, or clash as they strike together. But unlike similar duels in German universities, wounds are rare, since the head and face, where most of the blows fall, are not exposed. There is no slit even for the eyes. The fighter must see as best as he can right through the mesh screen of the helmet flap.
The duel I witnessed was, of course, friendly. Though both fighters were well oiled on home-made barley brandy and didn't hesitate to attack with full vigor, a couple of bruises were the worst that happened.
When, however, anyone actually inflicts a wound, either in friendly or in angry battle, the victim must be compensated in cows. The village elder measures the wound in barley seed, and for every seed it will contain the guilty swordsman must pay one cow.
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