For in the meantime Russia had resumed her southward march, setting to work with the doggedness that she usually displays in the task of avenging slights and overbearing opposition.  The penury of the exchequer, the plots of the Nihilists, and the discontent of the whole people after the inglorious struggle with Turkey, would have imposed on any other Government a policy of rest and economy.  To the stiff bureaucracy of St. Petersburg these were so many motives for adopting a forward policy in Asia.  Conquests of Turkoman territory would bring wealth, at least to the bureaucrats and generals; and military triumphs might be counted on to raise the spirit of the troops, silence the talk about official peculations during the Turkish campaign, and act in the manner so sagaciously pointed out by Henry IV. to Prince Hal:—­

                          Therefore, my Harry,
     Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
     With foreign quarrels, that action, hence borne out,
     May waste the memory of the former days.

In the autumn of 1878 General Lomakin had waged an unsuccessful campaign against the Tekke Turkomans, and finally fell back with heavy losses on Krasnovodsk, his base of operations on the Caspian Sea.  In the summer of 1879 another expedition set out from that port to avenge the defeat.  Owing to the death of the chief, Lomakin again rose to the command.  His bad dispositions at the climax of the campaign led him to a more serious disaster.  On coming up to the fortress of Denghil Tepe, near the town of Geok Tepe, he led only 1400 men, or less than half of his force, to bombard and storm a stronghold held by some 15,000 Turkomans, and fortified on the plan suggested by a British officer, Lieutenant Butler[333].  Preluding his attack by a murderous cannonade, he sent round his cavalry to check the flight of the faint-hearted among the garrison; and, before his guns had fully done their work, he ordered the whole line to advance and carry the walls by storm.  At once the Turkoman fire redoubled in strength, tore away the front of every attacking party, and finally drove back the assailants everywhere with heavy loss (Sept. 9, 1879).  On the morrow the invaders fell back on the River Atrek and thence made their way back to the Caspian in sore straits[334].

[Footnote 333:  This officer wrote to the Globe on January 25, 1881, stating that he had fortified two other posts east of Denghil Tepe.  This led Skobeleff to push on to Askabad after the capture of that place; but he found no strongholds.  See Marvin’s Russian Advance towards India, p. 85.]

[Footnote 334:  Parl.  Papers, Central Asia, No. 1 (1880), pp. 167-173, 182.]