Nevertheless, in the face of all these arguments, and even allowing
their weight so far as not at all to deny the injustice or the impolicy
of the Imperial Ministers, it is contended by many persons who have
reviewed the affair with a command of all the documents bearing on the
case, more especially the letters or minutes of Council subsequently
discovered, in the handwriting of Zebek-Dorchi, and the important
evidence of the Russian captive Weseloff, who was carried off by the
Kalmucks in their flight, that beyond all doubt Oubacha was powerless
for any purpose of impeding, or even of delaying the revolt. He
himself, indeed, was under religious obligations of the most terrific
solemnity never to flinch from the enterprise, or even to slacken in
his zeal; for Zebek-Dorchi, distrusting the firmness of his resolution
under any unusual pressure of alarm or difficulty, had, in the very
earliest stage of the conspiracy, availed himself of the Khan's well
known superstition, to engage him, by means of previous concert with
the priests and their head the Lama, in some dark and mysterious rites
of consecration, terminating in oaths under such terrific sanctions as
no Kalmuck would have courage to violate. As far, therefore, as
regarded the personal share of the Khan in what was to come, Zebek was
entirely at his ease: he knew him to be so deeply pledged by religious
terrors to the prosecution of the conspiracy, that no honors within the
Czarina's gift could have possibly shaken his adhesion: and then, as to
threats from the same quarter, he knew him to be sealed against those
fears by others of a gloomier character, and better adapted to his
peculiar temperament.
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