ABSTRACT
On his tour of inspection in the Caucasus, Chernyshev discovered that ‘there was no unity of command in the Caucasus and consequently no unity of action’. 1 While Grabbe obtained his independence from Golovin, Raevskii, the commander of the Black Sea Line, ‘liberated himself from direct subordination to both’, and so did many other local commanders. Accordingly,
each commander had his own policy and conducted his own war. The minister of war, Prince Chernyshev [or rather, the emperor] was, of course, sure that he was holding all the threads of Caucasian affairs in his hands and directing them towards a definite aim; but who does not know what it is like to direct military operations from a distance of 5,000 verstsl
