Destruction of the Refugee Aul of Uzeni-Yurt, Extortion of Hostages from Geldigen, and Capture of Samashki Residents at Harvest (1826-1827)

During the destruction of Uzeni-Yurt on January 10, 1827, Cossacks of the detachment of General Laptev, commander of the left flank of the Caucasian Line, took captive three women from among the fleeing inhabitants. The imperial historian Potto recorded: the Cossacks "seized... three women"^[1]. In the summer of 1827, having encircled the population of the aul of Samashki in an ambush during the harvest, the Cossacks of General Engelhardt, commander of the left flank of the Caucasian Line, took captive the families of resistance leaders: the leader Tara-Adzuev and the family of Bakar-Bulatov; Bulatov himself managed to break through the cordon. Potto wrote: "Tara-Adzuev and Bulatov's family they carried off with them"^[1].

On January 10, 1827, during the razing of the village of Uzeni-Yurt, the troops of General Laptev, commander of the left flank of the Caucasian Line, destroyed the inhabitants' livestock — the basis of a peasant household's sustenance. The imperial historian Potto recorded: the village, "with all its property and even its livestock, was destroyed to the ground"^[1]. In the summer of 1827, the Cossacks of General Engelhardt, commander of the left flank of the Caucasian Line, after seizing the population of Samashki, destroyed the standing crops of the Galgai who lived near the aul at mills and farmsteads. Potto wrote: "beforehand they ordered that they be shown the fields belonging to those Galgai who lived at the mills, and burned their grain where it stood"^[1]. The destruction of livestock in winter and of ripened grain at harvest time deprived people of sustenance for a year ahead.

On the night of January 10, 1827, General Laptev, commander of the left flank of the Caucasian Line, forced four hundred Chechens of subjugated communities to take part in a raid on the Nokhchi village of Uzeni-Yurt with a combat mission against their compatriots. The imperial historian Potto wrote: they "swam across the Argun and were to go by a roundabout road in order to cut off the inhabitants' retreat to the forest"^[1]. In the summer of 1827, General Engelhardt, commander of the left flank of the Caucasian Line, compelled to take part in the ambush on the inhabitants of Samashki, alongside a hundred Mozdok Cossacks, as Potto recorded, "as many peaceable Chechens"^[1]. The subjugation of these communities was maintained by a system of hostages, as documented by Laptev's same practice with regard to Geldigen.

In the winter of 1826–1827, General Laptev, commander of the left flank of the Caucasian Line, extorted amanats (hostages) from the village of Geldigen, using a captured young man of Geldigen as leverage. The young man agreed to a staged "captivity" in order to avert the strike being prepared against the village: the occupation left the village no other way to buy safety than by handing over hostages. The imperial historian Potto admits: Laptev, having got the man into his hands, "rejected all offers and demanded one thing only — amanats. Willy-nilly this condition had to be accepted, and the people of Geldigen, who had always stood at the head of bloody movements, left in our hands the hostages of their tranquility"^[1].

At dawn on January 10, 1827, the Cossacks of the detachment of General Laptev, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line, having burst into the village of Uzeni-Yurt, cut down unarmed inhabitants fleeing across the Argun. The imperial historian Potto recorded: the Cossacks, «having barely managed to overtake the tail of the fleeing, seized only three women and killed and wounded some fifteen people»^[1]. The killed and wounded were unarmed people overtaken in flight. Armed resistance, as the same Potto wrote, was mounted later only by those inhabitants who had managed to take refuge in the forest.

On the night of January 10, 1827, General Laptev, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line, led a detachment of 350 Line Cossacks with two horse guns and four hundred Chechens of subjugated communities compelled to take part against the village of Uzeni-Yurt - a refuge for the inhabitants of villages ravaged by troops in Yermolov's punitive campaign of 1826 - in order to destroy it as punishment for raids on the Line and in the absence of the Karabulak leader Astemir. The imperial historian Potto wrote: «Laptev decided to take advantage of that moment to strike a blow in Astemir's absence... and, quickly assembling a detachment, on the night of the tenth of January led it against Uzdeni-Yurt. By dawn the troops already stood before the aul»^[1].

On January 10, 1827, the troops of General Laptev, commander of the left flank of the Caucasus Line, razed the village of Uzeni-Yurt on the bank of the Argun, whose inhabitants had fled across the river. The imperial historian Potto acknowledges: «the village of Uzeni-Yurt, with all its property... was destroyed to its foundations»^[1]. The village had served as home to people whose former auls had been exterminated by troops in Yermolov's punitive campaign of 1826 and who had refused to resettle under the conqueror's control.