in the campaign “Exploitation of the village of Solzha (Sunzhenskaya) as a resource base and its punitive devastation for the armed resistance of the Nokhchi (1818)”
Solzha (Sunzhenskaya) the Russian Empire took by storm and ravaged as punishment for the village’s refusal to hand over a fellow villager who had shot at a soldier who was taking his ox. Historian D. A. Khozhayev records the ravaging of Solzha (Sunzhenskaya)[1]. Imperial general Yermolov testifies in his "Notes" that a villager shot at a soldier "when they would not give him back an ox from a state wagon, which he called his own," and the attempt to seize the shooter failed — the officer whose "horse was seized by the bridle" was nearly killed, and the detachment retreated; to the demand to hand over the shooter the villagers replied "that they would not surrender the man who shot at the soldier and would defend themselves if the troops came," after which the chief of the corps staff "went himself with several companies… but was met with gunfire," while "the wives and children and the best property had already been sent away; only men remained to defend the houses"; during the storming the troops were ordered to cut off the withdrawal — "to intercept the retreat in the forest" — but the defenders had withdrawn earlier[2].