in the campaign “Bulgakov's Punitive Expedition: Devastation of Chechen Villages and Coercion into Allegiance (1807)”
The Russian Empire dispatched troops to the lands of the Nokhchi to compel submission. The plan of the commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, General Gudovich, was to strike the unprotected: to catch the inhabitants before "their livestock and families… are sheltered in the mountains," for "then… their punishment and complete success in the matter would be surer and more convenient." When the commander of the Caucasus Line, General Bulgakov, delayed by an expedition in Dagestan, gave the inhabitants time to fortify the Khankala Gorge and took it by a bloody storm, General Gudovich, in a directive of March 20, 1807, refused to take this "on his own account" and stressed that he had not sent him to wage war: "you were sent not to wage war with the Chechen peoples, but to punish them and bring them into complete submission." The commander of the Caucasus Line, General Bulgakov, considered the outcome of the campaign to be that the Chechens had by force of arms been "brought to such a state that they will long feel the blow dealt to them and, certainly, will not soon regain strength"[1].