in the campaign “Demonstrative destruction of the aul of Dadi-Yurt and the construction of the Vnezapnaya fortress to force the Nokhchi off the Kumyk plain (1819)”
During the storming of a Nokhchi aul, the Russian Empire exterminated its inhabitants without distinction of sex or age. Historian D. A. Khozhayev writes that "the brutalized punitive forces spared neither women nor children," and, breaking into the houses, "slaughtered everyone without mercy"[1]. The organizer himself, general Yermolov, admits the toll in his "Notes": "all who bore arms were exterminated, and their number could not have been fewer than four hundred," while "a far greater number were slaughtered or perished in the houses from the effect of artillery and fire"[2]. Imperial historian Potto confirms that the aul was taken only when "every one of its defenders had been exterminated to a man," and those slaughtered or killed in the fire numbered twice as many as the one hundred forty who survived[3].