in the campaign “Night Attack on the Aul of Topli, Burning of Germenchuk, and Coercion of the Nokhchi to Fell Their Own Forests (1820)”
The Russian Empire sent troops on a punitive campaign to ravage Nokhchi villages and cut military roads through their lands. The imperial historian Potto writes that in the spring of 1820 Grekov, commander of the left flank, moved on the aul of Germenchuk "with a musket in one hand and an axe in the other," and on the night of March 6, 1820, covertly moved a detachment across the Sunzha, falling suddenly upon the aul of Topli[1]. General Yermolov himself, in an order to Grekov of March 15, 1820, sanctioned the design: "only the squeezing of the Chechens in their essential needs can make plain to them the advantage of submission, and I have long since authorized you to employ every possible means to that end"[2].