From December 18, 1830 to January 26, 1831, General Velyaminov conducted a sweeping march through lowland Chechnya as punishment of the people for supporting the resistance, systematically devastating villages from the Sunzha River to the Kachkalyk Ridge. The imperial historian Potto wrote of the method: Velyaminov "would usually mark out a point toward which he advanced unswervingly with his entire detachment, and then, upon reaching it, immediately set up camp and established a fortified wagenburg (a camp enclosed by wagons), from which the troops were dispatched in turn in small columns to exterminate the neighboring auls"[1]. Potto acknowledges the outcome of the campaign: "the whole of lowland Chechnya, traversed through and through as far as the Kochalyk Ridge, was put to fire and sword by Velyaminov"[1].