in the campaign “"Constriction of Chechnya from all sides": blockade, secret war, punitive expeditions and the Sunzha Line (1840-1846)”
Three times in 1842-1845 the empire threw large armies at Chechnya. On 30 May 1842 general Grabbe, commander of the troops of the Caucasus Line (the chain of imperial fortifications on the land of the Nokhchi), led a ten-thousand-strong detachment from the Gerzel fortress into Ichkeria (mountainous south-eastern Chechnya) - towards Dargo, the residence of Shamil (the imam, leader of the resistance of the highlanders of Dagestan and Chechnya to the Russian conquest); historian N. I. Pokrovsky: "In a six-day battle in the dense Ichkerian forests Grabbe suffered a decisive defeat"[1]; the historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov count: "The total losses in killed, wounded and missing came to 66 officers and over 1700 lower ranks"[2]. On 14 November 1843 emperor Nicholas I personally assigned new forces: "I am sending you for one year 2 divisions of 24 battalions... I give you such forces as the Caucasus has not seen even in a dream... You must penetrate into the mountains, rout Shamil wherever he stands against you, annihilate everything that resists you, but spare everything that submits without a fight" - and added, on bribery: "Scatter money, trying to attract to our side people who have influence over the tribes"[3]. In summer 1845 Vorontsov, viceroy and commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, on the direct order of Nicholas I led an army against Dargo: Pokrovsky counts the detachment at 9500 men, historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov - "an army of 21 thousand soldiers and officers with 42 artillery pieces"[1][2]. The march ended in catastrophe: "Of the 9500 men who made up Vorontsov's detachment, 3510 men were put out of action, among them 3 generals, 28 staff officers and 158 line officers"[1]. The fate of Dargo itself the sources convey differently: according to Pokrovsky, the troops found the aul "cleared and set alight by the murids themselves"[1]; by the record of Gadzhi-Ali, Shamil's companion and chronicler, the Russians "after an insignificant skirmish took possession" of Dargo, and burned about 700 of their own tents as they left[4]; historian D. A. Khozhayev writes that the village was burned by the tsarist troops themselves[5].