Short surprise strikes were the working mode of the troops in Lesser Chechnya (the lowland-piedmont western part of Chechnya) in 1847-1851. The detachment against the hamlet of naib Duba (a deputy of Imam Shamil, leader of the highlanders' resistance to the Russian conquest) set out "on 5 March, at 10 o'clock at night" and struck at dawn[1]; the raid of 17 February 1850 took "two hours' time"[2]; in June, September and November 1851 the auls were struck by the detachments of Generals Sleptsov, Baryatinsky and Kozlovsky[2][3]. The frame of the practice was given by historian N. I. Pokrovsky: "separate short strikes aimed at terrifying the Chechens"[3].