For a long time our possessions in the foothills of the Caucasus did not stray far from the mouth of the Terek. Only in 1735 was Kizlyar built near the sea. But little by little, the Terek Cossacks increased with the influx of new Cossacks - settlers from the Don and Volga, as well as Ossetian mountaineers and Kabardians who entered Russian service; The Cossacks moved higher and higher along the Terek. In 1763, the Mozdok fortress was already built, and Cossack towns and villages almost completely bordered the course of the Terek.

The victorious Turkish wars of Catherine the Great moved the Russian border close to the Caucasus Mountains. The Kuban steppes, where the Tatar hordes roamed, came under Russian rule.

The famous Suvorov was sent to organize the newly conquered region. The Kuban Tatars stubbornly refused to recognize the Russian authorities and were exterminated almost entirely in a bloody struggle. The remnants of the once formidable horde fled to Turkey or were resettled in Crimea. But with the extermination of this predatory people, rapid raids of warlike and wild tribes - Circassians, Kabardians and others - began from the Caucasus Mountains on the deserted steppe. These raids reached not only the land of the Don Cossacks, but even the Voronezh province. It was necessary to immediately take decisive measures to protect the new border.

With the conquest of the Kuban steppes, the Kuban and Terek became the natural border of Russia. Terek was already securely fortified. Now, along the banks of the Kuban and further into the steppe, fortified cities began to grow (Ekaterinodar, Stavropol, etc.). Soon the Kuban fortifications met the Terek fortifications. Thus a continuous line of fortifications closed, fencing our southern border from the predatory raids of the mountaineers. This feature was known for a long time under the name of the Caucasian line. The Caucasian fortresses were small and unpretentious: a small village surrounded by a moat, a high earthen rampart, on it - a strong fence made of thick brushwood, a watchtower; five or six cannons, some company of soldiers - that’s the whole fortress. But the line was not protected by such fortresses alone. When it was established, several thousand Zaporozhye Cossacks were hastily resettled in the Kuban steppes, whose service on the Dnieper was no longer needed. At first they wanted to form them into simply mounted soldier regiments, but the Cossacks, loving their Cossack life, asked to leave them as Cossacks and give them new lands to settle in, where their service would be useful. Empress Catherine showed them the free Kuban steppes for settlement and even sent them for a housewarming, according to Russian custom, bread and salt with a dish and a salt shaker made of pure gold. In 1792, the new settlers received from the Empress a “Grant” for ownership of the Kuban lands. A new Kuban Cossack army was formed (the Little Russian dialect of the Kuban people still distinguishes them from the Great Russian Tertsy). The Kuban army, together with the Terek Cossacks, waged a difficult heroic struggle for half a century, defending the Russian border from Asian robbers.

Behind them, the fertile Stavropol steppes were quickly populated by peaceful agricultural people, and cities grew. Meanwhile, on the line, a cruel and bloody struggle was going on, not stopping for a day.

The formidable Caucasus Mountains come close to the southern banks of the Terek and Kuban. From time immemorial, these mountains were inhabited by wild warlike tribes of Chechens, Circassians, Kabardians, Lezgins, Ossetians, Ingush, and Kumyks. The majority of the Caucasian highlanders were very poor: even their princes often did not have clothes more elegant than a sheepskin sheepskin coat. But all these tribes were distinguished by their courage, and in battle, according to the Russians, a hundred Circassians were worth a thousand Tatars. Greedy for blood and robbery, the highlanders loved war more than anything else. The Asian cruelty of these thugs knew no bounds. Having captured a Russian Cossack or soldier, they cut his veins so that he could not move his arm or leg, and, stripping him naked, they threw him in the reeds to be devoured by the mosquitoes that hung in clouds over the water. They did not conclude or recognize any agreements, and their neighborhood threatened every hour with a sudden raid. Day and night, along the entire Caucasian line, stretching 700 versts from the mouth of the Terek to the mouth of the Kuban, there was a vigilant Cossack guard. From fortification to fortification, a chain of “cordons” was set up - 50-60 people, and sometimes 200 each. Between the “cordons” there were small guard detachments, “pickets”, 10 people each, and “pledges”, or “secrets”, 2 each. -3 persons. At each guard post special “figures” or “beacons” were displayed - straw effigies on a high pole. A lit “beacon” announced an alarm along the entire line, indicating the appearance of enemies. The forests that then covered the banks of the Terek still made it easier for the mountaineers to make unexpected attacks, and required special vigilance from the Cossacks. Of course, the Cossack daredevils did not miss the opportunity to sneak onto the hostile shore, waylay and shoot a Chechen or Kabardian wandering near the Russian border.

In this alarming military situation, the Cossacks grew up to be born warriors, in no way inferior to their eternal enemies - the mountaineers. The Cossacks adopted their vigilance and dexterity, their familiarity with mountain nature, their military techniques, the ability to wield weapons, and even adopted their attire from their enemies - the Circassian coat. For guard duty and minor border warfare, the Cossacks were invaluable. No regular army could replace them. The mountaineers themselves considered the Cossack villages more dangerous for themselves than real fortresses. “A fortress is a stone thrown into a field,” they said, “rains and winds will demolish it later or sooner; and the village, like a plant, will dig its roots into the ground - and nothing can tear it out.”

Indeed, the Cossack villages were the most reliable stronghold of the Caucasian line.

In 1774, when the Cossacks went on a campaign against the Turks, a whole crowd of highlanders descended on the Naurskaya village (Terek army), thinking of plundering it without a fight. Then the old men, already out of ranks, boys who were not old enough to be taken on a campaign, even Cossack women, took up arms: they poured out onto the rampart in their red sundresses, beat the mountaineers with scythes, sickles, poured boiling water and hot cabbage soup on them, cooked for dinner. After a whole day of persistent attack, the mountaineers fled in shame. Naur Cossack women received military insignia for this deed, and for a long time in the mountains one could still see “horsemen” (warriors) with burnt faces. The Cossacks teased them: “What, buddy, weren’t you slurping cabbage soup in Naur?”

With the final construction of the line, Russia has already established a firm foot in the northern foothills of the Caucasus. In the last years of the reign of Catherine the Great, the governor of the Ciscaucasian possessions of Russia was Prince Potemkin, a relative of the famous governor of New Russia and Crimea. Under his careful management, the region quickly achieved noticeable development. Kizlyar, Mozdok, Stavropol, which until then were only fortresses, have already turned into real cities, filled with industrial and commercial populations. Traders and entrepreneurs from Germans and Armenians came here, and sericulture and winemaking began to develop quickly. The newly built and rapidly growing Yekaterinograd (now a village in the Terek region) was decorated with a magnificent palace worthy of the viceroy of the Great Russian Empress. The semi-wild mountaineers looked at the growing power of Russia with involuntary respect and fear. The princes of some mountain tribes, not embarrassed by the difference in faith, themselves hastened to ask for citizenship of the Russian state. They were sworn in in the Yekaterinograd Palace in the presence of the governor and his brilliant court, with the thunder of cannon fire, and the new Russian subjects left for their mountains, even more blinded by the splendor of the luxury and power of Russia.

The Nizhny Novgorod Dragoon Regiment, now “the pride and joy of our cavalry,” as Popka rightly puts it, was abolished in 1800. His squadrons, merging with the squadrons of the Narva regiment, formed one common Pushkin (Narva) dragoon regiment, and the glorious name of the Nizhny Novgorod people disappeared from the ranks of the Russian army for almost a whole year. Emperor Alexander, upon his accession to the throne, ordered the regiment to be returned to its original existence, and now the Nizhny Novgorod squadrons again separated from the Narva regiment and formed a regiment so memorable to the highlanders since the times of Tekelli, Bibikov, Gudovich and especially after their brilliant participation in the storming of Anapa. The successive spirit of the old dragoons, which formed the basis of the future loud military glory of the Nizhny Novgorod residents, was not lost, of course, in the short-term abolition of the regiment, but nevertheless Glazenap should be credited with the merit that he was able to support in the regiment that combat direction, which since then has never been no longer left.

Having moved, after being appointed head of the Caucasian Line, from Yekaterinograd to Georgievsk, which served as the seat of the then authorities, Glazenap devoted himself entirely to the organization of the region entrusted to him. His lifestyle at that time can serve as an example of tireless activity. His two adjutants, who concentrated the entire current huge headquarters department, had so much work to do that they spent the whole day at their desks, and in the evening Glazenap received reports from them and gave orders. The old general usually lay at this time in Voltaire's chair, and the adjutants, every day and carefully for several years, standing, listened, along with orders, to the story of Count Pyotr Aleksandrovich Rumyantsev, the Battle of Cahul and the Turkish campaigns. Only after ten o'clock the adjutants were released from classes and hurried to see their friends, with whom, according to the custom that existed at that time in Georgievsk, they spent the evenings in various games and dances. Glazenap himself rarely took part in these entertainments. Cares and labors often took away even part of his night. To be fair, he knew how to keep a vast and troubled region in order, despite the fact that, after the separation of most of the troops to Georgia, only a few regiments remained at his disposal, scattered, moreover, along the entire enormous extent of the Line. A particular shortage was felt in cavalry capable of performing cordon service, and yet the Caucasian war required precisely the individual development of people, their vigilance, vigilance, or, as Glazenap himself used to say, “wakefulness.” The closest neighbors of the Russians: Chechens, Kabardians and Trans-Kubans - never missed an opportunity to watch for a soldier and take him prisoner or kill him in an ambush.

“And it was not any offensive actions on our part,” Glazenap says in one of his letters, “that called the mountaineers to these robberies. They were most often driven by natural daring, contempt for danger, and most importantly, an insatiable greed for gold, which they, due to the nature of their lives, they did not know how to use it. True, they purchased expensive weapons from Baghdad and Damascus for them, but they usually went to the line Cossacks, who almost all had their swords, daggers, pistols, even saddles and cloaks, taken from the battle. .

It must be said that the linear Cossacks in general were a particular weakness of Glazenap, who extremely valued these unique, daring riders. At his request, four villages were re-established in the Kuban: Temishbeevskaya, Kazanskaya, Ladonskaya and Tiflisskaya, populated in 1803 by the remnants of the Ekaterinoslav Cossack search. This army, once formed by Catherine exclusively from single-lords of the suburban Ukrainian provinces, was destroyed by Emperor Paul, but many of the Ukrainians did not want, however, to part with their usual Cossack service and voluntarily, at the first call, went to Kuban, where Glazenap formed a new one from them , the fifth in a row, the Caucasian linear Cossack regiment, which occupied the places named by the villages, to the right of the Kuban regiment, between the Grigoronolissky redoubt and the Ust-Labinsk fortress.

Glazenap's three-year management of the Line was rich in alarming events; but, fortunately, he had at his disposal excellent assistants in the regiment commanders, of whom the most famous were Generals Meyer and Likhachev and Colonel Stahl, who were then in charge of the cordon areas, and Colonel Stahl, who had at their disposal the Kazan men, the rangers of the sixteenth regiment and the Nizhny Novgorod dragoons. The more vehemently the mountaineers attacked precisely these areas and, it happened, caused the greatest devastation here. Such, for example, is the unfortunate incident at the Essentuki post, where Kabardians cut out a Cossack post in the Likhachev cordon and removed several pickets.

A series of such attacks and unsuccessful negotiations with the Kabardians regarding the introduction of tribal courts among them prompted Glazenap to energetically take up arms. A strong detachment, composed of eight infantry battalions, four dragoon regiments and twenty-four guns, gathered in the village of Prokhladnaya and, on May 3, 1804, entered the Kabardian lands. The enemy was nowhere to be seen, and the troops calmly reached the Baksan River. From here Glazenap sent a proclamation, inviting the Kabardian people to voluntarily submit, and while waiting for an answer, the detachment bivouaced in a mountain valley, on the banks of a river, which with a furious roar burst out of a narrow and rocky gorge. On May 9, Nikolin’s day, after mass, Glazenap and all the officers had breakfast with the military foreman of the Mozdok regiment, Zolotarev. He was a venerable old man, with a long and white beard, like a Burungun swan, known for his desperate courage. He took pleasure in showing the guests the weapons he had acquired in various battles and which were the subject of his just pride. The soldiers, free from duty, were having lunch, the horses were grazing on the beautiful grass, when suddenly a shot rang out from the Cossack pickets, and a cloud of dust appeared from the mountains, rushing straight towards the camp. The alarm sounded. While the infantry was taking up arms, the Cossacks were already on horseback and in the field. The brave Cossack major Luchkin with his Yekaterinograd hundred was the first to start a firefight. Kabardian riders rode against him, dressed in their famous light, strong, impenetrable chain mail.

These chain mails are now an archaeological rarity, they can only be seen in museums, and it seems that the very secret of their incomparable workmanship has been lost forever. A similar three-chain armor, which is a fine mesh, easily fits all in the palm of your hand and weighs no more than five or six pounds, but, put on the head and shoulders, it forms a kind of cast mass, which could only be pierced with a bayonet or pike, but not the round bullet then used. In the Caucasus, however, there was a special type of checkers called gourda, the hardening of which was adapted specifically for cutting these famous shells, but real gourda - and there were many counterfeit ones - were worth their weight in pure gold.

“The battlefield,” says an eyewitness, “turned into a wide arena in which the best riders in the world now competed. The number of killed and wounded on both sides grew rapidly. Soon they brought military sergeant Zolotarev from the battlefield, who an hour before had so cordially treated the officers in his tent. He advanced slowly on a white horse, covered with deathly pallor and supported by two Cossacks. He was shot right through the chest and died barely reaching the camp.”

Glazenap sent the rest of the troops to help the Cossacks. The dragoon column of sixteen squadrons set off at a trot and, soon outpacing the infantry, disappeared into the thick clouds of dust it raised. The Russian cavalry had all the advantages: slender squadrons on fresh and good horses were eager to charge into the enemy, and the very terrain, flat and smooth, like a tablecloth, was tempting for a furious gallop. The officers of the Nizhny Novgorod regiment, being in front, shouted: “Attack! Attack!" But the chief of the cavalry, Major General Lezino, who had been on fire for the first time in his life, was so confused that, to everyone’s amazement, he stopped the dragoons and, dismounting, began to build a square. Fortunately, the infantry arrived in time. General Likhachev and his rangers went behind the enemy's rear, and the Kabardians were completely defeated.

After spending the night on the battlefield, Glazenap moved to the mountains the next day. The Kabardians did not show up anywhere, but their burning villages indicated their intention to defend themselves. The Nizhny Novgorod Dragoon Regiment was in the vanguard, and, despite the proximity of the enemy, the dashing singers of Major Surzhikov's squadron were called forward, and a ringing Russian song, perhaps for the first time, was heard in the Kabardian mountains. So they reached the Chegem River, and there they stood for three days on the occasion of negotiations begun by the Kabardians. But since it turned out that these negotiations were conducted only with the sole purpose of gaining time, Glazenap on the fourteenth of May crossed the fast Chegem and attacked the enemy. The Kabardian position, located along the ridge of a steep and wooded mountain, was taken by storm. In vain the enemy, having broken up into groups, tried to defend themselves in fortified villages and towers - the Cossacks, dragoons and Likhachev's rangers overtook and exterminated the enemies everywhere.

In one of these battles of the Nizhny Novgorod regiment, the dragoons Krivosheya in single combat chopped up a Kabardian clad in armor and took possession of his weapon. But the bridle horse somehow fell into the hands of the Taganrog dragoons, from whom Krivosheya demanded it by right of the winner. The matter came to Glazenap and, in order not to start a story with another regiment, he gave Krivoshey fifteen ducats and promoted him to non-commissioned officer.

Only night stopped the pursuit. And the next day, when the battle was ready to resume, the Kabardians sent a letter, asking for mercy and entrusting their fate to the generosity of the Russian sovereign.

But while calm was thus established in Kabarda, one of the Kabardian princes, Roslambek Misostov, fled beyond the Kuban and raised up the local tribes. The revolt swept the entire Trans-Kuban region. In vain did the Nogai bailiff, Major General Sultan Mengli Giray, try to stop the movement. Abandoned by the people, he himself barely escaped the Trans-Kubans, who were chasing him and killed twenty-eight people from among his retinue. In Abadz, fugitive Kabardians massacred the Cossack team; The Kuma redoubt was attacked twice, and all posts, from the strong Okop to Konstantinogorsk, were besieged by the Trans-Kubans. The brilliant deed of Colonel Davydov, who with one squadron of Borisoglebsk dragoons defeated a strong party of Trans-Kubans and captured Mengli-Girey’s brother, also could not improve the circumstances; The defeat of the highlanders on October 7 by the Don hundred of the bravest captain Lyapin, who, unfortunately, was wounded and died at the battle site, also remained in vain.

Glazenap sent Major General Likhachev with his rangers there.

Likhachev met Roslambek in the Kuban at the Kamenny Bridge, but after a three-day battle he was forced to retreat with the loss of one gun. Then Glazenap himself went beyond the Kuban. Meanwhile, in his absence, a new riot broke out in Kabarda. And the circumstances were all the more difficult because at the same time it was necessary to pacify the Ossetians on communications with Georgia and keep the Chechens beyond Sunzha in obedience. Fortunately, Nesvetaev’s victories in the mountains and a very successful search by the Line of Lieutenant Colonel of the Kazan Regiment Maksimovich to the Chechens soon restored calm in the vicinity of Vladikavkaz. But things with the Kabardians were not as successful.

The detachment of Major General Dekhtyarev, sent to Urukht, where, according to rumors, the Kabardians were gathering, was met by the enemy near Tatartub and forced to retreat until the crossing of Malka. The success greatly encouraged the Kabardians.

On the twenty-ninth of July, at dawn, about three hundred armored soldiers, having crossed Malka, suddenly rushed to the Soldatskaya settlement, which was located within the cordon distance of General Meyer. The Cossack picket, taken by surprise, was cut down; several inhabitants who were in the field were taken prisoner; the herds are driven away; and the Kabardians, with easily acquired booty, returned back before the signal beacons sounded alarm along the Line. At every opportunity, both from nearby and distant posts, however, Cossack reserves galloped to the scene of the incident, but it was no longer possible to chase the enemy: on the other side of Malka, opposite the village, there was a huge cavalry party.

The presence of the enemy at such a close distance from the borders and the impossibility of maintaining the entire length of the Line forced General Meyer to concentrate troops in a central position, between Soleno-Brodsky post and Belomechetka. But since most of the Kazan regiment, located at this distance, was then in Ossetia, the entire detachment of General Meyer consisted of only one incomplete infantry battalion and several hundred Don and line Cossacks.

For two whole weeks, spies, who kept coming to Meyer, brought alarming news about the gathering of significant Kabardian parties. It was necessary to expect a thunderstorm, and it finally broke out.

On the evening of August 18, the Patrikeevsky post made it known that the Kabardians were coming. Meyer moved part of his Cossacks there at night, and after them he sent a company of the Kazan regiment, with one gun. But this last help turned out to be unnecessary. Experienced and not inferior to their opponents in the methods of predatory warfare practiced in the Caucasus in general, the Linemen perfectly studied all the small skills of sudden night attacks and, guided by their own considerations, did not go to the post where the mountaineers could notice them, but, approaching it, still in the distance, like wolves, they dispersed in different directions, sat down along deep ravines and began to wait for the enemy.

It was two o'clock in the morning. The Cossack's sensitive ears heard dull splashes of waves - a sign that the Kabardians were crossing. The nearest ambush, where the centurion Sofiev was sitting with the Volga hundred, prepared for the meeting. And as soon as the whole crowd of Kabardians climbed to the high bank, a hundred rushed out of the gully and silently, without a shot, rushed at them, who did not expect to see the enemy in front of them at that very moment. The crowd wavered and wavered. It was in vain that the bravest of them rushed forward - they were cut down in the blink of an eye, and meanwhile hundreds of Venerovsky and Guselshchikov were already rushing here from other sides, and panic reigned among the Kabardians. At once repulsed from the fords and pressed to the shore, they turned back and rushed into Malka from a steep cliff. Many riders and horses died in this desperate somersault, and while below, under the steep slope, there was a terrible commotion, while the living were getting out from under the dead and the dead, blocking the road to the river, were scattered to the sides, the Cossacks dismounted and stretched the chain along the outskirts of the shore and with well-aimed fire they hit both those who were still crowded under the steep slope and those who were already sailing along the Malka...

The enterprising Meyer knew that it was necessary to immediately expect new invasions of the Kabardians, who would try with all their might to avenge the defeat, and in order to make them care more about protecting their homes than about invading Russian borders, he decided to make a raid himself in the Saban-Kosh gorge, to the villages of Prince Roslambek Misostov.

At the very dawn of the twenty-fourth of August, the troops crossed Malka. The linemen, with Major Luchkin and Captain Venerovsky, went forward. The Saban-Kosh gorge was already in sight, when suddenly a two-thousand-strong cavalry party of Kabardians appeared from it, heading towards the Line. There was no time to think - and the linemen hit the checkers. The Kabardians boldly rushed forward, and both sides clashed in hand-to-hand combat. The strongest Kabardians crushed the Cossacks. And so the Linemen rush back, the Kabardians behind them. Noticing a hollow ahead, the experienced linemen began to hold back their horses and suddenly turned to the side, and the Kabardians, rushing past them, ran head-on into the infantry hidden in an ambush. The smoke of the fired volley enveloped the entire Kabardian party; Meanwhile, the linemen turned back and crashed into the ranks of the enemy, cruelly paying for their first failure; The Kabardians, famous from time immemorial for their horsemanship, did not yield, and both attack and defense proceeded with equal ferocity. Glazenap describes in his report how a whole crowd of armored men attacked the Cossack centurion Sofiev and how this hero alone fought off everyone, chopped up three, clad in armor from head to toe, and forced the rest to flee.

But while hot cavalry action was going on on the plain, and Kabardian messengers were galloping everywhere, raising the people's alarm, Meyer with two companies of Kazanians quickly penetrated deep into the Saban-Kosh gorge, occupied villages and destroyed the richest Kabardian apiaries. Screams of alarm still rang across the mountains, and Meyer then pulled the cavalry towards him and quickly retreated back behind Malka.

This expedition, memorable for its stubborn cavalry battle, which the old Cossacks still talk about to this day, is no less remarkable for the speed of the march of the Caucasian infantry.

“I set out from the camp,” Meyer says in his report, “at four o’clock in the morning, and at three o’clock in the afternoon I had already returned, having covered fifty-six miles both ways, withstood the battle and destroyed the Kabardian bee colonies.”

But while Meyer went to Saban-Kosh, a gang of desperate abreks, under the command of the young Atazhukin, moved to the Russian side and with their appearance brought panic to the entire neighborhood. Georgievsk itself, defended by only one hundred and eighty dragoons of the Taganrog regiment, was in a defensive position for three days. The dragoons bivouacked in the square, the guns stood on the rampart with lit wicks, and when the evening dawn broke, the guns were taken to the bridge to the city gates. It was necessary at all costs to clear the region of the bandit gang, and Meyer, having sent convoys to Maryevka, set out lightly to the peaks of Malka on the twenty-seventh of August. The detachment had not yet gone a few miles when one of the defectors let it be known that for three days the abreks had been hiding on Zolka in the sheepfolds of the Armenian Panaev. The line hundreds of Major Luchkin and the esauls Venerovsky and Starozhilov turned there, but the party of Kabardians turned out to be so significant that the linemen, dismounted, sent to ask for reinforcements. Meyer led the Kazan companies towards them with a forced march. Up to one and a half hundred abreks, seeing the approaching infantry, rushed to attack it with such swiftness that they almost burst into the square in the footsteps of their leader, who fired a gun almost point-blank at General Meyer: fortunately, the gun stopped short. The small square, however, held out, and its volley was one of the first to kill the brave leader in his place. His body was quickly picked up by nukers, but the gun from which he shot Meyer was captured by the soldiers. At that moment the Cossacks, jumping on their horses, struck their checkers - and the abreks fled. The infantry pursued them behind Zolka. The Cossacks cut down the fleeing people. Among those killed were two bridles Adel-Girey and two Anzorov brothers, famous for their equestrianism.

“For me,” Meyer wrote about this matter, “there is nothing more flattering than commanding, albeit a small, but exactly the kind of detachment that was entrusted to me... The officers deserve the highest praise than what I can attribute to them.”

September came, but Kabarda did not subside. At Chegem there was a national meeting of Kabardians, at which, after noisy debates, it was decided to split into two parts: one to attack Meyer’s detachment, the other to attack the Soldatskaya settlement. And so, when on the seventeenth of September Meyer, leaving his camp under the cover of one hundred and thirty-five Don Cossacks, with Yesaul Denisyev, moved with the entire detachment twenty-six miles to the Soleno-Brodsky post, where there were good fords, to the same Soleno-Brodsky post, on the other side of the Malka, a strong Kabardian party was approaching, led by Shamakha Navruzov, who also intended to cross the river here. The roar of a cannon shot that rolled far across the mountains and three signal flares that soared over the Russian camp let Navruzov know about Meyer’s arrival. Then, having canceled the crossing, Navruzov rushed downstream, crossed the river near the Krymovsky post and suddenly attacked the Wagenburg. The Don Hundred retreated after a short battle, and Navruzov set fire to the abandoned Russian camp. At the first news of this, Meyer quickly moved back, but found only sad traces of destruction at the site of his camp. Navruzov, however, did not go inside the Line and retreated behind Malka.

Then, having sent all his burdens to Belomechetka, Meyer nevertheless decided to stay closer to Soldatskaya and on September 19 set out for Zolka, having with him an incomplete battalion of the Kazan regiment of three hundred and sixty bayonets and four hundred Don and line Cossacks. This was all that could be collected on the Line at that time.

The detachment had barely moved ten or twelve miles from the camp when the forward patrols made it known that the enemy was crossing Malka in huge forces. At this time it was already beginning to get dark. “On my watch,” says Meyer, “it was twenty minutes past five.” Curled up in a square and with the Volga and Mozdok Cossacks on the flanks, the detachment continued to move, sending forward the Don Cossack Regiment, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Kryukov. Kryukov ordered the Don men to lower their darts and began to make his way through the thick weeds in order to quietly approach the enemy and better look out for his forces.

The Kabardians poured in in thick crowds, unaware of the proximity of the Russian detachment, hidden from them by weeds and undulating terrain. Their famous princes rode ahead of everyone: Dzhembulat Misostov, Aslan-Girey, Kasai, the Navruzov brothers and, finally, Adel-Girey Atazhukin - the same one who was deported to Russia under Gudovich, fled from there and has since lived beyond the Kuban.

It is difficult to say whether the Don people stumbled upon the enemy completely unexpectedly for themselves, or, on the contrary, they wanted to take advantage of the mistake of the mountaineers, but only the Cossacks suddenly moved out from behind the weeds and rushed to the attack. This attack was brilliant in the full sense of the word. One hundred Donets rushed against five or six thousand of the best Circassian cavalry. From the raid the Donets crashed into the very center of the enemy, where five hundred selected armored men stood; but the Kabardians, who wavered at first, soon recovered, and, surrounded on all sides, the Don people were crushed and overturned in brutal hand-to-hand combat... Sotnik Shurupov with six Cossacks, carried far into the depths of the enemy masses, disappeared there without a trace; eight Cossack bodies remained in the hands of the enemy. The regimental commander himself, Lieutenant Colonel Kryukov, wounded in the leg by an arrow, was surrounded by Kabardians. His permanent orderly and bodyguard, Cossack Uparnikov, who did not lag a step behind his commander, shielded him with himself and was cut into pieces. Kryukov, despite his wound, defended himself desperately, but, of course, would have been killed if Adjutant Later and two constables, Petrukhin and Bannikov, had not noticed the absence of their commander and had not rushed to his aid. With rare self-sacrifice, they made their way through the dense crowd and snatched Kryukov from the hands of the enemy.

Meanwhile, the Mozdok people were already rushing to the rescue of the Donets; they were met, however, by new crowds of Kabardians, hurrying here from behind Malka, and the armored soldiers flew at the battalion with such speed that the skirmishers barely had time to jump into the square before these squares were already surrounded on all sides. The Kabardians were so densely populated with infantry that “I,” says Meyer in his report, “one might say, with my two two-company kareis, swam in their crowds.” The infantry had to fight back with bayonets, and in hand-to-hand combat, sergeant major Sumtsov especially distinguished himself, who in a one-on-one battle put a bayonet in the place of the famous Circassian hero Ashib-ogly.

And on the flanks at the same time there was a hot cavalry battle - the Mozdok people did not allow the enemy to overtake the infantry from the rear; A horse was killed under Yesaul Venerovsky, and he fought back on foot ahead of his Cossacks. Meanwhile, the Donets managed to recover. Persiyanov's regiment moved forward in a closed front and, with its commander in front on a dashing horse, with a drawn saber, rushed into the attack. Crushed by this new slender force, the Kabardians gave up the rear. The linemen settled on the flanks.

It was already dark night when the defeated ones galloped to Malka. But then they saw with horror that the crossing was occupied by the Mozdok Cossacks, who had managed to arrive here earlier, taking the shortest route. The battle for life and death began again. The Kabardians tried to take possession of the crossing, but the Linemen did not let them in. Soon the Donets and infantry arrived here.

“The officers,” Meyer writes, “were fighting just like the soldiers, but nothing could break the Kabardians.”

Then, to settle the matter, Meyer moved the infantry back and, placing it in small ambushes in different places, shouted to the Cossacks: “Back!” His calculation was completely successful. As soon as the Cossacks showed their rear, the Kabardians, heated by the battle, rushed after them, were ambushed, and the infantry enveloped them from all sides, “like a net.” Then, completely defeated, the Kabardians rushed into Malka from a steep cliff, and for a long time rifle and cannon shots thundered behind them from the shore... It was ten o’clock in the evening when the battle completely died down; the entire Russian detachment spent the night right there on the battlefield, and only the next day returned to camp.

Meyer does not determine the total loss of the enemy, but among those killed were two sovereign princes, many bridles, and judging by the six killed game-colored horses ridden by clergy, it can be assumed that the same number of mullahs were killed. “The entire battlefield,” reported Meyer, “on which one hundred and thirteen Kabardian bodies lay, was strewn with shreds of meat and ribs.” In the Russian detachment, two officers and seventy-five lower ranks were out of action. From the few prisoners captured in this case, they learned that the party had from six to seven thousand horsemen, that it intended to rest in the ravine above Zolka, and at night attack Georgievsk and then, through the Aleksandrovskoye village, rush to the Kuban in the rear of General Likhachev .

All this complicating matters on the Line finally forced Glazenap to entrust military operations in the Kuban to Likhachev alone, and to return to Georgievsk himself. The winter, however, passed quite calmly, but in the spring, already at the beginning of March 1805, when the Kabardian herds and herds had not yet found food in the mountains covered with snow, and grazed on the open plains adjacent to Malka, Glazenap concentrated a detachment in the village of Prokhladnaya ; Having spread the rumor that he was going to Chechnya, and thereby diverting the attention of the Kabardians, on the night of March 9, he suddenly made a huge sixty-mile journey and unexpectedly found himself on a plain in the midst of numerous Kabardian herds and herds. All the herds and herds were captured at once, and at ten o'clock in the evening the detachment stopped to spend the night on the Baksan River in the Kis-Burun Gorge. The huge trek through the slush and the fuss with the herds tired the people to the extreme, and yet at night they had to wait for an attack. On the right side of the bivouac in the gorge there was a huge sheer cliff that completely blocked access to the detachment, but serious attention should have been paid to the left side, where Baksan roared, and behind him the low and rather gentle mountains began. It was dangerous to throw pickets across Baksan so as to place them on a hill, and therefore we had to limit ourselves to one camp chain stretched on this side of the river. The night was unusually dark. But since the attack was expected only in the morning, a certain carelessness reigned in the camp. Meanwhile, as soon as the detachment began to eat dinner, gunfire suddenly thundered, a piercing Tatar boom was heard, and drums sounded the alarm throughout the bivouac. The fact was that the mountaineers, having descended from the mountains, opened strong fire across the river at the camp. All this happened so suddenly, and the disorder in the detachment was so great that many already thought that the mountaineers had broken into the camp. The artillery opened grapeshot fire at random. Fortunately, the combers and rangers occupying the camp chain soon drove away the Kabardians. Nevertheless, the alarms were renewed several times during the night, and the detachment remained under arms until the morning. In the morning everything calmed down, and reconnaissance carried out from the camp showed that only about eight versts from Baksan, in a large village, a strong crowd of mountaineers was concentrated.

The next day, most of the detachment went to the Line, transporting there a huge amount of captured cattle, while the other, smaller part remained on Baksan to observe the mountaineers. The camp was moved away from the river closer to the rocks, but bullets often reached there, so there were wounded in the detachment. “There was no night,” says one of the participants in this expedition, “that there was no alarm. The secrets lay there with their hammers cocked, and as soon as a flash appeared on the other side, indicating a shot, ours thundered in volleys from all sides. In the impenetrable darkness of the Caucasian nights, such a shootout presented a wonderful effect, and it was impossible to get enough of it.”

One day something more serious happened. The mountaineers attacked the foragers in broad daylight; having set up an ambush and let the vanguard pass by, they rushed at the packs and carts, putting the column in such a position that Glazenap had to bring almost his entire detachment into battle. But those were already the last outbreaks of the uprising. The enormous losses suffered in the battles, and most importantly the seizure of livestock and herds, forced the Kabardians to come to terms. Their main leaders, the sovereign princes, left for the Kuban; the rest begged for mercy.

Glazenap led them to the oath of citizenship of Russia, took the amanates, introduced clan courts and limited himself to punishing only the main instigators of the rebellion.

A two-time campaign in Kabarda and the pacification of the Trans-Kuban highlanders brought Glazenap the Order of St. Anna of the 1st degree, decorated with diamonds, and after that the Order of St. Vladimir 2nd degree.

The monument to these campaigns in Kabarda were the simple soldiers' songs with which the old Caucasians loved to consolidate their military exploits. Here is one of them.

Kabardians, don’t be arrogant,
Your shells are dust to us;
It's better to stay in the mountains,
Why bother you with bayonets?
On their spirited horses
You flew like a black corvid,
But they stumbled on the Cossacks
Darts, shouting: “Yaman!”
Busurmans, don't be proud
You are a damask steel and a horse,
Give up gold and silver
And, bowing his forehead to the ground,
Alexandra, beg
About the mercy of your days
And bend your knees
Before the greatest of kings.
He will give you a blessing
Peace, sparing its people,
softened by your meekness,
Will not deprive you of clear days.
You're bringing us as a gift
Fat oxen and sheep,
We like them
And drunkenness from Taurus.
We are here for your health
Sprinkle the porridge with butter;
Cow meat on coals
We'll toast and drink.
Go whenever you want
Kabardians, come here to us,
But bring your gifts,
Otherwise you will be in trouble!
We will not accept you without gifts,
We don't need an adversary;
Bring it and we’ll hug you,
Let's say: “Sit down, dear matchmaker!”

The soldiers composed another song when returning from a campaign.

Having defeated the Kabardians,
We are on our way back;
Their blood spilled in streams,
Sweetly we await the reward,
That our king is blessed
He will turn his gaze on us,
For wreaths, woven from laurels,
Gifts of rewards will flow to us.
Triumph, our Orthodox,
Dear King of Heaven!
We accomplished a glorious feat.
Glory, glory, sir!
Let the enemy now tremble,
Honors you and your law,
Looks up in surprise,
Why has he been trampled upon by you!
And he will always be trampled upon,
Since you own us,
will not forget your glory
And leaves all dreams
To fight the Russians
Whenever he could.
Grace is with you,
And God is our helper!

Returning to Georgievsk, Glazenap was greeted with stunning news about the appearance of plague there, brought by the Astrakhan mail. While he was sorting out the packages, the assistant postmaster suddenly felt an attack of a terrible illness, and along with him, all those who helped him fell ill and died. The mortus appeared and used hooks to drag bodies, suitcases, papers, etc. into a heap. But the precaution did not help, and the disease spread throughout the city with extraordinary speed. Every morning, several houses were added, whose boarded doors and windows served as silent but loud witnesses to the merciless guest. Every evening in special booths the property left behind by the dead was burned, and from this hellish illumination everyone learned about the number of victims. The life squadron of the Nizhny Novgorod regiment, the subject of Glazenap’s special care, was also infected. In desperation, Glazepan, wanting to save the squadron, ordered it to be taken to the camp that same day and there completely stop all communications between people, setting up a separate hut for each. The dragoons spent two weeks in this quarantine confinement, and the disease stopped, but in the Kazan regiment it raged with terrifying force.

Panic reigned in the city. Nobody knew what to do or what precautions to take. Doctors were afraid to approach the sick, and they often died helplessly on the streets. It took Glazenap a lot of effort to introduce order, establish hospitals and open quarantines. Fortunately, he found excellent assistants in the person of two doctors, Ginafeld and Geer, who spent the whole day driving around the city, visiting quarantines, entering plague-ridden houses and helping the sick on the streets. And fate, fortunately, protected these friends of humanity from death, who deserved universal gratitude and surprise.

Meanwhile, the plague spread throughout Greater Kabarda, along the Line, through peasant villages, and Glazenap himself traveled around the region to monitor strict compliance with quarantine rules everywhere.

And on the border line even now, especially in Colonel Stahl’s cordon area, between Mozdok and Yekaterinograd, small but alarming actions continued as usual. The Chechens, in small and sometimes larger parties, broke into Russian borders, keeping the cordon line in constant tension. Here are some of the most outstanding cases characterizing this predatory war.

One day, on a dark May night, three Chechens crept up to the post that stood at the very confluence of the Malki and the Terek and fired at the sentry. The Don constable Shchepalkin with ten Cossacks set off in pursuit of them. Having gotten carried away and having already galloped about twenty versts, the Don people suddenly noticed a strong cavalry party rushing across their retreat. The fellows who got into trouble instantly realized what they had to do. Seeing that they could not stand in the open field, even after dismounting, the Cossacks left their horses as prey for the Chechens, and they themselves rushed into a young, thick oak forest, sat down in the bushes and, despite the fact that there were twenty Chechens for each of them, sat out , losing only two Cossacks killed.

Such defenses, both from one side and the other, were not at all rare, exceptional cases. Brave and courageous in open battle, both the Cossacks and the mountaineers reluctantly risked themselves in these remote, unknown battles, knowing how much the life of even one person who sat down with the determination not to fall into the hands of the living would cost the opponents.

They said at that time that the following incident happened in the Kuban, near Likhachev.

Two highlanders lay down in the forest behind a log and for exactly twelve hours they fired alternately - as they say, through a gun - from a whole hundred Don Cossacks of the Akhanov regiment; many Donets were killed, and in all likelihood this story would have dragged on for a long time if the linemen had not arrived in time. The Lineians finally managed to lure both shots from the enemy at once and then, rushing into the checkers, they finished off the highlanders before they had time to reload their rifles.

Another time, a party of eleven people, having made their way between Mozdok and Ekaterinodar, rushed inside the Line to the banks of the Kuma, to Madzhar. It is enough to look at the distance between Kuma and Terek on the map to understand the audacity of such a raid. And the Chechens were not lucky this time; their traces were soon discovered, and the pursuit along the fresh sakma began from different points of the cordon line. The Chechens saw the danger in time and hastened to get away as quickly as possible. For a long time they flew like an arrow on their light horses, but the constant horses, having been riding for two days and without food, finally began to get tired. The Chechens stopped, slaughtered their horses and disappeared into the first deep hole they came across on the road. The linemen cordoned them off. And while the number of Cossacks gradually increased, the Chechens continued shooting until their gazyrs were finally empty. Then they smashed their pistols and rifles on the stones, broke their swords and were left with only daggers. There came a moment of fatal ominous calm. The Cossacks realized what was happening and rushed in a whole mass... The vague roar of hand-to-hand combat, wild screams and several rifle shots - that’s all that flew from the bottom of the terrible pit, and a minute later everything in it became quiet and silent as before.

It was not easy to mess with such opponents as the mountaineers, and the Cossacks needed to be extremely careful - otherwise they would have to pay for every mistake with blood or property. This is what happened once in the vicinity of Ekaterinodar itself. The Chechens waylaid a soldier who was carelessly driving from the mill, took him prisoner and threatened him to find out where the village herd was grazing, how much cover he had, how many Cossacks there were in the village, and the like. Having learned that almost all of the old Cossacks were on the march and that the herd was under the supervision of young Cossacks, eighty Chechens decided to attack at night.

Half of the party swam across Malka, the other remained on the other side to take over the herd across the river. It was late autumn, the nights were dark and long, and the Chechens had enough time to cut a wide clearing in the coastal bush with daggers to easily steal the herd. Not expecting to meet resistance from the Cossacks, the Chechens rode up to the herd before the light, whooped, and the horses, frightened by rifle shots, darted to the side. The lively Cossacks, however, opened such fire that they immediately killed and wounded many Chechens, and one youngster mounted a horse and flew to the village to let them know about the attack. But in the village they had already heard gunfire, and the cavalry reserve rushed from there at every opportunity to the scene of the incident. Reserves also galloped from other posts, and to the particular misfortune of the Chechens, the Cossacks had both boats and boats at hand. The village commander Luchkin, an experienced Volga fighter, the terror of the Kabardian riders, took over control of all the river and land Cossack forces. At his direction, a whole flotilla of small ships of all kinds and shapes set off downstream of the Terek and just managed to take over the crossing. As it accelerated, it crashed into a thick floating crowd, and the Cossacks began using whatever they could - both oars and hooks - to drown out the Chechens like red fish. It was impossible for the Chechens to defend themselves afloat, and the river instantly became stained with their blood, and the muddy waves of the Terek carried many corpses, both human and horse, to the distant shores of the Caspian Sea... None of the Chechens managed to reach the opposite shore.

But this is not the end of the matter. While the river battle was going on, Luchkin himself with cavalry reserves crossed above this place and rushed at the party hiding on the other bank. The Cossacks were soon joined by two squadrons of Nizhny Novgorod dragoons. The Chechens fled, leaving behind many horses and weapons as booty.

When dividing the spoils, Luchkin got a black Kabardian horse, light as a bird, galloping without shortness of breath or stamping, as if he was rushing through the air. And from then on, Luchkin was constantly seen on this horse, which became the envy of the whole Line.

In February 1806, vague rumors suddenly reached Glazenap that Prince Tsitsianov had been killed, and that the troops that had gone with him to Baku had retreated to an unknown destination. As the senior general in the region, he was greatly alarmed by this news and immediately reported it to the sovereign. From St. Petersburg he received an order to take over the administration of the region pending the appointment of a new commander-in-chief, and meanwhile the couriers flew continuously with questions about the missing troops, until finally news was received from General Zavalishin that he was with the troops on the island of Sarah.

Having accepted the main command over the region and leaving Major General Nesvetaev in charge of Georgia, Glazenap gathered a detachment on the Line and set out on a campaign against Derbent and Baku, in order, first of all, to avenge the death of Tsitsianov and to make amends for the unfavorable impression of his failure. The purpose of the campaign was kept in deep secret and, except for Glazenap and two or three close people, was not known to anyone, and as a precaution, all letters and papers going to the Kumyks or Chechens were intercepted. The Russian detachment had already passed the Aksaev possessions, crossed Sulak and stood near Tarki, the main city of the Shamkhal possessions.

Shamkhal Tarkovsky, in a Russian adjutant general's uniform and in the Alexander ribbon, made a ceremonial welcome to the detachment, but the tactful Glazenap himself introduced himself to him with an honorable report, and with this calculating attention he so endeared himself to the vain owner that he even willingly agreed to take part in the campaign.

Hearing constant reminders that he was a general, the shamkhal did not take off his uniform all day and decided this time to shake off even all the ties of Asian customs. At the end of the luxurious dinner, to which all Russian officers were invited, he invited the guests to show his harem, where the foot of an infidel had never penetrated.

The harem structure was two stories high, with patterned windows and beautiful galleries, and occupied three sides of a vast courtyard, in the middle of which there was a pool, gracefully trimmed with cut stone. Here the beauties of the harem bathed and played in the water in front of their master. This time the odalisques, smartly dressed in their picturesque fantastic costumes, stood in a long row along the gallery, with their gazes cast downward. Shamkhal ordered them to remove the covers, and the Russian officers saw a row of slender beauties with black fiery eyes. No matter how much the modest general laughed it off, he had to, at the persistent demand of the Shamkhal, finally point out one Circassian woman whom he liked more than others.

Thus, the Shamkhal militia joined the Russian detachment in Tarki, but the purpose of the campaign remained a mystery to everyone. Moreover, no one could have imagined that a handful of Russian troops were going to conquer Derbent, a stronghold that Peter the Great and Count Zubov besieged with entire armies.

In Derbent at that time there was general displeasure against the ruler, the famous Sheikh Ali Khan, and Glazenap based the entire success of his expedition on this circumstance. He knew that Sheikh Ali was completely mired in vices and was living a depraved life, which had a heavy impact on all his subjects. Burdening the population with huge taxes, taking away daughters and wives, he subjected to terrible executions the most honorable people from the clergy and beks who dared to tell him the truth. Indignation against him among the people grew and finally turned little by little into open murmur.

Shamkhal of Tarkov skillfully incited the unrest that had begun, and as soon as Russian troops appeared on the border of the Derbent Khanate, a rebellion broke out in the city, and the confused khan was forced to seek salvation in flight. Derbent surrendered to Glazenap without a fight and on June 22nd met the Russian troops as their deliverers. The entire space between the detachment and the city was covered with people who formed a living street. The silver keys to the city were presented to Glazenap by the same, now hundred-year-old, old man who presented them to Peter and Count Zubov. The next day, all residents were sworn in, and after a solemn prayer service, with the thunder of cannons, the Russian flag soared victoriously over the main tower of the Derbent citadel of Naryn-Kale.

Knowing the importance and strength of Derbent, on the one hand, and the weakness of the Russian detachment, on the other, it was difficult to believe that the conquest of Derbent was a fait accompli. “And how pleasant it was,” says a participant in this campaign, “to look at our venerable boss, the unforgettable Grigory Ivanovich, who accepted general congratulations and surprise with a good-natured smile.”

The conquest of Derbent, which since then has never left Russian rule, truly constitutes the best monument that Glazenap erected for himself in the Caucasus. The Tsar granted him a snuff-box strewn with diamonds and three thousand rubles for life.

From near Derbent, Glazenap sent with part of the detachment of his worthy associate along the Line, Major General Meyer, to expel Surkhai Khan of Kazikumyk, who appeared in the Tabasaran possessions, and Meyer brilliantly carried out the assignment.

Meanwhile, Cuba and Baku, frightened by the fall of Derbent, also sent deputies asking for their citizenship. Glazenap was only waiting for the arrival of the Caspian flotilla to continue military operations, but fate decided otherwise. The new commander-in-chief, Count Gudovich, who had not liked Glazenap for some private relationship since the time of Rumyantsev, had already arrived in the Caucasus, and immediately upon arrival in Georgievsk he sent an order that Glazenap’s detachment should not move from Derbent until the arrival there of General Bulgakov, to whom and further actions were instructed. Thus, amid brilliant successes and general unfeigned regret among the troops who had lost their beloved leader, Glazenap’s activities ended. He had, however, the consolation of seeing that the plan for his campaign had been approved, although it was not he who was destined to carry it out to the end.

After surrendering command of the detachment, Glazenap voluntarily remained with the troops and, under the command of Bulgakov, participated in the conquest of Baku and the Kuban Khanate. In Baku, merchants and citizens brought expensive Persian stallions as a gift to all the generals, but Glazenap, who by principle never took anything that did not belong to him by indisputable right, was the only one who did not accept the gift. Such rules turned into pedantry for Glasenap, he lived with them all his life, and with them he died, poor as a soldier, but with a clear, calm conscience.

Understanding perfectly well the position of the region, Glazenap, in a letter from Cuba, advised Count Gudovich to send troops to Erivan, vouching for success. The same idea, it must be said, was pursued by Nesvetaev. But the count gave the honor of conquering Erivan to himself, and ordered the detachment to return to the Line. The sad consequences that accompanied Gudovich’s campaign against Erivan are known, due to the loss of favorable time.

Upon the return of the troops from Derbent, General Bulgakov was appointed head of the Caucasian line, and Glazenap went on vacation, being offended by Count Gudovich’s attitude towards him.

As the chief of the Nizhny Novgorod Dragoon Regiment, Glazenap, after the expiration of his leave, returned to the Caucasus again and settled in Georgievsk. Now not busy with a lot of things, Glazenap tried to unite the city society around him, organized concerts, singing, dancing, gave balls, charming everyone with his courtesy. But this was the last winter he spent in the Caucasus. On February 4, 1807, he was appointed inspector of the Siberian authority and head of the Siberian line, and the title of chief of the Nizhny Novgorod Dragoon Regiment passed from him to Colonel Stahl.

Noble Steel, as soon as he learned of his appointment, immediately hurried to Georgievsk and appeared to Glazenap. “Here is a report on the condition of the regiment, and here is a receipt for its proper receipt from you,” he said, handing him the papers. Glazenap, pleasantly surprised, replied: “You, Karl Fedorovich, have not yet looked around and, perhaps, you will find some shortcomings.” Steel objected to this and asked that the matter between them be considered over.

In Siberia, Glazenap's activities were aimed exclusively at the peaceful development of the country and especially at organizing the internal life of the Siberian Cossack army. During this peaceful period of his life, he received from the sovereign a diamond snuffbox with a monogram image of the name of His Majesty and the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky, and on December twenty-fifth, 1815, he was appointed commander of a separate Siberian Corps.

Glazenap remained in this rank for four years and died on March 10, 1819 in Omsk, in his sixty-ninth year from birth. Above his coffin stands a modest monument, which is a tall white pyramid of Siberian marble, surrounded by a cast-iron lattice with bronze decorations and the family coat of arms. The inscription on this monument indicates that it was erected by “grateful subordinates in memory of their beloved boss.”

Pyotr Gavrilovich Likhachev is one of the valiant fighters of the great Battle of Borodino. But his fame began much earlier, during his service on the Caucasian line, where, in the modest rank of regiment commander, he gained such popularity that even the larger figures of the Caucasian war could envy.

Likhachev began military service in 1783 under the command of Suvorov. As part of the Kuban Corps, he took part in the defeat of the Nogais near Kermenchik and then received his first military award - the rank of second lieutenant. Then he was at war with the Swedes, commanding one of the floating batteries in the Nassau-Siegen detachment, and after peace was concluded he again moved to the Caucasus, to the Kuban Jaeger Corps, and there rose to the rank of colonel. In 1798, Emperor Paul promoted him to major general, at the same time appointing him as chief of the sixteenth Jaeger Regiment, which was then located on the very border with Kabarda, in the Konstantinogorsk fortification.

Now only two small mounds overgrown with grass, the remains of earthen ramparts, several empty houses, and decayed gardens indicate the place where this Russian fortress once stood. But at the time in question, Konstantinogorsk played a very important role as the point under whose protection the mineral springs of Pyatigorsk were located. As a matter of fact, Pyatigorsk, as a city, did not yet exist at that time, and patients who came here for treatment were usually accommodated in Konstantinogorsk, from where every morning they went to the springs, spent the day there in the Kalmyk tents, and returned to the fortress at night. Many visitors, completely unfamiliar with the conditions of Caucasian life, almost always careless and careless, allowed the mountaineers to count on easy money here more than anywhere else, and the surroundings of Konstantinogorsk enjoyed a very sad reputation in the Caucasus in this sense.

With the appointment of Likhachev, the situation changed. As an independent commander of the well-known region of the Caucasian line, he based his military system in it not on passive defense, but, on the contrary, on attack and extermination of the enemy, whom he himself was looking for, and with a series of brutal defeats inflicted on the predatory Kabardians, he soon forced them to far avoid the hated strengthening

But in order to achieve this result, it was necessary to put the regiment at a high level of combat development, and given the routine views that had reigned in the army since the time of Emperor Paul, such a thing was far from easy. Conventional teaching methods were not suitable for this at all. What was needed here was not masses crushing the enemy with a granite wall, not peaceful movements of the front, equal even under the enemy’s grapeshot fire, but simply dashing Russian fighters, agile and dexterous, like the Kabardians themselves. Likhachev understood this perfectly; gymnastics, war games, shooting and application to the terrain received predominant importance in his troops. Monotonous drills faded into the background, and less was done. But this is not enough. Likhachev was the first of the Caucasian generals to decide to deviate from uniforms, allowing changes in them that were most consistent with the conditions of Caucasian military life. Heavy shakos, narrow tight uniforms, backpacks and clumsy cartridge bags, hung at the back and not allowing for fast running, were completely abandoned. Instead, Likhachev's rangers wore soft Circassian hats, which served as a pillow for the soldier on occasion, spacious green jackets, wide trousers of the same type, hidden in boots above the knees, and over the shoulder - canvas bags, fitted so that the soldier could throw them off to relieve himself at every slightest stop, then a light circular bandoleer covering the waist, and a gun or rifle complemented their combat equipment.

In this comfortable and light clothing, the huntsmen could run for a long time and quickly, so that in the first ten to twelve miles they usually kept up with the Cossacks. The ability to keep up with the enemy on horseback made it possible that wherever the mountain parties turned, rangers sprang up in front of them, as if out of the ground, who had the ability to keep up wherever danger threatened. The Kabardians were amazed by the forced marches of the Likhachev regiment and nicknamed it the Green Army.

If such energy were the property of all private bosses, then the petty predations that ravaged the Caucasian line day after day would almost never have taken place. But, unfortunately, there were not many Likhachevs in the Caucasus!

Tested in single battles in small units, the regiment was not slow to acquire victorious laurels and in full force during the pacification of the Kabardians in the spring of 1804. The riot began when the Kabardians in significant forces attacked several points of the cordon line at once and, among other things, the Essentuki post, which lay near Kislovodsk, in the Likhachev region. Eight Donets, dismounting and firing from behind their horses, defended themselves heroically, but nevertheless, out of eight Cossacks, six were killed, and only two were rescued by the reserves that finally arrived in time. Likhachev, meanwhile, received orders to go with the regiment to Kabarda to join the detachment of General Glazenap. And so, on the ninth of May, at a time when a serious matter had begun on Baksan and the Lezino cavalry was already in a critical position, Likhachev unexpectedly appeared, leading his glorious sixteenth regiment from the Line. Seeing the skirmish from above and quickly realizing the benefits of his position, he changed direction and, scattering a thick chain, struck with such speed at the flank and rear of the Kabardians that he immediately forced them to clear the battlefield.

After their defeat at Baksan, the Kabardians retreated across the Chegem River and took up an advantageous position on a high mountain, which had to be taken by storm, and Glazenap sent forward the sixteenth Jaeger Regiment for this. It was the fourteenth of May, 1804.

The “green” rangers scattered, crouched to the ground and crawled towards the enemy so skillfully secretly that from a distance they were not visible at all, and only Likhachev, calmly riding on a small white horse, indicated the direction in which the attack was going. When the huntsmen crawled up to take a aimed shot, Likhachev gave the prearranged signal, and the fire immediately lit up along the entire Line. The shooting of such fellows could not but prove extremely disastrous for the enemy. Clouds of lead devastated the ranks of the Kabardians, and their people and horses, not having the strength to stay on the mountain, rolled down under the feet of the detachment. There was no way to withstand the hellish fire of the rangers, and the Kabardians fled, not expecting an attack.

When the rebellion was pacified and the Russian troops were returning to the Line, an incident occurred that was one of those dramatic bloody episodes in which the annals of the Caucasian peoples are so rich.

From the very beginning of the campaign, the Kabardian prince Roslambek Misostov, who was considered a colonel in the Life Guards Cossack regiment and belonged to one of the best Kabardian families, was visible in the Russian detachment. Suddenly, to everyone's amazement, he disappeared from the camp. It turned out that Roslambek fled beyond the Kuban along with the villages under his control, and that the motive for this was kanla - blood revenge for the death of his own nephew, killed in one of the Kabardian raids on the Line.

To prevent the Kabardian villages from leaving the Kuban, Glazenap immediately sent Likhachev’s regiment in pursuit of Roslambek. Likhachev, with a forced march, reached the upper reaches of the Kuban and here, at the Stone Bridge, through which the famous trade road goes, he learned that Roslambek was standing across the river with a large party, which was joined not only by Kabardians, but by Trans-Kuban Circassians and even Nogais. This did not stop the general's enterprise. But as soon as he crossed the Kuban, he was attacked by huge forces of the highlanders. Likhachev fought for three days in a row with his characteristic courage, but, overwhelmed by the large number of enemies, he was finally forced to begin a retreat. The enemy desperately pursued him for a whole day, and although the rangers repelled the attack, when returning across the Stone Bridge, when a general hand-to-hand fight ensued, one of our guns fell into the river and was lost.

The next day, Roslambek himself proposed concluding a truce and, speaking of his repentance, asked for a personal one-on-one meeting with Likhachev. Likhachev, without any hesitation, went to the Stone Bridge and met Roslambek there. The meeting was completely friendly. Roslambek tried to justify his actions by the fact that he, as a Muslim, could not leave the death of his own nephew without vengeance, but that now that blood had been shed, he, along with the Kabardians who remained with him, was ready to return and continue to be a faithful servant of the Russian Tsar. He announced, among other things, that he had ordered the search for the sunken gun, since he was well aware of the responsibility for such a loss.

The straightforward and honest Likhachev believed Roslambek’s words and the next day sent a company of Captain Volkov and thirty-five Cossacks, under the general command of Major Pirogov, to the Kuban to find the gun. Roslambek himself was with the detachment with two bridles and an interpreter. On his instructions, the rangers and Cossacks, leaving their weapons, went down to the river and, not suspecting treason, began to look for the cannon. Suddenly Roslambek waved his whip twice and began to gallop... This was a prearranged signal, according to which the ambush, lying near the shore, rushed at the soldiers with a boom, and in the general confusion, everything that was in the river, not having time to reach the weapon, was chopped up. Major Pirogov, who was riding a dashing Persian stallion, rushed to the camp, but was overtaken and killed on the spot by a pistol shot. Only Volkov and nine rangers escaped the common fate, who, hiding in the bushes, fought off the furious attacks of the mountaineers for several hours. All of them were wounded several times, but did not give up and were rescued by help that arrived from the camp. Roslambek remained in the mountains and since then became one of the most desperate and rabid abreks.

Likhachev's rangers spent the entire winter on the Kuban Line. There were no major military operations, but a small war was going on, which on the part of its participants required not only no less, but, perhaps, even greater heroism than large battles. The rangers either repelled the raids or crossed the Kuban themselves and brought weapons into hitherto inaccessible mountain gorges.

One romantic adventure dates back to this time, showing that the Russian conquests and even just the close presence of Russian troops did not remain without influence on the very morals of the highlanders. And if some of them, like Roslambek, fled from us beyond the Kuban, then others, on the contrary, ran across the Kuban to the Russian side and sought protection and patronage from foreigners against the constraining customs of their homeland. From this point of view, the incident described is not without interest.

In 1804, one of the princes hostile to Russia, Atazhukin, raided the Kists, with whom he had old scores to settle for their robberies and for the fact that the Kists gave refuge to fugitive Kabardian slaves. The raid was successful, but the prince himself almost died in hand-to-hand combat and even would have certainly died if one young bridle, named Dzhembulat, had not shielded him with his chest. Dzhembulat was dangerously wounded, and the old prince, grateful to him for his salvation, treated the brave young man in his own sakla.

The prince's only daughter, the beautiful Tskheni, looked after the sick man. And this circumstance, given the freedom that Circassian girls enjoy, served as the beginning of a cordial rapprochement between the two young people. But the hand of the prince’s daughter could not belong to the young bridle - local customs did not allow such a union at all; and Dzhembulat, and Tskheni, and the old father, who saw the nascent love of his daughter and did not have the will to interrupt it at the very beginning, were equally unhappy. Moreover, Tskheni’s hand had already been promised to the son of a neighboring owner, and if the old prince had not kept his word, he would not only have covered his gray hair with shame, but would have also brought upon himself inexorable vengeance. “The moving wall of daggers and sabers,” the prince himself said, “will then shine around my aul, and it will be razed to the ground.”

Gloomy days were experienced in Atazhukin’s family.

Once, in order to disperse somewhat, the old prince, accompanied by bridles and Dzhembulat between them, went hunting. But this hunt was destined to end sadly. While chasing a wild animal through the forest, the hunters suddenly came across some Cossack party wandering beyond the Kuban, and a well-aimed Cossack bullet killed the old prince in his place. The Cossacks wanted to seize his body, but Dzhembulat defended him and took him to the village on his saddle. Approaching his native village, Dzhembulat sent one of his comrades to warn the princess about the misfortune that had befallen her, and meanwhile the party stopped at a spring to wash the prince’s body, covered with dust and blood. Soon rumors of the sad incident spread throughout the entire village, and residents ran to the source. Tskheni was right there; she sobbed and threw herself on her father’s corpse and said with bitter reproach to Dzhembulat:

- Dzhembulat! Where was your courage if you did not save your prince?

- Tskheni! – the young man answered. “A bullet is faster than a dagger, but I saved you the consolation of crying over his grave.”

The sad procession slowly returned to the village, and each one sought the honor of carrying, in turn, the mortal remains of the brave prince. And the next day, as soon as the burial ceremony was completed, at the council of elders it was decided that Tskheni should marry the son of the neighboring prince Bek-Mirza-Arslangir, whom the people at the same time wanted to recognize as their rightful owner - the successor of the deceased prince, who did not leave behind male generation. Tskheni had to sacrifice herself for the sake of the customs of her homeland.

The day of marriage was approaching. The ancient friendship of the two princely families was to be further strengthened by an alliance based on common desires and benefits. But at midnight, on the eve of the wedding day, Tskheni disappeared from the saklya. Dzhembulat was waiting for her in the forest; he quickly grabbed her into his saddle, and the fast horse carried them to the Russian border. We rode all night. But in the east the approaching dawn appeared. Dzhembulat reined in his horse to let him breathe and ride at a walk. But suddenly a dull noise in the distance struck him; he began to listen.

“This is the sound of a mountain spring,” Tskheni told him, “in the silence of the night it can be heard far away.”

- No! It's a chase! - answered the alarmed Dzhembulat and set off his horse at full speed.

The shadows of night gradually gave way to the rising day; The clatter of the chase could be heard clearer and clearer; now she had already appeared from behind the nearby hill, and now no speed of the horse could save the fugitives. A few more minutes and they would have found themselves in the hands of furious enemies. Then, deciding on the last resort, Dzhembulat jumped onto a high cliff, rising menacingly above the fast bubbling waves of the Kuban... Just one minute of thought - and Dzhembulat reared his horse, threw a cloak over his head, and shouted: “Tskheni! Close eyes!" - rushed down from a twelve-foot height into the boiling abyss.

The amazed Circassians stopped at the edge of the cliff, and the same thought flashed through everyone: “He’s dead.” But another moment - and everyone saw clearly how a horse emerged in the middle of the foamy waves and the figure of a swimming rider was outlined against the dark background of the river. A hail of bullets showered the fugitives, but none of them hit the target, and Dzhembulat reached the opposite bank. But here he faced a new danger. The shots caused alarm at the surrounding posts, and the line Cossacks were already rushing from all sides. A single horseman could easily be mistaken for the leader of an enemy party crossing to the Russian side, and guns were already flashing in the hands of the Cossacks. Resourceful Tskheni tore off her white veil and began waving it. The Cossacks who rode up were surprised to see the horseman and the woman. When they found out what was the matter, when they measured with their eyes the formidable cliff rising on the other side of the Kuban, they were able to appreciate all the heroism of Dzhembulat, and the brave young man immediately won their sympathy. But the subject of special admiration was Dzhembulat’s faithful comrade, his good horse; the Cossacks surrounded him, could not look at him enough, could not praise him enough, they talked to him as if to a comrade.

This incident was reported to Emperor Alexander, and Dzhembulat was accepted into Russian service as an ensign in one of the dragoon regiments stationed on the Caucasian line. At the same time, the sovereign ordered that his will be communicated to the Caucasian commander so that full respect for the religious rites and customs of Dzhembulat could be maintained. But Dzhembulat himself did not want to remain a Mohammedan, he was baptized and was married to Tskheni according to the Orthodox rite.

An active employee of Glazenap on the Line, Likhachev, at the beginning of 1806, participated with him in the famous Dagestan campaign. And if the Russians have the right to be justly proud of this campaign, if the bloodless conquest of the Derbent Khanate is still one of the prominent pages of the military chronicle of the Caucasus, then this owes most of all to the extraordinary courage, energy and political tact of General Likhachev.

The fact is that when a rebellion broke out in Derbent and the residents, having driven out the khan, sent deputies to the Russian camp with a request for the speedy occupation of the city, Glazenap, not yet knowing for sure what was happening in Derbent, hesitated. But it was Likhachev who convinced him to immediately send at least a small part of the army, pointing out how inappropriate slowness was here, that hesitation could only produce distrust in the power of Russian weapons in the deputies. Remembering the recent fate of Prince Tsitsianov, who died at the very moment when he accepted the keys from the Baku Khan, nevertheless Likhachev, guided solely by his courage, himself volunteered to go to Derbent and for the speedy movement he asked for only six hundred Cossacks and one gun.

- Honor is my god. “I will die willingly, if I must die for the benefit of my fatherland,” said the general, saying goodbye to his officers.

Quickly, in one night, having walked more than sixty miles, Likhachev appeared under the walls of Derbent in the morning and, without entering the city, sent an order for all the people to come out to meet the Russian general. The residents obeyed, and Likhachev solemnly entered the main gate of the fortress with his Cossacks. Here the elders and the most honorable beks presented the general with the city keys, but he modestly declined this honor, leaving it to Glazenap, who was supposed to come up the next morning.

After the capture of Derbent, Likhachev participated, under the main command of General Bulgakov, in the conquest of the Kuba Khanate, the owner of which, the same Sheikh Ali Khan, not wanting to submit to the Russians, hid in the mountains and from there worried the surrounding population. In order to restore order in the country, it was necessary first of all to break the stubborn energy of the khan, and Likhachev again, with his selfless courage, volunteered to go to the mountains alone, almost without an escort, in order to achieve a peaceful resolution of this issue. His daring trip was crowned with complete success, and Sheikh Ali Khan decided to disband his armed gangs.

Likhachev's brilliant participation in the Kabardian expedition, in the Kuban and, finally, in the mountains of Dagestan, brought him the Order of St. Vladimir 3rd degree, Annensky ribbon and a diamond ring with a monogram image of the name of Emperor Alexander I.

In December 1806, Likhachev returned to the Line, and the following February marked himself with a new brilliant feat during the assault on the Khankala Gorge.

This place, perfectly fortified by nature itself, lies in Chechnya, seven miles from the current Grozny fortress, between the Argun and Goyta rivers. Two separate high mountains form a gorge known as the Khankala Gorge. Both the mountains and the gorge are covered with dense dense forests, which have long served as a den for predatory parties gathering on the Sunzha opposite the Line. In mid-February, Bulgakov with a small detachment, which included Likhachev’s regiment, approached the Khankala Gorge and demanded its surrender. “Only over our corpses will the Russians pass through the gorge,” answered the mountaineers. Bulgakov pushed forward the sixteenth Jaeger Regiment and ordered Likhachev to storm the gorge. The position of the mountaineers, located in a gorge, among a dense forest, was covered from the front by a number of rubble, surrounded by ditches and ditches; behind it stood a solid wall menacingly, made up of boulders and entire cliffs, and then there were log buildings with loopholes punched into them. But neither the natural strength of the position, nor the art of its defense, nor the desperate courage of the Chechens, who swore to die with weapons in their hands, nothing helped stop the rangers led by the brave Likhachev. After a bloody nine-hour massacre, which has not yet been forgotten in the Caucasus, most of the stubborn defenders of the Khankala Gorge lay down on the spot, and Russian banners were hoisted among the impregnable stronghold.

In the midst of the battle, the brave captain Semeka, who had just fought off a whole bunch of Chechens attacking him, was subjected to a new attack by three highlanders, against whom he was no longer able to defend himself. A private of his company, Bashir Ablikamirov, seeing the danger to which the captain was exposed, rushed to his aid, killed one Chechen with a rifle shot, stabbed another with a bayonet, and at that moment, as the saber of the third was already sparkling over the officer’s head, he rushed forward and put him under strike your own hand. Ablikamirov’s hand instantly flew away, severed at the elbow, but this moment was enough for Semeka, who recovered, to chop the Chechen to pieces.

Likhachev was awarded the Order of St. for this matter. George 3rd degree.

The last feat of Likhachev’s fifteen-year service in the Caucasus was the pacification of the Karabulaks that same year. At that time, half a century was already resting on his shoulders, and, exhausted by combat labor, he retired. Sadly saying goodbye to the Caucasus, where his best blossoming years had passed, he retired to his Porkhov village, intending to spend the rest of his days there in rural silence and in modest pursuits of village farming.

A year later, however, he again entered service on the occasion of the war then declared on Austria, and was appointed chief of the Tomsk infantry regiment, and three years later - head of the twenty-fourth infantry division, with which during World War II he defended the ancient walls of Smolensk and participated in the Battle of Borodino.

The illness, a consequence of old campaigns and wounds, meanwhile worsened in Likhachev; severe aches and paralysis of his legs did not allow him to walk without assistance. But a high sense of duty overpowered physical ailments, and on the day of the Battle of Borodino, Likhachev, with his division, is one of the valiant defenders of the central mound, known as the Raevsky battery. The main forces of the French were concentrated against him, but, despite all the efforts of the Viceroy of Italy, the redoubt remained behind us during the eight-hour mortal battle.

Sitting on a camp chair in the front corner of the fortification, weak, sick, but indestructible in spirit, Likhachev, under a deadly cloud of lead and cast iron, calmly says to the soldiers: “Stand, guys, bravely! And remember: Moscow is behind us!”

The last minute has finally arrived in the combat life of the Caucasian hero. At five o'clock in the afternoon the enemy, concentrating all his forces, launched a final decisive attack on this mound, which formed the key to the Borodino position. French infantry rushed into the redoubt from all sides and filled it with their corpses, but the Saxon cavalry rushed to its aid and the entire corps of Caulaincourt rushed after it. A fierce hand-to-hand fight began... Caulaincourt was killed, but the last defenders of the redoubt fell under the blows of the men-at-arms. Then Likhachev, having gathered his last strength, with his sword drawn, rushes alone into the crowds of the enemy, wanting to lie down on the corpses of his colleagues rather than fall to the French alive. His wish, however, did not come true. The badges of the general's rank and the white St. George's Cross on the neck stopped the French grenadiers. Covered with serious wounds, Likhachev found himself in captivity and was presented to the Viceroy of Italy. Gifted with an exalted and ardent soul, who knew how to understand the feats of military courage, Prince Eugene respectfully received Likhachev and ordered him to be presented to Napoleon. The Emperor, in turn, said a few consoling words to him and handed back his sword. Likhachev showed the generosity of a winner.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” he replied in a weakening voice, “but captivity has deprived me of my sword, and I can only take it back from my sovereign.”

He was sent to France, but serious wounds forced him to stop on the way to Konigsberg, and here, in a foreign land, death put an end to his glorious career.

Gudovich's old comrade-in-arms on the Caucasian line, with Georgy on his neck for the storming of Anapa, Infantry General Sergei Alekseevich Bulgakov deservedly enjoyed the reputation of a brave, energetic and extremely truthful person. Despite his advanced years, he still remained a truly military man and to the end retained the ability to captivate people with his courage and purely youthful ardor.

By the highest decree on June 19, 1806, Bulgakov was accepted from retirement into service and, at the request of Count Gudovich, was appointed commander of the troops on the Caucasian line. But as soon as he arrived in Georgievsk, he received orders to immediately take Glazenap’s detachment, then operating in Dagestan, under his command. On the tenth of August, Bulgakov was already in the conquered Derbent and, finding the troops completely ready for a further campaign, led them straight to Baku, bypassing the Kuban and Kazikumyk provinces.

Approaching the city, he sent a proclamation, inviting residents to surrender to the mercy of the Russian emperor and threatening otherwise to “shake the foundation of the city with invincible troops.” Suleiman-bek, one of the close associates of the Baku khan, turned to Bulgakov with a response to the proclamation, justifying the khan and informing that if the khan did not receive forgiveness, then the city would defend itself to the last extreme, and that the people would not proceed to anything without the will of the khan.

There is, indeed, reason to believe that the khan was not involved in the murder of Prince Tsitsianov and that it took place against his will and desire.

Here is the story of one Baku resident, an eighty-three-year-old man named Hadji-Urban, who was in the Khan’s retinue at the time of the incident itself.

“On the day appointed for a meeting with Prince Tsitsianov,” he said, “Hussein-Kuli Khan went out of the city gates on foot; they did not take out the keys to the fortress, but went only for negotiations; the keys were given to General Bulgakov a year later On one side of the khan walked Kazem-bek, his friend and associate, on the other, Kerim-bek. All three had armed nukers with them. I was then a nuker with Kazem-bek and accompanied him to this meeting. The roads diverged, the cloaks were spread out, all three sat on them and waited for the arrival of Prince Tsitsianov. The prince rode on horseback, accompanied by dragoons, but the dragoons stopped on the road, and the prince separated from them with his adjutant, two Cossacks and an interpreter. got off his horse, which he gave to the Cossack, and the Cossack took it to the dragoons.

At that time, we had two Persian khans living in Baku; they were sent by the Shah as if to bring water from the sea into the fortress moat, but in fact, to observe Hussein Khan and prevent him from getting closer to the Russians.

Hussein had a cousin, Ibrahim Beg, who hated him from an early age, tried to harm him and sought power himself. It was he who entered into secret negotiations with the Persians and undertook to kill Tsitsianov in order to quarrel the Baku residents with the Russians once and for all. Hussein Quli Khan knew nothing about this.

Seeing from the fortress wall that Tsitsianov sat down on a spread out cloak, Ibrahim left the fortress with two of his nukers. One was called Amir-Amza, the other was Seid. Pretending that they were walking without a goal, they kept to the left of the road and suddenly quickly turned in the direction where Tsitsianov was sitting. Khan was amazed by their sudden appearance and made signs with his head for them to leave. But Ibragim and his nukers suddenly pulled out their guns, fired at once - and Tsitsianov fell killed. Hussein, who knew nothing about this intention, was shocked by the murder. “God grant that your house fails!” - he shouted to Ibrahim; but Ibragimov’s nukers, not paying attention to the Khan’s abuse and threats, rushed at the corpse of the murdered man, cut off his head, and carried the body itself to Baku. That same night, Ibrahim fled with Seid to Tabriz, where he presented his head to the crown prince. Ibrahim Beg was accepted into the Persian service and made the head of the detachment. In the place where the Russians now erected a monument, then we had a city ravine in which sewage was dumped. It was into this dirty ravine that the residents threw Tsitsianov’s corpse and buried it with earth;

When, amazed by everything that had happened, Hussein Quli Khan returned home, both Persian khans came to him with congratulations. “God grant that Ibrahim’s face turns black,” Hussein Quli Khan answered them. “He has put me at odds with the Russians forever, and I am surprised why you are congratulating me.”

This is the story of an eyewitness. Bulgakov, who obviously knew the matter well, sent a messenger from the road to persuade Hussein Quli Khan to stay in Baku and not worry about his future. The Khan replied that he would await his arrival, and sent Kazem-bek to meet him with a banner, keys to the fortress and bread and salt. Kazem-bek met Bulgakov at the fifth station in Besh-Barmaglah. Bulgakov again repeated his assurances to Kazem-bek and, sending him back to Baku, sent with him his son, lieutenant colonel of the Borisoglebsky Dragoon Regiment (later killed near Erivan), to tell the khan that he knew his innocence and knew who killed Tsitsianov. However, approaching the city at night, young Bulgakov and Kazem-bek saw that all the people were leaving Baku and going to the mountains. When asked where the khan was, they were told that he, fearing Russian revenge for the treacherous murder of Tsitsianov, fled to Cuba and, together with the former ruler of Derbent, intended to seek the protection of the Persian Shah.

All night, risking his life, Bulgakov rode horseback through the streets of the city, announcing to the population that he was the son of a Russian general, the commander of the troops, and was sent to calm the people and declare forgiveness to them. Baku residents, however, did not believe, and the morning of October 2 found the majority of the population already outside the city limits. Having learned that the people were going to flee beyond the Kura River, where the khan promised to give them new places to settle, young Bulgakov decided to follow them and once again try to persuade them. For a long time and passionately, he convinced the Baku residents and finally achieved that the people little by little began to return to the deserted city.

Meanwhile, the detachment approached Baku. General Bulgakov was met several miles from the city wall by one of the most influential people in the city, Kazem-bek, already familiar to him, with sixteen effendias and elders, and after them came the Armenian clergy with crosses and banners. Presenting the city banner and the keys of the citadel, Kazem-bek once again asked for the mercy of the people. While Bulgakov received the deputation, the Baku residents, bowing their banners and heads, awaited the decision of their fate with Asian fatalism, but their fears soon dissipated. Major Tarasov, on behalf of the commander-in-chief, declared a pardon for them, and then those present were sworn to the oath of allegiance to the Russian Tsar. At the same time, Major Generals Dekhtyarev and Count Gudovich (the son of the commander-in-chief) traveled through the villages and swore in the villagers.

Thus, on the third of September 1806, the city of Baku, the object of Tsitsianov’s aspirations, was finally occupied by Russian troops, and the next day at eight o’clock in the morning the Russian flag was raised on the walls of the citadel. The body of Prince Tsitsianov, buried at the fortress gates, was immediately transferred with honors to a new grave prepared in an Armenian temple, and his killer, nuker Amir-Amza, captured in Baku, was put on trial, driven through the ranks and exiled to Siberia.

The troops remained in Baku for several days, and Bulgakov lived all this time in the Khan's palace, which was distinguished by purely oriental luxury. A special treasure in it were the historical paintings, painted very skillfully on the walls with oil paints and then gilded. By order of Bulgakov, some of them were knocked off the walls with special chisels and so skillfully that they remained completely intact.

The troops in Baku suffered from a lack of healthy fresh water, since in all the surrounding wells it had a bitter-salty sea taste. There was also no fuel. The Armenians, who controlled all the oil sources, protected their interests too zealously, and the soldiers camped on the seashore were forced to walk ten miles to collect weeds in order to heat themselves with even this meager fuel on damp and cold nights. Sickness and mortality began. And Bulgakov, leaving only the battalion of the Sevastopol regiment as a garrison in Baku, under the command of Major General Guryev, with the rest of the troops, hastened to leave for the Kuba Khanate, the conquest of which was a natural consequence of the occupation of Baku. As long as Cuba remained in the hands of Sheikh Ali Khan, it was impossible to vouch for the safety of the roads and the peace of mind of the residents of Derbent and Baku, especially since the route between these two cities lay through Cuban possessions.

Approaching Cuba, Bulgakov learned that Sheikh Ali Khan, fearing for his fate, fled with the entire population to the mountains. In Kuba and in the surrounding villages, the Russians, indeed, did not find a single person, but the detachments sent in pursuit of the residents managed to overtake and return most of them to the city. They announced that Sheikh Ali Khan would forever be removed from governing the Khanate and that his possessions would be annexed to the Russian state. The Cubans took the oath unquestioningly, but Sheikh Ali Khan, hiding in the mountains, continued to worry the population. In vain Bulgakov demanded the khan to come to him and offered him various conditions, but it was impossible to capture him, since he had found a safe refuge in Kazikumyk.

There was only one thing left to do - to force the Kazikumyk people themselves to hand over the khan, but the late season and the fear of being caught in the mountains in winter forced Bulgakov for now to be content with the outward obedience of the khan, who sealed it with his oath.

Thus, calmly, without shedding blood, Derbent, Baku and Cuba were annexed to Russia. Unfortunately, severe illness among the troops, a consequence of this campaign, took many brave soldiers of the Georgian Corps to an early grave. The return traffic to the Line was especially disastrous. Winter overtook the detachment without warm clothes and shoes; the weather was stormy; wet snow formed impenetrable mud, in which the soldiers had to spend the night without any bedding and even without overcoats, which had long since worn out. In order to shelter from the wind and somehow warm their numb limbs, people dug holes like graves, cooked food in them and then, having extinguished the coals, went to bed in these warm, but destructive lairs.

Sixty miles before Kizlyar, the detachment was caught in the steppe by frost and a terrible blizzard. The soldiers unanimously asked to be led further without an overnight stay and, one might say, they did not walk, but ran throughout the entire transition all the way to the Terek. There was a strong ice drift along the Terek, and there was no crossing, but the soldiers preferred to take an icy bath rather than wait for the ferries, and, having waded through waist-deep water, they rushed in crowds to Kizlyar, where they were housed haphazardly in apartments. The convoys that followed the troops were loaded into the river. The Furshtats unharnessed their horses and galloped off to the city, and the abandoned wagons became so frozen in the ice that covered the river that same night that they later had to be cut down with axes.

Meanwhile, when the events described took place, the Caucasian line, left almost without troops, was going through a difficult time. Throughout its entire length there were continuous robberies and predatory raids of the mountaineers. Gudovich wanted Bulgakov, returning from Baku, to make an expedition against the highlanders directly from Kizlyar, but the fatigue of the troops forced it to be postponed, and it took place only in the spring of 1807. Troops entered Chechnya from three different sides, under the command of Bulgakov, Count Ivelich and Musin-Pushkin; but Bulgakov’s mistake was precisely that all these units were not strong enough to act decisively in difficult places; they often stopped and thereby interrupted the general connection of the operation. General Bulgakov himself dealt with the main forces of the Chechens in the Khankala Gorge, and although he took it by storm, the huge loss suffered by the Russians only confirmed the Chechens in the idea of ​​​​the impregnable position of their homeland, which is why the formidable assault on the Khankala Gorge, which opened the way to the very heart of Chechnya and memorable in the Caucasus until now, ended with such an insignificant result as the conquest of two independent societies: Atagi and Gekhi.

Meanwhile, the military operations in Chechnya had absolutely no impact on the Trans-Kuban highlanders, who continued to attack not only the Kuban, but were predatory right under Mozdok and appeared even beyond Stavropol.

On April twenty-eighth, 1807, a party of two hundred people attacked Sengileevka (the village of Bogoyavlenskoye), which lay almost twenty-five miles from the Kuban. The robbery and massacre continued until two o'clock in the afternoon and cost the Russians dearly: thirty people were killed, drowned and burned alive, twenty-four were wounded, one hundred and two were captured, and more than two thousand cattle and horses were stolen during this attack. Such a defeat, of course, could only take place during a panic that attacked the peasants, and seven privates of the Suzdal regiment, who accidentally spent the night in Sengileevka, not only fought off the predators, but managed to save several neighboring peasant houses from plunder.

Before the impression of this raid had yet faded, on the twenty-third of May a new party, breaking through at Belomechetka, defeated the Vorovskolesskaya station of the Kuban regiment and took more than two hundred Cossacks captive.

Panic seized the peasant population. The police officer reported that in all the villages along Yegorlyk, the residents were in indescribable fear, that the Sengileevites, wounded during the defeat of the village, not daring to return to their ashes, huddled in the forest and settled down to be treated in some small dugout they found. The rest of the villages presented a picture of the same sad quality: the peasants lived in bivouacs, their property was packed and tied onto carts, sentries stood on the bell towers, and everything was adapted so that at the first sound of the alarm bell they could run wherever possible; many families, as night approached, went into the forests and hid there in slums and ravines; those who stayed at home gathered for the night in unfinished churches, climbed the bell towers and spent the night there, despite any bad weather. And the rumors coming out of Kuban were the most alarming. They were afraid of an attack on the Temnolessskaya village, they were waiting for it on the state-owned villages of Nikolaevka, Kamennobrodskoye, and again on the same Sengileevka, and even Stavropol itself did not consider itself safe. The fields stood uncultivated, famine began, and to complete the disasters, the provincial city of Georgievsk, half empty already from the plague, burned to the ground in the summer of 1809. However, it should be noted that even before the fire Georgievsk was one of the poorest cities in Russia and that in the Caucasus even many Cossack stations were much richer and more attractive than their provincial city. There was only one dilapidated wooden church in it and there were not ten houses covered with planks; even the governor's house, which was a wattle-and-daub hut, was covered with reeds and consisted of only four small rooms. Under such conditions, the fire completed its destructive work in two to three hours - and the residents were left without shelter.

So difficult were the circumstances under which Bulgakov had to take upon himself the organization of the Line. His main concern was to secure Russian settlements from the Trans-Kuban highlanders, whose raids had reached hitherto unheard of proportions. For this purpose, he sent two strong detachments to the Kuban, but despite their presence, as soon as autumn came and the dark nights began, the entire Caucasian line was again struck by the insolence of the Trans-Kuban highlanders. A strong party of them, having broken through at the Strong Trench, penetrated to Yegorlyk, stole a thousand horses and inflicted great damage on the Don regiment of Colonel Arakantsev, who tried to recapture the prey from them. But this is not the end of the matter.

On November 7, another party, uniting with the Kabardians, rushed deep into the Stavropol district and destroyed the rich Kamennobrod village to the ground. The unfortunate residents rushed to run in fear wherever they could, but most took refuge in the church, hoping to find salvation there; The mountaineers, however, burst inside the temple of God and cut down everyone hiding in it. The church platform was drenched in blood and littered with corpses, and everything that survived the massacre was taken as booty by the mountaineers. Those killed alone then numbered more than one hundred and thirty souls of both sexes; Three hundred and fifty people were taken prisoner, all the livestock was driven away, farmsteads were burned, and winter crops were trampled.

One episode is associated with this terrible pogrom, not important in the general course of events of that time, but characterizing the population that the greedy mountaineers faced.

In Kamennobrodsk, among other prisoners, Avdotya Mikhailovna, a single-family dweller, was taken along with her son, daughter and the orphan Fekla who lived with her. Subsequently, during the exchange of prisoners, the mother did not find her daughter among those exchanged, who, in all likelihood, had already been resold to some distant village. The Circassians shouted to find her daughter if she agreed to leave her pupil Thekla in return. “No,” Avdotya answered, “the Lord will punish me if I let the orphan die; I took her in my arms and will have to answer for her before God. It’s better if my daughter remains in captivity - the Lord will not leave her.” And she returned to her homeland without her daughter.

In order to somehow appease the restless neighbors and encourage the settlers, Bulgakov himself went to the Kuban at the beginning of 1810, ravaged villages, stormed the rubble, penetrated into places that the mountaineers themselves considered inaccessible, but despite all this, despite the full assistance For the Nogais who lived in the Kuban, the results of the expedition were so insignificant that the mountaineers, after the troops were removed, again took up petty predation.

It was some kind of fatal time for the Caucasian line. The need to concentrate troops in the Kuban forced the border along the Terek and Malka to be exposed, and the Chechens, immediately taking advantage of this, attacked the villages of Priblizhnaya and Prokhladnaya.

Prokhladnaya fought back, but in Priblizhnaya the cattle were stolen and up to twenty Cossacks were hacked to death. At the same time, the Novogladkovskaya village on the Terek was attacked, but the old combs did not allow the villages to be taken by surprise and repelled the attack. A hundred Linemen even flew beyond the Terek and returned back with rich booty.

From then on, the combers stood on guard. However, on April 2, 1810, from the tower of Chervlennaya Stanitsa, a strong party was seen crossing the Terek. The commander of the Grebensky regiment, military foreman Frolov, hurried to the crossing and, seeing that the enemy was going back, rushed in pursuit of the Terek. With him there were only three officers and eighty-six Cossacks, but despite this, the brave Frolov galloped to Sunzha, repulsed the enemy cattle and only here he noticed that a thousand-strong party of Chechens was rushing across to cut off his retreat. The carried away daredevils turned for help to the peaceful village of Prince Bamat-Bekovich, but, having received a refusal, they began to retreat, crowding around their prey, which they did not want to leave. So, repelling attack after attack, the Grebens finally reached the Terek and were already a hundred fathoms from the peaceful village when the Chechens surrounded them. Since Bekovich did not allow entry into the village itself for defense, the Combs had to fight back in the field. And while some of them dismounted and held off the mountaineers, others transported the captured loot across the Terek. The situation was becoming critical, especially because the treacherous Bekovich was preparing to attack the Cossacks from the rear during the crossing.

Fortunately, shots were heard in Chervlennaya, and two hundred Cossacks galloped to the rescue. Noticing their approach, Frolov rushed to checkers and, mixing up the crowds of the enemy, took advantage of this moment to retreat beyond the Terek. Unfortunately, in this valiant battle, all the officers were out of action: the two brothers Frolov and Tikhanov, and half of the Cossacks.

The participation of the Kabardians in all the unrest on the Line, especially in the defeat of the Kamennobrodsky village and in the attacks on the Cossack villages along Malka, was beyond doubt. A conspiracy was brewing in Kabarda, and if an uprising did not break out, it was only because the energetic Bulgakov, who never lost his head in danger, quickly moved troops to the Kabardian plain and captured twenty thousand head of cattle, which he immediately ordered to be distributed to satisfy the affected linear inhabitants.

Deprived by this loss of almost all means of subsistence, the Kabardians were forced to come to terms and accept the conditions that Bulgakov dictated to them.

On the appointed day, July 9, 1810, the most noble princes, clergy and brigades of the Kabardian people, numbering thousands of people, gathered on the banks of the Malka River opposite the Prokhladnaya Stanitsa. Bulgakov, wanting to make the ceremony as pompous as possible, ordered the banner of the Kazan regiment to be brought; and when it was unfurled, when the thunder of drums and the sounds of music greeted its appearance, the Kabardians bowed their heads before this symbol of military honor. They took turns approaching the lectern on which the Koran lay, and, shaded by the banner, they swore to be peaceful and good neighbors.

It was decided to seal this solemn act by sending Kabardian deputies to the highest court, for which the Kabardians themselves petitioned; but their request was rejected by Bulgakov himself, who guessed that with this visible sign of devotion to Russia the princes only wanted to disguise their relations with Turkey and gain time.

Turkish emissaries actually scurried all over Kabarda, and their agitation was so successful that the Kabardians soon forgot their promises. On November 2, 1810, large crowds of them, under the leadership of the most honorable owners, gathered behind Malka and stood on the vast plain that lay opposite the Prokhladnaya Stanitsa. Notified of this by the Kabardian bailiff, Bulgakov himself went to the meeting, but when asked about the reason for the gathering, one of the Kabardian princes, Izmail Atazhukov, boldly replied that he had gathered the owners for his own needs.

“You have no right to hold such a meeting without permission,” Bulgakov noted.

- Are you kidding me or what? – Atazhukov impudently objected to him. “I am the eldest of the Kabardian princes and, according to the custom of the peoples, I have the right to hold such meetings at any time.

And then he submitted a request to Bulgakov on behalf of the people, in which the Kabardians sought to receive such rights and privileges that in no case could be given to them. The daring request, of course, remained unfulfilled, and Atazhukov was arrested. Nevertheless, this whole story, together with the continuous destruction of the Line by the mountaineers, caused a great stir, and in St. Petersburg they even began to receive denunciations about the disorderly administration of the Caucasian province.

That things on the Line were really in a sad situation is indisputable, but the fault for this was not Bulgakov’s personal qualities, not a lack of intelligence or energy on his part, but only the unfortunate circumstances that arose for him, which his successors subsequently did not escape.

It is also impossible not to notice that one of the main obstacles to Bulgakov’s activities was the constant bickering with him from the civil authorities, who tried in every possible way to paralyze his orders. He wanted to blame Bulgakov even for something for which he could not possibly be guilty - for example, for the appearance of the plague and the fire of Georgievsk.

To put an end to all these misunderstandings, Major General Verderevsky was sent from St. Petersburg with the rights and authority of the Governor General. But the honest and straightforward Bulgakov, accustomed to using a saber rather than a pen, considered it humiliating to refute the accusations brought against him and did not want to justify himself. Meanwhile, Verderevsky’s actions were no longer directed in his favor, and the consequence of this whole sad story was Bulgakov’s removal from service. At the beginning of 1811, he handed over his position to Lieutenant General Musin-Pushkin, who took over the management of the Line until the arrival of the new chief, Lieutenant General Rtishchev, and he himself went to Russia and soon died there from an apoplexy, leaving behind the memory of a brave and straightforward warrior .

“The bravest of the brave,” as Tsitsianov called him, Semyon Andreevich Portnyagin began his service in 1773 as a private in the Vladimir Infantry Regiment. Eight years later, promoted to officer, he joined the Sumy Hussars and participated in the infantry against the Polish Confederates. But the first time he had to be in a serious battle was only during the Turkish war, during the siege of Ochakov, and then during the assault on Izmail, where he commanded a column that captured an enemy battery.

The three ranks he received for distinction in battles and in a number of partisan exploits in Poland during the uprising of 1792 drew special attention from his superiors, and Emperor Paul, upon his accession to the throne, transferred Portnyagin to the Kharkov Cuirassier Regiment, where he three years, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, colonel, major general and appointed chief of the Narva Dragoon Regiment, located on the Caucasus Line.

Service in Georgievsk, amid daily worries and dangers, placed this regiment at a high level of combat experience. Excellent marksmen and dashing grunts, the dragoons were not inferior to the Kabardians, whom they tried to imitate in horsemanship and horse riding, while remaining at the same time one of the best regiments of regular cavalry with all its advantages over disorganized riders. And in the spring of 1803, when the regiment was moved to Georgia, Tsitsianov, who inspected it on the march, wrote to the sovereign that “thanks to the care of its chief, Major General Portnyagin, the regiment surpasses every expression: the horses, despite the difficult trek through the mountains, are in the best bodies, people are dressed like one person, and sit firmly in their saddles, like real Asians.”

Having barely crossed into Georgia, Portnyagin in the same 1803 already played one of the leading roles in the capture of Ganja, where, after extraordinary assault efforts, he was the first, at the head of his column, to ascend the fortress wall and received George of the 2nd degree. Informing the sovereign about Portnyagin’s actions, Tsitsianov wrote among other things: “It is not I who give him the title of brave, but the soldiers whom he led to the Ganzhin attack.”

Following this, one episode of the Erivan campaign made the name of Portnyagin famous and formidable to the very borders of Persia. When the Persian army, which attacked the blockade corps under the walls of the fortress, was defeated and driven back partly to Kalaakhir, and partly to Garni-Chai, Tsitsianov decided to take advantage of the separation of enemy forces and ordered Portnyagin, with a detachment of nine hundred infantry and cavalry, to make a night attack on Garni -Tea, where the crown Persian prince was camped. Portnyagin knew that he might have to deal with the entire Persian army, but carried away precisely by the riskiness of the enterprise, he boldly took on a dangerous assignment. At first everything went well, and the troops, having covered twenty miles, quietly approached the enemy camp. But at dawn, on the twenty-fourth of July, the Tatar police came across an enemy picket and raised the alarm. The cavalry immediately began to leave the Persian camp, followed by dense masses of infantry; at the same time, messengers flew to Kalaakhir, to Baba Khan, with the news of the Russian attack. And in less than two or three hours Portnyagin was already standing face to face with a Persian army of forty thousand.

One of those terrible moments has arrived when the commander has to decide a fatal dilemma: whether to lose the weapon and save the lives of a thousand soldiers, or to preserve the honor of the weapon and pay for it with thousands of lives. Portnyagin chose the latter and, curled up in a square, slowly, step by step, began to retreat back, suppressed by an enemy forty times superior to him. Soon all the artillery soldiers were wounded, and the officers themselves had to load the guns and perform the duties of lower ranks. For fourteen and a half hours and for more than twenty miles, an uninterrupted battle rumbled. But Portnyagin came out of this critical situation with honor and returned, leaving no trophy in the hands of the enemy: even the bodies of the dead were brought with them to the camp.

Reporting about Portnyagin's unprecedented retreat, Tsitsianov added that the Persians had triumphed in advance of a complete victory, and Baba Khan even sent a messenger to congratulate the Erivan sardar on it, and cannon shots thundered from the fortress in honor of it all day. By evening, the shots, however, fell silent, when the Erivan residents were surprised to see with their own eyes the Russian square, returning in orderly order among the countless enemy hordes surrounding it.

The detachment lost only sixty-four men in this retreat; among those killed, unfortunately, was Portnyagin’s nephew, ensign of the Narva regiment Rybakov, an unusually talented officer, who was especially distinguished by Tsitsianov. Portnyagin was awarded for this feat the Order of St. Anna 1st degree.

When the lack of food forced Tsitsianov to assemble a military council, which decided to retreat from the fortress by a majority of all votes against one, this single vote belonged to Portnyagin. And Tsitsianov fully agreed with him, although he obeyed the decision of the military council. “I foresee,” Tsitsianov wrote to the sovereign, “an unfavorable impression for us and harmful consequences that may arise from the lifting of the blockade, both in Georgia and in the Mohammedan lands adjacent to it, but, obeying the law, I do not have the right to take responsibility for assault, when there is only one General Portnyagin on my side.”

Two years passed, and in the Turkish war that had then begun, Portnyagin again showed a brilliant feat in the storming of the Akhalkalaki fortress, again commanding an assault column and bearing the brunt of the bloody battle on his shoulders. Having under his command only a battalion of rangers, with a reserve of one hundred and fifty Caucasian grenadiers, Portnyagin, through the hellish fire of the enemy, reached the fortress moat and began to climb the wall. The stairs turned out to be short, however, and the huntsmen along with them were thrown into the ditch. Staff Captain Comte de Mont, who was in front of the soldier, was killed outright, Colonel Golovachev and Major Aksenov were wounded, and Portnyagin himself was hit in the head with a stone. He, however, organized a column again, and when the remaining troops, under the command of General Titov and Count Gudovich, had already retreated, Portnyagin, becoming, together with the wounded Golovachev, at the head of the rangers, again rushed to attack, and this time the speed of the attack was so large that the column climbed the wall, captured the tower and captured a cannon and banner there. From here a handful of brave men even descended into the fortress itself, but, not supported by anyone, it was surrounded and lost two hundred people killed, whose corpses were instantly beheaded. For five hours, however, Portnyagin held on to the position he had occupied, waiting in vain for support, and retreated only because the enemy dug in and blew up the tower.

After the siege was lifted, in the same year, Portnyagin took an outstanding part in the general battle with the Turks at Arpachai, and the next year, when hostilities were transferred to Persia, he was again at the siege of Erivan, which was closely familiar to him from the time of Tsitsianov. Since this time the Erivan Khan with his cavalry left the fortress to disturb communications with Georgia, the commander-in-chief entrusted the guard of the Russian rear to General Portnyagin. And Portnyagin brilliantly carried out the assignment: he defeated the Persian cavalry twice and, not content with throwing them back beyond Arak, he himself swam across this fast river and on the right bank finally scattered the enemy hordes.

Portnyagin's energetic actions secured the detachment's messages. Unfortunately, the assault undertaken by Gudovich failed, and the late season, blizzards and deep snows, which blocked the mountain passes and stopped the movement of transport, forced them to retreat from the fortress again without success. Gudovich gave full justice to Portnyagin’s services in this campaign. “The excellent condition of the Narva Dragoon Regiment commanded by him (Portnyagin) deserves special attention,” he wrote to the sovereign. At a time when the Borisoglebsky regiment returned from the expedition on foot, when even the Cossacks had lost most of their accustomed and hardy horses, the Narva dragoons could have easily withstood a new campaign, since their horses were kind, fresh and drawn into the labors of bivouac life.”

Military operations this year began on July 21 with a sudden invasion of the Persians on Amamli, Bekant and Gumri. Part of the Saratov regiment that occupied these villages, under the command of the brave Major Zgorelsky, repelled the attack. The Persians then rushed at the transport traveling from Tiflis to the Shuragel distance, and on the same day captured it at the pass over the Bezobdalskaya Mountain, which was helped by the extreme steepness of the ascents and descents, which forced the convoy to stretch so that its head was already descending into the Bombak valley, while while the tail was still near the village of Gergery, at the northern foot of Bezobdal.

Subsequently, one officer, a participant in this unfortunate affair, told the sad details of it.

“My brother and I,” he says, “overtook the transport and rode with the vanguard, which consisted of ten infantry and several mounted Armenians. Descending from the mountain, we heard strong rifle and cannon fire towards the village of Amamly, from which we could conclude that things were hot. At this very time, a large crowd of Persian cavalry rushed at us with a boom from a side gorge. In an instant we were surrounded... Eighteen years have passed since this unfortunate moment, but even now I cannot remember my situation at that time without horror! At the first boom of the enemy, the Armenians abandoned us and galloped back, and we, sitting with the infantry behind one of the transport carts, began to shoot back. The bullets pierced us right through, and suddenly, to top it all off, our mobile fortress, the last hope of salvation, was carried away by frightened buffalos. Finding ourselves completely unprotected, we were overthrown and crushed by numerous cavalry. My poor brother, torn from his horse before my eyes, was beheaded. His soldiers suffered the same fate. I was stunned by a saber blow to the head and woke up in the evening, tied to some horse that was quickly rushing along a mountain road in a crowd of unfamiliar riders. Twisted with a lasso, I lay supine on a high pack, and my wounded head, hanging down, pounded against the bow and the hard luggage of woolen chuvals with booty. Shall I tell you, gentlemen, what booty, what terrible treasure I was tied to? At the first overnight stay, I learned that these were the dead heads of my brother and my compatriots...”

The capture of the transport was, however, the only happy episode for the Persians during this invasion. The next day, the twenty-second of July, they repeated the attack simultaneously on Amamly, Artik and Gumri, but, repelled again by the Saratov regiment, they made a third and final attempt on the twenty-third, and were again completely defeated by Major Zgorelsky, the soul of this three-day battle. The total loss of the Russians was small, but, unfortunately, Zgorelsky himself was seriously wounded in the last case near Amamli. The Emperor awarded him the rank of lieutenant colonel and in this rank granted him the Order of St. Vladimir 3rd degree.

These defeats and the very successful raid made by Portnyagin himself into the Persian possessions in the summer of 1810 so secured the borders that the new commander-in-chief in Georgia, cavalry general Tormasov, found it possible to move troops from the Bombak province to Turkey to participate in the siege of Akhaltsikhe.

The short siege, which lasted only ten days, however, gave Portnyagin more than one opportunity to show new military distinctions. So, on the tenth of November, approaching Akhaltsikhe, he defeated the Turkish corps that met him, and the cavalry, personally led into the attack by Portnyagin, took the kettledrums and banner from the enemy. During the siege, he took part in repelling many Turkish attacks, and during the retreat he commanded the rearguard and withstood a stubborn three-day battle, preventing the enemy from disturbing the main Russian forces.

Awarded for this campaign the Order of St. Vladimir 2nd degree, Portnyagin returned to Tiflis in the fall of 1811 and was appointed military commander of the Kakheti district.

The Kakheti uprising under Paulucci, unfortunately, took Portnyagin by surprise. Captured by him in the village of Sagaregio with insignificant forces, he could not prevent anything and only with the help of the Kherson grenadiers who arrived in time could he himself retreat to Tiflis. Meanwhile, his Narva regiment, upset by the losses of officers, soldiers and horses, was sent to the Caucasian line, and from there to the cavalry reserves that were then being formed in Brest-Litovsk. Portnyagin surrendered the regiment to Colonel Ulan and was enlisted in the army. But then, in February 1812, he was appointed, in place of Lieutenant General Rtishchev, as head of the nineteenth infantry division and commander of the troops on the Caucasian line.

Having moved to Georgievsk, where twelve years earlier his military service in the Caucasus had begun, Portnyagin found the Line in a very sad state. There were few troops, and they could hardly repel the constant attacks of the Chechens and Kabardians, who had become especially daring during the reign of his predecessor, and meanwhile, unrest began between the Nogais on the right flank, and a certain Seid-Efendi, a Turkish subject, was already approaching the Kuban to openly take their side and support the uprising.

Portnyagin's position was all the more difficult because he had to reckon not only with the hostile population of the mountaineers, but also with the local civilian authorities, who continually burst into the area of ​​his military orders and paralyzed all his actions. Someone, speaking about Portnyagin’s predecessor, Bulgakov, very wittily said that “with small forces two wars cannot be fought,” and that “Bulgakov, busy during his command with repelling partisan attacks by the governor’s office, unwittingly allowed the Trans-Kubans to destroy several Russian villages.” This bitter truth was now repeated in full force over Portnyagin. A determined and energetic soldier, Portnyagin never hesitated to resort to weapons. The civil authorities, on the contrary, did not share the benefits that could come from the bold and decisive orders of the military leader, and put up obstacles for him at every step, against which even Portnyagin’s iron energy was broken. A war has begun on paper, and the war is merciless. In one of the articles reviewing this time, it was rightly noted that the linear Cossacks wasted less blood in the fight in the Kuban and Terek than their military and civilian commanders wasted ink in mutual hostility among themselves. The honest and straightforward Bulgakov died in vain in this inky whirlpool of slander, quarrels and denunciations. But his sad example did not teach Portnyagin to be more careful. The brave general went ahead, as he once did against entire Persian armies, and became a victim of intrigue.

It began with the fact that when news was received about the gathering of Trans-Kubans who were preparing to attack Russian villages, as was the case under Bulgakov, Portnyagin immediately ordered to arm the peasants and distributed them guns, cartridges and sabers. The civil authorities who controlled the peasants for some reason saw in their armament a measure dangerous for the peace of the region, and asked Rtishchev to cancel the order. Rtishchev, who constantly reported on the peaceful mood of the mountaineers, was unpleasantly surprised by Portnyagin’s order and reprimanded him, ordering at the same time not only to disarm the peasants, but even to transfer the money used to buy gunpowder to the account of the head of the Line.

“I don’t see any need for arming the peasants,” he wrote to Portnyagin, “because if any village were really in danger from predators, then you, having troops, are obliged to protect its inhabitants yourself. Moreover, residents must protect themselves from attack by having villages surrounded by ditches, not living on farmsteads and not settling in separate houses.”

Soon, an incident occurred that further increased Rtishchev’s displeasure. In January 1813, four thousand Chechens gathered against the Shelkozavodskaya village on the Terek, threatening to invade the Caucasus province. The chief of the Suzdal regiment, Colonel Prince Eristov (later the famous conqueror of Tarviz), warned them of their intentions and, crossing the Terek, routed the entire crowd. Portnyagin asked to reward Eristov. Rtishchev not only refused the reward, but also expressed positive displeasure for such expeditions, finding that it was the job of the Line’s leaders to gain the friendly disposition of the mountain peoples not with weapons, but with affectionate treatment and calm neighborhood.

The peace-loving mood of the commander-in-chief so encouraged the Chechens to make new daring raids that they surged onto the Termk line and, like the water of a broken dam, spilled over the roads. Driven out of patience, the ardent Eristov, despite the previous lesson, crossed the Terek a second time and, after a stubborn battle, destroyed several villages along the Sunzha. The defeat of the Chechens this time was so instructive that they asked for mercy and gave amanats, promising not to disturb the Russian borders anymore. The circumstances of the case were such that it was no longer possible to accuse Eristov of anything, and for both cases he received the rank of general and the Order of St. Vladimir 3rd degree.

While holding back the highlanders on the Terek, Portnyagin at the same time continuously sent flying detachments beyond the Kuban to monitor the state of affairs there. But since this aroused Rtishchev’s constant displeasure, Portnyagin was finally forced to give in and submit to the unconditional demands of the commander-in-chief. The execution of someone else's program, which did not at all correspond to the then state of affairs on the line, however, could not be successful. Left alone, the highlanders quickly strengthened their strength and on September 6, 1813, breaking into Russian borders, they took with them up to two thousand Nogai families beyond the Kuban. Two expeditions undertaken by Portnyagin to return the fugitives were unsuccessful; It was only possible to recapture the cattle and part of the property - everything else managed to take refuge in the land of the Abazas.

Encouraged by success, the mountaineers decided to repeat the invasion, and the spies, coming to Georgievsk, even named the names of those villages that were doomed to destruction. Then Portnyagin himself crossed the Kuban and, attacking the crowd, scattered it before it was ready for the campaign. But on the way back, the small Russian detachment was surrounded by twelve thousand highlanders; They, however, failed to break the detachment’s staunch defense, and after a four-day battle they dispersed, leaving in place more than two thousand bodies of their best riders. Eyewitnesses say that when the Circassians had already lost hope of destroying the detachment with open force, they launched a huge herd of angry buffaloes at it, hoping to hit the checkers under this cover, but their cunning maneuver failed, because the herd, frightened by the shots that met it, jumped back and crushed the Trans-Kubans themselves.

Unfortunately, the entire result of Portnyagin’s brilliant campaign was paralyzed by the failure suffered almost at the same time beyond the Kuban by military sergeant major Sychov. Sychov, with two hundred soldiers and Don Cossacks, was sent to pursue the fleeing Nogais, but, approaching their nomads, he was suddenly surrounded by a party of four thousand and, not having the courage to pave the way for himself with weapons, entered into negotiations. The mountaineers demanded the extradition of two Nogai owners detained on the Line, and took three Russian officers as security.

Portnyagin, a worthy student of Tsitsianov, naturally saw in this whole matter a shameful stain on the honor of Russian weapons and immediately removed Sychov from command. The commander-in-chief did not look at this matter this way. By his order, the Vladikavkaz commandant, Major General Delpozzo, immediately began a formal investigation of Portnyagin himself, and one of the reasons for his accusation was the removal from office of the chief Nogai bailiff, Major General Mengli-Girey, in whom the Nogais had great confidence. This was indeed Portnyagin’s mistake, but to attribute any special significance to this circumstance alone was extremely unfair. And Delpozzo knew very well the secret springs that moved this whole story, but he was completely silent about them in his report to the commander-in-chief.

The point was actually the following. Even during the rule of the Line by General Rtishchev, Mengli-Girey’s brother, Bakhty-Girey, was killed by one of the Trans-Kuban owners, Prince Loov. Mengli-Girey then demanded that Loov be dealt with to the fullest extent of Russian laws, since the murder was committed on Russian territory. But Loov fled to the Abazas, and Bakhta-Girey’s supporters, deprived of the opportunity to take revenge on him personally, transferred the bloody cannon not only to the entire Abaza people, who sheltered the criminal, but also to the Nogais, among whom he was killed. Alarmed, Rtishchev sent one native, Lieutenant Taganov, to the mountains so that he would somehow capture Loov. The cunning Taganov was not slow to insinuate himself into the prince’s confidence and managed to persuade him to come to Georgievsk, as if to reconcile with Mengli-Girey. But as soon as the straightforward Loov, who believed this word, crossed the Russian border, he was captured, brought to Georgievsk and put on trial.

Rtishchev at this time had already been appointed commander-in-chief in Georgia and, leaving for Tiflis, ordered Portnyagin to send Loov to Astrakhan, since on the Line, where he had many friends, attempts could be made to free him. Portnyagin did not hide his contempt for Taganov, as a man who played with his word of honor, and delayed sending Loov until Rtishchev, on the complaint of Mengli-Girey, reminded him of his order. Then Loov was sent, but fled from Astrakhan, and Mengli-Girey suspected the participation of Portnyagin himself in this matter. Deeply harboring resentment and hatred in his soul, he again complained to Rtishchev, and meanwhile began to worry the Nogais. And so, when his intrigues were discovered, Portnyagin removed him from office.

Delpozzo, however, did not consider it necessary to touch upon the details of the matter and simply reported to the commander-in-chief that the reason for the Nogai unrest was: firstly, in the oppression that the linear Cossacks did to them mainly on land issues; secondly, the removal from office of General Mengli-Girey, who alone kept the violent Nogais in obedience; and thirdly, in the weak and careless protection of the border line by the Cossacks. Delpozzo proved the latter circumstance by the fact that the Turkish Nazir Seyid-Efendiy, having broken through the cordons near Georgievsk itself with a party of one and a half thousand horsemen, before leading the Nogais away, remained in Russian possessions for five days, unnoticed by anyone.

As for the Sychov case, Delpozzo fully confirmed Portnyagin’s report, but at the same time expressed his own opinion that “Sychov’s actions were completely legal and correct” and that “prudence itself prompted him to carry out the way he did it, for persistence did not promise nothing but misery." “As for the three officers,” adds Delpozzo, “they entered the pledge voluntarily and without the slightest coercion from the superior.”

Portnyagin could not digest such a view of military honor and replied that “such prudence closely borders on shameful cowardice, unworthy of the Russian name.” The Commander-in-Chief recognized, however, that Delpozzo's conclusion was quite reasonable and, having released Sychov from arrest, returned the regiment to him.

Portnyagin, at the insistence of Rtishchev, was court-martialed and removed from his post as head of the Line. He was even accused of the fact that “Taganov, after the capture of Loov, instead of gratitude for his service, received only insulting contempt from Portnyagin,” and that Portnyagin himself went beyond the Kuban to pursue the Nogais, whereas, in the opinion Rtishchev, he should have used troops not to punish the mountaineers, but to protect the various kinds of Nogai cattle remaining on our side, which amounted to a million heads. “Then,” wrote the simple-minded Rtishchev, “the Nogais, seeing that their property was preserved intact with us, would very soon feel their recklessness and themselves would return again because of the Kuban.” If such an idea had arisen in the dreamy head of some young civil administrator, it would have been understandable, but it is completely incomprehensible how Rtishchev, an old soldier, could seriously present such demands to Portnyagin.

Nevertheless, the court's verdict was confirmed. Deprived of service and having handed over control of the region to Major General Delpozzo, Portnyagin retired to Tiflis and there, amid the living memories of his recent brilliant exploits, he lived for several years in poverty and without any business. Ermolov's arrival in Georgia finally brought him out of this situation, and Portnyagin, again enlisted in the service, was appointed on October 9, 1822 district general of the eighth district of the internal guard. He remained in this position for five years and died on the twentieth of April, 1827.

Quietly and imperceptibly, far from military affairs, the last years of the general passed, whose combat courage and military talents Tsitsianov himself marveled at.

During the command of General Portnyagin’s Line, an out-of-the-ordinary, almost incredible, but nevertheless quite reliable event happened in the Caucasus, clearly showing how easily, with a certain freedom of action, complex issues could be resolved, on which, under other conditions, they worked in vain the best Caucasian administrators. This event - the formation of a militia from the highlanders - had a brilliant beginning, but ended with a somewhat dramatic end, or rather, it had no end at all, since an unforeseen accident, unfortunately, prevented its full development and completion. There is every reason to say: “Unfortunately,” because the very idea of ​​the enterprise was unusually successful and even grandiose; if the means used to carry it out were not entirely legal, then, perhaps, only because, with the routine and bureaucracy that reigned then, capable of killing any good undertaking in the bud, there were no others.

One day, in the spring of 1812, a young officer in a Horse Guards uniform arrived in Georgievsk from St. Petersburg. It was Lieutenant Sokovnin, the aide-de-camp of the sovereign, who presented an open order to the head of the Line, ordering him to form a cavalry regiment of Circassians and follow him into the active army.

The idea of ​​​​forming a mounted militia from the highlanders was far from new. Even during the War of the Austrian Succession, Empress Elizaveta Petrovna wanted to have a militia recruited from the Caucasian highlanders with our foreign army, but since there were no volunteers among them then, the idea itself was abandoned. Then Pavel Sergeevich Potemkin, living in Yekaterinograd, dreamed for a long time of collecting the Caucasian Life Hundred for the Empress, and if this attempt failed, it was only because everything was done through tenths of hands. Then Prince Tsitsianov also wrote to Emperor Alexander about the benefits of maintaining a Caucasian cavalry squadron in the Life Guards in St. Petersburg and even proposed Colonel Izmail Bey, who knew the Russian language well, as its commander, but the matter was not carried out due to financial considerations, as well as , if nothing more, from the inability to instill confidence in the Kabardians in this new business for them.

The last attempt in this direction was made by Lieutenant General Rtishchev, who finally managed to persuade Kabarda to send a special deputation to St. Petersburg for this purpose. Kindly treated by the sovereign, the Kabardians promised to field a hundred guards, but they could not fulfill this, since, upon returning home, they themselves were expelled from their homeland by the verdict of the aulii - “God’s people.” The failure was then most to blame for Rtishchev, who allowed into the deputation people of dark origin, humble and poor families who had no influence on their compatriots and whose promises therefore meant absolutely nothing.

Now the question of the mountain militia was raised for the fifth time, and Sokovnin took it up ardently, pointing out, among other things, the important political significance that it would have. And he was, of course, right when he said that the militia that would go to Russia would at the same time serve as a reliable amanate, a hostage, curbing the predatory instincts of their compatriots.

Possessing a brilliant appearance and an excellent education, Sokovnin managed to win over the Caucasian authorities, and things moved forward quickly and successfully. Vice-Governor Wrangel immediately released Sokovnin a significant amount of money, and General Portnyagin himself traveled along the Line and, thanks to his influence, managed to persuade many of the noblest princes to join the militia. The first to appear at the gathering place were the princes Bekovichi-Cherkassky, Roslam-bek and Araslan-Girey - a descendant of Genghis Khan, the last branch of the ancient Crimean khan family. Following their example, the Uzdeni, nobles and workers who were subject to them began to gather. Meanwhile, Sultan Mengli-Girey and Prince Aitek Misoustov recruited militias in the villages of the Trans-Kuban Circassians. The success of the matter exceeded the wildest expectations, and, instead of a hundred guards, which had previously only been dreamed of, it was now possible to send several thousand selected cavalry into the active army.

Much was expected from the Kabardian militia. Everyone knew the excellent fighting qualities of this natural and, without a doubt, the best cavalry in the world. It was possible to foresee in advance what miracles the flying detachments of these Centauri, as elusive as air, could perform if only they were thrown on the flanks and rear of the enemy army.

The gathered Kabardians were already completely ready to set out on a campaign. Beautiful, slender, dressed in iron chain mail, shining with expensive weapons, they presented a beautiful sight, and looking at them, one could say without hesitation that no cavalry in the world could withstand their crushing blow at checkers. Unfortunately, this whole high-profile affair dissipated like smoke, and the entire gathering of these properly organized thousands, these best Asian riders eager for battle, turned out to be a mere fantasy of an overly ardent young imagination.

While Portnyagin and Sokovnin were traveling through the fortresses on the Caucasian line, one of the advisers to the treasury chamber, a certain Khandakov, began to doubt that such an important matter as the formation of the Circassian army could be entrusted to such a young officer, and in this sense sent a report to the minister finance. Sokovnin, having learned about this, asked, for his part, that Portnyagin send a courier with an emergency report to the Minister of Police, Adjutant General Balashov, who was then under the sovereign in the army. Portnyagin appointed the efficient sword belt-ensign Zverev, but, no matter how much the latter was in a hurry, Khandakov’s courier still arrived in St. Petersburg much sooner.

The response of the Minister of Finance created an unimaginable turmoil in Georgievsk. They informed from St. Petersburg that Sokovnin was an impostor, that he had no instructions from anyone, and that he should be immediately arrested and sent to the capital under guard. Everyone was baffled by the fact that the inquiries that had previously been sent about Sokovnin to various ministries always received completely satisfactory answers.

The general bewilderment was resolved by Sokovnin himself when he was arrested at an evening hosted by the commander of the Kazan Infantry Regiment, Colonel Debu. Taking a pen in his hands, he began to sign the handwriting of the sovereign and the ministers, and so skillfully that everyone was amazed at the inimitable similarity.

Sokovnin explained that his real name was Medox, that he was an Englishman, born in Moscow, where his father was the founder and owner of Moscow theaters, that he himself was a cornet, listed in the cavalry and recently appointed to serve under the Don Ataman Platov.

Medox-Sokovnin immediately admitted that he knew about all the papers written on his case, and that they all disappeared at one of the intermediate stations where he had an accomplice. The answers, composed by him himself, were submitted to the same station and received in Georgievsk. Somehow, by mistake, he did not intercept Khandakov’s denunciation, which became fatal not only for him, but also for the entire enterprise he cherished and so successfully started.

All of Madox’s actions were arranged so skillfully and deftly that any thought of forgery would have seemed absurd, and the handsome appearance of the young guard, the adjutant’s uniform and excellent education complemented the rest and involuntarily subjugated everyone to his charm.

Madox calmly announced that he knew the fate that awaited him, but did not lose hope of the opportunity to justify himself, since his intentions were the most honest. He really carried out financial reporting with remarkable accuracy and conscientiousness. Medox distributed money to the Circassians only in the presence of the commandants, with their testimony, and no one could reproach him for spending at least one government penny on personal needs. On the contrary, the investigation revealed that he even spent his last three thousand rubles, which he inherited from his father, for this purpose.

“I wanted to serve the fatherland in troubled times,” he told Portnyagin, “and if I broke the law, I did nothing against my conscience. I didn’t have any selfish goals: you saw for yourself who and when I gave the money. Finally, I'm easy to test. The Circassians are ready to march, and I would advise not to disband them.”

At the end of the investigation, Medox was sent under arrest to St. Petersburg, where, by order of Count Vyazmitinov, he was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. His trial, which lasted more than twelve years, was sentenced to the fullest extent of the laws of that time. But Emperor Alexander took part in the ardent enthusiasm and replaced the grave punishment with exile to live in Irkutsk, where Medox remained until the thirties.

Irkutsk was extremely interested in the personality of Medox. It was accepted everywhere except at the Governor General's house. They talked a lot about him, but from this much nothing positive and clear emerged; he remained, as before, a completely mysterious person. They said then that he was a member of some European secret society, had great connections in the capital and abroad, that from various persons, but from whom it was unknown, he quite often received a lot of money. Whether he was Medox - and this remained in doubt. He never told anything about himself, but he loved to talk about the Caucasus, about the customs of the highlanders, and in general about life there, which, apparently, he knew perfectly well.

– How long were you there, Madox? - they asked him once.

- Not very long.

-What were you doing there?

“I had an assignment, but envy and intrigue ruined a wonderful undertaking.

– What enterprise?

But he immediately changed the conversation, and nothing more was obtained from him.

We also know little about the further fate of this mysterious person. Upon returning from Siberia, Medox lived for some time in St. Petersburg, then he was again involved in some dark matter, was kept for a long time in the Shlisselburg fortress and was released from there only at the very beginning of the reign of Alexander P. Medox died on December 5, 1859 and was buried in the Tula province , Kashira district, in the village of Popovka.

The incident with Medox did not remain without unpleasant consequences for other characters who became unwitting accomplices of his illegal actions. For the unrest discovered on the Line, the Caucasian authorities were reprimanded. Ten thousand spent on the formation of the mountain militia were to be recovered from Vice-Governor Wrangel, and the costs of sending a courier to the active army were to be recovered from Major General Portnyagin.

This is how this semi-fantastic story played out, which for a long time served as the subject of stories on the Caucasian line. It remains to be regretted that the highlanders were disbanded; there is reason to think that their appearance in the European theater of war could significantly influence the course of military operations and, on the other hand, introduce many new issues into the field of military science and cavalry affairs. It is also possible that this circumstance would lead to a rapprochement between the mountaineers and the Russians and would have an impact on the entire subsequent course and events of the Caucasian war...

Circassians, seeing European cities, European life and getting acquainted with European concepts, could not avoid their influence and, returning to their homeland, would naturally soften the hatred of Asian tribes towards them and even spread respect for them. The idea of ​​influencing the Caucasian peoples in this way is so clear and simple that its implementation could only be a matter of time. And indeed, already during the time of Paskevich, the Life Guards Caucasian-Mountain Half-Squadron, which served in St. Petersburg, and the Muslim Cavalry Regiment, together with the Caucasian-Mountain Division, were formed, located in Warsaw, at the main headquarters of the army. At the same time, a special detachment made up of the best mountain families, mainly Kabardians, became the personal escort of the sovereign. And the high trust in the Caucasian highlanders could not but arouse in them a feeling of pride and devotion to the Russian monarchs. The composition of these troops was not constant, and while some returned to their mountains, others came to learn European life.

The last commander of the troops on the Caucasian line before Ermolov, who began a completely new period of the Caucasian war, was Major General Ivan Petrovich Delpozzo, a native of Tuscany. He entered Russian service in 1775 as a volunteer, was for a long time an officer in the ground cadet corps, and in 1795, with promotion to colonel, he was appointed commander of the Kazan infantry regiment located on the Line. Here he had the imprudence to turn to Emperor Pavel Petrovich with some kind of request, which was found to be “indecent,” and Delpozzo was removed from service.

On the Terek, between the villages of Novogladkovskaya and Shchedrinskaya, five or six versts from the first, there are, perhaps, still traces of a small fortress that existed here, called Ivanovskaya. It was an earthen fortification, abolished later, when a new fortification, called Amir-Adji-Yurt, was built on the opposite bank of the Terek. It was in this Ivanovo fortress that Delpozzo lived in his small house, and here a terrible misfortune happened to him - he was captured by the highlanders.

On September 20, 1802, on a beautiful autumn morning, Delpozzo and three Greben Cossacks went to the neighboring village of Porabochevskoye. At that time it was still very dangerous on the Terek, and its entire coastal scenery was framed completely differently than it is now. It seemed that an eternal, endless night reigned in its trans-river forests; the sound of an ax and the ringing cry of a man rarely broke their silence. But the Chechens skillfully used these forests for their attacks, and when a rifle shot echoed with a distant and fragmentary echo, it would happen that along the coastal rocks, the Cossack guards, listening to it, would already ask the alarming question: “Are they targeting an animal or a person?” Often on dark nights the blow of a horse's hoof on granite was heard, and a homeless wanderer, thrown out of the threshold of his hut by enmity or hunger, like a ghost, loosening the reins and whistling in the air with a wide cloak, disappeared with his horse into the foaming river, boldly getting out to the opposite bank to to wait for the Cossack to make a mistake.

It was through such a forest, which in those days approached the Porabochevsky village itself, that Delpozzo and his combs were passing, when suddenly, at one turn, from the very thicket of bushes intertwined with thick grapes and hops, mountaineers jumped out. There were twenty-one of them. Chopping up the guards and the coachman, cutting off the tugs at a gallop - all that took one minute. Delpozzo was left alone and unarmed. He defended himself with a cane for a long time, but finally, wounded by a saber, he fell exhausted. The Chechens knew who they were dealing with and spared the life of the old general in the hope of a good ransom. They threw a lasso around his neck and dragged him along, forcing him with cruel blows of his own cane. Finally, Delpozzo was tied up, thrown over the saddle and taken beyond the Terek, to the Germenchug aul, from where only several months later they finally received news that the mountaineers were demanding twenty thousand silver rubles for him.

For the negotiations, a translator was used, a certain Alikhanov, who had great family connections and strong kunaks in Chechnya.

He saw a terrible and disastrous picture in Germenchug, when he was led into the hut where the ill-fated captive was kept... Before him was not a man, but a skeleton. Heavy trenches hung on his arms and legs, a thick iron ring with a huge padlock was put on his neck, and from this ring a heavy chain was threaded through the wall of the hut and secured from the outside to a thick and strong pole. Delpozzo's bed was a torn piece of sheepskin thrown on the bare floor, and he had almost no clothes on. The old man, as Alikhanov said afterward, either cried like a child, or, cheering up, joked about the chains and talked about the vicissitudes of human destinies. The mountaineers first demanded from Alikhanov a whole cart of silver, then reduced this demand to several bags and finally settled the matter for four thousand two hundred rubles in small silver coins. With this news the translator came to the Line. We agreed to give the required amount, but here we encountered a new difficulty - we were afraid that the Chechens would detain the person sent with the money and commit new treachery; The Chechens refused to give up hostages. Then the commander-in-chief in Georgia, Lieutenant General Prince Tsitsianov, took an active part in Delpozzo’s fate, demanded Shamkhal Tarkovsky’s assistance in this matter, and after the defeat of the Jaro-Belokan Lezgins, he made it a condition for them to rescue Delpozzo, promising to return from sixty to one hundred prisoners for this ; otherwise, he threatened to sell them all to distant lands and use the proceeds to redeem Delpozzo. The frightened Jarians really worked more energetically than anyone else. Meanwhile, Prince Tsitsianov ordered General Shepelev, who was then in charge of the Caucasian line, to punish the Aksaev villages through which the predators passed with the prisoner, and to pound all the Chechen cattle that walked in the valley between the Terek and Sunzha. Two companies located in the Shchedrinskaya village, fifty Greben Cossacks and two guns moved beyond the Terek at night. The Cossacks quickly drove away the herds and, under the cover of infantry, transported them to the Russian side, before the Chechens from nearby villages had time to gallop to the alarm. The whole thing ended in a small shootout. The baranta was immediately sold for ten thousand rubles, and from this amount eight thousand four hundred rubles were deducted, that is, twice the agreed amount, for the ransom; Alikhanov again went to Germenchug, handed over money to the mountaineers, and Delpozzo was released, having been in captivity for more than a year.

Upon his return from captivity, Delpozzo was again recruited as a major general and appointed bailiff of the Kabardian people.

From the time of Potemkin until Delpozzo’s appointment to this position, the system followed by the leaders of the Caucasian line in managing the highlanders was to attract influential people to their side through gifts and money and thereby undermine their authority among their compatriots, who generally looked askance at everything. rapprochement with the Russians. Inflaming all sorts of class and tribal enmity, the leaders of the Line tried to arm the princes against each other and against the Warks and then, supporting the Warks against the princes, aroused an endless series of internal unrest. The warring parties, of course, each turned to the Russians for help, and political calculations determined who should be given it. Tsitsianov was a complete opponent of this system, finding that it did more harm than good, since, by supporting enmity, it itself turned Kabardians into total predators. Tsitsianov decided to radically change the treatment of the mountaineers and, holding them back with an iron fist, gradually introduced the beginnings of civilization and enlightenment into their lives. This was the responsibility of the Kabardian bailiff - a more or less independent person, in whose actions and orders none of the outside commanders had the right to interfere. For his part, Delpozzo eagerly set about the new business. Trying to win the hearts of the Kabardians with meekness and condescension and taking advantage of every opportunity to bring them closer to European customs and concepts, he sometimes went much further in this direction than he should have. So, for example, while in Greater Kabarda, near the Konstantinogorsk fortress, at the foot of one of the Beshtau mountains, the Scots Brontov and Paterson founded a colony of mountain people and slaves with the goal of preaching the light of Christian teaching to the wild mountaineers, Delpozzo, on the contrary, patronized their faith , built mosques and encouraged trade itself, often even to the detriment of domestic benefits. The tribal courts, which were the subject of constant displeasure of the Kabardians, were destroyed, and their power was handed over to honorary akhunas and qadis. The lands on which Russian fortifications stood were demarcated, and the garrisons, having received a certain number of dessiatines, were obliged under strict responsibility to ensure that their cattle did not enter the adjacent dachas of the Kabardians. Trade developed because every Kabardian freely came to the Line to sell his works, and in Konstantinogorsk and Georgievsk mosques and rich caravanserais were built for this purpose. But most importantly, Delpozzo paid attention to the education of the younger generation - in the two most important points, Georgievsk and Yekaterinograd, he established schools in which the children of Kabardian owners and princes entered; upon completion of the course here, they were supposed to be sent to cadet corps and released as officers into the army.

Unfortunately, all these measures did not lead, however, to the desired results, they did not make the predatory Kabardians better than they were, and even on the contrary, much went to the detriment of the interests of Russia.

With the destruction of the tribal courts, bribery and unrest began, and the clergy tried to tilt every matter to the benefit of Turkey of the same faith. The delimitation of lands caused general displeasure on the Line and served as a source of eternal bickering and disputes, often ending in bloody clashes. Free trade with the Kabardians brought not only goods into Russian borders, but also a plague that devastated entire villages. Mosques and caravanserais. which cost the treasury enormous expenses, stood empty, and although children appeared in schools, sending them to St. Petersburg was limited to isolated exceptional cases. Widely taking advantage of their privileges, especially in relation to trade, the Kabardians did not miss the easiest ways to make money and still robbed the Line, drove away livestock and took prisoners, whom they sold to distant mountains. It was at this time that their bloodiest uprisings, pacified by the weapons of General Glazenap, date back. There was no point in even thinking about the establishment of a guards squadron, which Tsintsianov dreamed of, because not a single Kabardian wanted to part with his homeland. Later, already under Gudovich, Delpozzo made an attempt to gather the Kabardian militia to participate in the campaign against the Chechens, but the Kabardians only reached Sunzha and here they discovered such claims that they considered it best to disband them home. Gudovich apparently preferred Potemkin's system to Tsinianov's. At least he wrote to Delpozzo regarding the Chechen campaign: “I extremely regret that the Kabardians did not have to be used in the present case with the Chechens, for my whole goal was to quarrel these two peoples with each other, to create enmity between them and thereby, over time, weaken them."

And since the main reason for the failure in the campaign against the Chechens was the reluctance of the Kabardians to fight against their coreligionists, it goes without saying that this circumstance greatly alarmed and upset Gudovich.

“Have the Kabardians,” he wrote to Delbpotspo, “forgot their duty and oath, according to which they pledged to be loyal subjects and recognize every enemy of Russia as their enemy, despite their common faith and nothing else. I must conclude from this act that if the Turks do something this summer from Anapa, then the Kabardians will also refuse to act against them, because the Turks have the same faith with them, and then what good is their obedience and citizenship to us? ?

These thoughts were quite fair, and Delpozzo, having been a bailiff for almost seven years. left Kabarda in the same position in which it was before. Having handed over his position to Lieutenant Colonel Rebender, in the summer of 1810 he was appointed chief of the Vladikavkaz garrison regiment and commandant of the Vladikavkaz fortress.

In this place, Delpozzo’s activities were expressed by concerns about improving the Georgian Military Road, the desolation of which inspired him with the idea of ​​​​building a monastery on the top of Krestovaya Mountain, following the example of the St. Bernard Monastery in Switzerland. Although this wonderful idea was not fully realized in the form that Delpozzo thought about it, nevertheless, on the northern slope of the Gudaur Pass through the main ridge, at a place called Baydara, a Cossack post was established and with it two or three Ossetian saklis, made of stone slabs and cobblestones. The government paid the Ossetians money, and the Ossetians obliged for this, during snowstorms at the pass, to ring the bells and provide assistance to all belated travelers. This place has served the same purpose since ancient times, and even King Heraclius settled one Ossetian with his family on the top of this Kaishaur mountain and determined his maintenance; This Ossetian not only gave many people shelter during severe cold weather and snowstorms, but also informed travelers about times when travel was dangerous, and pointed out those places where rubble would inevitably fall. Thus, in 1800, the old man saved the Kabardian regiment crossing the mountains, warning them in time about the danger. For some reason, Prince Tsitsianov refused to support him, and he left Kaishaur Mountain. Now on this place, at an altitude of eight thousand seven hundred and thirty-two feet above sea level, a barracks has been built, which, after the Kodori fortification, is the highest point inhabited by man in the Caucasus.

A monument to Delpozzo’s command of the Vladikavkaz district remained the annexation of the Ingush tribe that lived in the upper reaches of the Sunzha to Russia. Even a year before this, the relations of the Ingush towards the Russians were quite hostile. It so happened that in April 1809, one of the Ossetian elders, Major Dudarov, who had great influence on the people, was killed near the Vladikavkaz fortress itself by the elder of the Ingush tribe Shikh-Murza. Both of them came to Vladikavkaz to see Dudarov’s relative Devlet-Mirza. But for some reason Dudarov upset the Ingush at this meeting, and he was not accepted by Devlet. Then Shikh-Murza left Vladikavkaz and, waiting for Dudarov on the road, jumped up to him on horseback and crushed his skull with a rifle shot. Dudarov's retinue and the Cossack posts, who rode up to the shot, pursued the killer, but he managed to go to the Ingush village, locked himself in a tower and began to shoot back. Meanwhile, Russian infantry, sent from Vladikavkaz to reinforce the Cossacks, occupied the village, and the killer fled. He was not pursued, but Dudarov’s convoy, having burst into the tower and finding only two women there, relatives of Shikh-Murza, cut them down and plundered their property. The hostile relations of the Ingush were immediately reflected in the frequent breakthroughs of the Chechen parties, which they freely passed through their possessions, but the same raids, as we will see, also served as the reason for the beginning of rapprochement between the Ingush and Russians. In July 1810, a few days before Delpozzo's arrival, the Chechens attacked Vladikavkaz, but were repulsed. Delpozzo's predecessor, Major General Count Ivelich, pursuing the Chechen party, persuaded the nearest villages of the Ingush, in view of the possibility of great profit, to cut off its retreat. The Ingush, who did not understand the consequences, but were tempted by the prey, agreed, and the predators, caught between two fires, suffered such a loss that they even abandoned the body of their leader, Prince Konchokov, at the battle site. Knowing that the Chechens would not leave the act of their fellow countrymen without revenge, Delpozzo, who replaced Ivelich, persuaded the Ingush to temporarily accept the Russian army, and Lieutenant Colonel Firsov, with a detachment of two hundred infantry and one hundred and fifty Cossacks, with three guns, occupied their main village Nazran.

Firsov actually defeated the Chechen party that was trying to attack Nazran, and thereby made reconciliation between the Chechens and Ingush almost impossible. Then the latter, fearing new Chechen invasions, themselves retreated into Russian citizenship, and their example was followed by the neighboring Ossetian tribe of Digorians, who lived in the mountains, towards Greater Kabarda. A Russian garrison remained in Nazran, holding out there until the last period of the Caucasian war. Not content with this, Delpozzo set up another advanced fortification at the very crossing of the Sunzha in Kazakh-Kichu and proposed to gradually advance the fortified Line along the left bank of the Sunzha all the way to the Terek. Unfortunately, lack of funds prevented this intention from being realized at the time, and it was destined to be fulfilled only thirty years later, during the governorship of Prince Vorontsov.

Meanwhile, Delpozzo’s activities attracted the special attention of the commander-in-chief in Georgia, infantry general Rtishchev, who gave him a very important assignment - to investigate the causes of the unrest discovered on the Caucasian line. Delpozzo went to Georgievsk for this purpose and lived there for several months. Unfortunately, the exaggerated reports he made about Portnyagin, a man who enjoyed a well-deserved military reputation in the region; justification of the Cossack major Sychov, who stained himself with capitulation with the Circassians. - an act that ran counter to the concepts of all the best military officers of the Caucasus; excessive concern for the savings of the treasury to the detriment of the contents of the soldiers, whom he, Delpozzo, forced to work for free on all government buildings; finally, the eternal suspiciousness, “which forced him to turn his ear to what lies a dark shadow between the worthy personality of the commander and the noble feelings of his subordinates” - all this together could not gain Delpozzo either special love or special popularity on the line. And if we add to this Delpozzo’s little acquaintance with the order of service and written affairs, which gave rise to various abuses on the part of his office officials, then it becomes clear why his appointment in Portnyagin’s place as the head of the nineteenth infantry division and commander of the troops on the Caucasian Line was accepted by everyone more than cold. The line, during his brief command, indeed not only did not improve, but, on the contrary, fell into even greater disorder. It began with the plague, which, having appeared at the Mikhailovsky post, against Malaya Abasia, soon spread to the very headquarters of the Don Cossack Regiment, located in Batalpashinsk. Delpozzo saw the reason for the appearance of this disease in the well-known greed of the Cossacks for booty; but, as Debu rightly notes, the plague originally entered the Line from Kabarda while Delpozzo was the Kabardian bailiff, and since then has sometimes weakened, but has never completely stopped. They say that Kabardians complained to Delpozzo that the goods they brought, especially burkas, were being held up in quarantine, and that Delpozzo, seeking popularity, ordered the release of Kabardian goods detained in the village of Prokhladnaya, but it was here that the destructive disease first appeared. An untimely desire to promote the Kabardian industry even endangered Delpozzo’s own family. To comply with government interests, moreover, when he was the Vladikavkaz commandant, he did not destroy by fire the infirmary items left after the plague, and this contributed to the spread of the infection not only in Vladikavkaz, but also on the way to Georgia.

Delpozzo’s military activity itself also went on without much success, and of the expeditions during his time, only the campaign to Kabarda was remarkable, which ended, after four months of negotiations, with the issuance of amanates by the Kabardians, who were settled in Yekaterinograd. These amanats, however, soon formed a conspiracy, but, fortunately, their intention to escape was discovered in time by the commander of the Kazan regiment, Major General Debu, and their open resistance was pacified with weapons. The main instigator of the conspiracy, Anzorov, was wounded and died, and the rest were imprisoned in the Kizlyar fortress.

Delpozzo also undertook a campaign to punish the Dzhirakhites who lived in the gorges along the Georgian Military Road. But the advantageous location occupied by this tribe, the slowness of the movements of the Russian detachment and the indecisiveness of Delpozzo made it possible for the perpetrators to take refuge in the mountains and leave behind only empty villages, which were set on fire.

Poor control of the Line led to the fact that by the end of Delpozzo’s command, attacks on Russian borders of unprecedented audacity made even large roads and communications between stations dangerous. Among the major events of this time, one cannot fail to note the murder by the mountaineers of the retired Major Yankovsky, who lived on his own farm, and the capture of Major Shvetsov, one of the best Caucasian officers. The mountaineers refused Delpozzo’s demand to return him, and the unfortunate man languished in captivity until his arrival at the Ermolov Line.

The disorderly state of the Caucasian line did not hide from the watchful eye of the new commander-in-chief. Respecting Delpozzo for the selflessness with which he commanded on the Line, Ermolov nevertheless found it necessary to remove him under a plausible pretext. Upon his return from Persia, at the beginning of 1818, he appointed Delpozzo commandant in Astrakhan, retaining for him all the contents that he received with the rank of division chief.

Delpozzo stayed in Astrakhan for three years and received the Order of St. as a reward for his long service. Vladimir 2nd degree. There he died on the twelfth of February 1821, at eighty-two years of age.

The beginning of mass Russian colonization of the North Caucasus. Russian-Turkish War 1768-1774 was marked by brilliant victories of the Russian army and navy at Larga, Kagul, Chesma. As a result, Russia is firmly entrenched on the Black Sea coast. Under the terms of the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi peace that ended the war, she received the entire eastern coast of the Sea of ​​Azov, territories along the right bank of the Kuban from the mouth to its headwaters and east to the Caspian Sea. The government resettles the Zaporozhye Cossacks here, thereby laying the foundation for the Kuban Cossack Army.

In the eastern Ciscaucasia, the border is established from the Caspian Sea along the Terek and Kalaus rivers to the mouth of the Malki River. In 1763, the city of Mozdok was founded here.

The border strip between Terek and Azov, more than 500 miles long, was not protected, and the border was marked extremely vaguely. Within these territories they roamed, and with them the border from Mozdok to Azov “roamed”. Crowds of highlanders passed through it unhindered, ravaging Russian settlements and nomadic Tatars. It was necessary not only to protect, but also to develop these lands. The government intended to do this with the help of a line of fortresses, military posts, cordons and Cossack villages.

According to the project approved by Catherine II on April 24, 1777, the line of fortifications running from Mozdok to Azov received the official name of Azov-Mozdok and was supposed to consist of ten fortresses, as well as a number of redoubts, cordons, fortified posts and villages in between . Fortresses were to be built on the line: Ekaterinograd, Pavlovsk, Georgievsk, Aleksandrovsk, Northern, Stavropol, Moscow, Don. It was planned to settle Khoper Cossacks from the Don and Volga Cossacks from near Kamyshin and Dubovka in the fortifications (B. Grekov. History of the USSR, vol. I, p. 646).

With the establishment of the Azov-Mozdok line, Russia begins a consistent policy. And the main pioneer, the pioneer in the development of this region was the Cossack - a faithful servant of the Russian state, and the Cossack villages were the power and economic support of this policy.

The government already had experience in developing and protecting new territories: creating not only military fortifications, strong points and Cossack villages in the border strip. The government bore minimal costs, because the entire burden of protecting borders and developing land, all material and financial costs were shifted onto the shoulders of the Cossacks - even for the postal department.

Perhaps it was no coincidence that the government used the Khoper and Volga Cossacks from the flanking points of the Tsaritsyn Line, as the most combat-ready force, but politically unreliable. The Volzhskys were distrusted for their participation in the Pugachev rebellion, and the Khoperts were distrusted for showing little zeal in suppressing it.

The government entrusted the organization of resettlement to the Caucasus to the Astrakhan governor I.V. Yakobi. It was necessary to create the Azov-Mozdok line with the help of Cossack settlers, to provide them with military cover and supplies. The Khopersky and Volzhsky Cossack regiments, the Vladimir Dragoon Regiment, and two battalions of rifle rangers were transferred to his subordination. Dragoons and rangers were the force on which Jacobi had to decisively suppress all attempts of the Cossacks to disobey, revolt or escape. Such measures were provided for by the government within the powers of the governor. It was officially believed that dragoons and rangers were supposed to serve as military cover for work on the line being constructed.

Before the resettlement of the Cossack regiments to the Caucasus in 1776, Jacobi, with Colonel of the General Staff I. German and the commander of the Kabardian regiment N. Ladyzhensky, carried out a detailed reconnaissance and survey of the area of ​​​​a vast area in the north-west direction to Azov and reported their considerations to the government.

In accordance with the government resettlement plan, in May 1777, Jacobi handed the commander of the Khopersky regiment, Colonel K. Ustinov, order No. 989 book. Potemkin, where it was indicated to form a regiment of Khoper Cossacks consisting of 520 people and resettle them together with their families to live in the Caucasus province (GAKK, f. 408, op. 1, unit 1, l. 16). Based on this order, the Khopertsy in full force, but without families, arrived in Tsaritsyn by the beginning of August. From here, on August 6, the Khopersky and Volzhsky Cossack regiments, under the leadership of the commander of the dragoon regiment Shultz, set out on a campaign in the direction of the river. Kuma to the redoubt at the Madzhary tract.

On September 25, the column of regiments, having traveled more than 500 miles, reached the city of Mozdok. Here provisions, tools, building materials, etc. were prepared for the arrivals. The Khopersky regiment was allocated the northern section of the line - the fortresses of Aleksandrovskaya, Severnaya, Stavropolskaya, Moscow, Donskaya.

At the beginning of October, the dragoons and Khoper Cossacks set out for their destination. During the transition, 250 Khopertsy and two squadrons of dragoons were left at the site where the Aleksandrovskaya fortress was planned and began its construction. In 1785 it was renamed the Northern Fortress. The remaining part of the dragoons and Khopers proceeded further and on October 22 arrived at the site of the future Stavropol fortress.

Construction was carried out using accelerated methods: by Cossacks and soldiers, who were paid 5 kopecks for a 14-hour working day. The Nogais brought construction materials. Simultaneously with the construction of the fortress, housing was also built outside its walls.

By the beginning of 1778, the Stavropol and Aleksandrovsk fortresses were basically completed. By 1781, 23,764 rubles were spent on their construction.

In November 1777, by order of Count Rumyantsev, the great Russian commander A.V. Suvorov was appointed commander of the Kuban Corps, who exercised general supervision over the construction of the fortresses of the Azov-Mozdok line and their inspection.

A.V. Suvorov paid special attention to the Stavropol fortress as a junction of the Azov-Mozdok line and the Kuban line perpendicular to it. He presented a large report to Rumyantsev on the economic and political situation of the Trans-Kuban region. At his suggestion, a number of new additional fortifications were built. Among them, in 1784, a number of powerful strongholds were built in the Kuban: Strong Trench, Pregradny Stan and a redoubt at the Nevinny Cape (on the site of Pregradny Stan, the village of Barsukovskaya subsequently arose, where about 150 families were resettled from the villages of Stavropol and Moscow in 1826) .

The government also instructed Suvorov to resettle the Kuban Nogais to free nomads on the left bank of the lower Volga.

In the summer of 1778, the first batch of Cossack families of immigrants arrived in the Stavropol region from Khopr, settling in the fortified villages of Stavropol and Northern. In the late autumn of 1779, a second group arrived from Khopr. 140 Cossack families were settled in each of the four fortress villages.

The greatest hardships during the resettlement fell on those who settled in the villages of Moskovskaya and Donskoy. The transition from the Don to the Caucasus itself took a long time for a number of reasons. Almost half of the horses died. Endless troubles with provisions. They entered winter without supplies of food, feed and fuel. For two years it was not decided what kind of salary and maintenance the Cossacks would receive. The families of Cossack migrants were denied food supplies. Finally, the most important thing is that the villages of Moskovskaya and Donskaya were not ready to receive settlers: a hundred of Yesaul Naydenov, having laid down the fortresses and completed more than half of the work, suspended construction for lack of funds. The settlers did not receive the promised 20 rubles. lifting In his report to Prince Potemkin, Governor Jacobi petitioned for the assignment of grain and cash salaries. Without waiting for an answer to numerous reports, with his authority he ordered the distribution of provisions to the Cossacks on an equal basis with the soldiers. Jacobi, not without reason, stated that “the Cossacks, having fallen into complete need and impoverishment,” did not abandon the line and did not run away. By order of Potemkin, the Cossacks were allowed to use the best lands and forests in unlimited quantities.

1783 turned out to be a difficult year for the Khoperts. The harvest turned out to be below average, and even that was eaten by locusts. However, the military authorities categorically demanded that the Cossacks return 600 quarters of grain issued in the year of their arrival on the line. The matter reached Prince Potemkin, who ordered the arrears to be written off.

By 1781, the Khoper settlers finally settled in new villages on the line. However, settlers from Khopr and Don continued to arrive until the beginning of the eight hundred years, mainly “relatives to relatives.” Cossacks and a very small part of non-military class people settled in the villages, mainly clergy, merchants, and artisans. The four fortress villages were thoroughly equipped with artillery.

The villages of Stavropol, Moskovskaya, Donskaya, and Severnaya formed the Khopersky regimental district with its center in the Stavropol fortress.

The regiment's staff consisted of 16 foremen, 500 Cossacks, grouped into five hundred, and 160 gunners-artillerymen (40 people per village).

On Khopr, Cossack settlers were promised a benefit for three years - exemption from service to settle their households. Arriving at the line, the Cossacks saw that the promised benefit was not worth even thinking about. From the very first days they found themselves drawn into a continuous and exhausting armed struggle with an unusually active “local” enemy. Everyone who was able to hold a weapon found themselves under arms. On Khoper they left inhabited farmsteads, well-groomed fields, orchards, vegetable gardens, and the graves of their ancestors. Here the region was rich, full of tempting hopes, promising independent life and prosperity in the very near future, but hostile. There was everything for the normal development of the Cossack economy: a fertile climate, a mild short winter, fertile land not yet touched by the plow, free pastures with inexhaustible feed. However, it was necessary to live and start farming from scratch, under the roar of guns, the whistle of buckshot and bullets, under the real threat of being killed or captured. Whether the Cossack was building his hut in a still unprotected village, whether he was leading his horse to watering or riding out into the field, he must always have a loaded gun behind his back or a pistol in his belt. As the Cossack song says:

With a rifle always behind my back
The land is wild and hard to settle.

Already in 1779, the highlanders attacked the Stavropol fortress. In January 1778, Kabardians in large forces (about 10 thousand people) attacked the Pavlovsk fortress. In the spring of the same year they attacked the Maryinsky fortress on Zolka. Here, the commander of the Astrakhan (Caucasian) Corps, General Jacobi, was presented with an ultimatum: “Immediately tear down all the fortifications of the Azov-Mozdok line.” While waiting for a response from the general, they massacred 85 people and stole more than 5 thousand heads of livestock. Defeated at the Maryinsk and Pavlovsk fortresses, retreating, the highlanders merged with the detachments that came to the rescue, and again attacked the Maryinsk fortress. Having surrounded it from all sides, they began a siege. A little more than two hundred Cossacks under the command of Captain Baso skillfully repelled several frantic attacks.

A few days before the siege of the fortress, Cossack families arrived from the Volga to the Maryinsk fortress: wives, children, parents. Finding themselves under siege, wives and Cossack girls, dressed in men’s clothing (“it’s sinful and inconvenient to wear women’s clothes”), joined the ranks of the defenders, steadfastly enduring all the hardships of the siege, almost without food or water.

With a coordinated attack by a detachment of the Astrakhan corps and a sortie of the garrison, the highlanders were completely defeated and proposed peace negotiations. The negotiations were difficult with endless breaks, all sorts of tricks, with endless vows and assurances that this would not happen again, that they only wanted peace with the Russians. They offered amanats (hostages), double reward for the losses caused to the Cossacks, but firmly stood their ground: “Tear down all the fortifications of the line.” At this time, several large detachments numbering 150-300 people. They broke into the outskirts of Georgievsk, burned all the grain in the fields and hay, and stole a lot of livestock.

Having received reinforcements from Russia, Jacobi with his Astrakhan corps himself went on the offensive, deciding to defeat the main forces of the Kabardians on the river. Malka. Having driven and surrounded the enemy on one of the islands, he destroyed a horde of ten thousand in a bloody battle that lasted many hours. Twice defeated, near Maryevskaya and on Malka, at the end of 1779, Kabarda recognized its citizenship of Russia for the third time (1557, 1777, 1779).

The defeat allowed Jacobi to concentrate all his military forces and attention on ensuring the defense of the Stavropol section of the line, in particular, the villages of Moskovskaya and Donskoy: a difficult situation had developed here. Hunger could lead to a massive escape of Cossacks from the line or an armed uprising, and the increasing frequency of raids paralyzed economic life. The command was surprised by the exceptional activity and audacity of the highlanders. Destroyed in one place, they appeared in another. Escaping the pursuit, the mountaineers captured people and cattle who happened to be on their way, which often doomed them to defeat from their Cossack pursuers.

On May 30, 1779, the highlanders, numbering more than 500 people, attacked the Alexander Fieldschanz, but were repulsed by grapeshot fire, losing about 60 people killed and wounded. At noon the Khopersky regiment arrived. The attackers saw this and, nevertheless, “barely coming to their senses,” they again frantically climbed onto the rampart, being shot almost point-blank with grapeshot. And only when they were attacked from the rear by two hundred Khopers, they retreated, losing more than 90 people.

A month later there was a new attack on the same fortification. Suddenly jumping out of the beam, a gang of 30-40 people killed three Cossacks guarding the herd and stole more than a hundred horses from it. Then she attacked the fortification twice and was again driven back by grapeshot. Retreating, they attacked an intermediate post and captured 50 cows in a field. They were pursued by two hundred Khopers and overtook them at the very crossing. The predators, having chopped up the cows with sabers, managed to sneak away beyond the Kuban. The Khopertsy could not pursue them further: they were then forbidden to cross the Kuban.

In the fall of 1785, a crowd of about one and a half thousand highlanders broke through the line, defeated the Safe post, defended by the Khoper Cossacks, reached the Cherkasy postal highway, and then to the Donskaya village. Thanks to the Cossack artillerymen, the attack was repulsed. Retreating, the highlanders killed five people in the surrounding villages, captured 23, stole a herd of horses and a herd of cattle of more than 500 heads (V. A. Potto. Two centuries of the Terek Cossacks, p. 309).

The anxious and dangerous life of a Cossack lineman was difficult due to the military situation. Things were not going well in land use either.

In 1785, by decree of Catherine II, the Caucasian governorship was created from the Caucasian and Astrakhan provinces. Count P. S. Potemkin, a close relative of the then powerful Prince Potemkin of Tauride, was appointed governor. The administrative center was the village of Ekaterinogradskaya. The territory of the governorship was divided into six counties. Among them, the Stavropol district was created. The fortress village of Stavropol became a district city with all all-Russian rights.

The opening of the governorship took place only in 1787. The authority of the governor extended to all settlements, townspeople, peasants, Cossacks, nomadic Nogais, Kalmyks, “peaceful” highlanders, etc.

The power of the governor was divided into military and civil. However, civil power “did not reach the Cossacks of the villages of Moscow and Donskaya.” As, indeed, to other villages in the district.

The governor-general of the region, P. S. Potemkin, was given overall command of the Caucasian and Kuban corps located on the line. With such powers, he could determine military and economic policy throughout the territory under his jurisdiction.

By the end of the 80s. Potemkin was convinced and managed to convince the government that the economic development of the richest region by the forces of the Cossacks alone was impossible due to the reasons of their small number and the specific nature of military service.

Taking this into account, Potemkin launched a campaign to invite state peasants and “free” people to new lands, located under the military cover of fortresses and other defensive points of the line. There were a lot of people willing. Peasant villages quickly began to appear along the line. Peasant villages of Sergievskoye, Pelagiada, Nadezhda, Mikhailovka appeared near the Cossack villages. Villages appeared, entirely founded by retired soldiers of the Caucasian Corps and people familiar with weapons. Villages began to appear on the lands of the Khopersky district, and Cossack shares turned out to be adjacent to peasant plots.

Immediately after the formation of the Caucasian governorship in 1786, the flow of peasant migrants increased even more. Peasants' land plots appeared next to the Cossack plots, which led to a countless stream of complaints, disputes, litigation and acute conflict situations. The Cossacks complained about the peasants to their military authorities, the peasants - to the governorship authorities. In such a situation, the issue became even more confusing.

The Cossacks did not receive any remuneration for their hard military service to the state. Hence, the issue of land use for the Cossacks was vitally important and always came first. And the government, with the formation of the viceroyalty, with extraordinary haste and a generous hand, distributed huge plots of land to dignitaries, military commanders, etc. In 1786, 83,350 acres of land were distributed to 16 landowners. The smart and far-sighted commander of the Khoper regiment K. Ustinov saw that in 8-10 years his Cossacks would be left without land. Back in 1782, he turned to Prince Potemkin himself with a request for land allocation, but received no answer. In 1786, he turned to the Stavropol authorities and proposed to prohibit single-yard peasants from plowing lands belonging to the regimental district. While “defending” the peasants, the administration reproached the officials of the regimental district for the fact that the Cossacks were plowing up already sown peasant lands.

In response to numerous requests from the regimental administration on land use, the board of the Caucasian Viceroyalty proposed to demarcate land for the regiment at the rate of 300 dessiatines to the regimental commander, 60 dessiatines to the foreman (officer), 30 dessiatines to the Cossack. But that was just a proposal. Practically nothing was done.

The issue of disassociation of land to the Khopers was resolved only in 1820 by a special Decree of Alexander I according to the above standards. 1,934 acres of forest were allocated in separate (in five places) plots.

Potemkin, being a supporter of the peaceful colonization of the region, tried to actively implement this policy. Arranging magnificent receptions, he invited the “peaceful” aristocracy of the highlanders to them - princes, uzdens, urks, generously presenting them with gifts and gold, and invited them to his service. But they, having received gifts, having given out countless oaths and promises to be at peace with the Russians, returned home and immediately put together gangs of thugs for raids.

Count Potemkin paid great attention to the development of barter trade. Several exchange yards were opened under him, and it was planned to open one at the Nevinnomyssk redoubt.

P. S. Potemkin conducted active diplomatic correspondence with the rulers of Persia, Georgia, etc. He tried to establish sericulture and expand winemaking.

The transition from Cossack democracy to military dictatorship in the villages occurred overnight. There was an elected chieftain, and now the chief of the village residents has become the chief of the regimental district. His power was divided into military and civil.

Military: organizing a defensive service to protect the district from military attacks, managing the course of military operations, etc.

Civil: the entire social, economic and other life of the village residents, as well as the maintenance of defensive structures, bridges, crossings, provision of food warehouses with supplies, etc.

Social and everyday life: maintaining public order in the village, pursuing horse thieves, swindlers, observing Orthodox rituals by the Cossacks and their families, celebrating Christian holidays, observing fasts, issues of educating younger generations, attitudes towards the elderly, etc.

In the villages, these functions were performed by the village commander, appointed from the regimental sergeant major (officers).

The village commander monitored the execution of orders and instructions from the district commanders. He ensured the organization of the defense of the village, the distribution of orders for internal service, and the protection of those working in the fields and grazing livestock. He did everything in the village as the authorities told him, and as the head of the village himself wanted it.

In all linear villages in the service, in public, even family life, in home life, military law reigned in everything, everything was controlled by military power - rude, straightforward and very often unfair.

In 1787, the Russian-Turkish war began. The main events of the war took place in the southwest of Russia. Here the brilliant victories of A.V. Suvorov were achieved - Ochakov, Rymnik. The crowning glory of these victories was Ishmael, captured on December 12, 1790.

The newly created Black Sea Fleet under the command of Admiral F. Ushakov twice defeated the Turkish fleet and began to threaten the Bosporus.

Since the second half of the 80s, the general political situation has worsened in the Ciscaucasia and on the line. The mountaineers are intensifying their attacks on Cossack villages. Their escapes become systematic and with large numbers of participants.

In the fall of 1785, several large detachments of highlanders broke through to the line, defeating the villages of Pelagiadu and Mikhailovka.

In 1786, the Trans-Kuban highlanders besieged the Alexander Fortress, simultaneously destroying the village of Novoseltsevo, where they killed 15 people, took 180 with them as prisoners, and stole 8 thousand heads of cattle.

In 1787, repulsed by artillery fire near the village of Donskoy, the same hordes attacked the Northern Fortress, but were defeated here.

Anticipating a military clash with Turkey in the very near future, the command of the Kuban and Caucasian Corps is taking urgent measures to further strengthen the Azov-Mozdok line by building new fortresses and redoubts. In 1784, the Nevinnomyssky redoubt grew up near the Nevinny Cape as one of the important strongholds of the Upper Kuban section. In the early 90s. on Mount Strizhament, the New Catherine Fortress appears.

In connection with the outbreak of the war, here in the Upper Kuban area there was a direct threat of a Turkish invasion of the North Caucasus.

In 1789, at the Nevinnomyssk redoubt, by order of the head of the Caucasian Corps, General Tekelli, large military forces were assembled to repel the attack of a multi-thousand-strong Turkish corps under the command of Seraskir Batal Pasha. Having landed in Anapa and Sundzhuk Kale, he headed to Kabarda.

Batal Pasha believed that the Caucasian Corps would be easily defeated after its failure near Anapa. The Turkish government had high hopes for this corps and made far-reaching plans to conquer not only the North Caucasus, but also the entire south of Russia. Batal Pasha's expedition to the upper reaches of the Kuban was large-scale and multifaceted. Its successful implementation could put an end to Russian possessions in the North Caucasus.

Having penetrated Kabarda and strengthened here, capture Georgievsk, destroy the entire Azov-Mozdok line, and raise the entire Muslim population of this region against Russia. However, not only this region, but also Muslims in the Volga, Urals and even Siberia. These were the plans of the Turkish command.

Batal Pasha's campaign in Kabarda was planned as a combined attack on Russia from several directions simultaneously. It was hoped that when Batal Pasha appeared in Kabarda, Turkey's protege Shah Mansur, in combat readiness with a horde of fifty thousand, standing on the banks of the Sunzha, would rush to the Terek line to capture Kizlyar. All of Dagestan was armed and waiting for the signal. Turkish agents even penetrated into Persia. Here the Akhaltsikhe Pasha Suleiman (brother of Batal Pasha), showing extraordinary activity, did everything to attract the Azerbaijani khans to the campaign against Kizlyar.

But all this remained only in the plans of the Turks. Russian troops at the mouth of the river. The Abazins under the command of Major General I. I. German, with the oncoming movement of troops, captured the Tokhtamysh heights, and secured a positional advantage. Together with Barvits’s column approaching from the Innocent Cape, Herman’s detachment amounted to a little more than three thousand infantry and cavalry. The Khopersky regiment (three hundred) approached the beginning of the battle under the command of K. Ustinov. The general left him in the rearguard as cover for the rear of his troops.

This was all that Herman could oppose to the 25,000-strong horde of Turks. In his report to the commander of the Caucasian line, General Bulgakov, it was written: “The Russian corps consisted of a little over three thousand people, with 18 guns. The Turkish corps consisted of 8 thousand infantry and up to 10 thousand Turkish cavalry of Trans-Kuban and local Circassians and various other mountain peoples... 30 guns in total..." (Major General I. German. TsGVIA, f. 52, op. 1/194, St. 124, d. 566, d. 5-7.

On September 30, 1790, skillfully maneuvering his troops on the battlefield, I. I. German completely defeated the Turkish army. Seraskir Batal Pasha himself was captured. The remnants of his army fled and were finished off by the Kuban Corps of General Rosen.

The brilliant victory over the Turks at Abazinka had a significant impact on the conclusion of the Peace of Jassy, ​​thwarted all plans for Turkish expansion in southern Russia and very convincingly demonstrated the power of Russian weapons to the highlanders. The victory was won in a purely Suvorov style: not by numbers, but by skill.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Yassy, ​​Türkiye recognized the Kuban as a natural border. Turkey and Russia were forbidden to use both its banks as springboards for attacking each other. Based on the articles of the treaty, the Russian command forbade the Cossacks from crossing the river when pursuing robber-predators. Kuban. This put the border population of the villages at a disadvantage and complicated guard duty. The mountaineers took advantage of this. The number of their raids increased sharply. Having reached Kuban with abundant booty, they moved on with impunity. The Russian military authorities many times turned to Anapa Pasha as the guarantor of the Yassy Treaty, but he did not take any measures, but on the contrary, he openly helped by organizing “wholesale purchases of yasyr.”

During the military campaign of 1787-1791. The government and the command of the Caucasian Corps were able to correctly assess the strategic importance of the Upper Kuban section of the defensive line. From the Nevinnomyssky redoubt to the Ust-Dzhegutinsky post, it covered the shortest route from the western Ciscaucasia to the eastern. Even during the war, the government proposed to the commander of the Kuban Corps, General Gudovich, to develop a project for new fortifications of the Sukhoi and Verkhnekubanskaya lines, from Taman to the Caspian Sea. According to this plan, it was planned to build new fortresses and redoubts from the Konstantinogorsk fortress perpendicular to the Kuban and further along the Kuban to Ust-Labinsk: fortress No. 1 at the White Mosque, No. 2 at Konstantinotorskaya, No. 3 at the Kumsky feldshan, No. 5 at the Nevinnomyssk redoubt, No. 6 at Temnolessky, No. 7 at Nedremanny, then Prochnookopskaya, Grigoropolisskaya, Caucasian, Tiflisskaya, Ust-Labinskaya. Five of those designed were to be fundamental, which were designed to be able to withstand and withstand massive fire from heavy siege artillery. Their garrison was planned to be 1200-1500 people.

The first to fourth fortresses were supposed to be populated by Volga Cossacks, the fifth, sixth, and seventh by Khoper Cossacks, and the rest by Don Cossacks.

In the spring of 1792, it was planned to begin the resettlement of the Cossacks and the construction of fortresses based on the experience of the Azov-Mozdok line. An open protest against the resettlement began among the Don Cossacks (F. Shcherbina. History of the Kuban Cossacks, vol. 1, p. 658).

Cossacks-Old Believers played a very noticeable role in the anti-resettlement action of the Don Cossacks. This forced the government to reduce the order for resettlement on the Kuban line.

Since the beginning of the 80s. Among the mountain nobility there is a desire to win the Nogais over to their side as fellow believers. In 1804, a large crowd of mountaineers broke through the cordon line below the Nevinnomyssk redoubt and tried to forcefully drive the “peaceful” Nogais beyond the Kuban. Three Khoper hundreds, the reserve of the Nevinnomyssk redoubt of centurion Grechkin, three squadrons of dragoons in the area of ​​the Barsukovsky post defeated and scattered the highlanders, repulsing some of the Nogais and returning them to their original place. Another detachment of Khopers and dragoons under the command of General Likhachev in the area of ​​the future village of Krasnogorskaya encountered a detachment of one and a half thousand highlanders. Despite their numerical superiority, they were also defeated. In this battle, the Khopers lost 10 Cossacks, including the dashing centurion Grechkin.

In 1807, the Circassians with a sudden raid destroyed the village of Sengileevskoye and the village of Vorovskolesskaya.

Numerous gangs, numbering from 15 to 30 people, constantly scoured the walls of the Stavropol fortress, seizing livestock and taking people prisoner.

In 1809, more than 500 Circassians attacked the village of Kamennobrodskaya. They destroyed 35 houses, took about 200 people captive, and stole more than 5,000 heads of livestock. The head of the site, General Bulgakov, organized the pursuit. Having pressed the highlanders to the steep bank of the Kuban, he began to shoot with grapeshot.

Having defeated them within half an hour, he managed to save the prisoners and livestock.

Highlander raids on the line became especially frequent in 1812-1813. Obviously there was some connection with Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, although the Peace of Bucharest was signed, ending the Russian-Turkish war of 1806-1812.

A sharp aggravation of the situation on the line forced the Russian command to take a number of measures to strengthen the Cossack regiments in such a way that for every 12 versts of the line there would be 20 mounted and 4 foot Cossacks. The regiments were strengthened by recruiting retired Cossacks. The number was increased from five hundred to eight hundred. The general organization of linear parts has been changed. The line's troops were consolidated into two brigades, and several additional posts were built (including on Nevinskaya Mountain). The garrison of the Nevinnomyssk redoubt has been increased by half, and another cannon has been installed.

In 1811, the Trans-Kuban highlanders received a Turkish agent, Nazyr Said Ahmet Efendi. An unusually active personality. He tried by any means to oppose the gullible Nogais to the Russians, convincing them that the war with the infidels (Russians) was needed by Allah, that the Russians wanted to turn them into Christians, would take them into soldiers, etc. He penetrated into the Yankuli region and managed to raise up civilians Nogais against the Russians and persuade them to cross the Kuban.

In September 1813, a large detachment of highlanders broke through the line at the Nevinnomyssk redoubt with the help of Said Akhmet. About two thousand Nogais, together with their families and livestock, moved beyond the Kuban. They were covered by a detachment of three thousand Circassian cavalry. The Russian detachment under the command of General Portnyagin caught up with the rearguard of the highlanders and entered into a battle that lasted more than six hours and was interrupted by the onset of darkness. In the morning the battle resumed. The Circassian rearguard was defeated, but some of the highlanders and Nogais managed to break away from their pursuers and go to the Kuban. However, at the Nevinnomyssk redoubt the battle broke out again. Only a small part managed to cross in several places and go beyond the Kuban. In the area from Yankuli to the Nevinnomyssk redoubt, the Cossacks captured about half a million head of cattle and much other property.

After the defeat at the Nevinnomyssk redoubt, incited by the same Said Akhmet, the Circassians and Nogais, united with the Abadzekhs and Temirgoyites, were preparing a new invasion of the line. To warn him, Portnyagin decided to beat them one by one, but first of all to smash the Abadzekhs and Temirgoyevites - these were more dangerous. On a trip to Transkuban, he twice along the river. Beloy and Labe defeated their hordes. But when Portnyagin’s detachment returned to the line, the Abadzekhs and Temirgoyevites received reinforcements from their fellow tribesmen and a crowd of up to 10 thousand people surrounded the Russian detachment. Despite their tenfold superiority, the highlanders failed to destroy Portnyagin’s detachment, which organized resistance unprecedented to them. The Khopper gunners with their cannons especially distinguished themselves here. Showing exceptional composure, they allowed the attacking cavalry of the highlanders to approach 60-100 fathoms, and then suddenly opened rapid fire with grapeshot. The highlanders were struck by the unusual resilience of the infantry: having formed in a square, it was indestructible with its aimed and salvo fire, which devastated the ranks of the attackers. Having lost more than 1,800 people, the highlanders retreated with losses exceeding the number of the Russian detachment. They were so demoralized that they did not dare to pursue the Cossacks.

On June 23, 1815, fifty Khopers under the command of Captain Strizhnevsky, chasing a gang of abreks from the Stavropol fortress, overtook them at the Nevinnomyssk redoubt. When crossing the Kuban, in the ensuing battle, the leader of the gang, widely known in the area, Prince Khopach, was killed along with ten of his henchmen.

Similar bloody clashes occurred every day throughout the Kuban. Abrek cutthroats and gangs of robbers broke through the line to capture prisoners and livestock. It was in the style of the Crimean Tatars or Mongols. If it was impossible to leave, living goods were mercilessly destroyed. With bestial fury, saving ammunition, they chopped down cattle with sabers.

“In the history of the Old Line Cossacks,” writes academician F. Shcherbina, “due to the loss of materials, information about a whole mass of small cases of skirmishes and struggles between the Khoperts and the highlanders was not preserved. The life of the Cossacks was filled with these bloody episodes and heroic deeds. At home, by the hearth, when the highlander was sneaking up on the Cossack's family, property, in the guardhouse at the fence gate, when the Circassians tried to penetrate the village, at redoubts and posts, on the road and in secret, in the field, at work and in times of alarm, alone and in parties Khopertsy went through a harsh school...

This difficult struggle, full of unprecedented self-sacrifice and heroism, placed the heaviest burden on the Cossack life and environment of the Khoprets and, like a worm, undermined his well-being and peaceful life” (F. Shcherbina. History of the Kuban Cossack Army, vol. 2, p. 230).

The Cossacks who settled in the villages of Moscow and Donskaya, as well as along the entire line, spent a painfully long time and with great effort establishing their economy. It was especially difficult for those who had two workers - the Cossack himself and his wife - with three or four children. They had to wait a long time for the children to grow up. Only then did it become possible to escape from poverty.

As the main workforce, the Cossack was constantly busy with service. There was not enough time to do housework and it fell on the shoulders of the housewife. In this situation it was difficult to get out of poverty. The Cossack economy was semi-natural. He lived only on what it provided, including for service and other expenses.

The multi-family farms of the schismatic Cossacks were more affluent and even prosperous. There were many workers here, but this type of farming was also semi-natural in nature. Wealth was expressed in the accumulation of livestock as a living commodity. From the 80s of the 18th century until the mid-19th century, the predominant form of farming in almost the entire region was cattle breeding, which did not require large labor costs and labor. This was also facilitated by natural conditions: vast excellent pastures, where the bulk of the animals were fed almost all year round on pasture. With the money received from the sale of livestock to military quartermasters and prasols, the Cossack equipped himself for service and supported his family.

The Cossacks brought the traditions of a large family here from Khopr and the Don. Most Cossacks had families consisting of three generations (12-16 people), and there were families of up to 20 or more people. The grandfather and often the great-grandfather (“bolshak”), a retired clerk or even a foreman, as he once did in his fifties or tens, uncontrollably managed the household and family, maintaining harmony and well-being in it by all means. His regime was harsh and did not allow any relaxation and, especially, laziness. The wives and mothers of both ordinary Cossacks and officers worked at home and in the fields. No one disdained menial work. Military service and equipment were the main and very burdensome expense for the family of a foreman or Cossack.

The foreman was required that both his horse and equipment be better than that of ordinary Cossacks. Accordingly, his service expenses were significantly higher. These expenses became especially large after the introduction of Cossack ranks, equivalent to general army officer ranks, and the introduction of mandatory military uniforms.

The Khoperts had a good tradition on the Don, which they transferred to the line, and then to the Kuban: “help in peace.” Cossacks, elders, widows and simple villagers who found themselves in difficult situations were helped to selflessly plow, harvest, build a home, etc. They worked not for hours, but for days and even weeks.

Each Cossack had to serve properly. Many “due to their poverty” did not have such an opportunity, but here the tradition of “helping with peace” came to the rescue. For the “proper” performance of service, two poor Cossacks contributed their service by contribution. A horse, weapons and equipment were purchased at a common expense. Then each one took turns serving: one was at home on the farm, the other in the ranks in the service. The authorities knew about this and, accordingly, equipped the Cossacks for service.

Khopertsy village residents selflessly helped fire victims who suffered from enemy raids and robberies. There were a lot of hunters to be the breadwinner of milk for a family whose cow was stolen. This was considered a charitable deed; there was even a sequence established as to when and to whom milk should be brought. These were not one-time dachas and they continued until the victim acquired a cow. There was another way. Having added up 5-10 kopecks, the community bought a cow for 2-3 rubles and handed it to the victim. If the entire village's cattle were stolen, other villages helped.

Time passed. Suffering losses, the villages desperately defended themselves from the attacks of the treacherous enemy. Slowly but steadily the economy strengthened, and with it the Cossack households.

In addition to military service, the Cossacks on the line also carried out a number of duties. Some of them, in their importance for the economy, were not much different from military service. Their whole burden lay in the fact that they were sent in kind, that is, with the direct participation of the Cossack or members of his family. Duties were divided into state, military, village and a number of others. The Cossack was always guilty of something, obliged, must, and fulfilled these duties as a military order.

Before the Cossacks had time to properly settle down in the villages of Moskovskaya and Donskoy, they were immediately assigned two companies of soldiers to billet. A retired Cossack acquired a pair of oxen - he was immediately assigned to transport 40 pounds of government cargo to Nevinka, salt to the exchange yard. I figured out in my mind how long it would take: more than 100 miles one way. If there is opportunity, it will take two weeks, but without opportunity it is dangerous to travel: the mountaineers can kill or capture.

Underwater (horse-drawn) duty was performed mainly by Cossacks of internal service. The drivers, that is, the drivers, were very often Cossack girls and youngsters. A lot of cargo was delivered with numerous transfers. In the wagons, the Cossack was a guard, a driver, a loader, etc. All this was done without any remuneration and at “their own grub.”

The Cossacks settled in a region where there was nothing but animal trails. On the site of a vast and rather elevated (up to 832 m) Stavropol plateau. The territory is sharply rugged, cut by numerous gullies and ravines. To build roads and maintain them, enormous costs were required for the construction of descents, ascents, crossings, bridges, etc. All this also fell into the category of state service for the Cossacks. Roads were vital. Without them, neither economic development nor military defense of the region would have been possible.

Constant conscription was also burdensome for the Cossacks. In the first decades, 1-2 companies of soldiers, 1-2 hundred Don Cossacks, and a squadron of dragoons were billeted in the villages. It was especially difficult for the guests in the village of Donskoy, located on the highway. Military transports, recruiting and military teams for the Caucasian Army, recruiting and military teams for the Caucasian Army, countless couriers, couriers, messengers and many officials moved along it in a busy stream. Basically, this whole mass stopped to spend the night and rest in Donskoy. In central Russia there were inns along the postal routes. Here, neither the civil nor the military authorities bothered to organize them in the first decades. The issue was resolved simply: everyone in need of accommodation and rest was placed in Cossack families.

There was hardly a day when there were no guests in the Cossack huts. 7-10 people of the Cossack family lived in a small hut, and 5-8 more people from the team traveling through the village were added to them. In the summer it was bearable. The family went to the stable, to the barn, to the attic, but in cold weather there was incredible crowding of people. But these were so-called short-term guests. We spent the night, rested and moved on.

There was also a category of long-term guests. For such people, the village society constantly and free of charge allocated hayfields and pastures, amounting to half of the village fund. Very often, food and fodder were issued to the guests from public village stores (warehouses), which also infringed on the interests of the village residents, since these distributions were not replenished by the treasury. This also led to a reduction in public assistance to village residents affected by natural disasters and enemy raids. In fact, it turned out that the long-term residents were supported by the village. And there were such guests in every village.

The combined forces of several villages built bridges, repaired them, eliminated landslide areas on the roads, accompanied and guarded high-ranking commanders, escorted teams of prisoners, caught horse thieves - the Cossacks had many duties and even took preventive measures to combat locusts. A fine and a foot were used here as a measure to prevent non-compliance.

In 1822, the residents of the village of Vorovskolesskaya turned to the commander of the Caucasian Corps with a request to resettle the village, since it was finally weakened not only from the pogroms of the highlanders (the village was destroyed by them to the ground in 1804 and 1807), but also from the camping of their soldiers and natural duties, not only burdening, but also ruining the Cossack households.

In 1830, the cornet of the Khoper Regiment, Bulavin, addressing the commander of the Caucasian Corps, Count Paskevich, wrote: “In the villages, before moving to the Kuban, the Cossacks were overwhelmed by stationary, submarine duties...” And the Cossack needed to buy uniforms, maintain a regimental infirmary, and a grain storage store and generally find funds for various duties (F. Shcherbina. History of the Kuban Army, vol. 2, p. 415).

In 1785, by decree of Catherine II, several postal routes were opened on the line. The main one went from Mozdok to Stavropol and further through the village of Donskaya to the Don to Cherkassk. The highway to Astrakhan departed from it. The tracts were called Cherkasy and Astrakhan, respectively. The first one was the busiest in the entire North Caucasus with intermediate postal stations every 15-20 versts. With its opening, the Cossacks of the Donskoy village were assigned additional duties, no less severe than military service.

Within the regimental district, for more than 100 versts, the highway was served by Khoper Cossacks. They equipped and guarded its stations, transported mail, delivered urgent packages by relay, transported and guarded large sums of money. In addition, the Cossacks systematically, at the request of major military and civil officials, supplied their horses for driving. This was a big nuisance for the Cossack. Horses from the stages often returned in such a condition that they were no longer fit for service, and sometimes did not return at all. But the cost of a horse was almost equal to the cost of the entire farm. No one even thought about compensating the Cossack for losses.

When the Caucasian province was formed, the provincial government, for the maintenance of mail within the province, imposed a poll tax of 1 ruble 90 kopecks on all non-service Cossacks, the elderly, those maimed in the war, the disabled, and even male children.

It is a known fact that at the stations of the Cherkassy tract, the kind of scuffles that existed on the tracts in the depths of Russia were rare. High-ranking officials, known for their “ferocity,” behaved “quietly” here. Instead of the words “You! You bastard, I'll screw you up! Bring on the horses! At least die!” here they said in an unctuous pleading voice: “Dear Cossack, can’t we get some horses as soon as possible?” His brave appearance and independent demeanor aroused involuntary fear and respect in the nobleman.

At the end of the 80s. The neighbors of the Khoperts - the Volga Cossacks - declared postal service illegal. The decision of the provincial government was protested at the Military Collegium. In St. Petersburg, this protest was recognized as justified, the case was given legal progress, but the decision came only in 1816. Postal service was removed from the Volga Cossacks. The Khopersky and other Cossacks continued to perform it for another thirty years. It was canceled only in the mid-40s. under Nicholas I.

The command of the Khoper Regimental District in the area under its jurisdiction paid special attention to the security of the Cherkassy tract. In the first decade, postal cargo and travelers were sent “with opportunity,” that is, under guard. And yet, there were cases of death of travelers and theft of postal cargo along the route.

In the early 80s, before Trinity Day, the Cossack of the Moskovskaya village, Kononenko, received an order: to urgently deliver a government package to the postal station and personally hand it over to the caretaker. Being busy in haymaking, he entrusted the delivery of the package to his seventeen-year-old son Stepan. On the way to the station, Stepan was ambushed, his horse was killed, and he himself woke up “tied” with a lasso at the pommel of the abrek’s saddle. A frantic jump began, so painful that it prevented Stepan from thinking anything. But nevertheless, he managed to free one hand and noted that his captors were very tired, and the horses were “starved” and walked at a walk. The abreks stretched out in a chain: two in front, he with the kidnapper in the center, the other trailed behind, 200 fathoms behind, and was apparently dozing in the saddle. Stepan, having contrived, with his free hand grabbed the dagger hanging from the predator and, hitting him in the stomach, knocked him off the saddle. Instantly freed from the fetters, grabbing the horse's bridle, he galloped to the side. The man behind started shooting. At this time, a reinforced ten Cossack patrol was following the trail of the robbers. Hearing the shots, the Cossacks immediately came out to the kidnappers. A shootout ensued. Seeing the triple superiority of the Cossacks, the abreks split up and began to leave one by one in different directions. During the shootout, the Cossacks managed to shoot the horse of one of the abreks. Having fallen over, she covered the rider. The Cossacks immediately took possession of it. Under the Circassian coat the predator found a package that Stepan was taking to the station. Seeing this and taking it, Stepan rushed not home to the village, but to the station to hand over the “government package” to the caretaker. Having experienced such a shock, physically crumpled, he was thinking about how to deliver the “staff” to its destination! Barely alive, he returned to the village only at midnight. The head of the cordon section who happened to be in these parts ordered two of the horses captured by the Cossacks in this case to be handed over to Stepan. One - as compensation for the murdered, the other - as a reward “for faithful service to the Fatherland.”

More than 150 years have passed since these events, but they were preserved in the living memory of the Cossacks with individual details and names of its participants (recorded from the words of the former centurion of the 2nd Khopersky regiment E.E. Kushchenko, Udobnaya village, 1954).

Time passed. Fighting off the endless attacks of the insidious enemy, the population of the region grew and became stronger. New tracts of land were developed, new peasant villages and hamlets appeared. The number of livestock increases sharply. This was facilitated by favorable climatic and natural conditions, but, most importantly, by the persistent and diligent work of peasants, Cossacks, and members of their families.

According to statistical data from Debu, in the villages of the Khoper regimental district in 1816, there were 4,602 horses, 11,603 heads of cattle, 35,345 sheep in 1,265 households with a population of 7,946 souls of both sexes. On average, one Khoper yard had 3.5 horses, 13 heads of cattle, 28 sheep (camels, donkeys and pigs were not counted).

Late 90s The 18th century convinced the command of the Caucasian Corps that the government policy of peaceful development of new territories of the Trans-Kuban region did not take place. The enemy turned out to be more serious than expected. The self-interested mountain nobility, on whom the government relied, showed itself to be more treacherous and deceitful. Selfish and short-sighted, guided by immediate interests, she dragged her people into the abyss of an irreconcilable war with the Cossacks. The corps command was convinced that the Azov-Mozdok line, equipped with 9 fortresses over more than 300 versts and with an average of 32-34 versts between them, would not provide adequate protection for the region. There are extremely insufficient troops for normal provision of fortifications, especially on the right flank of the Khopersky regiment - a strategically important direction.

The system of redoubts and posts in the Upper Kuban sector, with an insufficient number of troops, was a relatively weak defense against enemy raids, which systematically infiltrated the gaps between the fortifications. The destruction of Sengileevka, Kamennobrodskaya, Vorovskolesskaya and others by the mountaineers clearly confirmed the weakness of the Upper Kuban section. Based on this, the corps command believed that, given the available capabilities, the best measure to strengthen the area would be to populate it with Cossack villages - a method that had already been tested and was effective.

The question of settling the right bank of the Kuban River with villages arose back in the late 1700s. He was connected with the fate of many thousands of people. It was not easy to solve it and the government avoided solving it. In the early 1800s, the head of this section, General Bulgakov, diplomatically conducted a survey among the elders and Cossacks and, in a delicate manner, received a unanimous “no”. The Cossacks motivated their refusal by the fact that they had just settled in, settled down, and now there was a new resettlement, which promised disruption and almost ruin. The question remains open.

And only the decisive General Ermolov, with significant pressure on the Cossacks, managed to resolve this issue. He assumed that the numerous peasant settlements that had arisen near the Cossack villages would be “rendered out,” that is, simply assigned to the Cossacks. The insightful Ermolov saw this as the only solution to the problem.

Ermolov proposed to resettle the Cossacks of the Khopersky district to Kuban (GASK, f. 377, op. 1, d. 15, l. 8). The resettlement will be carried out in several stages, starting first with the wealthy Cossacks.

The village commanders of the resettled villages had to very carefully study and inspect the places of settlement of future villages and, in addition to strategic considerations, take into account the possibility of providing the Cossacks with an allotment according to the generally accepted norms of the regimental district. During the study of resettlement sites, it was decided to establish one of the villages near the Nevinnomyssk redoubt. This redoubt, created in 1784, occupied an important place in the system of defensive structures of the Upper Kuban Line (F. Shcherbina. History of the Kuban Cossacks, vol. 2, p. 229). It covered a strategically important direction - the shortest route from the Western Ciscaucasia to the Eastern. In addition, here was the best place at that time for crossing the Kuban for 160 miles, hidden by folds of the terrain and forested approaches, sloping banks and wide rifts along the river.

There are several legends that explain the name of one of the rivers flowing into the Kuban in this area.

At the very beginning of the 80s. XVIII century in one of the raids behind the line, the Turks and highlanders captured “yasir”: more than 70 women and children. Escaping the pursuit of the Cossacks, the predators brutally cut them off on the cape, where the river flowed into the Kuban. In memory of the innocent people who died, this place was named the Innocent Cape, and the tributary of the Kuban - the Nevinka River. This is where the name of the redoubt that arose here comes from, later transferred to the village.

The Nevinnomyssk redoubt was a powerful field fortification at that time. It was a closed large polygon, adapted for independent all-round defense. The redoubt served as a stronghold for two or three companies of soldiers or hundreds of Cossacks. In 1810, its garrison consisted of 5 elders, 5 Pentecostals and two hundred lower ranks.

The redoubt was covered by an external ditch and parapet, reinforced with fascines. It was armed with a cannon.

The Nevinnomyssk redoubt was a much more powerful fortification than other structures of this type. A number of posts also related to him.

The guard post, or cordon, consisted of a team of 12 to 25 people with a constable and an officer (GAKK, f. 408, op. 1, sv. 1, l. 29). At the cordon there was a hut for guards, stables and an observation tower on which a high pole was installed, wrapped in tow and impregnated with resin. The pole was called a pole and served as a visual communication signal. In case of danger, the milestone was set on fire and the smoke, visible from afar, served as a harbinger of alarm.

The distance between posts was 7 versts.

One such post was located on Nevinskaya Mountain. The Verkhnebarsukovsky post was located between the villages of Barsukovskaya and Nevinnomysskaya.

Many posts were temporary and mobile. At the posts, the Cossacks took turns serving as sentries on the tower, “watching” the Trans-Kuban side in daytime pickets, night secrets, and traveling. Several such posts and redoubts formed a fortified area of ​​the line.

Almost all major events in the Upper Kuban section took place at the Nevinny Cape, as a convenient crossing point. For a long time after the founding of the Nevinnomysskaya village, the redoubt remained an important outpost of the Upper Kuban section.

The Azov-Mozdok line played an important role in strengthening Russian positions in the region. And although in connection with the construction of more southern fortified lines, the strategic significance of most of its fortresses was largely lost, it did not lose its historical significance. The settlements built during its creation over time became settlements and cities of the Stavropol Territory.

©site
created based on open data on the Internet

Caucasian line at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century

The beginning of the Caucasian line was laid by the Greben (Terek) Cossacks.

After the end of the Great Northern War, Peter I launched a campaign against Persia in 1722-1723.

After the Persian campaign, the king appointed a participant in the campaign, Brigadier Vasily Levashov, as his representative in the annexed territories, where he was involved in introducing new forms and methods of management.

Kizlyar fortress in the atlas of the Russian Empire (1745).

Kuban border line

• The Black Sea cordon line extended 180 versts along the Kuban, up from its mouth.

• The right flank included the Kuban and Labinsk lines.

• The center, from the Stone Bridge on the Zelenchuk River to the Secret Bridge, near Mozdok, was divided into the Kislovodsk line, the internal and advanced Kabardin lines and part of the Georgian Military Road; it included the settlements of the Volga and mountain Cossacks, Greater and Lesser Kabarda, Karachay and mountain tribes beyond the Black Mountains, to the Vladikavkaz district.

• The left flank included the Tersk and Nizhne-Sunzhenskaya lines, the Kumyk plane, with its forward line, and Chechnya, with the advanced Chechen line. The last three sites in the late 1850s. converted into right and left wings.

• The Vladikavkaz Military District - the forward part of the center of the Caucasian Line - extended from it to the south to the north. snow ridge; part of the Georgian Military Road was also under the jurisdiction of the head of this district.

The head of each unit was directly subordinate to the commander of the troops on the Caucasian line and was in charge of military operations, the regular troops, the Cossack and native population, and against hostile tribes he took those measures that, according to the circumstances, were considered necessary. According to internal administration, troops and Cossacks were under the authority of their immediate superiors and the appointed ataman. The means to repel predatory parties and larger gatherings were: a) in the local, armed Cossack population; b) in fortifications, fortified villages, posts and pickets; c) with the assistance of regular and Don Cossack troops.

The very cordon of the Caucasian line was not equally exposed to the danger of raids along its entire length, and therefore the security measures were different. Only on the main line the villages were put into a defensive state, and in new areas put forward in front they were installed as fortifications. The gaps were occupied by a cordon of posts and pickets; the latter were replaced at night with so-called secrets. The posts had some defense and consisted of a dugout, a barn, an observation tower and some kind of fence with a moat. The breakthrough of predatory parties was signaled by signals and messengers sent to neighboring posts.

Chiefs of the Caucasian Line

see also

• Sunzhenskaya cordon line

Links

• V. A. Potto Caucasian War. In 5 volumes. - Volume 1, From ancient times to Ermolov. General Medem (Caucasian line from 1762 to 1775)
• Debu O.I. About the Caucasian line and the Black Sea army attached to it. St. Petersburg, 1829
• Expansion of military Cossack colonization on the Caucasian line in the 90s of the XVIII - 60s of the XIX century.

Notes

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

See what the “Caucasian line” is in other dictionaries:

CAUCASIAN LINE, cordon line along the river. Kuban, Malka and Terek, which consisted of a number of fortresses, fortified villages and settlements. Throughout K. l. Cossack and regular troops were stationed. In the 30s 19th century K. l., which has not yet reached full development, ... ... Lermontov Encyclopedia

System of defensive structures in the North. Caucasus, created by Russian troops during military operations against Turkey and the highlanders in the 18th and 19th centuries. Consisted of Kizlyar, Mozdok, Kubano Black Sea and other lines... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

CAUCASIAN LINE, a system of defensive structures in the North Caucasus, was created by Russian troops during military operations against Turkey and the highlanders in the 18th and 19th centuries. Consisted of Kizlyar, Mozdok, Kubano Black Sea and other lines; watchdog... ...Russian history

The system of defensive structures in the North Caucasus was created by Russian troops during military operations against Turkey and the highlanders in the 18th and 19th centuries. It consisted of Kizlyar, Mozdok, Kubano Black Sea and other lines. * * * CAUCASIAN LINE… … encyclopedic Dictionary

This name previously meant the cordon line along the Kuban, Malka and Terek, the forward lines along the Laba and Sunzha, the forward points and all parts of the region occupied by the Russians in the north. side of the Main and Andean ridges. The basis of the K. line was the Russian... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

1817 1864, war of the Russian Empire with the mountain peoples of the North Caucasus. The struggle of the Muslim mountaineers against the Russians took place under the flag of Gazavat (see GAZAVAT). Ended with the annexation of Chechnya, Mountainous Dagestan and the Northwestern Caucasus to Russia.… … encyclopedic Dictionary

Caucasian line of cinema, Caucasian line of light
Caucasian fortified line- a system of cordon (border fortifications) of Russian troops in the Caucasus in the 18th-19th centuries. It was erected to protect Russian communications and was used to support the actions of Russian troops during the Caucasian War (1817-1864). It included the Kizlyar, Mozdok, Kuban-Chernomorskaya and other lines, united together in 1785.

The initial Caucasian cordon line ran along the Kuban, Malka and Terek rivers, with forward lines along the Laba and Sunzha, covering all Russian-occupied parts of the region on the northern side of the Main Caucasian and Andean ranges. The Caucasian line was based on Cossack settlements created in the 16th - 17th centuries on the Terek and Kuban.

The Caucasian Cordon Line reached full development militarily in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Her goal was:

1. ensuring communications with Transcaucasia,
2. protecting the southern provinces from raids by mountaineers,
3. keeping the conquered region in obedience.

Later, the Caucasian fortified line was divided into the left flank, the center, the right flank and the Black Sea cordon line. Significant fortifications on the Caucasian line were called fortresses: Groznaya, Vnezapnaya, Vladikavkazskaya, etc. They were supplemented by forts, redoubts, pickets, and observation posts. The Caucasian and Black Sea Cossack troops served on the line. With the end of the Caucasian War, the Caucasian Line lost its significance. Abolished in 1860.

• 1 Caucasian line at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century
  • 1.1 Kuban border line
• 2 Commanders
• 3 Caucasian Line in the late 1840s and early 1850s
• 4 Chiefs of the Caucasian Line
• 5 See also
• 6 Notes
• 7 Literature
• 8 Links

Caucasian line at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century

The beginning of the Caucasian line was laid by the Greben (Terek) Cossacks.

After the end of the Great Northern War, Peter I undertook a campaign against Persia in 1722-1723.

In 1722, in the lower reaches of the Terek, Peter I founded the fortress of the Holy Cross. It was inhabited by Cossacks transferred from the Terek city (founded back in 1588).

After the Persian campaign, the king appointed as his representative in the annexed territories a participant in the campaign, Brigadier Vasily Levashov, who was involved in introducing new forms and methods of management.

Kizlyar fortress in the atlas of the Russian Empire (1745).

In 1735, on the banks of the Terek River, Chief General V. Ya. Levashov founded the Kizlyar fortress. From the fortress of the Holy Cross on Sulak, demolished at the request of Nadir Shah, Cossacks, North Caucasians who had long been in the service of Russia (Chechens-Akkins, Kabardians, etc.), as well as Armenians and Georgians, were transferred here. All of them began to be called the Terek-Kizlyar Cossack army. Kizlyar became the first Russian fortress of the system of border Caucasian fortified lines.

In 1759, the owner of Lesser Kabarda Kurgok Konchokin was baptized (new name - Andrei Ivanov (Konchokin)) and moved with his baptized subjects to the Mezdogu tract. From among the settlers, mainly baptized Ossetians and Kabardians, a mountain Mozdok Cossack team was created, numbering a little more than 100 people.

In 1763, the Mozdok fortress was founded on the banks of the Terek west of the Kizlyar fortress. On the basis of these fortresses, the Kizlyar and Mozdok lines later emerged.

After the Russian-Turkish War of 1768-1774, under the terms of the Kuchuk-Kainardzhi Peace, the Russian Empire in the North Caucasus received Greater and Lesser Kabarda.

Kuban border line

In 1777, by decree of Empress Catherine II, construction of a line of outposts - the “Old Line” - began in the North Caucasus.

On November 14, 1777, Lieutenant General Alexander Suvorov was appointed commander of the Kuban Corps. On January 16, 1778, he arrived in Kopyl and, after inspecting the area, ordered to burn out the reeds and set up observation posts throughout the Kuban. Then, having visited Temryuk and Taman, the commander came to the conclusion that the best means of isolating the Nogais from the Turks and preventing their joint actions with the Adyghe princes was a line of fortifications. Soon, the construction of the seaside feldshans Podgorny and Peschany began on Taman, the feldshans Dukhovoy near the Nekrasov towns (at the mouth of the Suyak tract), the strengthening of the defensive structures of all other fortifications, including the fortresses of Tamanskaya and Ekaterininskaya. In Temryuk, construction of a new fortress began on the site of the Brink retranchement. Although Suvorov noted the good quality of the defensive structures of the Novotroitsk fortress, Colonel Gambom still had to begin strengthening the fortress with new fortification obstacles: soon he had to allocate part of his garrison to staff the garrisons of the newly built Kuban feldshans Slavyansky, Sarsky and Right.

By March 1778, six out of 10 planned fortifications were built along the Kuban River (along its right bank from the mouth to the Laba River and further to Stavropol), including the Annunciation Fortress (now the Trudobelikovsky farm) near the destroyed Turkish fortress of Eski-Kopyl.

These fortifications along the Kuban River formed the Kuban border line with a length of 550 km. On it were the Belozersky infantry regiment of eight companies, the Slavic and Ostrogozhsky hussar regiments, a combined grenadier battalion and two Cossack regiments. The center of the line became the Maryinsk Fortress.

In the fall of 1782, Lieutenant General Pavel Potemkin took command of the Russian army in the North Caucasus, replacing Fyodor Fabritsian, who died in September. In 1782, the elders of the Alagir, Tagaur and Tual societies turned to the Russian administration with a request to build a fortress on the foothill plain and grant them the right to settle in it. In the fall of 1783, the commander of the Caucasian Line, Pavel Potemkin, received instructions from the government to build a Russian fortress in the Central Caucasus.

In 1783, Pavel Potemkin erected a fortress on the left bank of the Terek near Elkhotovo, calling it “Potemkinskaya” in honor of his uncle G. A. Potemkin-Tavrichesky. However, soon, for a number of compelling reasons, it was decided to build a new fortress closer to the mountains, on the eve of the Daryal Gorge. In 1784, the Vladikavkaz fortress was founded. On April 25 of the same year, the commander of the Caucasian Line reported to Field Marshal Prince G. A. Potemkin: “...At the entrance of the mountains, I ordered the founding of a fortress in the place designated by my observation under the name Vladikavkaz.” Also in 1784, fortifications were built along the Georgian Military Road. By 1785, all the fortifications formed a single Caucasian fortified line.

Fragment of an English map of 1808 with the lands of the Black Sea Cossacks.

In 1793, the beginning of the Black Sea cordon line was laid. In October 1793, the military ataman of the Cossacks, Chepega, immediately after the latter had resettled to the Kuban, occupied on its right bank, at the direction of Chief General Gudovich, places that were more convenient for observing the enemy with fortifications, starting from the Voronezh redoubt to Bugaz. By his order, Colonel Kozma Bely set up the first 10 posts or cordons, which formed the first part of the cordon line.

Commanders

• Knorring, Karl Fedorovich
• Obreskov, Alexander Vasilievich

Caucasian Line in the late 1840s and early 1850s

The Caucasian line was subordinate to a special commander and was divided into the following parts: the Black Sea cordon line, the right flank, the center, the left flank and the Vladikavkaz Military District.

• The Black Sea cordon line extended 180 versts along the Kuban, up from its mouth.
• The right flank included the Kuban and Labinsk lines.
• The center, from the Stone Bridge on the Zelenchuk River to the Secret Bridge, near Mozdok, was divided into the Kislovodsk line, the internal and advanced Kabardin lines and part of the Georgian Military Road; it included the settlements of the Volga and mountain Cossacks, Greater and Lesser Kabarda, Karachay and mountain tribes beyond the Black Mountains, to the Vladikavkaz district.
• The left flank included the Tersk and Nizhne-Sunzhenskaya lines, the Kumyk plane, with its forward line, and Chechnya, with the advanced Chechen line. The last three sites in the late 1850s. converted into right and left wings.
• The Vladikavkaz Military District - the forward part of the center of the Caucasian Line - extended from it to the north. snow ridge; part of the Georgian Military Road was also under the jurisdiction of the head of this district.

The head of each unit was directly subordinate to the commander of the troops on the Caucasian line and was in charge of military operations, the regular troops, the Cossack and native population, and against hostile tribes he took those measures that, according to the circumstances, were considered necessary. According to internal administration, troops and Cossacks were under the authority of their immediate superiors and the appointed ataman. The means to repel predatory parties and larger gatherings were: a) in the local, armed Cossack population; b) in fortifications, fortified villages, posts and pickets; c) with the assistance of regular and Don Cossack troops.

The very cordon of the Caucasian line was not equally exposed to the danger of raids along its entire length, and therefore the security measures were different. Only on the main line the villages were put into a defensive state, and in new areas put forward in front they were installed as fortifications. The gaps were occupied by a cordon of posts and pickets; the latter were replaced at night with so-called secrets. The posts had some defense and consisted of a dugout, a barn, an observation tower and some kind of fence with a moat. The breakthrough of predatory parties was signaled by signals and messengers sent to neighboring posts.

Chiefs of the Caucasian Line

• Velyaminov, Alexey Alexandrovich
• Portnyagin, Semyon Andreevich
• Delpozzo, Ivan Petrovich
• Emmanuel, Georgy Arsenievich
• Tormasov, Alexander Petrovich
• Musin-Pushkin, Pyotr Klavdievich

see also

• Russian fortified lines
• Azov-Mozdok fortified line
• Lezgin line
• Black Sea cordon line
• Black Sea coastline
• Sunzhenskaya cordon line

Notes

1. Lidia Zasedateleva, Doctor of Historical Sciences Along the Terek River “Rodina” is a popular historical magazine.
2. Kuban 1776 - Detachment!
3. In the footsteps of the missing river - Cossack Erik.
4. Suvorov in the Kopyl fortress
5. Soloviev V. A. - Suvorov in Kuban

Literature

• Debu I. L. About the Caucasian line to the Black Sea army attached to it or General comments about the settled regiments fencing the Caucasian line, and about the neighboring mountain peoples. From 1816 to 1826 / Censor V. G. Anastasevich. - SPb.: Type. Karla Kraja, 1829. - 504 p.
• Caucasian line // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg, 1890-1907.
• Potto V. A. From ancient times to Ermolov // Caucasian War in individual essays, episodes, legends and biographies: in 5 volumes. - 2nd ed. - SPb.: Type. E. Evdokimova, 1887. - T. 1.

Links

• Expansion of military Cossack colonization on the Caucasian line in the 90s of the XVIII - 60s of the XIX centuries.. Kvkz.ru.

Caucasian line of cinema, Caucasian line of March, Caucasian line of defense, Caucasian line of light

Caucasian Line Information About