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Updated: May 4, 2025
Two rivers flowed between the mountain ranges and the Kabardas, and two lines of hostile fortresses guarded the frontier, containing in all no less than seventy thousand men. Between the forts lay Cossack settlements, and beyond them the Kabardians, an armed and warlike race. Schamyl had no artillery, no fortresses, no dépôts of provisions and ammunition.
It was easy galloping over the smooth valleys and softly rolling hills of the Kabardas; nor having once broken the bounds of the mountains were Schamyl's riders content to turn back their horses until they had watered them on the Kuban, and even filled with consternation the stanitzas on the still more distant banks of the Laba.
Schamyl, surveying the posture of affairs in the spring of 1846, with the eye of a warrior who was at the same time a prophet, saw that the concentration of Russian troops was mostly in the fortresses of Temir-Chan-Chura and Grosnaja; that Woronzoff was busy looking after his kreposts and his stanitzas; and that consequently there was an opening for himself by means of fast galloping to break through the enemy's line, and make a raid in the Kabardas.
Two rivers flowed between their land and the Kabardas; and across their war-path ran two lines of hostile fortresses. Among these latter was the strong-hold of Wladikaukas, besides others scarcely less impregnable; and in them all lay an army of seventy thousand troops well armed and ready for service.
But in this long period of resistance the chivalry of the Kabardas was gradually wasted, whereas army after army came out of the north as from a womb of men which was inexhaustible.
In the beautiful month of May, when nature in bud and full leaf throughout the mountains inspired the breast of the warrior as well as of the husbandman with hope, Schamyl set forth for the Kabardas. The week before, the highlands lay as peaceful in the midst of the spring's blossoming as they had under the protecting mantle of the winter's snows.
The Kabardas, the great and the little, are twin provinces lying on the northern side of the Caucasian range midway between the two seas, and in a north-westerly direction from the Lesghian and Tchetchenian highlands.
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