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In the intervals between stretched the settlements of the Cossacks; and beyond, the Kabardians themselves had been born warriors, and still retained their arms. On the other hand, Schamyl had no artillery, and no regular convoys of provisions and ammunition.
No less than sixty populous aouls of the Kabardians were plundered; twenty Cossack stanitzas were destroyed; and ravaging on either side the lands through which he passed, the Imam seriously threatened the strong places of Mosdok, Jekaderinograd, and Stavropol.
Petersburg. Previously to his invasion of the territory of these Russianized Kabardians, Schamyl had made various attempts to incite them to throw off their yoke.
Before the garrisons in the strongholds fairly knew that he was among them he was gone; and while the Kabardians believed that he was lurking in the mountain depths, he suddenly dashed into their midst. Sixty populous Kabardian villages were plundered, and the mountaineers proudly refused to turn till they had watered their horses in the Kuban and even reached the more distant banks of the Laba.
But when the work of devastation and pillage was done, he suddenly turned his horses' heads south from Jekaderinograd; overran the Cossack colonies in that direction; and with a considerable number of Kabardians forced into his ranks, with his cruppers loaded with the booty of the plains, and his saddle-bows well furnished with both millet and mutton, regained the mountains.
There was no stopping; and before the garrisons along the line knew that Schamyl had come, he was gone; and when the Kabardians believed that the braggart who had threatened their land with plundering was shut up in his mountains six hundred wersts away, he was in their midst.
In the western Caucasus the various tribes, such as the Kabardians, the Ubighé, and the Adighé, who are the Circassians proper, live under a form of social organization more or less feudal and aristocratic; but in the eastern, among the Lesghians, the Tchetchenians, and the inhabitants of Daghestan, there is for the most part no distinction of classes.
"And an utterly stupid people too!" he replied. "Would you believe it, they are absolutely ignorant and incapable of the slightest civilisation! Why even our Kabardians or Chechenes, robbers and ragamuffins though they be, are regular dare-devils for all that. Whereas these others have no liking for arms, and you'll never see a decent dagger on one of them! Ossetes all over!"
Simultaneously General Prince Gargarin threw troops into the attack on both flanks, advancing infantry and native cavalry regiments of Daghestanians on the right and Circassians and Kabardians on the left. The Ukhnov regiment and the natives rushed forward in a furious onslaught, carrying with them also the Russian regiment which had retired.
But the Kabardians who, formerly converted from paganism to Muscovite Christianity and afterward to Mahometanism, were not zealots in religion, turned a deaf ear to both proclamations and preaching, and even put Achwerdu-Mahomet to death. For alike despising the threats of Schamyl, and fearing the artillery of the Russians, they determined to remain neutral.
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