The circumstances connected with the war--the ukase states in part--were of a nature to complicate and suspend the transplantation of the Jews.... These complications can now, after the cessation of the war, be averted in the future by means of a gradual and most convenient arrangement of the work of transplantation.... For these reasons we deem it right to lay down an arrangement by means of which the transplantation of the Jews, beginning with the date referred to above, may be carried into effect, without the slightest delay and mitigation. The "arrangement" alluded to consisted in spreading the expulsion from the villages over three years: one-third of the Jews were to be expelled in 1808, another third in 1809, and the last third in 1810. Committees were appointed to assist the governors in carrying out the expulsion decree. These committees were instructed to make it incumbent upon the Kahals to render financial assistance to the expelled, to those who were being pitilessly ruined by the Government. The horrors of the expulsion began. Those who did not go willingly were made to leave by force. Many were ejected ruthlessly, under the escort of peasants and soldiers. They were driven like cattle into the townlets and cities, and left there on the public squares in the open air. The way in which the expulsion from the villages was carried out in the Government of Vitebsk was particularly ferocious.[249] Scores of exiled Jews petitioned the authorities to have them transferred to New Russia, to the agricultural colonies, in which several hundred Jewish families had found some kind of shelter. But the supply of arable land and the funds set aside for the transfer were found to be exhausted; the appeals therefore remained unheeded. The distress of the Jewish masses reached such colossal proportions that the governors themselves, in their reports to the central Government, declared that it was impossible to carry out the expulsion decree without subjecting the Jews to complete ruin. Accordingly a new ukase was issued in the last days of December, 1808, to the effect that the Jews be left in their former domiciles, pending special Imperial orders.