"But at the same time I inform you that all the aouls and tribes who join the party of Schamyl and oppose themselves to our rightful authority shall be subjected to the most terrible punishments. The same shall be inflicted also on all those who seek to retire into the mountains, and all those who, having fled thither, do not immediately return to their former habitations. And these habitations likewise shall be razed to the ground. "As to the tribes of Akuska and Zudakera, the conditions on which their submission will be accepted will be made known to them by the commander of the forces in Daghestan. "Ye people of Tchetchenia and Daghestan! In this year will your destiny be decided. It depends on yourselves. Choose! In case you submit yourselves to the rightful and beneficent rule of Russia, you will receive the inexpressibly great gift of the grace of our lord the emperor, who watches equally over the happiness and prosperity of all his subjects. But if you obstinately continue in your errors, and place yourselves in the ranks of our enemies, you will share in the punishment inflicted on Schamyl, and will be torn in pieces by the claws of the Russian eagle, which at the same time appears at the rising of the sun and where it goes down in the west, and which wings its flight over Elbrus and Kasbek as though they were mere mole-hills." XXXIX. HIS INVASION OF THE KABARDAS. The black cloud of vengeance, though so small as not to be noticed by the Kabardians, was now gathering in the south-east. 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. It was an inspiration of genius to conceive the plan; it would require the boldest riders in the world to execute it.