The Bokhāran host was within three marches of Tashkent. The city with its 70,000 inhabitants was seething with rebellion, and to maintain a defensive attitude was to court defeat. Romanovski adopted the only tactics which afforded a chance of success. He marched from Tashkent with a force of 14 infantry companies, 5 Cossack squadrons, 20 guns, and a rocket apparatus, and, following the left bank of the Sir Daryā, encountered the enemy at Irjai, between Jizāk and Khojend. The battle that followed on the 20th May 1866 recalls Plassey: 3600 Russians utterly routed a force of 5000 well-armed Bokhāran regulars and 35,000 horsemen with 2 guns which had taken up an entrenched position on the road to Samarkand, on which the beaten host retreated in the utmost disorder. That hotbed of fanaticism lay open to the invader, but he deemed it safer to seize the fortress of Khojend, thus driving a wedge between Bokhārā and the Kokand territories. On the 6th of June 1866 Khojend fell after a siege of eight days and a bombardment by 2 mortars and 18 field-pieces.[549] The news of the rout of Irjai, and the capture of Khojend, created a profound dismay throughout Central Asia; but the proud Uzbegs were loth to acknowledge themselves beaten; and the mullās were still less inclined to forfeit the great position which they held under so pious a ruler as Muzaffar ed-Dīn. He was persuaded to disregard the ultimatum sent by Romanovski, and actively pursued preparations for a new campaign. The Russians therefore took the offensive with unabated vigour. During October they seized the Bokhāran border strongholds of Ura-teppe and Jizāk, thus obtaining a complete command of the valley of the Zarafshān. In the spring of 1867 Yani Kurgān was added to the list of Russian conquests, and was twice heroically defended by General Abramoff against a Bokhāran force of 45,000 men bent on wresting it from the invader. Thus, in the middle of 1867, the Russians found themselves masters of the great sources of Bokhāran prosperity--the basins of the Zarafshān and the Sir Daryā. The vast extent of this newly conquered territory, and its distance from Orenburg, still the administrative capital of Russian Central Asia, led to a revision of the boundaries. By a ukase[550] dated 11th (23rd) July 1867 Turkestān was placed under a governor-general, with headquarters at Tashkent. His authority extended over the provinces of Sir Daryā and Semirechensk, the latter including the vast territory lately acquired between the lakes of Balkash and Issik Kul. General Kauffman, a general who has written his name indelibly on Central Asian annals, was appointed to the important post. On taking the helm he found Kokand quiescent, but Bokhārā still in a state of suppressed excitement, which found occasional vent in attacks on Russian outposts.