Nothing was saved from the general wreck except the portable part of
the domestic utensils, and that part of the woodwork which could be
applied to the manufacture of the long Tartar lances. This chapter in
their memorable day's work being finished, and the whole of their
villages throughout a district of ten thousand square miles in one
simultaneous blaze, the Tartars waited for further orders.
These, it was intended, should have taken a character of valedictory
vengeance, and thus have left behind to the Czarina a dreadful
commentary upon the main motives of their flight. It was the purpose of
Zebek-Dorchi that all the Russian towns, churches, and buildings of
every description, should be given up to pillage and destruction, and
such treatment applied to the defenceless inhabitants as might
naturally be expected from a fierce people already infuriated by the
spectacle of their own outrages, and by the bloody retaliations which
they must necessarily have provoked. This part of the tragedy, however,
was happily intercepted by a providential disappointment at the very
crisis of departure. It has been mentioned already that the motive for
selecting the depth of winter as the season of flight (which otherwise
was obviously the very worst possible) had been the impossibility of
effecting a junction sufficiently rapid with the tribes on the west of
the Wolga, in the absence of bridges, unless by a natural bridge of
ice.
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