The Czarina's yoke these wild nations bore
with submissive patience, but not the hands by which it had been
imposed; and, accordingly, catching with eagerness at the present
occasion offered to their vengeance, they sent an assurance to the
Czarina of their perfect obedience to her commands, and at the same
time a message significantly declaring in what spirit they meant to
execute them, viz., 'That they would not trouble her Majesty with
prisoners.'
Here then arose, as before with the Cossacks, a race for the Kalmucks
with the regular armies of Russia, and concurrently with nations as
fierce and semi-humanized as themselves, besides that they were stung
into threefold activity by the furies of mortified pride and military
abasement, under the eyes of the Turkish Sultan. The forces, and more
especially the artillery, of Russia, were far too overwhelming to
permit the thought of a regular opposition in pitched battles, even
with a less dilapidated state of their resources than they could
reasonably expect at the period of their arrival on the Torgau. In
their speed lay their only hope--in strength of foot, as before, and
not in strength of arm. Onward, therefore, the Kalmucks pressed,
marking the lines of their wide-extending march over the sad solitudes
of the steppes by a never-ending chain of corpses.
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