During the three following years there was an incessant succession of expeditions. Golovin, on the frontiers of Georgia, Grabe on the north, and Racifsky on the Circassian seaboard, left nothing untried to accomplish their master's orders. The sacrifices incurred by Russia were enormous; the greater part of her fleet was destroyed by a storm, but all efforts failed against the intrepidity and tactics of the mountaineers. Some new forts erected under cover of the ships were all that resulted from these disastrous campaigns. I was in the Caucasus in 1839, when Lieutenant-General Grabe returned from his famous expedition against Shamihl. When the army marched it had numbered 6000 men, 1000 of whom, and 120 officers, were cut off in three months. But as the general had advanced further into the country than any of his predecessors, Russia sang poeans, and Grabe became the hero of the day, although the imperial troops had been forced to retreat and entirely evacuate the country they had invaded. All the other expeditions were similar to this one, and achieved in reality nothing but the burning and destruction of a few villages. It is true the mountaineers are far from being victorious in all their encounters with the Russians, whose artillery they cannot easily withstand; but if they are obliged to give way to numbers or to engineering, nevertheless, they remain in the end masters of the ground, and annul all the momentary advantages gained by their enemies.
The year 1840 was still more fatal to the arms of Nicholas. Almost all the new forts on the seaboard were taken by the Circassians, who bravely attacked and carried the best fortified posts without artillery. The military road from the Kouban to Guelendchik was intercepted, Fort St. Nicholas, which commanded it, was stormed and the garrison massacred. Never yet had Russia endured such heavy blows. The disasters were such that the official journals themselves, after many months' silence, were at last obliged to speak of them, and to try to gloss them over by publishing turgid eulogiums on the heroism of the unfortunate Black Sea garrisons. The following is the bulletin published in the Russian Invalide of the 7th of August, 1840:[61]
"The annals of the Russian army present a multitude of glorious deeds of arms and heroic actions, the memory of which will be for ever preserved among posterity. The detached corps of the Caucasus has from its special destination more frequent opportunities than the other troops to gather new laurels; but there had not yet been seen in its ranks examples of so brilliant a valour as that recently manifested by the garrisons of several campaigning fortifications erected on the unsubjugated territory of the Cossacks of the eastern shores of the Black Sea. Erected with a view to curb the brigandages of those semi-barbarous hordes, and particularly their favourite occupation, the shameful trade in slaves, these fortifications were during the spring of this year the constant objects of their attacks. In hopes to destroy the obstacles raised against them, at a period when by reason of their position, and the insurmountable difficulty of communication, the forts on the seaboard could not receive any aid from without, they united against them all their forces and all their means. And indeed three of these forts fell, but fell with a glory that won for their defenders the admiration and even the respect of their fierce enemies. The valiant efforts of the other garrisons were crowned with better success. They have all withstood the desperate and often-repeated attacks of the mountaineers, and held out unsubdued until it was possible to send them succours.