Page:The Annual Register 1758.djvu/288

 repel the inhabitants, who might assemble to attack them. Two new corps are detached to scour the parts where the former had been; and in the instant these return, a third detachment is sent out to gather the gleaning the others may have left.

These barbarians spare none. They cut the throats of infants and old people; but men and women, boys and girls, they compel to follow them. The number of their captives hath sometimes exceeded 50,000. They generally burn the houses they have plundered, and turn the most pleasant and fruitful countries into a frightful desart.

The same havock which they make round the places they fix for the limits of their incursions, they make also in their return in those parts which they spared at first, provided they be not pursued. When they pass the frontiers and get to a place of safety, they repose themselves and divide the booty, of which one tenth is always reserved for the Kan. They cruelly separate all the members of one family; the husband from the wife, the children from the parents, alotting them to different persons, and selling them into different countries. They sell many of them to the Turks, who employ them on board their gallies; but they reserve the young women to be the unfortunate victims of their brutality. Tho' they arrive in a country all together, yet in going back they march in several divisions, that those who follow them, seeing several tracks, may not know precisely which road they have taken. On these occasions, the Cossacks, who have almost as much ferocity, and no less love of plunder, generally lay ambuscades for them. They wait for them in defiles, or even in the midst of plains, where they march in tabort; that is the name they give to their manner of travelling between two rows of waggons, which enclose them and from thence they fire on the Tartars with small arms. It seldom happens, but that the whole army is put into disorder. They fly in such confusion, that one runs over another, without respect even to their leaders. Each runs whither his fears carry him: and if they are pursued, they gradually throw away all they carry. They strew effects in the way, to amuse the enemy. They throw away even their arms, and often, without ceasing to run, they cut the girts of their saddles, and let them fall off, in order to relieve their horses, that they may run more swiftly.

 

