The two rebel chiefs occupied the neighboring towns, and so cut off all supplies from the neighboring forests.  In Orenburg they had already eaten up the horses belonging to the garrison, and a certain Kicskoff, the commissary, invented the idea of boiling the skins of the slaughtered animals, cutting them into small slices and mixing them with paste, which food was distributed amongst the soldiers, and gave rise to the breaking out of a scorbutic disease in the fort which rendered half the garrison incapable of work.  On January the 13th, Colonel Vallenstierna tried to break his way through the rebel lines with 2,500 men, but he returned with hardly seventy.  The remainder, about 2,000 men, remained on the field.  At any rate, they no longer asked for food!  A few hundred hussars, however, cut their way through and carried to St. Petersburg the news of what Czar Peter III. (who had now risen for the seventh time from his grave) was doing!  The Czarina commenced to get tired of her adorer’s conquests, so she called together her faithful generals, and asked which of them thought it possible to undertake a campaign in the depth of the Russian winter into the interior of the Russian snow deserts.  This did not mean playing at war, nor a triumphal procession.  It meant a battle with a furious people who, in forty years’ time, would trample upon the most powerful European troops.  There were four who replied that in Russia everything was possible which ought to be done.  The names of these four gentlemen were:  Prince Galiczin, General Bibikoff, Colonel Larionoff, and Michelson, a Swedish officer.  Their number, however, was soon reduced to two at the very commencement.  Larionoff returned home after the first battle of Bozal, where the rebels proved victorious, whilst Bibikoff died from the hardships of the winter campaign.

Galiczin and Michelson alone remained.  The Swede had already gained fame in the Turkish campaign from his swift and daring deeds, and when he started from the Fort of Bozal against the rebels his sole troops consisted of 400 hussars and 600 infantry, with four guns.  With this small force he started to the relief of the Fort of Ufa.  Quickly as he proceeded, Csika’s spies were quicker still, and the rebel leader was informed of the approach of the small body of the enemy.  As he expected that they only intended to reinforce the garrison of Ufa, he merely sent against them 3,000 men, with nine guns, to occupy the mountain passes through which they would march on their way to Ufa.  But Michelson did not go to Ufa as was expected.  He seated his men on sledges, and flew along the plains to Csika’s splendid camp.  So unexpected, so daring, so little to be credited, was this move of his, that when he fell on Csika’s vanguard at one o’clock one morning nobody opposed him.  The alarmed rebels hurried headlong to the camp, and left two guns in the hands of Michelson.  The Swedish hero knew well enough that the 3,000 men of the enemy who occupied the mountain pass would at