On the night of 6 to 7 July (24/25 June, according to the Julian calendar) 1866, 5,000 kilometres east of their homeland, a group of January insurgents who had been sent to Baikal for penal labour stirred up a rebellion, disarmed their guards, and tried to forge an escape route to Mongolia. Against less than six hundred insurgents, the Russians mobilised several thousand soldiers. There was a clash at the Miskha River, where the Poles were defeated and began to flee, but only one small group managed to reach the Mongolian border. Four leaders of the uprising, Gustaw Szaramowicz, Narcyz Celiński, Władysław Kotkowski and Jakub Raynert, were captured by the Russians and hanged. Other participants in the uprising were given harsher punishments. The paradox of the event was that the troops suppressing the uprising were commanded by a Pole in the Tsar’s service, General Bolesław Kukiel, Chief of Staff of the East Siberian Military District, who enjoyed a good reputation among Polish exiles and exile workers. Many of them reacted with astonishment to the news of the uprising. Apolinary Świętorzecki, a former January Uprising insurgent, was simply shocked by the news.