The majority of its inhabitants agreed to evacuate their families and property to Nerchinsk, whereas several young Cossacks resolved to join the Manchu army and to relocate to Beijing.
The fort of Nerchinsk dates from 1654 and the town was founded four years later by Afanasy Pashkov, who in that year opened direct communication between the Russian settlements in Transbaikalia and those on the Amur River which had been founded by Cossacks and fur-traders coming from the Yakutsk region.
Nerchinsk katorga (Russian: Нерчинская каторга, Nerchinskaya katorga) was a katorga system of the Russian Empire in the Nerchinsk okrug of Transbaikalia (today's Chita Oblast), between rivers Shilka and Argun, near the border to Mongolia, in the 18th to 20th centuries.
Argun was the first town on the Russian border, then they went through Nertzinskoi (Nerchinsk), Plotbus, touched a lake called Schaks Ozer, Jerawena, the river Udda, Yeniseysk, and Tobolsk (from September 1703 to beginning of June 1704).