CAMPAIGN IN THE CAUCASUS

Disquieting as was the British offensive in Mesopotamia, the Turkish General Staff were not to be drawn by it from considerations of larger strategy. Acting in agreement with the German and Austrian General Staffs, plans were rapidly pushed for an aggressive offensive in the Caucasus, that old-time battling ground of the Russians and the Turks. Germany was being hotly pressed in France by the armies of Belgium, France, and England, and feared an offensive on the part of the Russian army.

Across the great isthmus separating the Caspian and Black Seas run the Caucasus Mountains. Parallel to this range of towering mountains, the highest in Europe, runs the frontier line of Russia and Turkey and Russia and Persia, winding in and out among the Trans-Caucasian Mountains. About two hundred miles from the Russo-Turkish frontier stands Tiflis, the rich and ancient capital of Georgia, and one of the prime objectives of any Turkish offensive. One of the few railroads of this wild country runs from Tiflis through the Russian fortress of Kars, forty-five miles from the Turkish frontier, to Sarikamish, thirty miles nearer. On the Turkish side the fortress of Erzerum stands opposed to Kars, but suffering in comparison by the lack of railroad communication with the interior of Turkey.

Despite all these discouraging circumstances, however, the Turkish General Staff, dominated by the indefatigable and ambitious Enver Pasha, was not to be deterred. A brilliant and daring plan of campaign, aiming at the annihilation or capture of the entire Russian Caucasian army, the seizure of Kars and Tiflis, and the control of the immensely valuable and important Caspian oil fields, was prepared. The unwelcome task of carrying this plan to completion and success was intrusted to Hassan Izzet Pasha, under the general guidance of Enver Pasha and his staff of German advisers.

The heroic efforts of the Turkish troops, their grim but hopeless battle against equally brave troops, appalling weather conditions, and insuperable obstacles, their failure and defeat when on the very verge of complete success, make an intensely interesting story.

Stationed at Erzerum, Turkey had the Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Corps. In addition, the Thirty-seventh Arab division had been brought up from Bagdad to strengthen the Eleventh Corps. At Trebizond two divisions of the First Corps had been brought from Constantinople by sea. These forces totaled about 140,000 troops. At and about Kars, General Woronzov, the Russian commander, had between 100,000 and 110,000 troops at his disposal from first to last. But although weaker in numbers he had the inestimable advantage of operating with a line of railroad at his back, whereas the Turkish commander had to depend entirely upon road transit, 500 miles from the nearest railroad.

The conditions absolutely necessary for the success of the Turkish plan were the holding of the Russian force beyond Sarikamish, and the accurate timing of the flanking attacks, otherwise the Russian commander would be able to deal with each force separately and defeat and perhaps destroy them.

The campaign opened on November 20, 1914. The Russians, advancing across the frontier from Sarikamish, took Koprikeui, within thirty miles of Erzerum. There, for some time, they remained while the Turkish command prepared for their great coup.

About the middle of December, 1914, the Eleventh Corps of the Turkish army moved out of Erzerum, engaged the Russians at Koprikeui, defeated them after a short, sharp struggle, and drove them in disorder a dozen miles to Khorasan. While the Eleventh Corps was thus engaged the Ninth and Tenth Corps, marching forty miles to the north in terrible weather, succeeded in crossing the high mountains that guard the Russian frontier. On Christmas Day they looked down on the town of Sarikamish and the vital railway that stretched away to the eastward. At the same time the two divisions of the First Corps, stationed at Trebizond, making a wider sweep, had, by forced marches through a blinding blizzard that threatened to make necessary the abandonment of the artillery, reached the vicinity of Ardahan.

The Tenth Corps had reached and was threatening the railway east of Sarikamish on the road to Kars. Its defeat was absolutely necessary to the safety of the Russian army. It was therefore the object of General Woronzov's first attack. During four days every available man and gun he could bring up on the railway were thrown against the rapidly dwindling ranks of the Tenth Corps. The Turks fought bravely, but weight of numbers and superiority of communications told in the end, and the Ottoman forces were driven into the mountains to the north.

The defeat and retreat of the Tenth Corps exposed the left flank of the Ninth, commanded by Iskan Pasha. General Woronzov took full advantage of the situation. Iskan and his 40,000 troops were soon fighting a desperate battle against an enveloping movement that threatened to encompass them.

Of the 40,000 troops of the Ninth Corps, a bare 6,000 struggled out of the mountains to the vicinity of Sarikamish, where they were rallied by Iskan Pasha. For six days and nights this heroic band made a determined attempt to capture the town held by a comparatively weak Russian garrison. Finally, when, surrounded by overwhelming Russian forces, it became apparent that no Turkish relief could reach him, Iskan Pasha and the remnant of his once proud corps surrendered.

Sarikamish was defended against Iskan's 6,000 by a mere handful of soldiers. Time and time again urged by their German officers, the Turks hurled themselves against the thin Russian line. It bent but did not break, as step by step, fighting fiercely all the way, it retreated before weight of numbers. And when relief did come to the defenders, and Iskan and his force were compelled to surrender, the brave little Russian band was completely exhausted.

In their pursuit of the remnants of the Tenth Corps the Russians met with some of the difficulties that had been the undoing of the Turks. Furthermore, although the Ninth Corps had been hemmed in so that no relief could reach it, the Turkish command had by no means lost the power of effective counteraction. The Eleventh Corps at Khorasan carried on an energetic campaign against the Russian front, gained a local and tactically important success, and drove the enemy back as far as Kara-Urgan, less than twenty miles from Sarikamish. Indeed, so serious became the threat to the Russian forces that General Woronzov, much against his wishes, was compelled to call off the pursuit of the Tenth Corps and strengthen the Sarikamish front with the troops that had been operating farther to the east.

In the second week of January, 1915, between these forces and the Eleventh Corps of the Turkish army a fierce battle, lasting several days, opened. The struggle was of the utmost intensity, at times developing into a hand-to-hand combat between whole regiments. On January 14 the Fifty-second Turkish Regiment was put to the bayonet by the Russians. At Genikoi a regiment of Cossacks charged, during an engagement with a portion of the Thirty-second Turkish Division, and killed and wounded more than 300.

It must be remembered in judging the terrible nature of the struggle that the armies were fighting in difficult country. The battle of Kara-Urgan, furthermore, was waged in a continual snowstorm. Thousands of dead and wounded were buried in the rapidly falling snow and no effort was made to recover them. By the end of this week, January 16, 1915, owing largely to their superior railway communications and the possibility of reenforcements, the Russians had not only checked the Turkish offensive, but had decisively defeated the Eleventh Corps. Pressing their advantage the Russians pursued the beaten Turks toward Erzerum, but the heavy snows prevented them gaining the full fruits of their victory.

If the Eleventh Corps had not won a victory it had, however, accomplished its object in that it had relieved the pressure on the Tenth and enabled it to make good its escape to the north, where it proceeded to effect a junction with the First Corps. The experience of this First Corps had not been a happy one. We left it on Christmas Day, 1914, overlooking Ardahan. A week later it entered the city and prepared to carry out its rÔle in the general offensive by advancing upon the Russian right flank at Kars. It met serious opposition, however, when it attempted to move out of Ardahan, was itself compelled to retreat, and finally sought safety beyond the ridges to the west. There, in the valley of the ChorÛk, it joined up with the Tenth Corps. Together they continued their retreat upon Trebizond. Subsequently they tried a new offensive in the ChorÛk valley which was undecisive, however, and at the end of January, 1914, the situation had developed into a deadlock.

The Turkish troops in their operation in the Caucasus appeared to have suffered from the difficulty of keeping open their sea communications with Constantinople. Lacking railways they relied too much upon supplies arriving at Trebizond. The Russian fleet in the Black Sea was active, however, and upset the Turkish calculations. In the first week of January, 1915, at Sinope a Russian cruiser discovered the Turkish cruiser Medjidieh convoying a transport. After a short engagement the Medjidieh was put to flight, and the transport sunk.

On January 6, 1915, the Russian Black Sea fleet ran into the Breslau and the Hamidieh and damaged them both in a running fight. A week later Russian torpedo boats sank several Turkish supply boats near Sinope.

While this fighting was taking place in the north, farther to the south toward the Persian frontier the Russians were attempting a turning movement against the Turkish right flank. At the same time that the Russian force in the north crossed the Turkish frontier the Russian column entered Turkey fifty miles farther southeast. On November 8, 1914, this force entered the Turkish town of Kara Kilissa. A week later, making its way southwest for a distance of twenty miles, it engaged, near the village of Dutukht, a Turkish force composed largely of Arab troops of the Thirteenth Corps. At the outset the Russians met with a measure of success, but on November 22, 1914, the Turks, having been reenforced by troops from Bagdad, began a fierce offensive. After indecisive fighting in the Alashgird valley the Turks, about the middle of December, 1914, almost caught the Russians in a bold enveloping movement north of Dutukht. In order to escape the Russians were compelled to retreat hurriedly and thus ended their offensive operation in this section.

Still farther to the south, in Persia, the Turks and Russians also battled. Not only because of political conditions, but because of the nature of the country, it was easier for Russia and Turkey to attack each other through Persia than directly across other frontiers, just as it was easier for Germany and France to reach each other across Belgium. At the outbreak of war both Turkey and Russia, recognizing these circumstances, were occupants of Persian territory. Early in November two Russian columns marched across the northwest corner of Persia and into Turkey by the Kotur and Khanesur passes, evidently with the important city of Van, on the lake of that name, as an objective. At a point near Dilman, and again at Serai, they drove the Turkish troops back toward Van, but were checked by reenforcements.

Meanwhile the Turks had a more considerable success to the south. Apparently taking the Russian higher command completely by surprise, Turkish troops advanced almost unopposed to Tabriz, the most important of the cities of northern Persia. Alarmed by this, Russia sent a strong force which, on January 30, 1915, succeeded in recapturing the city.

Thus, up to the end of January, 1915, nothing decisive had been accomplished on the Caucasian front by either Turkey or Russia. The Battle of Sarikamish, resulting in a Turkish loss estimated by the Russian authorities at 50,000, while decisive enough locally, seems to have had no appreciable effect upon the situation as a whole. For reasons resting very largely in the difficulty of finding the troops necessary, as well as in the conditions of the country and the weather, the Russians had been unable to follow up their success. Indeed, the offensive appears to have continued in the hands of the Turks.

It is probably the case that Russia was unwilling to detach any considerable number of troops from her Polish and Galician front, where important events were brewing. Her General Staff rightly regarded the Caucasian front as of secondary importance—and like Austria on her Italian frontier, determined to fight a defensive campaign.

However that may be, conditions after the first few months of campaigning settled down into a stalemate. Engagements on a relatively small scale were reported from time to time, but the balance of advantage remained fairly even. Both countries had fronts where victories would bring larger returns and more immediate effect upon the ultimate outcome of the war.[Back to Contents]