I would gladly have witnessed the disembarkation of our troops (for aught I know it may have already taken place), but, after fruitlessly waiting many days in dreary Trebizonde, I no longer dared to delay. News had come that a large Russian force was advancing from Kars westward towards Erzeroum, and, although there are in and around that place some 50,000 Turkish troops, yet, save at Keupru Kui, a place about nine hours’ ride from Erzeroum on the Kars road, little or no preparation appears to have been made to resist an enemy. Erzeroum, let it be remembered, is entered by three posterns, called respectively the Stamboul, the Ardahan, and the Kars gates. The roads from them lead to Ardahan, Kars, Van, Erzinghan, and Trebizonde. On the south of Erzeroum, at a very short distance from the walls, a mountain descends steeply towards the city, which it altogether commands, and a direct road runs from Van to Moush, and from that town to the mountain, from which two water channels lead into Erzeroum. If an enemy once had possession of the eminence—and, so far as I can learn, there is little or nothing to prevent him—he would be able to turn these water-courses off from the city. There are, it is true, a few wells within the walls, but the supply from them is already insufficient for the requirements of the population, without taking into account the troops quartered in and around the town. It seems typical of Turkish apathy that so little should have been done to secure this their last great stronghold in Asia Minor from attack. I am going, of course, merely by what I hear from Turkish officers, as I have as yet been unable to see for myself; but I have hitherto had no reason to discredit their information.
It appears that from time to time, since 1878, proposals have been made for fortifying various strong natural positions, but that, with a procrastinatory belief in the protection of Providence that is wholly Turkish and almost English, these plans have been continually set aside until it is now too late to execute them. Thus on the Van Road, about five miles from Erzeroum, there is an admirable position known as the Palandukain defile. This position was protected after a fashion in 1876, when a fort was constructed capable of offering sturdy resistance. Another fort had been built also at that time at Gereguzek, eighteen miles from Erzeroum, on the Ardahan road. Another position, that of the Devé Boinou Bogaz, five miles from Erzeroum, on the Kars road, was considered at that time to be a good place for a fort, and yet further defences were then constructed at the Loghana defile, which is some twenty-four hours from Erzeroum, on the Kars road. There are, no doubt, also important positions on the Bayazid road, as, for instance, at Deli Baba—a narrow gorge through high mountains, which the Turks declare to be impregnable—at Taher Gedi, five hours’ march further on, and at Kara Kilissa, beyond which there is a level road to Bayazid. Since the war, however, it appears that little or nothing has been done to strengthen or even to maintain these positions in an adequate state of defence. There has been much talk of late in Constantinople of extensive armaments on this frontier. Krupp guns have, it has been said, been sent to supplement the bronze cannon manufactured at Tophané, with which the forts of Erzeroum were in the last war mainly armed. As to whether any such material has reached its destination I am as yet uninformed. People on this road, which it must surely have traversed, profess to know nothing of it. It is to be feared that we may expect a repetition of the famous story of the million liras expenditure said to have been incurred in the fortification of Erzeroum in the last war.
I did not journey from Trebizonde alone, but took advantage of the departure of a huge straggling convoy of mules and pack-horses laden with ammunition for Erzeroum. There were also with us half a dozen English doctors who have taken service with the Porte, and have volunteered to attend the wounded under fire. Owing to the accident to my horse, who slipped, poor brute, through a ragged hole in the wide stone bridge across the Kara Su, close to this place (a terrible pitfall for artillery), and badly scraped both his own shin and his master’s, these gentlemen have perforce abandoned me until such time as I can obtain another beast.
The traffic through this little place, which is the point of junction of the Trebizonde and Erzinghan roads to Erzeroum, and as a rule at this season is almost deserted, is in itself indicative of stirring events in our front. All through the day there has been a continuous passage of nondescript wayfarers in either direction. Turkish soldiers—stragglers or deserters may be—some sick, some slightly wounded; Koordish Bashi-bazouks, pure bandits for the most part, flashing great arsenals of gleaming weapons in their waist-belts, and armed, many of them, with Winchester rifles, remnants of the last war; slim, evil-visaged Circassians on lean, wiry horses, and gaunt Zaibeks, ferocious beneath their extravagant headgear, have tramped and clattered continuously past the miserable khan where I am established. Some of these gentry, I note, have Russian great-coats with regimental numbers on the shoulder strap, flung either across their cruppers, or around their shoulders. This is a sure indication that there has at least been some skirmish or reconnaissance in which Russian arms have suffered not a little.
REPULSE OF THE RUSSIANS.
THE TURKS PURSUE ESKI ZAGRA—THE GRIM REALITIES OF WAR.
Near Keupru Keui, May 2.
I am profiting by an opportunity to send you a hurried message by a Turkish officer on his way to Erzeroum with despatches. Soon after writing last to you, I managed to pick up a horse—a poor beast enough truly, in place of my stalwart grey—and pushed on to Erzeroum. There I found all in confusion. Certain news had arrived of a Russian advance in force along the Kars road, and every available man had been thrown forward to meet it. It was but natural that the Russians should seize the earliest possible opportunity of hurling themselves against the Turkish stronghold, which they might very reasonably expect to find unprepared to receive them. More or less unprepared the Turks indeed were, but Ghazi Moukhtar Pasha—the hero of ’77—who had himself reached Erzeroum but a few days since, was fully determined not to permit his traditional enemy to win an easy triumph. As I have said, every available regiment was ordered to meet the attack, and hurried forward to Keupru Keui, where the stand was to be made. I have as yet no details—indeed, as I stayed but an hour or so in Erzeroum to feed my horses, I have hitherto been able to see no one in authority; but so far as I can gather, the Turks, though outnumbered, were not greatly inferior to their adversaries, over whom they had the additional enormous advantage of being in a position which tradition has taught them to regard as well-nigh impregnable. In any case Turkish arms seem to have gained a signal victory.
Very soon after leaving Erzeroum, which I did shortly before mid-day this morning, I began to meet with unmistakable evidences that a big battle had either been fought or was in progress. First a knot of some twenty infantrymen, weary, haggard, and ragged, met me on the steep slope of the hill some five miles beyond the town. They were all jaded beyond expression—every one was wounded more or less grievously—several were using their rifles as crutches, and some who had lost or abandoned their rifles were helping themselves along either by the aid of their comrades’ shoulders, or by stakes, or waggon-boards, or rammers, or indeed any of the miscellaneous articles of wood or metal that are to be found strewn along the line of a straggling fight. I gave them a water-skin, and offered a bottle of brandy (as ilitch—medicine for their wounds). The water they took, but none would touch the spirit save one gaunt, white-moustached veteran, who mumbled incoherencies about Algeria, by way seemingly of excuse. While they drank I asked them what was doing. ‘A great battle was being fought,’ they said, but their opinions were divided as to the course of the action; several men (weak from loss of blood) opined that the enemy was too strong for them. But one broad-shouldered, bright-eyed little fellow, who had had all the flesh of one cheek torn from him by a shell splinter, and had bound the wound with a strip from his rough serge jacket, was loud in his derision of this view. ‘It was Eski Zagra again,’ he said. The Moskoffs were driven back, beaten hopelessly, and pursued by agile Bashi-bazouks through the slippery passes, the precipitous fastnesses, the treacherous paths of the rugged route, a pursuit without cess or quarter—where every enemy, whether wounded or not, was exultingly slaughtered as soon as caught. The little veteran illustrated with horribly realistic gestures his own views as to the treatment of Russian wounded. With a foul gusto that raised wild enthusiasm in his weary comrades, he demonstrated how he would hew off the noses and lips of his enemy; how he would gouge out their eyes with his bayonet before he plunged it into their throats and twisted it till the victims died suffocated with their own blood. He outlined other horrors, but I had had enough, and left him posing in anticipation as a hero among his fellows, while I rode on towards this place.
That this fierce implacable Moslem had been right in his conjecture I soon had ample—ay, terrible—proof. In every mile, even on the rugged track itself, as I neared the spot from which I write, the horrible evidences of deadly carnage multiplied and repeated themselves. Disembowelled horses, broken limbers, little mounds of dead, fallen one on another, their still, calm, white faces in cruel contrast to the extravagant distortion of their scattered and twisted limbs; and everywhere traces of that ruthless hatred vowed by the Turk to his hereditary enemy. Hideous featureless corpses stared at me out of eyeless sockets from the roadside, their hands uplifted and bloody, showing that wounded, not dead Russians, had been thus maltreated; occasionally a movement, slight though perceptible, caused me to dismount, eager to aid some mutilated sufferer, but all to no purpose—the Turks had done their work too well. As I advanced, the spectacle of these recurrent horrors increased in its revelations of barbarism and malignant cruelty. The number of Turkish dead diminished step by step, as that of the Russians augmented, and by the time I reached this place I had had such a surfeit of ghoul-feasting (for the eye) as I envy no man.