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.