But only to meet disappointment. The local Russian commanders professed themselves utterly unable to render the least assistance, and could only offer the Patriarch the abjectly despairing counsel that, now he himself had escaped, he had better remain in safety, and not sacrifice his life uselessly by a vain attempt to return. Mar Shimun indignantly refused to rest even one night in safety, and turned back at once to the mountains to share his people’s doom.
The outlook was now truly terrible, but the Assyrians were determined not to perish without one more struggle.[{372}] They would attempt to break the leaguer and force their way down to Urmi Plain. Even for an uncumbered army this could hardly be thought a promising enterprise; and the tribesmen were but ill-armed and poorly disciplined. Moreover, they must endeavour to carry off with them their non-combatants—women and children. They would number in all about 25,000 persons, and flocks and herds besides. Their route, as all know who have travelled there, lay through one of the most rugged and most difficult of the mountain districts in Asia; and the paths are seldom wide enough for two men to walk on them abreast. It was a desperate expedient, but to stay was certain death. Surrender meant massacre, for there was no mercy either in Turk or Kurd; and if the worst came to the worst, it was better to die fighting. Moreover, they had leaders who knew how to make the most even of the slenderest chances; and the plan which they resolved to attempt was marked by all the hardihood and ingenuity of desperation.
The bulk of their foes lay to the eastward, blocking all the direct tracks to Urmi, and drawing their sustenance from the fertile fields of Gawar, where Nuri Beg had just completed a peculiarly atrocious massacre of the unarmed Christians of the plain. Therefore they would break out westward, where no one would dream of expecting them. They would march in two bands, lest their line should be strung out unwieldily—and perhaps with a tacit prevision like that of the patriarch Jacob, that if one band was caught and overwhelmed the other might have chances of escape. They would cross the Zab by the flimsy wooden bridges near the mouths of the lateral valleys of Diz and Tal.[162] Then, making a wide circuit northward, they would reunite on the further side of Julamerk, whence one more long day’s march would bring them to Albaq (near Bashkala) and the pass that led to Salmas Plain.
And, in the face of all military probability, this daring plan actually succeeded. If the Assyrians were but poorly disciplined, the Kurds who beleaguered them were no better.[{373}]
A BIT OF THE ROAD BETWEEN TAL AND JULAMERK
These built-up sections, or “Stangi,” are a feature of the mountain paths