through to Erzerum. The offensive began on Jan. n 1916, up the Aras valley, and by the i4th the Turkish positions E. of Erzerum had been carried. It was unfortunate for the Turks that at this moment Mahmud Kiamil had been called away to Constantinople, and that his German chief of staff, Col. Guse, was on sick leave after a severe attack of typhus. The temporary commander of the III. Army, "Abdul Kerim Pasha, was not equal to the situation. The Turkish forces, after losing heavily in a series of rearguard actions, took up a position on the heights N. and S. of Erzerum which had been hastily fortified. The Russians, who expected to overrun these defences at the first attack of their advanced guards, were checked for the moment; but a second assault, delivered by strong forces against the left of the Turkish line from Kara Gobek, proved decisive of the fate of the fortress, which fell into Russian hands on Feb. 15 1916, the troops of Gen. Yudenich advancing by surprise against the southern front, where no attack was expected.
The defenders of Erzerum had certainly put up a good fight, and the Russian claim to have captured in the fortress 100,000 prisoners, 437 guns in the inner and 374 guns in the outer forts and 200 field guns was certainly greatly exaggerated. The whole Turkish army, if we deduct the heavy losses suffered, was barely 50,000 strong, and the whole artillery of the fortress amounted to barely 10% of the figures given by the Russians.
The Turks, however, whose communiques were easily the most inaccurate of all those issued by the belligerents, sent home on Feb. 16 an entirely fanciful account of what had happened: " On the Caucasus front," it ran, " in the violent position fight- ing which has continued for the last three days despite the cold and snow, the enemy lost 5,000 dead and 60 prisoners." The loss of Erzerum was not even mentioned, and even the Sultan and his entourage only heard of it some months later; and even when the facts were finally announced to the world the impor- tance of the place was minimized and its evacuation represented as being a voluntary withdrawal on the part of the Turks. The Grand Duke Nicholas, far from resting content with his victory, vigorously followed up the Turks in their disordered retreat, and occupied Mamakhatun. On Feb. 24 the remnant of the beaten army crossed the Euphrates at Kotur. Mahmud Kiamil, who had resumed his command, was now replaced by Wahib Pasha; the greater part of the artillery and material had been left behind in the retreat, and he only succeeded with great difficulty in getting his troops across the river, which here flows from N. to S., and into position on the right bank on the heights of Baiburt. The V. Corps, which was arriving in haste and piecemeal from European Turkey, assisted in checking the Russian advance. In the coastal sector the detachment at Artvin, though reinforced by some units of the V. Corps, was assailed by superior forces and compelled to fall back after stubborn fighting. Maj. Hunger, the German commander, succeeded in making a renewed stand 20 m. E. of Trebizond, but by the middle of April the Russian i23rd Div. forced him back once more and occupied Trebizond.
The Turkish strategic situation had now become serious. The possession of Trebizond allowed the Russians to open up a mich shorter line of communications across the Black Sea from
- he Ukrainian and Crimean seaports, and gave them a base
- lose behind their front. The disadvantage of having this base
oehind the right wing of their army could be compensated for )y reinforcing this wing, so as to avoid any possibility of its )eing forced away from its line of communications, while the and route to Erzerum from Kars was still in use and would be ivailable to supply the whole army if necessary.
The Turks, therefore, had to expect that in the forthcoming pring the Grand Duke Nicholas, whose forces were continually >eing reinforced from the Caucasus, would resume the offensive >n a large scale. The Turkish Supreme Command was now reed of all anxiety from the side of the Dardanelles, but it still naintained three armies, the I. (Essad Pasha), the II. (Ahmad fzzet Pasha) and the V. (Liman Pasha), massed in the Constan- inople-Adrianople area, thousands of miles from the theatres of perations, in Mesopotamia and eastern Anatolia.
The loss of Trebizond finally aroused Enver Pasha to a realiza- tion of the full extent of the strategic danger in the E., and in March the II. Army was directed to the E. Anatolian front. It was to deploy on the line Lake Van-Mush-Kigi, and advance against the Russian flank and rear in the general direction of Erzerum; it was to be brought up to a strength of 10 divisions by the addition of the forces already in the area of operations, and to be reorganized in four corps. The commander, Ahmad 'Izzet Pasha, had been promoted commander-in-chief of the Turkish army after the Dec. armistice in the Balkan War.
The strategic plan adopted by the Turkish Supreme Command for the II. Army was as usual excellent in theory but impossible of execution. The idea of throwing a whole army on the flank and rear of the Russians must certainly have seemed seductive to anyone sitting over a map in Constantinople; for it seemed to promise a strategic encirclement, it followed famous precedents, and there was plenty of room for the manoeuvre. In practice, however, the plan paid no attention to the actual conditions of time and space. The II. Army was despatched in the spring by rail from Constantinople to Ulu Kyshla; the line, which was a single one, with enormous intervals between stations, was already serving as the line of communication for the Palestine and Mesopotamia armies, so that any rapid transport of the II. Army was out of the question. The Turkish Supreme Command made a grave miscalculation in assuming that the army would be assembled and ready for the advance in 40 days; the distance from the railhead -at Ulu Kyshla to the area of concentration (some 400 m.), which had to be covered on foot, would itself have taken up all that time. The amateur strategists at Turkish H.Q. took no account of these matters, and were mightily surprised when the event disappointed their expectations. As a matter of fact by July 8 the leading troops of the II. Army (III. Corps 7th and nth Div.) had barely passed Malatia, and the rest of the army was still on the railway in August.
Meanwhile the situation on the III. Army front was going from bad to worse. At the end of May it had carried out a few successful minor operations; Mamakhatun and Surmene (E. of Trebizond) had been occupied, and the army command, which was now at Gumuskhane, misconceiving the general situation, proposed to carry out a powerful offensive S. of Trebizond early in July. For this purpose it suggested that the units of the II. Army already available should push forward without delay to the area S. of Erzerum an advance which, with the weak forces which 'Izzet Pasha had at his disposal, could only have been effective as a demonstration or a piece of bluff. But even this could hardly have succeeded, in view of the excellent intelligence as to the Turkish movements which the Russians were known to have, and 'Izzet Pasha rightly declined to fall in with the scheme. As a matter of fact the Russians had full information as to these happenings, and especially the progress of the transport of the II. Army, and seized their chance to attack the III. Army in July, before the II. Army's menace to their flank could become effective. This was the best solution of their problem of opera- tions on the inner line, and it met with complete success. On July 7 the Turkish III. Army was driven from Erzinjan and Baiburt with heavy losses in men, guns and material, and was able to make another stand only on the line Kemach (on the Euphrates 30 m. W. of Erzinjan) -Chadali Pass-Tireboli on the Black Sea. The most serious result of this defeat was the complete de- moralization of the defeated troops; thousands of deserters, plundering and robbing, flooded all the country as far back as Sivas; columns and transport melted away in panic on the appearance of the Russian cavalry, who had broken through the Turkish line at two points and suddenly appeared in its rear. The III. Army reported in Aug. that 13,000 deserters had re- joined their units, but the governor of Sivas estimated that some 30,000 were still at large in his area. The fact that the Mahom- medan population in the area evacuated by the Turkish army fled in terror before the advance of the Russians added to the indescribable confusion.
When 'Izzet Pasha with the III. Corps advanced at the end of July into the zone of assembly allotted to the II. Army the
