CAPTURE OF MIANEH
Armoured car causes consternation--Reconnoitring the road--Flying
column sets out--An easy capture at the gates of Tabriz--Tribesmen
raid the armoured car--And have a thin time--Turks get the wind up.
Zinjan having thus passed into our hands without the firing of a
shot, the Wagstaff column established its headquarters in a garden
villa a mile north of the town, near the junction of the road to
Mianeh. The Indo-European Telegraph Company had an office in Zinjan,
and we were speedily in communication with Kasvin, eighty miles to
the south-east.
Osborne's small party soon turned up, having failed to round up any
Turks. Indeed, the latter bolted from Zinjan with amazing celerity,
so much so that their commandant, Major Ghalib Bey, left behind some
of his papers and personal effects.
During our march on Zinjan, Dunsterville headquarters had moved up
from Hamadan to Kasvin in order the more effectively to co-operate
with Bicherakoff and his Russian volunteers in the impending
operations against Kuchik Khan and his Jungalis, who were holding the
Manjil-Resht road.
A few hours after we had taken peaceable possession {153} of Zinjan,
Lieutenant Pierpont, with a light armoured car mounting a machine-gun
and a Ford convoy bringing supplies for our force, arrived from
Kasvin. The car, as it lumbered through the narrow bazaar streets,
scraping its way round sharp corners where there was scarcely room to
swing a cat, visibly impressed the susceptible native mind, and
damped the pro-Turkish enthusiasm of the militant local Democrats.
Its presence exercised a salutary moral influence, and although there
were mutterings of discontent at our unceremonious seizure of the
town, the stodgy barrel of the machine-gun peeping from the turret of
the armoured car was in itself sufficient to overawe all the
anti-British hotheads of Zinjan.
On the morning following our arrival in Zinjan Major Wagstaff sent me
off with the armoured car to reconnoitre the road towards Mianeh. I
had with me Lieutenant Pierpont, who was in charge of the car and its
crew of three, and Lieutenant Poidebard of the French Army, who was
attached to our column. In addition to the car there were a couple
of Ford vans carrying spare petrol and stores for the journey.
Official road reports in our possession covering the section of the
route between Zinjan and Mianeh were indefinite and even conflicting.
The road ahead was in places reputed to be "good for wheeled
transport," but whether it was passable for an armoured car was
highly problematical.
Our first day's journey was devoid of thrill. We forded the shallow
waters of the Zinjan Rud and one {154} of its tributary streams,
towed the car in places with the two Fords as tugs, and at others
built a plank bridge to carry it over deep mud holes.
At the village of Nik Be, or Nikhbeg, which is about thirty miles
from our starting-point, the inhabitants fled in terror at the sight
of the strange iron-clad monster moving down the village high street.
The very dogs took fright and set out for some remote part of
Azerbaijan with their tails between their legs. Even the usually
placid transport donkey was not proof against the prevailing
infection of fear, and kicking his load free, he betook himself
elsewhere. The general impression appeared to be that the Evil One
himself had dropped in for a morning call. In five minutes from our
entry into the village not a human face was to be seen, and a silence
as of death itself reigned everywhere. Presently we dug out some of
the terrified villagers from various subterranean hiding-places and
prevailed upon them to inspect the "monster" at close range. Finding
it now stood the test well, and that it behaved in a rational way,
they grew bolder, and patted its khaki-painted sides affectionately,
as one would stroke a dog of dubious friendliness.
On the succeeding day, by dint of a good deal of spade work, we
reached Jamalabad, about fifteen miles from Mianeh, where the road
approaches the Baleshkent Pass. The ascent to the pass from the
Jamalabad side is about three miles from the village, and the road
mounts abruptly at a very sharp angle. {155} On the reverse slope it
zigzags down the side of a gorge which made one giddy to look at. It
required the united efforts of fifty sturdy villagers from Jamalabad
to push the car to the top of the pass, but, even if we could have
negotiated the descent in safety, it was doubtful if we should ever
have been able to climb back by the precipitous corkscrew ascent.
To be caught by the Turks at the bottom of the Pass unsupported would
mean disaster for the expedition, so very reluctantly we turned the
armoured car's head for Zinjan. We learned that there were Turks in
Mianeh, but none of those who had quitted Zinjan in such haste before
the advance of the Wagstaff column had come along the Jamalabad road.
Pierpont, who was in charge of the car, was a mild-mannered youth,
but of a very warlike disposition, and was much disappointed that we
had not had a brush with his old enemy, the Turk. Down Mesopotamia
way he once charged an infantry position and engaged in "close
action" by laying his armoured car alongside a front-line trench,
where he speedily closed the account of its defenders with
machine-gun fire.
Another swift stroke now placed us in possession of Mianeh and
brought us eighty miles nearer Tabriz.
Captain Osborne, taking with him a small detachment from Wagstaff's
force, as well as a contingent of hastily recruited Persian
irregulars, was despatched from Zinjan over the recently reconnoitred
{156} route. He had a convoy of Ford vans, took with him the
armoured car under Lieutenant Pierpont, and pushed forward rapidly,
negotiating the difficult Baleshkent and the still more difficult
Kuflan Kuh Passes. The Kuflan Kuh at its highest point is 5,750
feet, and the ascent on the south side and descent on the north side
are very difficult for ordinary wheeled transport. This is
especially so on the south slope, which, in a series of short, sharp
gradients rises 2,000 feet in two miles.
By the aid of a good deal of native labour the armoured car was
safely taken over the formidable Kuflan Kuh, and duly made its
appearance in Mianeh. The Turks were reported to have had a small
post here, but when Osborne's party entered Mianeh the enemy had
already withdrawn towards the north-west.
The premises of the Indo-European Telegraph Company, which had a
stout wall and a compound, were selected as British headquarters.
Leaving a part of his slender command here to hold the place until
Wagstaff and his main body could come up, Osborne with the
armoured-car patrol and a few British N.C.O's pushed along the Tabriz
road, crossed the Shibley Pass twenty miles south-east of Tabriz, and
reconnoitred up to the gates of the city itself. It was a hazardous
and daring undertaking, but it would have succeeded, and we could
easily have won the race to Tabriz and so checkmated the less
enterprising Turks, had a few companies of {157} British troops been
available to hurry to the support of Osborne. But one cannot very
well expect the equivalent of a sergeant's guard to perform the work
of a battalion, and to hold a city of 200,000 inhabitants whose
attitude was doubtful from the point of view of friendship. So
Osborne had to fall back slowly towards Mianeh.
The armoured car had by this time used up all the spare tyres and
inner tubes, and, when the retirement over the Shibley Pass began, it
was going on bare rims. Its mobility was impaired, and, while it
could still fight, it certainly could not run, and its tyreless
progress over the mud and boulders which pass for a road in
Azerbaijan was slow and painful.
The limping car looked an easy prey to Turk or prowling robber
hordes. So thought a band of two hundred Shahsavan tribesmen, as
they rode down from the hills one morning on one of their periodical
forays. They had watched the car from afar, and noted its limping
gait and its helplessness.
In that corner of upper Azerbaijan, from the Tabriz road east to
Ardabil and the Caspian Sea, and north towards the Russian frontier,
there roam free and unhampered a score or so of sub-tribes of the
Shahsavan Clan, wild and lawless rascals for the most part, but not
wanting in courage or in that rude chivalry common to the Asiatic
hillmen. The Shahsavani handle a rifle skilfully. Pillaging is for
them both a livelihood and a distraction. They are the recognized
tax-gatherers of the Tabriz road, and {158} will rob a fat caravan,
or disarm and strip the Shah's Cossacks, with equal impunity.
And now the tribesmen got their lesson. The car stood on the
roadside while Lieutenant Pierpont and his men were preparing
breakfast. Approaching to within eight hundred yards, the raiders
opened out, and charged to the accompaniment of wild yells. Then the
machine-gun in the turret of the immobile car spoke up in reply. It
sprayed the charging horsemen with lead; they broke and fled; but,
reforming, came on anew. The gun spat more leaden hail, and this
time the tribesmen had had enough; they fled in disorder, and ever
afterwards gave a very wide berth to all such devilish contrivances
as armoured cars and machine-guns.
The Turks now grew seriously alarmed at our temerity in threatening
to snatch Tabriz from their impending grasp. It was the door to the
Caucasus and to one of the Turkish main theatres of military
operations. It was a prize worth having, and for the Turks the
possession of the capital of Azerbaijan was of scarcely less vital
importance than it was for the British themselves. Kuchik Khan had
already effectively barred the gate to Resht and shut us off from the
Caspian on the east; now the Turk was completing the "bottling-up"
process, for he was closing the door of Tabriz in our face and
getting in the way of our reaching Tiflis in the north.
[Illustration: ROAD NEAR RUDBAR. THE TWO LARGE ROCKS IN THE
FOREGROUND REPRESENT ONE ATTEMPT OF THE JUNGALIES TO BLOCK THE ROAD.]
During the first week in June the Turks bestirred themselves and
began their campaign of close and {159} active co-operation with
Kuchik Khan. Turkish troops hurriedly moved on Tabriz from the
neighbourhood of Khoi and the direction of Julfa. Ali Elizan Pasha,
who designated himself "Commander of the Ottoman Army in the province
of Azerbaijan," issued a flamboyant proclamation addressed to his
dear Persian brethren and co-religionists asking them to rally to his
standard and to make common cause with his Army of Liberation which
was pledged to free Persia from the thraldom of the Infidel. So the
Turks moved in, and were welcomed by the Persian officials and by the
Valiahd or heir-presumptive with manifestations of joy, and the
Entente consuls and citizens of the Entente countries moved out as
fast as slow-moving Persian transport could carry them.
Once in Tabriz, the Turks did not let the grass grow under their
feet. They were bent on giving us a Roland for our Oliver. They
assiduously cultivated the good graces of the local Persian
Democrats, actively identified themselves with the Ittahad-i-Islam,
or Pan-Islamic movement, and set about the recruiting and training of
local levies with which to harry us in Azerbaijan. The Turks also
formally notified the Teheran Government that it was their intention
to extend their occupation to the Persian capital, so as to complete
the spiritual and political resurrection of the Shah's Empire.
Mahmud Mukhtar Pasha, a Turkish military leader of some renown,
entered Tabriz on June 15th, gave {160} his blessing to the
Pan-Islamic propagandist movement, and promised the militants amongst
the Democrats that there would soon be no British left in Azerbaijan
or elsewhere in Persia to trouble the peace of mind of those
patriots. The good work was furthered by such zealous Democrats and
Turkophiles as Hadji Bilouri, Mirza Ismael Noberi, and the Sheikh
Mehamet Biabari, who contrived to combine piety with politics for a
cash consideration.
The Turks, while lavish with oratory, were niggardly with money. In
short, they were bad paymasters, happily for the British; otherwise
the latter would not have been in Azerbaijan as long as they were.
They enrolled fedais or native levies, but forgot to pay them,
whereupon the levies deserted and took service with the British down
Mianeh way, arguing, logically enough, if crudely, that Turkish
promises would not buy bread, and that the money of the Infidel was
better than none at all.
The Turks, too, by their rapacity early estranged popular feeling.
They commandeered right and left without payment, and in the bazaar,
at the point of the pistol, they compelled merchants and
money-changers to accept their depreciated paper currency at an
inflated rate of exchange as against Persian krans.
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