Yet Benshi did not tell all there was to be told about Asiatic Turkey, all that had to do with the British and other forces. We have intimated already in the course of this narrative how a force employed in one quarter of the world, if sufficiently powerful, may well affect the fortunes of other troops engaged in a different area altogether. We told of how the coming of Turkey into this world-conflict in partnership with Germany and Austria affected the fortunes of Russia on her European front, because of the need to hold her Caucasian frontier, and there is no need to enter into details of the fighting which took place in those mountains, almost in perpetual snow, where Turks and Russians faced one another. It will suffice if we say that, well-armed, well-equipped, and officered by Germans in numerous instances, the army corps which Turkey sent to the Caucasus at the commencement of hostilities, that is to say, during the first winter of this widespread warfare, suffered many a reverse at the hands of the Tsar's gallant soldiers. They failed to advance, failed to invade southern Russia, and indeed had their work cut out to prevent the Muscovite armies from invading Asiatic Turkey, and from pouring down into the land south of the Caucasus range--land itself some six thousand or more feet in elevation.
Indeed, the country south-west of the Caucasus range is broken up by innumerable ranges of hills and mountains, and presents large numbers of upland plateaus. It is the country in which the unfortunate race of Armenians were fostered, where they have dwelt for centuries, and on one of those upland plateaus, perched in a situation of natural strength, and defended by forts and gun emplacements, cunningly designed by German engineers, lies the city and fortress of Erzerum, the main base of those Turkish armies operating against the Russians--a fortress deemed impregnable, and one upon which the Turks and their German masters had placed the utmost importance. As that British force was fighting its way back to Kut-el-Amara, and was besieged in that little township on the River Tigris, the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia, he who had led the Tsar's armies into Galicia a year previously, was mustering his forces and preparing his arrangements for a dash into Armenia--a dash made in the height of winter, through snow-drifts ten or more feet in depth, and in an atmosphere well below freezing. Such was the impetus of that dash, so good and careful were the preparations for it, and so great the courage and the élan of the armies of the Caucasus that, in spite of Turkish resistance, in spite of batteries cunningly placed, in spite of every obstacle, human and natural, the Russians poured down upon the fortress of Erzerum, and to the amazement of all--of the Turks and of the Germans, not less than of the others, captured it, its guns, and a goodly part of its garrison. Then, flooding over this upland plateau, carving their way westward and south-east, they rapidly forced their way in the direction of Trebizond--that port on the Black Sea by which Turkey had reinforced and revictualled her Caucasian army. To the south-east, Russian troops, in smaller numbers, pushed along the frontier of Persia, striking towards Mesopotamia, until patrols of horse and companies of foot were within measurable distance of Bagdad. Yet they were not near enough to seize the city, not in sufficient force at present to advance across the desert, not able, in fact, to lend assistance to the British force beleaguered in Kut-el-Amara, and to that other force, since organized, and sent up the River Tigris to relieve it--a force of British and Indians again, which, willing enough and eager to relieve their comrades, had, for weary weeks now, been held up by rains and floods in the country.