Defence of Rasht

At dawn on 20 July 1918 the Jangali forces of Mirza Kuchik Khan attacked from the west and south-west Rasht, capital of the Persian province of Gilan, and the British detachment stationed there. According to the British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign by F.J. Moberly and the memoirs of Major-General Lionel Dunsterville, about 2,500 men attacked, supported by a few Germans and Austrians. They were commanded by a German officer whom British sources call von Passchen. Rasht was defended by the detachment of Lieutenant-Colonel Matthews of the 1/4th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, about 450 rifles: roughly 300 men of the Hampshires and 150 of the 1/2nd Gurkha Rifles, with two mountain guns and two armoured cars. The main force was camped in the southern suburbs, by the Russian consulate. In the centre of the town about 20 soldiers guarded the British consulate, and a small group the bank building.

The British had not been in Rasht long. In the spring the whole of Gilan was held by the Jangalis, who in March had imprisoned the British consul and closed the road to the Caspian Sea. On 12 June Lazar Bicherakhov’s Cossacks, supported by a squadron of the 14th Hussars, two armoured cars and two aircraft, routed them at the bridge at Manjil. Bicherakhov reached Rasht and Enzeli, and at the beginning of July sailed to Baku. From then on the road was guarded by Dunsterforce: Matthews’s mobile column, about 800 rifles spread over 80 kilometres of mountain road and forest from Manjil to Rasht. On 29 June the British consulate in Rasht was ceremonially re-established and Moir became the new consul. The town, however, had a perimeter of about 11 kilometres, and dense forest came right up to the houses. Defending the whole of Rasht was beyond the garrison’s strength, and more than 2,000 Jangalis were in the surrounding forests. Kuchik Khan, whose headquarters was at Kasma, about 40 kilometres to the west, assured his men that it was the Russians, not the British, who had beaten them at Manjil. Dunsterville wrote that the German instructors portrayed British soldiers as cowards.

The heaviest blow fell on the camp in the suburbs. The Jangalis renewed their attacks all day and were beaten off every time. At the same time a second large group entered the town, began looting it and surrounded the British consulate. The building stood in a tightly built-up area, among houses from which marksmen could fire into the courtyard. Matthews sent Captain McCleverty’s Gurkhas with an armoured car to its aid, straight through a maze of narrow alleys. After heavy street fighting they reached the consulate at the last moment, when the attackers had already set fire to the outer gate, and brought out the consul and his defenders. At dusk the Jangalis withdrew from the camp. They left more than a hundred dead on the field, and about 50 prisoners, including several Austrians, fell into British hands. British losses were 51 men according to Moberly, about 50 according to Dunsterville. There was no pursuit. It was ruled out by the dense forest, the small size of the force and the fact that in the evening most of the town was still in the attackers’ hands.

Over the next two days the British drove the Jangalis out of the town. There was street fighting, but according to Dunsterville it was decided by aircraft from Qazvin, whose bombs smoked the enemy out of the hotels and public buildings they had occupied. By the end of the month Rasht had been cleared. The Persian governor had fled, so the British appointed a military governor. Dunsterville noted that five months after his first risky journey to Enzeli the road to the Caspian Sea was at last safe.

The battle of Rasht broke the Jangalis’ resistance. Kuchik Khan began to seek peace and, according to Moberly, on 12 August agreed to stop fighting. Captain Noel, held by the Jangalis since March, regained his freedom. Percy Sykes wrote that Kuchik Khan then became a British rice supplier and was happy to make money while waiting for a better opportunity. From then on Dunsterville could turn to the affairs of Baku, where Bolshevik rule was tottering under Turkish pressure.