Russians capture Bitlis

The British chronology of the war and the British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign record under 2 March 1916 the Russian capture of Bitlis, a town in Turkish Armenia south-west of Lake Van. The assault itself took place at night. According to the history of the Caucasian wars by W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, the Russian infantry attacked on the night of 2–3 March. General Evgeny Maslovsky, who served on the staff of the Caucasus Army, describes the night attack “on 17 February” by the Julian calendar, which corresponds to the night of 29 February – 1 March by the Gregorian. The sources thus agree on the course of the fighting but differ by a day or two on its date.

March through a wasteland

The capture of Bitlis and Muş was meant to cover the left wing of the forces of General Nikolai Yudenich, which in February had taken Erzurum. Through Bitlis ran the best road from the Tigris valley, from Mosul and Diyarbakır, northwards towards Erzurum. The Russians wanted to cut it before Turkish reinforcements could come up along it.

The central column of the IV Caucasian Corps under General Dmitry Abatsiev advanced on Bitlis. It moved very slowly. The valley of the Murat river south of Malazgirt, fertile and populous before the war, was empty. The Armenians, who had made up a large part of the inhabitants here, had been murdered or deported in 1915 during the Armenian genocide, and the remnants had fled to Russia. The Muslims, as Allen and Muratoff write, had also suffered from hunger, epidemics and massacres by the irregular units of both sides, and had dispersed with their flocks. Abatsiev’s horses had no fodder, and the supply columns needed a strong escort against bands of hungry Kurds. Abatsiev had to leave almost all his cavalry and artillery behind. On 20 February he reached Tatvan on Lake Van with one rifle battalion, one volunteer druzhina and two sotnias of Cossacks.

With such small forces he could not attack. He asked for help from General Foma Nazarbekov, who had already taken Muş. Reinforcements came both from Muş and from Van, including the Armenian volunteer druzhina of Andranik Ozanian. According to Allen and Muratoff, Abatsiev then had five infantry battalions, five druzhinas and 12 guns.

Assault in a snowstorm

The Turks held a fortified position just outside the town, in a narrow valley closed on both sides by walls of mountains that could not be outflanked. Maslovsky describes how the first attack in three columns stalled: the outflanking columns could not get through the deep snow, and the frontal attack of the central column cost about 300 wounded. Then, at the suggestion of his chief of staff, Colonel Pavel Shatilov, Abatsiev decided to attack at night, without artillery preparation, along the road into the town.

At three in the morning the Caucasian riflemen moved off in a blizzard without firing a shot and charged with the bayonet. According to Maslovsky, the leading battalion overran the outposts and at about five in the morning broke into the town, and by seven the fighting was over. Allen and Muratoff write of several hours of fierce hand-to-hand fighting. The Turks fled south towards Siirt, pursued by Cossacks. The figures for the booty differ: Allen and Muratoff give all the Turkish guns, 20 pieces, and about a thousand prisoners; Maslovsky gives 14 guns, some of them old, and no number of prisoners. Russian losses, according to him, were small, only 24 killed and wounded in the night attack itself.

After the capture of the town

Maslovsky also recorded a grim episode. At about noon Andranik’s druzhina, which had been left in the rear before the attack, entered the town without orders. Some of its volunteers came from Bitlis and could not find their families, who had been murdered by the Turks. They broke into the hospital of the American mission, where many Turkish families had taken refuge, to take revenge on them. A sotnia of Cossacks was called in and put a stop to it, and the ringleaders were arrested.

The Turks lost the race against time. According to Allen and Muratoff, as early as 1 March the first units of the reinforcements being transferred from the Dardanelles under the command of Mustafa Kemal began to reach Diyarbakır. They came too late to save the valleys of Muş and Bitlis, which these authors call the gateways to the Taurus and the middle Euphrates. News of the capture of Bitlis also reached the British garrison besieged in Kut and, according to the British official history, raised the soldiers’ spirits.

With the capture of Bitlis the IV Caucasian Corps had accomplished its task and advanced no further. The Russians held the town until August 1916, when it was retaken by Mustafa Kemal’s troops during the offensive of the Second Army.