CHAPTER XIV

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.

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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