Note 13 — Chapter XIX · KARS

With certain changes in name my reader can follow this disposition of the defences upon the plan at the commencement of the present chapter, which is founded upon plans made during the last Russo-Turkish war in 1877. The Russians have since added to the strength of the works and have vastly improved the communications between them. But they do not appear, so far as I was enabled to judge, to have materially altered their arrangement. The greater range of modern guns has perhaps already necessitated a further extension of outlying forts. The old citadel has sunk into insignificance; and the defence of the future will have to deal with a very large area, and will require many times as many men as in the past. How Williams with such a small force could have held out for five months against an organised army of twice his own strength is a question which I cannot answer with satisfaction to myself. His ultimate surrender was occasioned by starvation; but he had already repulsed, with enormous losses to the enemy, the main attack, which was directed against Fort Takhmas.13 For the second time the victors were compelled at the peace to disgorge their prize, which they justly regarded as the outer bulwark of Erzerum and Asia Minor. Its permanent conquest was reserved for the war of 1877, when the Turks were left by England to their own resources, and when they practically gave it away to Loris Melikoff after the defeat at the Alaja Dagh.14