Note 2 — Chapter VIII · TO ALEXANDROPOL

Its extreme youth and the fact that it is almost exclusively peopled by Armenians are the most remarkable features about Alexandropol. At the commencement of the nineteenth century the site was partly vacant and partly tenanted by an insignificant village called Gümri. The district formed part of the outlying province of Shuragel,2 which belonged to the Georgian kingdom at the time of the annexation of Georgia by Russia in 1801. The Cossacks who came to take over this important piece of territory appear to have established a camp in the vicinity of Gümri; the place was early developed into a frontier station on the side of Turkey, and in 1817, when it was visited by an English traveller, was already occupied by a considerable Russian garrison.3 In the war between Russia and Turkey, which broke out in the spring of 1828, this partially fortified position served the Russians as an advanced base. It was on the line of advance or defence on the side of Gümri that the Russian military authorities placed the greatest store. There the Russian possessions were most open to attack; but, on the other hand, it was through Gümri that they could take the offensive with the greatest advantage, since it enabled them to cut off Akhaltsykh and the northern provinces from Erzerum and those upon the west. How Turkey could have permitted her powerful neighbour to acquire this strip without an appeal to arms can probably best be explained on the ground of Oriental fatalism. When Marshal Paskevich had taken Erivan and concluded the war with Persia by the Peace of Turkomanchai (February 1828), his hands were free to cut large slices from the Ottoman empire; and it was at Gümri, overlooking the Arpa Chai, the boundary against Turkey, that he effected the concentration of his troops. From Gümri he set out in person at the head of his army on the 26th of June 1828. The outcome of this war was the capture of Kars and Erzerum, and the permanent acquisition by Russia of Akhaltsykh and the northern districts under the Treaty of Adrianople (1829). The restoration to the Sultan of the two first-named strongholds increased the strategical value of the station on the Arpa Chai. Gümri was slowly but persistently converted into a first-rate fortress, the necessary timber for the constructions being supplied to his hereditary enemies by the Pasha of Kars from the forests of the Soghanlu Dagh. In 1836 the place was visited by the Emperor Nicholas I. in person, who inspected the works, which, however, were only in an inchoate state.4 The inhabitants date the prosperity of their town from the Imperial visit, which at once inaugurated an era of rapid expansion and transformed the village of Gümri into the city of Alexandropol. Since Russia has become possessed of Kars, the fortress on the Arpa has somewhat declined in importance; but it is still occupied by a considerable garrison, and the strength of its defences should enable it to give a good account of itself in time of war.