Kars Breakdown
In the wake of their disastrous failure to take Kars, the main body of the Russian force withdrew to Tchivilli, five and a half hours march from Kars, leaving a rearguard of three thousand troops at Ainali, only one and a half hours away. Kmety was keen to sortie out that far, but Williams, busy absorbing the impressions of his first action, did not want to risk any blemishes on what would be regarded by any standards as a handsome victory as it stood.
Muraviev had been defeated by a combination of superbly sited defences and consistent individual courage and great tenacity in hand-to-hand combat whereever the battle raged. The constant artillery cross fire to which the attackers had been subjected, much of it with grape and canister at short ranges, meant that they had suffered appallingly high casualties. On the fifth day after the battle Colonel Lake wrote in his diary: 'Accounts today show six thousand three hundred and odd actually buried of the Russians. This does not include those who fell at a distance; some of whom were carried off by the enemy and others are still lying in all directions...we have only two hundred and odd wounded Russians in our hospital...a deserter who came in today says that two thousand carts (which I saw) started for Gumri laden with wounded; and that two thirds of the Russian infantry are hors-de-combat.'
The Turks lost 362 killed and 631 wounded. Casualties among the citizen fighters were 101.
But even this emphatic victory was not enough to secure the relief of Kars. On hearing that Omar Pasha, far from being half way up the Trebizond - Erzerum road, was kicking his heels in Sukhum Kaleh, General Muraviev realised that he had all the time he needed to starve out the garrison without further loss, and he brought his army back to their close siege positions. As if to rub it in, they brought huts with them, demonstrating that they were well prepared for the approaching winter if need be.
Not so with the Kars garrison, where the situation was getting desperate. The meagre food supplies were having to be eked out - horses were being slaughtered for their meat, and broth for the wounded, who in spite of the dedicated efforts of Dr Humphry Sandwith were slow to recover largely due to their undernourished state.
Sandwith comes over as a most parochial Englishman. A bluff Yorkshire-born innocent abroad for the first time, he found it difficult not to consider anything unenglish abnormal. On the boat trip up with Williams he had been both fascinated and repelled by a rich Pasha who was a fellow passenger. 'The pasha varies the monotony of the voyage by smoking, eating raw cucumbers and fingering his beads' Well O.K , sounds pretty normal, would have been a bit strange if he was eating cooked cucumbers... ' A Turk even a Pasha is never unoccupied;' Very praiseworthy, but I don't think he's going to mean it as a compliment.. 'some such employments as the above are always had recourse to, for I believe he never thinks.' What? Where on earth is the logic in that - an extraordinary conclusion, particularly from a medical man... 'His numerous servants watch every movement of his eye. What can it mean and whence this strange adoration of their master? We have nothing like it in the West.' Other than at any country house weekend shooting party picnic in mid 19th century England, for starters. And again, referring to the other officers of European origin stationed at Kars. ' They are of a most seedy questionable aspect...a queer lot with whom it would be unpleasant to be too intimate.' In other words, in Sandwith's world, they were typical foreigners. On the local women; ' the chief employment of the women appears to be the fabrication of tezek, or dried cow dung for fuel.' probably purposely picking the one activity in their crowded day which had an unsavoury ring about it.
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