ounded by overwhelming Russian
forces, it became apparent that no Turkish relief could reach him,
Iskan Pasha and the remnant of his once proud corps surrendered.

Sarikamish was defended against Iskan's 6,000 by a mere handful of
soldiers. Time and time again urged by their German officers, the
Turks hurled themselves against the thin Russian line. It bent but did
not break, as step by step, fighting fiercely all the way, it
retreated before weight of numbers. And when relief did come to the
defenders, and Iskan and his force were compelled to surrender, the
brave little Russian band was completely exhausted.

In their pursuit of the remnants of the Tenth Corps the Russians met
with some of the difficulties that had been the undoing of the Turks.
Furthermore, although the Ninth Corps had been hemmed in so that no
relief could reach it, the Turkish command had by no means lost the
power of effective counteraction. The Eleventh Corps at Khorasan
carried on an energetic campaign against the Russian front, gained a
local and tactically important success, and drove the enemy back as
far as Kara-Urgan, less than twenty miles from Sarikamish. Indeed, so
serious became the threat to the Russian forces that General Woronzov,
much against his wishes, was compelled to call off the pursuit of the
Tenth Corps and strengthen the Sarikamish front with the troops that
had been operating farther to the east.

In the second week of January, 1915, between these forces and the
Eleventh Corps of the Turkish army a fierce battle, lasting several
days, opened. The struggle was of the utmost intensity, at times
developing into a hand-to-hand combat between whole regiments. On
January 14 the Fifty-second Turkish Regiment was put to the bayonet by
the Russians. At Genikoi a regiment of Cossacks charged, during an
engagement with a portion of the Thirty-second Turkish Division, and
killed and wounded more than 300.

It must be remembered in judging the terrible nature of the struggle
that the armies were fighting in difficult country. The battle of
Kara-Urgan, furthermore, was waged in a continual snowstorm. Thousands
of dead and wounded were buried in the rapidly falling snow and no
effort was made to recover them. By the end of this week, January 16,
1915, owing largely to their superior railway communications and the
possibility of reenforcements, the Russians had not only checked the
Turkish offensive, but had decisively defeated the Ele