402 
THE WAR BETWEEN RUSSIA AND TURKEY. 
eJiaussee as supports for the cavalry. The remainder of the troops he 
sent back to the camp before Kars, from which General Devel had in 
the meantime reconnoitred the north-west front of the fortress without 
being disturbed by the enemy. The camp of Zaim was now broken 
up, and the troops encamped on the heights west of Kars at Aravartan, 
Bozgana, and Kogali, and outposts were thrown out towards the west 
front and the northern part of the east front, under the protection of 
which the siege works were commenced. On the 8th June the invest¬ 
ment was completed, and on the 9th the north front was personally 
reconnoitred by the Grand Duke Michael, who had moved his head¬ 
quarters to Kurukdara. On the 12th June the Turks opened a 
purposeless fire from the west front, and on the 15th an energetic sortie 
was made. At 3 a.m. the Turks advanced from Tikh Tepessi and Laz 
Tepessi with 9 battalions and 2 batteries, and at the first rush drove in 
the Russian picquets and captured the Tschiftlik heights, 6 kils. west of 
the forts and 4 from the camp at Aravartan. Four battalions of the 
13th and 14th Grenadiers kept up a dropping fire against them till the 
cavalry from Kogali attacked the Turkish left flank, against which also 
2 battalions of the 13th Grenadiers with a battery were sent. The 
Turkish advance was brought to a standstill, and finally they retreated, 
followed by the 17th Dragoons. The total Russian loss was 118 men; 
that of the Turks about 550. In the night from the 16th to the 17th 
June, 5 batteries, armed with 25 guns and mortars, were opened, and 
on the morning of the 17th the bombardment of Forts Muchlis, Arab, 
and Karadagh began, and was continued till the 23rd with small loss, 
and was hardly replied to. There was an unimportant sortie on the 
22nd. 
The cavalry, which had been pushed westwards as far as Mezingerd, 
being opposed by a concentration of fresh hostile troops, were not able 
to prevent Mukhtar Pasha—who, by drawing troops from Europe, had 
raised his army to 35,000 men—from pushing forward a part of his 
forces on the Bayazid Road; the Erivan Column would therefore have 
failed in its object if an advance on Erzeroum were not carried out by 
the main army, so as to threaten Mukhtar Pasha's line of retreat and 
cause him to withdraw the troops he had detached towards Bayazid. 
Loris-Melikoff had therefore to operate on Koprikoi, the point of passage 
of the Aras, but could not use the road leading thither in a south¬ 
easterly direction from Mezingerd, by Khorassan and Ardost, till Ismail 
Pasha had been driven from his entrenched position at Zewin on the 
northern parallel road. The great tactical strength of the position of 
Zewin and the uncertainty as to the strength of the enemy—reckoned 
at 10,000 men at least—forced Melikofi to concentrate the entire 
Grenadier Division at Mezingerd, and its last echelon entered the 
camp there on the 24th June. 
Ismail was encamped with about 19,000 men in a very strong 
position on the rocky heights on the right bank of the Zewin Tchai, 
in front of which the slopes falling to the river, in form of terraces 
and exceptionally steep and stony, and without cover for an assailant, 
were swept by four batteries which were connected by two (in places 
three) rows of shelter-trenches ; behind the ridge the open and rolling 
