ISSUE 13

PAGE 7

  • 25 canons, 100 machineguns ( with 60 in each magazine)
  • Nikitin Russian Consul, Shet American consul, and Goujel Patron of french hospital in the city were the ones who were pulling the string.
  • Aga Petros and Melek Khoshabe were the leaders of the community.

It was obvious that an army of this size could not be defeated by some untrained volunteers no matter how brave they are. They could only destroy Christian army if the government Army with the help of thousands of volunteers, armed with armoury similar to those of enemy and conduct a regular war. Another solution would have been if  armed democrats in their thousands could be deployed  to help reinforce resistance of people in Urmu and Salmas. Unfortunately neither of those options were on the plate. Governor General was seemed satisfied with the situation ( this story will be covered later on). With regard to Democrats rivalry for taking control of the group has crippled them and destroyed the trust of ordinary members. Above all democrats was not able to produce a strog leader to unite behind him.

Semkhan from Almasaray forced Chrisian troops to withdraw to Urmu. Subsequently on 28th of March Dilmaqan was freed without a fight and some Christians were killed during the withdrawal.

An eye witness who is originally  from  Salmas and was in Dilmaqan at the time has written in his notes. (He was a clergy men from Salmas and still lives there and unfortunately I do not know his name).

" All of a sudden some 500 strong cavaliers and fighter poured into the city in the middle of the night. Some Christians were killed and the rest immediately withdrew their troops. People and armed forces took control of the city overnight. Only short sighted  people were happy and believed they are liberated but those who knew the strength of enemy were saddened by the action.

Help and supply was continuingly arriving from Khoy and Tebriz for ten days. In  matter days the number of our armed men hit 2000. Meanwhile