Two armies by the Kura
In the summer of 1828, at the height of the Russo-Turkish war, General Paskevich’s army covered about 70 kilometres from Akhalkalaki in three days and reached Ahıska. On 4 August the Ottoman army of Köse Mehmed Pasha arrived and camped by the Kura river. After reinforcements on 7 August the Russians numbered more than 10,000; the Ottomans about 30,000.
The defenders’ words
The English historian John Baddeley, in “The Russian Conquest of the Caucasus” (1908), conveys the townspeople’s confidence:
“You would sooner pull the Moon from the sky than the crescent from the mosque of Ahıska.”
Battle and assault
On 8 August the Russians began shelling the city. On 9 August the Ottoman army was defeated in a field battle; Köse Mehmed Pasha, wounded in the leg, broke into the fortress with five thousand men. The bombardment went on until 14 August, the assault began on the 15th, and at dawn on 16 August the city was taken. The houses lay in ruins. Paskevich’s own report in the “Tiflis Gazette” spoke of five thousand dead.
What followed
By the Treaty of Adrianople in 1829 Ahıska remained with Russia, and many of its people left for Erzurum. More in “Ahıska: the history of the land up to 1829”.