Some of the Armenian population in the areas still occupied by Ottoman Empire, followd the Russian army (especially the Armenians in Erzurum, Alashkert, Bayazid, Kars and Van). Thus around 100,000 Armenians left their homes and settled in Eastern Armenia and in Akhalkalak (40,000), Shirak (12,000) and Yerevan and Sevan (25,000).
This immigration was encouraged by the Russian government, supervision of this task falling to the famous Armenian Colonel Lazaref, who granted lands and agricultural tools to the immigrants and exempted them from paying taxes for five years.
During the Crimea War (1855-1856) Armenia once again became the second stage of war between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. A Russian army of 6 000 men, led by the Armenian General Behboudian, achieved its first victory on November 14, 1853, by the Arpa River, near Gyumri, crushing the 12 000 strong Turkish army which was led by Ahmed Pasha.
In the summer of 1854, the Russians, who were led by General Mouraviev, surrounded the fortress of Kars, which had an English commander, by the name of General Williams. All attempts to send aid to the fortress, both from Erzurum and from Batum, were stopped by the Russians. The Ottoman garrison, after a heroic defence which drove back a huge Russian offensive, was finally forced to surrender on November 27, 1855, due to the depletion of its arsenal and provisions.
The treaty of 1856 in Paris, signed after the fall of Sevastopol, brought to an end the Crimea War, and forced the Russians to leave Kars again.
The Russian-Ottoman war between 1877 and 1878, which resulted in the independence of Bulgaria, began yet another war in Armenia. 36 The Russian Caucasian army, led by General Melikian, consisted of two forces. The first force, under the command of General Heyman, attacked Kars and besieged the city and then continued towards Erzurum. The second force, under the command of Ter-Ghoukasian, started from the periphery of Yerevan and took the city of Bayazid and continued to the plains of Alashkert. The Turkish chief commander, Mokhtar Pasha, proved a competent soldier and strategist in positioning himself between these two Russian forces and carried out a skilful manoeuvre with Neapolitan finesse. He fought each army before they had the chance to join forces, defeating the first army in Zewin and the other in Delibaba.
The Russian army was forced to concede the siege of Kars and returned to the old Russian-Ottoman boundary. After receiving reinforcements, however, General Loris Melikian reassumed the offensive. Through a circling offensive of his left flank, led by Lazarian, he surrounded the right flank of Mokhtar Pasha and defeated it by the shores of Arpa River. THus Loris Melikian was able to rapidly retake the Kars fortress, which fell during the night of November 18 to the Russian attack. For this he received the St George's Cross from the Russian tsar and the Order of Merit from the German Kaiser Wilhelm I. The battle ended with the conquest of Erzurum.
As a result of the negotiations in San Stefano and Berlin, Russia received Kars, Ardahan and Batum among its conquests in the Ottoman Empire, while her armies were forced to evacuate the rest of Western Armenia.
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