First World War: Bloody conflict in oil-rich Baku

In April 1918 the attention of the British cabinet and military high command turned again to the Caucasus. The Turks appeared to be preparing to invade that turbulent melting pot of Armenians, Muslims and their Russian overlords with the aim of capturing the Baku oilfields, which it was said had resources "enough to light and heat every home on earth".

Of equally troubling concern to ministers was that control of the region would, in theory at least, open the route through Persia – modern Iran – via Afghanistan to India, to where Lenin was known to have ambitions to carry the Bolshevik banner. The Caucasus had recently fallen under the tenuous control of the Baku Soviet, a shaky coalition of the city's residents presided over by the Armenian Stepan Shaumian, an adroit communist dedicated to the conversion of the region to the supposedly unifying new dogma propagated by Petrograd.

Although Shaumian's writ extended scarcely beyond the outskirts of Baku, in London's perception the city had become the centre of authority and must be denied to Turkey if the oilfields and way to India were to kept out of enemy hands.

Aside from the railway between Baku and Russia's previous administrative centre of Tiflis (now Tbilisi), overland communications were primitive and the best means of moving large bodies of troops was the Caspian Sea, lying like a plump reversed question mark to the east. Spanning 143,000 square miles, its coastlines lay in Russia to the north and east, Azerbaijan to the west and Persia to the south and southwest.

Baku, a well-developed cosmopolitan city, sits on a small peninsula on the Azerbaijani shore, with transport vessels plying from its port to others around the coast. At Hamadan, in neutral and compliant Persia, Major-General Lionel Dunsterville and a cadre of instructors intended to turn the Armenians, whose territory faced the border, into a military force capable of holding back the Turks. He waited impatiently for reinforcements from Baghdad, 300 miles away. These were essential if he was to have a force capable of fighting its way through to the port of Enzeli on the southern coast, from where Dunsterville planned to sail north to Baku, then utilise the railway for an advance on Tiflis. The mountainous territory between Hamadan and Enzeli was the haunt of tribesmen likely to massacre the 44-man cadre of instructors, unless it had a substantial escort.

Baku city lay quiet, but with an underlying tension because the Muslim majority resented the oilfield workers from neighbouring Armenia. Worrying news for the Muslims that the British government was providing funds and arms to the Armenians, ostensibly to build up an army against the threatening Turks, elicited support for the Muslims from a totally unexpected direction. Arrival of the advance guard of the former tsarist Muslim Savage Division by sea from Lankaran on the coast near the Azerbaijani border with Persia introduced confusion, then violence.

Officials of the Baku Soviet strode down to the harbour to demand the newcomers' intentions, only to be sent sprinting back to their headquarters by rifle fire. Bolshevik troops were summoned and eventually overcame and disarmed the relatively small number of aggressors, but then the rest of the Savage Division arrived, giving the Muslims the advantage of numbers. There were, however, Russian-manned naval vessels in the harbour whose crews joined the Bolsheviks. Barricades were thrown up, trenches dug and within hours the city was engulfed in fighting between the Russian Bolsheviks and the Muslims, who were soon getting the worst of it.

At first the Armenians declared their neutrality and tried to hide themselves away in their own quarter of the city, but extreme nationalists among them prevailed in their urgings to take the opportunity to attack their ancient enemies. As so often happens in civil conflict, the fighting degenerated into wholesale slaughter, in this case of the Muslim population and the pillage and destruction of their houses. For three days everyone not involved in the fighting locked their doors.

The wife of a British officer serving with the defunct military mission to the tsar's army, Ida Dewar Durie, watched the mayhem from her first-floor room in the Hotel d'Europe, where she and her companion lived on bread, cheese and Caspian caviar, because the hotel's food stocks had been looted by both sides. Makeshift hospitals for the many wounded were established and Mrs Dewar Durie noticed that most of the stretcher bearers were former Austrian or German prisoners-of-war set free by the Bolsheviks. The Muslim quarter of Baku was soon in flames and further resistance ended with the Bolsheviks and Armenians triumphant.

The Bolshevik leader Shaumian sent a dispatch to Lenin stating that 10,000 Muslims, including the Savage Division, had been soundly defeated and, embroidering his report – as victors are prone to do – added that the handful of Muslim survivors were now "rallying to the Bolshevik cause".

Factual and distorted rumours of the fighting and its outcome reached Dunsterville, who was still awaiting reinforcements at Hamadan. Before their arrival came changed instructions, a not infrequent military experience. Instead of arming and training the Armenians to fight the Turks, he was ordered to secure Baku and its strategic oilfields.