one. Ironically, for all of Russia's insistence that the Aras and Kura
rivers constituted the only secure border with Iran, for most of
the years the Aras could be forded at so many places that the Rus-
sians could not have hoped to patrol them all. Throughout the war,
Iranian troops crossed and recrossed the Aras without difficulty. The
geographical difficulties that had plagued the 1796 expedition re-
mained a problem. Even when the road between Georgia and the
Caucasian Line was not under attack, it posed many hazards. At-
tempts were made to improve it, but it was still extremely narrow (in
some places ten to twelve feet wide) and vulnerable to avalanches,
floods, and blizzards. Artillery and large carts could not travel along
this route, and fatal accidents occurred regularly. The mountainous
terrain of most of the war zone and the many thick forests prevented
Russia from maximizing its clearest military advantage, its artillery,
which was difficult to transport or use effectively in the narrow con-
fines within which the fighting often took place.^6
Contrary to the Russians' expectations, they were not able to use
their naval supremacy on the Caspian to compensate adequately for
the difficulties they encountered on land, either in supplying troops
in the Caucasus or in attacking enemy coastal positions. Not only
was there a serious climatic problem, in that severe storms and ice-
bergs made sailing the Caspian perilous during the winter, but the
Russian navy was unequal to the task. Many naval vessels were in dis-
repair, and the quality of their weapons was as often substandard.
For example, when the navy attempted to bombard Baku into sub-
mission in 1805, it only had two suitable guns and both broke after
five days' use. At this time, the Caspian fleet had only eleven seawor-
thy vessels and, therefore, had to be supplemented by rented mer-
chant boats for the transportation of supplies. Renting provided a
limited solution for the problem since the cost was high and the bud-
get small.^7
Service in the Caucasus in the early nineteenth century was made
still more hazardous by a variety of health problems. Russians, as
newcomers to the area, were especially susceptible to illness from un-
familiar foods and water, scorching summer heat, and diseases to
which natives had acquired immunity. Baku, Qobbeh, Ganjeh, and
the land along the Aras were considered particularly unhealthy areas.
In addition, repeated epidemics swept through the Caucasus. Plague
reappeared in the region in 1803. There are no statistics on the over-
all casualties, but in Tbilisi, where the mortality rate was particularly
high, 500 people died of plague in a single month. Every year during
the next decade, an outbreak of the disease occurred somewhere in
The War, 1804-1813 103