With such aims in view, Russia, through Count Varantzoff Dashkoff, informed the Armenian National Council (then in existence at Tiflis) that if the Armenians would unreservedly give their support to the Russian armies during the course of the war, Russia would grant autonomy to the six Armenian vilayets. The Russian Armenians, however, through bitter experience, knew very well what little practical value could be attached to the promises of Russian Czarism. During the course of the 19th century at three different times the Russians had made similar promises to the Armenians when they waged war with Turkey and Persia, and, although the self-sacrificing co-operation of the Russian Armenians enabled the Russians to capture the districts of Elizavetpol, Erivan and Kars in 1806, in 1828, and again in 1878, at the end of these wars their flattering promises to the Armenians were promptly forgotten. But this time the Armenians thought that Russia was not alone; the two great liberal nations of the West, France and England, were her Allies. After long and weighty consultation, with their hopes pinned on France and England, the Armenians resolved to aid the Russian armies in every possible way. While Russian diplomacy was in the midst of these diplomatic negotiations at Tiflis, during the last days of August, 1914, a Turkish mission of twenty-eight members (the object of which was to organize a Pan-Islamic and a Pan-Turanian movement among all the races of the Near East against Russia and her Allies) left Constantinople for Armenia. The leaders of that mission were Omar Nadji Bey, Dr. Bahaeddin Shakir, and Lieutenant Hilmy, all of them very influential members of the "Committee of Union and Progress." The mission included representatives of all the Eastern races, such as the Kurds, Persians, Georgians, Chechens, Lezgies, Circassians, and the Caucasian Tartars, but not the Armenians. During those same days the annual Congress of the Armenian National Organization was in session at Erzeroum. In the name of the Turkish government the above mentioned mission appealed to the Armenian Organization with the following proposition: [Illustration: Armenians of Van defending themselves against the Turkish and Kurdish raids in 1915. The volunteers in their trenches.] "If the Armenians,--the Turkish as well as the Russian Armenians--would give active co-operation to the Turkish armies, the Turkish government under a German guarantee would promise to create after the war an autonomous Armenia (made up of Russian Armenia and the three Turkish vilayets of Erzeroum, Van, and Bitlis) under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire."