Towards the end of July signs of dissension showed themselves amongst the Bolshevik militants who controlled the political and military destinies of Baku, a matter of which I wrote in the previous chapter. The Turks were without the gates. Bicherakoff had gone north, and the Bolshevik military machine had helplessly broken down. It could neither organize any scheme of defence, nor evolve any offensive plan for relieving the city from the gradually tightening grip of the Turk. The people of Baku found that mediocrity and mendacity were but poor and unsatisfactory weapons with which to attempt to arrest the march of a modern army, and these were about all the Bolsheviks possessed in their mental arsenal. Above the chaos and welter of discordant opinion arose the murmurings of a discontented, fear-stricken people. They had suffered much from Bolshevik oppression and from Bolshevik ineptitude, and clamoured for a new set of _dramatis personæ_ and the recasting of the principal roles in the Baku tragedy. So these political _farceurs_, the Bolsheviks, were figuratively hissed off the boards, and disappeared {212} down the stage trap-door to an oblivion which, alas! was but temporary. They were baffled, but not beaten. Their places were taken by men holding saner and less violent political views. One of the first official acts of the new Baku Government was to summon the British to their aid. It was the chance for which Dunsterville had lived and waited, and he lost no time in grasping it. At Enzeli he embarked a mixed force of about two thousand, made up of unattached Imperial and Dominion officers of the original Dunsterforce, a battalion or so of the North Staffords, a detachment of Hants, howitzer and field gun sections, two armoured cars, two sections of the motor machine-gun company, and other sundry units and details which had been commandeered from Resht for the move upon Baku. The advanced guard disembarked at the Caspian oil port on August 5th, and the remainder speedily followed.