When a retirement was seen to be inevitable, the charvadars were ordered to load up the stores and medical supplies at the serai. In the midst of their preparations the levies broke and fled. This decided the charvadars, who showed themselves to be as arrant cowards as the rest of their race. Cutting away the lashings securing the loads on the transport mules, they jumped on the animals' backs and galloped panic-stricken to the rear. Captain John, of the Indian Medical Service, who had worked like a Trojan attending to the wounded under fire, now collected three or four British N.C.O's. and sought to rally the runaway charvadars, or at least to recapture some of the transport mules. As well might Dame Partington have tried to mop back the waves of the Atlantic. John, however, did succeed in moving the British wounded, but all the officers' kits, medical supplies, and ammunition fell into the hands of the enemy. {174} The sadly diminished and battered British force withdrew to Karachaman, preceded by the fleeing native levies, who magnified the extent of our reverse, and as they ran spread panic amongst the villages on our line of retreat. Eight days before the Turks hit us at Tikmadash, news had filtered through to Mianeh that the enemy was becoming active in Eastern Azerbaijan. Raiding parties of Turkish cavalry had penetrated to Sarab, eighty miles east of Tabriz, and stray bands of tribal levies who had taken service under the Turkish flag were reported farther east towards Ardabil and the Caspian littoral. They distributed proclamations broadcast announcing a Jehad or Holy War against the British, and calling upon the people to rally to the banner of the Ittahad-i-Islam, or Pan-Islamic movement, and so make an end of the Infidel occupation of Persia. The hapless villagers themselves had little choice in the matter; compulsion was drastically applied, and a village that showed hesitation, or evinced any apathy in embracing the tenets of the political-cum-religious and Turkish-controlled Ittahad-i-Islam, was laid waste, its inhabitants maltreated, or sometimes put to the sword.