Sassoun is the name of a district south of the Plain of Moosh. It is a
mountainous country, containing about one hundred and fourteen villages
and hamlets. The inhabitants, about seventy thousand persons, were
mostly Armenians, under a resident Turkish governor, called Kaimakam.
The inhabitants of this region, like the rest of the people in Armenia,
were agricultural and pastoral in their occupation, and they were
also surrounded by their tormentors, the Kurds. It is not improbable
that the inaccessibility of the district and the number and hardiness
of the people, may have impressed the Turkish authorities with the
desirability of reducing them into a complete docility. So when the
“Hamidieh” cavalry regiments were formed a few years before they were
entrusted with this work.
The Kurdish chiefs, in some districts in Armenia, were in the habit
of demanding, and extorting from the people some kind of tribute. The
raids of the Kurds and Circassians were not infrequent. The taxes of
the government were ever increasing, and were always in demand. This
vexatious condition of affairs was sufficient to drive any peaceful
people to desperation.
In one instance, when the Kurds had raided an Armenian village, and
carried away the cattle, the villagers armed themselves as best as they
could and pursued the raiders, like Abraham,[132] to recover their
herds. In the encounter several Kurds were killed. It is probable that
some Armenians also were killed, but that is of no consequence. Those
unfortunate Kurds who suffered for their crime were the members of the
“Hamidieh” cavalry. Then false reports were sent to Constantinople that
the Armenians were in arms, and had rebelled against the authority of
the government and had killed some of the soldiers of the sultan.
The sultan, who had been planning ever since the signing of the
Treaty of Berlin to exterminate the Armenians, seized upon this
opportunity, which was of his own making, and at once sent orders to
Mushir at Erzinghian to exterminate them, root and branch. “The order
as read before the army, collected in haste from all the chief cities
of Eastern Turkey, was: ‘Whoever spares man, woman, or child, is
disloyal.’”
The massacre took place in the early part of September, 1894. The
following letter, written at Bitlis, September 26, 1894, gives the
first evidence:
“The troops have been massed in the region of the large plain (of
Moosh) near us. Some sickness broke out among them which took off
two or three victims every few days.... I suppose that one reason
for placing quarantine was to hinder the information as to what all
these troops were about in that region. There seems little doubt that
there has been in that region back of Moosh what took place in 1876 in
Bulgaria. The sickening details are beginning to come in.”
“Bitlis, October 9, 1894.
“All these things (following facts) were related here and there by
soldiers who took part in the horrible carnage. Some of them, weeping,
claim that the Kurds did more, and declare that they only obeyed
the order of others. It is said one hundred fell to each of them to
dispose of. No compassion was shown to age or sex, even by the regular
soldiery, not even when the victims fell suppliant at their feet. Six
to ten thousand persons met such a fate as even the darkest ages of
darkened Africa hardly witnessed, for there women and tender babes
might at least have had a chance of a life of slavery, while here
womanhood and innocency were but a mockery before the cruel lust that
ended its debauch by stabbing women to death with the bayonet, while
tender babes were impaled with the same weapon on their dead mother’s
breast, or perhaps seized by the hair to have their heads lopped off
with the sword.
“In one place, three or four hundred women, after being forced
to serve vile purposes by the merciless soldiery, were hacked to
pieces by sword and bayonet in the valley below. In another place,
some two hundred weeping and wailing women begged for compassion,
falling at the commander’s feet, but the bloodthirsty wretch, after
ordering their violation, directed his soldiers to dispatch them in
a similar way. In another place, some sixty young brides and more
attractive girls were crowded into a church, and after violation were
slaughtered, and human gore was seen flowing from the church door.
“At another place still, a large company under the leadership of their
priest, fell down before them begging for compassion, and averring
that they had nothing to do with the culprits (?). But, all to no
purpose. All were called to another place, and a proposal was made to
several of the more attractive women to change their faith, in which
case their lives were to be spared. They said: ‘Why should we deny
Christ? We are no more than these’ (pointing to the mangled form of
their husbands and brothers). ‘Kill us too’; and they did so. A great
effort was made to save one beauty, but three or four quarreled over
her, and she sank down like her sisters.
“But why prolong the sickening tale? There must be a God in heaven who
will do right in all these matters, or some of us would lose faith.
One or more consuls have been ordered that way to investigate the
matter. If the Christians, instead of the Turks, reported these things
in the city of Bitlis, and the region where I have been touring, the
case would be different. But now we are compelled to believe it.
“It seems safe to say that forty villages were totally destroyed,
and it is probable that sixteen thousand at least were killed. The
lowest estimate is ten thousand, and many put it much higher. This
is allowing for more fugitives than it seems possible can have
escaped.”[133]
It is useless now, after twenty-three years, to add the testimony of
the eye-witnesses and fugitives to show the barbarity of the soldiers
and officers of the sultan, who had been inadvertently encouraged to go
on in his career of assassination by the declaration of Her Majesty’s
government that the imprisonments, tortures and massacres of the
Armenians were not attributable to their religious faith.
It appears from the following statement made by reliable persons that
the sultan himself not only ordered the massacre, but he prepared an
occasion for that deviltry. “To what extent Armenian agitation has
provoked the terrible massacre it is difficult to determine. For a
year or more there seems to have been an Armenian from Constantinople
staying in the region as an agitator. For a long time he skilfully
evaded his pursuers, but was at last caught and taken to Bitlis. He
demanded to be taken to Constantinople and to the sultan, and it is
said, he is now living at the Capital, receiving a large salary from
the government. Evidently he has turned state’s evidence.” This mean
creature, who ever he was, was an emissary of the Turkish government.
He and his mission were not known to the officers at Bitlis. So he
demanded that he should be taken to Constantinople, and to the sultan.
There he was rewarded for the mischief that he was hired to do: he had
paved the way for a great massacre.
But by a most influential paper of Great Britain the crime at Sassoun
was laid primarily at the door of England:
“The crime at Sassoun lies primarily at the door of England. It is
one of the many disastrous results of that ‘peace with honor’ which
the English government, represented by Lord Beaconsfield, claimed to
have brought back from Berlin in 1878. Why was it that the Armenians
at Sassoun were left as sheep before the butcher? Why was it that the
sultan and his pashas felt themselves perfectly free to issue what
order they pleased for the massacre of the poor Armenians? The answer
is, unfortunately, only too simple. It is because England, at the
Berlin Congress, and England alone--for none of the other powers took
any interest in the matter--destroyed the security which Russia had
extorted from the Turkish government at San Stefano, and substituted
for the sterling guarantee of Russia the worthless paper money of
Ottoman promises.”[134]
The Sultan publicly endorsed the massacre and decorated Zeki Pasha, the
commander of the Fourth Army Corps, and sent four flags to the Kurdish
cavalry regiments.
Well said a prominent American: “The sultan’s act is a sort of insolent
challenge to Christendom.” Why should he not challenge Christendom?
There were some so-called Christian rulers back of him. Though the
civilized world was filled with righteous indignation at the cruelty
and insolence of the successor of Mohammed, yet he was only true to the
teaching and example of the prophet in thus violating all the laws of
civilization and humanity.
It is the characteristic of the Armenian mothers to teach their
children to cling to the religion of Christ, let come what may. And it
is due to this fact that the Armenian nation, after having undergone
fifteen centuries of persecution for their faith, still exists as
a Christian people. “The permanence of the Armenian race has been
ascribed to the virtue of their women and exceptional purity and
stability of their family life.”
The Turkish government, as might have been expected, first tried to
conceal the facts or even admit the occurrence of such a massacre.
However, under some pressure from the British ambassador, she made the
following report:
Constantinople, November 16, 1894--“The Porte has issued an account of
the last Armenian troubles in Sassoun district. The responsibility is
laid upon the Kurdish brigands, who murdered a Mussulman and committed
many other excesses. The Turkish troops called to Sassoun are said to
have restored order and protected all law-abiding persons.”
But when Sir Phillip Currie sent Mr. Hallward’s (British vice-consul
at Van) report of the massacre to the Porte, the Turkish minister
positively denied the facts, asserting that Mr. Hallward’s report was
untrue. The Porte further “stated outright, that he (Mr. Hallward) had
encouraged the Armenians to revolt.” Another report received from a
Turkish official source was “that at Sassoun all the Armenians fell in
open combat. The troops killed two thousand of them.”
The friends of Christianity and humanity, who sincerely sympathized
with the martyred Christian Armenians, have learned that the Mohammedan
rulers and the Turkish officials in the past centuries, and in the
present, have given us enough instances of cruelty to convince the
world that Mohammedanism and barbarism, if not identical, surely go
hand in hand. Furthermore, the Turkish government and its officers
have shown to the world that they were, and are, destitute of
truthfulness. A well-informed recent writer says: “As rulers of subject
races, the Turks have shown themselves incapable of anything except
cruelty and corruption.” “Has Turkey one whit improved in the last five
centuries? No. The Porte’s diplomatists have learned to tell falsehoods
with more freedom, and more unblushingly; her cruelties and oppressions
are practiced more vigorously but more secretly; and she is far more
steeped (her higher classes) in vice and barbarism than she was five
hundred years ago.”[135]
The sultan, with an air of frankness, though compelled by the demand of
the British ambassador, and with a desire to postpone immediate action,
so that the indignation of the Christian world might subside, appointed
a commission to make an investigation of the massacre. He depended
too much on the friendly relations of the United States with Turkey,
through Minister Terrell. The sultan asked the President to appoint a
representative of this country; but when President Cleveland appointed
Mr. Jewett, consul at Sivas, to make an independent investigation and
report to our government, the sultan refused his appointment. How
could he allow such an honest man as Mr. Jewett to make an independent
investigation? Mr. Jewett knew the corruption of the sultan’s officers;
he had some experience in the Marsovan trouble; his despatches were
detained and his letters were meddled with by His Majesty’s faithful
servants, who, at the head of a Turkish mob, had burned the mission
school.
The sultan’s commission was composed of the Turkish officers appointed
by the Sultan and the consuls of France, England and Russia, who were
in Asiatic Turkey. The commission was to decide who was to be examined,
and whose testimony was to be taken. The European representatives were
not privileged to make an independent investigation of the matter.
Such being the case it was evident what might be expected from the
Commission.
In such a country as Turkey, where justice is unknown, and for a
Christian to protect his property, home, and life from plunder and
violence is considered a “political offense” against the State, how
could Christians dare to come forth and testify against the officers
and the government, to whose cruelties and murderous propensities they
were again to be left, when the European representatives departed? Even
if they did dare, the testimony of the Christian is worthless against
the faithful followers of Mohammed, who were the defendants in the
case. Hopelessness of the condition of the Armenians was manifest.
Hardly will it be necessary to say that the universal impression
was that the Sultan’s investigating commission was a farce, and
perilous, yet it suited the sultan and his friends. St. Petersburg
(Petrograd), December 30, 1894: “The _Moscow Gazette_ pillories the
Sassoun investigating Commission as a farce. It asks why the Powers
do not give the Porte so many days in which to decide whether it will
fulfill the Treaty of Berlin, and if an unsatisfactory answer be given,
co-operate to enforce the Treaty.”
This leading journal revealed the mind of the Russians. That England
could have had the support of France. That, even, if Germany had sided
with Turkey (which she most probably would), she would then have been
half-prepared than twenty years later, at this terrible conflict. That
the Powers would have had the universal moral support of the whole
civilized world, especially at that time (preceding the Balkan wars),
when the Balkan nations would have been in full sympathy with the
entente, to drive the Turk out of Europe.
But England’s delay of action before the massacre, for she was aware
of its coming, and her hesitation and distrust of Russia after the
massacre, gave ample time to the crafty Abdul Hamid to create discord
among the Powers, and he thus thwarted England’s belated attempts to
redress the wrong that was committed.
The following quotation from “Our Responsibility for Turkey,” by the
Duke of Argyle, confirms the above facts:
“That the Powers should have consented even to allow their
representatives to spend time in such attempts as those [a commission
to investigate the massacre and a scheme or reform for the Armenian
provinces], after the experience of half a century of the hopeless
bad faith and of the cunning procrastination of the Porte, is indeed
astonishing. As usual, we seem to have been the leaders in this farce.
Our Foreign Office boasted from time to time that we had got all the
Powers to act ‘in line,’ which was, indeed, true. But what was the
line doing? It was what is called in the language of military drill
‘practicing the Goose Step’--going through the form of taking steps,
but not advancing one inch towards any practical result. The whole
time occupied by Lord Rosebery’s Government, after they first heard
of the impending dangers--which was at least eleven months from the
beginning of August, 1894, to the middle of July, 1895--was wasted in
this idle and grotesque procedure. And yet there really had been some
encouraging symptoms of the disposition of Russia, if we had taken
earnest and immediate advantage of them. And not less really had we
very early noticed of what was coming from the Turks. So early as
September 10, we knew that they were actually engaging a Kurdish chief
of notoriously bad character to command three regiments of Kurdish
irregular cavalry, as part of the forces destined for putting down
what they were pleased to call the insurrection.”
Here we also add Lord Bryce’s words which are emphatically true:
“In the field of Eastern politics generally the conspicuous result
has been the failure--the complete humiliating and irretrievable
failure--of the traditional policy pursued by England of supporting
the Turk against Russia.”[136]
An Armenian deputation called on the late Hon. W. E. Gladstone on the
occasion of his birthday (December 29, 1894). He delivered an address
on the Sassoun massacre. A few paragraphs of his speech may be here
reproduced:
“The history of Turkey is a sad and painful one.... I have lived to
see the empire of Turkey in Europe reduced to less than one-half of
what it was when I was born, and why? Simply because of its misdeeds,
and the great record written by the hand of Almighty God against this
_injustice, lust, and most abominable cruelty_. If, happily (I speak,
hoping against hope), the reports be disproved or mitigated, let us
thank God. If, on the other hand, they be established, it will more
than ever stand before the world that there is a lesson, however
severe it may be, that can teach certain people the duty of prudence
and the necessity of observing the laws of decency, humanity, and
justice.... If the facts are established, it should be written in
letters of iron upon the records of the world that a government which
could be guilty of countenancing and covering up such atrocities is a
disgrace to Mohamet, the prophet; a disgrace to civilization at large,
and a disgrace to mankind.... I have counseled you to be still and
keep your judgments in suspense; but as the evidence grows the case
darkens and my hopes dwindle and decline; and as long as I have voice,
it will be uttered on behalf of humanity and truth.”[137]
Mr. Gladstone’s address on the Bulgarian massacre of 1876 was reprinted
in the _Christian Register_, Boston, Mass., Dec. 1, 1894. I quote the
following passage from it:
“There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a cannibal
in the South Sea Islands, whose indignation would not arise and
overboil at the recital of that which has been done; which has too
late been examined, but which remains unavenged; which has left behind
all the foul and all the fierce passions that produced it; and which
may again spring up, in another murderous harvest, from the soil
soaked and reeked with blood, and in the air, tainted with every
imaginable deed of crime and shame. _That such things should be done
once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them;
that a door should be left open for their ever-so-barely possible
repetition would spread that shame over the whole._”
The door in Bulgaria was closed, but a wide door was left open in
Armenia, and England made herself a defender of the Turk that he may do
as he pleases.[138]
According to the following despatch after six or more months of
dilly-dallying, the European delegates to the Commission quitted their
Turkish colleagues in disgust.
Constantinople, June 10, 1895.--“The Moosh Commission closed on
Friday, so far as the work of the European delegates is concerned.
They were compelled to tell the Turkish delegates that they could
have nothing more to do with them. From the first the attitude of the
Turkish delegates has been invariably and increasingly dishonest.
According to the statements of those interested in the workings of
the commission, the representatives of the sultan have not manifested
honor, truth, or decency. They have made no efforts to determine the
cause of the outrages in Armenia.
“The rupture between the Turkish and European commissioners was
caused by the refusal of the Turks, on purely farcical grounds, to
hear important witnesses upon matters pertaining to the questions at
issue. It was evident that the Turks were afraid that the tissue of
falsehoods that they have thrown around the situation in Armenia would
be broken down....”
The following is the report of the European delegates of the Commission:
“We [Wilbert, Shipley, and Pyevalsky, the French, English and Russian
consuls] have, in our report, given it as our conviction, arrived
at from the evidence brought before us, that the Armenians were
massacred without distinction of age or sex; and indeed, for a period
of some three weeks, viz.: from the 12th of August to the 4th of
September (1894 O. S.), it is not too much to say that the Armenians
were absolutely hunted like wild beasts, being killed wherever they
were met; and if the slaughter was not greater, it was, we believe,
solely owing to the vastness of the mountain ranges of that district,
which enabled the people to scatter, and so facilitated their escape.
In fact, and speaking with a full sense of responsibility, we are
compelled to say that the conviction has forced itself upon us that it
was not so much the capture of the agitator Mourad, or the suppression
of a pseudo-revolt, as the _extermination, pure and simple, of the
Gheligrizan and Talori districts_.”[139]
Before closing this chapter I quote one more reference to the Sassoun
massacre and the work of the commission from Dr. J. Lepsius of Berlin,
whose book was published in 1896, under the title of “_Armenia and
Europe_.”
“Turkish Commission was appointed to inquire into occurrences which
took place at Sassoun in the autumn of 1894, when in the massacre in
which Turkish soldiers took part, twenty-seven Christian villages were
destroyed and thousands of Armenians were murdered. Delegates from
the English, French, and Russian consulates were appointed to attend
the Commission. At the second sitting held at Moosh, on January 26,
1895, they made what according to European ideas of justice was the
natural request that the commissioners, before inquiring into any
other matter, should take evidence as to the massacre of Armenians
by Turks. The commissioners (Turkish) however alleged that according
to their instructions from the Porte they were only to inquire “into
the criminal proceeding of the Armenian brigands,” they denied that
there had been any massacre of Armenians, and rejected the request
of the delegates. The commission sat from January 24 to July 21 at
Moosh. Some fifteen to thirty miles from the seat of the massacre,
and held one hundred and eight sittings. They declined to listen to
the Christian witnesses brought forward by the delegates and would
only accept the testimony of Turks, who had been carefully instructed
to give such evidence as would prove that the Armenians were alone
to blame. Witnesses who ventured to give evidence in favor of the
Armenians atoned for their rashness by immediate imprisonment. The
consular delegates at last refused to have anything more to do with
this farce; they therefore went to Sassoun, and by evidence there
obtained established the terrible facts and the innocence of the
peaceful Armenian population.”[140]