THE REIGN OF TERROR.
The time has come for every citizen to deliberately accept or repudiate
his share of the joint indirect responsibility for a series of the
hugest and foulest crimes that have ever stained the pages of human
history. The Armenian people are being exterminated root and branch
by Turks and Kurds--systematically and painfully exterminated by
such abominable methods, and with such fiendish accompaniments as
may well cause the most sluggish blood to boil and seethe with shame
and indignation.
For the Armenians are not lawless barbarians or brigands: nor are the
Turks and Kurds the accredited torch bearers of civilization. But
even if the "rôles" of the actors in this hideous drama were thus
distributed, an excuse might at most be found for severity, but
no pretext could be discovered for the slow torture and gradual
vivisection employed by fanatic Mohammedans to end the lives of
their Christian neighbors. If for instance it be expedient that
Armenians should be exterminated, why chop them up piecemeal, and in
the intervals of this protracted process, banter the agonized victims
who are wildly calling upon God and man to put them out of pain?
Why must an honest, hard workingman be torn from his bed or his
fireside; forced to witness the violation of his own daughter by
a band of all pitiless demons unable to rescue or help her, and
then, his own turn come, have his hand cut off and stuffed into his
mouth while a short sermon is being preached to him on the text:
"If your God be God, why does He not succor?" at the peroration of
which the other hand is hacked off, and then amid boisterous shouts of
jubilation, his ears are torn from his head and his feet severed with a
hatchet, while the piercing screams, the piteous prayers, the hideous
contortions of the agonizing victim seem to intoxicate with fiendish
delight the fanatic Moslems who inflict such awful cruelties. And why
when the last and merciful blow of death is being dealt, must obscene
jokes and unutterable blasphemies sear the victim's soul and prolong
his hell to the uttermost limits of time, to the very threshold of
eternity? Surely, roasting alive, flaying, disembowelling, impaling
and all that elaborate and ingenious aggravation of savage pain on
which the souls of these human fiends seem to feast and flourish,
have nothing that can excuse them in the eyes of Christians, however
deeply absorbed in politics or money getting whether in Downing Street
or in Wall Street.
But the Turk or Kurd is at his best only a Tartar utterly averse to
all humanizing influence, and at his worst seems a fiend incarnate
perpetrating and glorying in the horrors just enumerated, and in others
so gross and vile that they can not be mentioned. But remember that
while we may shut our ears to the horrid tale, innocent women and
young children are enduring even unto the agonies of death outrages
we can not imagine.
The Armenians constitute the sole civilizing force--nay with all
their faults, the sole humanizing element in Anatolia: peaceful to
the last limit of self sacrifice, law-abiding to their own undoing,
and at the same time industrious and hopeful under conditions which
would stagger the majority of mankind. At their best they are the
stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made. Most emphatically they
are the martyr nation of the world.
They are Christians, believing as we believe that God has revealed
Himself to the world in Jesus Christ for the salvation of men; and
they have held fast to that faith in our common Lord in spite of
disgrace and misery, in the face of fire and sword, in the extremest
agonies of torture and death. Whether suffering death at the hands
of the Persia Magi, or being built alive by Tamerlane into pyramids
of hideous glory, scarcely a generation has passed to the grave
without giving up its heroes and martyrs to the Cross of Christ. The
murdered of Sassoun, of Van, or Erzeroum were also Christian martyrs:
and any or all of those whose eyes have been gouged out, whose limbs
were torn asunder from their bodies might have obtained life and
comparative prosperity by merely pronouncing the formula of Islam and
abjuring Christ. But instead of this, thousands have commended their
souls to their Creator, delivered up their bodies to the tormentors,
endured indescribable agonies, and died, like Christian martyrs,
defying Heaven itself so to speak, by their boundless trust in God,
though he seemingly does not hear their cries for deliverance.
The apostacy to Islam by those who can no longer endure these
horrors will, certainly, be laid at the doors of Christian Europe
and America, who left them to perish in the direst, darkest hour of
human history. All Christendom knows what they are suffering yet not a
Christian power has said in words like solid shot: "These persecutions
must cease." Identity of ideals, aspirations and religious faith give
this unfortunate but heroic people strong claims on the sympathy of
the English-speaking peoples, for our ancestors whatever the form of
their religious creed never hesitated to die for it, and whenever the
breath of God swept over them breasted the hurricane of persecution.
But even in the name of a common humanity to say nothing of race or
creed what special claims to our sympathy are needed by men and women
whom we see, treated their masters, as in the dark ages the damned
were said to be dealt with by the devils in the deepest of hell's
abysses? Our written laws condemn cruelty to a horse or cat or dog;
our innate sense of justice would compel us to punish the man who
should wantonly torture even a rat by roasting it alive. And yet we
read of wounded Armenians being thrown into wells where kerosene was
poured upon them and then being burned alive and we are as cool as
ever. What more is needed to compel us to stretch out a helping hand
to tens of thousands of virtuous women and innocent children to save
them from protracted tortures with some of which the Gehenna of fire
were a swift and merciful death.
Why is it that the sentimental compassion of England has not gone
out into effective help to poor Armenia? For reason of "higher
politics." Her interests demand that the Turks and Kurds in whose
soulless bodies legions of devils seem to have taken up their abode,
shall be protected; the integrity of the Empire and the rule of
Islam are essential--indispensable to Christian civilization, i.e.,
to England's commercial prestige.
By the terms of the Berlin Treaty and the occupation of Cyprus, England
bound herself to see to it that the Christian peoples under the rule of
the Porte should have fair, humane treatment. This has been fully and
clearly shown in our chapter on the Russo-Turkish war. At the close of
that war (1878) the condition of Armenian Christians was from a humane
point of view deplorable. Yet nothing was done--no efficacious step
was taken to fulfil that solemn promise. Things were allowed to drift
from bad to worse, mismanagement to develop into malignity, oppression
merge into persecution, until just as in 1876 most solemn promises
of reform were followed by the Bulgarian horrors, so the promises
for reforms in Armenia after the Sassoun massacre were followed by
the still more terrible atrocities which have not yet ceased.
The Turk knew that the powers would not agree in compelling the
enforcement of the promises made. Time was needed. Yes time in which
to slaughter and to starve the Armenians whom by the treaty of Berlin
all the Great Powers were bound to protect in their rights.
But the unfortunate action and reaction of the English government made
themselves immediately and fatally felt in the very homes and at the
fireside of hundreds of thousands of Christian men and women driving
them into exile, shutting them up in noisome prisons and subjecting
them to every conceivable species of indignity, outrage and death. By
pressing a knob in London, as it were, hell's portals were opened in
Asia Minor, letting loose legions of fiends in human shape who set
about torturing and exterminating the Christians there. Nor was the
government ignorant of the wide-reaching effects of its ill-advised
action. It is on record that for seventeen years it continued to watch
the harrowing results of that action without once interfering to stop
it although at any moment during that long period of persecution it
could have redeemed its promise and rescued the Christians from their
unbearable lot.
Mr. Dillon says that if a detailed description were possible of
the horrors which England's exclusive attention to her own mistaken
interests let loose upon Turkish Armenians, there is not a man within
the kingdom of Great Britain whose heart strings would not be touched
and thrilled by the gruesome stories of which it would be composed.
During all those seventeen years written law, traditional custom, the
fundamental maxims of human and divine justice were suspended in favor
of a Mohammedan Saturnalia. The Christians by whose toil and thrift the
empire was held together were despoiled, beggared, chained, beaten,
banished and butchered: First, their movable wealth was seized, then
their landed property was confiscated, next, the absolute necessaries
of life were wrested from them, and finally honor, liberty and life
were taken with as little to do as if these Christian men and women
were wasps and mosquitoes. Thousands of Armenians were thrown into
prisons by governors like Tahsin Pasha and Bahri Pasha, and tortured
and terrorized till they delivered up the savings of a lifetime and
the support of the helpless families to ruffianly parasites. Whole
villages were attacked in broad daylight by the Imperial Kurdish
cavalry without pretext or warning, the male inhabitants killed or
turned adrift, the wives and daughters falling victims to the foul
lusts of these bestial murderers.
In a few years some of the provinces were decimated: Aloghkerd for
instance being almost "purged" of Armenians. Over twenty thousand
woe-stricken wretches once healthy and well-to-do, fled to Russia
or Persia in rags and misery diseased or dying. On the way they were
seized over and over again by the soldiers of the Sultan who deprived
them of the little money they possessed, nay, of the very clothes they
were wearing, most shamefully abused the wives and daughters and then
drove them over the frontier to hunger and die. Those who remained
behind for a time were no better off. Kurdish brigands lifted the last
cow and goats of the peasants and carried away their carpets and their
valuables. Turkish tax-gatherers followed after these, gleaning what
the brigands had left, and lest anything should escape their avarice
they bound the men, flogged them till their bodies were a bloody mass,
cicatrized the wounds with red hot ramrods, plucked out their beards
hair by hair, tore the flesh from their limbs with pincers and often
even then hung the men whom they had thus beggared and maltreated
from the rafters of their houses to witness with burning shame and
impotent rage the hellish outrages of these fiends incarnate.
Terrible as these scenes are even in imagination, it is only proper
that some effort should be made to realize the sufferings which have
been brought down upon these thousands and hundreds of thousands of
helpless men and women, and to understand somewhat of the shame, terror
and despair that must take possession of the souls of Christians whose
lives are a daily martyrdom of such unchronicled agonies, during which
no ray of the life-giving light that plays about the throne of God
ever pierces the mist of blood and tears that rises between the blue
of heaven and the everlasting grey of the charnel house called Armenia.
These statements are neither rumors nor exaggerations concerning which
we are justified in suspending judgment,--though the Turks long denied
the reports of the Sassoun massacres. History has set its seal upon
them. Diplomacy has slowly verified and reluctantly recognized them
as accepted facts. Religion and humanity are now called upon to place
their emphatic protest against them on record.
The Turks in their confidential moods have admitted these and worse
acts of savagery. The Kurds glory in them at all times. Trustworthy
Europeans have witnessed them and described them: and the Armenians
have groaned over them in blank despair, and the sweat of their
anguish has been blood.
Officers and nobles in the Sultan's own cavalry regiments like Mostigo
the Kurd, glory in the long series of crimes and outrages which have
marked their career, and laugh to scorn the idea of being punished
for robbing and killing the Armenians whom the Sublime Porte desires
them to exterminate.
The stories of the Bulgarian atrocities were repeated here. It was
the Armenians themselves who were punished if they dared complain
when their own relatives or friends were murdered. And often they were
punished on the charge of having committed these outrages themselves,
or else on the suspicion of having killed the murderers who were
afterwards found living and thriving in the Sultan's employ, and were
never disturbed there.
Three hundred and six of the principal inhabitants of the district
of Khnouss in a piteous appeal to the people of England, wrote:--
"Year by year, month by month, day by day, innocent men, women and
children have been shot down, stabbed, or clubbed to death in their
houses and their fields, tortured in strange fiendish ways in fetid
prison cells, or left to rot in exile under the scorching sun of
Arabia. During that long and horrible tragedy no voice was raised
for mercy, no hand extended to help us. * * * Is European sympathy
destined to take the form of a cross over our graves."
Now the answer has been given. What an answer! These ill-fated men
might know that European sympathy has taken a different form--that of
a marine guard before the Sultan's palace to shield him and his from
harm from without, while they proceed with their orgies of blood and
lust within. They might know; only most of them have been butchered
since then, like the relatives and friends whose lot they lamented
and yet envied.
In accordance with the plan of extermination, which has been carried
out with such signal success during these long years of Turkish vigor
and English sluggishness, all those Armenians who possessed money
or money's worth were for a time allowed to purchase immunity from
prison, and from all that prison life in Asia Minor implies. But,
as soon as terror and summary confiscation took the place of slow
and elaborate extortion, the gloomy dungeons of Erzeroum, Erzinghan,
Marsovan, Hassankaleh, and Van were filled, till there was no place
to sit down, and scarcely sufficient standing room. And this means
more than English people can realize, or any person believe who has
not actually witnessed it. It would have been a torture for Turkish
troopers and Kurdish brigands, but it was worse than death to the
educated schoolmasters, missionaries, priests, and physicians who were
immured in these noisome hotbeds of infection, and forced to sleep
night after night standing on their feet, leaning against the foul,
reeking corner of the wall which all the prisoners were compelled
to use as.... The very worst class of Tartar and Kurdish criminals
were turned in here to make these hell-chambers more unbearable to
the Christians. And the experiment was everywhere successful. Human
hatred and diabolical spite, combined with the most disgusting sights
and sounds and stenches, with their gnawing hunger and their putrid
food, their parching thirst and the slimy water, fit only for sewers,
rendered their agony maddening. Yet these were not criminals, nor
alleged criminals, but upright Christian men, who were never even
accused of an infraction of the law. No man who has not seen these
prisons with his own eyes, and heard these prisoners with his own
ears, can be expected to conceive, much less realize, the sufferings
inflicted and endured. The loathsome diseases, whose terrible ravages
were freely displayed; the still more loathsome vices, which were
continually and openly practised; the horrible blasphemies, revolting
obscenities and ribald jests which alternated with cries of pain,
songs of vice, and prayers to the unseen God, made these prisons,
in some respects, nearly as bad as the Black Hole of Calcutta, and
in others infinitely worse.
Into these prisons venerable old ministers of religion were dragged
from their churches, teachers from their schools, missionaries from
their meeting-houses, merchants, physicians, and peasants from their
firesides. Those among them who refused to denounce their friends,
or consent to some atrocious crime, were subjected to horrible
agonies. Many a one, for instance, was put into a sentry-box bristling
with sharp spikes, and forced to stand there motionless, without food
or drink, for twenty-four and even thirty-six hours, was revived
with stripes whenever he fell fainting to the prickly floor, and
was carried out unconscious at the end. It was thus that hundreds of
Armenian Christians, whose names and histories are on record, suffered
for refusing to sign addresses to the Sultan accusing their neighbors
and relatives of high treason. It was thus that Azo was treated by
his judges, the Turkish officials, Talib Effendi, Captain Reshid, and
Captain Hadji Fehim Agha, for declining to swear away the lives of the
best men of his village. A whole night was spent in torturing him. He
was first bastinadoed in a room close to which his female relatives
and friends were shut up so that they could hear his cries. Then he
was stripped naked, and two poles, extending from his armpits to his
feet, were placed on each side of his body and tied tightly. His arms
were next stretched out horizontally and poles arranged to support his
hands. This living cross was then bound to a pillar, and the flogging
began. The whips left livid traces behind. The wretched man was unable
to make the slightest movement to ease his pain. His features alone,
hideously distorted, revealed the anguish he endured. The louder he
cried, the more heavily fell the whip. Over and over again he entreated
his tormentors to put him out of pain, saying: "If you want my death,
kill me with a bullet, but for God's sake don't torture me like
this!" His head alone being free he, at last, maddened by excruciating
pain, endeavored to dash out his brains against the pillar, hoping in
this way to end his agony. But this consummation was hindered by the
police. They questioned him again; but in spite of his condition,
Azo replied as before: "I cannot defile my soul with the blood of
innocent people. I am a Christian." Enraged at this obstinacy, Talib
Effendi, the Turkish official, ordered the application of other and
more effective tortures. Pincers were fetched to pull out his teeth;
but, Azo remaining firm, this method was not long persisted in. Then
Talib commanded his servants to pluck out the prisoner's moustachios
by the roots, one hair at a time. This order the gendarmes executed,
with roars of infernal laughter. But this treatment proving equally
ineffectual, Talib instructed his men to cauterize the unfortunate
victim's body. A spit was heated in the fire. Azo's arms were freed
from their supports, and two brawny policemen approached, one on each
side, and seized him. Meanwhile another gendarme held to the middle
of the wretched man's hands the glowing spit. While his flesh was
thus burning, the victim shouted out in agony, "For the love of God
kill me at once!"
Then the executioners, removing the red hot spit from his hands,
applied it to his breast, then to his back, his face, his feet,
and other parts. After this, they forced open his mouth, and burned
his tongue with red hot pincers. During these inhuman operations, Azo
fainted several times, but on recovering consciousness maintained the
same inflexibility of purpose. Meanwhile, in the adjoining apartment,
a heartrending scene was being enacted. The women and the children,
terrified by the groans and cries of the tortured man, fainted. When
they revived, they endeavored to rush out to call for help, but the
gendarmes, stationed at the door, barred their passage, and brutally
pushed them back. [1]
Nights were passed in such hellish orgies and days in inventing new
tortures or refining upon the old, with an ingenuity which reveals
unimagined strata of malignity in the human heart. The results throw
the most sickening horrors of the Middle Ages into the shade. Some of
them cannot be described, nor even hinted at. The shock to people's
sensibilities would be too terrible. And yet they were not merely
described to, but endured by, men of education and refinement, whose
sensibilities were as delicate as ours.
And when the prisons in which these and analogous doings were carried
on had no more room for new-comers, some of the least obnoxious of
its actual inmates were released for a bribe, or, in case of poverty,
were expeditiously poisoned off.
In the homes of these wretched people the fiendish fanatics were
equally active and equally successful. Family life was poisoned at
its very source. Dishonor menaced almost every girl and woman in the
country. They could not stir out of their houses in the broad daylight
to visit the bazaars, or to work in the fields, nor even lie down at
night in their own homes without fearing the fall of that Damocles'
sword ever suspended over their heads. Tender youth, childhood itself,
was no guarantee. Children were often married at the age of eleven,
even ten, in the vain hope of lessening this danger. But the protection
of a husband proved unavailing; it merely meant one murder more,
and one "Christian dog" less. A bride would be married in church
yesterday and her body would be devoured by the beasts and birds of
prey to-morrow. Others would be abducted, and, having for weeks been
subjected to the embrace of lawless Kurds, would end by abjuring their
God and embracing Islam; not from any vulgar motive of gain, but to
escape the burning shame of returning home as pariahs and lepers to
be shunned by those near and dear to them for ever. Little girls
of five and six were frequently forced to be present during these
horrible scenes, and they, too, were often sacrificed before the eyes
of their mothers, who would have gladly, madly accepted death, ay, and
damnation, to save their tender offspring from the corroding poison.
One of the abducted young women who, having been outraged by the son
of the Deputy-Governor of Khnouss, Hussni Bey, returned, a pariah,
and is now alone in the world, lately appealed to her English sisters
for such aid as a heathen would give to a brute, and she besought it
in the name of our common God. Lucine Mussegh--this is the name of
that young woman whose Protestant education gave her, as she thought,
a special claim to act as the spokeswoman of Armenian mothers and
daughters--Lucine Mussegh besought, last March, the women of England
to obtain for the women of Armenia the privilege of living a pure
and chaste life! This was the boon which she craved--but did not,
could not, obtain. The interests of "higher politics," the civilizing
missions of the Christian Powers are, it seems, incompatible with
it! "For the love of the God whom we worship in common," wrote this
outraged, but still hopeful, Armenian lady, "help us, Christian
sisters! Help us before it is too late, and take the thanks of the
mothers, the wives, the sisters, and the daughters of my people,
and with them the gratitude of one for whom, in spite of her youth,
death would come as a happy release."
Neither the Christian sisters nor the Christian brethren in England
have seen their way to comply with this strange request. But it may
perhaps interest Lucine Mussegh to learn that the six Great Powers of
Europe are quite unanimous, and are manfully resolved, come what will,
to shield His Majesty the Sultan from harm, to support his rule, and to
guarantee his kingdom from disintegration. These are objects worthy of
the attention of the Great Powers; as for the privilege of leading pure
and chaste lives--they cannot be importuned about such private matters.
What astonishes one throughout this long, sickening story of shame and
crime is the religious faith of the sufferers. It envelops them like a
Nessus' shirt, aggravating their agonies by the fear it inspires that
they must have offended in some inexplicable way the omnipotent God
who created them. What is not at all wonderful, but only symptomatic,
is the mood of one of the women, who, having prayed to God in heaven,
discovered no signs of His guiding hand upon earth, and whose husband
was killed in presence of her daughter, after which each of the two
terrified females was outraged by the band of ruffians in turn. When
gazing, a few days later, on the lifeless corpse of that beloved child
whom she had vainly endeavored to save, that wretched, heartbroken
mother, wrung to frenzy by her soul-searing anguish, accounted to
her neighbors for the horrors that were spread over her people and
her country by the startling theory that God Himself had gone mad,
and that maniacs and demons incarnate were stalking about the world!
Such, in broad outline, has been the normal condition of Armenia ever
since the Treaty of Berlin, owing at first to the disastrous action,
and subsequently to the equally disastrous inaction of the British
Government. The above sketch contains but a few isolated instances of
the daily commonplaces of the life of Armenian Christians. When these
have been multiplied by thousands and the colors duly heightened, a
more or less adequate idea may be formed of the hideous reality. Now,
during all those seventeen years, we took no serious step to put an end
to the brigandage, rapes, tortures, and murders which all Christendom
agreed with us in regarding as the normal state of things. No one
deemed it his duty to insist on the punishment of the professional
butchers and demoralizers, who founded their claims to preferment upon
the maintenance of this inhuman system, and had their claims allowed,
for the Sultan, whose intelligence and humanity it was the fashion to
eulogise and admire, decorated and rewarded these faithful servants,
making them participators in the joy of their lord. Indeed, the utter
perversion of the ideas of justice and humanity which characterized
the views of European Christendom during the long period of oppression
and demoralization at last reached such a pitch that the Powers agreed
to give the Sultan a "reasonable" time to reëstablish once more the
normal state of things.
SASSOUN.
Sassoun is a mountainous province in the southern portion of the
Armenian plateau, west of Lake Van. It is inhabited exclusively by
Armenians and Kurds, the former race being in majority. There is,
however, no intermingling of the races; the Armenian villages are
grouped in the center of the province, and the Kurdish are scattered
all around.
Despite continuous spoliation by Kurd and Turk, the Armenians managed
to get along tolerably. But Turk and Kurd became more and more
exacting, the Kurd being instructed by the Turk. The Kurds would be
satisfied with the traditional tribute, but the Turkish authorities
incited them to demand more, to plunder and to kill.
The Armenians of Sassoun were fully aware of the hostile intention
of the Government, but they did not imagine it to be one of utter
extermination.
The Porte had prepared its plans. Sassoun was doomed.
The Kurds were to come in much greater number, the Government was to
furnish them provisions and ammunition, and the regular army was to
second them in case of need.
The plan was to destroy first Shenig, Semal, Guelliegoozan, Aliantz,
etc., and then to proceed towards Dalvorig.
The Kurds, notwithstanding their immense number, proved to be unequal
to the task. The Armenians held their own and the Kurds got worsted.
After two weeks fight between Kurd and Armenian, the regular army
entered into active campaign.
Mountain pieces began to thunder. The Armenians, having nearly
exhausted their ammunition, took to flight.
Kurd and Turk pursued them and massacred men, women and children. The
houses were searched and then put on fire.
The scene of the massacre was most horrible. The enemies took a
special delight in butchering the Dalvorig people.
An immense crowd of Kurd and Turk soldiery fell upon the Dalvorig
village, busy to search the houses, to find out hidden furniture,
and then to put fire to the village.
A native of the Dalvorig village, succeeded in hiding from the
searching soldiers, and when, twelve days after the destruction of his
home, the army went away, he came out of his hiding place and looked
among the corpses for his own dead. He found and buried his father,
two nephews and his aunt. The bodies were swollen enormously in the
sun, and the stench was something awful in all the surroundings. He
witnessed many acts of military cruelties which are not proper to
be reported.
In June, 1893, four young Armenians and their wives, living only two
miles from the city of Van, where the Governor and a large military
force reside, were picking herbs on the hillside. They carefully kept
together and intended to return before night. They were observed by a
band of passing Kurds, who in broad daylight fell upon the defenseless
party, butchered the young men, and, as to the brides, it is needless
to relate further. The villagers going out the next day found the four
bodies, not simply dead, but slashed and disfigured almost beyond
recognition. They resolved to make a desperate effort to let their
wrongs at least be known.
Hastily yoking up four rude ox carts they placed on each the naked
remains of one of the victims, with his distracted widow sitting
by the side, shorn of her hair in token of dishonor. This gruesome
procession soon reached the outskirts of the city, where it was met
by soldiers sent to turn it back. The unarmed villagers offered no
resistance, but declared their readiness to perish if not heard. The
soldiers shrank from extreme measures that might cause trouble among
the thirty-thousand Armenians of Van, who rapidly gathered about
the scene. The Turkish bayonets retreated before the bared breasts
of the villagers. With ever-increasing numbers, but without tumult,
the procession passed before the doors of the British and Russian
vice-consulates, of the Persian consul-general, the chief of police
and other high officials, till it paused before the great palace of
the Governor.
At this point Bahri Pasha, the Governor, stuck his head out of the
second story window and said: 'I see it. Too bad! Take them away
and bury them. I will do what is necessary.' Within two days some
Kurds were brought in, among whom were several who were positively
identified by the women; but, upon their denying the crime, they were
immediately released, and escaped.
In 1893, the impoverished Armenians stripped of everything worth
possessing, decided to resist further robberies. Early in the spring
of that year, the Kurds came with demands more exorbitant than ever,
the chiefs being escorted by a great number of armed men, but they
were driven back by the brave villagers. When this became known to
the Ottoman authorities, some of the more zealous of them applied for
a large body of regular troops. The Turkish Government affected to
believe that the secret political agitation which had been going on
among the Armenians for some time had at length produced a serious
revolt, and that it was necessary to quell it at once in energetic
and relentless fashion.
Orders were accordingly sent to Zekki Pasha, the Mushir commanding the
troops at Erzinghian, to proceed to Sassoun with a sufficient force
and suppress the disturbances. The precise terms of the instructions
to this energetic Pasha never transpired and were never known to any
one outside the Turkish official world. Whatever they were the Pasha
evidently understood that he was literally to annihilate those who had
resisted the authority of the local officials, and he executed what he
supposed to be the wishes of his superiors with a barbarity towards
both men and women, which deserves the reprobation of the civilized
world. The Turkish soldiers hesitated to carry out such atrocious
orders against defenceless women and men who offered no resistance,
and they did not obey until threatened with condign punishment for
disobedience. The protests of the Mutessarif, the civil Governor of
the district, were disregarded.
The fixed hour of fate arrived.
In August 1894, Kurdish and Turkish troops came to Sassoun. Among
them the famous Hamidieh troops, the specially organized Kurdish
cavalry named after the Sultan, the name significant of the purpose
for which they were organized.
Zekki Pasha who commanded on that infamous occasion was afterwards
decorated by the Sultan as were four Kurdish chiefs who had been
specially savage and merciless during the progress of the carnage,
while the Civil Governor of the district who so humanely protested
was summarily removed from his post.
The Kurds were newly armed with Martini rifles. Zekki Pasha, who had
come from Erzingan, read the Sultan's order for the attack, and then
urged the soldiers to loyal obedience to their Imperial master. On
the last day of August, the anniversary of Abdul Hamid's accession
to the throne, the soldiers were specially urged to distinguish
themselves in making it the day of greatest slaughter. On that day
the commander wore the edict of the Sultan on his breast. Kurds began
the butchery by attacking the sleeping villagers at night and slaying
men, women and children. For twenty-three days this horrible work of
slaughter lasted. Some of the Kurds afterward boasted of killing a
hundred Christians apiece. At one village, Galogozan, many young men
were tied hand and foot, laid in a row, covered with brushwood and
burned alive. Others were seized and hacked to death piecemeal. At
another village, a priest and several leading men were captured
and promised release if they would tell where others had fled; and,
after telling, all but the priest were killed. A chain was put around
his neck and pulled from opposite sides until he was several times
choked and revived, after which bayonets were planted upright and he
was raised in the air and dropped upon them. The men of one village,
when fleeing, took the women and children, some five hundred in
number, and placed them in a ravine where soldiers found them and
butchered them. Little children were cut in two and mutilated. Women
were subjected to fearful agonies, ending in death. A newly wedded
couple fled to a hilltop; soldiers followed and offered them their
lives if they would accept Islam, but they preferred to die bravely
professing Christ. On Mount Andoke, south of Moush, about a thousand
persons sought refuge. The Kurds attacked them, but for days were
repulsed. Then Turkish soldiers directed the fire of their cannon
on them. Finally the ammunition of the fugitives was exhausted, and
the troops succeeded in reaching the summit unopposed and butchered
them to a man. In the Talvoreeg district, several thousand Armenians
were left in a small plain. When surrounded by Turks and Kurds they
appealed to heaven for deliverance, but were quickly dispatched with
rifles, bayonets and swords. The plain was a veritable shamble.
No accurate estimate of the number slain in the first massacre could
be made. Forty villages were totally destroyed and the loss of life
from ten to fifteen thousand. Efforts were made to conceal the real
extent of the carnage, but the "blood-bath of Sassoun" has passed
into history and cannot be forgotten.
At Bitlis there was a Kurdish raid on Armenian cattle, resulting in
a fight in which two Kurds were killed.
The friends of the Kurds took the corpses to Moush and declared that
the Armenians had overrun the land and were killing and plundering
right and left. This furnished a pretext for a massing of the troops.
On the admissions of Turkish soldiers, some of whom tearfully protested
that they merely obeyed orders, six thousand people were killed. No
compassion was shown to age or sex. In one place three or four hundred
women, after having been forced repeatedly to submit to the soldiery,
were hacked to pieces with swords and bayonets. In another place two
hundred women begged at the commander's feet for mercy. The commander,
after ordering that they be outraged, had them all despatched with
the sword. Similar scenes were enacted in other places.
In one case sixty young brides and maidens were driven into a church,
and after being violated were butchered until their blood flowed from
the doors.
A large company, headed by a priest, knelt near the church begging
for compassion, averring that they had nothing to do with the culprits
who killed the Kurds. It was in vain; all were killed.
Several attractive women were told that they might live if they would
recant their faith. They replied: "Why should we deny Christ? We
have no more reason to do so than had these," pointing to the mangled
bodies of their husbands and brothers, "Kill us, too." This was done.
A priest was taken to the roof of his church and hacked to pieces;
young men were placed among wood saturated with kerosene and set on
fire. After the massacre, and when the terrified survivors had fled,
there was a general looting by the Hamidieh Kurds. They stripped
the houses bare, then piled the dead into them and fired the whole,
intending as far as possible to cover up the evidences of their
dreadful crime.
The rivulets were choked with corpses; the streams ran red with
human blood, the mountain gorges and rocky caves were crowded with
the dead and dying; among the black ruins of once prosperous villages
lay half-burned infants on their mothers' mangled bodies: pits were
dug at night by the wretches destined to fill them; many of whom
were flung in while but slightly wounded, and underneath a mountain
of clammy corpses struggled vainly with death and with the dead who
shut them out of life and light forever.
The following letter from an Armenian native of Sassoun added another
page to the tale of woe:--
"At last we have escaped from the barbarity and atrocity of the
Turks, and have arrived at Athens. Our escape from Sassoun was almost
miraculous, and it is possible that the cannon and knives of the
Turkish soldiers are still doing their bloody work there. Everybody
knows that the orders for the massacre were given by direct counsellors
of the Sultan.
"There is hardly a man left alive in Sassoun, and pleading women and
little children, all together, old and young, have been sacrificed by
the swords of the Turkish soldiers. They besieged the village from
the last of April until the first of August, and during all these
weeks we fed on vegetables and the roots of grasses.
"The first few weeks were bitterly cold, and existence was
terrible. All outside communication was cut off. The Turks suspected
that other villages would give us food, and so they plundered the
neighboring villages. The villagers resisted and hundreds of them
were killed. Of the three hundred and twenty-five houses which made
up the village of Varteniss only thirty-five were left standing.
"When the news of this massacre reached Sassoun our people were excited
beyond all thought of personal safety, and we attacked the soldiers
and succeeded in killing twelve of them. Then more ammunition and
soldiers were sent there, and a devilish work was begun.
"The Chiefs of the tribes of the Kurds, with Celo Bey and his staff,
together with the regular soldiers, came to the village of Samal. Many
of the inhabitants, after suffering atrocious cruelties, were put
to death. They brought the minister of the village from his house,
and after putting the sacred chalice into his hands, bound him to a
donkey and then shot him and the animal together. In all, the number
killed in the village was forty-five.
"This deviltry was by no means the worse perpetrated. The greatest
horror was at the village of Gely Guse. Celo Bey and his men entered
the village before daybreak, and while the inhabitants were peacefully
sleeping in their homes set fire to the whole village, and not one
escaped. The village of Shenig met with almost a similar fate, all
the people of prominence being killed.
"The tribe of Kurds known as Gebran, headed by the Chief Ebo and
accompanied by Turkish soldiers, entered the village of Konk. There
they gathered all the women in the church. After defiling them in the
most revolting manner, they slew them. The soldiers spent the night
in the village in revelry and debauchery.
"Two other tribes, those of Pakran and Khisan, came against the
village of Alpak. They collected all the herds and flocks, and drove
them off. Then they returned and burned the whole village.
"We who have escaped thank God for our safety and are prayerfully
exchanging the helpful sympathy of the civilized world."
Another letter from a Sassoun fugitive, gave the saddening story
of the experience of one family. It is typical of the experience of
thousands of others. He wrote:
"Our family was composed of ten members, and were natives of Semal,
a village in Sassoun. We fought the Kurds to protect our lives and
property; but when the Turkish soldiers united with the Kurds, we
fled. I was with my father. He could not run away because he was very
weak, having eaten nothing for many days. I entered, with the rest
of my family, into a thick forest. The soldiers overtook my father
and struck him with their swords, disemboweling him; they filled his
body with gunpowder and set fire to him. Afterwards I went with others
and gathered up what remained of my poor father and buried him.
"With the rest of my family I remained forty days in the forests,
subsisting on herbs and roots until the soldiers were recalled,
and there was nobody to pursue us. We came down to Moush, and the
government sent us to Khibian, a village in the Moush plain, where we
remained in a dilapidated hut with very little to eat. All of us became
sick from hunger and cold: two girls and one boy died, and the rest,
six members of our family, are now wandering from village to village,
naked and hungry."
Neither age nor sex were spared. A final refusal to deny Christ and
accept Islam sealed the fate of the Armenian. Women torn from their
homes and outraged, and hundreds of young girls forcibly carried off,
fiendishly used and wantonly slain, and other horrors unnamable and
unfit to print, were some of the methods employed with the Sultan's
permission, in upholding the glory of Islam.
The following narrative, was also obtained from Armenian sources:
"Andakh was besieged in August. Gorgo, with his followers, strengthened
their position and defended it heroically for six days, generally
fighting with stones and daggers. The women often took the places of
these who had been killed. The position becoming untenable, Gorgo left
the women to defend it, and took his troops out to forage for food and
ammunition. The women maintained the defence twenty-four hours, then
yielded to greater numbers after being surrounded on all sides. Their
condition was terrible. Many carried babies on their backs, while the
elder children stood beside them. The women saw that they never could
fight their way through the ranks of the enemy. Gorgo's wife stepped on
a high rock and cried, 'Sisters, you must choose between two things:
Either fall into the hands of the Turks and forget your husbands,
homes, and your holy religion to adopt Islam, and to be violated,
or you must follow my example.' Thereupon, holding her young child
in her arms, she dashed herself into the abyss. Others followed her,
falling without cry or groan. The children followed their mothers,
and the ravine was soon filled with corpses. Those who jumped last
were not hurt, as their companions' bodies were piled high. About
fifty women and one hundred children were taken prisoners. The women
bore their tortures silently, and refused to betray Gorgo and his
brave followers. Gorgo's wife was named Schakhe."
The following accounts gave in realistic language, some of the
sufferings of the native Christians, who met death bravely rather
than purchase life by denying their Saviour.
A man from Central Dalvorig, said: His family numbered twelve;
of these six had been killed. His wife, a son six years of age,
and a little girl, a brother, a daughter five years old, and son aged
ten. These children tried to flee, but being greatly reduced by hunger,
were unable to escape from the soldiers pursuing them. A brother,
Shemo, survived, and with his wife and children found refuge in a
monastery. He saw a group of three brothers, while hidden behind some
trees, surprised by soldiers and brutally murdered. They were boys
about three, seven, and ten years of age. Their anguished mother, from
Hodwink, utterly powerless to rescue her children, witnessed the awful
deed from her place of concealment, and after the soldiers had gone,
went and buried them. The same writer repeatedly heard women say,
"We will be a sacrifice for our nation, but we cannot deny our faith."
A man from Galigozan said that he had an uncle and three cousins
killed in the massacre--all were shot and one was mutilated with the
sword. Another nephew, thirty-five years of age, was burned in a house
from which he could not escape. His wife and two children remained
for five weeks in the covert afforded by the rocks and holes of a
mountain side. On seeing soldiers approach one day, a man nearly
strangled his little daughter, four years of age, to suppress her
cries for food. She died a few days afterward from the effects of his
treatment. The niece was betrothed to a young man from Semel who, with
three others from the same house, came to Galigozan when the soldier
called to surrender, promising safety. But on appearing there the whole
company were told that they must either embrace Islam or meet instant
death. The four men above referred to with forty others, were there
pitilessly slaughtered, and thrown into the pit which had been dug.
From Spughawk, a village near Dalvorig, a man gave an account of the
fate of his family. A Kurdish Sheik with fifteen hundred followers
came and the terrified people fled to the mountain. In the attempt
to escape many were killed. Afterwards soldiers came and with the
Kurds surrounded the village, plundered and burned it. Its fine
church built of hewn stone laid in lime and having an arched roof,
was razed to the ground. This man's brother Arakil was shot and then
pierced with twelve bayonet wounds. His nephew was killed with the
bayonet and a niece who was about to be married was decapitated.
A woman and her two sons (thirty and seven years of age), were
discovered by soldiers. They first attacked the woman, inflicting
dangerous, though as it proved, not fatal wounds, and then killed her
two sons. After the departure of the soldiers the mother with one hand,
(the fingers of the other had been mangled), scraped shallow holes
in the ground using sharp stones and then dragging the bodies of
her sons thither, covered them with earth and stones. One man said
that his family consisted of twelve persons. His brother was one of
the chief men of the place, conspicuous at all times for his ability
and courage. The soldiers had heard of this man and were anxious to
find him. Finally they discovered his hiding place and attacked him
fiercely saying: "At last we have found you, infidel!" With cursing
and dreadful language they literally hacked him to pieces, his son,
and his brother's wife hidden among rocks near by, paralyzed with
terror, saw the awful deed. His son Sarkis was afterward slain,
as also his nephews.
A woman from Dalvorig said: "Of the twelve in my family, three were
killed in the massacre, my husband (forty years), daughter (ten years),
and Hukhit, my infant son. A brother-in-law was taken captive, and
after suffering much from cruel treatment, died in Moush prison. When
we saw the smoke of the burning villages we hastily fled. We had
buried our most valuable household goods some days previous, but the
Kurds found and carried off everything. While concealed among the
rocks and thickets we heard the sound of trumpets, and fearing lest
we should be hunted down by the soldiery, about one hundred refugees
got together and we then decided to go to the Hinatsee tribe of Kurds;
(they were the aghas of our province), and implore their protection. We
set out early in the morning and soon met five Kurds who said to us:
'Come to the camp, to the surrender; there is peace.' Thus saying,
one of them seized a mule, the only animal we had with us, and
rode away to betray us as it afterward proved. We followed the four
Kurds till we came near a river. Then we saw two large companies of
Kurds approaching us, one some distance below us, the other on the
opposite side of the river. These soon surrounded us. They were led
by a mollah, one of the followers of the noted Sheikh of Zeelon. They
drove us into a ravine. One of our company attempted to escape, but was
instantly cut down with the sword. The Kurds gave us the alternative
of accepting the Moslem faith or death. With one accord we all said,
'We cannot deny our Christ.' Immediately they seized the men, there
were only eleven in our company, bound their arms with cords, and then
took from us women and children all clothing worth removing. Many
were left with a single garment. One aged woman near us was left
stark naked. After this the mollah sent a letter to the Turkish
camp, which was about half an hour distant from Dalvorig village,
inquiring as to what should be done with us. I heard them talk about
the letter. Soon after this I heard the Kurds plotting to take the
young women and send the others away to the mountains.
"They did not unite in this plan, and as the darkness came on they
counted us and set a watch and lay down to rest on the ground about
the ravine. The next day towards noon they decided to take us to the
Turkish camp and ordered us to set out. Our husbands and brothers who
had been bound the night before were in a pitiable condition,--their
arms and hands badly swollen. Shortly after this the Kinds dispersed
and we made our escape to the mountains. One day while hiding among
the rocks I saw my husband, and son-in-law, Kevork, bound by cords
and cruelly murdered. My husband was cut limb from limb--literally
hacked to pieces. Too terrified to move I stood gazing at the awful
sight, when suddenly five Kurds sprang upon me. They did not harm me
but wanted my child. I threw myself upon the ground to shield him,
but they drugged me to one side and stabbed him with a dagger. (Her
twelve-year old daughter was not far away. She was greatly terrified,
having witnessed the murder of her father and brother.) I ran to
her and tried to pull her along as we fled, but she soon stopped
and exclaiming, 'mother, I am dying,' fell dead at my feet. I did
not dare to linger and fled over the rocks until I found my other
children, one of whom was the wife of Kevork, my son-in-law, who had
just been murdered. The next day we turned back to bury the body of
my daughter. We did not dare to go further then, as there were many
soldiers and Kurds around. Twenty days later I returned and buried
the remains of my husband and son-in-law. While I was hiding among
the rocks I saw soldiers barbarously kill a woman, removing the yet
unborn child and thrusting it through with a bayonet."
What she saw and endured during those weary days of wandering would
fill many pages. At length all the surviving members of the family
reached Shadald, a district near Moush.
One woman's husband disappeared at the time of the massacre. She, with
her husband, brother, and his son, were hiding in the mountains when
soldiers murdered her brother-in-law, and his son-in-law, and his son
in a most brutal manner. She was very near them, hidden behind some
rocks, but they did not discover her, and the next day she joined
a company of seven villagers, two women, three girls, and two boys,
with whom she remained hiding among rocks and thickets. They were soon
discovered by Kurds. Two soldiers took her away from her companions
and told her she must adopt the Mohammedan faith, and that if she
refused they would take her life then and there. She finally replied,
"if you wish to kill me I am helpless, but I cannot commit the awful
sin of denying Christ." They took her with them for several miles,
sometimes persuading, sometimes threatening her, till they were met
by a company of Kurds, among whom was a woman who begged the soldiers
to let the young woman go. This they did.
A woman from Somal said: "I am a member of a priest's family; my
husband was his brother's son; I went with the family to surrender
at Galigozan; the priest, my husband, and his two brothers were all
cruelly murdered and thrown into the death-pit at Galigozan which the
soldiers had dug. We were separated from our husbands and brothers,
and soldiers took us to a church about half an hour away from the
camp. There we were kept all night. In the morning soldiers came to
us and said: 'Come to camp and give your word that you will accept
Islam.' We cried out, 'Never! We cannot do that great sin.' They
replied, 'If you do not, we will do to you as we did to your husbands
and sons last night.' This was the first intimation we had of the
awful massacre that had taken place the night before."
Such are some of the causes that impelled these people to appeal to the
Christian world for protection and redress. The incidents mentioned
were only a few among thousands of similar experiences, which showed
how loyally the Christian peasants of Armenia laid down their lives
rather than betray their Master by accepting the faith of Islam.