THE REIGN OF TERROR--TREBIZOND AND ERZEROUM.
The Mohammedan populace in all the large cities of Asia Minor were
deliberately inflamed against the Armenians by lying rumors of intended
attacks on the mosques. Soon there was an outbreak at Constantinople
in which nearly two hundred Armenians were killed by the "Softas"
(Moslem students), and by the police.
This was followed by a terrific outburst of fanaticism all over the
Sultan's dominions, the Kurdish Hamidieh were brought into requisition,
and such scenes of massacre ensued as have not been paralleled since
the days of Tamerlane.
Through all the vilayets of Armenia ran the red tide of blood. In
Trebizond, Erzeroum, Erzinghan and hundreds of other cities and
villages the Christians were crushed like grapes during the vintage. In
this work of destruction the Kurds may have been the leaders, but
the Turkish soldiers and civilians did their full share.
For a week prior to the outbreak on October 8, there was great
excitement in Trebizond, and the consuls called in a body upon the
Vali, and urged him to arrest those who were exciting the populace
to deeds of violence. Matters apparently quieted down for a few
days, when, suddenly, like a clap of thunder in a clear sky, the
assault began. Unsuspecting people walking along the streets were
shot ruthlessly down. Men standing or sitting quietly at their shop
doors were instantly dropped with a bullet through their heads or
hearts. The aim was deadly, and there were no wounded men. Some were
slashed with swords until life was extinct. They passed through the
quarters where only old men, women and children remained, killing the
men and large boys, generally permitting the women and younger children
to live. For five hours this horrid work of inhuman butchery went on;
the cracking of musketry, sometimes like a volley from a platoon of
soldiers, but more often single shots from near and distant points,
the crashing in of doors, and the thud, thud of sword blows resounded
on the ear. Then the sound of musketry died away, and the work of
looting began. Every shop of an Armenian in the market was gutted, and
the victors in this cowardly and brutal war glutted themselves with
the spoils. For hours bales of broadcloth, cotton goods, and every
conceivable kind of merchandise passed along without molestation to
the houses of the spoilers. The intention evidently was to impoverish,
and as near as possible, to blot out the Armenians of this town. So
far as appearances went the police and soldiers distinctly aided
in this savage work. They mingled with the armed men and, so far
as could be seen, made not the least effort to check them. To any
found with arms no quarter was given, but large numbers were shot
down without any demand to surrender. One poor fellow when called
on to surrender thought he was called on to give up his religion,
and when he refused he was hacked to pieces in the presence of his
wife and children. Not one of the perpetrators of these outrages was
arrested or disarmed, but all moved about with the utmost freedom to
accomplish their nefarious purposes. On the other hand many of the
Armenians were thrown into prison.
The frantic mob, seething and surging in the streets of the cities,
swept down upon the defenceless Armenians, plundered their shops,
gutted their houses, then joked and jested with the terrified victims,
as cats play with mice. As rapid whirling motion produces apparent
rest, so the wild frenzy of those fierce fanatic crowds resulted in
a condition of seeming calmness, composure, and gentleness which,
taken in connection with the unutterable brutality of their acts,
was of a nature to freeze men's blood with horror. In many cases they
almost caressed their victims, and actually encouraged them to hope,
while preparing the instruments of slaughter.
The French mob during the Terror were men--nay, angels of
mercy--compared with these Turks. Those were not insensible to
compassion; in these every instinct of humanity seemed atrophied or
dead. On the first day of the massacre, an Armenian was coming out
of a baker's shop, where he had been purchasing bread for his sick
wife and family, when he was surprised by the raging crowd. Fascinated
with terror, he stood still, was seized, and dashed to the ground. He
pleaded piteously for mercy and pardon, and they quietly promised it;
and so grim and dry was the humor of this crowd that the trembling
wretch took their promise seriously and offered them his heartfelt
thanks. In truth they were only joking. When they were ready to be
serious they tied the man's feet together, and taunted him, but at
first with the assumed gentleness that might well be mistaken for
the harbinger of mercy. Then they cut off one of his hands, slapped
his face with the bloody wrist, and placed it between his quivering
lips. Soon afterwards they chopped off the other hand and inquired
whether he would like pen and paper to write to his wife. Others
requested him to make the sign of the cross with his stumps or his
feet while he still possessed them, while others desired him to shout
louder so that his God might hear his cries for help. One of the most
active members of the crowd then stepped forward and tore the man's
ears from his head, after which he put them between the man's lips
and then flung them in his face.
"That effendi's mouth deserves to be punished for refusing such a
choice morsel," exclaimed a voice in the crowd, whereupon somebody
stepped forward, knocked out some of his teeth and proceeded to cut out
his tongue. "He will never blaspheme again," a pious Moslem jocosely
remarked. Thereupon a dagger was placed under one of his eyes which
was scooped clean out of its socket. The hideous contortions of the
man's discolored face, the quick convulsions of his quivering body
and the sight of the ebbing blood turning the dry dust to gory mud,
literally intoxicated these furious fanatics, who having gouged out
the other eye and chopped off his feet hit upon some other excruciating
tortures before cutting his throat and sending his soul to "damnation"
as they expressed it. These other ingenious, pain-sharpening devices,
however, were such as do not lend themselves to descriptions.
More than one thousand people perished in Trebizond under similar
tortures who were not more mercifully shot down at once--while many
Armenian women were murdered or kidnapped, and most of the Armenian
houses were burned to the ground; the survivors of the massacres
being driven to the hills and woods to suffer slow starvation.
Equally sad was the fate of the Christians of Baiburt whose tragic
taking off was related in a letter addressed by the survivors to the
Armenian Patriarch at Constantinople. After giving a partial list
of the slain, the writers stated: "When the massacres and plundering
began, on account of the prevailing terror and insecurity, the people
were compelled to close all the churches, shops and schools, and
take refuge in the houses. Letters were sent from our Prelate to the
commandant of the Fourth Army Corps at Erzeroum, and to the Armenian
Prelate at Erzeroum asking assistance; but all our prayers remained
unanswered. After the massacres the Turks advised us indirectly
that the order was secretly given from the Imperial Palace and was
irrevocable!
"The frantic Turkish mob, assisted by regular troops suddenly fell
upon the innocent and unarmed Armenians. The bloody work began at four
o'clock A. M., and lasted until late in the evening. Besides murdering
our people, the mob plundered and fired the Armenian dwellings and
stores, taking care that the Greeks should not be molested. On that
frightful day the Armenian community was almost annihilated.
"Strong men, youths and women, and even babies in the cradles and
unborn children were butchered with most awful savagery. Infants were
stuck on bayonets and exposed to the agonized view of their helpless
and frantic mothers. Young brides and girls were subjected to a
fate far worse than death. No resistance was possible on the part
of the Armenians. All the native teachers with a single exception
were murdered with most cruel tortures. Baiburt became a slaughter
house. Torrents of blood began to flow. The streets and bazaars were
filled with dead bodies. On the following day the Turks did all in
their power to conceal the bodies of those who had been pierced by
bayonets. Similar scenes were enacted in all the surrounding villages.
"Mourning and lamentation prevail throughout Armenia. The churches are
closed; no more can the sound of worshippers be heard. The pealing of
the bells is silent. We have no more teachers to teach the remnant
of Armenians who still live. Rich and poor alike have perished, and
the survivors are in the direst indigence. No bread, no covering for
their nakedness; they are shivering in the cold. Baiburt, until lately
so generous to help others, is now helpless, and in need of moral
and material assistance. Unless such assistance is soon received,
nobody can live.
"After the massacres the government began to arrest the remaining
Armenians who had escaped the slaughter. We hear that in the prisons
the tortures have reached an extreme point of frightful cruelty. Thus
the survivors of the massacre are now dying daily. Every moment we
have the horrors of death."
Turkish duplicity was fertile in its resources. Many documents
were forwarded to the Grand Vizier at Constantinople from scenes of
massacres, purporting to be signed by Armenian nobles, the signatures
having been obtained by intimidation. One of the most remarkable was
from Bitlis, and bore the signatures of thirty-one Armenian nobles. It
proceeds to state that "some of our co-religionists have been deceived
by instigators coming from certain parts, and have been the cause of
deplorable events and have committed crimes contrary to the wishes
of his Imperial Majesty, and against the government of his Imperial
Majesty--a government to be whose subject had been for six hundred
years a title of glory to us, and through whose benevolence we were
enjoying religious liberty and a self-government, the like of which
cannot be found under any administration. This being so there remains
no hope for us but the mercy of our august sovereign, who deigns to
accept all classes of his subjects with a benevolence worthy of the
greatest of monarchs.
"On the other hand, everlasting happiness for us consists in preserving
our national existence in the shadow of the imperial government. We
dare to commend ourselves to the humanity and benevolence of our
sovereign, who is an object of admiration for the whole world, and
we implore his pardon, taking refuge in that heavenly power bestowed
upon him for the pardon of criminals."
Such is an example of similar documents that were drawn up by local
Turkish officials, in fulsome praise of the Porte's humanity, and
which the leading Armenians were compelled to sign, under threats
of imprisonment and torture. These spurious testimonials, like the
manufactured reports of outrages by Armenians, were designed to
influence public opinion in Turkey's favor.
Even the Porte, accustomed to distort facts, found itself no longer
able to conceal from the world the pitiable condition of the Armenians.
In Erzeroum, where a large tract of country, from the lofty mountains
of Devi Boyen to the Black Sea shore was laid waste and completely
purged of Armenians, similar scenes were enacted. The vilayet of Van,
the town of Hassankaleh, and numerous other places were deluged with
blood, and polluted with unbridled lust. A man in Erzeroum, hearing
the tumult, and fearing for his children, who were playing in the
street, went out to seek and save them. He was borne down upon by the
mob. He pleaded for his life, protesting that he had always lived
in peace with his Moslem neighbors, and sincerely loved them. The
statement may have represented a fact, or it may have been but a plea
for pity. The ringleader, however, told him that that was the proper
spirit, and would be condignly rewarded. The man was then stripped,
and a chunk of his flesh cut out of his body, and jestingly offered
for sale: "Good fresh meat, and dirt cheap," exclaimed some of the
crowd. "Who'll buy fine dogs' meat?" echoed the amused bystanders. The
writhing wretch uttered piercing screams as some of the mob, who had
just come from rifling the shops, opened a bottle, and poured vinegar
or some acid into the gaping wound. He called on God and man to end
his agonies. But they had only begun. Soon, afterwards, two little
boys came up, the elder crying, "Hairik, Hairik, (Father, father,)
save me! See what they've done to me!" and pointed to his head, from
which the blood was streaming over his handsome face, and down his
neck. The younger brother--a child of about three--was playing with
a wooden toy. The agonizing man was silent for a second and then,
glancing at these, his children, made a frantic but vain effort to
snatch a dagger from a Turk by his side. This was the signal for
the renewal of his torments. The bleeding boy was finally dashed
with violence against the dying father, who began to lose strength
and consciousness, and the two were then pounded to death where they
lay. The younger child sat near, dabbling his wooden toy in the blood
of his father and brother, and looking up, now through smiles at the
prettily-dressed Kurds, and now through tears at the dust-begrimed
thing that had lately been his father. A slash of a sabre wound up his
short experience of God's world, and the crowd turned its attention
to others.
In Erzeroum about seven hundred houses and about fifteen thousand
shops were plundered. The number of killed was never known, for there
were many strangers in the city. The condition of the people was about
as bad as that of the Sassoun people after the massacre. Between two
thousand and three thousand people were destitute of fuel, bedding and
food, and the majority had only the clothes they had on their backs.
The Government made a show of distributing the plunder collected from
the barracks to the rightful owners, but the attempt was farcical.
The Turks declared that the Armenians made an attack on the Government
House, and so the affair begun. This declaration was absolutely without
foundation. There was no attack even contemplated by Armenians. The
first man shot was an aged priest, who was at the Government House
to present a complaint to the Governor. He had been robbed in his own
house in the village of the Tivnig, and only got off with his life by
giving a note for $500 for five days. He was an inoffensive old man,
and would be the last man in the world to offer an attack. The attack
was made by Moslems after leaving the mosques after the noon hour of
prayer, and it was simultaneous all over the city.
A letter from Erzeroum said: "It is almost impossible for me to
describe that which I have seen and heard. In Gurum everything which
hellish ingenuity can devise has been done by the Turkish soldiers
and Bashi-bazouks. All the Armenian villages are in ashes, and the
smoke which is rising from the ruined houses gives the appearance of
a volcanic eruption. Along the road between Trebizond and Erzeroum,
at every step, mutilated bodies are lying. We are unable to leave
our homes to bury the dead; unable to sleep. The whole city has
taken on the aspect of a wild desert strewn with corpses. Hundreds
of thousands of families are compelled to wander in rags, begging
for their living. The same fate has befallen a few of the Europeans."
The Erzeroum massacre started at the office of the Vali in the
government building. An Armenian priest of Tevnik was in the building
endeavoring to gain an audience with the Vali, when he was shot down
by Turkish murderers. Then followed a horrible saturnalia of carnage,
during which over one thousand Christians were slaughtered. After the
butchery, the dead victims were dragged by the neck and heels into
the cemetery and cast into a long, deep trench, not unlike the death
pit of Geliguzan--the murdered fathers, mothers and sweet, innocent
babes, all calm and peaceful in the sleep of death, flung down like
carrion. Nothing more horrible or more pathetic could be imagined
than that scene at the cemetery two days after the massacre. The
spaces between the poor dead bodies were filled with the skulls and
thigh-bones that had been taken by the sacrilegious Moslems from the
old, upturned graves and then all were covered up together out of
sight. The survivors dared not even express their grief.
Not less shocking was the news that came from Kaisarieh in that part
of Asiatic Turkey known as Cappadocia, where a frightful massacre
of Christians took place, accompanied by the outraging of women and
the looting of the shops and houses. This was done in obedience to
orders from Constantinople. Over one thousand were killed and the
fury of the Kurds, not satiated with slaughter, vented itself in the
mutilation of the inanimate bodies.
An extract from a paper on "The condition of Armenia" by E. J. Dillon
will fitly close this chapter.
"The stories told of these Koordish Hamidieh officers in general,
and of one of them, named Mostigo, in particular, seemed so wildly
improbable, that I was at great pains to verify them. Learning that
this particular Fra Diavolo had been arrested and was carefully
guarded as a dangerous criminal in the prison of Erzeroum, where
he would probably be hanged, I determined to obtain, if possible,
an interview with him, and learn the truth from his own lips. My
first attempt ended in failure; Mostigo being a desperate murderer,
who had once before escaped from jail, was subjected to special
restrictions, and if I had carried out my original plan of visiting
him in disguise, the probability is that I should not have returned
alive. After about three weeks' tedious and roundabout negotiations,
I succeeded in gaining the gaoler's ear, having first replenished
his purse. I next won over the brigand himself, and the upshot of my
endeavors was an arrangement that Mostigo was to be allowed to leave
the prison secretly, and at night, to spend six hours in my room,
and then to be re-conducted to his dungeon.
"When the appointed day arrived the gaoler repudiated his part of
the contract, on the ground that Mostigo, aware that his life was
forfeited, would probably give the prison a wide berth if allowed to
leave its precincts. After some further negotiations, however, I agreed
to give two hostages for his return, one of them a brother Koord, whose
life the brigand's notions of honor would not allow him to sacrifice
for the chance of saving his own. At last he came to me one evening,
walking over the roofs, lest the police permanently stationed at my
door should espy him. I kept him all night, showed him to two of the
most respectable Europeans in Erzeroum, and, lest any doubt should
be thrown on my story, had myself photographed with him next morning.
The tale unfolded by that Koordish noble constitutes a most admirable
commentary upon Turkish régime in Armenia. This is not the place to
give it in full. One or two short extracts must suffice.
"'Now, Mostigo, I desire to hear from your own lips and to write
down some of your wonderful deeds. I want to make them known to the
"hat-wearers."' (Europeans).
"'Even so. Announce them to the Twelve Powers.' (The whole universe).
"There were evidently no misgivings about moral consequences;
no fears of judicial punishment. And yet retribution was at hand;
Mostigo was said to be doomed to death. Desirous of clearing up this
point, I went on:
"'I am sorry to find that you are living in prison. Have you been
long there?'
"'I, too, am sorry. Five months, but it seems an age.'
"'These Armenians are to blame, I suppose?'
"'Yes.'
"'You wiped out too many of them, carried off their women, burned
their villages and made it generally hot for them, I am told.'
"(Scornfully). 'That has nothing to do with my imprisonment. I shall
not be punished for plundering Armenians. We all do that. I seldom
killed, except when they resisted. But the Armenians betrayed me and
I was caught. That's what I mean. But if I be hanged it will be for
attacking and robbing the Turkish post and violating the wife of a
Turkish Colonel who is now here in Erzeroum. But not for Armenians! Who
are they that I should suffer for them?'
After he had narrated several adventures of his, in the course of
which he dishonored Christian woman, killed Armenian villagers,
robbed the post and escaped from prison, he went on to say:
"'We did great deeds after that: deeds that would astonish the Twelve
Powers to hear told. We attacked villages, killed people who would
have killed us, gutted houses, taking money, carpets, sheep and
women, and robbed travelers.... Daring and great were our deeds,
and the mouths of men were full of them.'
"Having heard the story of many of these 'great deeds,' in some of
which fifty persons met their death, I asked:
"'Do the Armenians ever offer you resistance when you take their
cattle and their women?'
"'Not often. They cannot. They have no arms, and they know that even
if they could kill a few of us it would do them no good, for other
Koords would come and take vengeance; but when we kill them no one's
eyes grow large with rage. The Turks hate them, and we do not. We
only want money and spoil, and some Koords also want their lands, but
the Turks want their lives. A few months ago I attacked the Armenian
village of Kara Kipriu and drove off all the sheep in the place. I did
not leave one behind. The villagers, in despair, did follow us that
time and fire some shots at us, but it was nothing to speak of. We
drove the sheep towards Erzeroum to sell them there. But on the way
we had a fight near the Armenian village of Sheme. The peasants knew
we had lifted the sheep from their own people, and they attacked
us. We were only five Koords and they were many--the whole village
was up against us. Two of my men--rayahs [2] only--were killed. We
killed fifteen Armenians. They succeeded in capturing forty of the
sheep. The remainder we held and sold in Erzeroum.'
"'Did you kill many Armenians generally?'
"'Yes. We did not wish to do so. We only want booty, not lives. Lives
are of no use to us. But we had to drive bullets through people at
times to keep them quiet; that is, if they resisted.'
"'Did you often use your daggers?'
"'No; generally our rifles. We must live. In autumn we manage to get
as much corn as we need for the winter, and money besides. We have
cattle, but we take no care of it. We give it to the Armenians to
look after and feed.'
"'But if they refuse?'
"'Well, we burn their hay, their corn, their houses, and we drive off
their sheep, so they do not refuse. We take back our cattle in spring,
and the Armenians must return the same number that they received.'
"'But if the cattle disease should carry them off?'
"'That is the Armenians' affair. They must return us what we gave them,
or an equal number. And they know it. We cannot bear the loss. Why
should not they? Nearly all our sheep come from them.'
"After having listened to scores of stories of his expeditions,
murders, rapes, &c., &c., I again asked: 'Can you tell me some more
of your daring deeds, Mostigo, for the ears of the Twelve Powers?' to
which I received this characteristic reply:
"'Once the wolf was asked: Tell us something about the sheep you
devoured? and he said: I ate thousands of sheep, which of them are
you talking about? Even so it is with my deeds. If I spoke and you
wrote for two days, much would still remain untold.'
"This brigand is a Koord, and the name of the Koords is legion. Ex
uno disce omnes. And yet the Koords have shown themselves to be the
most humane of all the persecutors of the Armenians. Needing money,
this man robbed; desirous of pleasure he dishonored women and girls;
defending his booty, he killed men and women, and during it all
he felt absolutely certain of impunity, so long as his victims were
Armenians. Is there no law then? one is tempted to ask. There is, and a
very good law for that corner of the globe were it only administered;
for the moment he robbed the Imperial post and dishonored a Turkish
woman, he was found worthy of death.
"Laws, reforms and constitutions therefore, were they drawn up by the
wisest and most experienced legislators and statesmen of the world,
will not be worth the paper they are written on so long as the Turks
are allowed to administer them without control."
* * * "Justice in all its aspects is rigorously denied to the
Armenian. The mere fact that he dares to invoke it as plaintiff
or prosecutor against a Koord or a Turk is always sufficient to
metamorphose him into a defendant or a criminal, generally into
both, whereupon he is invariably thrown into prison. In such cases
the prison is intended to be no more than the halfway-house between
relative comfort and absolute misery, the inmates being destined to
be stripped of all they possess and then turned adrift. But what the
prison really is cannot be made sufficiently clear in words. If the
old English Star Chamber, the Spanish Inquisition, a Chinese opium den,
the ward of a yellow fever hospital, and a nook in the lowest depths of
Dante's Hell be conceived as blended and merged into one, the resulting
picture will somewhat resemble a bad Turkish prison. Filth, stench,
disease, deformity, pain in forms and degrees inconceivable in Europe,
constitute the physical characteristics: the psychological include
the blank despair that is final, fiendish, fierce malignity, hellish
delight in human suffering, stoic self-sacrifice in the cultivation of
loathsome vices, stark madness raging in the moral nature only--the
whole incarnated in grotesque beings whose resemblance to man is a
living blasphemy against the Deity. In these noisome dungeons, cries
of exquisite suffering and shouts of unnatural delight continually
commingle; ribald songs are sung to the accompaniment of heartrending
groans; meanwhile the breath is passing away from bodies which had
long before been soulless, and are unwept save by the clammy walls
whereon the vapor of unimagined agonies and foul disease condenses
into big drops and runs down in driblets to the reeking ground. Truly
it is a horrid nightmare quickened into life."