THE REIGN OF TERROR--HARPOOT AND ZEITOUN.
The Harpoot massacre was another butchery carried out under
orders. Sixty Christians fled to a church in the vain hope that its
walls would furnish them a shelter against those who were crying for
the blood of Armenians. They were permitted for a time to believe
themselves secure, but suddenly the church was surrounded by a great
number of Kurds. The doors were then blown in, and the Christians
thought that they would be massacred within the sacred structure. They
were not. Their captors took them one at a time outside the church,
and there, heedless of the cries for mercy from women and children,
killed them, either by shooting or stabbing them. The first victim
was the Protestant pastor of the church, who, as he was dragged out,
bade the others, if they had to die, to die as Christians. He met
his death like a martyr. Some of the refugees, in a very agony of
terror, offered to abjure their faith and accept Islamism, thinking
thus to save their lives. The offers availed them nothing, for their
insatiable enemies, after accepting them, dragged the converts out and
killed them one by one. The Armenian Church was turned into a mosque,
and the Protestant Church into a stable.
An eyewitness who saw the Christian quarter in flames and the houses
of the American mission burning, said that he came on to Malatia (the
ancient Melitene), and found not a house in the Christian quarter
standing. In a khan there were about twenty wounded men, the sole
survivors of a caravan of two hundred who had been traveling to Harpoot
from Northern Syria and whose members had nearly all been slain by the
Kurdish bands. There were one hundred and fifty bodies lying in the
road. At Marash, the same witness, days after the massacre, counted
eighty-seven dead Armenians in one spot, and there were hundreds of
bodies strewn around in the near neighborhood. In the villages on
the plains near Harpoot, each containing from fifty to one thousand
houses, the evidences of slaughter were sickeningly abundant. The
Kurdish butchers had slain fully half the population. The door of a
house would be burst open, a volley fired upon the shuddering inmates,
while those who rushed out were caught and killed in the fields. Then
the houses were plundered, fired and left blazing. This was the fate
of thousands of Christian homes.
Several thousand Armenian Christians fell in the city of Harpoot under
Kurdish and Turkish swords. In the Province of Harpoot were hundreds
of small towns and villages, few of which escaped the terrible fate
of slaughter and desolation that befell over two thousand other towns
and villages throughout the country.
Harpoot is one of the principal stations of the Eastern Turkey Mission,
and is the seat of Euphrates College, a group of buildings, eight
of which were badly wrecked during the riots. This institution had
about five hundred and sixty-four pupils in all its departments, and
was exerting a powerful influence for good throughout Eastern Turkey.
It was estimated that the loss would not be less than $88,000. At
Marash, the destruction of mission buildings was more complete. The
Central Turkey Girls' College and the Theological Seminary were both
wrecked. There were in the former institution (which was organized
in 1884), about thirty-five students. Both buildings were located a
little distance outside of Marash.
In February, 1896, the United States Minister, Mr. Terrell, demanded an
indemnity of $100,000 for the burning and pillaging of the American
missions at Marash and Harpoot. He also asked for the immediate
granting of firmans for the rebuilding of them.
Rev. Grigos Hachadoovian, the pastor of the Second Congregational
Church in Harpoot, when the Turkish soldiers commenced shooting all
over the city, took his wife and children and went to church, where
about sixty of his congregation joined him. Naturally good and earnest
Christians as they were, they lifted their voices up to heaven for
help. While in prayer the Turks rushed in and demanded of the minister
to become a Mohammedan then and there, with his congregation. He
refused promptly. The Turks removed the pulpit, made a butchering
platform, cut off the head of the minister and actually cut him to
pieces before his congregation. Mind you on the platform from which
he had preached Christ for twenty years. This horrible spectacle had
no effect upon the devout Christian Armenians, as they all refused
to denounce Christ and pray to Mohammed, and all were killed in the
church to the last man, woman and child. What do you think of that
picture, Christian people of America? That is the Mohammedanism some
people would like to have introduced into our county.
Letters received from persons engaged in relief work among the
Armenians, gave the following carefully prepared statistics concerning
the recent massacres by the Turks under the tolerance of Christian
powers in the year of our Lord, 1895-6. These statistics were given
in detail for the several villages in Harpoot province.
"Killed, thirty thousand six hundred and one; burned to death,
one thousand four hundred and thirty-six; preachers and priests
killed, fifty-one; died from starvation, two thousand four hundred
and sixty-one; died unprotected in the fields, four thousand three
hundred and forty; died from fear, six hundred and sixty; wounded,
eight thousand; houses burned, twenty-eight thousand five hundred and
forty-two; forcible conversions, fifteen thousand and sixty-six; women
and girls abducted, five thousand five hundred and forty-six: forcible
marriages, one thousand five hundred and fifty-one; churches burned,
two hundred and twenty-seven; destitute and starving, ninety-four
thousand seven hundred and fifty." The account does not add the
number of English and American cannon with the cobwebs left over
their mouths. The Turks said that they killed too few the last time,
and would kill more in the next massacre.
When the Kurds were expelled from Diarbekir and the gates closed
against them, they turned their attention to the villages. These,
one after another, were taken, plundered, and in many instances,
burned--massacre being generally in proportion to the degree of
resistance made by the villagers. A district about ninety miles long
and fifty broad, east of Diarbekir, and up to the boarders of Syert,
in the vilayet of Bitlis, was swept by this hurricane of destruction,
wherever Christian villages nestled among the billows of this rolling
country. The first intimation that the wave of wanton wreckage was
moving southward was given in the attack upon Tel-Ermin. This Armenian
town of two hundred houses and sixty shops, five hours west of Mardin,
was taken, plundered and burned. The next day Gorli, a Syrian village
south of Mardin, and only two hours away, shared the same fate. About
the same time the village of Abrahamiyeh fell into the hands of the
Kurds and only Monsoruyeh, twenty miles north of the city remained
intact. This they tried to capture, but were driven back. Serious
attempts were made by the Kurds to enter the city in the hope that
they would be aided from within. In this they were disappointed and
obliged to draw off with severe loss. The Kurds persistently asserted
that a firman for the slaughter of Christians had been given, but
that the Christians of Mardin had bribed the government to conceal
it and defend them. When the Kurds realized that the government and
city garrison were a unit for the common defence, they drew off and
the tide of attack swept further east taking Nisibin, and some twenty
Christian villages in its way. Thousands of refugees collected near
Mardin. In the village of Kulleth, three hundred refugees from the
Diarbekir plain were begging food and clothing. The entire Christian
population remaining in Syert was stripped of everything.
Fully three thousand Armenians were massacred at Arabkir, and the
widows and orphans of those killed were left in terrible distress
from cold and hunger.
The Armenians of Sivas and Cæsarea were in daily fear of massacre,
and soon their fears were terribly realized, for the Kurds and Turks
thoroughly performed their inhuman work of butchery and plunder,
the former taking the booty as their pay, according to the permission
granted from Constantinople.
In the district between Gemerek and Cæsarea twenty-seven Armenian
villages were pillaged and burned. The thirteen villages this side
of Gemerek, and five or six hours distant, such as Burhan, Dendil,
Tekmen, etc., were also pillaged and ruined. Burhan was ravaged five
times and Tekmen seven times. The raiders carried plunder from Dendil
for three days continuously; they carried away even the old mats and
wooden spoons from the houses. No clothing, no bedding, no utensils,
and no food was left to the survivors in those villages. The people
lived on herbs gathered from the hillsides, and cooked in the petroleum
tins which the raiders had brought along full of petroleum to fire
the houses with. In the district of Tounnouz the Armenian villages,
especially Hantavos, Kazmakara and Patsin were pillaged and destroyed,
the male inhabitants were butchered, and the young women were carried
off. Some of the villages were so utterly destroyed that now there
is no sign that such places existed.
At Gemerek the Turks joined the Armenians and drove away the raiders,
who however carried away one thousand sheep and cattle and about one
hundred horse loads of wheat and flour from the neighboring mills.
The reader can understand the ferocity of the attack upon the
Christians in this city from the fact that the wife of a captain
in the Turkish army watched the horrors from her window. She was so
affected by what she saw that she has since that event become insane.
Another terrible massacre occurred in Palu, a district not far from
Harpoot. An Armenian lady of Palu, writing to her son in New York,
thus told the story:
"You are my comfort in God. My only joy is that you are safe; but
we are in great distress. My hands are trembling; I cannot write
from hunger. The Turks have burned forty-one villages, destroying
everything. They take the beautiful women to their homes and use
them badly. They kill the old men, and the old women and children
are entirely naked. Their bed is now the snow. They go begging at
Turkish doors for a piece of bread, and instead of bread they get
mulberry and husks. After six days of plundering and burning those
villages, our enemies returned to the city. Ten thousand Kurds with the
Mohammedans of the city, attacked the houses and killed one thousand
seven hundred and thirty-two grown-up men and many children and women
who would not accept Mohammedism.
"They took all the articles which were useful and broke everything
they had no use for. They tore up every place in the hope of finding
something valuable."
A letter received from an Armenian resident on the seacoast of
Cilicia, said:
"The government has taken away all the arms from the Armenians of Chok
Marsovan, who were armed to protect themselves against fifteen thousand
Bashi-Bazouks, who were marching on them. Since then the Turks have
reduced to ashes the villages of Engerli and Ojakli, which contained
respectively three hundred and two hundred and fifty houses. They have
plundered seventy-five houses in the Armenian village of Najarli. They
set on fire the houses in the presence of the regular soldiers. Now
all the villagers are reduced to the utmost distress. More than one
hundred farms have been plundered, and many people butchered in the
houses and in the gardens."
Every account from survivors of the massacres who succeeded in
reaching places of safety, disclosed some new and revolting trait of
Moslem ferocity and hatred against Christianity. A veritable crusade
of Mohammedan fanaticism ruled the hour. Whole villages and towns,
and whole Christian quarters in cities were driven like helpless
sheep into the Moslem fold.
Aintab, a city of forty-five thousand inhabitants had its baptism of
blood. The massacre and pillage began in the markets and in those
parts of the city where Christian houses offered easy points of
attack, crowds rushed in every direction while pistol and gun shots
with cries of fear, anger and defiance made an exhibition of the most
fearful tumult and confusion.
After the Kurds and Turkish soldiers of Harpoot had plundered and
burned nearly all of the Christian houses in the missionary quarter of
the city, including eight of the mission buildings which were then in
flames, when massacre was rife and the air was rent with the cry of
the wounded and dying, nearly five hundred Christian refugees with
the missionaries, driven from place to place by fire and bullet,
found themselves in the large, new stone building of Euphrates
College. The Turkish officers, seeing that in order to reach the
refugees they must withdraw the Americans whom they feared to kill,
attempted to induce the missionaries to come out from the building
"that they might be the better protected." Dr. Barnum (a missionary
for thirty-nine years) replied, "You can protect us here better than
anywhere else; we shall remain and if you burn the building we will
die with these Christians." They were all spared. Certainly the age
of heroism is not past.
The city of Oorfa is one of the most ancient in the world. It is the
Edessa of the time of Christ where Abgar reigned as King (see Chapter
I.)--the Ur of Chaldea, where the patriarch Abraham was born.
It was one of the great heathen cities to which the disciples
went immediately after Pentecost and where they were most gladly
received. In this city, on October 27th, 1895, began an awful
slaughter, which continued for two days. When the massacre was
yet proceeding, a Muezzin ascended to the steeple of the Armenian
church and began to call the faithful to prayer. During the two days'
disturbance three thousand Christians were slaughtered by a single
Hamidieh regiment and a force of Bedouins and all their property was
either looted or destroyed. Among other horrors, one hundred and fifty
wounded Armenians were thrown down a well and petroleum having been
poured over them the whole mass of human beings were set on fire and
perished in most awful agony.
For two months, the Christian population of Oorfa experienced all
the vicissitudes of a veritable "Reign of Terror." During all this
time the Christians ventured beyond the precincts of their own homes
only at the risk of their lives. Nor were they secure even in their
homes. For six or seven weeks the soldiers of the government went from
house to house almost daily, and after forcing an entrance, offered the
inmates the option of becoming Moslems, or being killed on the spot.
When the general onslaught began on December 29th, the Christians
sought the refuge of their churches and every other possible place
which they hoped might shelter them from the fury of their fiendish
assailants. Many took refuge in wells, some under manure heaps, while
others had their friends cover them under piles of charcoal. For some
of these their shelters proved to be a living grave. Two hundred and
forty-six persons took refuge in the home of the American Missionary,
Miss Shattuck.
During the six weeks immediately following the first massacre, this
devoted missionary heroine was obliged to keep all but constant vigil,
and was unable through all this time to undress even once, and retire
to her room for a night's rest. Any rest or sleep obtained was on a
lounge and for but short intervals, while others kept watch.
This church was built entirely of stone and may be said to be
absolutely fire-proof. It was to this edifice from fifteen hundred
to two thousand of the people fled when the general massacre began,
and the story of what took place within its walls on that awful day
will never be fully known. These nearly two thousand victims were
at the mercy of the merciless soldiers and the worse than merciless
mob. The soldiers were first to enter, but they soon allowed the
promiscuous rabble to follow and share with them in the carnival of
debauchery and blood. The fiendish fanaticism of these Moslems had
its climax in setting fire to the victims of their wild fury. There
being no wood finishing on the inside of the church, and little or no
inflammable furnishings, one can only conjecture how they succeeded in
transforming this multitude of human sacrifices into the great mass
of bones and ashes to which they were all reduced by the following
morning. For two or three days afterward a number of hammals (Turkish
porters), were engaged in carrying the bones and charred remains of
these victims from the church to a place close in the rear of the
American mission premises, where they were dumped over a portion of
the old wall of the city.
Apart altogether from those killed and burned in the church,
the bodies of over one thousand five hundred by actual count were
dragged, usually by the legs, and in considerable numbers at a time,
by animals, to a large trench dug for the purpose on the outskirts
of the city. There they lie in one, irregular mass, awaiting the day
when all wrongs shall be righted.
As many as three hundred bodies were taken from one of the large
cistern wells some days after the massacre, while another furnished
over fifty and yet another about thirty. Scarcely a single Gregorian
or Protestant home escaped the general pillage and bloodshed and the
total number of victims in this last massacre in Oorfa must now be
put down at four thousand.
Read this farewell which seemed to come out from the tombs of the dead:
Some days before the massacre at Oorfa the Armenians were warned that
it was impending, but the officials prevented them from leaving the
town. During the suspense the Gregorian clergy compiled a letter which
they sent secretly to Aintab, whence it was forwarded to Europe. The
Arch Priest Stephen and four other priests were subsequently slain
before the altar while celebrating the Eucharist. The letter contained
messages to the Sultan and to the Gregorian's Moslem fellow-countrymen,
and reproached their European brethren for standing by, watching the
bloody work. It also contained the following:
"To the Christians of the United States of America we say farewell. We
have been strenuously opposed to your mission work among us, but these
bloody days have shown that some of our Protestant brethren have been
staunch defenders of our honor and our faith. You, at least, know
that our crime, in the eyes of the Turk, has been that we adopted
the civilization you commended to us. Behold now the missions and
schools which you planted among us, at the cost of many millions of
dollars and hundreds of precious lives! They are in ruins, and the
Turk is planning to rid himself of the missionaries and teachers by
leaving them nobody among whom to labor."
Zeitoun has the glory of being the only town that successfully resisted
the Turkish troops and secured for itself an honorable capitulation.
Peace having been secured through the Consuls of the various Powers,
it was believed that the terms of the amnesty granted by the Porte
would honestly be fulfilled.
It would not have been a very easy thing to hush up another massacre,
and if one had occurred it might at last have aroused the Powers that
(ought to) be to some decisive action.
The town of Zeitoun lies several hours' journey over the mountains,
to the north of Marash. Secluded in a deep valley, it is well protected
on all four of the roads leading into it and could be defended against
very great odds if there were a small force at each narrow pass.
The Zeitounlis had early determined to make a stand for their lives
and had succeeded in capturing the barracks, which are situated just
at the edge of the town, after an attack of sixty hours and taking
prisoners nearly six hundred Turkish soldiers, and then they proceeded
to garrison and provision the town for a siege.
In one of the battles which took place at Hot Springs, some five miles
east of the city, the Zeitounlis made a stand at a stone bridge which
there spans a rushing torrent. But after holding it bravely for awhile
they slowly retreated up a steep hill until almost the entire Turkish
army had crossed the bridge, when suddenly the bridge was blown up and
the Zeitounlis turning, hurled down from the hills above great rocks
and poured upon them a most destructive fire. Hemmed in as they were
the loss was very great. The Turkish account was that fire burst out
from the air or from the ground and destroyed the army. Seven distinct
attacks were made in which the losses as sent through official sources
to the Porte were placed at ten thousand men.
On February 9th, 1896, the Porte communicated to the embassies of the
Powers its reply to the proposals of the Zeitounlis for conditions of
surrender. The Porte promised a satisfactory settlement, and on the
13th the terms were announced. Terrible distress and illness prevailed
in the city as the consequence of the siege. Thousands died of cold
and starvation.
How the Turk began on the first day of 1896 to keep the oft repeated
promises made to the Powers of Europe, was best told in the following
account of the massacre at Birijik (province of Aleppo).
"The assault on the Christian houses commenced at about nine o'clock
in the morning, and continued until nightfall. The soldiers were aided
by the Moslems of the city in the terrible work. The object at first
seemed to be mainly plunder, but, after the plunder had been secured,
the soldiers seemed to make a systematic search for men, to kill those
who were unwilling to accept Mohammedanism. The cruelty used to force
men to become Moslems was terrible. In one case the soldiers found
some twenty people, men, women and children, who had taken refuge
in a sort of cave. They dragged them out, and killed all the men and
boys because they would not become Moslems.
"After cutting down one old man who had thus refused they put live
coals upon his body, and, as he was writhing in torture, they held
a Bible before him and asked him mockingly to read them some of the
promises in which he had trusted. Others were thrown into the river
while still alive, after having been cruelly wounded. The wounded
and children of this party were loaded up like goods upon the backs
of porters and carried off to the houses of Mussulmans.
"Christian girls were eagerly sought after, and much quarreling
occurred over the question of their division among their captors. Every
Christian house, except two claimed to be owned by Turks, was
plundered. Ninety-six men were killed, or about half of the adult
Christian men. The others became Mussulmans to save their lives, so
that there was not a single Christian left in Birijik. The Armenian
Church was made into a mosque and the Protestant Church into a
Medresse Seminary."
Massacres went on actively in Armenia for over sixteen months, dating
from the terrible slaughter at Sassoun in August and September,
1894. A low estimate of those either killed, or in a state of actual
starvation, was half the agricultural population of seven vilayets--two
hundred and seventy-five thousand, according to Turkish statistics,
two-thirds of the starving being women and children. The government
completed its work in the vilayets by reducing the population and the
remaining property under the forms of martial law, and by forcing the
Armenians to declare themselves Mohammedans. Many died for their faith,
but the greater number still held out, dying by inches.
Turkish estimates, which, as can be readily understood, did not
magnify the massacres, gave the following as the net result of the
sanguinary work up to the middle of December:
Armenian population in larger towns 177,700
Armenian population in villages 538,500
Number killed in towns (estimated) 20,000
Number of Armenian villages (about) 3,300
Villages destroyed 2,500
Number killed in villages, no data, but probably, 60,000
Number reduced to starvation in towns 75,000
Number reduced to starvation in villages 366,600