OUR SMALLEST ALLY
Nine years have elapsed since the last chapter was written, and the hope
with which it ends has been most tragically deferred. Nearer Asia has
been swept by another of those great cataclysms with which its past
history has rendered it but too familiar--in this case a back-wash only
of a yet more worldwide catastrophe, but scarcely less devastating than
the ravages of Genghis or Timour. Of those mentioned by name in our
earlier chapters a large proportion have perished. Nay, whole
communities and nations have been almost completely erased. And some
brief epilogue is needed to tell of the fate that has befallen them, and
to arouse some new interest among Englishmen in the future of those
battered remnants whom their Treaties still pledge them to protect.
The most prominent place in our previous narrative has been given to the
Assyrian Christians, and especially to the Ashiret mountaineers of
Hakkiari, who formed the most virile and independent section of that
tiny nation and Church. And it is but fitting that we should again give
them precedence in the "Footnote to the History of the Great War" which
we are now contributing; since, in this obscure corner of the stage upon
which that portentous drama was enacted, they played perhaps the most
prominent and assuredly the worthiest part.
The first news of the outbreak of war was brought to Mar Shimun at
Qudshanis. He had just returned thither from Van, where he had been
discussing Governmental business with the Vali. The discussions had been
most amicable; and he had brought back with him a whole crop of promises
for the redress of grievances--promises which he had accepted with
becoming gratitude, but at the recognised rate of discount, having had
ripe experience of the value at which they were apt to be redeemed. And
he was far from feeling reassured by the startling tidings that now
reached him; for all knew the sort of justice that the Ottoman reserved
for his helots whenever the eyes of Europe might chance to be diverted
elsewhere.
He soon saw an earnest of his misgivings in the sacking of isolated
Armenian villages, and in renewed outbreaks of the feuds which were
perpetually simmering on the Persian border between the Begzade Kurds
and the Assyrians of Mergawar and Tergawar. A general massacre of all
Christians began to be openly talked about; and when (in November) the
expected happened, and Turkey entered the lists as a combatant, that
event was signalised by the pillaging of all the Christian villages near
Bashkala with the practically open approval of the local Ottoman
authority.
The first open fighting, however, occurred in neutral Persia--a country
which should (theoretically) have been out of bounds to both sides. But
Urmi, though nominally Persian, had for years been practically
administered by the resident Russian "consul," and the Turks were not
altogether unjustified in electing to regard it as enemy territory. A
mixed force of Turks and Kurds swept down from the mountains upon Urmi,
massacring the wretched Armenians, and driving before them the
struggling Assyrians from the villages of Mergawar and Tergawar. They
felt so confident of victory that, when within a mile or two of the
city, they flung away the reserves of bread that they had brought with
them, relying on the promise of their leaders that next day they would
be sacking the bazaars. And, verily, it looked as if they would be; for
Urmi is only defended by a ruinous mud wall, and its sole effective
garrison (apart from the Assyrian auxiliaries) was the Russian consular
guard. But it was now discovered that the consul had also in reserve a
considerable stock of arms and ammunition, and with these the clansmen
were rearmed. An opportune Russian reinforcement arrived in the nick of
time from Tabriz, and the great assault on the morrow was decisively and
bloodily repulsed. The invaders recoiled to the mountains, where their
ill-disciplined Kurdish levies dispersed; and soon another defeat of a
second Kurdish force near Suj Bulak rendered the position at Urmi, at
all events, temporarily secure.
But the Russian commanders were uneasy. Enver Pasha's invasion of
Transcaucasia was by now beginning to make headway, and the Russians
were recalling their detachments in Azerbaijan to meet the threat to
Batum. They told the American missionaries that the utmost they could
promise them was not to withdraw without full notice; and even this
guarded promise proved illusory, for the very next morning brought them
imperative orders from headquarters directing immediate evacuation. The
whole Russian force marched off instantly--and in their train some
10,000 of the Christian population of Urmi, taking with them such scanty
provision as they were able at the moment to collect. They saved their
bare lives by their flight, and eventually the greater part of them
found a miserable asylum at Tiflis; but the hardships of their journey,
and of their prolonged exile, exacted a terrible toll.
The fate of those who remained proved that the fugitives' forebodings
had been well grounded. Urmi was abandoned once more to the wretched
misrule of the Persians; and the man who obtained chief authority was
that same Mejid es Sultaneh of whom we have already spoken on page 215.
In those days he had been generally regarded as one of the most
enlightened and free-thinking of the Persian nobility. His reforming
tendencies had earned him disgrace and exile; and it had been to the
generosity of sympathetic English merchants that he had owed the
preservation of his forfeited estates. But apparently the only lesson
that he had been capable of learning from adversity was the wisdom of
truckling to iniquity, and he now reappeared as a pan-Islamic fanatic of
the most virulent and reactionary type.
The Persian magnates were as much averse to Turkish domination as to
Russian, and might have been expected to evince some gratitude to their
Christian neighbours for the prominent share they had taken in repelling
the recent assault. But apparently they argued in their own minds that
the very presence of the Christians had in some sort invited the
invasion; that anyway they had helped the hated Russians, and that a
general persecution of them would be the best way of conciliating the
Turks.
So some hundreds of these poor wretches were massacred during the
winter--driven out in batches of 50 or 60 to one or other of the
neighbouring villages, and there mercilessly put to death. Among them
were a batch of 70 from the Christian villages of Gawar, who had been
impressed to act as porters by the Turks in the recent invasion and had
given their captors the slip when the invading army took to flight.
These were marched back towards Gawar and handed over to the
Kurds--possibly the very men who had impressed them--by whom they were
all knifed or clubbed to death.
In these massacres perished Mar Dinkha,[154] the Bishop of Mergawar; and
we, who have laughed at his oddities must not omit to pay our tribute to
the heroism of the old man's martyrdom. Utterly crippled by his
injuries, he spent his last hours in prison crawling to and fro to
comfort his fellow-sufferers--his last moments in bestowing absolution
upon them as each in turn preceded him to death.
It should be noted by our phil-Islamites that, in nearly every instance,
all these victims were offered their lives on the sole condition of
apostasy. With Islam (when free to express itself) it is still "the
Koran or the sword."
Mercifully the return of spring brought a respite from this reign of
terror. Enver's invasion of Transcaucasia had been utterly crushed at
Sara Hamish. The Russian outposts spread south again, and Urmi was
reoccupied once more.
With the Assyrian tribesmen in the mountains the crisis had not
developed so rapidly. The Turks themselves were anxious to defer it.
Indeed, there is no valid reason to doubt that they would have liked to
evade it altogether. This knot of hardy mountaineers ensconced in their
rocky fastnesses were far more difficult to eradicate than ten times
their number of Armenians--poor, spiritless hucksters and husbandmen
dispersed in open villages and towns. There was little spoil to be won
from them--many more hard knocks than ha'pence--and the force that would
be needed to subdue them was wanted rather urgently elsewhere. Moreover,
if they could only be cajoled into complacency they might prove quite a
useful asset later as independent witnesses to character. The Armenian
massacres were now really beginning, and the Turks were inflexibly
resolved to persist in them to the uttermost. There could come no
protests from Europe, but perhaps from America there might--and the
presence of American missionaries in the country rendered it impossible
for the facts to be altogether hid. It would be but prudent accordingly
to prepare a line of apology, and to invest with some faint plausibility
the plea that this monstrous holocaust had been "exaggerated," and that
such "repressive measures" as had been adopted were really no more than
were necessary to quell an incipient revolt. Such a plea might gain
valuable corroboration from the fact that another Christian _millet_,
living in the same provinces and under the same conditions as the
Armenians, had nevertheless continued loyal to their suzerains, and had
seen in the Turks' proceedings no cause of apprehension for themselves.
On military grounds also the mountaineers were worth conciliating; for,
if Turkish Armenia were invaded, this little garrison on their flank
might sensibly hamper the defenders.
Thus, quite high bids were made for what the Turks called Assyrian
loyalty, and what the Assyrians (clinging fondly to their traditional
but shadowy independence) preferred to style alliance. Their Patriarch,
their bishops, and their chiefs were all to be salaried. They were to be
armed. They were to be allowed absolute freedom for education. And many
of the Assyrian leaders felt certainly much tempted to clinch the
bargain, and to adopt what (on the face of things) seemed manifestly the
safer course.
But the very magnitude of these Greek gifts aroused the distrust of the
majority. They knew well that Turkish promises were apt to prove so
much "hot air." The arms and salaries were things that could never be
expected to materialise. They doubted even the immunity which all these
lavish promises implied. _Jehad_ had been proclaimed, and they were
Christians in a Moslem country. Could the Turks guarantee them from the
attacks of their turbulent Kurdish neighbours--attacks from which they
had never been wholly exempt even in their most tranquil periods, and to
which the proclamation of _Jehad_ would now give sanction and cohesion?
Could they even rest assured that the Turks themselves would not attack
them as soon as their hands were freed from the embarrassments which now
beset them? They saw the fate that had overtaken their co-religionists,
the Armenians and Jacobites; the fate that had befallen their own
fellow-tribesmen in the outlying districts to the East. Every night
brought their Patriarch news (for now none dared travel by day) of some
fresh massacre perpetrated in some of their isolated villages. One night
came five successive messengers from five different villages; and all
closed their tidings with the same refrain, "I only am escaped to tell."
Would it not be better to trust to their own right arms? To the chance
of help from Russia, to the fainter chance of help from England? These
nations had always befriended them, and with them their real sympathies
lay.
Yet the peril was great and obvious. They were in the very jaws of the
wolf, and who could blame them if they elected to play for safety? They
could rest assured at all events that England and Russia would not. They
might argue, with their Yezidi neighbours (and with a good many other
more enlightened folk in less remote districts than Sheikh Adi) that it
was safer to offend a good God, who might forgive, than a malignant
Devil who assuredly would not.
Meanwhile the war was still distant, and no final choice was forced on
them. Through the winter the nation wavered. But it was significant that
the Patriarch quitted Qudshanis (which lay on the outskirts of his
territory, and close to the Turkish garrison at Julamerk), and withdrew
across the Zab into the rugged mountain fastnesses of Diz. This seemed
to portend rejection of the Turkish overtures, yet in truth under what
other conditions could he continue to negotiate with a Government which
had just inaugurated the Armenian massacres by treacherously kidnapping
and assassinating their chiefs?
Then, in the spring of 1915, the war took a turn in Russia's favour. The
Turkish invasion of Transcaucasia was defeated, and the Russian invasion
of Turkish Armenia began. A Russian army reached Van and relieved the
Armenians beleaguered there; and a detachment thrust forward to Bashkala
sent a formal invitation to the Assyrians to throw in their lot with the
Allies. The invitation was boldly accepted; and the point that seems
definitely to have turned the scale in favour of acceptance was the
religious character that had been given to the war by the Turkish
proclamation of _Jehad_. The Assyrians felt that they were now called to
play their part on the side of Humanity and Christendom; and as soon as
the call came definitely they braved all the risks that it involved.
But no doubt it is too much to assert that they were guided entirely by
this higher motive. They were (as our previous chapters have indicated)
a nation of fighters with a healthy, carnal appetite for what is
vulgarly called "a jolly row." And they were probably swayed in the same
direction by the fact that all their neighbours with whom they had
long-standing and (in the main) very just causes of quarrel, were ranged
on the contrary side. The war-song of _Shamasha_ Ephraim was soon in all
men's mouths in the mountain villages, and some of its spirited lines
deserve quoting as evincing the ardour with which they entered the war:
Brothers, up and arm you; 'tis the Turk assails you;
Lo, the day is dawning when we march to meet the foe!
Quit your flocks and cornfields, grip your trusty rifles,
Forth we go to battle in the name of Mar Shimun.
Stand by one another, clansmen of the nation,
Tkhuma by Tyari, and let Baz by Jilu stand.
Like a band of brothers, hearts and hands united,
Forth we go to battle in the name of Mar Shimun.
David is our leader, valiant in the combat,
He is captain over us to lead us forth to war.
Danger shall not daunt us, fear shall flee before us,
Forth we go to battle in the name of Mar Shimun.
Young men of the nation, tribes renowned in story,
Mighty men in battle were our fathers' kings of old.
Raging through the valleys, storming o'er the mountains,
Forth we go to battle in the name of Mar Shimun.
Nineveh the holy[155] beckons back her children;
Know ye not her ancient walls shall be the victor's crown?
There alone, Assyrians, shall our race be stablished,
Forth we go to battle in the name of Mar Shimun.
Their valour was soon to be tested for scarcely had they committed
themselves, when the Russians withdrew again northward and left them to
fight it out alone. A formidable accumulation of enemies was promptly
mustered against them, and within five weeks of their decision the
Assyrians were battling for their lives. Mira Reshid[156] the tyrant of
Berwar, led the confederated Kurds from the westward against Lizan and
Lower Tyari and with him marched a strong contingent of regular troops
from Mosul with batteries of mountain guns. Chumba and Upper Tyari were
attacked by the Artosh Kurds and the regular troops from Julamerk. The
Agha of Chal[157] brought his forces against Salabekan and Tkhuma; and
Sutu Agha of Oramar assailed Jilu and Baz. The Christians were
outnumbered on all sides and were much worse equipped than their
enemies; for except for a small supply of rifles and ammunition which
they had obtained from the Russians their arms were all sadly obsolete.
And yet the general result of this great combined attack was failure.
Qudshanis was pillaged and burned and the Valley of Lizan was occupied.
So also were the villages in the Sapna and Berwar valleys; but these
were all open and isolated, and had never been regarded as tenable. The
attacks on Jilu, Chumba and Salabekan were all three heavily repulsed.
Thus, after a week's hard fighting the Assyrians had lost only the
outskirts of their territory on the right (or western) bank of the Zab,
and had kept all their key fastnesses (on the eastern side of it)
intact. It was only the first round certainly, but the Turks had been
foiled for a season; and it was hoped that the Russian operations in
Armenia might eventually bring them relief.
[Illustration: THE MOUNTAINS OF DIZ AND TAL, FROM THE PASS ABOVE
QUDSHANIS
Looking across the Zab Gorge, which at this point is about 3,000 feet
deep]
Then followed a deed as brutal and dastardly as it was
characteristically Turkish. Hormizd, Mar Shimun's eldest brother, a
young man of three-and-twenty, had been at Constantinople for his
education--at the Turkish Government's own invitation--for a period of
over two years. As soon as Turkey entered the war, he had been arrested
and placed in confinement, and obviously could have had no personal
responsibility for any of the events that had occurred subsequently. He
was now sent under guard to Mosul to be used for the foulest of
blackmail.
The Vali of that city was no longer worthy old Tahir.[158] With the good
luck that had generally attended him, and which he had generally
merited, he had been gathered to his fathers little more than a
twelve-month before. His successor, Haidar Beg, was a ruffian--a fit
tool for higher placed ruffians--and this man now sent Mar Shimun the
message: "Your brother is in my hands, and unless you surrender he
dies."
The brothers were almost of an age. They had been bound together from
infancy by ties of the closest affection. It is vain to hope that any
words of ours can succeed in conveying to our readers the poignancy of
the trial to which Mar Shimun now found himself subjected. But his
choice was the choice of Guzman the Good. "My people are in my charge,
and they are many," he answered; "how can I betray them for the sake of
one, though that one be my brother?" And, on the receipt of this answer,
Hormizd was put to death.
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO AMADIA.
No. 16]
Mar Shimun had made two attempts to obtain further succour from the
Russians during the five or six weeks' respite which succeeded the first
attacks. And on the second occasion some reinforcement appears to have
been sent, but it is not quite known at what period, while it is
certain that it never arrived. For some years previous to the war common
rumour had persistently credited the Russians with having secretly
sapped the allegiance of many prominent chiefs among the Kurds; and as
soon as war broke out it had been confidently expected that these men
would turn against Turkey. How far this rumour was justified is perhaps
known positively to no one; but it is certain that, while hopes of
plunder and butchery lasted, the Kurds all sided with the Turks. Perhaps
the Russians may have had some cause to think that the more prosperous
aspect of their affairs in Asia Minor might now be prompting these
double traitors to think better of their first bargain. Anyway a party
of some 400 Cossacks was about this time pushed up from Urmi into
Oramar. Sutu Agha received them most graciously, and sent two of his own
sons with them to guide them on their further journey. But secretly he
betrayed them into an ambush which he had prepared with the assistance
of the Kurds of Shemsdinan, and in the deep Balanda gorge they were
exterminated to the last man.
The second assault on the Assyrians was delivered in the middle of
August; and this time the assailants had the formidable assistance of
the Kurds of Barzan, who lay to the south of Tkhuma, and formed the
connecting link between the co-ordinated assaults from Oramar on the
east and from Berwar on the west. Our friend Sheikh Abdul Selim[159] was
unhappily no longer their leader. The Government had always looked with
a jealous eye on the tolerant "Sheikh of the Christians," and a few
months earlier he had been enticed down to Mosul by the Vali Haidar Beg,
and there secretly put to death.
It is doubtful perhaps whether, had he still been in power, he would
have been able to resist the pressure put upon him by the _Hukumet_ (and
by his own tribesmen) to play his part in an official _Jehad_. After all
he was a Moslem, and a Turkish vassal, and a consistent contemner of
Russians, so wherefore should he stand aside? But he might have proved a
chivalrous, albeit a formidable, enemy, and his influence might have
alleviated some of the vindictiveness of the campaign.
For this second assault was successful. It was from the southern side
that the Christian valleys were most assailable; and Tkhuma, Baz, Jilu,
and Tyari were ravaged from end to end. The churches and houses were
burned, the fields wasted, the trees cut down, the irrigation channels
demolished; and the valleys were thus rendered practically uninhabitable
for years.
It was in this devastation that the famous church of Mar Zeia in
Jilu[160] was plundered for the first time in its history--maugre that
notable talisman that had always preserved it previously, the Charter of
Protection granted to it (as believed) by Mohammed himself. But its fate
was not quite unavenged. A fierce young Kurdish chieftain, the eldest
son of Simco Agha of the Shekak Kurds, was the leader of the spoilers;
and he (like Fanatic Brooke) had boasted that he would not rest till he
had seen the ruin of every Christian church in the land. As he now stood
at the door, watching the destruction of that wonderful and weird
collection of age-old votive offerings, a bullet fired at extreme range
took him in the head, and he dropped dead on the desecrated threshold.
But though beaten out of their valleys, the Assyrians were not yet done
with. They now took refuge on their _Yailas_--the upland pastures on the
laps of the mountains, 10,000 feet above sea-level--whither they had
always been accustomed to drive their flocks and herds in summer, and
where a considerable part of the nation used generally to remain
encamped as long as the cattle were there. It was summer still, and the
cattle had been driven there as usual: the _Yailas_ were, therefore,
already well provisioned, and there is always water from the melting
snows.
These strongholds are only approachable by a few precipitous pathways,
and the Kurdish attempts to penetrate to them were everywhere easily
repulsed. Raiding parties of Assyrians were even able to sally down from
them into the valleys, and carry back small supplies of corn from the
hidden granaries in the villages. Lack of salt was the chief privation
that the bulk of the people suffered during their sojourn here, but salt
is wellnigh a necessity to an Oriental; and their Patriarch, who (as a
_Rabban_) was prohibited by his vows from eating flesh meat, was obliged
to live almost entirely upon milk and parched corn.
But if the _Yailas_ were impregnable, there was yet one fatal defect in
them. It is absolutely and utterly impossible for any creature to live
there in winter. Autumn was already beginning; and, at these lofty
altitudes, the first snows may fall as early as October. The Assyrians
were virtually "treed" (to use an expressive Americanism); and their
enemies, as fully conscious of the defect in their position as they
were, were content to form a leaguer round them, and wait till they
should come down to be killed.
In this almost hopeless position, Mar Shimun determined on making one
final appeal to the Russians. Accompanied by one of his principal chiefs
(the _Malik_ Khoshaba of Lizan) and by two other companions, he quitted
the _Yaila_ of Shina[161] at the head of the Tal and Tkhuma gorges to
make his way across the mountains and down to Urmi Plain. The whole
intervening country was thickly beset with enemies; but, travelling
mostly by night and with experienced guides, the little party succeeded
in accomplishing their daring journey, and reached the Russian outposts
near Salmas.
But only to meet disappointment. The local Russian commanders professed
themselves utterly unable to render the least assistance, and could only
offer the Patriarch the abjectly despairing counsel that, now he himself
had escaped, he had better remain in safety, and not sacrifice his life
uselessly by a vain attempt to return. Mar Shimun indignantly refused to
rest even one night in safety, and turned back at once to the mountains
to share his people's doom.
The outlook was now truly terrible, but the Assyrians were determined
not to perish without one more struggle. They would attempt to break
the leaguer and force their way down to Urmi Plain. Even for an
uncumbered army this could hardly be thought a promising enterprise; and
the tribesmen were but ill-armed and poorly disciplined. Moreover, they
must endeavour to carry off with them their non-combatants--women and
children. They would number in all about 25,000 persons, and flocks and
herds besides. Their route, as all know who have travelled there, lay
through one of the most rugged and most difficult of the mountain
districts in Asia; and the paths are seldom wide enough for two men to
walk on them abreast. It was a desperate expedient, but to stay was
certain death. Surrender meant massacre, for there was no mercy either
in Turk or Kurd; and if the worst came to the worst, it was better to
die fighting. Moreover, they had leaders who knew how to make the most
even of the slenderest chances; and the plan which they resolved to
attempt was marked by all the hardihood and ingenuity of desperation.
The bulk of their foes lay to the eastward, blocking all the direct
tracks to Urmi, and drawing their sustenance from the fertile fields of
Gawar, where Nuri Beg had just completed a peculiarly atrocious massacre
of the unarmed Christians of the plain. Therefore they would break out
westward, where no one would dream of expecting them. They would march
in two bands, lest their line should be strung out unwieldily--and
perhaps with a tacit prevision like that of the patriarch Jacob, that if
one band was caught and overwhelmed the other might have chances of
escape. They would cross the Zab by the flimsy wooden bridges near the
mouths of the lateral valleys of Diz and Tal.[162] Then, making a wide
circuit northward, they would reunite on the further side of Julamerk,
whence one more long day's march would bring them to Albaq (near
Bashkala) and the pass that led to Salmas Plain.
And, in the face of all military probability, this daring plan actually
succeeded. If the Assyrians were but poorly disciplined, the Kurds who
beleaguered them were no better.
[Illustration: A BIT OF THE ROAD BETWEEN TAL AND JULAMERK
These built-up sections, or "_Stangi_," are a feature of the mountain
paths]
The pursuers who should have pressed on their tracks, as soon as they
found that the _Yailas_ had been evacuated, stayed behind to quarrel
over the division of such sheep as had been abandoned; and the isolated
detachments that strove to check their progress were surprised by their
sudden sally and easily brushed aside.
The Patriarch marched with the Tal column, and his march was marked by
an incident as moving as it is picturesque. His route led him over a
lofty mountain col near Julamerk,[163] whence for the last time he was
able to look down upon the little green "alp" that marked the site of
his own village of Qudshanis; and, as he paused to gaze, one natural
sigh escaped him: "When shall I ever drink the waters of Qudshanis
again?" The words were caught by as attentive ears as those of the three
mighty men who followed the son of Jesse. Without a word to their
chieftain a small party of devoted warriors broke away from the line of
march, burst through the Kurdish picket that attempted to bar the path
against them, and brought back to their beloved Patriarch a pitcher of
water from the Qudshanis spring.
The columns from Tal and Diz joined hands again at Kotranis, and the
reunited nation reached Albaq according to plan. Here they had one last
struggle; for a body of Kurds from Gawar had crossed the Zab by one of
the higher bridges and cut into their path ahead of them. But the pass
was carried triumphantly by a detachment under Khoshaba of Lizan; and
the Assyrians, saved by their own exertions, poured at last into Salmas
Plain.
It was not a beaten host that arrived--or, at all events, no more beaten
than that untamable Serbian army which, just at this very same period,
was being driven from its own country by the combined Austrians and
Bulgars. They had held their own against great odds as long as
resistance was possible; and, when forced to retreat under appalling
difficulties, they had brought away with them not only their women and
children, but a large proportion of their flocks and herds as well.
They had indeed suffered heavy losses in the fighting and many women and
children had succumbed to the hardships of the retreat. But their spirit
was still unbroken, as they were yet destined amply to prove.
Their irruption over the border of Persia introduced an additional
complication into a medley of anomalies which was already quite
complicated enough. Persia was nominally neutral, but too weak to
enforce her neutrality; and both combatants were still professedly
respecting a neutrality which their every act ignored.
Azerbaijan is an appanage of the _Vali Ahd_ (the Persian heir-apparent).
The Governor of Urmi is consequently his nominee, and the Governor's
Advisory Council are the Moslem notables of the place. But the infamous
régime which these gentry had established during the previous winter had
been promptly suppressed by the Russians as soon as they returned in the
spring. The Governor still held his post--was he not still (nominally)
Governor? But the only orders he was allowed to issue were those that
were put into his mouth by the Russian "consul." And, if the Russian
consul chose to take previous council with anyone, he consulted not the
Moslem notables, but the despised local Christians, who possessed no
_locus standi_ in the eyes of the Government at all. How intolerable
this position must have seemed to a city full of fanatical Moslems will
be appreciated by those who know the overbearing arrogance with which
fanatical Moslems are accustomed to treat any Christian helots who may
be subject to them, and the amount of swagger which an Oriental menial
is apt to assume to celebrate his emancipation. But, grin as they might
in secret, they did not dare do so openly in the presence of Russian
soldiery; and, indeed, though he may be a bully, the Persian is
generally a coward.
And now to complete their afflictions came this horde of ruffians from
the mountains--men whom they despised, not merely as Christians, but as
savages yet of whose physical prowess they were all mortally afraid; men
who had lost their all, and who (so at least Urmi credited) had been
accustomed from their cradles to regard robbery and bloodshed as their
ordinary daily work. Here they were with arms in their hands and Urmi at
their mercy.
Yet in truth (in the words of Dr. Macdowell of the American Hospital at
Urmi) the newcomers "behaved much better than anyone could reasonably
expect." They certainly plundered at first--not, indeed, in the district
of Salmas where the Patriarch had settled himself, but in the
neighbourhood of Urmi where there was no controlling hand. But it is
certain also that the Persians who complained of them had themselves
been asking for trouble rather importunately. Starving men with arms in
their hands are apt to grow rather restive when they find conspicuously
hard bargains being driven at their expense; and, having just saved
their bare lives by means of their trusty weapons, they are mighty
suspicious of invitations to surrender those weapons in exchange for a
little food. Moreover, they had uglier treatment to complain of. Ijlal
el Mulk, the Persian Governor of Urmi, came suddenly upon a party of
Assyrians as he turned the sharp, rocky point at the northern end of the
lake which is known as "Snatch-beard Corner," and promptly loosed his
guards upon them in sheer panic terror, under the crazy delusion that
they were an ambuscade. But even events like these were presently
smoothed over; and, as there were plenty of deserted villages in the
districts of Urmi and Salmas, the Assyrians found little difficulty in
gradually suiting themselves with new homes.
Meanwhile they were not quite oblivious of the fact that "there was
still a war on." Now, for the first time, they began to get adequately
armed with modern rifles and ammunition from the Russian arsenals. And
perhaps it deserves to be recorded that they took extremely kindly to
bombing. Bombs made such noble detonations when used liberally in
echoing ravines. Surma, the Patriarch's sister (as the only
non-combatant who carried sufficient authority), was installed in charge
of the ammunition depot; and, after living for months in a house crammed
to the doors with high explosives, was amused to overhear a couple of
her reckless tribesmen lamenting her pitiable "nervousness," because
she had sternly prohibited their smoking when they came to fetch powder
from the magazine.
They now grew distinctly assiduous in the payment of a series of return
calls upon their lately exulting Kurdish enemies. Sutu Agha's stronghold
at Oramar was captured and sacked; and this victory regained for them
quite a lot of the plunder of Jilu. Chal fell to a well-planned raid
under David, the Patriarch's brother; and the summer camps of the nomad
Heriki[164] yielded quite a rich booty of sheep. These forays were
conducted in much more gentlemanly fashion than the harrying of the
Christian valleys in the autumn of 1915. The son of the Agha of Chal for
instance, was captured at the fall of that fastness, and was at once
released on a verbal promise that he would arrange an exchange of
prisoners--a promise which (to the Kurds' credit) was for once loyally
redeemed. "Grass soon grows over blood that has been shed in fair
fight"; and if these courtesies were more often reciprocated by the
Moslems we might entertain some hope of eventual peace in Kurdistan.
These diversions had at least the effect of immobilising a good number
of Kurdish levies, who might otherwise have caused annoyance on the
flank of the Russian advance to Erzerum; and the Russians rewarded this
service by a lavish distribution of decorations which were immensely
appreciated and universally worn. Mar Shimun himself received a personal
letter of congratulation from the Tsar, and was welcomed with high
distinction at Tiflis by the Grand Duke Nicholas.
Thus matters continued prosperous till the autumn of 1917, when the
outlook again became fearfully overclouded by omens of Russian collapse.
The munitions of war had never before been so plentiful as they were at
this period in eastern Asia Minor. The arsenals of England, France, and
America had been pouring material into the country to equip the armies
of Russia. But the men for whom it was intended had no longer spirit to
use it; and an Allied Commission had been despatched in hot haste to the
Caucasus to try and rake together a few substitutes to replace their
exhausted protagonist.
There was plenty of fighting spirit still to be found among the
Assyrians and a certain dour gloomy inveteracy among some Armenian units
further north. Between these lay the territory of Simco (_i.e._, Ismail)
Agha of the Shekak Kurds; and the allied liaison officers conceived the
notion that these three elements might be combined into a coherent line
of defence.
Simco was the Agha whom we mentioned on page 228 as anxious to acquire a
British consul's Mannlicher rifle at the price of his newly married
wife. At Kotur he held a position of high strategic importance; and he
commanded a considerable following, comprising some 2000 horse. He had
participated two years previously in the combined attack on the
Assyrians; but it was thought he would feel no scruples about changing
sides, if it could be shown that it was worth his while. And certainly
he had no cause to love the Persians; for his own brother (and
predecessor in the chieftainship) was that same Jaffar who had been so
foully assassinated at Tabriz by the ex-Shah when he was _Vali
Ahd_.[165]
The scheme on the whole was a good one and its advantages were obvious.
But it had one fatal objection--the connecting link was a Kurd.
Hanpartsunian, the Armenian leader, was most reluctant to admit him to
the league; and when Mar Shimun heard the proposal he shared his
reluctance to the full. But in those days British officers were rather
inclined to assume that Kurds were "indifferent honest." It is believed
that after four years' experience of administration in Mesopotamia they
would now vote this theory obsolete.
Despite their rooted prejudices to the contrary, the Armenian and
Assyrian chieftains allowed themselves to be over-persuaded, and the
plan won acquiescence from their followers. Simco embraced it with
enthusiasm, and swore upon the Koran to keep faith with his Christian
associates, protesting (somewhat anomalously) that he regarded the
Assyrian Patriarch as "the Religious Head of Kurdistan."
This ill-assorted alliance was soon to be crucially tested. Some Russian
assistance had been counted upon, and 250 Russian officers were to have
undertaken the organisation of the combined force. But the officers
never arrived; and what Russian force still remained in the district
gradually melted away to nothing. Russia was no longer only a falling
wall whose collapse might be averted by buttressing. The very bricks of
which it was built had disintegrated, and resolved into the mud from
which they had been made.
It was now February, 1918--not yet quite the darkest hour upon the
Western Front, but already very nearly so. And in the East the collapse
of Russia had completely convinced all waverers that Germany and her
allies had virtually won the war. The all-conquering Mackensen was
rumoured to be already on his way to assume the command at Mosul, and to
besom the British out of Mesopotamia; and Ijlal el Mulk plucked up heart
of grace, and issued a grandiose proclamation ordering the Assyrians to
lay down their arms.
Mar Shimun wrote a letter of protest to Mukht-i-Shems, the Persian
Governor of Tabriz, reiterating that his people were merely refugees,
and carried arms solely for their own protection. But these were facts
of which the Persians had, of course, been fully aware for two years and
more. They did not want an apology--only a pretext for falling on their
unwelcome guests.
Then abruptly the flash-point was reached. For some weeks an explosion
had manifestly been growing inevitable, but what precisely caused it was
never known. There was a sudden outbreak at Urmi--two days of sharp
street fighting--and the Moslems were crushed decisively, and the
Assyrians remained masters of the town.
Foiled utterly in open warfare, the Persians turned at once to their
more familiar trade of treachery; and Mukht-i-Shems, the official
representative of his nation, a Persian nobleman with an English
education, wrote plainly to Simco Agha to tell him that he might earn
the gratitude of the Persian Government by the assassination of Mar
Shimun. The Kurd took the hint promptly. He had already been growing
uneasy at the conviction that after all he had espoused the losing side;
and now he wrote to Mar Shimun (who by this time had returned to
Salmas), requesting that he would meet him at a conference to discuss
the new situation caused by the Russian debacle.
The trap was cunningly baited. Such a conference seemed not merely
desirable, but imperative. What could be more natural under the
circumstances than a meeting between two sworn allies? And Mar Shimun,
accompanied by his brother David and a few other friends, drove out to
the Armenian village of Koni Shehr, which was the appointed
meeting-place.
There were whispers that treachery was intended. An Armenian villager
was told by a friendly Kurd: "There is no danger for _your_ folk"; and
on this he at once sent off his son with a warning message, which was
unhappily disregarded. As the party entered the house where the meeting
was to be held, David pointed to a group of Kurds upon a neighbouring
roof, and asked "what those fellows wanted." But the Patriarch had
seemingly determined that he must "trust all in all, or not at all."
"They only want to get a good view, I suppose," he answered, and passed
in.
Simco received him most cordially. The ceremonial hospitality, which
throughout the East is held to set the seal of inviolability upon the
guest's person, was duly offered and accepted. The conference proceeded,
and terminated without the least hint of disagreement; and Simco, with
marked deference, conducted his guest to the door.
His turning back was the signal. There was a volley from the roof, and
the Patriarch was shot dead. It was an almost literal repetition of the
treachery perpetrated upon Simco's own brother by the _Vali Ahd_ eight
years before. How David escaped is a mystery. He was wounded, but
friendly Armenians snatched him into one of the adjoining houses and hid
him till the search was over. In the ensuing confusion only one other
member of the party was actually killed and the rest succeeded in
escaping.
The Patriarch's body was treated with the grossest indignity--stripped,
and flung out into the street. But afterwards it was reverently taken up
by the Armenians and buried by their priest in the village church. In
those medieval times to which Benyamin Mar Shimun belonged alike by
character and training that church would be held to enshrine the relics
of a martyr.
The almost incredulous fury with which the wild tribesmen learned the
news of their beloved Patriarch's murder can, perhaps, be barely
imagined by people less primitive than they. In the first gust of their
rage they began a massacre of the Kurds in Urmi; but this was quickly
arrested by the interposition of their chiefs. Polus a younger brother,
was chosen as the Patriarch's successor; and under David and Khoshaba a
strong force mustered to avenge his death.
With these two there marched a third leader. And among the many
disreputable characters who "made good" during war-time, it can surely
not be easy to find a parallel to Petros of Baz--that knavish exploiter
of bogus Macedonian orphanages, whose shady antecedents were recounted
on page 218. With the fruits of his youthful peculations he had acquired
a prominent position in Urmi, no less than that of Ottoman consul. Thus,
as soon as the war broke out, he was able to pose as a leader; and from
the husk of a glib-tongued swindler there now emerged a born Captain of
_guerilleros_, whose achievements during these later stages were among
the most remarkable in the war. Like several others of his kidney, he
has since (we regret to say) reverted. But assuredly, while the ball
lasted it cannot be denied that this arch-thief showed a singularly
handsome leg.
Simco's army was thoroughly routed and his castle at Chara captured; but
he himself unhappily escaped and has since been allowed even by the
allies of his victim, to reap all the profits of his crime. In his house
was found the actual letter which he had received from Mukht-i-Shems
prompting him to the Patriarch's murder. Can it be wondered that the
wrath of the Assyrians burns yet more hotly against the Persian than it
does against the Turk?
But the crushing of their false friend did not deminish the number of
their enemies. The Christians were now threatened on all sides by Turk,
by Kurd, and by Persian; and in Urmi they had to control a seething
hostile community considerably more numerous than themselves. The
British advance from Baghdad had still penetrated no higher than Tekrit,
250 miles to the southward; and all hope of Russian help was gone. They
were still well off for munitions; but the bulk of the lavish supplies
which had been intended for the armament of Russia had fallen into the
hands of their enemies, and the Turkish armies in Eastern Asia Minor
were now equipped as no Turkish armies in that district had ever been
equipped before.
There still remained, however, some scattered contingents of
Armenians--unhappily divided against themselves by bitter internecine
dissensions--and with one of these led by a grim fighter named Andranik
who commanded a personal following of about 5000, there was still some
chance of effecting a junction. Petros got into communication with him,
and a plan was concerted to this end.
Had the plan succeeded it is probable, in the light of subsequent
events, that the Assyrians would have been able to keep their hold upon
Urmi until the Armistice. But the Turks held the interior lines and Ali
Ihsan, their commander in this district, was unluckily a General of
considerable capacity. He flung himself across Petros' path as he
pressed northward and repulsed his attempt to break through. Petros,
better as a tactician than as a strategist, unhappily did not renew the
assault at the moment when perseverance might have earned victory; and
Ali Ihsan, in the nick of time, was able to turn upon Andranik, and beat
him back after a long day's desperate fighting in the streets of Khoi.
Nevertheless the Assyrians still continued to present a bold front to
their enemies; and for three months, under Petros' able leadership, they
beat back in battle after battle all the attacks that were delivered
against them both north and south of Urmi. They are said to have fought
no fewer than fourteen actions in this time. In one of these, at Ushnu,
they captured nearly 350 Turkish regular soldiers, besides 5 machine
guns and 2 pieces of field artillery; and with almost unbelievable
generosity these prisoners were released upon parole.
"But what of your Kurdish prisoners, Saypu?" we asked of the stalwart
young warrior whose maiden exploit in arms we related on page 315.
"We took no Kurdish prisoners, Rabbi," replied Saypu grimly, "after the
death of Mar Shimun."
Their humanity is more to their credit, since they knew well the fate of
their kinsfolk in the outlying villages which they were forced to
abandon, and might learn thence to what fate they themselves were doomed
should they fail to make good their defence. Ali Ihsan had now gone
southward to take over the command at Mosul, and to be defeated by
General Marshall in the last battle of the war. The Turkish leader in
the north was now Jevdet Bey, previously Vali of Van, the brutal son of
kind old Tahir and brother-in-law of Enver Pasha, a man who had already
earned eternal infamy by his pitiless massacres of the Armenians at Van.
Now on one occasion he forced the entire population of a village,
numbering it is said 700, and including all the women and children, to
dig a deep trench for their own grave along the foot of a lofty mud
wall. When the trench was finished they were marched into it. The wall
was thrown down on the top of them; and every soul was buried alive. On
another occasion a village, which had defended itself to the last
cartridge, surrendered at last on fair conditions which the Turks
solemnly confirmed by oaths taken on the Koran. Every male was
immediately massacred; every female stripped and outraged, and then
turned adrift naked to crawl to Urmi as she could.
Such incidents are, of course, but samples of hundreds of similar
atrocities perpetrated by the Turks upon their Christian helots during
the recent war. Neither is it permissible for any honest chronicler to
leave them unrecorded, so long as there are any advocates for a policy
of leaving Christians subject to Turks.
And the cruel mercies of Islam seemed now closing round the Assyrians.
Their fighting force was steadily dwindling and now their ammunition was
running out. The end was almost in sight; but once more there came a
gleam of hope just as the last hope seemed extinguished, and an
aeroplane appeared over Urmi on July 8th, 1918. It was saluted with a
hot fusillade, for all, of course, deemed it Turkish. But presently it
dawned upon someone that the tricoloured circles were not a Turkish
emblem, and it was wildly welcomed to earth. Captain Pennington of the
Royal Air Force had flown from Miani in the south over 150 miles of
unknown and hostile country; and, having escaped his friends' bullets,
was next nearly suffocated by their embraces, for all, of course, argued
(Oriental-like) that their final relief was now assured.
But Captain Pennington was no more than the far-advanced scout of a
woefully weak flying column, consisting of a machine-gun company and a
squadron of the 14th Hussars; and these had only penetrated as far as
the village of Sain Kaleh, 100 miles to the south. Yet he bore a message
of hope. They had escorted thither a first instalment of money,
munitions, and officers; and if only the Assyrians could gain touch with
them these supplies might enable them to hold out.
But how could touch be established? Urmi was now menaced by a force of
two Turkish divisions--the 5th from the north and the 6th from the
south--and by large irregular levies of Kurds and Persians as well. It
was agreed that Petros, with the Urmi division of his army, should
attempt to clear the way to Sain Kaleh; and that the Salmas division
should hold on to Urmi till his return. It was once more a desperate
chance; but the Assyrians had only preserved themselves hitherto by
taking a whole series of desperate chances. Unhappily, on this occasion,
they could only partly win through.
Petros marched south, and, with his usual skill and daring, defeated the
6th Division at Suj Bulak, and drove them into the mountains towards
Rowanduz. But, unfortunately, the 5th Division learned of his departure,
and seized the opportunity to deliver a vigorous assault upon those who
had remained behind. The line of the Nazlu River, which the Assyrians
had sought to hold was forced; and the defeated mountaineers swept back
in confusion upon Urmi. Panic seized upon that hapless city. Under the
protection of the Assyrians it had become a sort of asylum of refuge for
thousands of fugitives who had escaped from previous massacres; and now
the whole Christian population--Assyrian and Armenian, men, women, and
children--determined instantly on flight. Harvest had just been
gathered, so they had food available, and enough beasts and vehicles to
improvise some kind of transport; and soon the whole mob was trailing
southward in an agony of terror and despair. Somewhere in that direction
lay their last faint hope of survival, and, heedless of order or
discipline, they fled in Petros' wake.
That flight was a ghastly tragedy, comparable perhaps, while it lasted,
only to that terrible trek of the Calmuck Tartars so graphically
depicted by De Quincey. Provisions, indeed, were adequate; and, had they
been unmolested, the fugitives might have won through without very great
loss or suffering. But their enemies swarmed on their tracks like wolves
upon a drove of cattle. Even before they cleared the city the bazaar
ruffians under Mejid es Sultaneh freed from the fear of their recent
masters, were cutting the throats of the stragglers as they emerged from
their houses; and hampered by hosts of non-combatants--dispirited and
without cohesion--that long, slow, straggling convoy formed a fatally
vulnerable prey. The mountaineers, indeed, suffered less than the
townsfolk as being more accustomed than they to conditions of trek and
battle. It was even said, unkindly but plausibly, that the Tyari men
eventually reached their journey's end not only with all their women,
but with more sheep than they had at the start. But for all the
conditions were terrible enough. Men were slaughtered by hundreds; women
stripped and outraged; girls borne off to Mussulman harems; and many
who dropped from the ranks were seen to roll themselves in filth and
ordure in the hope of escaping the violation which they knew was their
probable fate. It must be within the mark to state that at least 15,000
persons--a fourth of the whole number--perished in those dreadful days.
The British were no longer at Sain Kaleh. Petros had been a week late at
his rendezvous, and they had strict orders not to linger in such a
perilously advanced position. But happily they were not beyond recall,
and, with Petros' army to back them, they now hurried back to bring aid.
That handful of well-armed and disciplined men fell like a thunderbolt
into the midst of the disorderly hordes of the pursuers, and, ignorant
what force might be following, these scattered before them in dismay.
There was one instance where seven men equipped with a Lewis gun, and
led by Captains Savage and Scott-Ollson, dashed at a force of several
hundred Kurds who were besetting a group of fugitives, and drove them
off in confusion--a feat that might have earned a lay in the annals of
the Round Table.
It took three days' sharp fighting to complete the rescue, for the
fugitives only struggled in by driblets and the Kurds and Persians who
clung to them were loth to relinquish their prey. But at last the
Assyrians' purgatory was over. The column was re-formed at Sain Kaleh
and proceeded by easier stages 200 miles further southward to Hamadan.
They were blamed for plundering on this march; and, undoubtedly, they
did plunder wholesale. But what wonder? They were utterly destitute and
had surely every possible excuse for regarding Persia as an enemy
country. And be it recorded to their honour that by the admission even
of their enemies, and though the atrocities that their own women had
suffered were still fresh in their memories even now no Mussulman woman
was insulted or maltreated by them.
Early in September they were transferred to the great refugee camp which
had been prepared for their reception at Baquba on the Diala near
Baghdad; and here they were established when Turkey sued for peace a few
weeks later. Not less than two-thirds of their nation must have perished
in their four years' trial; but, like Sir Hugh Percy, they had "saved
the bird in their bosom," and assuredly had no cause for shame in the
plucky part that they had played.
The fate of their neighbours, the Armenians, is already too well known
to be dwelt upon, but, alas! too little regarded, for us to pass over it
even here. We have sketched the horrors endured by one small sister
community--a community whose position was admittedly much more
defensible, and whose stout-hearted resistance enabled them to avert the
worst. Multiply those horrors twenty fold to allow for the greater
numbers of the Armenians. Double them again for the helplessness that
robbed them of self-defence. And our minds are incapable of grasping the
scope of a butchery more hideous and widespread than any that has
horrified Asia since the ravages of the Tartar hordes. "Then there took
place such wholesale slaughter and unrestrained looting and excessive
torture and mutilation as is hard to hear spoken of, even generally; how
think you, then, of the details? There happened things I dare not
mention, therefore imagine what you will."[166]
Nay, the Tartar massacres after all were mostly perpetrated in hot
blood, and in days that followed close upon battles; but these
advisedly, upon unresisting helots, and persistently for months and
years. In these the blind fury of the fanatic and the blood-lust of the
Kurdish robber were deliberately manipulated by cool-headed and
calculating administrators. And even Abdul Hamid's cruelty was not so
coarse and stupid as that of the low-bred upstarts who now reigned in
his room.
Talaat Pasha's own letters are extant to prove how he hounded on his
underlings to the butchery; how he dismissed and disgraced those who
shrank from the ghastly tasks imposed upon them; nay, even those who
permitted the slightest alleviation of horrors at which their souls
sickened; how he insisted repeatedly and categorically that not even
children must be spared. And Enver and Djemal, his fellow-triumvirs,
seconded him inexorably in all.
That some Turks did venture on protests we are ready to admit gladly;
but with the bulk of the nation the crime was actually popular. No
Mollah raised his voice to denounce it; and there was never the least
difficulty in finding plenty of willing executioners. The crime was the
crime of the Ottoman nation and of the Stamboul Caliphate, and the
criminals are still rejoicing in the success and impunity of their
crime.
The programme of massacre was identical in practically every district.
First, the chief local leaders of the Armenians (Parliamentary Deputies
and so forth) were quietly entrapped and assassinated before their vague
forebodings had ripened into serious alarm. Then those who had been
called up for military service (of course, the pick of the nation) were
disarmed, drafted into labour battalions, and set to road-making and
other tasks in remote and sparsely populated districts, where they were
soon worn out with hard work, exposure, and starvation, or shot down at
leisure in idle sport by their armed guards. Then all the better class
townsfolk--doctors, teachers, merchants, tradesmen, and artificers--were
arrested, formed into columns, and marched away from their homes,
ostensibly for some distant destination. It was arranged that armed
Kurds (or their own escort) should fall upon them during the journey;
and all that was known of them subsequently was that they had never
arrived. The villages and towns were then sacked in detail, and the men
almost all exterminated, though young and good-looking girls were
reserved for the Mussulman harems. If any pretext were needed, it was
generally supplied by demanding the surrender of a stated number of
rifles, which it was assumed that the villagers were concealing, and
torture was often applied to extort what they had never possessed.
Then the "Red Massacres" were over, and the "White Massacres" started.
The victims of these were mostly the miserable women and their
children--practically all who still survived. These were formed up into
columns and literally marched to death. With bleeding feet, starving and
unsheltered, they were driven pitilessly forward--day after day, week
after week--on a march that was never intended to have any ending till
the last of them had dropped and died. And such of them as survived to
cross the Taurus were finally thrust forth into the bleak foodless
waterless desert; Talaat professing with fiendish effrontery that he was
thus "colonising Mesopotamia."
Surely if ever assassination was justified it was in the death of this
monster, and it is the shame of all Europe that it was to an assassin
that they left the task.
We have said that some Turks protested, and were deprived of their
offices for protesting. The Vali of Aleppo and the Mutaserif of Mardin
were two of these. In some towns the Moslem population presented
petitions against the massacres. In Urfa--even in fanatical Urfa--there
was one such petition sent in. Diarbekr was true to its grim traditions,
and here there was no relenting. Here the notables of the city had
formed a "Committee for the Study of the Armenian Question," and the
fruit of their "Studies" was a revival of Carrier's infamous _noyades_.
The clothes of which the victims were stripped before they were flung
overboard were, with sickening shamelessness, sold openly by their
executioners in the bazaar.
At Mosul the sword was stayed; we cannot conceive for what reason. But
perhaps the Arabs, though equally keen robbers, were not found such
practised butchers as the Kurds.
Jevdet Bey, the Vali of Van, was one of the most relentless murderers;
and the thoroughness of his methods in the villages of his _Vilayet_
even caused him to be employed as an expert in redeeming slackness
elsewhere. But of Van city itself--thanks to its proximity to the
frontier--he made rather a botched job. Aram, the Tashnakist whom we
mentioned in an earlier chapter[167] was by accident absent from the
city when the other two local leaders were assassinated. The Armenians
took alarm betimes and stood on their defence.
Van was a large sprawling city, and the Armenians formed rather the
larger half of the population. They had much previous experience of
massacres and alarms of massacre; and they now drew together
instinctively in their own quarter of the Garden City, and fortified
themselves with abattis and barricades. They sent a message to their
Moslem fellow-citizens that they had no quarrel with them and were only
defending themselves against the Vali. And the Moslems replied
sympathetically though they said they would be obliged to fight.
Perhaps it was owing to their lukewarmness that Jevdet, though supported
by the regular soldiers of the garrison, never ventured to deliver a
formal assault upon the entrenched quarter; but there was much desultory
fighting, and most of the city was burned. Jevdet relied principally
upon blockading his victims, and reducing them by hunger; and, to
quicken their surrender, he even refrained from massacring the few
surviving villagers, and drove them into the entrenchments to help in
consuming supplies. After four weeks' leaguer this scheme was on the
point of succeeding, when suddenly the despairing Armenians saw their
enemies preparing to withdraw. The Russians advancing from Sara Hamish
had approached within striking distance, and next day Van was relieved.
When the Russians withdrew a little later the Armenians, of course, fled
with them, and took refuge across the border, near Tiflis and Erivan.
How many of them, we wonder, have survived their later tribulations--war,
famine, typhus, internecine strife and Bolshevism?
And the motive for all this butchery? The alleged "plot" is merely a
subterfuge. The Armenians would, no doubt, have welcomed the coming of
the Russians; what subject race in Turkey would not? But, until the
Russians arrived, they were no more a menace to the rear of the Turks
than the citizens of occupied Belgium were to the rear of the Germans.
There is something, perhaps, in the suggestion that one motive was sheer
plunder. Many Armenians were wealthy; and the Turks, impoverished by a
series of wars, were intent on seizing their wealth, never reflecting
that by the extermination of their cleverest traders, and their best
artificers and husbandmen, they were only consigning themselves to a
deeper and more hopeless poverty. There was certainly also a religious
motive; for, though we can hardly say that the profession of Islam would
in all cases have secured quarter, yet it is certain that this was made
an essential condition in the sparing of the few who were spared. And
what but religious bigotry could have involved the Jacobites in the fate
of the Armenians? There was no plot to fear from the Jacobites. They had
neither the cohesion nor the national aspirations of the Armenians.
Their escapes in previous massacres prove that the Turks could have
spared them if they wished. And yet this time they were not spared.
But professed infidels like Talaat and Enver are not swayed by religious
bigotry. It was national and political bigotry that was the ruling
motive with them. They only consented to the sparing of apostates
because apostasy in those regions sets the seal upon the abjuration of
nationality. And in the Ottoman Empire they meant the Turk to reign
alone. In their extirpation of the Armenians the Young Turks were
carrying out a deliberate national policy, conceived by the Old Turks
more than a generation before. And the Young Turks, taking it over, had
only been waiting their opportunity till the preoccupation of Europe
should leave their hands untied.
It only remains to add that the Yezidis were not massacred. And, even in
such a plethora of massacres, it is strange they should have suffered
such neglect. We can only suppose that _Melek Taüs_, seeing all idle
hands so desirably occupied, devoted his unaccustomed leisure to taking
care of his own.