It is true that the battalions of Armenian volunteers took no active
part in the battles of July, for they were then in the district of Van
and undertaking the heavy duty of rear guard work for the Russian army
and the Armenian refugees. But the Turkish Armenians behind the front,
who were being deported and massacred as early as the month of July, by
their heroic resistance, occupied the attention of four Turkish
divisions and tens of thousands of Kurds just at the time when the Turks
had such great need of those forces to aid them in their July drive. It
is worth while, therefore, to point out here that, during the
deportations and massacres of 1915, whenever the Armenians had any
possible means at all of resisting the criminal plans of the Turkish
government, they took up arms and organized resistance in different
parts of Armenia.
Even before the deportations had begun, toward the latter part of 1914,
the Turkish government cunningly attempted to disarm the Zeitunians, the
brave Armenian mountaineers of Cilicia, who had taken up arms against
the Turkish government at three different times in the nineteenth
century, and each time had laid down their arms only on the intervention
of the European powers, believing that they would put an end to the
Turkish barbarities. This time the government filled the prisons with
the prominent Zeitunians and persuaded the young warriors to surrender,
promising to set them free if they did so. After accomplishing its
deceitful plan, the government put to death most of the young men,
deported the inhabitants, and made the mouhajirs from Balkans inhabit
Zeitun, even changing the name of the place to Soulaymania, in order to
erase the memory of those brave mountaineers. A group of warriors,
however, found means to take up their arms, climb the mountains, and
fight the Turkish soldiers. They are still free, and live among the
mountains of Giaur Dagh. In the following year the inhabitants of
Suediah were the first to defend themselves against the Turks. In April,
when the Turkish government ordered the Armenian peasants of Suediah to
leave their homes and emigrate toward Der-El-Zor, the inhabitants of
four or five villages, nearly 5,000 in number, refused to obey this
unlawful order of the Turkish government. With their families they
climbed the Amanos mountains and for forty-two days heroically resisted
the cannonading of the regular Turkish forces. Their situation was of
course critical. The desperate villagers sewed a large red cross on a
white sheet to inform the fleet of the Allies in the Mediterranean that
they were in danger. The French cruiser, Guechène, got in touch with the
Armenian peasants, informed its war department of the situation, and
obtained permission to remove them by transports to Port Said (Egypt).
Most of them are still there, cared for by the British, while the young
warriors went to join the French Oriental Legion, and fought on the
Palestine front under General Allenby.
[Illustration: Turkish cannons captured by the Armenians of Van in
April, 1915.]
The resistance at Van has already been spoken of. The next place of
importance must be given to the brave mountainous district of Sasoun,
that very Sasoun which had retained its semi-independent position in
Turkish Armenia up to the beginning of the last century, and had taken
up arms at three different times in the present generation to defend its
independence against the Ottoman troops--in 1894, in 1904, and again in
1915. This last time, toward the end of June, when the troops of Khalil
and Jevded began to lay waste with fire and sword the city of Moush and
the unprotected villages of the outlying district, the gallant
Sasounians, under the guidance of their two idealistic leaders, came
down from their mountains and made several raids on the city to drive
away the Turks. One of their leaders was Roupen, a self-sacrificing and
highly educated young man who had received his university training in
Geneva, Switzerland, and had shouldered his gun in 1904 and had
dedicated himself to the task of defending Sasoun. The name of the other
was Vahan Papazian (a native of Van, but educated in Russian
universities), who had been elected representative from Van to the
Ottoman parliament. This daring step on the part of Sasoun forced the
Turkish commanders to march on Sasoun with two divisions of troops and
with nearly 30,000 Kurds. From the first days of July to Sept. 8, the
Sasounians were able to resist the Turco-Kurdish attacks, always with
the hope that the Russian army would come to their assistance. During
that interval of time, the Sasounians sent several couriers to the
Russian army and asked for help, but the Russian commanders remained
indifferent, in spite of the fact that the extreme front line of the
Russian army was scarcely 50 kilometers (31 miles) away from Sasoun, and
the sound of the Turkish artillery aimed at the Sasounians could be
heard very distinctly by the Russian army. One of the commanders of the
Armenian volunteers, Dro, appealed to the Russian commander and asked
for one battery of cannon and a score or two of machine guns, which
would have enabled his men to break the Turkish front and join the
Sasounians. That request likewise was refused by the heartless
commanders of despotic Russia. These were the conditions under which
fell the historic Verdun of Armenia, heroic little Sasoun which, with
its 10,000 mountaineers, succeeded in facing 50,000 Turks and Kurds for
two months, with antiquated weapons and without adequate food or
ammunition.
Making all due allowance for the relative magnitude and importance of
the Near Eastern and the Western fronts, we may safely say without
exaggeration that Van and Sasoun, on the Caucasian front in the year
1915, played exactly the same role which Liege played in 1914 and Verdun
in 1916 on the Western front. Had it not been for these two points of
stubborn resistance against the Turkish troops in the summer of 1915,
the two Turkish offensives, already spoken of, would have had great
chances of success. This is an undisputed fact with all the inhabitants
of the Near East. And indeed, three months after these events, when the
Armenian volunteers together with the Russian troops recommenced their
drive and captured the cities of Moush and Bitlis, in the diary of a
Turkish officer, who was taken prisoner in Bitlis, was found the
following item, which appeared at the time in the Russian press:
"We are asked why we massacre the Armenians. The reason is quite
plain to me. Had not the Armenians fought against us, we should
have reached Tiflis and Baku long ago."
In addition to Van and Sasoun, during the same July when deportations
and organized massacres were going on, three other places might be
mentioned where hopeless attempts at resistance were made by the
Armenians against the savage Turks and Kurds. These places were Sivas,
Urfa, and Shabin-Karahissar. At Sivas the heroic resistance of Mourat
and his comrades and their escape were so full of thrilling events that
they have been likened to the adventures of Odysseus. Mourat is a brave
warrior who, together with his companion, Sepouh, had fought at Sasoun,
in 1904, and had taken part in the Armenian and Tartar clashes of 1905
and 1906 in the Caucasus. When deportations and massacres commenced in
1915, Turkish gendarmes were sent to capture Mourat, who was living with
his wife and child in a village near Sivas. Realizing the coming danger,
Mourat climbed the mountains with his band of warriors and resisted the
raids of the enemy. After a year and a half of stubborn resistance, he
descended one day to the shore of the Black Sea, captured a Turkish
sail-boat near Samsoun, and, putting his comrades into it, ordered the
Turkish sailor to steer the boat toward Batoum, a Russian port.
According to cable messages, Mourat was chased by a Turkish gun-boat.
Several battles took place in which he lost a few of his men, but
finally repulsed the Turks and reached Batoum safe and sound. At Urfa
the Armenians were able for forty days to repulse the attacks of one
Turkish division, but finally fell heroically under the fire of Turkish
artillery, commanded by German officers, having previously destroyed all
their property so that it would not fall into the hands of their
enemies. In the ruined Armenian trenches at Urfa, by the side of
Armenian young men there had fallen dead also Armenian young women who,
arms in hand, were found all mangled by the German bombs. At
Shabin-Karahissar, nearly 5,000 Armenians, for twenty-seven days without
interruption, in the same month of July, kept busy another division of
Turkish troops with their artillery. There took place one of the most
tragic and heroic episodes of the present war. When the ammunition of
the Armenians was almost gone, on the last day of the struggle, nearly
3,000 Armenian women and girls drank poison and died in order not to
fall alive into the hands of the savage Turks. If the supply of poison
had not given out, all the women would have done likewise. An
eye-witness, one who had taken part in the struggle and who succeeded in
reaching the Caucasus in 1916, after wandering in the mountains and
valleys of Armenia for a whole year, related how on that last day
Armenian mothers and girls, with tears in their eyes and with hymns on
their lips, received poison from the Armenian physicians and
apothecaries for themselves and their little ones. When the supply of
poison gave out, those who were unable to obtain any uttered terrible
wailing, and many of the girls cast themselves down from the rocks of
the Karahissar citadel and committed suicide.
[Illustration: DRO