XIVTHE MASSACRE AT SASSOUN

Sassoun is the name of a district south of the Plain of Moosh. It is a mountainous country, containing about one hundred and fourteen villages and hamlets. The inhabitants, about seventy thousand persons, were mostly Armenians, under a resident Turkish governor, called Kaimakam.

The inhabitants of this region, like the rest of the people in Armenia, were agricultural and pastoral in their occupation, and they were also surrounded by their tormentors, the Kurds. It is not improbable that the inaccessibility of the district and the number and hardiness of the people, may have impressed the Turkish authorities with the desirability of reducing them into a complete docility. So when the “Hamidieh” cavalry regiments were formed a few years before they were entrusted with this work.

The Kurdish chiefs, in some districts in Armenia, were in the habit of demanding, and extorting from the people some kind of tribute. The raids of the Kurds and Circassians were not infrequent. The taxes of the government were ever increasing, andwere always in demand. This vexatious condition of affairs was sufficient to drive any peaceful people to desperation.

In one instance, when the Kurds had raided an Armenian village, and carried away the cattle, the villagers armed themselves as best as they could and pursued the raiders, like Abraham,[132]to recover their herds. In the encounter several Kurds were killed. It is probable that some Armenians also were killed, but that is of no consequence. Those unfortunate Kurds who suffered for their crime were the members of the “Hamidieh” cavalry. Then false reports were sent to Constantinople that the Armenians were in arms, and had rebelled against the authority of the government and had killed some of the soldiers of the sultan.

The sultan, who had been planning ever since the signing of the Treaty of Berlin to exterminate the Armenians, seized upon this opportunity, which was of his own making, and at once sent orders to Mushir at Erzinghian to exterminate them, root and branch. “The order as read before the army, collected in haste from all the chief cities of Eastern Turkey, was: ‘Whoever spares man, woman, or child, is disloyal.’”

The massacre took place in the early part of September, 1894. The following letter, written at Bitlis, September 26, 1894, gives the first evidence:

“The troops have been massed in the region of the large plain (of Moosh) near us. Some sickness broke out among them which took off two or three victimsevery few days.... I suppose that one reason for placing quarantine was to hinder the information as to what all these troops were about in that region. There seems little doubt that there has been in that region back of Moosh what took place in 1876 in Bulgaria. The sickening details are beginning to come in.”“Bitlis, October 9, 1894.“All these things (following facts) were related here and there by soldiers who took part in the horrible carnage. Some of them, weeping, claim that the Kurds did more, and declare that they only obeyed the order of others. It is said one hundred fell to each of them to dispose of. No compassion was shown to age or sex, even by the regular soldiery, not even when the victims fell suppliant at their feet. Six to ten thousand persons met such a fate as even the darkest ages of darkened Africa hardly witnessed, for there women and tender babes might at least have had a chance of a life of slavery, while here womanhood and innocency were but a mockery before the cruel lust that ended its debauch by stabbing women to death with the bayonet, while tender babes were impaled with the same weapon on their dead mother’s breast, or perhaps seized by the hair to have their heads lopped off with the sword.“In one place, three or four hundred women, after being forced to serve vile purposes by the merciless soldiery, were hacked to pieces by sword and bayonet in the valley below. In another place, some two hundred weeping and wailing women begged for compassion, falling at the commander’s feet, but the bloodthirsty wretch, after ordering their violation, directed his soldiers to dispatch them in a similar way. In another place, some sixty young brides and more attractive girls were crowded into a church, and after violation were slaughtered, and human gore was seen flowing from the church door.“At another place still, a large company under the leadership of their priest, fell down before them begging for compassion, and averring that they had nothing to do with the culprits (?). But, all to no purpose. All were called to another place, and a proposal was made to several of the more attractive women to change their faith, in which case their lives were to be spared. They said: ‘Why should we deny Christ? We are no more than these’ (pointing to the mangled form of their husbands and brothers). ‘Kill us too’; and they did so. A great effort was made to save one beauty, but three or four quarreled over her, and she sank down like her sisters.“But why prolong the sickening tale? There must be a God in heaven who will do right in all these matters, or some of us would lose faith. One or more consuls have been ordered that way to investigate the matter. If the Christians, instead of the Turks, reported these things in the city of Bitlis, and the region where I have been touring, the case would be different. But now we are compelled to believe it.“It seems safe to say that forty villages were totally destroyed, and it is probable that sixteen thousand at least were killed. The lowest estimate is ten thousand, and many put it much higher. This is allowing for more fugitives than it seems possible can have escaped.”[133]

“Bitlis, October 9, 1894.

“All these things (following facts) were related here and there by soldiers who took part in the horrible carnage. Some of them, weeping, claim that the Kurds did more, and declare that they only obeyed the order of others. It is said one hundred fell to each of them to dispose of. No compassion was shown to age or sex, even by the regular soldiery, not even when the victims fell suppliant at their feet. Six to ten thousand persons met such a fate as even the darkest ages of darkened Africa hardly witnessed, for there women and tender babes might at least have had a chance of a life of slavery, while here womanhood and innocency were but a mockery before the cruel lust that ended its debauch by stabbing women to death with the bayonet, while tender babes were impaled with the same weapon on their dead mother’s breast, or perhaps seized by the hair to have their heads lopped off with the sword.

“In one place, three or four hundred women, after being forced to serve vile purposes by the merciless soldiery, were hacked to pieces by sword and bayonet in the valley below. In another place, some two hundred weeping and wailing women begged for compassion, falling at the commander’s feet, but the bloodthirsty wretch, after ordering their violation, directed his soldiers to dispatch them in a similar way. In another place, some sixty young brides and more attractive girls were crowded into a church, and after violation were slaughtered, and human gore was seen flowing from the church door.

“At another place still, a large company under the leadership of their priest, fell down before them begging for compassion, and averring that they had nothing to do with the culprits (?). But, all to no purpose. All were called to another place, and a proposal was made to several of the more attractive women to change their faith, in which case their lives were to be spared. They said: ‘Why should we deny Christ? We are no more than these’ (pointing to the mangled form of their husbands and brothers). ‘Kill us too’; and they did so. A great effort was made to save one beauty, but three or four quarreled over her, and she sank down like her sisters.

“But why prolong the sickening tale? There must be a God in heaven who will do right in all these matters, or some of us would lose faith. One or more consuls have been ordered that way to investigate the matter. If the Christians, instead of the Turks, reported these things in the city of Bitlis, and the region where I have been touring, the case would be different. But now we are compelled to believe it.

“It seems safe to say that forty villages were totally destroyed, and it is probable that sixteen thousand at least were killed. The lowest estimate is ten thousand, and many put it much higher. This is allowing for more fugitives than it seems possible can have escaped.”[133]

It is useless now, after twenty-three years, to add the testimony of the eye-witnesses and fugitives to show the barbarity of the soldiers and officers of the sultan, who had been inadvertently encouraged to go on in his career of assassination by the declaration of Her Majesty’s government that the imprisonments,tortures and massacres of the Armenians were not attributable to their religious faith.

It appears from the following statement made by reliable persons that the sultan himself not only ordered the massacre, but he prepared an occasion for that deviltry. “To what extent Armenian agitation has provoked the terrible massacre it is difficult to determine. For a year or more there seems to have been an Armenian from Constantinople staying in the region as an agitator. For a long time he skilfully evaded his pursuers, but was at last caught and taken to Bitlis. He demanded to be taken to Constantinople and to the sultan, and it is said, he is now living at the Capital, receiving a large salary from the government. Evidently he has turned state’s evidence.” This mean creature, who ever he was, was an emissary of the Turkish government. He and his mission were not known to the officers at Bitlis. So he demanded that he should be taken to Constantinople, and to the sultan. There he was rewarded for the mischief that he was hired to do: he had paved the way for a great massacre.

But by a most influential paper of Great Britain the crime at Sassoun was laid primarily at the door of England:

“The crime at Sassoun lies primarily at the door of England. It is one of the many disastrous results of that ‘peace with honor’ which the English government, represented by Lord Beaconsfield, claimed to have brought back from Berlin in 1878. Why was it that the Armenians at Sassoun were left as sheep before thebutcher? Why was it that the sultan and his pashas felt themselves perfectly free to issue what order they pleased for the massacre of the poor Armenians? The answer is, unfortunately, only too simple. It is because England, at the Berlin Congress, and England alone—for none of the other powers took any interest in the matter—destroyed the security which Russia had extorted from the Turkish government at San Stefano, and substituted for the sterling guarantee of Russia the worthless paper money of Ottoman promises.”[134]

The Sultan publicly endorsed the massacre and decorated Zeki Pasha, the commander of the Fourth Army Corps, and sent four flags to the Kurdish cavalry regiments.

Well said a prominent American: “The sultan’s act is a sort of insolent challenge to Christendom.” Why should he not challenge Christendom? There were some so-called Christian rulers back of him. Though the civilized world was filled with righteous indignation at the cruelty and insolence of the successor of Mohammed, yet he was only true to the teaching and example of the prophet in thus violating all the laws of civilization and humanity.

It is the characteristic of the Armenian mothers to teach their children to cling to the religion of Christ, let come what may. And it is due to this fact that the Armenian nation, after having undergone fifteen centuries of persecution for their faith, still exists as a Christian people. “The permanence of the Armenian race has been ascribed to the virtueof their women and exceptional purity and stability of their family life.”

The Turkish government, as might have been expected, first tried to conceal the facts or even admit the occurrence of such a massacre. However, under some pressure from the British ambassador, she made the following report:

Constantinople, November 16, 1894—“The Porte has issued an account of the last Armenian troubles in Sassoun district. The responsibility is laid upon the Kurdish brigands, who murdered a Mussulman and committed many other excesses. The Turkish troops called to Sassoun are said to have restored order and protected all law-abiding persons.”

But when Sir Phillip Currie sentMr.Hallward’s (British vice-consul at Van) report of the massacre to the Porte, the Turkish minister positively denied the facts, asserting thatMr.Hallward’s report was untrue. The Porte further “stated outright, that he (Mr.Hallward) had encouraged the Armenians to revolt.” Another report received from a Turkish official source was “that at Sassoun all the Armenians fell in open combat. The troops killed two thousand of them.”

The friends of Christianity and humanity, who sincerely sympathized with the martyred Christian Armenians, have learned that the Mohammedan rulers and the Turkish officials in the past centuries, and in the present, have given us enough instances of cruelty to convince the world that Mohammedanism and barbarism, if not identical, surely go handin hand. Furthermore, the Turkish government and its officers have shown to the world that they were, and are, destitute of truthfulness. A well-informed recent writer says: “As rulers of subject races, the Turks have shown themselves incapable of anything except cruelty and corruption.” “Has Turkey one whit improved in the last five centuries? No. The Porte’s diplomatists have learned to tell falsehoods with more freedom, and more unblushingly; her cruelties and oppressions are practiced more vigorously but more secretly; and she is far more steeped (her higher classes) in vice and barbarism than she was five hundred years ago.”[135]

The sultan, with an air of frankness, though compelled by the demand of the British ambassador, and with a desire to postpone immediate action, so that the indignation of the Christian world might subside, appointed a commission to make an investigation of the massacre. He depended too much on the friendly relations of the United States with Turkey, through Minister Terrell. The sultan asked the President to appoint a representative of this country; but when President Cleveland appointedMr.Jewett, consul at Sivas, to make an independent investigation and report to our government, the sultan refused his appointment. How could he allow such an honest man asMr.Jewett to make an independent investigation?Mr.Jewett knew the corruption of the sultan’s officers; he had some experience in the Marsovan trouble; his despatches were detained and his letterswere meddled with by His Majesty’s faithful servants, who, at the head of a Turkish mob, had burned the mission school.

The sultan’s commission was composed of the Turkish officers appointed by the Sultan and the consuls of France, England and Russia, who were in Asiatic Turkey. The commission was to decide who was to be examined, and whose testimony was to be taken. The European representatives were not privileged to make an independent investigation of the matter. Such being the case it was evident what might be expected from the Commission.

In such a country as Turkey, where justice is unknown, and for a Christian to protect his property, home, and life from plunder and violence is considered a “political offense” against the State, how could Christians dare to come forth and testify against the officers and the government, to whose cruelties and murderous propensities they were again to be left, when the European representatives departed? Even if they did dare, the testimony of the Christian is worthless against the faithful followers of Mohammed, who were the defendants in the case. Hopelessness of the condition of the Armenians was manifest.

Hardly will it be necessary to say that the universal impression was that the Sultan’s investigating commission was a farce, and perilous, yet it suited the sultan and his friends.St.Petersburg (Petrograd), December 30, 1894: “TheMoscow Gazettepillories the Sassoun investigating Commission as a farce.It asks why the Powers do not give the Porte so many days in which to decide whether it will fulfill the Treaty of Berlin, and if an unsatisfactory answer be given, co-operate to enforce the Treaty.”

This leading journal revealed the mind of the Russians. That England could have had the support of France. That, even, if Germany had sided with Turkey (which she most probably would), she would then have been half-prepared than twenty years later, at this terrible conflict. That the Powers would have had the universal moral support of the whole civilized world, especially at that time (preceding the Balkan wars), when the Balkan nations would have been in full sympathy with the entente, to drive the Turk out of Europe.

But England’s delay of action before the massacre, for she was aware of its coming, and her hesitation and distrust of Russia after the massacre, gave ample time to the crafty Abdul Hamid to create discord among the Powers, and he thus thwarted England’s belated attempts to redress the wrong that was committed.

The following quotation from “Our Responsibility for Turkey,” by the Duke of Argyle, confirms the above facts:

“That the Powers should have consented even to allow their representatives to spend time in such attempts as those [a commission to investigate the massacre and a scheme or reform for the Armenian provinces], after the experience of half a century of the hopeless bad faith and of the cunning procrastination of the Porte,is indeed astonishing. As usual, we seem to have been the leaders in this farce. Our Foreign Office boasted from time to time that we had got all the Powers to act ‘in line,’ which was, indeed, true. But what was the line doing? It was what is called in the language of military drill ‘practicing the Goose Step’—going through the form of taking steps, but not advancing one inch towards any practical result. The whole time occupied by Lord Rosebery’s Government, after they first heard of the impending dangers—which was at least eleven months from the beginning of August, 1894, to the middle of July, 1895—was wasted in this idle and grotesque procedure. And yet there really had been some encouraging symptoms of the disposition of Russia, if we had taken earnest and immediate advantage of them. And not less really had we very early noticed of what was coming from the Turks. So early as September 10, we knew that they were actually engaging a Kurdish chief of notoriously bad character to command three regiments of Kurdish irregular cavalry, as part of the forces destined for putting down what they were pleased to call the insurrection.”

Here we also add Lord Bryce’s words which are emphatically true:

“In the field of Eastern politics generally the conspicuous result has been the failure—the complete humiliating and irretrievable failure—of the traditional policy pursued by England of supporting the Turk against Russia.”[136]

An Armenian deputation called on the late Hon. W. E. Gladstone on the occasion of his birthday (December 29, 1894). He delivered an address on theSassoun massacre. A few paragraphs of his speech may be here reproduced:

“The history of Turkey is a sad and painful one.... I have lived to see the empire of Turkey in Europe reduced to less than one-half of what it was when I was born, and why? Simply because of its misdeeds, and the great record written by the hand of Almighty God against thisinjustice, lust, and most abominable cruelty. If, happily (I speak, hoping against hope), the reports be disproved or mitigated, let us thank God. If, on the other hand, they be established, it will more than ever stand before the world that there is a lesson, however severe it may be, that can teach certain people the duty of prudence and the necessity of observing the laws of decency, humanity, and justice.... If the facts are established, it should be written in letters of iron upon the records of the world that a government which could be guilty of countenancing and covering up such atrocities is a disgrace to Mohamet, the prophet; a disgrace to civilization at large, and a disgrace to mankind.... I have counseled you to be still and keep your judgments in suspense; but as the evidence grows the case darkens and my hopes dwindle and decline; and as long as I have voice, it will be uttered on behalf of humanity and truth.”[137]

Mr.Gladstone’s address on the Bulgarian massacre of 1876 was reprinted in theChristian Register, Boston, Mass., Dec. 1, 1894. I quote the following passage from it:

“There is not a criminal in a European jail, there is not a cannibal in the South Sea Islands, whose indignationwould not arise and overboil at the recital of that which has been done; which has too late been examined, but which remains unavenged; which has left behind all the foul and all the fierce passions that produced it; and which may again spring up, in another murderous harvest, from the soil soaked and reeked with blood, and in the air, tainted with every imaginable deed of crime and shame.That such things should be done once is a damning disgrace to the portion of our race which did them; that a door should be left open for their ever-so-barely possible repetition would spread that shame over the whole.”

The door in Bulgaria was closed, but a wide door was left open in Armenia, and England made herself a defender of the Turk that he may do as he pleases.[138]

According to the following despatch after six or more months of dilly-dallying, the European delegates to the Commission quitted their Turkish colleagues in disgust.

Constantinople, June 10, 1895.—“The Moosh Commission closed on Friday, so far as the work of the European delegates is concerned. They were compelled to tell the Turkish delegates that they could have nothing more to do with them. From the first the attitude of the Turkish delegates has been invariably and increasingly dishonest. According to the statements of those interested in the workings of the commission, the representatives of the sultan have not manifested honor, truth, or decency. They have made no efforts to determine the cause of the outrages in Armenia.“The rupture between the Turkish and European commissioners was caused by the refusal of the Turks,on purely farcical grounds, to hear important witnesses upon matters pertaining to the questions at issue. It was evident that the Turks were afraid that the tissue of falsehoods that they have thrown around the situation in Armenia would be broken down....”

“The rupture between the Turkish and European commissioners was caused by the refusal of the Turks,on purely farcical grounds, to hear important witnesses upon matters pertaining to the questions at issue. It was evident that the Turks were afraid that the tissue of falsehoods that they have thrown around the situation in Armenia would be broken down....”

The following is the report of the European delegates of the Commission:

“We [Wilbert, Shipley, and Pyevalsky, the French, English and Russian consuls] have, in our report, given it as our conviction, arrived at from the evidence brought before us, that the Armenians were massacred without distinction of age or sex; and indeed, for a period of some three weeks, viz.: from the 12th of August to the 4th of September (1894 O. S.), it is not too much to say that the Armenians were absolutely hunted like wild beasts, being killed wherever they were met; and if the slaughter was not greater, it was, we believe, solely owing to the vastness of the mountain ranges of that district, which enabled the people to scatter, and so facilitated their escape. In fact, and speaking with a full sense of responsibility, we are compelled to say that the conviction has forced itself upon us that it was not so much the capture of the agitator Mourad, or the suppression of a pseudo-revolt, as theextermination, pure and simple, of the Gheligrizan and Talori districts.”[139]

Before closing this chapter I quote one more reference to the Sassoun massacre and the work of the commission fromDr.J. Lepsius of Berlin, whose book was published in 1896, under the title of “Armenia and Europe.”

“Turkish Commission was appointed to inquire into occurrences which took place at Sassoun in the autumn of 1894, when in the massacre in which Turkish soldiers took part, twenty-seven Christian villages were destroyed and thousands of Armenians were murdered. Delegates from the English, French, and Russian consulates were appointed to attend the Commission. At the second sitting held at Moosh, on January 26, 1895, they made what according to European ideas of justice was the natural request that the commissioners, before inquiring into any other matter, should take evidence as to the massacre of Armenians by Turks. The commissioners (Turkish) however alleged that according to their instructions from the Porte they were only to inquire “into the criminal proceeding of the Armenian brigands,” they denied that there had been any massacre of Armenians, and rejected the request of the delegates. The commission sat from January 24 to July 21 at Moosh. Some fifteen to thirty miles from the seat of the massacre, and held one hundred and eight sittings. They declined to listen to the Christian witnesses brought forward by the delegates and would only accept the testimony of Turks, who had been carefully instructed to give such evidence as would prove that the Armenians were alone to blame. Witnesses who ventured to give evidence in favor of the Armenians atoned for their rashness by immediate imprisonment. The consular delegates at last refused to have anything more to do with this farce; they therefore went to Sassoun, and by evidence there obtained established the terrible facts and the innocence of the peaceful Armenian population.”[140]

FOOTNOTES:[132]Genesis 14:14.[133]Greene, “The Armenian Crisis in Turkey,” pp. 17-24. (See fuller accounts.) Published by Putnam and Sons, N. Y. and London.[134]The Westminster Gazette, December 12, 1894, reprinted in theArmenia, London, Jan., 1895.[135]Norman, “Armenia and the Campaign of 1877,” p. 378.[136]Bryce, “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” p. 522, 4th ed.[137]The London Times, Weekly Edition, Jan. 14, 1895.[138]Greene, “The Armenian Crisis in Turkey,” pp. 129, 130. (See the entire address quoted by Greene.)[139]Blue-Book, Turkey, No. 1, 1895, p. 206.[140]Lepsius, “Armenia and Europe,” published in Berlin, 1896. I quote fromThe New Armenia, reprinted June 15, 1916.

[132]Genesis 14:14.

[133]Greene, “The Armenian Crisis in Turkey,” pp. 17-24. (See fuller accounts.) Published by Putnam and Sons, N. Y. and London.

[134]The Westminster Gazette, December 12, 1894, reprinted in theArmenia, London, Jan., 1895.

[135]Norman, “Armenia and the Campaign of 1877,” p. 378.

[136]Bryce, “Transcaucasia and Ararat,” p. 522, 4th ed.

[137]The London Times, Weekly Edition, Jan. 14, 1895.

[138]Greene, “The Armenian Crisis in Turkey,” pp. 129, 130. (See the entire address quoted by Greene.)

[139]Blue-Book, Turkey, No. 1, 1895, p. 206.

[140]Lepsius, “Armenia and Europe,” published in Berlin, 1896. I quote fromThe New Armenia, reprinted June 15, 1916.

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