CHAPTER XXXII.The garrison of Kars—Dr. Lanzoni—A probable outbreak of typhus—The two Pachas—Whose fault is it?—If God wills it, there will be no Cholera—If God wills it, the Russians will not come here—The hospitals full of men suffering from typhus fever—The International Commission—The Grand Duke Michael—Gumri—The Armenians and their nationality—The speech of the Grand Duke—The Master of the Armenian school—You shall go to prison—The Emperor Nicholas—Religious liberty granted to Armenians in Russia—The document—The Patriarch's death—Suspicious circumstances—Cossacks firing upon Mohammedans—Three children wounded—Clergymen of the Church of England—Hankering after the idolatrous practices of the Greek faith—Wolves in sheep's clothing—Colonel Lake—A little boy shot by the Cossacks—Russia the father of the fatherless—The Right Hon. R. Lowe, M.P.—The Author ofthe Bulgarian horrors—English officers and soldiers massacred in the Crimea—The Court of Inquiry—The Duke of Newcastle's speech—Russian officers butchering the English wounded.There were at the time of my visit to Kars about 20,000 troops quartered in and about the town; but large reinforcements could be sent from Erzeroum should occasion arise for their services. Laterin the day Dr. Lanzoni, of the Quarantine, called upon me; he is an Italian, and in the International Service. On my alluding to the state of the streets in Kars, he remarked that he had written twice to the authorities at Constantinople, but that no notice had been taken of his letters. "We shall have an outbreak of typhus or plague in the summer," continued the doctor. "The mortality will be very great, if we are besieged before the filth is cleared away."The civil governor entered the room. He joined in the conversation."It is the fault of the military Pacha," he observed. "The soldiers have made this mess in the streets, and the military Pacha thinks that the civilians in the town ought to clear it up. I have told him that this work ought to be done by the troops, but he says that the soldiers are the Padishah's servants, and that their duty is to fight, and not to be scavengers.""What have you done about the matter?" I inquired."We have written to Constantinople," replied the governor."How long does it take for a letter to go there?""About three weeks.""Yes," said the doctor, "three weeks to go, and three weeks to return, in all six weeks, withoutconsidering the delay there will be in answering the communication. We may have the cholera here long before that time.""If God wills it, there will be no cholera," said the Pacha.I interrupted him, "You are strengthening your garrison?""Yes.""You will repair the fortifications?""Yes.""You are supplying the troops with Martini-Peabody rifles at a great expense to your Government?""Yes.""Well," I continued, "why are you doing this?""On account of the Russians," said the Pacha, "but why do you ask me these questions?""Because if God wills it, the Russians will not come here, and if He has decreed that Kars is to fall, nothing that you can do will prevent that event taking place.""Then you think that armies are useless?" said the Pacha."No, but you would seem to hold that opinion, for you do not take the trouble to have the streets cleared, and say, if God wills it so, that there will be no epidemic.""Allah is all-powerful. He knows everythingthat has happened and that will happen," said the governor devoutly. "We are all dust in His sight. If we have the cholera in Kars, it will be the military Pacha's fault."Shortly afterwards my visitor left the room."I am very glad you spoke to him as you did," said the doctor. "Our hospitals are full of men suffering from typhoid fever; more than 10 per cent. of the poor fellows do not recover. This is a case in which the European powers ought to interfere," continued the speaker. "I am a quarantine officer, and am paid by the International Commission. It is my duty to prevent the cholera or any other infectious disease being brought from the East, but these Turks are doing their best to breed a plague in the heart of their principal fortification. Kars is only thirty miles from Gumri," he added, "if this place were to fall, the whole of Asia Minor would follow.""Do the Armenians in this town like the Russians?" I now inquired."Not at all," said the doctor. "Only seven months ago the Grand Duke Michael visited Gumri, the Russian frontier fortress. When he was there he inspected the Armenian schools, and made a speech to the girls in one of these institutions. After a few remarks about theprogress they were making, the Grand Duke concluded his discourse by addressing their mothers in these words, 'Rappelez-vous bien que le lait avec lequel vous nourrissez vos enfants doit être le lait Russe.' The Armenians are immensely vain of their nationality. This speech of the Grand Duke incensed them very much against him. The Russian prince made himself still more unpopular a few days later," continued the doctor. "In the course of a visit to the master of one of the Armenian schools, he observed some pictures in the schoolroom. 'What pictures are these?' he inquired. 'They are likenesses of some of the former kings of Armenia,' replied the schoolmaster. 'You have no right to have any portraits here save those of the Tzar and of the members of the Imperial family,' said the Grand Duke, 'you shall go to prison.'"An Armenian gentleman entered the room; he corroborated everything that the doctor had said, and presently remarked that many years ago the Emperor Nicholas had given the Patriarch Mateos a document in which the Tzar granted full religious liberty to all Armenians in Russia. "Our Patriarch kept this deed always on his person," continued the speaker. One day he died very suddenly, and under rather suspicious circumstances. His successor searched everywhere forthe document, but could not find it. At length he discovered a copy: he then wrote to the authorities in Tiflis, and asked for a fresh paper. His request was refused, and at the same time he was informed that no such religious liberty had ever been granted to the Armenians.""Is it true that the Russian authorities do not permit the Mohammedans to leave the Tzar's dominion?" I now inquired."Yes," said the doctor; "a very few months ago a case came under my own observation. Some Mohammedans wished to leave Russia and escape to Turkey; as they were passing the border-line, a band of Cossacks fired upon them. They continued their flight, but three children had been wounded and were afterwards treated in the hospital at Kars."As I copy the above lines from my note-book, I cannot help thinking of some few Clergymen of the Church of England who, secretly hankering after the superstitions attached to the Greek faith, put themselves forward as champions of Holy Russia. But we need not be surprised. Those people who are so deadened to a sense of right and wrong as to imagine that they are doing God service by instilling into the ears of our wives and children sentences from the foul pamphlet entitled "The Priest in Absolution," can readily bring themselvesto believe that killing pregnant women,[19]and flogging Christian women and children,[20]to make them change their religion, is justifiable on the part of the Russian Government. Priests like these would gladly re-establish the Inquisition in our midst. They could defend the massacres of St. Bartholomew, if the victims had been Mohammedans; and on the seventh day of the week they stand up in their pulpits and preach the doctrine of peace by advocating the extermination of the Turks.The above-mentioned way of treating Mohammedan little children is no novelty on the part of the Tzar's soldiery. Colonel Lake, in his work, the "Defence of Kars," remarks that, "brought up as savages from their infancy, some of these Cossacks will not scruple to commit the most barbarous actions. As an instance of this, on one occasion, during the earlier period of the blockade, a party of them made a dash at a small village by the river side called Karaba Kilissa, and though the inhabitants offered not the slightest opposition to them, they beat a little boy, twelve years of age, very cruelly with their whips, and finally shot him—the ball passing through his thigh and breaking the bone. It was heart-rending to see the poor old mother weeping over her dying child.He was packed up in anaraba, or country cart, and sent down to the hospital, where he was attended by Dr. Sandwith. Every possible care was taken of the little sufferer, but he died under the amputation of the shattered limb.We were told a few months ago by the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, M.P., that Russia was the father of the fatherless; judging from the way she has treated these Mohammedan children, it would not put her to much expense to provide for a numerous family.It was a goodly spectacle this Holy Russia putting herself forward last autumn as the Champion of the Bulgarians, after she had done her best to foment[21]the disturbances which led to the massacres in their country. It may be refreshing to some of the believers in Muscovite philanthropy if I recall to their recollection what took place very recently in Central Asia."Kill the Turkomans, kill them all!" was General Kauffmann's order during the Khivan campaign."I suppose you mean in the Circassian style," was the dry remark of an old colonel, well acquainted with the Russian manner of making war upon the Circassians."Yes; kill them all! Spare neither age nor sex! Let none escape!"Circassian[22]pregnant women cut to pieces!—does this go for nothing in the eyes of those gentlemen who called out for vengeance on the Circassians in Bulgaria? Circassian children butchered by Russian soldiery!—is this nothing to two clergymen of the Church of England, who denounced in the strongest language an imaginary atrocity of the Turks?Are these things nothing to the Right Hon. W. Gladstone, M.P., who, writing last autumn about a friendly power, remarked, "What seems now to be certain in this sense (besides the miserable daily misgovernment, which, however, dwindles by the side of the Bulgarian horrors) are the wholesale massacres—"Murder most foul, as in the best it is;But this most foul, strange, and unnatural!"[23]the elaborate and refined cruelty—the only refinement of which Turkey boasts!—the utter disregard of sex and age—the abominable and bestial lust—and the entire and violent lawlessness which still stalks over the land."Two wrongs do not make one right. This isan old saying and a true one. The atrocities committed by the Russians in the Caucasus are no excuse for those perpetrated by the Circassians in Bulgaria; but the Circassians are Mohammedans, the Muscovites profess the doctrines of Christ. Why was the author of the Bulgarian horrors silent when his own officials reported the crimes of the Russian soldiery? We have been told that Russia is the torch-bearer of civilization, and our military attaché at St. Petersburg, Captain and Lt.-Col. Wellesley, has stated that he believes the Muscovite soldiers are incapable of the atrocities laid to their charge. Mr. Gladstone has quoted this officer as an authority.It may be that our military attaché is ignorant of what took place during the Crimean war. He was a child in petticoats at the time. But Mr. Gladstone cannot assign extreme youth in his own case as an excuse for bad memory. He was a member of the Cabinet, and, as such, had access to all official despatches. Let me ask him if he can remember the circumstances under which many of our officers and soldiers met their death at the battle of Inkerman, and when they were lying helpless on the field? Does he know how Captain the Hon. Henry Neville, of the 3rd battalion of Grenadier Guards, was butchered? andhow Captain Sir Robert Newman, Bart., shared the same fate? Does he know how poor Disbrowe of the Coldstreams was tortured?Possiblyall these things have escaped from his memory, but the Cabinet to which he belonged did not forget them at the time.A Court of Inquiry[24]was held in the Crimea. It investigated the accusations made against the Russian troops. The proceedings of this Court of Inquiry, accompanied by a despatch, were forwarded by Lord Raglan to the authorities at home. In these papers will be found the names of many British officers and privates who were proved to have been brutally massacred—by the Russian soldiers—when imploring mercy, and helpless owing to their wounds. Such horror was created in the minds of some of the Cabinet, that one of its members, the War Minister, the late Duke of Newcastle, alluded to the matter on the 12th of December, 1854, in the House of Lords, as follows. I give his own words:—"The enemy which our men met were not content with the legitimate use of their weapons, but had the BARBARITY, THE ATROCIOUS VILLAINY, I will call it, TO MURDER INCOLD BLOOD THE WOUNDED SOLDIERS AS THEY LAY HELPLESS ON THE FIELD; AND not the ignorant serfs alone did that, but MEN HOLDING THE POSITION OF OFFICERS. Our men have had to fight the savage and uncivilized Kaffirs, but in no instance have THEY EXPERIENCED SUCH BARBARISM AS WITH THE RUSSIAN SOLDIERS!!!!"A number of families in Great Britain were in mourning after Inkerman. Many old fathers and mothers thought that their sons had been killed in fair fight. They have been deceived. The proceedings of the Court of Inquiry were in the War Office this summer. I challenge the author of the Bulgarian horrors to ask the Government to lay these papers, with Lord Raglan's and Marshal Canrobert's despatches relating to them, on the table of the House of Commons. It is to be hoped that he will do so. The British public would then be able to judge for itself what sort of men the Russians are, and how thoroughly Russia merits the terms—The Torch-bearer of Civilization and the Protector of the Unprotected—which have been applied to her by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone and the Right Hon. Robert Lowe.
The garrison of Kars—Dr. Lanzoni—A probable outbreak of typhus—The two Pachas—Whose fault is it?—If God wills it, there will be no Cholera—If God wills it, the Russians will not come here—The hospitals full of men suffering from typhus fever—The International Commission—The Grand Duke Michael—Gumri—The Armenians and their nationality—The speech of the Grand Duke—The Master of the Armenian school—You shall go to prison—The Emperor Nicholas—Religious liberty granted to Armenians in Russia—The document—The Patriarch's death—Suspicious circumstances—Cossacks firing upon Mohammedans—Three children wounded—Clergymen of the Church of England—Hankering after the idolatrous practices of the Greek faith—Wolves in sheep's clothing—Colonel Lake—A little boy shot by the Cossacks—Russia the father of the fatherless—The Right Hon. R. Lowe, M.P.—The Author ofthe Bulgarian horrors—English officers and soldiers massacred in the Crimea—The Court of Inquiry—The Duke of Newcastle's speech—Russian officers butchering the English wounded.
There were at the time of my visit to Kars about 20,000 troops quartered in and about the town; but large reinforcements could be sent from Erzeroum should occasion arise for their services. Laterin the day Dr. Lanzoni, of the Quarantine, called upon me; he is an Italian, and in the International Service. On my alluding to the state of the streets in Kars, he remarked that he had written twice to the authorities at Constantinople, but that no notice had been taken of his letters. "We shall have an outbreak of typhus or plague in the summer," continued the doctor. "The mortality will be very great, if we are besieged before the filth is cleared away."
The civil governor entered the room. He joined in the conversation.
"It is the fault of the military Pacha," he observed. "The soldiers have made this mess in the streets, and the military Pacha thinks that the civilians in the town ought to clear it up. I have told him that this work ought to be done by the troops, but he says that the soldiers are the Padishah's servants, and that their duty is to fight, and not to be scavengers."
"What have you done about the matter?" I inquired.
"We have written to Constantinople," replied the governor.
"How long does it take for a letter to go there?"
"About three weeks."
"Yes," said the doctor, "three weeks to go, and three weeks to return, in all six weeks, withoutconsidering the delay there will be in answering the communication. We may have the cholera here long before that time."
"If God wills it, there will be no cholera," said the Pacha.
I interrupted him, "You are strengthening your garrison?"
"Yes."
"You will repair the fortifications?"
"Yes."
"You are supplying the troops with Martini-Peabody rifles at a great expense to your Government?"
"Yes."
"Well," I continued, "why are you doing this?"
"On account of the Russians," said the Pacha, "but why do you ask me these questions?"
"Because if God wills it, the Russians will not come here, and if He has decreed that Kars is to fall, nothing that you can do will prevent that event taking place."
"Then you think that armies are useless?" said the Pacha.
"No, but you would seem to hold that opinion, for you do not take the trouble to have the streets cleared, and say, if God wills it so, that there will be no epidemic."
"Allah is all-powerful. He knows everythingthat has happened and that will happen," said the governor devoutly. "We are all dust in His sight. If we have the cholera in Kars, it will be the military Pacha's fault."
Shortly afterwards my visitor left the room.
"I am very glad you spoke to him as you did," said the doctor. "Our hospitals are full of men suffering from typhoid fever; more than 10 per cent. of the poor fellows do not recover. This is a case in which the European powers ought to interfere," continued the speaker. "I am a quarantine officer, and am paid by the International Commission. It is my duty to prevent the cholera or any other infectious disease being brought from the East, but these Turks are doing their best to breed a plague in the heart of their principal fortification. Kars is only thirty miles from Gumri," he added, "if this place were to fall, the whole of Asia Minor would follow."
"Do the Armenians in this town like the Russians?" I now inquired.
"Not at all," said the doctor. "Only seven months ago the Grand Duke Michael visited Gumri, the Russian frontier fortress. When he was there he inspected the Armenian schools, and made a speech to the girls in one of these institutions. After a few remarks about theprogress they were making, the Grand Duke concluded his discourse by addressing their mothers in these words, 'Rappelez-vous bien que le lait avec lequel vous nourrissez vos enfants doit être le lait Russe.' The Armenians are immensely vain of their nationality. This speech of the Grand Duke incensed them very much against him. The Russian prince made himself still more unpopular a few days later," continued the doctor. "In the course of a visit to the master of one of the Armenian schools, he observed some pictures in the schoolroom. 'What pictures are these?' he inquired. 'They are likenesses of some of the former kings of Armenia,' replied the schoolmaster. 'You have no right to have any portraits here save those of the Tzar and of the members of the Imperial family,' said the Grand Duke, 'you shall go to prison.'"
An Armenian gentleman entered the room; he corroborated everything that the doctor had said, and presently remarked that many years ago the Emperor Nicholas had given the Patriarch Mateos a document in which the Tzar granted full religious liberty to all Armenians in Russia. "Our Patriarch kept this deed always on his person," continued the speaker. One day he died very suddenly, and under rather suspicious circumstances. His successor searched everywhere forthe document, but could not find it. At length he discovered a copy: he then wrote to the authorities in Tiflis, and asked for a fresh paper. His request was refused, and at the same time he was informed that no such religious liberty had ever been granted to the Armenians."
"Is it true that the Russian authorities do not permit the Mohammedans to leave the Tzar's dominion?" I now inquired.
"Yes," said the doctor; "a very few months ago a case came under my own observation. Some Mohammedans wished to leave Russia and escape to Turkey; as they were passing the border-line, a band of Cossacks fired upon them. They continued their flight, but three children had been wounded and were afterwards treated in the hospital at Kars."
As I copy the above lines from my note-book, I cannot help thinking of some few Clergymen of the Church of England who, secretly hankering after the superstitions attached to the Greek faith, put themselves forward as champions of Holy Russia. But we need not be surprised. Those people who are so deadened to a sense of right and wrong as to imagine that they are doing God service by instilling into the ears of our wives and children sentences from the foul pamphlet entitled "The Priest in Absolution," can readily bring themselvesto believe that killing pregnant women,[19]and flogging Christian women and children,[20]to make them change their religion, is justifiable on the part of the Russian Government. Priests like these would gladly re-establish the Inquisition in our midst. They could defend the massacres of St. Bartholomew, if the victims had been Mohammedans; and on the seventh day of the week they stand up in their pulpits and preach the doctrine of peace by advocating the extermination of the Turks.
The above-mentioned way of treating Mohammedan little children is no novelty on the part of the Tzar's soldiery. Colonel Lake, in his work, the "Defence of Kars," remarks that, "brought up as savages from their infancy, some of these Cossacks will not scruple to commit the most barbarous actions. As an instance of this, on one occasion, during the earlier period of the blockade, a party of them made a dash at a small village by the river side called Karaba Kilissa, and though the inhabitants offered not the slightest opposition to them, they beat a little boy, twelve years of age, very cruelly with their whips, and finally shot him—the ball passing through his thigh and breaking the bone. It was heart-rending to see the poor old mother weeping over her dying child.He was packed up in anaraba, or country cart, and sent down to the hospital, where he was attended by Dr. Sandwith. Every possible care was taken of the little sufferer, but he died under the amputation of the shattered limb.
We were told a few months ago by the Right Hon. Robert Lowe, M.P., that Russia was the father of the fatherless; judging from the way she has treated these Mohammedan children, it would not put her to much expense to provide for a numerous family.
It was a goodly spectacle this Holy Russia putting herself forward last autumn as the Champion of the Bulgarians, after she had done her best to foment[21]the disturbances which led to the massacres in their country. It may be refreshing to some of the believers in Muscovite philanthropy if I recall to their recollection what took place very recently in Central Asia.
"Kill the Turkomans, kill them all!" was General Kauffmann's order during the Khivan campaign.
"I suppose you mean in the Circassian style," was the dry remark of an old colonel, well acquainted with the Russian manner of making war upon the Circassians.
"Yes; kill them all! Spare neither age nor sex! Let none escape!"
Circassian[22]pregnant women cut to pieces!—does this go for nothing in the eyes of those gentlemen who called out for vengeance on the Circassians in Bulgaria? Circassian children butchered by Russian soldiery!—is this nothing to two clergymen of the Church of England, who denounced in the strongest language an imaginary atrocity of the Turks?
Are these things nothing to the Right Hon. W. Gladstone, M.P., who, writing last autumn about a friendly power, remarked, "What seems now to be certain in this sense (besides the miserable daily misgovernment, which, however, dwindles by the side of the Bulgarian horrors) are the wholesale massacres—
"Murder most foul, as in the best it is;But this most foul, strange, and unnatural!"[23]
"Murder most foul, as in the best it is;But this most foul, strange, and unnatural!"[23]
"Murder most foul, as in the best it is;
But this most foul, strange, and unnatural!"[23]
the elaborate and refined cruelty—the only refinement of which Turkey boasts!—the utter disregard of sex and age—the abominable and bestial lust—and the entire and violent lawlessness which still stalks over the land."
Two wrongs do not make one right. This isan old saying and a true one. The atrocities committed by the Russians in the Caucasus are no excuse for those perpetrated by the Circassians in Bulgaria; but the Circassians are Mohammedans, the Muscovites profess the doctrines of Christ. Why was the author of the Bulgarian horrors silent when his own officials reported the crimes of the Russian soldiery? We have been told that Russia is the torch-bearer of civilization, and our military attaché at St. Petersburg, Captain and Lt.-Col. Wellesley, has stated that he believes the Muscovite soldiers are incapable of the atrocities laid to their charge. Mr. Gladstone has quoted this officer as an authority.
It may be that our military attaché is ignorant of what took place during the Crimean war. He was a child in petticoats at the time. But Mr. Gladstone cannot assign extreme youth in his own case as an excuse for bad memory. He was a member of the Cabinet, and, as such, had access to all official despatches. Let me ask him if he can remember the circumstances under which many of our officers and soldiers met their death at the battle of Inkerman, and when they were lying helpless on the field? Does he know how Captain the Hon. Henry Neville, of the 3rd battalion of Grenadier Guards, was butchered? andhow Captain Sir Robert Newman, Bart., shared the same fate? Does he know how poor Disbrowe of the Coldstreams was tortured?Possiblyall these things have escaped from his memory, but the Cabinet to which he belonged did not forget them at the time.
A Court of Inquiry[24]was held in the Crimea. It investigated the accusations made against the Russian troops. The proceedings of this Court of Inquiry, accompanied by a despatch, were forwarded by Lord Raglan to the authorities at home. In these papers will be found the names of many British officers and privates who were proved to have been brutally massacred—by the Russian soldiers—when imploring mercy, and helpless owing to their wounds. Such horror was created in the minds of some of the Cabinet, that one of its members, the War Minister, the late Duke of Newcastle, alluded to the matter on the 12th of December, 1854, in the House of Lords, as follows. I give his own words:—
"The enemy which our men met were not content with the legitimate use of their weapons, but had the BARBARITY, THE ATROCIOUS VILLAINY, I will call it, TO MURDER INCOLD BLOOD THE WOUNDED SOLDIERS AS THEY LAY HELPLESS ON THE FIELD; AND not the ignorant serfs alone did that, but MEN HOLDING THE POSITION OF OFFICERS. Our men have had to fight the savage and uncivilized Kaffirs, but in no instance have THEY EXPERIENCED SUCH BARBARISM AS WITH THE RUSSIAN SOLDIERS!!!!"
A number of families in Great Britain were in mourning after Inkerman. Many old fathers and mothers thought that their sons had been killed in fair fight. They have been deceived. The proceedings of the Court of Inquiry were in the War Office this summer. I challenge the author of the Bulgarian horrors to ask the Government to lay these papers, with Lord Raglan's and Marshal Canrobert's despatches relating to them, on the table of the House of Commons. It is to be hoped that he will do so. The British public would then be able to judge for itself what sort of men the Russians are, and how thoroughly Russia merits the terms—The Torch-bearer of Civilization and the Protector of the Unprotected—which have been applied to her by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone and the Right Hon. Robert Lowe.