CHAPTER IV

CONFLICTING NATIONAL ELEMENTS

The year 1903 will doubtless take an honorable place in history as a year of peace. Though there was one war cloud lowering on the horizon at its beginning and another at its close, yet for the breathing space of a twelvemonth nations ceased from strife. It does not follow that there was any talk of beating swords into ploughshares. On the contrary preparations for war as a safeguard of peace seemed to be the rule of the day with almost every nation. Moreover, while no official war was declared and none was in progress during the year, there were a number of revolutions, rebellions, and riots, more destructive of life and property, more horrible in outrage and cruelty, than regular warfare. Oppression, inhumanity, injustice, race hatred, religious prejudice, the jealous guarding of language and institutions, the hostility of "sullen, new-caught peoples" were causes of the year's conflicts.

The Macedonian Insurrection

Throughout the year there was little improvement in the Macedonian situation, which had been growing more and more intolerable for twenty years. The only progress made in the solution of the problem remained, at the close of the year, purely a nominal one. For while the Sultan was induced to accept in principal the nine points of Austro-Russian reform scheme outlined in Chapter II, it was perfectly clear that the proposals met with no honest nor earnest support either from the Turkish Government or from the revolutionary committees. Barbarity on the part of the Turkish troops continued, equalled by frenzied retaliation on the part of Macedonian rebels. Repeated revolutionary uprisings were promptly put down by military measures more and more drastic and terrifying.

Almost daily reports of Turkish atrocities appeared in the newspapers. The butchery that had been going on for two-score years

was unabated. A Frenchman who was on the scene in the early part of the year reported that throat-cutting was the pastime of the military in Macedonia. "Ten days before my arrival," he wrote, "there were found, not far from the village of Bresna, four Servian peasants with their heads cut off and their lungs drawn outside of their bodies, and in the village itself a child of fifteen years was shot in the shoulder and the chest. During my stop in this place a child's knee had been cut open by a saber in the hands of an Albanian, for no other reason than the very pleasure of the thing." At Monastir this correspondent purchased photographs of Turkish gendarmes exhibiting themselves in triumph with the heads of their victims. A consul of one of the great Powers stated positively to this correspondent that he knew of two hundred assassinations in the Uskub region, and it was believed that this was only about one-fifth of the actual occurrences.

Dr. E. J. Dillon, writing for the Contemporary Review, described scenes truly likened to "deadly visions from out the plague-polluted mist of hell.” Dr. Dillon ridiculed the idea that the Sultan would execute any of the reforms in the Austro-Russian note. The real answer of the Sublime Porte was the steady stream of Turkish troops poured into Macedonia, increasing an army of 57,000 in January to 200,000 in June. The best Turkish generals were appointed to the chief strategic positions in the country; Ali Riza Pasha, who served for several years in the Prussian army, was at the head of the Province of Monastir, and Mahmed Hafiz of the vilayet Uskub.

Other important witnesses to the atrocities in Macedonia were Madame Bakmetieff, the American wife of the Russian consul at Sofia, and M. Westman, the Russian Vice-Consul at Philippopolis, who made an official report. Madame Bakhmeditieff, who traveled about in the deep snow in zero weather to bring help to the fugitives, declared that two priests in the villages of Oranoff and Padesh were tortured` in a manner which suggested the story of St. Lawrence's death. They were not laid on gridirons, but they were hung over a fire and burned with red hot irons. In the village of Batshoff she saw thirty-two peasants almost beaten to death in the presence of the district chief. It was this same Madame Bakhmeditieff who presented the deplorable condition of affairs to the Russian Czar and Czarina, and impressed upon His Majesty the necessity for immediate interference.

M. Westman sent the startling results of his investigation to the foreign office in St. Petersburg. In his report he stated that a belt of territory thirty versts broad, running parallel to the frontier, typified the abomination of desolation. The churches had been defiled and the villages partly burned, while the inhabitants had fled. He declared that he saw women who had run away to save their honor and their lives huddled together almost naked in mountain fastnesses where the snow lay several feet deep. Forty women who reached Dubnicza and were cared for by Madam Bakhmeditieff were about to become mothers. Several were mutilated or disfigured, and the horrible marks of the red hot pincers with which they had been tortured were witnessed by all. A number of women testified that their daughters, children of from ten to thirteen, were torn from them by the Sultan's soldiers and subjected to nameless violence.

Incidents of the Insurrection

Insurrection broke out afresh in the early spring. During March various encounters took place between bands of insurgents and Turkish troops, accompanied by the burning of villages and the massacre of their inhabitants by both parties. The outrages at Salonica give an idea of the methods employed by the revolutionists to terrorize the country. On April 28, at eleven o'clock in the morning, when a French steamship, Guadalquivir, left the port of Salonica, there took place a terrible explosion, immediately followed by a fire which invaded every portion of the vessel. The forty passengers were saved, and the injured members of the crew were taken to the French hospital at Salonica. The dynamite bomb which caused the explosion was thrown by a passenger who was straightway arrested. The same evening dynamite was placed on the Salonica-Constantinople Railroad, but by great good fortune the explosive failed to ignite at the passage of the Constantinople express. On April 29 and 30, the gas was extinguished throughout the city, and bombs thrown in every direction by conspirators disguised as women and monks. One of these destroyed the Ottoman Bank, and by others many people were killed or wounded. Throughout the city there reigned a frightful panic. A report from the United States Minister at Constantinople stated that on this occasion the Turkish authorities held the Mohammedan population in check, and pre

REVOLUTIONARY MEASURES

109

vented them from retaliating for the outrages committed by the Christian population.

II

In the vilayet of Monastir revolutionary measures were especially bloodthirsty; assassinations of Turks and Bulgarians occurred with terrible frequency; railway bridges were blown up with dynamite, and preparations for a general uprising were rapidly pushed forward. A large mass meeting of Albanians was held to protest against the Austro-Russian program of reform; shortly afterward 3,000 Albanians made an attack on Mitrovitza which was repulsed by a Turkish garrison. The Russian consul, M. Stcherbina, was shot by an Albanian soldier and subsequently died of the wound. The insurrection was not confined to Christians; there was also a general uprising of Mohammedans. They were assisted by the Bashi-Bazouks. Many hundreds of Christians were killed and 150 villages of Monastir were burned to the ground. In July terrible outrages were committed by Turkish officials. on Bulgarians of both sexes in the Uskub vilayet.

III

Adrianople was the scene of the next uprising. On August 19 the revolutionary committees, encouraged by the presence of the Russian fleet on the coast of Roumelia, began frightful depredations. Telegraph wires were cut and over twenty Greek and Turkish villages were burned. Bands of insurgents appeared in adjoining parts of Macedonia, where they captured a number of Turkish posts, including the town of Krushevo. On August 27 the express train from Vienna to Constantinople was blown up by dynamite, killing a few passengers. In the same month there was a riot instigated by 600 armed Hintchakists in the district of Sasun, which was promptly quelled by the troops. In September an Hungarian passenger steamer was blown up by dynamite while en route from Varna to Constantinople. Several Turkish villages were burned and a few towns captured, though they were soon reoccupied by Turkish troops.

IV

Following every outrage committed by the revolutionaries were renewed cruelties by the Turkish soldiers. The capture of a Bulgarian. town, Smilevo, destroyed by the Turks and Bashi-Bazouks on August. 28, is an authenticated instance, and this is said to be but one instance

66

of ninety. An eye witness thus describes the horrors attendant upon the capture: 'Soldiers had come fresh from a defeat in the hills and had suddenly surrounded the flourishing village, setting fire to the outer ring of houses; then as the frightened inmates rushed into the streets the shooting began, and while the soldiers killed and tormented, the Bashi-Bazouks ransacked each house, igniting it when this work was done. Ah, how merrily they ran to and fro, screaming loudly as the circle of flames grew smaller! What sport to the soldiers, to kill slowly and with impunity! 'Tis verily better fun than being dynamited in the hills. They take the sword bayonets now for fear of shooting each other, and laugh as the pile of dead grows higher. Into the flames with the infants- it is good to hear the mothers shriek, and to cut them down as they run blindly at the butchers, armed only with their teeth and nails. Now it is enough; every house is in flames, and not a thing of value left the survivors. Some have run for the hills, a few of the men have escaped the shower of bullets, but most are dotting the wasted crops."

Measures for Punishing the Insurgents

By the end of September the insurrection had collapsed, but even after the organized revolt was suspended, Turkish military excesses continued unabated in various parts of the country. Nazir Pasha, the Turkish general in command, divided the insurrectionary district into sections to be driven simultaneously from different directions at the mercy of the relentless Albanian Bashi-Bazouks. A deliberate and systematic extermination of the peasantry was planned. All Christians of both sexes who failed to find refuge in the woods were put to the sword. Altogether in Macedonia and Adrianople at least a hundred villages were destroyed; fields were laid waste, the harvest was either uncut or burned, and the air was rank with the stench of putrid corpses. The prisons of Monastir were full of Bulgarian prisoners, and twelve hundred inhabitants of this province had been killed. Instances of fiendish cruelty on the part of Turkish officials were cited by the correspondents of the press of the capitals of Europe. After the insurrection in the Raslog district ceased, and the revolutionary bands disappeared, the reign of terror continued, the defenseless population being exposed to the vengeance of the authorities and Bashi-Bazouks.