TURKISH ATROCITIES IN BULGARIA.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 730, 21 October 1876, Page 3

TURKISH ATROCITIES IN BULGARIA.

The London correspondent of the Argxis writes You have already had full accounts of the awful massacres at Batak, a village which surrendered without firing a shot, Here is Mr Schuyler’s condensed account of what took place at Panagurishta or Otlukkiu, where the few insurgents had made a show of resistance. Apparently, no message to surrender was sent. “ After a slight oppo sition on the part of the insurgents the town was taken. Many of the inhabitants fled, but about 3000 were massacred, the most of them being women and children. Of these about 400 belonged to the town of Panagurishta, and the others to nine neighbouring villages, the inhabitants of which had taken refuge there. Four hundred buildings, including the bazaar, and the largest and best houses, were burned. Both churches were completely destroyed, and almost levelled to the ground, In one an old man was outraged on the altar, and afterwards burned alive. Two of the schools were burned, the third, looking like a private house, escaped. From the numerous statements made to me. hardly a woman in the town escaped violation and brutal treatment. The ruffians attacked children of eight and old women of eighty, sparing neither age nor sex. Old men had their eyes torn out and their limbs cut off, and were then left to die, unless some more charitably disposed man gave them the final thrust. Pregnant women were ripped open, and the unborn babes carried triumphantly on the points of bayonets and sabres, while little children were made to bear the dripping heads of their comrades. This scene of rapine, lust, and murder was continued for three days, when the survivors were made to bury the bodies of the dead. The perpetrators of these atrocities were chiefly regular troops commanded by Hafiz Pacha. The Turks claim, and the villagers admit, the death of fourteen Mussulmans, two of whom were women, who were killed with arms in their hands during a conflict with a party that refused to surrender to the insurgents.” The scenes that took place in this village and in many others are almost too horrible for description. The crimes that made Sodom and Gomorrah in famous were wrought upon the helpless popu lation. But the story must be told to understand the storm of indignation aroused, and the consequences that may ensue to tin Ottoman Empire. The Daily News cor re j poudent, who was with Mr Schuyler, givet l instances of fiendish cruelty more than I can repeat. Ho says, “ Not a woman in the place seems to have escaped outrage. The} all confess it openly. In other places outrages were committed so publicly and so generally that they feel it would be useless to try to hide their shame, and they avow it openly. Mothers were outraged in the presence of their daughters, young girls in the presence of their mothers, of their sisters,

and their brothers.” The same authority tells the story of a young schoolmistress, nicknamed “ The Queen of the Bulgarians,” who was beguiled into embroidering a flag for the insurgents. “ This educated, intelligent, sensitive young girl was seized and outraged in the ‘presence of half a dozen of her comrades and neighbours, by three or four brutes who still pollute the earth with their vile existence. But this was not enough. Her father was shot down in his own house, and she and her mother dug his grave in their garden and buried him. Still the poor girl had not suffered enough. The Turkish authorities heard that she had embroidered the flag, and two weeks after the insurrection was completely crushed, they ordered her arrest. A murdu had been sent to the village in the meantime, and he seized and took her to his house at ten o’clock at night, with the woman at whose house the flag had been worked. This woman told us what occurred in the mudir’s house that night. The poor girl, in spite of tears and prayers that might have moved a tiger to pity, was stripped naked, beaten, spat on, and again outraged. It was then that she was nicknamed “ Queen of the Bulgarians,” and the next day she and another woman, who had been likewise maltreated in even a more horrible way, were sent to Tatar Bazardjik. Here she was surrounded by the Turkish population, hooted, jeered, pelted with mud, spat upon, and insulted with the foulest epithets that a Turkish mob could find. It mattered not that she was one poor weeping girl alone among a crowd of enemies, fiends rather than men. There is no pity in the breasts of the savages. Then, fainting and insensible, she was thrown into a cart and sent off to Philippopolis, thrown into prison there, and kept on bread and water until the arrival of Mr Schuyler. Then she was set at liberty, ill, shattered in health, and broken hearted.

The horrors of Cawnpore, which years ago stirred all England, have been far surpassed in Bulgaria, I have told enough, but not a hundredth part of the story. These things, it must be remembered, are the outgrowth, not of sudden passion, but of years of sensual and corrupt government. The questions that now press for settlement lie outside the range of political parties. They are national although an effort is being made to reduce them to the level of party. It is unfortunate for Mr Disraeli that he should disappear into the House of Lords, and with the words of palliation on his lips, and no other declaration of policy than the vague and grandiose one that our first duty is to maintain the British Empire. The new-made earl has now had time to reconsider his position in the light of ascertained facts, and there is some danger of his earlier words being thrown back upon him with unjust vehemence in this great outburst of indignation. Conservatives are crying out loudly at the conduct of their leaders, and the clergy in particular. Last night, at a town meeting, held at Nottingham, the Conservative member read a letter from Mr Bourke, the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in which he stated that no men in England could be more indignant than the Prime Minister and Lord Derby, but that English statesmen are not Turkish rulers, and that the first duty of the Government is to look after English interests. Although they have exercised, and will exercise, their right of remonstrance with Turkey, whatever the fate of Servia, it is certain that no Government can long remain in office which supports the Porte in its present course. The country will not be satisfied with good advice which has no effect, and with promises that are never fulfilled.