THE ATROCITIES IN BULGARIA.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4879, 10 November 1876, Page 3

THE ATROCITIES IN BULGARIA.

The Daily News published another letter from a special correspondent. HAFIZ PASHA’S REVENGE. After describing the Bulgarian rising in Hanigurishti, and the involuntary part taken in it by the girl Raika, who has been nicknamed “ Queen of the Bulgarians,” the correspondent proceeds to describe Hafiz Pasha’s revenge on the village of the insurgents. It. would seem that the insurgents only had about 100 men armed with muskets or rifles, the rest h d only knives or pistols that before these troubles were worn by everybody. One hundred and fifty of the best armed had gone out ott one road towards Matar Bazardjik to dispute the way, and 100 ou the other,road, for it seems they did not have spies, but to see by which way the army would come. When Hafix Pasha arrived, be found only 100 men to oppose him ; and these, frightened at the great superiority of the force brought against them, ran away at the first fire. It does not even appear that they fired off their guns, for there was not a single Turk killed or wounded. The inhabitants, panic-stricken, had in the meantime attempted to fly ; but the town had already been surrounded, and they were either driven back or out down in the fields. I had forgotten to state that at the approach of the Bashi-Bazouks, the inhabitants of eight or nine neighboring villages, fear-stricken, had abandoned their homes and taken refuge here, to the number of five or six thousand, and they now filled tho streets crying and screaming with fright. As all resistance had now ceased, or rather as none had really been offered, Hafiz Pasha had nothing to do but march into the town, arrest tho leaders of the insurrection, and restora order. Instead of this, however, he brought up his artillery, and, without summoning the place to surrender, commenced a bombardment, ruthlessly throwing the bursting shells into tho. crowds of shrieking women and children. Until midnight the din of the bombardment resounded through tho streets, Hafiz Fa»ba was offering himself a concert. The hoarse roar of the cannon, the streaming of shells, tho earsplitting explosions, mingled with the feeble wail of women and children, made sweet music to his ears, and ho prolonged the entertainment. Ho wished to see it by night lit up by the fires of burning houses, and the globes of flame that leapt from the mouths of bis cannon. It was a safe and harmless kind of amusement There were no stern-eyed men there to give him back ball for ball and shell for shell, but only women and children, who answered with shrieks and groans, and he continued the joyous concert until midnight Then the loud-mouthed dogs ’of war ceased their clamor; they had done their work; it was now tho turn of the sabre. THE SLAUGHTER. During the night and the next morning the troops and the Bashi-Bazouks ■ entered tho place, anjl then began a scene of pillage, violence, and massacre only .equalled by tho Balak. .Neither ago nor sox were; spared. The town was pillaged then fired; about onefourth of the houses wore burnt; people were out down in the streets on their own door-stops,: slaughtered on their own hearth-stones. Old men and women boggod for mercy, and children and Infants, screaming in terror, perished alike' between the. swift and certain sabre. It fa

thought that three thousand people were killed in this place alone, of whom about four hundred were inhabitants of the towns, and the rest from, neighboring villages, who had taken refuge hero.' But we were not greeted here with the scenes of horror that awaited us at Bataki. Hafiz Pasha, unlike Achmet Agha, had sense’enough to have , the bodies buried within the following three’ days, and thus to cover up his tracks. It has been, repeated again and again that these acts were perpetrated by the Bashi-Bazouks only, and not by tbe regular troops. Now, as it happens wherever there were any regular troops to commit they rivalled the BashiBazouks in atrocity. Here, as Mr. Schuyler will show in his report, regular.and irregular troops were equally cruel, pitiless, and ferocious, and Hafiz Pasha is no less guilty than Achmet Agha. The reason is simple, they are all Turks alike, and there is nothing to choose between them. THE QUEEN OP THE BULGARIANS. , And the “Queen of the Bulgarians,” the young schoolmistress, what became of her ? Alas ! her fate was only that of hundreds of others. I could not ask her to relate, all the story of her misfortunes, - It was too plainly written in the pale, dejected, though . still gentle and sympathetic face. But we saw a woman in Otlukkui who was present when she fell into the hands of three or four. BashiBazouks. Yes, this educated, intelligent, sensitive young girl was seized and outraged in the presence of half-a-dozen of her comrades and neighbors by three or four brutes, who still pollute the earth with their vile existence. But this was not enough. Her father wax shot down in his own house, and she and her mother dug his grave in their garden and buried him, and 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 Mudir had been sent to the village in the meantime, and he took her to his house at ten o’clock at night, with the woman at whose house, the flag had been worked—the tall, stalwart women of. which 1 have spoken in the beginning of this letter. She 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 upon, arid 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 TatorBazardjik. Here she was surrounded by the Turkish population, hooted, jeer-d, pelted with mud, spat upon, and insulted with the foulest epithets a Turkish mob could find. It mattered not that she was one poor weeping girl all alone among a crowd of enemies—fiends rather than men. There is no pity in the breasts of these savages. Then fainting, insensible, she was thrown into a cart, sent off to Philippopolis, thrown into prison there, and kept on b'-ead and water until the arrival of Mr. Schuyler. Then she was set at liberty, all shattered in health, and broken hearted.