The Bulgarian Massacres

Te Aroha News, Volume III, Issue 130, 28 November 1885, Page 6

The Bulgarian Massacres

The re-opening of the Eastern Question has revived the recollection of the horrible atrocities which were reported to have been perpetrated in Bulgaria in the spring of 1876. It was in the neighbourhood of Philippopolis, the scene of the recent bloodless revolt, that the worst of these massaores occurred. The "Daily News" began to publish statements about them in June of 1876. Soon after more detailed accounts were furnished by a special correspondent despatched to the spot, the late Mr J. A. MacGahan. Mr MacGahati's descriptions were called in question at the time ; but the, disclosures of Mr Eugene Schuyler, then Secretary of the American Legation at Constantinople, and the sub ' sequent investigations of Mr Walter Baring, who was deputed by the English Government to report on this subject,' showed that Mr MacGahan had but slightly, if afc all, exaggerated the dreadful business. It may be interesting in view of the revolution in Eastern Roumelia, which geographically forms part of Bulgaria, to give the story as Mr MacGahan told it. The summary printed below is quoted from Mr T. P. O'Connor's " Life of Lord Beaconsfield." The " Daily News " was chief, if not first, among the public journals in publishing accounts of the atrocities in Bulgaria. Informed by Mr Pears, their correspondent in Constantinople, of what was going on, the proprietors of that paper despatched a special commissioner to investigate the facts f»n the pp it. The gentleman selected was the late Mr J, A. MacGahan. Never was there a happier choice for a journalistic task. And what was the story Mr MacGahan had to tell ? He had to tell that sixty or seventy villages had been burned ; that something like 15,000 people bad been slaughtered : that a large number of those dead were women and children ; that the bodies of men were flung to dogs ; that the women, and even the little children of both sexes, were subjected to the vilest outrages ; and that all those outrages were committed without anything like real provocation on the part of the Bulgarian?. In the course j of his inquiries MrMacGahan visited several 'of the villages in Bulgaria : he visited Raddovn, Otluk Kui or Panagurishti, Perustitza, Avrat-Alan, Klis3ura and Batak. And now let me give a brief summary of what he learned at each of those places. At Raddovo he found that of 160 houses, not one had been left standing. Ag the inhabitants had all fled before the arrival of the Turks, only twenty-two men had been killed, while all the women and children had escaped. And at Iladdovo, accordingly, the people had only to put up with the trifling inconvenience of trying to live without their houses, their furniture, or their means of existence. At Avrat-Alan he found that the people of the town, having surendered in time, were spared ; while 200 or 300 who were flying through the fields were killed ; and all the women in the place, with scarcely an exception, were violated by soldiers who were still reeking with the [ blood of a maesacre close by, of which I shall have to speak immediately. At Kliseura, not one of 700 houses wei-e left standing. The people were thus condemned to starvation, and besides thi*, though MacGahan does not note the fact, 250 people were killed. We have now gone through three villages : in two of those all the houses had been destroyed, and some hundreds of the inhabitants killed : in the third, the houses were not burned, but were plundered ; and while the men in the town were spared, about 250 in the fields were killed, and all the women were violated. Those are horrors sufficient to excite indig nation enough, but they appear as mere trifling incidents in comparison with the diabolical outrages which took place in other villages. At Otluk-Kui a rieing occurred on the 2nd of May ; ten days afterwards, Hafiz Pacha, with regulars, BashiBazouke, and two or three pieces of artillery, arrived before the place. The insurrection immediately collapsed, one body of the insurgents — who were 250 in all — having fled, and the other taken a wrong direction. There was, therefore, nothing for Hafiz i Pasha to do but to enter the town and take possession. Instead of doing that, he bombarded the place without asking it to ?urrender—a fate which was the more terrible because the ordinary population had been increased by 5,000 or 6,000 refugees from neighbouring villages. Till midnight of the 12th the bombardment continued. " Then the loud-mouthed dogs of war ceased their clamour ; they had done their work ; it was now the turn of the sabre." Turing the night and the following morning the soldiers entered the town : it was pillaged and then fired ; neither age nor sex was spared, and 3,009 people— men, womeD, and children - were killed. Scarcely a woman in the place appeared to have escaped outrage. ' ' Mothers were outraged in the presence of their daughters ; young girls in the presence of their mothers, of their sisters and brothers." A girl of ten years was violated, another of twelve ; and of a dozen of girls from twelve to fifteen years old, two were outraged and killed, and the remainder outraged. A young girl of sixteen was outraged by three or four Baahi-Bozouks in the presence of her father, who was aged and blind, and then was killed by the same bullet as she was endeavouring to save the old man's life. Perustitza consisted of 350 houses, and had 2,000 or 2,500 inhabitants. According to the account which the people themselves gave to MrMacGahan, they applied several times for the protection of regular troops to Aziz Pacha, without avail. Achmet-Aga meantime offered tiiem the protection of Bashi-Bazouks ; but having Borne natural distrust of such shepherds, they refused assistance, and in consequence of some circumstances that were in dispute, killed the two bearers of this message. The villagers now prepared for defence, making one of their churches their citadel. On Tuesday morning, May 11, the BashiBazouks appeared. Some of the people went out, gave up their arms, and were killed. Some fled to the fields, and, when ever overtaken by the Bashi-Bazouks, were killed. The remainder stuck to the church. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, the Bashi Bazouks employed themselves in pillaging and burning the surrounding villages, occasionally firing a shot at the church in which the villagers had taken refuge. Meantime the people remained in the church, so closely packed that it was impossible to lie down, terrified by the occasional shots and by the glare of the burning villages around. On the Thursday afternoon Aziz Pasha arrived with his regulars, and, according to MacGahan, before he had summoned the people to surrender bogan the bombardment of the church. The villagers were so panic-stricken that they fled to another oburch where they were less protected than before. Aziz Pasha bombarded this as he had bombarded the other church. The people had, meanwhile, sent messengers to him, asking for peace ; some of these were killed before they reached Aziz Pasha, others were killed on thqir way back. On the Friday night, when, this bombardment in the second church was taking place, at least two men, killed, their wives, anj \chijsren, and.,

On Saturday, at last, the people ;went out, and- were spared. :v Aboutl,ooo or 1,600 hadbeen killed. But all these horrors, great ast they are, sink into, insignificance ..beside those of 'Batak."' ' '* '' * ' While Mr MacGahan was at Pestera, a number "of» people crowded round' the place where he was staying, whom at, .first he supposed to belong to the town itself j they turned out, however, to be fugitives from Batak. They came to tell the "strangers the story of the tragedy enacted in theirhome. The' fugitives whom he met at Pestera followed him and his companions in a procession to Batak. : As they approached the doomed village, they began to find signs of the great disaster ; they met mills that were silent, and they saw hillsides covered with over- ripe corn, rotting for want of hands to reap it. But such signs of ravage were soon forgotten in the sight that next met their eyes. On a slope overlooking the town they observed a number of dogs, which ran away angry at their approach ; and on going near, found these animals had been feasting on a large heap of dead. That heap, MacGahan afterwards found out, consisted of 200 young sjirls, who had been kept prisoners for some days, outraged, and finally beheaded ' " From my saddle," he writes, " I counted about a hundred skulls, nut including, those that were hidden beneath the others in the ghastly heap, nor those that were scattered far and wide through the fields." From this spot they looked down on the town. " Not a roof," not a " whole wall " was left standing ; and there came up to their ears " a low plaintive wail, like the ' keening ' of the Irish over their dead." They descended into the town ; they saw in the house's women wailing over their lost husbands, brothers, children, ' beating their heads and wringing their hands" "This was the explanation of the curious sound we had heard when upon the hill. As we advanced there were more and more ; some sitting on the heaps of stones that covered the floors of their houses ; othera walking up and down before their doors, wringing their hands and repeating the same dcs pairing wail As we proceeded, most of them fell into line behind us, and they finally formed a procession of four or five hnndred people, mostly women and children, who followed us about where ever we went with their mournful cries. Such a pound as their united voices sent up to heaven I hope never to hear again." As they passed on, they caw the corpse of a young girl not more than fifteen. " There was a large gash in the skull, to which a mass of rich brown hair nearly a yard long still clung, trailing in the dust." Next they saw "the skeletons of two children lying side by side," " with frightful sabre cuts in their little skulls;" as they approached the middle of the town, " bone?, skeletons, and skulls became more numerous " "There was not a house beneath the ruins of which we did not perceive human remains, and the street besides was strewn with them. Beforo many of the doorways women were walking up and down wailing their funeral chant. One of them dragged MasGahan to see the corpse of. a young girl." u I could only turn round," he says, " and walk out sick at heart, leavingheralone with her ekeleton." A few steps further, he saw another woman "rocking herself to and fro, and uttoring moans heartrending beyond anything I could have imagined." "Her head was buried in her hands, while her fingei'S wera unconsciouely twisting and tearing her hair as she gazed into her lap, where lay three little skulls with the hair atill clinging to them." They next came to the schoolhouse and the church. In the school "lay the bones and ashes of two hundred women burnt alive within those four walls" " Just beside the schoolhouse is a broad shallow pit. Here were burned a hundred bodies two weeks after the massacre." They entered the churchyard. The whole of the little churchyard was heaped up with dead bodies to the depth of several feet. "We were told that there were three thousand people lying here in this little churchyard alone, and we could well believe it." And of those three thousand, many, if not most, were women and children." Next they looked into the church. "What we saw there was too frightful for more than a hasty glance." An immense number of bodies had been partly burnt there, and the charred and blackened remains, that seemed to fill it half- way up to the low dark arches and make them lower and darker still, were lying in a state of putrefaction too frightful to look upon. I had never imagined anyhhing so horrible. We all turned away sick and faint, and staggered out of the fearful pest house glad to get into the street again." Everywhere throughout the town they saw similar scenes. "Skeletons of men with the clothing and fleah still hanging to and mtten together ; skulls of women, with the hair dragging in the dust, bones of children and infants everywhere." Here they were shown a house where twenty people had been burned alive ; another where twelve girls had been slaughtered, "as their bones amply testified. " What showed most plainly the completeness of the massacre was the desolation of entire families. An old woman told Mr MacGahan that she had three sons, who were all married, and had twelve children : of all those nineteen people, but this poor old woman remained. Out of another family of thirty-nine, only eight were left ; out of one twenty-five but seven ; of twenty, put eight." And, finally, Mac Gahan, estimating the entire loss of life, says that of " the eight or nine thousand people who made up the population of the place, there are only twelve or fifteen hundred left !" Such was the story told by Mr MacGahan.