As to the menacing character of the insurrection, there is cumulative evidence to that effect. On 13th May, Vice‐Consul Brophy, writing to Sir H. Elliot, says: “I have the honour to express to your Excellency my belief that the Bulgarian insurrectionary movement, commenced in the Caza of Philippopolis, will not be confined to that district. I have some reason for thinking that the plans of the insurgents embrace six centres of revolt, most of them in the high Balkan (Kodga Balkan, Stari Planina), in each of which localities depôts of arms—rifles, revolvers, etc.—ammunition, and provisions are hidden.”[92]
The cruelties practised by the insurgents on the Turks were also beyond all doubt. They were, moreover, in strict conformity with the practice and instructions of the insurgents in all similar risings. On 12th May, Mr Dupuis informs Sir H. Elliot: “The burning of Bellowa seems to have been attended with horrible cruelties to the small Turkish guard in charge of the place, which, being overpowered, was hacked to pieces by the Bulgarians. My informant adds that, shortly after this occurrence, a party of about a hundred and fifty well‐mounted and equipped insurgents, led by the priests, presented itself in the village, declaring, with crucifixes in hand, that that was the way to exterminate Islamism.”[93] Mr Sandison, the first dragoman of the English Embassy, writing to Sir H. Elliot on 11th July 1876, says, à propos of these cruelties: “I may here quote the testimony of the artist employed by the Illustrated London News, who in his travels through Bulgaria came across the body of a Turk who had been impaled and roasted by Bulgarians. Such acts could not but lead to reprisals, and to the consequent destruction of many thousand lives, as well as of a large number of villages, amongst which must also be included a good many Mussulman ones.”[94] Consul Reade reports from Rustchuk on 19th July (1876) that “Some Bulgarian insurgents one day seized two Mussulman women, whose breasts they cut off and then put them to death.”[95]
Vice‐Consul Calvert, writing from Philippopolis on 29th August 1876, says; “The Christian Commissioners, one of whom, Yovantcho Effendi, is himself a Bulgarian, state themselves to be satisfied that deeds of great atrocity on the part of the insurgents marked the commencement of the rising in May last, and that cruelties were designedly committed by the insurgents as being the means best calculated to bring on a general revolution in Bulgaria, by rendering the situation of the Christians, however peaceably inclined, so intolerable under the indiscriminate retaliation which the governing race was sure to attempt, as to force them in self‐defence to rise. Among other instances of this Blacque Bey mentioned to me that the Christian inhabitants of a village near Tirnovo related to him, how, at the beginning of the revolt, the insurgents had seized a wealthy Turk of the locality, beloved by Christians and Moslems alike, for his justice and benevolence, had buried him up to the waist in the earth, and then stoned him to death.”[96]
With reference to the invariable mode of procedure of the leaders of the insurrection for the very purpose of exciting reprisals, Sir H. Elliot, in a communication to Lord Derby, says: “The inhabitants of another village stated that at the beginning of the insurrection, they were told by the priests and the schoolmasters that the Turks were advancing, that they must leave this village or they would be killed by the Turks, and that those who objected were driven out by force. The Mussulmans who happened to be there were murdered; their number was differently estimated at twelve and thirty‐two; the village was then set on fire. The Mussulmans in the neighbourhood seeing part of the village in flames, went there and pillaged and burnt the remaining houses.”[97] The revolutionary agents from the Slav Committees had, since the recrudescence of their activity in the winter, been working zealously among the Bulgarians. On 4th May Sir H. Elliot, in acquainting Lord Derby with the movement at Otloukeuyi, says: “It was known that revolutionary agents were working actively among the Bulgarians, and that arms and ammunition have latterly been introduced in considerable quantities.”[98] They knew, too, pretty well what they were about and when to strike, so that reprisals could be most surely counted on. Consul Reade, from Rustchuk, informs (9th May) Sir H. Elliot: “I have also just heard of an event said to have occurred near Avrat Alan, which, if true, may bring on serious complications. It is said that a Circassian village in that vicinity has been burnt; if so, the Circassians, generally a lawless set, are sure to take their revenge, and this may severely tax the Government to put down, when once commenced.”[99] Prophetic words indeed! The revolutionary agents of the Committees found this work difficult in the face of the repressive measures taken. On the 16th May 1876 Consul Reade reports from Rustchuk: “Many of the revolutionary Bulgarians in Wallachia are said to be entering this vilayet, and some have already been discovered and arrested.”[100] Here, then, we have revolutionary agents coming from abroad and exciting the people already long worked upon by priests and schoolmasters brought up in Russia, to rise in rebellion and to commit every species of atrocity on the Mussulman population with the direct object of provoking them to reprisals, which could be exploited against them all over Europe. We have further the Consul of a friendly Power, one of the chief leaders of the insurrection, and the “Ambassador of the same friendly Power” at Constantinople, strongly counselling against the despatch of regular troops to districts where the Governor‐General urges the necessity of their presence, and when the Mussulman inhabitants, in their defence and under the impulse of panic and exaggerated fear of what was going to happen, without any regular force to protect them, arm irregular bands from any quarter they can procure them with, likely enough, not sufficient discrimination and examination as to their character, scenes are, no doubt, enacted, and atrocities committed, which every human being, be he Christian or Mahometan, would in cold blood deprecate and deplore.
As Sir H. Elliot says: “An insurrection or civil war is everywhere accompanied by cruelties and abominable excesses, and this being tenfold the case in Oriental countries where people are divided into antagonistic creeds and races, the responsibility and sin of those who incite a peaceful province to rise becomes doubly heavy, and they now endeavour to throw them upon others.”[101] Nobody outside Timbuctoo approves or condones cruelties, but the charge against the Ottoman authorities really amounts to their arming and employing irregular troops, Pomaks, Circassians, Gipsies, etc., over whom they could exercise very imperfect control. But as Mehemet Rushdi Pasha told the English Ambassador, “the emergency was so great as to render it indispensable at once to stamp the movement out by any means that were immediately available.”[102] Mehemet Rushdi himself, it will be remembered, only came into office after those acts had been committed. He was consequently in no way responsible, neither he nor Midhat, either for their commission or for the events that led up to them.
With reference to the Daily News article on Turkish atrocities, which started the agitation against Turkey in England, Sir H. Elliot, writing on the 25th July 1876, says: “I have reason to believe that the credulity of the correspondent of the Daily News, whose letters on the subject of the Bulgarian atrocities attracted so much attention in England, has been imposed upon by two Bulgarian relatives of one of the presumed ringleaders of the revolt, inhabiting Philippopolis. One of these was for a time editor of a Bulgarian journal in Constantinople, and it is evident that information derived from such a source can only be regarded as untrustworthy.”[103]
As the very aim and purpose of the insurrection was to create excitement and provoke hatred of the Turk in Europe, it is no wonder if the most monstrous exaggerations passed current as peremptory truths.
Sir H. Elliot, writing on 6th July, says: “The excesses committed in the suppression of the insurrection have unquestionably been very great, as was inevitable from the nature of the force which the Porte was, in the first emergency, obliged to employ, but it is equally certain that the details which have been given, coming almost exclusively from Russian and Bulgarian sources, are so monstrously exaggerated as to deprive them of much claim to much attention. Cases of revolting cruelty have been mentioned to me in such a circumstantial manner as to make it almost impossible to doubt this truth, but which proved, on investigation, to be entirely fictitious.... Turkish ministers deny that the cruelties have been on a scale at all approaching to what they are represented; they point out that the horrors committed on Turkish women and children are passed over in silence, and they plead that they had no alternative but to use the irregular force at their disposal to put down an unprovoked insurrection fomented from abroad, the authors of which are responsible for the sufferings which have been entailed upon both Christians and Mahometans.”[104]
Some of the fictions invented were quite picturesque and dramatic. These fictions and legends were not confined to Bulgaria, and Canon Liddon and a Rev. Mr MacColl carried off the palm for ingenious credulity. On the 2nd October 1876, Sir H. Elliot telegraphs to Her Majesty’s Consul at Bosnia Serai: “Canon Liddon and a friend, who went to Servia by the Bosnian frontier, state that they saw examples of revolting cruelties practised by Turkish officers of the regular army, who have impaled, at all military stations along the frontier, men and women. Report as to truth of these statements.” On the 5th inst. the startled Consul sends the following reply: “Everything known here would make statement in your telegram of 2nd inst. perfectly incredible, but for the name of your Excellency’s informant. I will write of this by next post.”[105] The statement of the distinguished ecclesiastic created a great sensation. It turned out, however, that he had obtained his information from passengers in a steam vessel on the Save, and that they had not travelled along the frontier at all, as Sir A. Buchanan, who first reported to Sir H. Elliot, had been led to believe. “The whole story, therefore,” adds Sir A. Buchanan, “probably resolves itself, as suggested by Mr Holmes, to heads or even bodies having been exposed on poles, as I have myself seen hanging in chains during the British Protectorate of Corfu.”[106] Mr Holmes, in his report, after demonstrating the absurdity of the story, politely adds: “Now, if Canon Liddon states that he saw what he describes, of course I can say nothing to the contrary; but if he has only been assured of these atrocities, it is most certain that he has been grossly deceived, with a view to make use of his voice and influence as a means of increasing and confirming public opinion in England, in the belief of the barbarous conduct attributed to the Turks, and in hostility to them.”[107] These reverend gentlemen had evidently been the victims of, as Mr Holmes further says, “a monstrous joke,” and he proceeds to explain the matter. “After much reflection, however, the matter is, I think, as clear as possible. Near most Bosnian farm‐houses there are stakes, such as Mr MacColl describes, around which the haricot beans ... are fixed up to dry with something above them to keep off the birds.... At the time of Mr MacColl’s voyage down the Save, it is probable that most of the beans had been garnered, but a portion might have been left on one of the stakes which attracted his attention. This, on being pointed out to some practical joker amongst the officers of the steamboat, with its accidental likeness to a body, together, perhaps, with the previous conversation of the travellers, suggested the hoax, which, on seeing that it was seriously accepted, was kept up till the end of the journey.”[108]