Paris received the larger number of those who fled from the clutches of Abdul the Damned. In the life of the French capital, some gave themselves up to the manifold dissipations which that city offers for her visitors. Others loosely organised, worked and watched for that better day, when the Turk should no longer be a byword among civilised peoples. A newspaper edited by Ahmed Riza was published and thousands of copies were smuggled into the dominions. Hundreds of thousands of pamphlets somehow passed the Turkish frontiers and found readers, though their possession if discovered meant imprisonment and degradation, but the “Young Turks” were undismayed.
Into the harems the new ideas crept. One read to the others during the long days, and the forbidden books passed from hand to hand, and from house to house. Women high in rank, the daughters of court officials, carried messages. Where a man seemed approachable on that side, some member of his harem was converted, or else some woman was placed in his way, even sold to him, perhaps. Dozens of women sold into the harems of prominent men went as apostles of the new faith. Women deliberately sacrificed their reputations, since free association with men, unless supposedly lovers, would have aroused suspicion.
The army became infected, the officers first. During 1907, the third army corps in Macedonia became thoroughly permeated. Of course the cruel autocrat knew something of all this, for his spies were everywhere, but he misjudged the extent. He had seen dissatisfaction and unrest before, and he had crushed them by sudden blows. Perhaps he was tired, and less acute than he had been twenty years before. At any rate he waited too long before taking vigorous action.
Early in 1908 he ordered the higher officers of the army to quiet the unrest. A beloved officer raised the standard of revolt in Macedonia, and the soldiers refused to fire upon the rebels. The Committee of Union and Progress, as the “Young Turk” movement was called, assumed charge of the revolt and demanded the restoration of the constitution, which the sultan refused. Agents were sent to enforce his commands, but they were forced to flee for their lives, and officers not in sympathy with the movement were threatened. Thoroughly alarmed by the defection of the army, the cowardly sultan pretended to yield and on July 24, 1908, the constitution was restored.
Too much perhaps was expected of the Parliament. The fanatical Moslem leaders spread rumours of every sort, and the sultan’s agents were everywhere active, distilling doubt and suspicion into the soldiers and populace. In April, 1909, the garrison at Constantinople rose, dispersed the Parliament, and the wily sultan seemed again in control. The army in Macedonia was still loyal to the new ideas, and was promptly mobilised. Within ten days Constantinople was again in control of the Young Turks.
Abdul Hamid was evidently not to be trusted. The die was cast. His deposition was voted by the reassembled Parliament, and his brother who had long been a prisoner was placed on the throne, though the Young Turks, warned by their mishap, kept an effective veto on reaction in the form of the army.
But the wily Abdul not only plotted to gain back his authority in Europe, but his agents fanned the flames of religious and racial hatred in Asia Minor. The Armenians were once a great nation, and though they have long been ground beneath the heel of the oppressor, they still cherish the idea that another great Christian nation will arise in Asia. They saw hope in the new régime and began to speak more freely, to exhibit pictures of their old kings, and to buy arms.
The fierce Turks, Kurds, Arabs and Circassians looked upon the presumption of the “Christian dogs” with rage. Meanwhile agents of the Mohammedan League were everywhere stirring passion to fever heat, and on Tuesday, April 13, 1909, the conflict began in Adana, though not until the next day was the fighting general. For three days the contest raged, when soldiers appeared and a semblance of order was restored. Similar scenes had taken place in Osmanieh, Hamedieh, while at Tarsus the Armenians stood like sheep to be slain.
On Sunday, April 25th, the slaughter again broke out at Adana. This time it was a massacre pure and simple, for the few Armenians who owned weapons had either fled, or else were almost without ammunition. Men, women, children were indiscriminately killed, houses were robbed and burned, until hardly a Christian home was left standing. Over the whole country fire and sword made a waste of what had been the home of a prosperous population. How many were killed can only be estimated. Some say thirty thousand. No estimate is less than half that number.
An investigation was set on foot by Parliament after the instigator of the massacre had been sent with eight of his wives to live a prisoner at Salonica. The commission reported that it had hanged fifteen persons—fifteen persons for slaying fifteen thousand.