The Turks declared that the Armenians made an attack on the Government House, and so the affair begun. This declaration was absolutely without foundation. There was no attack even contemplated by Armenians. The first man shot was an aged priest, who was at the Government House to present a complaint to the Governor. He had been robbed in his own house in the village of the Tivnig, and only got off with his life by giving a note for $500 for five days. He was an inoffensive old man, and would be the last man in the world to offer an attack. The attack was made by Moslems after leaving the mosques after the noon hour of prayer, and it was simultaneous all over the city.
A letter from Erzeroum said: “It is almost impossible for me to describe that which I have seen and heard. In Gurum everything which hellish ingenuity can devise has been done by the Turkish soldiers and Bashi-bazouks. All the Armenian villages are in ashes, and the smoke which is rising from the ruined houses gives the appearance of a volcanic eruption. Along the road between Trebizond and Erzeroum, at every step, mutilated bodies are lying. We are unable to leave our homes to bury the dead; unable to sleep. The whole city has taken on the aspect of a wild desert strewn with corpses. Hundreds of thousands of families are compelled to wander in rags, begging for their living. The same fate has befallen a few of the Europeans.”
The Erzeroum massacre started at the office of the Vali in the government building. An Armenian priest of Tevnik was in the building endeavoring to gain an audience with the Vali, when he was shot down by Turkish murderers. Then followed a horrible saturnalia of carnage, during which over one thousand Christians were slaughtered. After the butchery, the dead victims were dragged by the neck and heels into the cemetery and cast into a long, deep trench, not unlike the death pit of Geliguzan—the murdered fathers, mothers and sweet, innocent babes, all calm and peaceful in the sleep of death, flung down like carrion. Nothing more horrible or more pathetic could be imagined than that scene at the cemetery two days after the massacre. The spaces between the poor dead bodies were filled with the skulls and thigh-bones that had been taken by the sacrilegious Moslems from the old, upturned graves and then all were covered up together out of sight. The survivors dared not even express their grief.
Not less shocking was the news that came from Kaisarieh in that part of Asiatic Turkey known as Cappadocia, where a frightful massacre of Christians took place, accompanied by the outraging of women and the looting of the shops and houses. This was done in obedience to orders from Constantinople. Over one thousand were killed and the fury of the Kurds, not satiated with slaughter, vented itself in the mutilation of the inanimate bodies.
An extract from a paper on “The condition of Armenia” by E. J. Dillon will fitly close this chapter.
“The stories told of these Koordish Hamidieh officers in general, and of one of them, named Mostigo, in particular, seemed so wildly improbable, that I was at great pains to verify them. Learning that this particular Fra Diavolo had been arrested and was carefully guarded as a dangerous criminal in the prison of Erzeroum, where he would probably be hanged, I determined to obtain, if possible, an interview with him, and learn the truth from his own lips. My first attempt ended in failure; Mostigo being a desperate murderer, who had once before escaped from jail, was subjected to special restrictions, and if I had carried out my original plan of visiting him in disguise, the probability is that I should not have returned alive. After about three weeks’ tedious and roundabout negotiations, I succeeded in gaining the gaoler’s ear, having first replenished his purse. I next won over the brigand himself, and the upshot of my endeavors was an arrangement that Mostigo was to be allowed to leave the prison secretly, and at night, to spend six hours in my room, and then to be re-conducted to his dungeon.
“When the appointed day arrived the gaoler repudiated his part of the contract, on the ground that Mostigo, aware that his life was forfeited, would probably give the prison a wide berth if allowed to leave its precincts. After some further negotiations, however, I agreed to give two hostages for his return, one of them a brother Koord, whose life the brigand’s notions of honor would not allow him to sacrifice for the chance of saving his own. At last he came to me one evening, walking over the roofs, lest the police permanently stationed at my door should espy him. I kept him all night, showed him to two of the most respectable Europeans in Erzeroum, and, lest any doubt should be thrown on my story, had myself photographed with him next morning.
The tale unfolded by that Koordish noble constitutes a most admirable commentary upon Turkish régime in Armenia. This is not the place to give it in full. One or two short extracts must suffice.
“‘Now, Mostigo, I desire to hear from your own lips and to write down some of your wonderful deeds. I want to make them known to the “hat-wearers.”’ (Europeans).
“‘Even so. Announce them to the Twelve Powers.’ (The whole universe).