The Balkan Trail

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Peto-the-Vlach was a picturesque character. He was thirty-five years of age, a native of Krushevo. He had been fighting the Turks for seventeen years. He was made prisoner in 1886 and exiled to Asia Minor. But benefiting by one of the frequent general amnesties he returned to Macedonia, rejoined the insurrectionary movement, and led the organisation of Krushevo and the neighbouring district.

At a conference of the leaders immediately prior to the Turkish attack, Peto declared that he would never surrender his town back to the oppressor; the others could escape if they would, the Turks could not again enter Krushevo except over his dead body. With eighteen men who elected to die with him, he took up a position by the main road and held it for five hours. It is said that he shot himself with his last cartridge, rather than fall into the hands of the Turks.

The natives put on their fezzes again, and a delegation of notables bearing a white flag went out to the camp of Bakhtiar Pasha to surrender the town. On their way they were stopped by the soldiers and bashi-bazouks and made to empty their pockets. Further on more Turks, whose rapacity had been less satisfied, demanded the clothes and shoes they wore. Arriving at headquarters of the general, situated on an eminence from which there was a full view of the proceedings, the representative citizens, left with barely cloth to cover their loins, offered a protest along with the surrender. Bakhtiar had their clothes returned to them, and told them he could do nothing with ‘those bashi-bazouks’—though beside him sat Adam Aga, a notorious scoundrel of Prelip, who had brought up the largest detachment of bashi-bazouks, and with whom, subsequently, Bakhtiar is said to have shared the proceeds of the loot.

The Turks entered the town in droves ready for their work, rushing, shouting, and shooting. The bashi-bazouks knew the town, its richest stores and wealthiest houses; they had dealt with the Vlachs on market day for years. They knew that the Patriarchist church was the richest in Macedonia. The carving on the altar was particularly costly, and there were rich silk vestments and robes, silver candlesticks and Communion service, and fine bronze crosses. They went to this church first. Its doors were battered down in a mad rush, and in a few minutes it was stripped by the frenzied creatures to the very crucifixes. Then a barrel of oil was emptied into it and squirted upon its walls; the torch was applied, and the first flames in the sack of Krushevo burst forth.

The Greek church was on the market place among the shops. The Turks who were not fortunate enough to get into the church went to work on the stores. Door after door was cut through with adzes, the shops rifled of their contents, and then ignited as the church had been. Two hundred and three shops and three hundred and sixty-six private houses were pillaged and burned, and six hundred others were simply rifled—because the petroleum gave out.

Some of the inhabitants escaped from their homes and fled into the woods. Turks outside the town met them and took from them any money or valuables they had, and good clothes were taken from their backs. A few pretty girls are said to have been carried off to the camps of the soldiers. But the Turks were mostly bent on loot. The people who remained in their homes were threatened with death unless they revealed where they had hidden their treasure. Infants were snatched from their mothers’ breasts, held at arm’s length, and threatened with the sword.

Krushevo, with its thrifty Wallachian population, was the wealthiest city in Macedonia. It was not many hours’ ride from the railway terminus at Monastir, and, for the purpose of making this journey, many of the Vlachs possessed private carriages. There were pack and draught animals and cattle to the number of many thousands. The Turks appropriated these, drove off the cattle in herds, and loaded the spoils from the stores and homes in the carriages and carts, and on the backs of the Vlachs’ pack-animals. Seven thousand animals were taken by the Turks—and not one went back.

This work went on for forty-eight hours. The first night was demoniacal. Three hundred houses were in flames, and dashing in and out among them were yelling fiends, firing rifles, slashing Christians who happened to be in their way, fighting among themselves, breaking in doors, splashing oil and firing houses, loading waggons and pack-animals. Money, jewellery, silver plate, linen, furniture, bedding, clothes, carpets went away to the Turkish villages in the neighbourhood.

Vlachs are rich and thrifty, Turks indolent and poor. They are pleased when the Sultan issues orders to suppress giaours.

Krushevo was built on rock in a slight depression in the top of a range of mountains. The houses were constructed solidly of stone, with thick slate roofs all cut from the mountain-side. Hilmi Pasha had explained to me that the ‘unfortunate’ conflagration was caused by the explosion of shells, which, he argued, any civilised nation would have employed in capturing the town. Every house in Krushevo was ignited individually. The gates of six hundred houses which suffered only pillage bore the hacks of adzes and axes. Soldiers and bashi-bazouks, holding hands—as Turks do—still lurked about with their adzes in their belts. On the walls, most of which still stood, stains of petroleum trailed down. I entered one house through which two cannon balls had passed. But there was not a mark of flame as a result.