The massacre took place in the early part of September, 1894. The following letter, written at Bitlis, September 26, 1894, gives the first evidence:
“The troops have been massed in the region of the large plain (of Moosh) near us. Some sickness broke out among them which took off two or three victims every few days.... I suppose that one reason for placing quarantine was to hinder the information as to what all these troops were about in that region. There seems little doubt that there has been in that region back of Moosh what took place in 1876 in Bulgaria. The sickening details are beginning to come in.”
“Bitlis, October 9, 1894.
“All these things (following facts) were related here and there by soldiers who took part in the horrible carnage. Some of them, weeping, claim that the Kurds did more, and declare that they only obeyed the order of others. It is said one hundred fell to each of them to dispose of. No compassion was shown to age or sex, even by the regular soldiery, not even when the victims fell suppliant at their feet. Six to ten thousand persons met such a fate as even the darkest ages of darkened Africa hardly witnessed, for there women and tender babes might at least have had a chance of a life of slavery, while here womanhood and innocency were but a mockery before the cruel lust that ended its debauch by stabbing women to death with the bayonet, while tender babes were impaled with the same weapon on their dead mother’s breast, or perhaps seized by the hair to have their heads lopped off with the sword.
“In one place, three or four hundred women, after being forced to serve vile purposes by the merciless soldiery, were hacked to pieces by sword and bayonet in the valley below. In another place, some two hundred weeping and wailing women begged for compassion, falling at the commander’s feet, but the bloodthirsty wretch, after ordering their violation, directed his soldiers to dispatch them in a similar way. In another place, some sixty young brides and more attractive girls were crowded into a church, and after violation were slaughtered, and human gore was seen flowing from the church door.
“At another place still, a large company under the leadership of their priest, fell down before them begging for compassion, and averring that they had nothing to do with the culprits (?). But, all to no purpose. All were called to another place, and a proposal was made to several of the more attractive women to change their faith, in which case their lives were to be spared. They said: ‘Why should we deny Christ? We are no more than these’ (pointing to the mangled form of their husbands and brothers). ‘Kill us too’; and they did so. A great effort was made to save one beauty, but three or four quarreled over her, and she sank down like her sisters.
“But why prolong the sickening tale? There must be a God in heaven who will do right in all these matters, or some of us would lose faith. One or more consuls have been ordered that way to investigate the matter. If the Christians, instead of the Turks, reported these things in the city of Bitlis, and the region where I have been touring, the case would be different. But now we are compelled to believe it.
“It seems safe to say that forty villages were totally destroyed, and it is probable that sixteen thousand at least were killed. The lowest estimate is ten thousand, and many put it much higher. This is allowing for more fugitives than it seems possible can have escaped.”[133]
It is useless now, after twenty-three years, to add the testimony of the eye-witnesses and fugitives to show the barbarity of the soldiers and officers of the sultan, who had been inadvertently encouraged to go on in his career of assassination by the declaration of Her Majesty’s government that the imprisonments, tortures and massacres of the Armenians were not attributable to their religious faith.
It appears from the following statement made by reliable persons that the sultan himself not only ordered the massacre, but he prepared an occasion for that deviltry. “To what extent Armenian agitation has provoked the terrible massacre it is difficult to determine. For a year or more there seems to have been an Armenian from Constantinople staying in the region as an agitator. For a long time he skilfully evaded his pursuers, but was at last caught and taken to Bitlis. He demanded to be taken to Constantinople and to the sultan, and it is said, he is now living at the Capital, receiving a large salary from the government. Evidently he has turned state’s evidence.” This mean creature, who ever he was, was an emissary of the Turkish government. He and his mission were not known to the officers at Bitlis. So he demanded that he should be taken to Constantinople, and to the sultan. There he was rewarded for the mischief that he was hired to do: he had paved the way for a great massacre.