ConstantinopleSept. 30, 1895 500
Trebizond Oct. 8, 1895 1,100
Ak Hissar Oct. 9, 1895 45
Gumush Khana Oct. 11, 1895 350
Baiburt Oct. 13, 1895 800
Erzingian Oct. 21, 1895 2,000
Bitlis Oct. 26, 1895 3,000
Palu Oct. 25, 1895 650
Diarbikir Oct. 25, 1895 3,000
Kara Hissar Oct. 25, 1895 800
Ersorum Oct. 30, 1895 1,500
Boulouik and Khnus Oct. 30, 1895 700
Tomzara Oct. 28 and Nov. 8, 1895 700
Malatia Nov. 6, 1895 5,000
Arabkir Nov. 6, 1895 4,000
Harput[142]Nov. 11, 18952,000
Gurin Nov. 10, 1895 2,000
Sivas Nov. 12, 1895 1,500
Moosh Nov. 15, 1895 350
Marsovan Nov. 15, 1895 125
Aintab Nov. 15, 1895 400
Marash Nov. 18, 1895 1,000
Zilleh Nov. 26, 1895 300
Cæsarea Nov. 30, 1895 400
Urfa Oct. 28 and Dec. 28-29, 1985 10,000
Biredjik Jan. 1, 1896 900
Van Niksar June, 1896 20,000
Eghin
Constantinople Aug. 26-27, 189610,000
The number of persons killed, about 100,000
The number of houses and shops burnt 12,000
The number of houses plundered 47,000
The persons forced to accept Mohammedanism 40,000
The number of persons left destitute 400,000[143]

It should not be considered that the number given as killed are exact, for some of those reports have gone through the Ambassadors’ revisions, and some places where massacres have taken place have never been noticed, because there was no foreigner, and no native that was able to report was left alive.

“From that date (October 8, 1895) until the end of the year the wave of massacre swept over the six eastern provinces, engulfing the villages, towns, and cities where Armenians lived; innumerable houses, and schools, and churches were burned, a vast amount of property was stolen or destroyed, a great number of women and girls were carried off by Turks and Kurds, multitudes of people were forced to accept the Mohammedan religion, 100,000 Armenian men and boys were slain, and 500,000 Armenian women and children were reduced to beggary. Everywhere it was understood by the Mohammedan population that they were authorized by order from Constantinople, to kill all Armenian men and boys and seize their property. In many places soldiers and officers joined with the mob and shared the plunder. The massacres were perpetrated in contempt and defiance of Europe; they were an expression of Turkish wrath and vengeance; they were in short, an attempt to end the Armenian question by the destruction of the Armenians. Europe raised the hope of the Christian population of Turkey, and Europe left them to their fate.”[144]

We had the pleasure, before, of quoting from the work of Dr. J. Lepsius of Berlin, “Armenia and Europe.” We are tempted to quote more for a few reasons: First, because he so fearlessly exposed the studied efforts of the official press of Germany to mislead the people with regard to the true nature of the condition of the Armenians who were massacred for their Christian faith, even though it was made to appear that the Turkish government was endeavoring to suppress a revolution which did not exist. Second, because of his courageous exposition of the criminal indifference of Europe to abandon the defenseless Armenians to the ruthless and barbarous tendencies of the Turks. Third, because of his faithfully exposing and showing the true nature of the followers of Mohammed, the absurdity, falsehood, and deviltry of the Turkish government’s excuse of putting down a revolt.

“The Turkish people, equipped and armed by the authorities, were delighted to take their share in the work of murder side by side with the military, the Radifs (Eeserves), the Zaptiehs (Gendarmes), and the lately formed Kurdish Irregulars, called the Hamidieh-Regiment after the reigning sultan. Every one was in the best humor.... A savage and murderous spirit took possession of the people. And what else could be expected? Here an officer urged them on with the cry, ‘Down with the Armenians, it is the sultan’s will!’ Here a Vali exhorted them to ‘Look sharp! Kill! Plunder! and pray for the sultan!’ What inducement had they to cease from murder or from prey! The reward of piety lay before their eyes, for all that they could seize and carry away was to be their own.... The monotonous work of dragging hundreds of defenceless Armenians out of their homes and hiding-places merely to behead, stab, throttle, hang, or beat them, soon palled. The merry mob wanted variety. Simple murder became dull, and the business must now be made more amusing. How would it do to light a fire and roast the wounded at it? To gibbet a few head-downwards? Drive nails into others? Or tie fifty of them together and fire into the coil?... Putting out eyes and cutting off ears and noses was a special accomplishment. Christian priests who refused to become Mohammedans were considered particularly worthy of this fate.... Petroleum and kerosene were at hand. It is true that the authorities intended them to be used only for the purpose of burning down houses and destroying grain. But why not put them to other and more useful purposes?

“There was a certain photographer, by the name Mardiros (martyr, or witness), who had a fine beard, petroleum was poured over it and set on fire. Several Christians were gathered together, kerosene poured over them, and, as they burnt, others were thrown into the fumes and suffocated. A woman with luxuriant hair had gunpowder sprinkled on it, and her head was blown off. In a monastery at Kaghtzorhayatz, an Effendi, by name Abdullah, had a young man and a girl placed close together and with one stroke cut off both their heads. But sword and fire can be dispensed with. The Kurdish Sheikh, Djevher of Gabars, proved this by binding two brothers with ropes and pegging them to the ground with stakes.... The baker in Kesserek, who had already murdered ninety-seven Armenians, which he proved by exhibiting their ears and noses, declared that he would not rest until he had brought up the number to one hundred. But he found his master in Hadji Bego of Tadem, who had butchered more than a hundred Christians, and who, as a sign of his prowess, cut a woman into four pieces and put them on posts to public view. The butcher of Aintab, who stuck the heads of six Armenians on his spit, was outdone by the Turk at Subaschigulp, who slaughtered Armenians like sheep and hung their bodies on meat-hooks. The people of Trebizond brought out the humor of the thing; they shot Adam, the Armenian butcher, and his son, cut them in pieces, stuck the limbs separately on sticks and offered them for sale to passers-by: ‘Who will buy an arm, a leg, feet or hands? Cheap! Who will buy?’ But innocence must be spared. The Sultan had commanded that Christians under seventeen should not be killed. But who heeds such caution?... The Mohammedans of a large village in Marash, saved at least one small child from this fate by throwing it into the fire.

“In Baiburt the destroyers were merciful enough in fourteen houses to burn the babies with their mothers. Ohannes Avakian, a rich civilian of Trebizond, offered the raging mob all his possessions if they would spare his family and himself. His three-year-old child was in his arms. Both were murdered before the eyes of the mother and the other children, and then the crowd seized the spoil. A valiant Turk thinks nothing of strangling children on the knees of their mothers. To play at ball with a baby, and toss it from one bayonet to another before its mother’s eyes seemed pleasant sport for the soldiers of Bitlis.... Although it is a fact that dozens of women and children perished in all the massacres, that in Kiauta and Lessouk a hundred women were mutilated, and amongst the victims at Bitlis were little boys (from five to twelve years of age) of the Church School of Surp Serkis, we must do the Turk the justice to acknowledge that these cruelties were not invariably approved by the head officials.... The populace went beyond their actual instructions when we find that amongst the 450 corpses buried in the cemetery at Sivas all the women had been mutilated. As a rule, however, the authorities did nothing to check the bloodthirstiness of the masses, and whenever the work of murder was too great for the people alone, the soldiers were speedily summoned to help.

“Many of the fleeing Armenians were simple enough to believe that their Churches would be a place of safety; that in the sanctuary they would be spared. But as hundreds of churches and convents had to be reduced to ashes, since the aim was to do away with every trace of the hated Christian faith, what mattered the trifling fact that men, women, and children were inside them? In Ressuan the doors of the church were broken open and all the refugees murdered. Three hundred Armenians escaped to the monastery of Maghapayetzatz only to be butchered with the brotherhood. In Indises (district of Luk-Shehri) and in Habusu (district of Harpoot) the churches were burned over the heads of the Christians; but here we cannot blame the people for the soldiers set the example. In Shabin Kara Hissar more regard was paid to the church, the two thousand people who had taken refuge there were at least killed outside the doors....

“It is worthy of record that the dead bodies of Christians were dragged naked out of the towns and villages, horribly mutilated, and then cast out in heaps on the streets, or on dung-hills, or thrown into streams and drains, till asses and Jews were requisitioned to carry the corpses away like the carrion of dead animals. Among the mass of mutilated human flesh no one was able to recognize his own dead. When the dead bodies were not left as food for dogs, or when they were not burned with petroleum, a hole was dug into which they were thrown in a mass. But to men of importance special funeral honors were paid. The priest Mattheas of Busseyid, had his head cut off and placed between his legs, and the young Turks of the town amused themselves by flogging the body. The priest, Der-Harutiun of Diarbekir, and his colleague from the church at Alipunar, together with ten other priests from the district of Tadem, had the skin flayed from their bodies. A special monument was erected to the Abbot Sahag, prior of the monastery of Surp Katch in the district of Kizan, and to his young assistant; their skins were stuffed with straw and hung on trees. The Turks of Arabkir with an imagination worthy of Nero set up the heads of Armenians in rows on long poles, and the commander of the gendarmes at Baiburt, who, on the 26th of October, received from the women of the village of Ksauta five hundred pounds sterling in money and jewels as a ransom for the lives of their husbands and who, a few days later, changed his mind, and collecting together in a field the women and children of the village, had them all pitilessly slaughtered, is worthy of being chief of Tamerlane’s bodyguard.