“At the beginning of the disturbance the inhabitants of twelve villages north and west of Marash fled for refuge to the town of Turnus with the intention of escaping from thence to the mountains near Zeitoun. About four thousand of them were suddenly one morning surrounded by soldiers. A terrible butchery began, and all were slain except three hundred and eighty women and children; these were collected together and driven by the soldiers for two days like a flock of sheep to Marash. The government of the sultan must show how merciful it could be to the innocent, even though these unfortunate women were obliged in the month of December to wade through the mountain snow, and to leave many of their starving children by the wayside, as no halt was permitted. One mother tells us that when she could not carry her two children any longer, she put them on a horse that belonged to the soldiers, and at the next river the little ones were thrown into the water. Would it not have been more merciful to have slain all the 4000 together?
“Has not enough blood been shed? When will the cry of this tortured people reach the ear of Christendom? What answer will those Christian Powers make who, eighteen years ago (1878), stretched a protecting hand over Armenia and presented her with paper reforms, signed and sealed in the name of the Almighty? But enough of this, for there is yet another page of horror to be disclosed.
“‘Kill the men! Their wives, their daughters, and their property are ours.’ That was the watchword with which the soldiers of Cæsarea urged on the armed mob to murder, plunder, and outrage. And this watchword was heard and obeyed in all the hundreds of towns and villages where the work of murder was carried out. Even before the commencement of the massacres the shameless Turkish soldiers had dared to ask the Christian mothers to keep their daughters for them, saying that soon all the Christian girls in the country would belong to them.
“We must already reckon the number of slain at 85,000 in the massacres of 1895-1896, but who can count all the deeds of shame and infamy, who can number the tens of thousands who were driven into the mountains, sold into harems, exposed in the slave-markets, or who, after having been outraged, were secretly murdered?
“It seems necessary to give some idea of the shame and dishonor to which even at the present time women are exposed. The scoundrel Hadji Bego, who boasted of having killed a hundred Armenians with his own hand, hunted a Christian girl naked through the streets of the town. The Turkish people of Cæsarea, who burnt thirty Armenian houses with their inhabitants, also helped to storm the women’s baths at the bathing hour. And with what reception did those thirty women of Koschmad meet, who wandered over the mountains without any clothes, till they reached Shinas and fell into the hands of the soldiers there? But that was nothing unusual. There was no massacre in which the murder of the men was not followed by outrage on the women and girls; no plunder in which they were not offered for sale, carried off as spoils, exchanged for horses and donkeys, or exposed in the slave market. The Agas or officers distributed the girls among the Zaptiehs and soldiers.
“Not safe in their own houses under the eye of their husbands, who had often, bound to door-posts, to witness their fate, outraged and robbed of all protection, hunted from house to house till they fell a prey to dishonor—that, Christian women, is the fate of your sisters in Armenia.
“Which of the two do you most pity—the widowed or orphaned girl cowering among rags in some corner of her ruined home, trembling at every footstep of a man, be he Turk or Kurd, who may force his way in and outrage her before her children, or her brothers and sisters; or that other girl who, distinguished perhaps for beauty, has pleased the eye of some Turkish Aga, and, in spite of her cries and tears, has been dragged into his harem, and forced to give up at once her honor and her faith? Can we understand now what drove hundreds of Armenian women to suicide? Or why those fifty women of Lessouk and Krauta threw themselves into the wells, or leapt from the edge of precipices? We can realize the horror that filled the soul of that highborn Armenian lady who was carried off with a troop of women and children and a few men from Uzounova (twenty-five miles east of Harpout). When they reached the banks of the Euphrates she called to her companions, and, rushing to the river, threw herself in. That dishonor is worse than death is proved by the fact, that fifty-five women and children followed her example, and perished in the waters.
“Who would not feel compassion for the unfortunate old man who thus expresses his nameless grief in a letter to his son: ‘Oh, I dare not tell you ... they came and threatened to kill me if I refused to give up your sister. After they had taken everything else—blankets, beds, clothes, provisions, and even fuel—they returned to demand our daughter. I was prepared to withstand to the end, but when she saw that they were about to kill me, she threw herself at their feet, and cried out: “Spare my father! Here I am.”’
“Admirers of Turkish army organization and of Mohammedan civilization ought to know that even the brutality of the Kurdish hordes and the cynicism of the townspeople were thrown completely into the shade by the infamous conduct of the soldiers and officers. Although it fills me with disgust to dip my pen into this sink of corruption, I feel it is necessary that the world should know what deeds are done in this home of promised reforms by the guardians of law and order.
“The truth of the following account is established by two independent testimonies which lie before me: ‘In the village of Husseyinik (vilayet of Harpout), six hundred soldiers (and their officers) collected together in the military depot about the same number of women and young girls; they first outraged them, and then murdered the unhappy victims of their horrible lust.’