Armenia, a martyr nation / A historical sketch of the Armenian people from traditional times to the present tragic days

by Mugurdich Chojhauji Gabrielian

The pastor of the Protestant Armenian church at Sivas, Garabed Kuludjizn, was visiting some strangers in a khan; he was seized upon and the demand made of him to deny Christ and accept the Mohammedan faith. On his refusal, he was shot to death by Mohammed’s followers.

The massacre at Marash was—like the rest of massacres in other places—carefully planned by the authorities and carried out with utmost cruelty and barbarism. On the 26th of October about forty Armenians were killed and some shops and houses were looted. But the plans for the general massacre must not have been quite matured, nevertheless, fifteen thousand Armenians, about one-third of the entire population of the city, were completely terrorized. The Christians fled and hid themselves in their houses for a while. On the 18th of November, at 8 A.M., the fearful slaughter and plunder began. The near neighbors of the missionaries fled into the missionaries’ houses for safety, and about two hundred persons were saved. We reproduce the following statements of our missionaries who witnessed the horrors:

“The massacre in the city was fearful beyond words to express. Three Christian quarters, covering a large area, were burned. Two Gregorian Armenian Churches were burned and in one of them the women and children, who had sought refuge there, perished in the flames. The Second and Third Evangelical Churches were looted and the inside of the building was cut to pieces. The venerable pastor of the native church connected with the Church of England, after suffering tortures, was killed. The two head teachers of the American Academy, one of whom was also acting pastor of the First Evangelical Church, were killed, and one of them was flayed alive and then cut to pieces. In all some 1000 Armenians, to whom generally the alternative of Islam or death was given, were most cruelly slain. Children were disemboweled, and the dissevered heads of men and women were kicked about by the soldiers as balls or were carried on pikes through the streets. And this dire work of murdering, robbing and burning was done, not by Kurds, but by the regular soldiers of the Ottoman Government, assisted by the Moslem population of the city, and here, as in so many other places, the Armenians were utterly passive victims, without arms or possible means of self-defense. So far as is known, not a Turk was hurt in all the eight hours’ carnage....

“Such is the preparation which his majesty is making, preliminary to the fulfillment of his promise to Lord Salisbury on his honor(?) to carry out the scheme of reform. Such is the state into which England (all unwittingly), by her initiative in elaborating and insisting on reforms, has plunged the Armenians. Is it to her honor that she now leaves them to be murdered, robbed, burned and martyred?”

England’s enemies—the enemies she had made in almost a hundred years of defending the barbarous Turk, and her jealous neighbors who were already her enemies—were secretly and openly encouraging the beast in human form to humiliate England through him, and also by befriending him, they were paving the way for their colonial and commercial ambitions. Thus the Armenians were abandoned to their fate. The following statement was made, it may be an attempt of England to throw off her responsibility: “In February, 1896, the cabinet of Lord Salisbury, the minister who had concluded the Convention (both of Cyprus and of Berlin in 1878), confessed that as the Turks had refused to carry out reforms promised in that instrument, it was impossible for England, notwithstanding the possession of Cyprus, to occupy Armenia and prevent the massacres which had happened there, and that it had become practically impossible for her any longer to give either moral or material support to the Turkish power.”[147]

England’s confession of her inability—rather her unwillingness—encouraged the great assassin, the sultan, to do still more of his bloody work. The following statement is given by Dr. Lepsius: “The massacres of Van, Niksar, and Eghin in June of 1896, although in their course, 20,000 Armenians were slaughtered, have, in spite of the details given in the Frankfort Journal, made not the slightest impression on the continental press. For the culture of Central Europe, such events lie too far away in the depths of Turkish territory.”

There is one more incident which belongs to this chapter. It is the massacre at Constantinople. The simple narrative of this horrible crime against humanity in general, and the Armenians in particular, is another indictment not only against the sultan, but also against the European Powers.

On good authority we are informed, that the Turkish government knew beforehand that certain revolutionary Armenians from Russia would make an attack on the Ottoman Bank, and had taken the necessary measures, not to prevent the revolutionary action, but to organize, owing to this welcome opportunity, a universal massacre of the peaceful Armenians of Constantinople.

“About noon (on the 26th of August, 1896) a band of Armenians, most of them from Russia, entered the Ottoman Bank, with arms and dynamite, took the employees prisoners and barricaded themselves in the building, with threat that, unless the ambassadors secure a pledge from the sultan of certain reforms, they would blow up the bank with dynamite. To finish with this part of the story, soldiers soon surrounded the bank, and negotiations began with the captors which in the evening resulted in their being permitted to leave the bank, go on board the yacht of the chief manager and leave the country unmolested.

“Who originated this plot I do not know, but it is certain that the Turkish government knew all about it, many days before, even to the exact time when the bank was to be entered, and the minister of police had made elaborate arrangements, not to arrest these men or prevent the attack on the bank, but to facilitate it and make it the occasion of a massacre of the Armenian population of the city. This was to be the crown of all the massacres of the year, one worthy of the capital and the seat of the sultan, a final defiance to the Christian world. Not many minutes after the attack on the bank, the band of Turks, who had been organized by the minister of police in Stamboul and Galata, commenced the work of killing every Armenian they could find. They were protected by large bodies of troops, who in some cases took part in the slaughter. Through Wednesday, Wednesday night, Thursday, and Thursday night the massacre went on unchecked. An open telegram was sent by the ambassadors to the sultan Thursday night, which perhaps influenced him to give orders to stop the massacre, and not many were murdered on Friday. I do not care to enter at all into the horrible details of this massacre of some ten thousand Armenians.