But how could touch be established? Urmi was now menaced by a force of two Turkish divisions—the 5th from the north and the 6th from the south—and by large irregular levies of Kurds and Persians as well. It was agreed that Petros, with the Urmi division of his army, should attempt to clear the way to Sain Kaleh; and that the Salmas division should hold on to Urmi till his return. It was once more a desperate chance; but the Assyrians had only preserved themselves hitherto by taking a whole series of desperate chances. Unhappily, on this occasion, they could only partly win through.
Petros marched south, and, with his usual skill and daring, defeated the 6th Division at Suj Bulak, and drove[{385}] them into the mountains towards Rowanduz. But, unfortunately, the 5th Division learned of his departure, and seized the opportunity to deliver a vigorous assault upon those who had remained behind. The line of the Nazlu River, which the Assyrians had sought to hold was forced; and the defeated mountaineers swept back in confusion upon Urmi. Panic seized upon that hapless city. Under the protection of the Assyrians it had become a sort of asylum of refuge for thousands of fugitives who had escaped from previous massacres; and now the whole Christian population—Assyrian and Armenian, men, women, and children—determined instantly on flight. Harvest had just been gathered, so they had food available, and enough beasts and vehicles to improvise some kind of transport; and soon the whole mob was trailing southward in an agony of terror and despair. Somewhere in that direction lay their last faint hope of survival, and, heedless of order or discipline, they fled in Petros’ wake.
That flight was a ghastly tragedy, comparable perhaps, while it lasted, only to that terrible trek of the Calmuck Tartars so graphically depicted by De Quincey. Provisions, indeed, were adequate; and, had they been unmolested, the fugitives might have won through without very great loss or suffering. But their enemies swarmed on their tracks like wolves upon a drove of cattle. Even before they cleared the city the bazaar ruffians under Mejid es Sultaneh freed from the fear of their recent masters, were cutting the throats of the stragglers as they emerged from their houses; and hampered by hosts of non-combatants—dispirited and without cohesion—that long, slow, straggling convoy formed a fatally vulnerable prey. The mountaineers, indeed, suffered less than the townsfolk as being more accustomed than they to conditions of trek and battle. It was even said, unkindly but plausibly, that the Tyari men eventually reached their journey’s end not only with all their women, but with more sheep than they had at the start. But for all the conditions were terrible enough. Men were slaughtered by hundreds; women stripped and outraged; girls borne off to Mussulman harems; and many[{386}] who dropped from the ranks were seen to roll themselves in filth and ordure in the hope of escaping the violation which they knew was their probable fate. It must be within the mark to state that at least 15,000 persons—a fourth of the whole number—perished in those dreadful days.
The British were no longer at Sain Kaleh. Petros had been a week late at his rendezvous, and they had strict orders not to linger in such a perilously advanced position. But happily they were not beyond recall, and, with Petros’ army to back them, they now hurried back to bring aid. That handful of well-armed and disciplined men fell like a thunderbolt into the midst of the disorderly hordes of the pursuers, and, ignorant what force might be following, these scattered before them in dismay. There was one instance where seven men equipped with a Lewis gun, and led by Captains Savage and Scott-Ollson, dashed at a force of several hundred Kurds who were besetting a group of fugitives, and drove them off in confusion—a feat that might have earned a lay in the annals of the Round Table.
It took three days’ sharp fighting to complete the rescue, for the fugitives only struggled in by driblets and the Kurds and Persians who clung to them were loth to relinquish their prey. But at last the Assyrians’ purgatory was over. The column was re-formed at Sain Kaleh and proceeded by easier stages 200 miles further southward to Hamadan. They were blamed for plundering on this march; and, undoubtedly, they did plunder wholesale. But what wonder? They were utterly destitute and had surely every possible excuse for regarding Persia as an enemy country. And be it recorded to their honour that by the admission even of their enemies, and though the atrocities that their own women had suffered were still fresh in their memories even now no Mussulman woman was insulted or maltreated by them.
Early in September they were transferred to the great refugee camp which had been prepared for their reception at Baquba on the Diala near Baghdad; and here they were established when Turkey sued for peace a few weeks later. Not less than two-thirds of their nation must have perished in their four years’ trial; but, like Sir Hugh Percy, they[{387}] had “saved the bird in their bosom,” and assuredly had no cause for shame in the plucky part that they had played.
The fate of their neighbours, the Armenians, is already too well known to be dwelt upon, but, alas! too little regarded, for us to pass over it even here. We have sketched the horrors endured by one small sister community—a community whose position was admittedly much more defensible, and whose stout-hearted resistance enabled them to avert the worst. Multiply those horrors twenty fold to allow for the greater numbers of the Armenians. Double them again for the helplessness that robbed them of self-defence. And our minds are incapable of grasping the scope of a butchery more hideous and widespread than any that has horrified Asia since the ravages of the Tartar hordes. “Then there took place such wholesale slaughter and unrestrained looting and excessive torture and mutilation as is hard to hear spoken of, even generally; how think you, then, of the details? There happened things I dare not mention, therefore imagine what you will.”[166]
Nay, the Tartar massacres after all were mostly perpetrated in hot blood, and in days that followed close upon battles; but these advisedly, upon unresisting helots, and persistently for months and years. In these the blind fury of the fanatic and the blood-lust of the Kurdish robber were deliberately manipulated by cool-headed and calculating administrators. And even Abdul Hamid’s cruelty was not so coarse and stupid as that of the low-bred upstarts who now reigned in his room.
Talaat Pasha’s own letters are extant to prove how he hounded on his underlings to the butchery; how he dismissed and disgraced those who shrank from the ghastly tasks imposed upon them; nay, even those who permitted the slightest alleviation of horrors at which their souls sickened; how he insisted repeatedly and categorically that not even children must be spared. And Enver and Djemal, his fellow-triumvirs, seconded him inexorably in all.
That some Turks did venture on protests we are ready to admit gladly; but with the bulk of the nation the crime[{388}] was actually popular. No Mollah raised his voice to denounce it; and there was never the least difficulty in finding plenty of willing executioners. The crime was the crime of the Ottoman nation and of the Stamboul Caliphate, and the criminals are still rejoicing in the success and impunity of their crime.