Their strangest stronghold, however, was the giant lavaflow of Tendurek. Here either the lava has streamed from great horizontal fissures, or possibly the whole mountain has been blown away by the discharge of an accumulation of energy. Whatever the cause, an area some twenty miles square has been covered with a sea of black lava; which has split and fissured in every direction as it cooled, and now resembles nothing so much as a gigantic black glacier. It is a place where any number of men, and any amount of stores, could lie perdu for as long as they wished; for there is an abundant supply of water in the crevasses. One edge of the field is admittedly in Persian territory, and so cannot be policed, even if it were a simple matter to put a cordon round such a place. All the guns of the empire might bombard the stronghold to the crack of doom without inconveniencing its occupants, except by an occasional[{250}] lucky shot; and the garrison could issue from it at any point to cut up any isolated post. It is an absolutely ideal guerrilla stronghold; for men can move from end to end of it unseen, while every movement of the besieger is conspicuous to them on the bare downs that surround it.
Of course, the game was a superb one for the Tashnakists, or for anyone who enjoys gambling against heavy odds with death as the penalty. For the unhappy Armenian rayats, who wanted to be let alone and given a chance to make a living, it was a different story. The revolutionaries wanted to do them good, no doubt; but few folk really like being done good to. And to like the peculiar Tashnakist method of getting them massacred for the assumed benefit of posterity was impossible for human nature. “We used to have one set of masters, and Allah knows that they were hard enough,” was the moan they made; “now we have two, and Allah alone knows which is the harder.” The revolutionaries came down on them, and demanded, at the mouth of a pistol, supplies to enable them to fight against the Government. Then they withdrew, and the Government came down on the poor rayats in their turn (or in some cases turned the Kurdish irregulars loose upon them), for their crime in “resetting” avowed rebels against the State. How many deaths took place in the summer of 1905 in the Mush district was never known; but the estimates of those who were in a position to know put the numbers at about 5000.
One party of the Fedais, in the course of their retreat to Persian territory entered the city of Van, where their proceedings gave a good instance in petto, of their whole modus operandi.
Entering the “garden city” by night, they encountered one of the police patrols; and a skirmish resulted, in which a policeman was shot. Of course the troops were called out, and the house in which the rebels had been received was attacked and burnt, after another and sharper skirmish. Still they effected their retreat from it, and were lost to sight for a moment in the walled gardens of the town.
The Vali had now to choose. Should he order a strict[{251}] search for those who were in open war against the Government and had thus outraged his authority? It was in his power to do so, and catch and destroy this band of a dozen men; but it was not in his power to hold the troops if the search, with its attendant street-fighting, once began; and the act spelt massacre for an unknown number of peaceful Armenians. On the other hand, could he allow those rebels to retire uninjured? What would his master the Sultan say to him if he did? And would the troops, one of whose comrades had been “murdered by these Armenian dogs,” obey him if he gave such an order? For twenty-four hours the scales wavered, every foreign house and Consulate being packed with terrified Armenian refugees. While in the Turkish quarter of the town the panic was hardly less, though less conspicuous; for to them every Armenian was a Fedai, and every Fedai had his pockets full of bombs.
The twelve Tashnakists themselves were probably the only people unconcerned; for they had won their game, though they might have to pay the forfeit of their lives, a thing that they had deliberately risked throughout. If they were allowed to withdraw, they had at least flaunted the Government in its provincial capital, and dictated terms to it there. If the attack was made, they could die fighting, and had secured the great “massacre advertisement,” for which they had been playing throughout. The fact is that an opponent who is reckless of his own life is very awkward to deal with! All honour is certainly due to the Vali (that same Tahir Pasha whom we knew in Mosul later), for he decided that, come what might, he would not order the massacre of those whom he was there to protect. He was able to induce the military commandant to withdraw the troops to barracks, and allow the Tashnakists to effect their retreat. He risked his career to save his subjects from their own friends.
Peace ruled in Van for a year or two after this incident; but the importation of rifles and other revolutionary material continued, and considerable arsenals were accumulated: the Kurds on the frontier being glad enough to earn good[{252}] pay by asking no questions as to the nature of the loads that passed through their territory. Government was vaguely aware of what was going on, and was uneasy; particularly as an oppressive Vali (successor of the shrewd old Tahir) was actually murdered by the Fedais. As this event took place in Russian territory, when the man was on a journey to Constantinople, no local disturbance was caused by it.
The acting Vali who took his place, one Ali Riza, was quietly at work in his house one night in February 1908, when he was informed that an Armenian insisted on seeing him on some important business, which he would disclose to no underling. After some demur he was admitted, and came to the point at once. “See here, Vali Pasha. My name is David; and I am come to tell you that I am one of the ‘inner ring’ of the Tashnakist society. For reasons of my own, I mean to disclose everything that I know to the Government. Give me a band of men now, and I will take them this very night to the house where the rest of the ‘ring’ are to assemble; and to-morrow, I will show you the depôts of rifles and cartridges.”
The motive for this act of exceptionally black treachery was, of course, some quarrel with his comrades. Several versions of this, all coherent enough, but all contradictory, circulated in the town during the next few days; the most probable being the obvious one that he and his chief (the man was second in command of the Van organization) had both fallen in love with the same girl. Most agreed, however, that David had somehow become aware that sentence of death had been passed on him by “the circle”; and hence had declared, “then I will at least have my revenge beforehand.”
Will it be believed that the Vali was either too fearful, or too stupid, to rise to this opportunity? He gave orders to keep the man in custody till next day, saying, “then he shall show us the depôts; and if his story is true about the guns, we can proceed to arrest the brigands themselves.” All suggestions that the guns could not be removed without some delay, but that the brigands would certainly not continue in that night’s meeting-place after the discoveries[{253}] had begun, were unavailing; and nothing was done that night. Next day the man redeemed his pledge, and there was rare excitement in Van. Rifles by the hundred were unearthed from various places; and one realized, in watching the searchers, how admirably a mud house lends itself to the making of a cache. The earth of Van sets into excellent sun-dried brick (in fact Urartian forts built of it in 800 B.C., remain to this day), and house walls of this material are usually about three feet thick. A hollow large enough to contain a score of rifles can easily be excavated in the middle third of the thickness, and the place built up again. Once let the fresh mud plaster have time to dry, and what tapping or sounding will reveal the hollow that exists behind it? Rifles to the number of nearly 500, half a million cartridges, and some three hundred packets of dynamite, were the spoil of that day.[123]