Title: Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam
Author: Augustus Warner Williams
M. Smbat Gabrielean
Release date: August 1, 2015 [eBook #49569]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Jeroen Hellingman and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net/ for Project
Gutenberg (This file was produced from images generously
made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Massacre of Armenians by Police, Softas and Kurds.
In offering to the public this volume on Bleeding Armenia under the Curse of Islam the writer does not seek to harrow the feelings of sensitive readers by the recital of blood-curdling outrages, tortures, murders, and butcherings; neither does he aim to discuss at any length the involved problems of the Eastern Question, but he does definitely seek to awaken interest in the history and fate of what may truly be called the Martyr Nation of the World.
It is not the isolated fact that Armenia is now undergoing a most terrible persecution, that fifty thousand or sixty thousand helpless men, women and children have already suffered death in every form which the most depraved nature, the most cruel instincts, the most bitter and fanatical hatred could devise, that so deeply arouses us; but the fact that for more than a thousand years this has been the bitter and bloody story of her wrongs—this is what staggers us.
That the reader may have some clearer conceptions of the present terrible situation in Armenia and of the causes which make her general condition one most deplorable to contemplate, its early history, civilization and conversion to Christianity is briefly sketched, and attention is called to the fact that its very geographical position has for many centuries made it the highway for the contending armies of the East and West.
Armenia has been the battle ground where diverse systems of religion and civilization have fought for supremacy. Its fate has always been to suffer, whichever power was for the time victorious. It has been sometimes ground to powder between the upper and nether millstone.
The rise of that alien system of religion which is the most bitter and relentless persecutor of the Christian faith the world has ever seen is accurately sketched, and careful attention given to it because Christian people believe it to be true that the cause of the fiercest and most vindictive hatred of the Turk to Greek, Bulgarian or Armenian is primarily his loyalty to Mohammed and his hatred of Jesus as the Christ.
It were not in the heart of humanity to kindle the passions into a flame so fierce as to consume every element of mercy and compassion, unless these were set on fire by fiendish fanaticism or religious bigotry.
In this light these persecutions are but the irregular outbreak of that spirit of opposition which will never cease so long as Islam has power to draw the sword. From the hour that the Ottoman Turk was securely seated on that eastern throne of the Cæsars, there never has been peace, and there never can be while he holds the keys to the gateway of nations.
Without laborious disquisition, with only a sincere desire to let history tell its own story, some phases of the struggle for place, preëminence and power between England and Russia, which form the heart of the Eastern Question are also presented.
No one can be in the slightest doubt as to which side of the Turkish-Armenian question the policy of England leans. There is no question as to the fact that England has been the firmest friend to Turkey for more than sixty years, and that the more she has feared the growing power of Russia the more resolutely she has stood by the Porte in spite of the atrocities which have marked the frequent persecutions of the Christian races under the sway of Islam.
Her purely selfish and commercial “interests” have caused the English government to be deaf to the cry of the decimated Bulgarians, and of Armenians to-day. The part that England played in elaborating the great treaties of Paris and of Berlin which controlled the issues of the Crimean and the Russo-Turkish wars stamps the character of her interests in the affairs of Turkey.
There is thus furnished in this historical data a broad ground on which public opinion in this country may call upon Great Britain in this hour of remorseless cruelty that she shall fulfil the treaty obligations which she most solemnly and publicly accepted and assumed and demand of the Porte at the mouth of shotted guns if need be, that the rights of Christian Armenians shall be defended and maintained by the whole power of the Turkish Empire.
The situation in Armenia is given with considerable fulness, though volumes could not contain a complete account of the sufferings that this long-doomed race has endured under the Curse of Islam.
The position that our government should occupy is that of high moral equity, the insistence upon the preservation of common rights of humanity irrespective of race or creed.
The immediate duty lying at our doors is to assist in relieving the distress even unto starvation, which hundreds of thousands of Armenians are now enduring. Many will perish before aid can reach them. What is to be done must be done quickly.
This book while making little pretension to literary polish is the result of wide historical research and has been carefully written and edited, and is now cast upon the great tide of public opinion with the hope that it may stimulate permanent interest in the great problems which are at issue in the conflict between Christianity and Islam—that it may reach and move the springs of deepest sympathy for suffering Armenians; that it may rouse a more vigorous moral indignation against such crime and cruelty, and thereby assist in creating such a just and righteous public sentiment that our government may take such a stand as shall tell speedily for the bettering of the conditions of human existence in far off Armenia.
Thus confiding in the kindly consideration of a generous public, I send forth this book on the mission to which it is hereby dedicated, viz:—to plead the cause of Bleeding Armenia which is being done to death under the Curse of Islam.
CHAPTER I.
A Martyr Nation—Need of a Voice—Historical Annals at Nineveh—Abgar’s Letter to Jesus of Nazareth—Acceptance of Christianity—Council of Nice—Persian Conquests—Bible Translated—Great Persecutions—Dying for the Faith—Magi Driven Out—Saracens in Armenia—Fearful Tortures—Burned Alive—Bogha the Tyrant—Sultan of Turkey—Islam or Death—Yussuf the Persian—Great Horrors Repeated—Starvation—Peace Returns 21
CHAPTER II.
Arabia—Mecca—Idolatry—Mohammed’s Birth—Carlyle on Islamism—The Hegira—Battle of Beder—Mecca Captured—Death of Mohammed—Golden Era of the Saracens—Khaled at Damascus—City Captured—Jerusalem Besieged—Capitulates—Persia Conquered—Egypt Won in a Day—Constantinople Besieged 44
CHAPTER III.
THE STORY OF THE FIRST CRUSADE.
Origin—Jerusalem Captured by the Turks—Peter the Hermit—Pope Urban—Crusade of the Mob—Walter the Penniless—Battle of Nicomedia—300,000 Perished in all—Crusade of the Kings and Nobles—Godfrey of Bouillon—Europe Moves Westward—Antioch—Jerusalem Captured July 14th, 1099—Godfrey Elected King 72
CHAPTER IV.
The Turcomans—Seljuks—Persia Conquered—Armenia Wasted—140,000 Slain—Ani with 1,001 Churches Falls—Awful Slaughter—Asia Minor Ravaged—Emperor of Constantinople Defeated—Damascus Falls—Saladin—Jerusalem Capitulates—Silence on the Coast—Jenghiz Khan—Armenia in Great Distress—Turks in Europe—Tamerlane—Armenia again in Torture—Pyramids of Human Skulls—Death of Tamerlane 104
CHAPTER V.
Ottoman Empire Rising—Danger to Europe—Mohammed II. the Conqueror—Fortress Built at Gallipoli—Emperor Alarmed—Europe Indifferent—First Great Siege with Artillery—Seven Weeks Bombardment—Final Assault—50,000 Ottomans Fall—Charge of the Janissaries—Constantine Died at His Post—Church of St. Sophia is turned into a Mosque—Islam sits on the Throne of Christianity 135
CHAPTER VI.
Four Centuries of Misrule—Chios, 40,000 Slain—Christians in Turkey Persecuted—Russia Demands their Protection—France and England against Russia—Czar’s Army Crosses into Moldavia—Sultan Declares War—Siege of Sebastopol—Treaty of Paris 1856—Turkish Loans—Revolt in Servia—Andrassy Note—Reforms Promised—Bulgarian Massacres—England Horror Struck—Gladstone on the Massacres—15,000 Butchered—Russia Arms for the Deliverance of the Christians 159
CHAPTER VII.
War Declared—Crossing the Danube—Siege of Plevna—Skobeleff’s Gallant Charge—Third Siege—Plevna Reduced and Surrenders—Alexander at the Danube—Shipka Pass—The Valley of Roses—Turkey Conquered—Adrianople—San Stefano—Berlin Treaty—Russia Robbed of her Victories 185
CHAPTER VIII.
Questions of Policy—Palace Rule—Alarm of the Porte—Shrewd Diplomacy—Playing off the Powers—Balance of Power—Reforms Promised—Never Fulfilled 213
CHAPTER IX.
PROGRESS AND POWER OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE.
The First Chapter in Turkish Missions—Have Missions been a Failure—Modern Triumphs of the Gospel 250
CHAPTER X.
Territory—Origin—Occupation—Character—Agriculture—Robbers—Cruelty of Warfare—Language—Homes—Women—Ruined Castles—Churches 277
CHAPTER XI.
THE REIGN OF TERROR—SASSOUN 303
CHAPTER XII.
THE REIGN OF TERROR—TREBIZOND AND ERZEROUM 341
CHAPTER XIII.
THE REIGN OF TERROR—VAN AND MOUSH 360
CHAPTER XIV.
THE REIGN OF TERROR—HARPOOT AND ZEITOUN 383
CHAPTER XV.
Mission Stations—The Christian Herald—Red Cross Society—Miss Clara Barton 400
CHAPTER XVI.
Despotic in Government—Intolerant in Religion—Evils of Polygamy—Degradation of Women—Ignorance—Cruelty of Officials—Extortion—Universal Distress—No Advance Possible—The Turk never Improves—Islam—Worse and Worse—Its Rule is against Humanity 423
CHAPTER XVII.
THE GREATEST CRIME OF THE CENTURY.
England’s Inactivity—Her Solemn Obligation—Treaty of San Stefano—Berlin—Convention with Turkey—Cyprus—Occupation of Egypt—Position of the English Government—Difficulties in the Way—But the Suffering Awful—Freeman—Gladstone 433
CHAPTER XVIII.
Possible Solution—Universal Arbitration—Constantinople a Free City—Europe Free—Armenia’s Sorrows Healed—The Dawning of the Twentieth Century 470
APPENDIX.
At no time of the world’s history have there ever been two months so rich in grand tragedy as the Armenian period of November and December, 1895. It is not the enormous number of the killed nor the frightful suffering of the survivors that give this period its unique character, but the fact that the great majority of the 75,000 or more of the massacred Christians had a free choice to make between life and death, and they chose death. Civilized humanity is bound to take a supreme interest in the action of those heroes and heroines who sacrificed all the interests of existence to their moral ideal of life,—in those women who, in order to escape from the outrage of a bestial soldiery, threw themselves into the river Euphrates and were drowned,—in those virgins who, captured by the brutal Moslems, received twenty, thirty sword cuts in defending their honor,—in those men who, when threatened with instant death if they would not embrace Islam, answered, “we are ready to be immolated for the love of Christ,” and they were slaughtered like sheep. The historian and the dramatic writer, the poet and the painter will soon follow the diplomatist and the journalist to take up the matter, and the Christian peoples of all lands will continue to receive now a thrill of pious admiration, now a tremendous shock at the recital of these events.
In fact, the Armenian occurrences have two sides, one glorious, and one of hellish darkness. They bring out in the most striking fashion, the infernal genius of the Mahommedan religion. The Moslems, high and low, exhibited such foul sensuality, such satanic cruelty and such delight in ferocity of which even the savages are incapable. And these qualities are precisely those which Mohammedanism cultivates.
The Armenian crisis served also as a test to bring out the actual degree of European morality. Alas! who would have believed a year ago that the Christian powers of Europe would permit the Turk to attempt before their eyes the extermination of a Christian nation and church by wholesale massacre and forced conversions? Such is, nevertheless, the dreadful revelation of the year. They did not prevent the most colossal crime of the century, nor did they punish the criminal who by their mercy alone had the power of committing such a crime; moreover, they had the front, at least some of them, to declare that, for reasons of high diplomacy, they were ready to support the authority of the monstrous criminal over his victims.
What makes this infamous course of the Christian governments the more ominous, is the fact that the Christian peoples and churches did not seem to be shocked. They stifled their indignation and swallowed their own protests if they felt or uttered any, and we see no nation whatever boiling with the sacred rage of revolting conscience.
The British government and press have tried hard to show that England has done all she could in order to protect the Armenians. Russia has yet her national conscience very imperfectly developed, Germany’s conscience is nearly dead under the curse of her success against France. It is only the government of Great Britain that feels the obligation of executing itself. But its failure in protecting Armenia is not merely the forced consequence of the course of the other powers in the matter, as it would like to make the public believe. England had sinned against Armenia during all the long period of 18 years before the matters came to a crisis. She had been, in 1878, the champion of the Turk against Russia, and in order to justify her support of a Moslem power which had been the curse of its Christian subjects, Great Britain pledged herself by the Cyprus Convention to protect the Christians against Turkish misrule as she would protect Turkish territory against Russian aggression.
Did England fulfill her solemn obligation toward Armenia? No! The British consuls in Armenia did report to the government that the Turkish authorities and Kurdish beys and Hamidieh troops continued to oppress the Armenians just as before, nay, worse than before,—that their worthiest leaders, bishops, professors, influential men were being exiled, the benevolent associations scattered, the useful books censured, the peasantry ground to dust, and hundreds of innocent men flung into prison and tortured—but the British Government did not move.
Let there be no misunderstanding as to my meaning. I do not mean England remained absolutely indifferent, but she never acted in time, and with adequate energy. She remained always behind the times. She brought to bear upon the Sultan a pressure of 1,000 tons when a weight of 10,000 was required, and used 10,000 when 100,000 was needed, with the result that Abdul-Hamid, instead of coming to his senses, grew bolder after each successful resistance. With trifling concessions he pushed his way and had the Kurdish brigands organized into imperial troops, acquitted Moossa Beg, enjoyed the Erzeroum massacre, undertook the more important massacre of Sassoon, and after all, the crowning massacres of 1895. Had England insisted upon Moossa Beg’s being hung, the Erzeroum slaughter would not have been allowed, and if the leaders of the Erzeroum carnage at least were punished, the greater devastation of the Sassoon province would have been prevented. Evidently it was much easier for the British government to successfully coerce the Sultan for the exemplary punishment of the first criminals than later to check the greater tides of sweeping evils. To judge aright, we must consider the whole course of the British in the matter and not merely what happened at the critical moment when the task was so much harder. And even then, namely in October last, did England show herself equal to the requirements of the crisis? Whatever Lord Salisbury and his party organs may say, he must have many times since avowed to himself that he did not act then as he could and ought to. He lacked courage and now the prestige of Great Britain has sunk to a miserably low degree in the Orient.
For the present the Sultan reigns in Constantinople and the Czar governs. The situation is evidently an unsettled one, as Hamid’s suicidal policy has prostrated the whole country, and a radical change is to come in the near future. The final doom of the Ottoman Empire can not delay much longer. The world expects to see some sudden developments in the affairs of the East. The fate of agonizing Armenia will be decided, and the relations of the Christian with the Moslem world will enter on a new phase.
This book therefore, is devoted to “Bleeding Armenia,” Under the Rule of Islam; will touch problems of the highest importance and command general interest. It can not give a definite solution to the multitudinous questions raised by the condition of Armenia, but will contribute to bring them to public comprehension and right judgment.
Great and Little Ararat, From the Northeast.