Читать книгу The Armenian Crisis in Turkey онлайн

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This furnished the government with the desired excuse for collecting soldiers from far and near. The general is said to have worn on his breast an order from Constantinople, which he read to the soldiers, commanding them to cut down the Armenians root and branch, and adjuring them if they loved their Sultan and their government they would do so. A terrible massacre followed. Between five and ten thousand Christians are said to have been butchered in a most terrible manner. Some soldiers say a hundred fell to each one of them to dispose of; others wept because the Kourds did more execution than they.

No respect was shown to age or sex. Men, women, and infants were treated alike, except that the women were subjected to greater outrage before they were slaughtered. The women were not even granted the privilege of a life of slavery. For example, in one place three or four hundred women, after being forced to serve the vile purposes of a merciless soldiery, were taken to a valley near by and hacked to pieces with sword and bayonet. In another place about two hundred women, weeping and wailing, knelt before the commander and begged for mercy, but the blood-thirsty wretch, after ordering their violation directed the soldiers to dispatch them in a similar manner. In another place a large company, headed by the priest, fell down before the officers saying they had nothing to do with the culprits, and pleading for compassion, but all to no purpose—all were killed. Some sixty young brides and more attractive girls were crowded into a little church in another village, where, after being violated, they were slaughtered, and a stream of human blood flowed from the church door. To some of the more attractive women in one place the proposition was made that they might be spared if they denied their faith. “Why should we deny Christ,” they said, and pointing to the dead bodies of their husbands and brothers before them, they nobly answered, “We are no better than they; kill us too,”—and they died.