Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of IslamWilliams, Augustus Warner
History
Bleeding Armenia: Its history and horrors under the curse of Islam
Williams, Augustus Warner
Armenian question
In the first outburst of righteous indignation that blazed out from
all Europe, it seemed as if the Infidel Turkish Government condemned
unanimously by the verdict of all nations for its crimes against God
and humanity, would soon be swept out of Europe and that even its
possessions in Asia Minor would be torn from its grasp and partitioned
among civilized races.
Lord Salisbury, the British Premier, at a public dinner, made an
address which plainly intimated that the patience of Europe was
exhausted, and that the Sultan's folly had sealed the doom of his own
government, if not of the Ottoman Empire. Lord Salisbury recognized
in the present condition of Turkey, the result of its offences against
God. He said:
"Above all treaties, all combinations of the Powers, in the nature of
things, is Providence. God, if you please to put it so, has determined
that persistent and constant misgovernment must lead the government
which follows it to its doom. The Sultan is not exempt any more than
any other potentate from the law that injustice will bring the highest
one on earth to ruin."
These words sounded as if the Prime Minister really meant to do
something to permanently better the condition of Christian Armenia,
but in the light of after events it seemed that Lord Salisbury,
after considerable reflection, concluded to let the Lord settle the
account with Turkey without England's intervention.
There was one man in Constantinople who played a mighty part in the
life and death struggle between Christianity and Islam--Mattheos
Ismirlian, the Armenian Patriarch, but great as was his influence,
he was powerless to relieve the increasing mass of suffering and
misery in all the provinces.
The story of Zeitoun, of its long and brave defence and of its final
capitulation has been already told, but the distress which prevailed
there was simply awful.
The five European Consuls who went to Zeitoun to negotiate for the
submission of the Armenian insurgents telegraphed to their respective
embassies that indescribable distress prevailed among the eight
thousand refugees at that place. The sick, the dying and the dead
were heaped together in all kinds of astonishing places where a little
extra warmth was to be hoped for. Bitter cold prevailed and the women
and girls were devoid of necessary clothing.
Although the inhabitants of Zeitoun gave up their arms, the refugees
shrank from quitting the town through lack of confidence in the
Turks. Only too well founded were their fears, as, a little while
after this disarming, sixteen Zeitounlis were proceeding under the
escort of one gendarme to Albistan to buy wheat or barley; they were
suddenly fallen upon and nine of them were massacred.
It was an awful crime against humanity, the stupidest folly to put
faith in the promises of the Turk where the welfare of a Christian
was at stake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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