The Turkish government made some feeble attempts to disavow the Bulgarian atrocities. But the Turk is an unmitigated liar. Freeman, the historian does not hesitate to say that the Ring at Constantinople worked with a deliberate policy to oppress and if possible to destroy the whole Bulgarian people. The first means they took was to plant large colonies of savage Circassians in Bulgaria who were allowed to commit any kind of outrage on their defenceless Christian neighbors without redress. They could drive the Christians from their homes, rob their houses, destroy their crops, ravish their women, and if any dared to resist their violence they were killed without hesitation. If any dared to complain against the Circassians they were summarily punished. But worse than this was the quartering of Turkish troops upon the peasants and the landholders whose dastardly outrages upon the wives and daughters of the Bulgarians were fiendish and constant. Neither woman's honor nor human life was safe where they were. When flesh and blood could bear no more there was some slight uprising of an unarmed people and then the fury of Circassian and of Bashi-Bazouk was let loose upon them. Freeman says again, "there can be no doubt that the massacre was deliberately ordered by the Ring at Constantinople, the Highnesses and the Excellencies of polite diplomacy. This is proved by the fact that they honored and decorated the chief doers of the massacre, while they neglected and sometimes punished those Turkish officers who acted at all in a humane way. To this day (April, 1877) in defiance of all remonstrances from the European powers, the chief doers of the massacres remain unpunished, while we still hear of Bulgarians being punished for their share in the attempt to free their country." For a true statement of some of the facts in the case, for the full truth can never be told, the world is indebted to the Government of the United States, which sent a special commission of inquiry to Bulgaria, and History will owe them a debt of gratitude for having furnished reliable documents on this matter in which every European State was more or less exposed to an imputation of bias. As Mr. Gladstone observed: "America had neither alliances with Turkey nor grudges against her nor purposes to gain by her destruction. She entered into this matter simply on the ground of its broad human character and moment. She had no 'American interests' to tempt her from her integrity and to vitiate her aims."