Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel; Turkey -- Politics and government -- 1878-1909
On the first day the insurgents made a house-to-house visitation
and requested donations of food, and later required any lead that
could be moulded into rifle balls. More bands arrived, and a number
of Bulgarians and Wallachs of the town joined the insurgent ranks,
altogether augmenting the number to over six hundred. They began at
once to raise fortifications, and made two wooden cannon such as had
been used in the Bulgarian revolt of the ’seventies. The cannon were
worthless, and were left to the Turks, who brought one of them into
Monastir.
On the second day the men of the town who possessed wealth were
summoned to appear before the military commission. A list had been made
(the information given by members of the organisation whose homes were
in Krushevo) of the standing and approximate wealth of each ‘notable’
in the community. As these headmen appeared before the triumvirate a
sum in proportion to his means was demanded from each. No protests
and no pleading affected the commission, and in every instance the
money was forthcoming within the time limit. More than 1,000_l._ was
collected in this way, and in exchange was given printed paper money,
redeemable at the liberation of Macedonia.
On the following Sunday the priests of both the Greek and the Bulgarian
churches were ordered to hold a requiem for the repose of the souls of
the committajis who had fallen in the capture of Krushevo. Detachments
of insurgents were present, in arms, and gave the service a strange
military tone. Open-air meetings were held on the same day, and the
people were addressed by the leaders of the bands.
During the ten days of the insurgent occupation sentinels and patrols
saw to the order and tranquillity of the town, and no cruelties were
committed. Business, however, was paralysed. The market place was
closed and provisions diminished; and attempts to introduce flour
failed, the emissaries to the neighbouring villages being stopped by
Turkish soldiers and bashi-bazouks, who were gathering about the town.
The news of the capture of Krushevo reached Monastir August 3, but not
until nine days later was an attempt made to retake the place. By that
time three thousand soldiers, with eighteen cannon, had been assembled.
About the town, also, were three or four thousand bashi-bazouks from
Turkish villages in the neighbourhood.
When the guns were in position on favourable heights above the town,
Bakhtiar Pasha, the commander of the troops, sent down a written
message asking the insurgents to surrender. The insurgents refused,
and an artillery fire was begun. Most of the insurgents then escaped
through a thick wood which appeared to have been left open for them,
but some took up favourable positions on the mountain roads leading
into the town, others occupied barricaded buildings in the outskirts,
and resisted the Turks for awhile. Two of the leaders, Peto and
Ivanoff, died fighting.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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