A Mother of Martyrs

YOU would see only a small knot of people, say twenty; perhaps a flourish of wooden clubs in the air. Then the mob would move on, leaving the body of a dead Armenian behind. This was massacre. Not a sound signified the horrible business afoot. The shops were closed as if for a holiday ; people, men and women, evidently all Turks, were quietly moving about the streets. The stillness of it seemed to me the most appalling part. One soon grew hardened to the sight of dead men. One came to expect that venerable Ulemas and ascetic young Softas, on their way from mosque to mosque, would kick the mangled bodies which blocked their paths, and curse them for dogs of Armenian traitors. The pools of blood in the streets, in some places actually dripping and trickling downhill, came in time, after you had stepped over and around a hundred of them, to remind you of some early visit to a slaughter house. Animal blood all seems the same: it was hard to realize that this had run in human veins.

Looking back upon those three terrible days in Constantinople, in August, 1896, when from seven to ten thousand Armenians were killed, it is difficult to believe that such things actually occurred. The first news of the outbreak came most unexpectedly. It found the diplomatic colony in the enjoyment of one of their delightful summers at Therapia. Both threats and entreaties had been received at the embassies from the Armenian revolutionary societies : but these had come to be so usual that they were not noticed,— so many threats had remained unfulfilled. Perhaps the culminating event of that season at this Oriental Newport was the very pretty bal poudre that was given at the British Embassy by the chargé d’affaires and his attractive American wife an the evening of August 25th. As our party separated in the early morning of the 26th, not one of us dreamed of what the day would bring. The passing of ten hours found some members of the party prisoners in the Imperial Ottoman Bank, at the mercy of a band of determined Armenian revolutionists, who threatened to blow up themselves and their prisoners with hundreds of pounds of dynamite. It found the rest of us hurrying, frightened, up and down the city, doing whatever we could to save them. It found the women weeping and terror-stricken, huddled together in small groups for comfort and consolation.

I did not go down to the city that morning. In the summer season, the presence of one of the members of the force in the American Legation each day was all that was necessary. As it happened to be the turn of Riddle, my colleague, the minister and I remained at Therapia, busily engaged with Washington correspondence. We had no news from town until about four o’clock in the afternoon ; then one by one horrified messengers began to arrive. The first only knew that a general massacre was on ; that the streets were filled with dead Armenians, and that bombs were being exploded all over town, especially wherever a squad of Turkish soldiery attempted to pass. Later came news of the taking of the great bank. Of course we had no details until days afterwards ; at first we heard only that the bank was held by a band of twentyfive revolutionists, who threatened to blow it up with all of the two hundred employees inside, unless the Sultan promised immediate compliance with their demands. These called for the improvement of the political status of his Armenian subjects. Afterward we heard how two strange Armenians had come to the receiving teller of the bank that morning and announced that, as agents of a silver mine in the interior, they wished to deposit a lot of silver bullion. This was a common occurrence, and they were told to bring in the bricks. What seemed to be the ordinary hamáls (porters) of the streets were given free admittance with the bags of supposed bullion on their backs. Then came the sudden killing of the two great Croatian porters, who stood in red and gold liveries at the door, and huge iron doors were swiftly closed and barred. In full possession of the bank, the alleged miners announced their terms to the frightened directors present, and sent out one of them as a messenger to the palace, bearing their demand and the fierce threat accompanying it. This was Wednesday afternoon. That night no one slept. Diplomatic launches were going up and down the Bosphorus all night. The ambassadors were sending their dragomans first to the bank, to parley with the revolutionists, and then to the palace, to insist there that immediate steps be taken for the release of the unfortunate men in the bank, and that a stop be put to the prevalent wholesale murder. Naturally, the women relatives of the directors and clerks in the bank were nearly distracted with fear. We caught ourselves listening for the sound of a great explosion. It was nearly day when Maximoff, the famous first dragoman of the Russian Embassy, brought the Sultan’s promise of immunity to the revolutionists, as well as the immediate proclamation of the political reforms, if they would give up the bank. Surrendering, as they said, not to save their wretched lives, but to secure the desired irade (proclamation), they were taken, carefully guarded, to the French launch in the Golden Horn, and carried out to the private yacht of Sir Edgar Vincent, governor-general of the bank, anchored in the Sea of Marmora, to await there the coming of an outbound passenger boat which would take them to Marseilles. In this way the ambassadors secured their first point. The bank employees, save the poor doorkeepers who had been killed at first, came out uninjured, and told us wonderful tales of their fifteen hours’ imprisonment. During that time a continual fusillade went on between the soldiers surrounding the bank without and the Armenians within. One of the band accidentally dropped a piece of dynamite, and was torn to pieces in the explosion which followed. He died after hours of stoic suffering, refusing all aid offered him by the clerks : he was glad, he said, to die for his country.

Next day we were early in town. In the clear August sunlight the outlook was ghastly. We stopped by the bulletbattered bank, on our way to the Legation. We saw pools of blood dotting the cobble pavement, and lines of soldiers standing silently about. We were just concluding that the massacre had stopped when a rattle of shots attracted our attention to a side street, where a crowd of rough-looking Turks were gathered before a barred and barricaded house. We passed several similar scenes, all of them in front of Armenian houses. The shots came from the owners, who were vainly trying to defend themselves against the rapacious mob. The stolid Turkish soldiers, standing about meanwhile, acted as if they were wholly unconscious of what was going on. The only moving vehicles in the empty streets were carts and carriages loaded down with dead men, —the bodies piled in any fashion, arms and legs hanging out, — on their way to the cemeteries. There was prompt system evident in every direction. The dead were being taken out of sight almost before they grew cold ; the battered Armenian shops were being closed up with rough boards ; lines of patrol were established in all of the principal streets. Everything was done save the one thing essential : no one raised his hand to save an Armenian life. Wherever two Turks, or even one, met a luckless Armenian or ferreted out his hiding-place, they beat him over the head with the wooden clubs which all the Turks carried, and an Armenian never attempted to resist. With a submission that was wonderful, he bowed his head to the blows. Only when he was in his home, barricaded, and felt that he could kill several Turkish soldiers, did he ever make any show of resistance.

When we reached the Legation, we heard unnumbered stories of the day and night before. Many people, among them rich Armenian bankers and merchants, were gathered there for protection, and each had some terrible personal experience to relate. Most of them had lost relatives, and all had lost friends. Lemme, our second dragoman, who lived over in Psamatia, the Armenian quarter of Stamboul, told of the awful butchery going on there, because the place was known as a hothed of revolution. Many of the revolutionists were armed with dynamite, and were throwing bombs wherever Turkish soldiers tried to arrest them. He told how one band barricaded itself in a church, and kept off the soldiers for hours. Finally, by promising to surrender, they tempted the soldiers in, until the church was filled : then, exploding a great amount of powder and dynamite, they killed themselves and their enemies. Of course many of the stories were exaggerated. One, subsequently verified, was of ten Turks who, armed with wooden clubs, entered the general railway station in Stamboul and killed thirteen Armenians, who were working with iron crowbars upon the track. It was in a discussion that arose over this incident that I heard one of the most prominent of the Armenian bankers of the city say to the minister, who could not understand the sheeplike submission of a whole race to death, that every Armenian was ready to die, if assured that his death would arouse Europe to the extermination of the Turk. We had often heard this threat of national suicide, but could never before believe it. A letter from the venerable missionary, Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, published in our Red Book for 1895, quoted it as coming from a leader of the revolution. Only after this experience was its appalling truth forced upon us.

As it was well established that the murderers were seeking none but Armenians, and were offering not the slightest injury to other Christians, we were also convinced of what it has been so hard for the Western world to understand. This is that these massacres were in no sense religious, but were wholly political. They had no connection with the Moslem church, except in so far as all political movements have their centre in the priesthood. Armenians were killed because the Turks were convinced that they were conspiring against the holy government ; and they were permitted to be killed because that same holy government did not dare to add to its well-established unpopularity by interfering with its infuriated subjects. Undoubtedly the priesthood had much to do with inciting the murderers.

Thursday afternoon, convinced of the safety of all other Christians, Riddle and I, accompanied by Cabell, a young Virginian, a chance tourist in Constantinople, took a long walk, wholly undefended and unarmed, over into Stamboul. where we knew the massacre was still unrestrained. Here again we saw the silent groups and the dead bodies they left behind when they moved on. We also saw, to be perfectly just, bands of cavalry in the open places, dispersing the mobs with riding-whips. But never a Turkish soldier dared to fire on a ruffian. And the soldiers seemed totally blind to many murders that went on in the smaller side streets.

Thursday night the killing continued ; so, also, all night long, the rattle of the death carts through the streets carrying the dead to the burying trenches. Not until Friday night did the continual pressure of the ambassadors force the government to issue orders to the soldiers to fire on all mobs. Then the massacre came promptly to an end. A visit made on Saturday morning to the Armenian cemetery at Chichli gave the best idea of the awful extent of the deadly work. Here the American and the Belgian ministers estimated that they saw from fifteen hundred to two thousand bodies, laid out in longlines, awaiting the completion of the trenches. Many of them had been lying in the hot sun since Wednesday, and were so swollen that their arms and legs were thrust up stark and stiff into the air.

Is it to be wondered at that, after this experience, ordinary stories of suffering and death seemed trivial, and only the extraordinary moved us to attention ? For weeks there was a constant stream of petitioners to the American Legation asking for protection and aid to leave the country. Since we had been directed by the government to give aid to all who could prove their American citizenship (many Armenians have secured naturalization from us, only to return home to live), as well as to the women relatives of Armenian citizens in America, the idea got abroad that we were befriending the whole race. Therefore hundreds who could establish no claim upon us were turned away, weeping and bitter. Every morning there were sure to be groups of them sitting about the hall of the Legation, awaiting the arrival of the minister. They all came to be of the same type, and to attract little of our attention.

One afternoon, on coming in from luncheon, I saw sitting just outside the minister’s room, where so often I had seen the black-draped figures, widowed or childless, a large woman with a markedly strong face. She was not bowed down in grief, as many of them had been, but sat straight up, looking ahead as if she saw nothing of the passing visitors. If there was some ideal of incarnate motherhood about her, there was also a firm expression of self-reliance. Her story, I felt, would not be of the usual tearful type. Her clear eyes were of a sort that yields few tears. As she waited for an audience I watched her, convinced that hers would be no ordinary story.

I spoke to Lemme about her. Lemme knew all the prominent Armenians in town. “ Oh yes,” he said, “ that is old Madame Manelian. I would have sworn that she was mixed up in the troubles in some way. She is a very famous character in Psamatia, and I heard the other day that all three of her sons were killed in the massacre. Her father was Agop Agopian, one of the best known Armenians in this country under the reign of Abdul Medjid. He was one of the Sultan’s secretaries, and for a long time one of those favorites such as we still have, and who, as you know, are often the real power. He once saved the Sultan’s life, when a young officer, for some grievance, attacked his Majesty. Agopian snatched a gun and killed the youngster. He grew old and rich and, it was said, very corrupt in the service. His daughter, the lady there in the hall, married Manelian, a professor in the military school near St. Sofia. At the time of the deposition of Murad in ’76 Manelian was charged with fomenting a conspiracy among the students, and was sent to die at work on the fortifications somewhere on the frontier. Ever since then Madame Manelian has been very bitter, and does not hesitate to call down curses on the head of the present Sultan openly and everywhere. I wonder the authorities have not laid hands on her long before this.”

This determined me to hear her story, and when I spoke to her she replied, as do most Armenians, in bad Levantine French. Fortunately a prominent Armenian came in for a visit to the minister just at this time, and she was enabled to tell her story fluently in her own language, which he interpreted, as she went slowly along, in perfect English. It was written down that night into a long memorandum, and I am therefore able to give it here almost in her own language : —

“ I come to ask your Excellency to be so graciously kind as to assist me, as you have assisted so many of my poor people, to leave this burial ground of our race. If I were a man I would stay here and fight for my rights. But I am only a poor woman, sixty years old. I have given my husband and my sons to the cause, and what more can a woman give ? The police know me and watch me, but they do not dare to hurt me. The bloody monster of Yildiz, base as he is, will not allow them to touch me. He remembers what his father, Abdul Medjid, owed to my father Agopian. He would have arrested me, but he is superstitious and therefore frightened. My father saved his father’s life ; he fears that he would lose his own if I were harmed. I am safe. But my strength is almost gone ; I have no further sons to urge against him ; my days are almost run, and I would die in peace. My only remaining child, a daughter, is married and living in Bucharest; I come, therefore, to your Excellency, to ask your protection in leaving, and a small assistance which will enable me to reach Roumania.”

Questioned as to what claim she had upon the United States, she knew of none. She understood that we were giving assistance to all Armenians who wished to leave. Assured that this was a mistake, she seemed very much disappointed, though she gave no sign of the tearful pleading usual at this point. But in his kindness the minister promised to use his good offices for her, and to do what he could, unofficially, to assist her departure. Then, because he was anxious to gather all the information possible concerning the massacres, he asked her of her experience. Very slowly and calmly, with but slight punctuation of sighs, she told this remarkable story : —

“ I had no cause to raise my sons to love the Sultan. Their poor father was sent to cruel imprisonment and a slow death, only because he was a friend of the brave, good Murad, whose place this usurper now holds. They knew his history. But to save them I sent them away as soon as they had been properly educated. Serkis, the elder, went to Athens, where he followed his father’s profession and taught. Hagop went first to Marseilles, then to Paris, and finally to Berne, where he was actively engaged in furthering the work of the revolutionary committee. But this, I assure your Excellency, was against my advice. Only Mardiros, their milk brother, the child of my sister, who died in giving him birth, remained with me. My daughter Anna was married two years ago. Almost before I knew it my boys became very much involved and very enthusiastic in the Huntchagist cause. The government knew it. The police came to see me and questioned me about them. They followed Mardiros, but he, poor boy, knew nothing of the cause until my sons returned.

“ I was ignorant of their plans until one night in July they knocked at my door. I should never have known them, they were so grown and changed. Both had heavy beards, and their oldest friends passed them in the street unnoticed. We sat that whole night through talking of their plans. They had returned for a grand demonstration in favor of the reforms. Mardiros was soon their enthusiastic companion. He helped to conceal their presence; and he gave it out among the neighbors that I had taken in two of his companions of the Regie [tobacco monopoly] to board. We thought we had completely deceived the police. Serkis and Hagop came and went undisturbed for a month. They were so brave and so unselfish. My pride in them was very great. I knew the whole plan. I had helped with my own hands to store the explosives in the cellar of my own house. They went out each night to meetings of the revolutionists, and spent the day in the manufacture of bombs, which Hagop had learned in Switzerland, and which he soon taught to Serkis and Mardiros. They planned that one band, as has come to pass, should seize the bank in Galata. Another, on the same day, was to occupy the great building of the administration of the Ottoman debt in Stamboul. In this last party were my boys. I saw them go forth on the morning of the day, and kissed them good-by as proudly as if they went to battle. I had well nursed my hatred through the long years ; I almost wished, old woman that I am, to go with them. Then I waited.

“ Now that I see more clearly than I did through the youthful enthusiasm of my boys’ eyes, I believe that we are not a fit people for self-government. Long submission has propagated in us all the meaner vices, and the virtues have had little nourishment. I have long known we are a race despised by the world. My boys knew it also. They told me how the people in other countries judge Armenians ; but they were filled with enthusiasm to prove their bravery and their honor, and I shared in their ardor. Now I have greater faith in the judgment of the world. In spite of the long cruelty of the Turks to my people as a race, in spite of what we have all suffered as individuals under the present reign, there were actually Armenians so base that for a little of the Sultan’s gold they betrayed their brothers. Some there were who, attending all of the meetings, promptly made plain to the authorities all that passed. The government knew of the whole plan days before it came to be carried out. They could have prevented the whole demonstration. But it pleased them to permit the attack on the bank to be made, in order to justify in the eyes of the world a wholesale massacre. And they have well succeeded.

“ It happened that one of the chief traitors was to lead the attack on the debt building. He failed to appear at the proper time, and sent messengers postponing the attack and deceiving my boys, who were there ready. Then came the news, like lightning, of the taking of the bank. My boys hurried home and thought themselves still safe. They little knew, as I know now, that the police, thanks to their traitorous colleagues, had been watching them for days. On the evening of Wednesday one of the chief police of Psamatia, at the head of a squad of soldiers, came to my house and demanded my sons. By this time the killing was well on in the streets, and all of our houses were closed. I opened a window in the upper story and denied that my sons were in the country. He replied that I was lying, and then began to tell me how long they had been there, what they had been doing, and even where they had been in the morning. The boys, who were listening behind me, knew then that some one had proven traitor. I still denied their presence. Then the officer ordered the men to batter in the door. They struck it not more than once, when Serkis seized some bombs which were under the divan and began to let them fall among the soldiers. Two, I think, were killed. But as they began to shoot I could no longer watch them. I ran to aid Mardiros in bringing the bombs from the cellar into the second story. Before we had carried them all upstairs the soldiers came back reinforced and the battle began again. One of their bullets made a fine hole for me to look through. How I rejoiced to see the bragging police officer, who was directing the attack, die ! Three times during the night they returned, and each time went back carrying their dead with them. None of us spoke a word. We all remained at our posts without food and without drink. We saw them kill the neighbors. They even set fire to the near-by houses in the hope of reaching ours. But, for a time at least, God was with us and the houses would not burn. Though none of us said a word of it during all that night and the next morning, we all seemed to know what was to be done. I have often wondered how the same idea came into the minds of all three of my boys, though there had been no plans for this circumstance beforehand. Meanwhile we all worked with a will, repulsing each attack as it was made, and killing I should say at least ten soldiers and wounding as many more. Turks are brave. They never fear death. When I was not watching I was distributing the ammunition in three little piles behind each of my boys. I also watched for an attack on the back door. It never came. We had but to open the wooden shutter for a moment whenever the soldiers tried to enter the door and let the bombs fall. The noise was so great as completely to deafen me. I remember wondering why the last made so little noise. There was a deep pit dug in front of the house where the bombs had fallen.

“It was just at sunset on Thursday when the last attack was made. I had not thought of the time when our ammunition would give out, but the boys had. They did not tell me, perhaps thinking that I would oppose them. I was trying to count the dead from the last bomb when I heard a different and a nearer report in the room. My firstborn, Serkis, had shot himself in the temple. Then I saw to my horror that all of the ammunition was gone. I heard the blows of the soldiers raining upon the door, as I ran to pick up my dying son. I had not noticed that Hagop had taken the pistol from his hand until another shot in the room took my eyes from Serkis. Hagop lay at my feet. He died immediately. None of us said a word. The blows came thicker and thicker upon the door below, but it was strong. I saw little Mardiros take the pistol out of Hagop’s hand, and I did not try to stop him. He looked straight at me and smiled as he pressed the barrel against his temple. I did not seem to hear the sound of the shot that killed him, for there was a great crashing noise made by the falling in of the door. I heard them entering below with loud hurrahs and curses. Serkis’ head was in my lap. As I heard them searching downstairs, I put out all my strength and drew my other dead babies to me, and, leaning my back against the wall, pillowed their heads in my lap. I was smoothing their hair with my fingers when the soldiers entered the room. It was nearly dark, and one held a lighted torch. Five or six of them came, but somehow they all stopped as soon as they saw us. They stood there for some time looking at me, saying nothing, and I spoke not to them, but I smoothed the hair of my boys. Then one said, ‘ Leave the old she-dog alone with her dead puppies.’ And they went away.”

We all sat for some minutes in silence after the story was told. The desolate mother had the same clear look in her eyes, wherein was never a tear. She scarcely breathed a sigh, but the interpreter was weeping softly, — weeping, I suppose, over this fine remaining monument of his degenerate race. And surely such a one should leaven a multitude despised!

Chalmers Roberts.