interesting details as to the origin of the late Bulgarian insurrec- The subject was mentioned once more in the House of Commons on the eve of the prorogation. Mr. Ashley alluded to the Premier's silence on Aug. 7th. The Premier ought to be glad of the opportunity of making a statement, for, while the truth of the atrocities was generally acknowledged, it was imputed to him that in addition to abetting the concealment of facts, he still adhered to the position of sceptical apathy which he took up at the outset. . . . The information received by the Press was rapidly supplementing that which the Foreign Office could supply. Mr. Ashley proceeded to read a private communication which he had received from Constantinople, in which a number of Turkish officials were named, and the part they had taken in the atrocities described (Shefket Pasha, Tossoun Bey, Hafiz Pasha, and others). Some of them had been promoted or decorated, while Aziz Pasha, late Governor of Philippopolis, whose justice and philo-Bulgarianism were well known, had been removed from office. Mr. Ashley asked that the Government should take steps to ascertain whether these statements were correct. Mr. Bourke felt bound to admit that the Government really had no idea of the events which had occurred in Bulgaria until attention was called to them in the House, and he gladly took the opportunity of saying that the Government and the country were very much indebted to the newspaper correspondents through whom those events had become known. Sir William Harcourt said: From the First Minister of the Crown down to the Consul at Adrianople there seemed not to be a man who, at the moment when the East was occupying the attention of the country, knew that those massacres and horrors were going on. The Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, indeed, admitted with admirable simplicity that the Government had learnt all about them from the newspaper correspondents. He was glad, he must say, at all events, that after being denounced in that House and vilified in the Conservative Press, it was at last acknowledged that the reputation of England, which had been neglected by Her Majesty's Government and overlooked by our representatives abroad, had been vindicated by the newspaper correspondents. Mr. Disraeli denied that the Government had been ignorant of what had been occurring in Bulgaria. "You come to say we were ignorant of all that was occurring, and did nothing to counteract it, because we said in answer to questions that the information which had reached us did not warrant the statements that were quoted in the House. These are two entirely different questions. I maintain that the statements made to Parliament in putting those questions were not justified. On the 13th of July, Lord Derby telegraphed immediately to Sir Henry Elliot quoting the statements made in the Daily News of that day and asking whether they were true. All the statements are untrue.” -H. of C. Aug. 11th. The position which the Premier took up was to treat those who were opposing a pro-Turkish policy something as if they were plaintiffs in an action, who must be pinned down to the "particulars" which they had delivered. Thus there arose a great controversy, not only as to the accuracy of the accounts transmitted by the Times and Daily News correspondents generally, but especially with respect to the following points. (1) The alleged parading of the heads of murdered women and children by Bashi-Bazouks.1 (2) The statement that women and children had been publicly sold.2 This is the statement alluded 1 See Belgrade telegram in D. N. of July 13th. to by Mr. Disraeli on Aug. 11th. See Turkey, iii. 1876, No. 13. Subsequently (D. N. Aug. 30th) Mr. MacGahan vouches the Italian Consul at Burgos as an authority for the fact that sacksful of heads were emptied in the street at Tamboli. 2 For the allegations under this head see Belgrade telegram spoken of above; also T. July 8th, "More than 1,000 Bulgarian children have been taken and sold as slaves. They have been sold publicly in the streets of Adrianople and Philippopolis."-[Letter cited by Constantinople correspondent.] See also D. N. July 8th, where Mr. Pears says he is informed young girls may be bought for three or four liras each at Philippopolis, and quotes a correspondent who states that many young women have been carried off, in some cases for a few days only, in others perhaps to form part of their captor's harems, and that many children have been carried off to be converted to Mohammedanism or kept as drudges. (3) The statement that thousands of Bulgarians were in confinement in prisons and other places, undergoing indescribable tortures.1 (4) A story of the burning of forty or fifty Bulgarian girls in a stable near Kalofer, mentioned by Mr. Pears in his original letter, (D. N. June 23rd) as a rumour. In his second letter (D. N. July Sth) he said the rumour had been confirmed, and gave the substance of a long account of the incident from the Courier d'Orient newspaper.2 (5) Another point in controversy was whether the accounts of the havoc, when they represented that "at least 25,000 perfectly innocent persons had been massacred," and "that a large number of villages, differently stated as being between 60 and 100 had been burnt," 3 did not grossly exaggerate the destruction to life and property. For these allegations see letters of Constantinople correspondents in T. and D. N. July 8th. See ante, p. 315, as to Mr. Disraeli's replies to inquiries on these points. 2 Mr. Pears alludes to the story again (D. N. Aug. 15th), commenting at length on the evidence, and saying that in spite of Mr. Disraeli's statement that there was not the slightest foundation for the report, this particular story is not and will not be disproved. Subsequently Mr. Evelyn Ashley communicated to the D. N. (about Sept. 9th, 1876) a letter from a correspondent of his, an English Vice-consul in Bulgaria, who, he said, wrote as follows about the much-discussed story of the burning of forty girls:-"The original statement was founded on the misunderstanding of a colloquial Turkish phrase; to burn in Turkish is vakmak, but this verb is constantly used in the sense to ruin. . . . The forty girls were taken by Bashi-Bazouks from the village of Radi-keni, and were carried off by them into the mountains of the district of Gabrova-they were never more heard of. I understood how the mistake arose in a rather curious way. I had asked a young man, named (he gives the name, but I suppress it), whose father is a wealthy Greek merchant at Philippopoli, to come and tell me what he knew for certain of the occurrences in that district, and at last I inquired if he knew about the forty girls; he said he knew well that so many had been carried off from such a village. And did they burn (yakmichlarmi) them? I asked. Burn them? Certainly they did (yakmichlarmi? evvet), was the reply. This staggered me, but I recollected the current locution, and inquired in Turkish whether they burned them with fire. To this the answer was 'No, but not one of them returned to their village.' Mr. Gladstone (Lessons in Massacre, p. 51) says-"The Courier d'Orient was suppressed for criticising the declaration by Lord Beaconsfield of the falsity of the story. It was false. In every case of terror such as this, however large the truth may be, it is sure to be exaggerated here and there by fable." So Mr. Baring summarises the statements on this head, which found their way into the English newspapers. Mr. Pears (D. N. June 23rd) wrote:-"It is too soon yet to attempt to ascertain, with any degree of exactness, the number who have been killed. An intelligent Turk, who has just arrived, estimates it at 18,000. Bulgarians speak of 30,000, and of the destruction of upwards of 100 villages." In his second letter (D. N. July 8th) he said no one in Constantinople hesitated to believe that many thousands of innocent men, women, and children had been slaughtered, and that at least sixty villages had been utterly destroyed. He did not pretend that the statistics could be given with accuracy. Nowhere to his knowledge had the estimate of killed been put lower than 12,000. Mr. Baring devoted a great deal of space to the consideration of these controverted allegations, with the following results. (1) As to the cartloads of heads, he says it is utterly untrue they were ever paraded in the streets of any town, but the heads of some of a band of insurgents who were defeated by BashiBazouks were brought into Sofia on bayonets and poles. (2) It is not true that women and children were publicly sold; but many women had been carried off. (3) The evidence as to torture was very conflicting. There is no doubt that the overcrowding in the prisons at Philippopolis was terrific. (4) He was not able to discover anything authentic as to the story of the burning of the forty girls. (5) The difficulty of obtaining a reliable estimate of the numbers massacred was immense, but his estimate was that about 12,000 persons perished in the sandjak of Philippopolis. Fifty-one Bulgarian villages were burnt in the same sandjak (that is in the districts of Philippopolis and Tatar-Bazardjik), also four monasteries. Besides these seven Turkish and mixed villages were burnt by the insurgents.1 But it was felt that after all the controversy whether a few incidents happened exactly as had been reported to correspondents at a distance from the scene was a somewhat barren one.2 1 Subsequently Mr. Stoney, principal agent in the Philippopolis district of the Central Relief Committee for the Bulgarians, drew up a list, which gave the number of men, women, and children killed at 3,694, and the number of Bulgarian villages wholly or partially burnt at forty-nine. Vice-consul Calvert, in forwarding this list, observed that these figures tallied closely with those compiled by the Rev. Mr. Clarke (an American missionary). Mr. Layard (May 2nd, 1877) in transmitting this report characterises it as "undoubtedly the fullest and most trustworthy statement that has yet been furnished upon this subject," and adds it is some relief to find that the number of victims was at first enormously exaggerated.— Turkey, xxv. 1877, No. 264. See Turkey, i. 1877, No. 683, for Mr. Baring's criticism of Mr. Clarke's figures and adherence to his own. Mr. Baring's method, where no better means existed, was to deduct the number left alive from the estimated original population. In this manner he arrived at the figures 5,000 as representing the loss of life at Batak alone. Mr. Stoney's figures were stated to be founded on house-to-house visitations. If this means that he took the names of those whom friends or neighbours stated to have been killed, it seems clear that his total would be far under the mark, as omitting cases where, for instance, whole families had been massacred. As his list shows that every house in Batak was burnt, it is not easy to see how he applied the method of house-to-house visitation in such a case. On the other hand, Mr. Calvert points out that his inquiries were made when the panic had worn off, and when numbers of runaways, at first counted as dead, had returned. A somewhat similar controversy arose with respect to impalements. Mr. MacColl, dating from Belgrade, Sept. 21st, writes to the Times (Sept. 28th, 1876), stating that Dr. Liddon and himself, on their way thither along the Bosnian frontier, observed some sharply-pointed stakes in front of a Turkish military station, and were told on inquiry that they were used for impaling the Christian insurgents of Bosnia. fact any Bosnian Christian found with arms in his hands was, and is now, exposed to "In The important matter was whether the charge brought against the Turkish Power of systematic inhumanity such as Europe could not tolerate, was founded on facts; and as to this Public Opinion on the evidence before it came to an almost unanimous verdict of guilty. The Times remarked it was impossible to reconcile Mr. Bourke's language with Mr. Disraeli's, but it preferred the Under Secretary in his agreement with facts to the Prime Minister in contradiction to them.-(Aug. 12th.) Thus when the substantial accuracy of the Daily News report became apparent, when the Government's first answer, "We have no information of anything of the kind," had to be modified bit by bit as their tardy reports came in piccemeal, till their whole story differed but little from that originally told in the Daily News, and when at last the Under Secretary confessed as much and owned the obligations of the country and of the Government to the newspaper, Public Opinion recognised that the Government was either ignominiously beaten in the competition, or had been disingenuously striving to prevent the facts appearing in their true colour. Neither alternative was calculated to increase the confidence of Public Opinion in the Government. It became the cue of the pro-Turkish party to lay as large a portion as possible of the blame upon the shoulders of an infuriated populace, or of underlings; and to deny this treatment. ... The officer of an Austrian steamer which passes up and down the Save twice a week assured Dr. Liddon and myself that they often saw human beings writhing on those cruel stakes. And we saw with our own eyes a ghastly confirmation of this story in the shape of a body thus impaled." The Turkish Ambassador writes (T. Oct. 3rd), saying the absurdity of the story is self-evident, but he is authorised to give it a formal denial. Mr. Denton (T. Oct. 5th) cites a letter he had just received from the Archimandrite of Herzegovina, in which, incidental mention was made of impalements, "Les vieillards mis sur le pal." Musurus Pasha writes again (T. Oct. 6th), and on the same day letters appear from Dr. Liddon and Mr. MacColl. The latter cites further evidence in corroboration of the original statement, namely that of a Roman Catholic priest, and of Bishop Strossmayer, whose guests they were, and whose diocese was the scene of the occurrences. He said it was all quite true, with this addition, that women as well as men were impaled. Canon Liddon sends a letter from Mr. Humphrey Sandwith to the Times of Nov. 30th. The latter says:-"During my travels. .. I have inquired from time to time about the practice of impalement as you requested me. From various people I have gathered that the practice is still more or less in force, though not very common." He incloses a translation of the deposition of an eye-witness of one case, taken before the tribunal of first instance of Belgrade. Consul Holmes, who was directed to report as to the truth of the original statement, replied that no one there had ever heard of anything resembling the cruelties mentioned, and it was impossible they could have occurred without becoming publicly known. He suggested that Mr. MacColl might have been hoaxed into accepting a faggot of beans, fixed up to dry, as an impaled body. (Turkey, i. 1877, Nos. 687 and 961.) Various other critics made similar ingenious suggestions. (See Mr. MacColl's letter headed "Impaled Vampires," D. N. March 2nd, 1878.) With reference to the whole matter compare Contemp. Rev. Feb. 1877, "The Morality of Mistake." |