CHAPTER XIII THE TRAIL OF THE INSURGENT

The Consuls and two newspaper correspondents cordoned at the storm centre received comprehensive and accurate reports of what was happening in the surrounding country through a secret emissary of the revolutionary committee. This envoy extraordinary, pleading his cause before the foreign representatives at a hostile capital, was a man of nerve, resource, and careful judgment, as well he had to be. Besides his other accomplishments, he had a knowledge of three European languages, French, German, and Italian, and was therefore able to translate the official insurgent reports from the original Bulgarian into languages understood of the Consuls. The contents of these periodical papers were a record of recent activities on the part of both insurgents and Turks. Combats and massacres were located, and where possible the numbers of killed and wounded were given. The final report was a summary of the summer’s work. It announced the razing, partial or entire, of 120 villages, and stated that 60,000 peasants in the vilayet of Monastir were homeless. Illustrating the report was a map which had been drafted by a skilled hand and manifolded by machine; a key in the corner explained the meanings of the different intensities of colour in which the villages were marked, from white, indicating total escape, to black, total effacement.

The dissemination of such information during the ‘general rising’ defeated the designs of the lawful administration, and, of course, the Turkish police were hard on the trail of the enemy in their midst. Hitherto it had been the practice of the Governor-General (who, like us, had left Uskub for more active fields) to inform foreign consuls only of such serious disorders as he could not hope to keep from them. Until now the number of casualties on the Turkish side in any single combat had been limited to ‘three killed and two wounded,’ and the Imperial Ottoman reports invariably defeated the ‘brigands.’ Now the limit of losses had to be raised, because of consular scepticism as to their accuracy, but still no record of defeat at the hands of the insurgents was ever permitted. Insurgent bands seldom numbered more than a hundred; nevertheless, his Excellency Hilmi Pasha would occasionally announce a loss to them of several hundreds. Invariably such a ‘destruction of brigands’ proved on unofficial information to be a massacre of non-combatants. It annoyed the chief officer of reforms exceedingly that foreign consuls and correspondents should give credence to the reports of the insurgents in preference to those of his office. His worry, however, was only on the score of effect in Europe; the tacit implication as to his veracity disturbed his excellency indeed very little.

A square-jawed Servian of some six-and-twenty years, dressed as a European with the exception of the fez, entered the Hôtel Belgrade for a cup of coffee—one act which never attracts suspicion. The café of the distinguished hostelry was otherwise deserted except for the Englishman and me. The stranger seated himself near us, looked us over while he sipped his coffee, then addressed us cautiously.

‘You are English correspondents?’ he inquired in a low voice in German.

‘We are,’ said my comprehending companion.

‘I have a confidential communication to make. Will you take me to your room?’

We went to the Englishman’s room, and the Servian explained his mission; whereupon he opened the door and called in a boy, not over fifteen, clad in a Greek gabardine, and carrying a basket of eggs.

This was our first meeting with the agent of the revolutionary committee. Of course, the papers meant for us were among the eggs.

For many weeks thereafter the envoy extraordinary and his youthful first secretary delivered the incriminating documents, but seldom twice in the same manner.

One day we received a message asking us to meet the insurgent at a certain house within the hour; the case was imperative. We made our way to the place indicated, and there received the revolutionist’s report with the map already mentioned. The man apologised for being unable to bring his final paper to us, and continued, ‘I must not be seen in the street to-day. They have my brother. They came to the house this morning while I was out and took him. The boy found me, and warned me not to return. For me it is fortunate that my work here is done.’

We never saw the Servian committaji again, and do not know that he eluded his pursuers; perhaps they were too close on his trail.

Monastir was thronged with Turkish warriors, Albanians, Anatolians, and European Turks, soldiers and bashi-bazouks, hale men and halt men; a one-armed soldier and a hump-backed dwarf carried guns, Turk and Turk alike. The vast barracks was overcrowded, tents stretched across the parade ground, otherwise seldom utilised, and climbed high up the mountain behind the caserne. The military hospital was surrounded by tents. A certain subdued delight fills the breast of the gentle Turk, and renders the combative Albanian loyal to the Padisha, when the native rajah gives cause for castigation. There is glory for Mohamed in the despatch of an infidel, and material profit in the plunder reaped.[6] Nearly a hundred thousand Albanian and Turkish soldiers were crowded into the Monastir vilayet to ‘repress’ the ‘armed insurrection,’ and such resident Mohamedans as were not called to the colours sharpened their yataghans and joined unorganised in the work of the army.

With this force on the warpath the town became quiet. Such Bulgarians as had not gone to the mountains became Greeks or Servians, and for a time the race disappeared from the streets. Greeks and Vlachs also kept close to their houses, and some days only soldiers selling plunder held the market place. The army commandeered the better pack-animals and teams as they appeared on the streets, paying for them in paper promises—in consequence whereof all fit animals were soon kept stabled. Honest toil ceased, and only the labour of the struggle continued. In the early morning, before the town stirred, detachments of troops started for the mountains with many pack-ponies, each laden with four ample tins of petroleum. At night, when Monastir was still again, the pack-ponies came back—bringing in the wounded of the Turks.

The revolutionary committee had declared the ‘general rising’ of the peasants with less than ten thousand rifles of all patterns,[7] a meagre force with which to contest the Ottoman authority, and a poor result for the price that had been paid in men and morals. The insurgents had been gathering arms for several years. Many murders had been committed in Macedonia in the forced collection of levied assessments, and some had taken place in Bulgaria; many massacres of innocent peasants had been brought about in the Turkish search for arms; many insurgents had given their lives fetching the arms from friendly and hostile frontiers.[8]

The high chiefs of the committee never expected to defeat the Turks with their inadequate force of untrained peasants; their purpose was to provoke the Sultan to set his soldiers upon the Christians. They were willing to pay the lives of many thousands of their brother Macedonians for the accomplishment of their desire—the country’s autonomy. They were fanatics. The Turks called them Christian fanatics, but it was not only the insurgents who were frenzied; probably 40,000 men, women, and children, the entire population of many villages, went to the mountains unarmed. This was the general rising. And all the Bulgarians who remained in their villages, and many other Macedonians, gave their whole sympathy to the cause of the committajis.

The revolution was declared in the vilayet of Monastir, among other reasons, because of a specific design upon the Greek communities. You have seen in a previous chapter how the Turks at repression recognised no difference between Greeks and Bulgarians, massacring both alike, even though the Greek clergy had some assurance that Bulgarians alone would be ‘repressed.’ The insurgents understood the Turk better. They laid deliberate plans to draw him down upon the communities of hostile politics. By capturing lightly garrisoned towns whose inhabitants adhered to the Greek Church, putting the Turkish soldiers to death, they drew the Turks in force to the retaking of these places, whence they (the insurgents) would cautiously withdraw, leaving the ‘Greeks’ to the vengeance of the Mohamedans. They argued that measure must be met by measure; Greek priests converted by threatening Bulgarian peasants with the Turk.

A TURKISH BAND LEAVING MONASTIR.

BASHI-BAZOUKS.

A storm of protest came from Athens, directed chiefly against one Bakhtiar Pasha, simultaneously commander of the most bloodthirsty body of soldiers and the most rapacious band of bashi-bazouks, who put to the sword and the torch both exarchist and patriarchist community. With the support of ambassadors of the Powers, the Greek Minister at Constantinople demanded the immediate relief of this general from his command ‘in the interest and honour of the Turkish army’; and the Sultan, always tractable under pressure, promised to punish the offending pasha. Forthwith the deviceful monarch despatched a special messenger from Constantinople to Monastir, bearing congratulations and the Order of the Mijidieh in diamonds for Bakhtiar the Brave.

But there came a day when Abdul Hamid kept a promise. Two ‘Greek’ towns, Nevaska and Klissura, were captured by insurgents and the Turkish garrison put to death. Some time elapsed before the Turks saw fit to retake the towns, and during the interval the Sultan was persuaded not ‘to further alienate Greek sympathies.’

At the approach of a strong body of Turks the insurgents retired, and the soldiers entered the town in military order, blades sheathed, and leading no asses laden with petroleum.[9]

But massacre and the burning of villages continued, and refugees entered Monastir in large numbers, some coming in alone, others travelling in companies. Several hundred women and children who arrived from Smelivo, one of Bakhtiar’s ‘victories,’ were driven back from Monastir by troops, though without further reduction of their numbers. The news of this came to the Consuls in a very few hours, and the Austrian, who was most active, visited the Governor-General at once and protested; whereupon the survivors of Smelivo were allowed to enter Monastir.

One day a woman among the refugees went to Herr Kraal and asked him to obtain the release of a son, whom she had thought dead, but had seen alive in the custody of certain Turks. The Consul caused his dragoman to ascertain where the boy was kept, and on learning the exact house, he called on Hilmi Pasha and stated the case. His excellency was horrified at such a charge against a Turk. For what purpose would a Mohamedan steal a Christian child? The Consul gave the Governor-General the location of the house, and threatened to send his dragoman and kavasses to release the child unless the police were put to the job at once. An Austrian dragoman accompanied the Turkish police; the boy was found and restored to his mother.

There was a Greek in Monastir known as a professional redeemer of stolen Christians. Through the instrumentality of the Greek Vice-Consul, Jean Dragoumis, this curious character and I were brought together. I ascertained from him that he had, in a period of twenty years, participated in the rescue of seventeen of his compatriots. Most of them were girls and women stolen by force or enticed from their own homes by Mohamedans. The most recent instance of this fortunately infrequent practice occurred, the native alleged, during our presence in Monastir. Two small boys were brought into Monastir by a Turkish soldier and ‘offered for sale on the market place’ along with other plunder. A subscription was raised among some Greeks, according to my informant, and the children were ‘purchased’ from the Turk for four mijidiehs. ‘Since Herr Kraal has protested,’ said the rescuer of Christians, ‘orders have been issued that no more stolen children shall be brought into Monastir.’ Jean Dragoumis himself, a splendid young Greek, interpreted for me on this occasion.

It is always difficult in Turkey to know just what is true and what is false. Even the peasants will attempt, for one consideration or another, to impose upon the stranger. Sometimes they invent or embellish incidents simply for vain notoriety, and again with deliberate intent to prejudice your sympathy. The refugees who came into Monastir from the surrounding country told some terrible tales. They told of dead lying unburied by the roadway, where they had been shot for no other reason than their race—which was undoubtedly true. They told in many instances of dogs gorging upon the unburied dead—which is quite probable; the hungry, bread-fed dogs of Turkey would devour any flesh. They told, in one case, of children having been thrown alive into a burning lime-kiln—which is possible. They told of women having been flayed alive—which I do not believe; it is not in the Turk’s nature to inflict lingering torture.

My companion and I saw among the refugees in the Greek hospital a woman whose shoulder had been almost severed from her body with a single sword slash; another woman whose hand had been cut off with a sabre—the arm, she said, had held her infant, which was hacked to pieces at her feet. We saw a small boy who had been shot through the head, and a small girl who had been stabbed in several places. These were the most cruel of many cases in the hospital.

On one occasion we succeeded in entering the Turkish civil hospital, where there were a number of wounded Bulgarians. In a women’s ward, where bandaged heads and limbs were in plain evidence, the dutiful doctor, a Greek, informed us that his patients were all suffering from ‘feminine complaints.’

‘But,’ we said, ‘some of them appear to be wounded.’

‘Oh, a few,’ replied the loyal servant of the Sultan, ‘must have attempted to commit suicide. They were found with wounds.’

At the barred door of a prison ward, through which we could see bandaged men, we were told, for variety, that this was the ‘accident’ ward. We inquired what comprised accidents.

‘Some fell out of trees, others amputated their own arms while cutting wood.’ This deviceful M.D. was indeed worthy of the Sultan’s service.

Towards the close of the revolution a Turkish proclamation addressed to the peasants in the mountains was placarded throughout the vilayet. It read, in true Ottoman fashion, in part as follows:

TURKS ON THE MARCH.

‘There is no need to mention how much his Imperial Majesty the Padisha, our benefactor and enlightened master, desires the prosperity of the country and the welfare of all his subjects without exception, sacrificing sleep and quiet day and night, thinking how to perfect his lofty purposes, and therefore commands the execution of certain benefits. Everywhere courts are approved and established for the preservation of the rights of the people; for the guarding of faithful subjects and the execution of the laws bodies of police and gendarmes are enlisted; for the saving of life and property guards are appointed; for the spreading of education schools are opened; roads and bridges are constructed for the people to carry food and merchandise; as also are begun everywhere various other needed benefits, and for this end part of the local income is apportioned.’

(‘I have the honour to transmit herewith a translation of the proclamation to the Bulgarians,’ ran the official report of the British Consul covering this document. ‘The list of reforms accomplished is purely illusory!’)

‘But some evil-minded ones,’ continued the proclamation, ‘not wishing the people to be benefited by these favours, and regarding only their own selfish interest, deceive the inhabitants and commit various repulsive transgressions. There is not the least ground for the lies and assurances with which the Bulgarians are deceived. All the civilised people of Europe and elsewhere regard with horror their deeds, which destroy the peace of the land, and everywhere—with great impatience—the suppression of these enemies to peace and order is awaited. The Imperial Government observes with sorrow that many people still rebel notwithstanding that until now, because of its great mercy, it has proceeded with marked clemency toward the agitators. But since the Government cannot coolly see the order of the country destroyed and the peaceful population subjected to murders and other evils, it categorically orders the commanders of the troops, wherever they are sent, to disperse and kill most severely the disturbers and their followers who still remain in rebellion. Therefore, for the last time, the Bulgarians who have been deceived and have left their fireside and their trades are invited to return to their homes and villages, and those who do not return and run towards the mercy of the Imperial Government will be punished and destroyed in the severest fashion.’[10]

The rebels did not run toward the mercy of the Imperial Government, but many of them, because of their privations with the bands and the approach of winter, began to return from the mountains to their homes or the sites of them, seeking on all occasions to avoid the Turkish troops. I heard an account of how in one instance a party of some forty men and a hundred women and children received a message from a detachment of the army promising them safety if they would return to their village, and with this specific assurance they ventured back. They were met on the way by the Turks, and the men were manacled and marched away towards Florina, where, the Turks said, their names would be recorded and they would then be set free. About half-way to town they met a larger body of soldiers, commanded by a superior officer, who demanded why Bulgarians had been made prisoners. No adequate reply forthcoming, the ranking man gave orders that the peasants should be put to death forthwith. The troops set upon the handcuffed men, slew them, and decapitated their bodies. The headless bodies, so the story goes, were thrown into the stream. What became of the heads none could say.

(A photographer at Monastir has, in former years, taken many pictures of Turkish soldiers and officers standing behind tables on which were laid the battered heads of Bulgarians and other ‘brigands.’ But heads are no longer brought into Monastir, and the photographer has been forbidden to display all pictures of this nature. I was able, however, to procure some.)

On a visit to Hilmi Pasha’s office soon after this incident I took occasion to mention it to his excellency. He was completely ignorant of the story, and asked me for details.

‘No, no, Monsieur Moore,’ he declared when I concluded; ‘none of the Sultan’s men would do such a deed.’

‘But your excellency,’ I said, ‘I know that the Metropolitan of Florina called on the kaimakam and requested him to have the bodies drawn out of the water and buried. The main facts of the story cannot be denied.’

‘Where did you say the Bulgarians were from?’ asked the Governor.

I consulted my note-book and told him.

‘There is no such place.’

‘Perhaps I have not pronounced the name properly, but the act of treachery remains,’ I contended.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Hilmi, ‘the town was ——;[11] I recollect now. Monsieur Moore, Turks never lie. With your pronunciation and the error in the figures you gave I did not recognise the affair. There were sixty Bulgarians killed, not forty. But the deed was not one of treachery; it happened two days before the Sultan granted pardon to the rebels.’

TURKISH TROOPS.

The inspector-general volunteered some further information on other affairs, notably that of Krushevo. At first the Turks contended that the insurgents had burned and pillaged the Vlach town. Now Hilmi Pasha informed me that bashi-bazouks had done the work. ‘The officers,’ he said, ‘tried to keep them off the heels of the army, but they were many, many, and while occupied fighting the insurgents the troops could not prevent the bashi-bazouks from plundering. I have had thirty bashi-bazouks arrested, and I have just received a report from one of my officers stating that four thousand animals, which were driven off by the bashi-bazouks, have been returned to the inhabitants of Krushevo.’

This statement was both an important admission and an interesting announcement, and I sent it at once to the Times, for which I was now correspondent. But a few days later on visiting Krushevo I was compelled to contradict his excellency’s information as to the return of stolen cattle.

In spite of the efforts of the authorities to suppress the news of what was happening, and to gull the correspondents, we were able to collect much valuable information, and through the Consular post to get our despatches safely to the Servian frontier, whence they were wired to London uncensored. When the Governor-General learned—via London and Constantinople—the nature of the reports the correspondents were sending through, he was much disturbed, and sought to frighten us out of the country. He sent a communication to Mr. McGregor informing him that he had received a letter from the committajis announcing that they intended to assassinate a British consul, a British correspondent, or an American missionary. The Consul—I use his words—considered this ‘a step taken by the authorities in order to cast suspicion on the Bulgarians in the much more likely eventuality of a Turkish outrage,’ and ‘consequently reminded Hilmi Pasha that, whatever the nationality of anyone guilty of a crime against a British subject, the responsibility of the Imperial Government will be the same.’