gost 246399
Aktivan član
- Poruka
- 1.554
Ни ти не стойиш баш найбоље са падежима. Трѣбаше казати: "Е мой Македонче...". А и х ти недостайе у "оћеш". Трѣба "хоћеш".
-
- Popularno:
- Da li Rusija treba da svrgne svoj režim...
- Vučić se obratio iz Niša: Stigli su...
- Једанаести сат у Новом Саду народ...
- Nakon kraha blokaderskih okupljanja -...
- Дачић: 900 аутобуса за митинг у Нишу
- Ipak, Vučić
- Proevropski kandidat u vođstvu u drugom...
- Ko će biti Vučićev predsednički...
- Да ли у Србији треба забранити...
- Prof Dr. Zoran Cvorovic: Englezi tj MI6...
2 avgust 1903 Ilinden, Za mnogu godini Makedonci!!!
- Začetnik teme oki1987
- Datum pokretanja
Ни ти не стойиш баш найбоље са падежима. Трѣбаше казати: "Е мой Македонче...". А и х ти недостайе у "оћеш". Трѣба "хоћеш".
Lesandar
Buduća legenda
- Poruka
- 27.930
E moj, Sandanskoviću, i ti hoćeš da budeš Maćedonac. Neće da te prihvate tamo pa moraš da grizeš, a?
kumanovo
Domaćin
- Poruka
- 3.096
Sigurno nisu uspeli da mu dobro prevedu tekst sada ce da ih kontaktira .
kumanovo
Domaćin
- Poruka
- 3.096
- Poruka
- 11.573
- Poruka
- 11.573
Е мој Македонче....?!?!!?
То можда ви Бугари тако пишете...
Пише се Е МОЈ МАКЕДОНАЦ...
оћеш или хоћеш...Мислим да се Оћеш говори код Срба у Босни...па чак и у Београду.
А ја и нисам Србин нити желим да будем...Тако да могу "се фрљам сс падежи колко си сакам"
...за разлику од поменутог господина из села Липково који је Србин над Србима.
- Poruka
- 11.573
Dragan Bošković:
CRNOGORSKO-MAKEDONSKE ISTORIJSKE I DRUGE VEZE
Pismo ruskoj carici
Хвала браћи Црногорцима
CRNOGORSKO-MAKEDONSKE ISTORIJSKE I DRUGE VEZE
Pismo ruskoj carici
Хвала браћи Црногорцима
gost 246399
Aktivan član
- Poruka
- 1.554
Немаш ти пойма.
МАКЕДОНАЦ йе именитељни падеж,
а МАКЕДОНЧЕ зватељни!
Ако се већ трудиш писати србским, онда не гутай падеже!
- Poruka
- 11.573
Ти си увек у праву, ваше Хашко височанство...
kumanovo
Domaćin
- Poruka
- 3.096
Tragedije derle je Sandanski ne zna on nista prevodi mu tekst neko drugo , a on odradi neki debilni odgovor kopira postove drugih ljudi .
- Poruka
- 11.573
Заиста си неписмени феномен!
Rechke
Veoma poznat
- Poruka
- 11.792
šta su Ameri onda znali o etničkom sastavu Balkana, Makedonac ej onda bila regionalna, a ne etnička ili nacionala odrednica
- Poruka
- 11.573
Можда за тебе је била...Али тај народ није тако говорио...
А теби само може да буде криво и ништа више...
kumanovo
Domaćin
- Poruka
- 3.096
Ma Ameri nemaju pojma .Uzelo derle da se igra Istorijom sacekajmo da mu prevedu tekst odradice on neki retard odgovor .
Poslednja izmena:
- Poruka
- 11.573
- Poruka
- 3.078
Charming document, written in literary Bulgarian language.
P. s. English translation:
http://www.kroraina.com/knigi/en/ban/ls3.html#82
The Proclamation of the General Staff of the Bitolya Revolutionary District announcing the Ilinden Uprising
July 15th, 1903
Brothers!
At last the long-expected day of settling our accounts with our age-old enemy has come.
The blood of our innocent brothers who have fallen victim to Turkish tyranny cries aloud for vengeance! The violated honour of our mothers and sisters demands restitution!
Enough of misery, enough of shame:
It is a thousand times better to die than to live the shameful1 life of an animal!
The appointed day on which the people throughout Macedonia and the region of Odrin will face the enemy openly, with arms in hand - is July 20th.
Follow your leaders, brothers, on that day and rally under the flag of freedom!
Persist in the struggle, brothers! Only persistence and a long struggle can save us.
May God bless our just cause and the day of the uprising!
Down with Turkey! Down with the tyrants! Death to the enemy!
Long live the people! Long live freedom! Hurrah!
We kiss you fraternally: the General Staff.
НБКМ - БИА, II. B-765; the original is in Bulgarian.
Full resolution: http://www.kroraina.com/knigi/en/ban/manifestvystanie.jpg
Poslednja izmena:
- Poruka
- 3.078
Another charming document, written in literary Bulgarian language. This document is not too popular in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia due to... well, some obvious reasons:
http://www.kroraina.com/knigi/en/ban/ls3.html#92
Letter No. 534 from the General Staff of the Second Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Region to the Bulgarian Government on the position of the insurgent population, requestioning assistance from Bulgaria
September 9th, 1903*
To the Esteemed Government of the Principality of Bulgaria
In view of the critical and terrible situation of the Bulgarian population of the Bitolya vilayet following the devastations and cruelties perpetrated by the Turkish troops and bashibazouks, in view of the fact that these devastations and cruelties continue systematically, and that one cannot foresee how far they will reach; in view, furthermore, of the fact that here everything Bulgarian is running the risk of perishing and being obliterated without a trace by violence, hunger and by approaching poverty, the General Staff considers it its duty to draw the attention of the Esteemed Bulgarian Government to the fatal consequences for the Bulgarian nation, if it fails to discharge its duty to its own brothers here in an impressive and energetic manner, made imperative by force of circumstances and by the danger threatening the common Bulgarian homeland at the present moment.
In the belief that the Esteemed Government is sufficiently well informed about the utter devastation of the vilayet, we consider it superfluous to repeat the facts in all their details here, and will confine ourselves to summing up the situation and the foreseeable consequences threatening our people in several points:
1. Both in the villages that have been burnt down or abandoned, and in the remaining Bulgarian villages, with very few exceptions, that part of the crop which was not burnt remains unharvested because any woman or man who appeared before the eyes of the patrolling troops and bashibazouks would be murdered; the crops are being gathered in by the Turkish population under the protection of the Turkish authorities. A large part of them, as well as of the plundered farm animals, are being used as provisions for the troops.
2. All equipment, implements and cattle used to till the land were destroyed by fire in the villages that were burnt down, while in the remaining villages, they were plundered by the troops and bashibazouks.
3. Almost all the small farm animals, which provide the means of livelihood for the greater part of the mountain population, were either destroyed or taken away, on orders from the authorities.
4. All burnt-down villages were pillaged before they were set on fire; the same fate befell literally all villages that have not yet been burnt; their houses were stripped to the walls, and their inhabitants - men, women and children, were forced to flee with only the clothes which they had on their backs.
5. In the burnt-down villages, religious rites were abandoned and the churches reduced to ashes, and in those villages which have escaped burning, the churches have been sacked, damaged and desecrated. In many places, the Turks used them as stables or latrines during their stay in the villages, e.g. in the villages of Tat-Mourounishta, Smilevo, Kriveni, Kroushe and others.
6. Not a single Bulgarian school is now open, or is likely to open, for the following reasons: a) the population has been scattered in consequence of the Turkish terror; b) almost all the teachers, as well as the priests, have joined the detachments, and will consequently not be considered eligible by the Turkish authorities for the posts they used to hold; c) no one gives a thought to learning when he is outlawed in the country where he lives, simply because he calls himself Bulgarian and fights against hunger.
7. At many places the Turkish authorities have announced to the population which had not fled, that, if it wishes to be spared, it should accept the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate. There were cases of this kind in the regions of Ohrid, Bitolya, Lerin and Kostour, where the troops, accompanied by the Greek bishop, forced the population to surrender their arms and to recognize the Patriarchate.
8. After our first offensive, we were forced to adopt a passive course of action, because, whenever we engaged in encounters with the mobilized Turkish battalions, either in skirmishes or from positions previously taken, depending on our tactics, the Turks after the end of fighting, would attack the unarmed men in the locality, and the women and children, killing all they could lay hands on, violating women and girls, setting fire to the villages that had not yet been burnt and to the woods around them, and taking away the farm animals that had been spared in earlier raids. There were cases of this kind in the villages of Armensko (Lerin district), where 114 old people, women and children were-massacred, Kroushe, Leoreka, Kriveni, Zlatari, Boino, Podmochani, Elha and others (Resen district), Plake, Rechitsa, Siroulya, Kouratitsa and others (Ohrid district); Smilevo, Dyavato (Bitolya district), etc., etc.
In view of the above, we call the attention of the Esteemed Bulgarian Government to the state of distress and helplessness to which our people have been reduced and to the sad and cruel fate threatening them in the immediate future, both as regards their property and health, and as regards their churches and schools. Being witnesses of this desperate plight, we venture to outline to you, in positive terms, the dark prospects of the future, as follows:
1. As a result of hunger, poverty and the approaching winter, one-third of our people is doomed to certain death.
2. As the farm animals and agricultural implements have fallen prey to fire or the Turks, the population, even if it is left in peace, having no means with which to till the land, will be compelled to give it up to the Turks and the fanatic supporters of the Greeks, and will thus entirely be reduced to the position of share-croppers or hired labourers.
3. The remaining part of the population, spiritually deprived and lacking the bare necessities of life, will be unable to resist the desire of the Turkish authorities and the tempting or threatening agitation of the unbridled Greek bishops and their organs, and is certain to accept the authority of the Greek Patriarchate, thereby being lost forever to the Bulgarian church and nation.
4. A further circumstance that we should not omit to mention is the following: For some time, now Catholic and Protestant missionaries have been approaching the Bulgarian population with secret proposals to accept the authority of their churches, if they wish to be protected from Turkish outrages. It will not be surprising if that part of the population that did not succumb to the Greek enticements might be prevailed upon to adopt Roman Catholicism or Protestantism.
In view of all this we are astonished that the Esteemed Government, which has the destinies of the Bulgarian people in its hands, can continue to look with such composure upon the systematic extermination of the Bulgarian population and the decline of our Bulgarian fame and honour before the world.
Placed at the head of the people's movement here, we appeal to you on behalf of the enslaved Bulgarians, to come to their assistance in the most effective way, i.e. by declaring war. We are confident that this call will be echoed by the people in Free Bulgaria.
Awaiting your patriotic intervention, we are pleased to inform you that we are keeping in readiness those of our armed forces which we have so far spared.
From the General Staff
ЦДНА, ф.176, оп 1, а.е. 1872, (л.л.. 243-244); the original is in Bulgarian.
P. s. Translation of the same text into literary Macedonian language: http://www.angelfire.com/super2/vmro-istorija/Dokument/pismogssep.html
http://www.kroraina.com/knigi/en/ban/ls3.html#92
Letter No. 534 from the General Staff of the Second Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Region to the Bulgarian Government on the position of the insurgent population, requestioning assistance from Bulgaria
September 9th, 1903*
To the Esteemed Government of the Principality of Bulgaria
In view of the critical and terrible situation of the Bulgarian population of the Bitolya vilayet following the devastations and cruelties perpetrated by the Turkish troops and bashibazouks, in view of the fact that these devastations and cruelties continue systematically, and that one cannot foresee how far they will reach; in view, furthermore, of the fact that here everything Bulgarian is running the risk of perishing and being obliterated without a trace by violence, hunger and by approaching poverty, the General Staff considers it its duty to draw the attention of the Esteemed Bulgarian Government to the fatal consequences for the Bulgarian nation, if it fails to discharge its duty to its own brothers here in an impressive and energetic manner, made imperative by force of circumstances and by the danger threatening the common Bulgarian homeland at the present moment.
In the belief that the Esteemed Government is sufficiently well informed about the utter devastation of the vilayet, we consider it superfluous to repeat the facts in all their details here, and will confine ourselves to summing up the situation and the foreseeable consequences threatening our people in several points:
1. Both in the villages that have been burnt down or abandoned, and in the remaining Bulgarian villages, with very few exceptions, that part of the crop which was not burnt remains unharvested because any woman or man who appeared before the eyes of the patrolling troops and bashibazouks would be murdered; the crops are being gathered in by the Turkish population under the protection of the Turkish authorities. A large part of them, as well as of the plundered farm animals, are being used as provisions for the troops.
2. All equipment, implements and cattle used to till the land were destroyed by fire in the villages that were burnt down, while in the remaining villages, they were plundered by the troops and bashibazouks.
3. Almost all the small farm animals, which provide the means of livelihood for the greater part of the mountain population, were either destroyed or taken away, on orders from the authorities.
4. All burnt-down villages were pillaged before they were set on fire; the same fate befell literally all villages that have not yet been burnt; their houses were stripped to the walls, and their inhabitants - men, women and children, were forced to flee with only the clothes which they had on their backs.
5. In the burnt-down villages, religious rites were abandoned and the churches reduced to ashes, and in those villages which have escaped burning, the churches have been sacked, damaged and desecrated. In many places, the Turks used them as stables or latrines during their stay in the villages, e.g. in the villages of Tat-Mourounishta, Smilevo, Kriveni, Kroushe and others.
6. Not a single Bulgarian school is now open, or is likely to open, for the following reasons: a) the population has been scattered in consequence of the Turkish terror; b) almost all the teachers, as well as the priests, have joined the detachments, and will consequently not be considered eligible by the Turkish authorities for the posts they used to hold; c) no one gives a thought to learning when he is outlawed in the country where he lives, simply because he calls himself Bulgarian and fights against hunger.
7. At many places the Turkish authorities have announced to the population which had not fled, that, if it wishes to be spared, it should accept the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate. There were cases of this kind in the regions of Ohrid, Bitolya, Lerin and Kostour, where the troops, accompanied by the Greek bishop, forced the population to surrender their arms and to recognize the Patriarchate.
8. After our first offensive, we were forced to adopt a passive course of action, because, whenever we engaged in encounters with the mobilized Turkish battalions, either in skirmishes or from positions previously taken, depending on our tactics, the Turks after the end of fighting, would attack the unarmed men in the locality, and the women and children, killing all they could lay hands on, violating women and girls, setting fire to the villages that had not yet been burnt and to the woods around them, and taking away the farm animals that had been spared in earlier raids. There were cases of this kind in the villages of Armensko (Lerin district), where 114 old people, women and children were-massacred, Kroushe, Leoreka, Kriveni, Zlatari, Boino, Podmochani, Elha and others (Resen district), Plake, Rechitsa, Siroulya, Kouratitsa and others (Ohrid district); Smilevo, Dyavato (Bitolya district), etc., etc.
In view of the above, we call the attention of the Esteemed Bulgarian Government to the state of distress and helplessness to which our people have been reduced and to the sad and cruel fate threatening them in the immediate future, both as regards their property and health, and as regards their churches and schools. Being witnesses of this desperate plight, we venture to outline to you, in positive terms, the dark prospects of the future, as follows:
1. As a result of hunger, poverty and the approaching winter, one-third of our people is doomed to certain death.
2. As the farm animals and agricultural implements have fallen prey to fire or the Turks, the population, even if it is left in peace, having no means with which to till the land, will be compelled to give it up to the Turks and the fanatic supporters of the Greeks, and will thus entirely be reduced to the position of share-croppers or hired labourers.
3. The remaining part of the population, spiritually deprived and lacking the bare necessities of life, will be unable to resist the desire of the Turkish authorities and the tempting or threatening agitation of the unbridled Greek bishops and their organs, and is certain to accept the authority of the Greek Patriarchate, thereby being lost forever to the Bulgarian church and nation.
4. A further circumstance that we should not omit to mention is the following: For some time, now Catholic and Protestant missionaries have been approaching the Bulgarian population with secret proposals to accept the authority of their churches, if they wish to be protected from Turkish outrages. It will not be surprising if that part of the population that did not succumb to the Greek enticements might be prevailed upon to adopt Roman Catholicism or Protestantism.
In view of all this we are astonished that the Esteemed Government, which has the destinies of the Bulgarian people in its hands, can continue to look with such composure upon the systematic extermination of the Bulgarian population and the decline of our Bulgarian fame and honour before the world.
Placed at the head of the people's movement here, we appeal to you on behalf of the enslaved Bulgarians, to come to their assistance in the most effective way, i.e. by declaring war. We are confident that this call will be echoed by the people in Free Bulgaria.
Awaiting your patriotic intervention, we are pleased to inform you that we are keeping in readiness those of our armed forces which we have so far spared.
From the General Staff
ЦДНА, ф.176, оп 1, а.е. 1872, (л.л.. 243-244); the original is in Bulgarian.
P. s. Translation of the same text into literary Macedonian language: http://www.angelfire.com/super2/vmro-istorija/Dokument/pismogssep.html
Poslednja izmena:
- Poruka
- 3.078
http://promacedonia.org/en/hb/index.html
MACEDONIA: ITS RACES AND THEIR FUTURE
.
by H. N. Brailsford
Methuen & Co., London, 1906
V. The Bulgarian movement
11. The General Rising of 1903 in Monastir
The moment for which the Bulgarian population had been preparing for ten years arrived on the festival of the Prophet Elias — the evening of Sunday, August the 2nd, 1903. The Turks and even the Europeans in Macedonia were taken by surprise. No one believed that a peasantry; to all appearance so crushed and brutalised, was really capable of a serious military demonstration on a scale which entitles it to the name of a general rising. It is true, there were rumours of what was coming. The peasants, when one talked of the future, would shake their heads and say wisely, "After the harvest you will see." But Macedonia is so used to threats and rumours that no one was seriously alarmed. Moreover, the relative calm which reigned throughout June and July had deceived the Turks, as it was intended to do. They still had some thought of making war on Bulgaria, and they were still concerned about the possibility of a fresh Albanian movement, and the result was that the greater part of their formidable army was grouped in the northern districts. In Monastir they had no more than fifteen thousand men, and these were scattered along the railway and throughout the interior. The chief command, moreover, belonged to Omer Ruchdi Pasha, an elderly and old-fashioned soldier, whose vacilla-
149
tion and incapacity still further aggravated the consequences of the surprise which the Committee had organised.
The signal was given by the burning of some haystacks just outside the town of Monastir. The revolt was proclaimed, and the banners blessed in the village churches, and before the short summer night was over the beacons had raised the whole of the highlands which stretch westward to Ochrida, northward to Dibra, and southwards to Castoria and Klissoura. The plan of campaign had been carefully thought out in advance. For years the country had been divided into military zones, each with its permanent cadre of seasoned guerillas, and each with its recognised chief. When the signal was given the young men of the villages who formed the standing reserve of the peasant army dug up their buried rifles, assumed their cartridge-belts, and set off with their cloaks and provisions to the appointed rallying-place. Their first duties were simple. Everywhere they cut the telegraph lines — a measure which in itself paralysed the bureaucratic machine, and made of the Turkish officials, accustomed as they are to regard themselves as the hands and eyes of some distant superior at the end of a wire, mere agitated units. Next came the wrecking of the bridges and culverts along all the main roads — an easy task in a country where everything is in decay. At the same time the isolated inns which serve as military posts along the trunk roads were ruthlessly burned. The railway line between Monastir and Salonica was also cut, but not so completely or so often as it ought to have been. The first Turkish reinforcements, it is true, had to march over the mountains from Uskub to Monastir, but in a very few days the railway was working steadily once more. Finally, each band employed itself on the congenial task of burning the keeps and towers of the Albanian beys — fortresses built by forced labour, and nests of robbery and oppression — and sometimes, it must be added, in murdering their owners. Some isolated Turkish posts were also rushed and destroyed, and some convoys captured on the roads. In all these destructive activities the bands hurrying to
150
group themselves around the Macedonian flag were practically unmolested and unopposed.
In all, the active ranks of the insurgent army in the Monastir Province mustered as nearly as I can estimate some five thousand men. It was no doubt a small force with which to oppose the large army of eighty thousand men which the Turks were soon able to assemble. It had no cavalry and no artillery — save two or three primitive pieces hollowed out of cherry-trees, according to the traditional plan followed in all Balkan risings. I should doubt if more than one man in four among the insurgents had ever been under fire before, or had practised marksmanship, although most of them had probably received some sort of drill. But they trusted each other and their leaders. They knew the mountain paths, and could march by night as well as day — a thing which no Turkish regiment will ever do. Their officers included not a few really capable guerilla chiefs. The headquarters were at first in the large village of Smilovo, half a day's journey from Monastir — one of those prosperous communities of migratory masons and carpenters which were the backbone of the insurrection. Here was gathered the general staff — Damian Groueff, Lozáncheff, and Boris Saráfoff. Saráfoff became the De Wet of the campaign, moving lightly about, accompanied by a picked band, and rallying the local levies, now in Florina and again in Ochrida, for some exceptional effort. Lozáncheff contrived by some unhappy chance to discredit himself in the eyes of his men. Groueff remained in command of the whole movement, and kept in touch with Monastir, where the consuls were regularly furnished with bulletins and reports, neatly manifolded and drafted in very tolerable French. Next in prestige was, I think, the southern detachment which worked in the Castoria-Klissoura region under the command of Tchakalároff of Smerdesh, a cruel but magnetic man, whose handsome presence and proverbial luck inspired his followers with complete confidence. The Resna contingent was commanded by a capable chief named Arsof, and the northern bands around Kruchevo were under a Vlach
151
named Pitou Goulé, who was killed in the second week of the rising. The Ochrida, Kitchevo, and Florina contingents worked as a rule in smaller detachments and had no very conspicuous generals. [1] The population of the villages which gave themselves over unreservedly to the movement is about sixty thousand, but reinforcements came from some other villages as well. About one in six of the male population were under arms, which is certainly a considerable figure. The Committee could, no doubt, have put other reserves in the field if it had had a larger supply of good rifles. The favourite weapon was the Gras, a cheap, heavy, inaccurate, and altogether inferior rifle, with a single breech-loading action; but many bands wisely preferred the Martini, and some few had magazine rifles. The bands were certainly mobile when one compares them with the Turkish columns, but their action was confined to their own districts unless, indeed, they were driven from one region to another — a fate which ultimately befell both Groueff and Tchakalároff. On the whole, when one considers how small the area affected really is, this was a somewhat primitive plan. From the extreme west (Ochrida) of the rebellious region to the extreme east (Sorovitch) is not further than a good horseman, well mounted, can ride in two long summer days. From Castoria in the south to Kruchevo in the north is no further. But there were doubtless sound reasons for adopting the plan of isolated and local action. If the whole force had come together to achieve some large enterprise they would have had to abandon their plages and their families to the unchecked fury of the bashi-bazouks. Moreover, the country, though the distances are not great, is exceedingly mountainous, so that rapid marching was out of the question.
The first three weeks of the insurrection were a period of almost unchecked triumph. The Turks seemed incapable
1. The number of the several contingents were, roughly, as follows: Smilovo and Gjavata, about 650; Kruchevo, 400; Demir-Hissar, 420; Resna, 450; Presba, 300; Florina, 450; Castoria, 700; Ochrida, 880; Kitchevo, 350; Monastir Plain, 250. In all about 4,800. But I give these figures under reserve. I have seen no official lists.
MACEDONIA: ITS RACES AND THEIR FUTURE
.
by H. N. Brailsford
Methuen & Co., London, 1906
V. The Bulgarian movement
11. The General Rising of 1903 in Monastir
The moment for which the Bulgarian population had been preparing for ten years arrived on the festival of the Prophet Elias — the evening of Sunday, August the 2nd, 1903. The Turks and even the Europeans in Macedonia were taken by surprise. No one believed that a peasantry; to all appearance so crushed and brutalised, was really capable of a serious military demonstration on a scale which entitles it to the name of a general rising. It is true, there were rumours of what was coming. The peasants, when one talked of the future, would shake their heads and say wisely, "After the harvest you will see." But Macedonia is so used to threats and rumours that no one was seriously alarmed. Moreover, the relative calm which reigned throughout June and July had deceived the Turks, as it was intended to do. They still had some thought of making war on Bulgaria, and they were still concerned about the possibility of a fresh Albanian movement, and the result was that the greater part of their formidable army was grouped in the northern districts. In Monastir they had no more than fifteen thousand men, and these were scattered along the railway and throughout the interior. The chief command, moreover, belonged to Omer Ruchdi Pasha, an elderly and old-fashioned soldier, whose vacilla-
149
tion and incapacity still further aggravated the consequences of the surprise which the Committee had organised.
The signal was given by the burning of some haystacks just outside the town of Monastir. The revolt was proclaimed, and the banners blessed in the village churches, and before the short summer night was over the beacons had raised the whole of the highlands which stretch westward to Ochrida, northward to Dibra, and southwards to Castoria and Klissoura. The plan of campaign had been carefully thought out in advance. For years the country had been divided into military zones, each with its permanent cadre of seasoned guerillas, and each with its recognised chief. When the signal was given the young men of the villages who formed the standing reserve of the peasant army dug up their buried rifles, assumed their cartridge-belts, and set off with their cloaks and provisions to the appointed rallying-place. Their first duties were simple. Everywhere they cut the telegraph lines — a measure which in itself paralysed the bureaucratic machine, and made of the Turkish officials, accustomed as they are to regard themselves as the hands and eyes of some distant superior at the end of a wire, mere agitated units. Next came the wrecking of the bridges and culverts along all the main roads — an easy task in a country where everything is in decay. At the same time the isolated inns which serve as military posts along the trunk roads were ruthlessly burned. The railway line between Monastir and Salonica was also cut, but not so completely or so often as it ought to have been. The first Turkish reinforcements, it is true, had to march over the mountains from Uskub to Monastir, but in a very few days the railway was working steadily once more. Finally, each band employed itself on the congenial task of burning the keeps and towers of the Albanian beys — fortresses built by forced labour, and nests of robbery and oppression — and sometimes, it must be added, in murdering their owners. Some isolated Turkish posts were also rushed and destroyed, and some convoys captured on the roads. In all these destructive activities the bands hurrying to
150
group themselves around the Macedonian flag were practically unmolested and unopposed.
In all, the active ranks of the insurgent army in the Monastir Province mustered as nearly as I can estimate some five thousand men. It was no doubt a small force with which to oppose the large army of eighty thousand men which the Turks were soon able to assemble. It had no cavalry and no artillery — save two or three primitive pieces hollowed out of cherry-trees, according to the traditional plan followed in all Balkan risings. I should doubt if more than one man in four among the insurgents had ever been under fire before, or had practised marksmanship, although most of them had probably received some sort of drill. But they trusted each other and their leaders. They knew the mountain paths, and could march by night as well as day — a thing which no Turkish regiment will ever do. Their officers included not a few really capable guerilla chiefs. The headquarters were at first in the large village of Smilovo, half a day's journey from Monastir — one of those prosperous communities of migratory masons and carpenters which were the backbone of the insurrection. Here was gathered the general staff — Damian Groueff, Lozáncheff, and Boris Saráfoff. Saráfoff became the De Wet of the campaign, moving lightly about, accompanied by a picked band, and rallying the local levies, now in Florina and again in Ochrida, for some exceptional effort. Lozáncheff contrived by some unhappy chance to discredit himself in the eyes of his men. Groueff remained in command of the whole movement, and kept in touch with Monastir, where the consuls were regularly furnished with bulletins and reports, neatly manifolded and drafted in very tolerable French. Next in prestige was, I think, the southern detachment which worked in the Castoria-Klissoura region under the command of Tchakalároff of Smerdesh, a cruel but magnetic man, whose handsome presence and proverbial luck inspired his followers with complete confidence. The Resna contingent was commanded by a capable chief named Arsof, and the northern bands around Kruchevo were under a Vlach
151
named Pitou Goulé, who was killed in the second week of the rising. The Ochrida, Kitchevo, and Florina contingents worked as a rule in smaller detachments and had no very conspicuous generals. [1] The population of the villages which gave themselves over unreservedly to the movement is about sixty thousand, but reinforcements came from some other villages as well. About one in six of the male population were under arms, which is certainly a considerable figure. The Committee could, no doubt, have put other reserves in the field if it had had a larger supply of good rifles. The favourite weapon was the Gras, a cheap, heavy, inaccurate, and altogether inferior rifle, with a single breech-loading action; but many bands wisely preferred the Martini, and some few had magazine rifles. The bands were certainly mobile when one compares them with the Turkish columns, but their action was confined to their own districts unless, indeed, they were driven from one region to another — a fate which ultimately befell both Groueff and Tchakalároff. On the whole, when one considers how small the area affected really is, this was a somewhat primitive plan. From the extreme west (Ochrida) of the rebellious region to the extreme east (Sorovitch) is not further than a good horseman, well mounted, can ride in two long summer days. From Castoria in the south to Kruchevo in the north is no further. But there were doubtless sound reasons for adopting the plan of isolated and local action. If the whole force had come together to achieve some large enterprise they would have had to abandon their plages and their families to the unchecked fury of the bashi-bazouks. Moreover, the country, though the distances are not great, is exceedingly mountainous, so that rapid marching was out of the question.
The first three weeks of the insurrection were a period of almost unchecked triumph. The Turks seemed incapable
1. The number of the several contingents were, roughly, as follows: Smilovo and Gjavata, about 650; Kruchevo, 400; Demir-Hissar, 420; Resna, 450; Presba, 300; Florina, 450; Castoria, 700; Ochrida, 880; Kitchevo, 350; Monastir Plain, 250. In all about 4,800. But I give these figures under reserve. I have seen no official lists.
Poslednja izmena:
- Poruka
- 3.078
152
of thinking out a plan of campaign, and, save in the three towns of Monastir, Ochrida, and Castoria, the insurgents were almost everywhere supreme. They took the three country towns of Kruchevo, Klissoura, and Neveska — all of them Vlach centres perched in the most inaccessible positions upon the mountain-side. The Turkish garrisons either fled or succumbed with hardly a show of resistance. Demonstrations were also made against the towns of Resna and Kitchevo, but here the attack was never pressed home. In the three captured positions provisional governments were installed, the insurgents danced with the girls of the place in the town squares, and from the churches, bells (which the Christians rarely dare to ring) summoned the townsmen to hear glowing orations upon the duty of rebellion and the glorious prospect of freedom. These three weeks must have been the happiest interval which Macedonia has known since the coming of the Turks. The men flung away their fezes — badges of servitude — and walked erect without fear of a beating or a bastinado. It is to their credit that, instead of enjoying their brief triumph at the expense of their Greek rivals, they bore themselves tolerantly and abstained from violence — save that they levied money contributions from the captured towns. They acted indeed in the spirit of the proclamation which announced the outbreak of the insurrection — a document which shows that humane ideals do penetrate even into the Balkans, however hard the local conditions make it to observe them: —
"We are taking up arms against tyranny and barbarism: we are acting in the name of liberty and humanity; our work is above all prejudices of nationality or race. We ought therefore to treat as brothers all who suffer in the sombre Empire of the Sultan. To-day all the Christian populations are wretched, nor must we except even the Turkish peasants. We regard the Turkish Government as our sole enemy, and all who declare themselves against us whether as open foes or as spies, and all too who attack old men, women, and defenceless children instead of attacking us. It is against them that we direct our blows and from them we shall exact vengeance."
A sensible attempt was sometimes made to secure the neutrality of Mohamedan villages, and occasionally with
153
success, as the following quaint document addressed by the notables of a Turkish village to the insurgent headquarters in Kruchevo proves:—
"We understand by the tenor of your letters that you are not evil men, that you have not left your hearths in order to attack the peaceful population (like ours), and that you are opposed only to the evildoers and to the Government which protects them. But those whom you seek are not to be found among us. They have fled to the towns. As for ourselves we promise to remain quiet. If your intention is to kill the innocent you have only to come here. May God help those whose quest is justice ! We have sent on your other letters to the neighbouring villages, which are also of our way of thinking."
For a brief period everything promised concord [2] and success. Indeed, the insurgents had to all appearances triumphed so easily that they gave themselves over to rejoicings and neglected to push their advantage by uniting their forces against the Turkish garrisons in such centres as Resna, Ochrida, Kitchevo, Castoria, and Sorovitch. Ochrida and Castoria could have been taken only at great cost, but the other places were by no means impregnable. It would be a mistake to consider this temporary triumph as a real military success, but it was and is of enormous moral importance. It was a brief hour of happiness in the long winter of misery, and the memory of it is still a stimulus, at least to the younger men.
2. It is proper in an impartial narrative to record the instances in which the insurgents were untrue to their ideal, (1) On the first day of the insurrection a detachment under Tchakalároff met a party of unarmed Moslems from the village Djerveni on the road to Castoria, and massacred twenty-four men and four boys in cold blood; four boys were spared. The village was afterwards besieged and burned. (2) Tchakalároff when driven from Klissoura made a raid with six hundred men into the Colonia district, which is purely Albanian. He burned six little hamlets — thirty houses in all. (3) Three Turkish villages were burned by way of reprisal in the Presba region. (4) The families of the Turkish officials in Kruchevo were well cared for and fed by the insurgents, while the town was in their hands, but during the attack two Turkish women were killed — possibly by accident. This was an isolated occurrence, and I believe the only occasion on which the insurgents were guilty of any wrong towards women. On the whole it is remarkable that so little barbarity was practised on the Christian side. The Committee behaved much better during the insurrection than either before or since. When it had the power to do incalculable ill it displayed self-control and moderation.
154
The first sign of energy which the Turks displayed was the dispatch of a force of about three thousand men under Baktiar Pasha to retake Kruchevo. They had eighteen guns with them, and outnumbered the insurgents by ten to one. There was some skirmishing, but on the 12th of August, ten days after the capture of the place, the Bulgarians made some sort of composition with the Turks, probably paying a ransom to the Pasha, in return for which the Bulgarian quarter of the town was spared. The troops and the bashi-bazouks compensated themselves by falling mercilessly upon the Vlach quarter, inhabited by a wealthy community with Greek sympathies. In four days 366 houses and 203 shops were burned, at least 44 men and women, all non-combatants, were murdered in the streets (of whom only three were Bulgarians); some women were violated. The pillage, both of shops and houses was complete and systematic, and hundreds of the citizens were beaten and maltreated. The Bulgarians showed little bravery in this affair, and their conduct in abandoning the Vlach quarter to be pillaged was grossly unchivalrous. The Turks acted after their kind. They knew the Greeks too well to fear that even this massacre of a Philhellenic population would affect the pro-Turkish policy of the Greeks. Neveska and Klissoura were evacuated by the Bulgarians without a struggle — let us hope from a scruple about exposing the inhabitants to a vengeance similar to that which had overtaken Kruchevo.
About August 25th Nasir Pasha, who had now taken over the command from the feeble hands of Omar Ruchdi Pasha, began to apply a systematic plan of campaign. He is a semi-civilised person who speaks German, and has been much employed by the Sultan on special embassies of courtesy in various European capitals. He was fond of explaining that he modelled his "methods of barbarism" on those which we employed in the Transvaal. His plan was to burn all the villages of the revolted Bulgarians, and gradually to drive them into corners. He certainly had men enough to execute this scheme, and the country in which he had to operate was not really extensive, though very difficult. But there was always some gap in his cordons, some
155
hitch in the time-table of co-operation, or else the regiments which should have been pursuing the insurgents found it more agreeable and interesting to pillage the defenceless villages and make war on the women and children. The Turks did so far succeed in certain zones that the bands were forced to concentrate, but they always managed to break through to some less harassed region. From August the 25th onwards the insurgents were acting purely on the defensive. They maintained their ground fairly well until the middle of September, skirmishing incessantly, marching and counter-marching, usually evading the Turks with success, but occasionally brought to a general engagement. After September the fighting was very desultory, and on November the 2nd the insurrection was officially declared at an end. In all, the Committee claims that about 150 skirmishes were fought, and in these they mustered anything from 20 to 600 men. Usually the bands operated in groups of from 80 to 200 fighting-men. The total casualties of the insurgent fighting-line in killed and wounded reached 746, which amounts to about 15 percent — a proportion which suggests resolute but not exactly desperate fighting. In most of these encounters the insurgents must have been outnumbered by at least ten to one, and if the Turks had been even respectable marksmen they would have lost very much more severely. They rarely if ever came to close quarters or used the bayonet. The whole campaign was a game of hide-and-seek in which small forces behind rocks and trenches exchanged shots with big battalions in the open. The bands which kept the field until the end of October achieved all the success which they could reasonably have hoped for. The climate would hardly have permitted a much more extended resistance. A sort of informal armistice permitted the bands to dissolve, and not more than a third of the armed men were compelled to surrender their rifles. Only very small groups, composed of the more desperate outlaws, remained under arms during the winter, refraining from aggression, satisfied if they could escape capture and keep the framework and the spirit of the organisation alive.
http://promacedonia.org/en/hb/hb_5_11.html
of thinking out a plan of campaign, and, save in the three towns of Monastir, Ochrida, and Castoria, the insurgents were almost everywhere supreme. They took the three country towns of Kruchevo, Klissoura, and Neveska — all of them Vlach centres perched in the most inaccessible positions upon the mountain-side. The Turkish garrisons either fled or succumbed with hardly a show of resistance. Demonstrations were also made against the towns of Resna and Kitchevo, but here the attack was never pressed home. In the three captured positions provisional governments were installed, the insurgents danced with the girls of the place in the town squares, and from the churches, bells (which the Christians rarely dare to ring) summoned the townsmen to hear glowing orations upon the duty of rebellion and the glorious prospect of freedom. These three weeks must have been the happiest interval which Macedonia has known since the coming of the Turks. The men flung away their fezes — badges of servitude — and walked erect without fear of a beating or a bastinado. It is to their credit that, instead of enjoying their brief triumph at the expense of their Greek rivals, they bore themselves tolerantly and abstained from violence — save that they levied money contributions from the captured towns. They acted indeed in the spirit of the proclamation which announced the outbreak of the insurrection — a document which shows that humane ideals do penetrate even into the Balkans, however hard the local conditions make it to observe them: —
"We are taking up arms against tyranny and barbarism: we are acting in the name of liberty and humanity; our work is above all prejudices of nationality or race. We ought therefore to treat as brothers all who suffer in the sombre Empire of the Sultan. To-day all the Christian populations are wretched, nor must we except even the Turkish peasants. We regard the Turkish Government as our sole enemy, and all who declare themselves against us whether as open foes or as spies, and all too who attack old men, women, and defenceless children instead of attacking us. It is against them that we direct our blows and from them we shall exact vengeance."
A sensible attempt was sometimes made to secure the neutrality of Mohamedan villages, and occasionally with
153
success, as the following quaint document addressed by the notables of a Turkish village to the insurgent headquarters in Kruchevo proves:—
"We understand by the tenor of your letters that you are not evil men, that you have not left your hearths in order to attack the peaceful population (like ours), and that you are opposed only to the evildoers and to the Government which protects them. But those whom you seek are not to be found among us. They have fled to the towns. As for ourselves we promise to remain quiet. If your intention is to kill the innocent you have only to come here. May God help those whose quest is justice ! We have sent on your other letters to the neighbouring villages, which are also of our way of thinking."
For a brief period everything promised concord [2] and success. Indeed, the insurgents had to all appearances triumphed so easily that they gave themselves over to rejoicings and neglected to push their advantage by uniting their forces against the Turkish garrisons in such centres as Resna, Ochrida, Kitchevo, Castoria, and Sorovitch. Ochrida and Castoria could have been taken only at great cost, but the other places were by no means impregnable. It would be a mistake to consider this temporary triumph as a real military success, but it was and is of enormous moral importance. It was a brief hour of happiness in the long winter of misery, and the memory of it is still a stimulus, at least to the younger men.
2. It is proper in an impartial narrative to record the instances in which the insurgents were untrue to their ideal, (1) On the first day of the insurrection a detachment under Tchakalároff met a party of unarmed Moslems from the village Djerveni on the road to Castoria, and massacred twenty-four men and four boys in cold blood; four boys were spared. The village was afterwards besieged and burned. (2) Tchakalároff when driven from Klissoura made a raid with six hundred men into the Colonia district, which is purely Albanian. He burned six little hamlets — thirty houses in all. (3) Three Turkish villages were burned by way of reprisal in the Presba region. (4) The families of the Turkish officials in Kruchevo were well cared for and fed by the insurgents, while the town was in their hands, but during the attack two Turkish women were killed — possibly by accident. This was an isolated occurrence, and I believe the only occasion on which the insurgents were guilty of any wrong towards women. On the whole it is remarkable that so little barbarity was practised on the Christian side. The Committee behaved much better during the insurrection than either before or since. When it had the power to do incalculable ill it displayed self-control and moderation.
154
The first sign of energy which the Turks displayed was the dispatch of a force of about three thousand men under Baktiar Pasha to retake Kruchevo. They had eighteen guns with them, and outnumbered the insurgents by ten to one. There was some skirmishing, but on the 12th of August, ten days after the capture of the place, the Bulgarians made some sort of composition with the Turks, probably paying a ransom to the Pasha, in return for which the Bulgarian quarter of the town was spared. The troops and the bashi-bazouks compensated themselves by falling mercilessly upon the Vlach quarter, inhabited by a wealthy community with Greek sympathies. In four days 366 houses and 203 shops were burned, at least 44 men and women, all non-combatants, were murdered in the streets (of whom only three were Bulgarians); some women were violated. The pillage, both of shops and houses was complete and systematic, and hundreds of the citizens were beaten and maltreated. The Bulgarians showed little bravery in this affair, and their conduct in abandoning the Vlach quarter to be pillaged was grossly unchivalrous. The Turks acted after their kind. They knew the Greeks too well to fear that even this massacre of a Philhellenic population would affect the pro-Turkish policy of the Greeks. Neveska and Klissoura were evacuated by the Bulgarians without a struggle — let us hope from a scruple about exposing the inhabitants to a vengeance similar to that which had overtaken Kruchevo.
About August 25th Nasir Pasha, who had now taken over the command from the feeble hands of Omar Ruchdi Pasha, began to apply a systematic plan of campaign. He is a semi-civilised person who speaks German, and has been much employed by the Sultan on special embassies of courtesy in various European capitals. He was fond of explaining that he modelled his "methods of barbarism" on those which we employed in the Transvaal. His plan was to burn all the villages of the revolted Bulgarians, and gradually to drive them into corners. He certainly had men enough to execute this scheme, and the country in which he had to operate was not really extensive, though very difficult. But there was always some gap in his cordons, some
155
hitch in the time-table of co-operation, or else the regiments which should have been pursuing the insurgents found it more agreeable and interesting to pillage the defenceless villages and make war on the women and children. The Turks did so far succeed in certain zones that the bands were forced to concentrate, but they always managed to break through to some less harassed region. From August the 25th onwards the insurgents were acting purely on the defensive. They maintained their ground fairly well until the middle of September, skirmishing incessantly, marching and counter-marching, usually evading the Turks with success, but occasionally brought to a general engagement. After September the fighting was very desultory, and on November the 2nd the insurrection was officially declared at an end. In all, the Committee claims that about 150 skirmishes were fought, and in these they mustered anything from 20 to 600 men. Usually the bands operated in groups of from 80 to 200 fighting-men. The total casualties of the insurgent fighting-line in killed and wounded reached 746, which amounts to about 15 percent — a proportion which suggests resolute but not exactly desperate fighting. In most of these encounters the insurgents must have been outnumbered by at least ten to one, and if the Turks had been even respectable marksmen they would have lost very much more severely. They rarely if ever came to close quarters or used the bayonet. The whole campaign was a game of hide-and-seek in which small forces behind rocks and trenches exchanged shots with big battalions in the open. The bands which kept the field until the end of October achieved all the success which they could reasonably have hoped for. The climate would hardly have permitted a much more extended resistance. A sort of informal armistice permitted the bands to dissolve, and not more than a third of the armed men were compelled to surrender their rifles. Only very small groups, composed of the more desperate outlaws, remained under arms during the winter, refraining from aggression, satisfied if they could escape capture and keep the framework and the spirit of the organisation alive.
http://promacedonia.org/en/hb/hb_5_11.html
- Poruka
- 3.078
12. The General Rising of 1903 in Thrace
To complete this brief account [1] of the military aspects of the insurrection, it is necessary to refer to the sympathetic revolts which occurred elsewhere. There was nothing approaching a general rising in the Uskub and Salonica Vilayets, but there was an active guerilla movement, particularly in the Struma valley, which attained its end of distracting the attention of the Turks and preventing them from throwing their entire army into the Monastir Vilayet. There were also several attempts upon the railways outside the Monastir Province, but these were hardly frequent or serious enough to be important. The chief effort outside Monastir was made in the Vilayet of Adrianople. Adrianople (Thrace) is one of the least known regions of Turkey. The great part of it is a rich plain inhabited by Bulgarians and Turks, with Greek settlements in the towns and along the coast. But of the Bulgarians of the plain a large proportion are Moslems (Pomacks). It is this greater prominence of the Mohamedan element which, in a political sense, distinguishes Thrace with its great plain, its rich rose-gardens and its tobacco fields from Macedonia — and Thrace begins virtually at Drama. The Christian Slavs of Thrace reproduce, I imagine, [2] the condition of the plain dwellers of Macedonia, who are too poor and too utterly crushed beneath the dominion of their Mohamedan neighbours to be capable of the military hardihood required for an open revolt in a country where there are no mountains of refuge. There is, however, a highland region to the north-east, forming a triangular wedge between the frontiers of free Bulgaria and the Black Sea shore, and here the peasantry is by majority Christian, and has been able to preserve its manhood. In this country around the little towns of Malko-Tirnovo and Kirk-kilissé the Committee has long been a power. This region suffered as heavily as Macedonia
1. The curious reader may consult the Memorandum of the Internal Organisation to which I have already referred. Even as adventure the stories which I heard from insurgent officers were seldom very interesting, turning as they did only on continual pursuits and escapes.
2. I have never travelled farther east than Doiran except by railway, and can only write at second hand of the political conditions which prevail in Thrace.
157
during the persecution of 1903; its situation had in fact become so intolerable, mainly owing to the unchecked oppressions of the bashi-bazouks, that no less than 20,000 peasants — men, women and children — abandoned their homes and their crops during the months of May and June, on the eve of the harvest season, finding a refuge in free Bulgaria. In Thrace, indeed, one finds the Turkish system of government in all its native crudity. There are few consuls even in the town of Adrianople, and for some of amazing reason of political selfishness Russia and Austria have always refused to permit any extension of the Macedonian reforms to this derelict and forgotten region. Among these refugees the Committee naturally found the material for bands, and two weeks after the proclamation of the revolt in Monastir the flag, with its device of "Liberty or Death," was unfurled in the Adrianople Vilayet as well (August 18th). The insurrection followed much the same course upon a smaller scale. Roads, bridges, and telegraph-lines were destroyed, isolated garrisons were overpowered, the bashi-bazouks driven into flight or a show of meekness, and for two or three weeks the whole of this highland region was in the hands of the insurgents. They showed little enterprise, however, and no attempt was made to capture the town of Malko-Tirnovo. The Greeks of the coast were thrown into a panic, and imagined that the Bulgarians intended to massacre them. The insurgents numbered, so far as I can ascertain, some 1,200 men, and had only 46 men killed and wounded. A relatively enormous Turkish force was ultimately drafted into the Vilayet (it is said 40,000 men), rather with the object of menacing Bulgaria than of crushing a rebellion so inconsiderable. This movement had no military interest, but for a moment there seemed a bare chance of an exciting complication. On August the 3rd the Russian Consul of Monastir, M. Rostkovsky, an enterprising but violent man, who could never remember that an Albanian Moslem has a fiercer sense of personal honour than a Russian peasant, struck a gendarme who had omitted to salute him, and was murdered on the spot. This was the second fatality within
158
four months among the Russian Consular Staff in Macedonia (the first affair being the assassination of M. Sterbina at Mitrovitza), and obviously it could not be passed over lightly. No one thought of demanding the punishment of the ruffians who were responsible for the massacres at Smerdesh and Monastir, but, as a Macedonian once remarked to me, "European blood is dear." Russia called for the dismissal of the Vali, the hanging of the murderer, and the punishment of several other scapegoats. To give more weight to her claims, the Black Sea fleet was put in motion and appeared in Iniada Bay off the Thracian coast, at the moment when the insurrection was at its height. The rebels were naïve enough to imagine that this coincidence had some bearings upon their own sufferings and their own hopes, and somehow failed to understand the sublime mental detachment of a Tsar who was capable at this supreme moment in the history of his kinsmen, the Southern Slavs, of sending his fleet to their shores with no other object than to mark his displeasure at the death of one of his consuls in a private and rather sordid brawl. But so it was. [3] The fleet lay at anchor, watched the flames of burning villages and beacon fires unmoved, and when a wretched gendarme had been hanged in Monastir sailed quietly home. Soon after its departure began the phase of massacre and devastation, but that development had no interest for the masters of the world's navies.
3. The first Secretary of the Russian Embassy came this morning to inform me that the Russian fleet would proceed to Iniada, but that its entry into Turkish waters was only intended to accentuate the gravity with which his Government regard the murder of the Russian Consul, and was not otherwise connected with the situation of affairs in Macedonia" (Blue-Book, Cd. 1875, p. 273).
http://promacedonia.org/en/hb/hb_5_12.html
To complete this brief account [1] of the military aspects of the insurrection, it is necessary to refer to the sympathetic revolts which occurred elsewhere. There was nothing approaching a general rising in the Uskub and Salonica Vilayets, but there was an active guerilla movement, particularly in the Struma valley, which attained its end of distracting the attention of the Turks and preventing them from throwing their entire army into the Monastir Vilayet. There were also several attempts upon the railways outside the Monastir Province, but these were hardly frequent or serious enough to be important. The chief effort outside Monastir was made in the Vilayet of Adrianople. Adrianople (Thrace) is one of the least known regions of Turkey. The great part of it is a rich plain inhabited by Bulgarians and Turks, with Greek settlements in the towns and along the coast. But of the Bulgarians of the plain a large proportion are Moslems (Pomacks). It is this greater prominence of the Mohamedan element which, in a political sense, distinguishes Thrace with its great plain, its rich rose-gardens and its tobacco fields from Macedonia — and Thrace begins virtually at Drama. The Christian Slavs of Thrace reproduce, I imagine, [2] the condition of the plain dwellers of Macedonia, who are too poor and too utterly crushed beneath the dominion of their Mohamedan neighbours to be capable of the military hardihood required for an open revolt in a country where there are no mountains of refuge. There is, however, a highland region to the north-east, forming a triangular wedge between the frontiers of free Bulgaria and the Black Sea shore, and here the peasantry is by majority Christian, and has been able to preserve its manhood. In this country around the little towns of Malko-Tirnovo and Kirk-kilissé the Committee has long been a power. This region suffered as heavily as Macedonia
1. The curious reader may consult the Memorandum of the Internal Organisation to which I have already referred. Even as adventure the stories which I heard from insurgent officers were seldom very interesting, turning as they did only on continual pursuits and escapes.
2. I have never travelled farther east than Doiran except by railway, and can only write at second hand of the political conditions which prevail in Thrace.
157
during the persecution of 1903; its situation had in fact become so intolerable, mainly owing to the unchecked oppressions of the bashi-bazouks, that no less than 20,000 peasants — men, women and children — abandoned their homes and their crops during the months of May and June, on the eve of the harvest season, finding a refuge in free Bulgaria. In Thrace, indeed, one finds the Turkish system of government in all its native crudity. There are few consuls even in the town of Adrianople, and for some of amazing reason of political selfishness Russia and Austria have always refused to permit any extension of the Macedonian reforms to this derelict and forgotten region. Among these refugees the Committee naturally found the material for bands, and two weeks after the proclamation of the revolt in Monastir the flag, with its device of "Liberty or Death," was unfurled in the Adrianople Vilayet as well (August 18th). The insurrection followed much the same course upon a smaller scale. Roads, bridges, and telegraph-lines were destroyed, isolated garrisons were overpowered, the bashi-bazouks driven into flight or a show of meekness, and for two or three weeks the whole of this highland region was in the hands of the insurgents. They showed little enterprise, however, and no attempt was made to capture the town of Malko-Tirnovo. The Greeks of the coast were thrown into a panic, and imagined that the Bulgarians intended to massacre them. The insurgents numbered, so far as I can ascertain, some 1,200 men, and had only 46 men killed and wounded. A relatively enormous Turkish force was ultimately drafted into the Vilayet (it is said 40,000 men), rather with the object of menacing Bulgaria than of crushing a rebellion so inconsiderable. This movement had no military interest, but for a moment there seemed a bare chance of an exciting complication. On August the 3rd the Russian Consul of Monastir, M. Rostkovsky, an enterprising but violent man, who could never remember that an Albanian Moslem has a fiercer sense of personal honour than a Russian peasant, struck a gendarme who had omitted to salute him, and was murdered on the spot. This was the second fatality within
158
four months among the Russian Consular Staff in Macedonia (the first affair being the assassination of M. Sterbina at Mitrovitza), and obviously it could not be passed over lightly. No one thought of demanding the punishment of the ruffians who were responsible for the massacres at Smerdesh and Monastir, but, as a Macedonian once remarked to me, "European blood is dear." Russia called for the dismissal of the Vali, the hanging of the murderer, and the punishment of several other scapegoats. To give more weight to her claims, the Black Sea fleet was put in motion and appeared in Iniada Bay off the Thracian coast, at the moment when the insurrection was at its height. The rebels were naïve enough to imagine that this coincidence had some bearings upon their own sufferings and their own hopes, and somehow failed to understand the sublime mental detachment of a Tsar who was capable at this supreme moment in the history of his kinsmen, the Southern Slavs, of sending his fleet to their shores with no other object than to mark his displeasure at the death of one of his consuls in a private and rather sordid brawl. But so it was. [3] The fleet lay at anchor, watched the flames of burning villages and beacon fires unmoved, and when a wretched gendarme had been hanged in Monastir sailed quietly home. Soon after its departure began the phase of massacre and devastation, but that development had no interest for the masters of the world's navies.
3. The first Secretary of the Russian Embassy came this morning to inform me that the Russian fleet would proceed to Iniada, but that its entry into Turkish waters was only intended to accentuate the gravity with which his Government regard the murder of the Russian Consul, and was not otherwise connected with the situation of affairs in Macedonia" (Blue-Book, Cd. 1875, p. 273).
http://promacedonia.org/en/hb/hb_5_12.html
- Poruka
- 3.078
13. The Sufferings of the Non-Combatants
The insurrection of 1903 was, however, very much more than an active military movement. It was also a passive demonstration in which the whole village population shared, men, women, and children. The casualties of the fighting-line were relatively small. It was the non-combatants who bore the full weight of their masters' wrath, and their miseries, losses, and privations, endured with stolid
159
courage and unfaltering resolution, were a sacrifice to the ideal of liberty rarely paralleled beyond the confines of Turkey. It was not lightly risked or incurred in ignorance. A people which determines to revolt against the Turks knows very well what fate it challenges. There are memories and precedents enough to warn the peasants. The Bulgarians have not forgotten the massacre at Batak which preceded the liberation of Bulgaria. The Armenian horrors made a profound impression even in Macedonia. And least it should have been supposed that the Turks had grown milder or more timid, there was the recent object-lesson of Smerdesh. Every village which joined the revolt did so with the knowledge that it might be burned to the ground, pillaged to the last blanket and the last chicken, and its population decimated in the process. That the Macedonians voluntarily faced these dangers is a proof of their desperation. Life had lost its value to them and peace its meaning. In many of the districts which revolted the peasants had so little doubt of what was in store for them that they abandoned their villages in a body on the first day of the insurrection. The young men joined their bands accompanied by a few women, who went to bake for them, and in some cases by the women-teachers of the town schools, who were organised as nurses for the wounded. The older men, the women, and the children sought refuge in the mountains and the woods. They took with them as much food as they could carry, drove their beasts before them, and buried their small possessions. The sick and the aged frequently remained behind, imagining that their weakness would appeal to the chivalry of the troops. As early as the second day of the rising the fate of the village of Krusje (near Resna) served as a warning against delay. It was pillaged and burned to the ground with the usual incidents of murder and violation. In most of the insurgent zones the non-combatant population came together under the direction of the Committee and formed great camps in inaccessible situations. Temporary shelters were constructed from the branches of the trees, ovens dug in the earth, and all the normal life of a Bulgarian
160
village reproduced as far as the circumstances would permit.
But not all the village populations fled when the insurrection broke out. There was Neocazi, a poor Bulgarian hamlet on the plain not far from Florina. From it only a few of the younger men had joined the bands. When the Turks swooped down upon it they were not content with burning it. They summoned the men together under the pretext of marching them as prisoners to Florina. On the road half-way they halted and massacred them at leisure and in cold blood, to the number of over sixty, for the crime of being the fathers of insurgent sons. It is said that some were tortured before they died, and others were made to stand in files that the soldiers might experiment with their rifles to see how many a single bullet would kill. Three days later it was the turn of Armensko, a village in the valley that leads up from Florina to the pass of Pisoderi. Its population is Slav in blood and speech, but it belongs to the Greek party and took no share in the Bulgarian movement. The troops under Haireddin Bimbashi, the butcher of Smerdesh, had been defeated by a numerous body of insurgents on the mountains above Armensko. They were retreating, angry and embittered, on Florina, and Armensko lay in their path. Its Greek priest went out to meet and welcome them and was murdered in the road, and then the horde swept down upon the unprepared and defenceless village. They pillaged and burned, and satisfied their brutal lusts undisturbed by any fear of resistance. Nearly all the wounded, many of them women and young children, who were brought in afterwards to the Greek Hospital in Monastir, were hacked and hewn with bayonets and swords. Sixty-eight of the villagers were massacred, and ten women and eight girls violated. There is European evidence for outrages that are almost unprintable but, after all, what Europe is prepared to tolerate Europe must not be too nice to hear. Several wounded women who managed to crawl out of their burning houses were afterwards caught as they lay dying, and violated repeatedly until they expired. [1] I was told by a Turkish officer who
1. See Blue-Book, Cd. 1875, p. 319.
161
was engaged in these punitive operations that the troops had formal orders, which came, so they understood, direct from the Sultan himself, to burn all villages whose inhabitants had fled, but to spare the rest. The positive order they obeyed, the negative command they frequently forgot. The result was that if the inhabitants of a village awaited the troops they risked the fate of Neocazi and Armensko; if they fled, their homes were infallibly destroyed. It was a choice between having your village burned or having it burned and being massacred as well. Most villagers preferred the lesser evil and took to the mountains, becoming thereby rebels by definition. A few object-lessons soon taught the peasants to flee betimes, and during the later phases of the insurrection the carnage in the villages was confined chiefly to the aged and the sick. The stragglers and the dilatory were often cut off before they had quitted their homes, and the bed-ridden were frequently burned alive where they lay. No village escaped entirely from this tribute, and the number of murdered non-combatants varied from threes and fours to fifties and sixties. Dymbeni and Kossenetz, for example, large villages in the Castoria district, lost, each of them, close on sixty innocent lives.
The life of the refugee population, which soon numbered close on 60,000 souls, grouped in some dozen camps among the mountains, passed through three distinct phases, so far as I can reconstruct it. During the hot weather of the first two or three weeks of August they must have lived in relative comfort and plenty, rejoicing in their brief freedom, welcoming as heroes the bands which came and went, hailing their successes, and debating every wild rumour of the aid that was to come from Europe or from Russia. Then came a second period of perhaps two weeks during which they still enjoyed relative security, had food to eat, and did not suffer grievously from cold even on the mountain-sides. But down below them their villages were burning. They heard no longer wild tales of glorious victories, but rumours of massacre and torture. [2] The
2. The most usual tale of horror was that on one occasion or another the Turks burned men and children alive, generally in bakers' ovens. I could never come across an eye-witness, however, and in one instance inquiry showed that a wounded insurgent chief, whose dead body the Turks did burn, had committed suicide to avoid capture.
The insurrection of 1903 was, however, very much more than an active military movement. It was also a passive demonstration in which the whole village population shared, men, women, and children. The casualties of the fighting-line were relatively small. It was the non-combatants who bore the full weight of their masters' wrath, and their miseries, losses, and privations, endured with stolid
159
courage and unfaltering resolution, were a sacrifice to the ideal of liberty rarely paralleled beyond the confines of Turkey. It was not lightly risked or incurred in ignorance. A people which determines to revolt against the Turks knows very well what fate it challenges. There are memories and precedents enough to warn the peasants. The Bulgarians have not forgotten the massacre at Batak which preceded the liberation of Bulgaria. The Armenian horrors made a profound impression even in Macedonia. And least it should have been supposed that the Turks had grown milder or more timid, there was the recent object-lesson of Smerdesh. Every village which joined the revolt did so with the knowledge that it might be burned to the ground, pillaged to the last blanket and the last chicken, and its population decimated in the process. That the Macedonians voluntarily faced these dangers is a proof of their desperation. Life had lost its value to them and peace its meaning. In many of the districts which revolted the peasants had so little doubt of what was in store for them that they abandoned their villages in a body on the first day of the insurrection. The young men joined their bands accompanied by a few women, who went to bake for them, and in some cases by the women-teachers of the town schools, who were organised as nurses for the wounded. The older men, the women, and the children sought refuge in the mountains and the woods. They took with them as much food as they could carry, drove their beasts before them, and buried their small possessions. The sick and the aged frequently remained behind, imagining that their weakness would appeal to the chivalry of the troops. As early as the second day of the rising the fate of the village of Krusje (near Resna) served as a warning against delay. It was pillaged and burned to the ground with the usual incidents of murder and violation. In most of the insurgent zones the non-combatant population came together under the direction of the Committee and formed great camps in inaccessible situations. Temporary shelters were constructed from the branches of the trees, ovens dug in the earth, and all the normal life of a Bulgarian
160
village reproduced as far as the circumstances would permit.
But not all the village populations fled when the insurrection broke out. There was Neocazi, a poor Bulgarian hamlet on the plain not far from Florina. From it only a few of the younger men had joined the bands. When the Turks swooped down upon it they were not content with burning it. They summoned the men together under the pretext of marching them as prisoners to Florina. On the road half-way they halted and massacred them at leisure and in cold blood, to the number of over sixty, for the crime of being the fathers of insurgent sons. It is said that some were tortured before they died, and others were made to stand in files that the soldiers might experiment with their rifles to see how many a single bullet would kill. Three days later it was the turn of Armensko, a village in the valley that leads up from Florina to the pass of Pisoderi. Its population is Slav in blood and speech, but it belongs to the Greek party and took no share in the Bulgarian movement. The troops under Haireddin Bimbashi, the butcher of Smerdesh, had been defeated by a numerous body of insurgents on the mountains above Armensko. They were retreating, angry and embittered, on Florina, and Armensko lay in their path. Its Greek priest went out to meet and welcome them and was murdered in the road, and then the horde swept down upon the unprepared and defenceless village. They pillaged and burned, and satisfied their brutal lusts undisturbed by any fear of resistance. Nearly all the wounded, many of them women and young children, who were brought in afterwards to the Greek Hospital in Monastir, were hacked and hewn with bayonets and swords. Sixty-eight of the villagers were massacred, and ten women and eight girls violated. There is European evidence for outrages that are almost unprintable but, after all, what Europe is prepared to tolerate Europe must not be too nice to hear. Several wounded women who managed to crawl out of their burning houses were afterwards caught as they lay dying, and violated repeatedly until they expired. [1] I was told by a Turkish officer who
1. See Blue-Book, Cd. 1875, p. 319.
161
was engaged in these punitive operations that the troops had formal orders, which came, so they understood, direct from the Sultan himself, to burn all villages whose inhabitants had fled, but to spare the rest. The positive order they obeyed, the negative command they frequently forgot. The result was that if the inhabitants of a village awaited the troops they risked the fate of Neocazi and Armensko; if they fled, their homes were infallibly destroyed. It was a choice between having your village burned or having it burned and being massacred as well. Most villagers preferred the lesser evil and took to the mountains, becoming thereby rebels by definition. A few object-lessons soon taught the peasants to flee betimes, and during the later phases of the insurrection the carnage in the villages was confined chiefly to the aged and the sick. The stragglers and the dilatory were often cut off before they had quitted their homes, and the bed-ridden were frequently burned alive where they lay. No village escaped entirely from this tribute, and the number of murdered non-combatants varied from threes and fours to fifties and sixties. Dymbeni and Kossenetz, for example, large villages in the Castoria district, lost, each of them, close on sixty innocent lives.
The life of the refugee population, which soon numbered close on 60,000 souls, grouped in some dozen camps among the mountains, passed through three distinct phases, so far as I can reconstruct it. During the hot weather of the first two or three weeks of August they must have lived in relative comfort and plenty, rejoicing in their brief freedom, welcoming as heroes the bands which came and went, hailing their successes, and debating every wild rumour of the aid that was to come from Europe or from Russia. Then came a second period of perhaps two weeks during which they still enjoyed relative security, had food to eat, and did not suffer grievously from cold even on the mountain-sides. But down below them their villages were burning. They heard no longer wild tales of glorious victories, but rumours of massacre and torture. [2] The
2. The most usual tale of horror was that on one occasion or another the Turks burned men and children alive, generally in bakers' ovens. I could never come across an eye-witness, however, and in one instance inquiry showed that a wounded insurgent chief, whose dead body the Turks did burn, had committed suicide to avoid capture.
- Poruka
- 3.078
162
sound of firing haunted them, and it often happened that some young woman who had ventured back to the deserted village to see what was left of her home or to visit the hiding-place where she had concealed her gala dress, returned no more, or, it may be, crept back to die, wounded and dishonoured. Lads herding the sheep of the refugees were caught if they ventured down the valleys, and sometimes hungry children straying to the maize fields would return speechless and stricken in mind. The final stage could not be long delayed. The cordons tightened their grip around the mountains, and from their eyries the peasants would suddenly become aware of red streaks upon the green foothills, or catch on the wind the shouts of drivers urging the pack-animals which carried the mountain-guns that were to shell their place of refuge. From mid-September onwards the fugitives were hunted from forest to mountain and from peak to peak. Their only safety was to follow the now concentrated bands, and sometimes the battle raged about the lair where the women and children lay, the men fighting with all their manhood to defend some shallow trench, knowing that behind them cowered wife and child expecting massacre if their courage failed or their bullets missed the mark. Fleeing incessantly, they soon left behind them their stores of food and their herds of beasts. They were now shelterless under colder skies. There were villages which lived for days together on roots and salad grasses. The younger children died in great numbers, and men and women graduated for the epidemics which were to decimate those whom the Turks had spared. Often the big camps broke up into scattered groups of starving and terrified fugitives, who returned at last to make their submission among the ashes of their homes. It sometimes happened that these fell in with prowling soldiers or marauding bashi-bazouks. Fifteen villagers, for example, from Bouno (near Resna), trudging, with their priest at their head,
163
towards the town, were massacred without distinction of age or sex. The younger women fared the worst, for, when the troops could catch them, they were often carried off to the Turkish camps and there kept for some days until the last brute who desired them had had his will. Many were shot while they sheltered behind the insurgents during the latter skirmishes of September and October, and sometimes the same bullet wounded a mother and her baby. [3] It was the impossibility of feeding and protecting the refugees which compelled the leaders to proclaim the insurrection at an end with the close of October; for the weather was still relatively mild (indeed, to us who came direct from England it seemed warm), though to be sure the mountains were already snow-clad, even on their lower-heights. The Turks had made war upon the women and children, and the men dared not prolong the unequal conflict with starvation. By the first week of November the population of the revolted districts had once more settled down, part of it on the sites of the ruined villages, part of it among friendly neighbours who had saved their roofs. Long before November the towns were crowded with helpless masses of starving women, who begged their bread from door to door, clamoured about the portals of the Bishops' palaces, and slept in the abandoned and ruined houses which abound in every Macedonian town.
It was at this stage that we first saw the condition of the returning villagers with our own eyes. Those who had found a roof beneath which to shelter in some friendly village were in an enviable case. They had lost everything indeed — crops, home, cattle, and household gear. They lived on the charity of neighbours, who as often as not had themselves been robbed. They owned nothing but the tattered summer garments in which they had fled three months before. They had neither blankets nor
3. One case of this kind we treated in our Ochrida hospital. It is fair to cite the contrary instances. One woman who had been shot by accident in the general fusillade when the troops rushed her village was kindly treated by the Turks, who gave her bread and water. I once saw a Turkish officer (after the insurrection) give his coat and gloves to a wounded Bulgarian woman. But such chivalry was rare.
164
winter cloaks. At least there was still a thatch between them and the rain. But the majority were camped among their ruins, busied during the last warm days of the autumn in clearing away the rubble from some corner of their homes and erecting some sort of "lean-to" of wood and straw against a crumbling wall. Nothing but a photograph could convey an idea of the devastation. The villages were mere heaps of charred wood and blackened stone, buried beneath a red dust, which the rain converted into mud. A few walls still stood upright, the only hope for the winter. Where the churches had not been burned they were riddled with bullets, blackened with bivouac fires, pillaged, dishonoured, and defiled with the ordure of a camp. The wells were sometimes buried under the débris of fallen houses, and in one case at least poisoned with the carcases of beasts. The mills, like the houses, had been burned, their dams broken down, the machinery destroyed, and even their stones in some cases shivered into fragments. Of the horses and oxen which the peasants owned, even after the authorities had professed to recover the loot, not one in four remained. Of the sheep and other small beasts and the poultry I doubt if one in ten was left. Even the ploughs were burned or stolen. It was rarely, too, that a family recovered the clothing and utensils which it buried before its flight — the bashi-bazouks had the knack of finding spoil. Of the harvest most villages saved sufficient for four or six weeks, while a few in the upland places where the ripe crops had been left ungarnered had enough for three months at most. But more harrowing than the material ruin was the moral desolation. Women would stand on a frosty day, their breasts bare, their feet naked upon the icy ground, oblivious of cold and hunger, sobbing out some tale of how they had seen the dear head of son or husband beaten in before their eyes by soldier or bashi-bazouk. Not less to be pitied were the young men who had laid down their arms and returned to find neither wife nor home. I think of one whose case seemed to me a full world of commonplace miseries. He was a mason who worked in Constantinople to keep a family in a village near
165
Resna. He was driven out of the capital, with all his countrymen, early in the spring, and returned home with an empty money-belt. Three months of idleness followed, and, when the lot fell upon him, he went out with the village band. His wife was struck by a soldier, and died in premature child-birth. The father cared for the baby as best he could, but he could find no work, and he came to us begging that we would provide milk to save the life of the ailing child. The quick horror of painful deaths seemed less moving than this succession of everyday troubles, each due to some political catastrophe or some national hate. Nor was the misery at an end when the insurrection ceased. Hundreds of men were in gaol or in exile in some distant Armenian town, and, as the months went by, the ill-spelt missives, without date or signature, began to arrive, which told how one village leader after another had died of typhus on the way to Diarbekir. There were other troubles too, more secret and more horrible, which would come to our ears through some kindly doctor who used his skill, where the Turks would allow it, among the village folk. Two young girls, for example, in a single village, who had passed some days and nights of shame in a Turkish camp, at last gave way to madness as they realised that they must become mothers. And all the while amid the degradation and the suffering, the sickness, and the fear of famine, there weighed upon this defeated people the sense that all its sacrifice had been in vain. The Turks had triumphed; Europe was still heedless and unconcerned; Macedonia was still enslaved ; and we, who were doling out our blankets and our flour among them, were only keeping them alive to endure fresh oppressions and further shame. [4]
4. The statistics of the devastation can have little meaning to those who did not see it, but they deserve none the less to be cited. One hundred and nineteen villages in the Monastir Province were wholly or partially burned. Eight thousand four hundred houses were destroyed. Between fifty and sixty thousand persons were rendered homeless. The number of murdered non-combatants can hardly have been less than fifteen hundred. For these figures I can vouch. I add the totals for the whole of Macedonia and Adrianople, which the Bulgarians collected. I cannot verify them, but probably they are not much exaggerated — indeed, the figures for Monastir published in Sofia were sometimes less than those which I collected while making out relief lists in the villages. The total number of houses burned is given as 12,211; of homeless persons about 70,000; of refugees driven from Macedonia and Adrianople into Bulgaria, 30,000; of violations, 3,098; and of women and girls taken captive, 176; of persons imprisoned, 1,500.
http://promacedonia.org/en/hb/hb_5_13.html
sound of firing haunted them, and it often happened that some young woman who had ventured back to the deserted village to see what was left of her home or to visit the hiding-place where she had concealed her gala dress, returned no more, or, it may be, crept back to die, wounded and dishonoured. Lads herding the sheep of the refugees were caught if they ventured down the valleys, and sometimes hungry children straying to the maize fields would return speechless and stricken in mind. The final stage could not be long delayed. The cordons tightened their grip around the mountains, and from their eyries the peasants would suddenly become aware of red streaks upon the green foothills, or catch on the wind the shouts of drivers urging the pack-animals which carried the mountain-guns that were to shell their place of refuge. From mid-September onwards the fugitives were hunted from forest to mountain and from peak to peak. Their only safety was to follow the now concentrated bands, and sometimes the battle raged about the lair where the women and children lay, the men fighting with all their manhood to defend some shallow trench, knowing that behind them cowered wife and child expecting massacre if their courage failed or their bullets missed the mark. Fleeing incessantly, they soon left behind them their stores of food and their herds of beasts. They were now shelterless under colder skies. There were villages which lived for days together on roots and salad grasses. The younger children died in great numbers, and men and women graduated for the epidemics which were to decimate those whom the Turks had spared. Often the big camps broke up into scattered groups of starving and terrified fugitives, who returned at last to make their submission among the ashes of their homes. It sometimes happened that these fell in with prowling soldiers or marauding bashi-bazouks. Fifteen villagers, for example, from Bouno (near Resna), trudging, with their priest at their head,
163
towards the town, were massacred without distinction of age or sex. The younger women fared the worst, for, when the troops could catch them, they were often carried off to the Turkish camps and there kept for some days until the last brute who desired them had had his will. Many were shot while they sheltered behind the insurgents during the latter skirmishes of September and October, and sometimes the same bullet wounded a mother and her baby. [3] It was the impossibility of feeding and protecting the refugees which compelled the leaders to proclaim the insurrection at an end with the close of October; for the weather was still relatively mild (indeed, to us who came direct from England it seemed warm), though to be sure the mountains were already snow-clad, even on their lower-heights. The Turks had made war upon the women and children, and the men dared not prolong the unequal conflict with starvation. By the first week of November the population of the revolted districts had once more settled down, part of it on the sites of the ruined villages, part of it among friendly neighbours who had saved their roofs. Long before November the towns were crowded with helpless masses of starving women, who begged their bread from door to door, clamoured about the portals of the Bishops' palaces, and slept in the abandoned and ruined houses which abound in every Macedonian town.
It was at this stage that we first saw the condition of the returning villagers with our own eyes. Those who had found a roof beneath which to shelter in some friendly village were in an enviable case. They had lost everything indeed — crops, home, cattle, and household gear. They lived on the charity of neighbours, who as often as not had themselves been robbed. They owned nothing but the tattered summer garments in which they had fled three months before. They had neither blankets nor
3. One case of this kind we treated in our Ochrida hospital. It is fair to cite the contrary instances. One woman who had been shot by accident in the general fusillade when the troops rushed her village was kindly treated by the Turks, who gave her bread and water. I once saw a Turkish officer (after the insurrection) give his coat and gloves to a wounded Bulgarian woman. But such chivalry was rare.
164
winter cloaks. At least there was still a thatch between them and the rain. But the majority were camped among their ruins, busied during the last warm days of the autumn in clearing away the rubble from some corner of their homes and erecting some sort of "lean-to" of wood and straw against a crumbling wall. Nothing but a photograph could convey an idea of the devastation. The villages were mere heaps of charred wood and blackened stone, buried beneath a red dust, which the rain converted into mud. A few walls still stood upright, the only hope for the winter. Where the churches had not been burned they were riddled with bullets, blackened with bivouac fires, pillaged, dishonoured, and defiled with the ordure of a camp. The wells were sometimes buried under the débris of fallen houses, and in one case at least poisoned with the carcases of beasts. The mills, like the houses, had been burned, their dams broken down, the machinery destroyed, and even their stones in some cases shivered into fragments. Of the horses and oxen which the peasants owned, even after the authorities had professed to recover the loot, not one in four remained. Of the sheep and other small beasts and the poultry I doubt if one in ten was left. Even the ploughs were burned or stolen. It was rarely, too, that a family recovered the clothing and utensils which it buried before its flight — the bashi-bazouks had the knack of finding spoil. Of the harvest most villages saved sufficient for four or six weeks, while a few in the upland places where the ripe crops had been left ungarnered had enough for three months at most. But more harrowing than the material ruin was the moral desolation. Women would stand on a frosty day, their breasts bare, their feet naked upon the icy ground, oblivious of cold and hunger, sobbing out some tale of how they had seen the dear head of son or husband beaten in before their eyes by soldier or bashi-bazouk. Not less to be pitied were the young men who had laid down their arms and returned to find neither wife nor home. I think of one whose case seemed to me a full world of commonplace miseries. He was a mason who worked in Constantinople to keep a family in a village near
165
Resna. He was driven out of the capital, with all his countrymen, early in the spring, and returned home with an empty money-belt. Three months of idleness followed, and, when the lot fell upon him, he went out with the village band. His wife was struck by a soldier, and died in premature child-birth. The father cared for the baby as best he could, but he could find no work, and he came to us begging that we would provide milk to save the life of the ailing child. The quick horror of painful deaths seemed less moving than this succession of everyday troubles, each due to some political catastrophe or some national hate. Nor was the misery at an end when the insurrection ceased. Hundreds of men were in gaol or in exile in some distant Armenian town, and, as the months went by, the ill-spelt missives, without date or signature, began to arrive, which told how one village leader after another had died of typhus on the way to Diarbekir. There were other troubles too, more secret and more horrible, which would come to our ears through some kindly doctor who used his skill, where the Turks would allow it, among the village folk. Two young girls, for example, in a single village, who had passed some days and nights of shame in a Turkish camp, at last gave way to madness as they realised that they must become mothers. And all the while amid the degradation and the suffering, the sickness, and the fear of famine, there weighed upon this defeated people the sense that all its sacrifice had been in vain. The Turks had triumphed; Europe was still heedless and unconcerned; Macedonia was still enslaved ; and we, who were doling out our blankets and our flour among them, were only keeping them alive to endure fresh oppressions and further shame. [4]
4. The statistics of the devastation can have little meaning to those who did not see it, but they deserve none the less to be cited. One hundred and nineteen villages in the Monastir Province were wholly or partially burned. Eight thousand four hundred houses were destroyed. Between fifty and sixty thousand persons were rendered homeless. The number of murdered non-combatants can hardly have been less than fifteen hundred. For these figures I can vouch. I add the totals for the whole of Macedonia and Adrianople, which the Bulgarians collected. I cannot verify them, but probably they are not much exaggerated — indeed, the figures for Monastir published in Sofia were sometimes less than those which I collected while making out relief lists in the villages. The total number of houses burned is given as 12,211; of homeless persons about 70,000; of refugees driven from Macedonia and Adrianople into Bulgaria, 30,000; of violations, 3,098; and of women and girls taken captive, 176; of persons imprisoned, 1,500.
http://promacedonia.org/en/hb/hb_5_13.html
- Poruka
- 11.573
Туто...де си бре...
Опет бугарски сајтови и текстови...Шта пише у тај устав...де се спомиње бугарска...
И ви нисте имали језик...Ми смо вас описмненили и припитомили...
Да поставим ја слике како сте клали по Македонији?
Остаћете увек највећи касапи Македонског народа..и увек ћемо да вас мрзимо..
Опет бугарски сајтови и текстови...Шта пише у тај устав...де се спомиње бугарска...
И ви нисте имали језик...Ми смо вас описмненили и припитомили...
Да поставим ја слике како сте клали по Македонији?
Остаћете увек највећи касапи Македонског народа..и увек ћемо да вас мрзимо..
kumanovo
Domaćin
- Poruka
- 3.096
Prilicno su smesni postovi ovog Bugarina opsto poznato je da su svi Sloveni u Makedoniji pre pocetka Srpsko-Turskog rata sebe nazivali Srbima .Kasnije Turci cine sve da iskorene srpstvo u Makedoniji .Sta vise i sami Bugari ne negiraju srpski karakter Makedonije .Poznati bugarski revolucioner Rakovski vidi stanovnike juga kao Srbe (....."Teorija da su "makedonski sloveni " blizi Bugarima cista je falsifikacija i izmislica bugarske vlade " makedonski sloveni " su fanaticni Srbi ...." kaze Rakovski .Kasnije bugarski propagatori proglasice Rakovskog za SRPSKOG SLUGU ili kako su ga oni zvali SRPSKI LEGIONER .
Poslednja izmena:
- Poruka
- 29.063
Ovaj Bugarin postuje slike stradanja srbskog naroda u Makedoniji,zbog osvete za ilindanski ustanak(ako se to uopste moze nazvati ustankom,ubiti par Turaka) koji su sami Bugari podigli i to u delu zemlje koji nikada nije bio naseljen Bugarima.Imas li obraza malo.
