THE RHODOPE COMMISSION.
IF but a twentieth part be true of the crimes charged against the Russian Army in the proasverbaux of the Rhodope Com- mission, and adopted in the Report of some of its Members, what we have really to deal with is a stupendous and inexplicable portent. We have before us the spectacle of some 300,000 men, embracing the choicest specimens of the manhood of All the Russias, transformed suddenly, silently, causelessly, as by some Circe's spell, from the likeness of ordinary humanity to the similitude and appetites of a herd of infuriated swine. No Turks, no Chinese, no horde of Tartars from the Steppes of Central Asia have ever behaved as the Russian Army in Bul- garia is said to have behaved in the documents just published by the British Government. Officers and men alike suc- cumbed without a struggle to this mysterious epidemic of depravity,—the intrepid Gourko, the gallant Skobeleff, the phlegmatic Todleben, as well as the peasant from the Ural Mountains, or the Cossack of the Don. One day we see the humanity of the Russian Army tested under extraordinary provocation, and passing through the ordeal unscathed. The splendid self-restraint of the Russian soldiers in the Shipka Pass, helping to dress the wounds of the red-handed murderers who had just treacherously tortured their comrades to death, was witnessed and attested by honourable men from all parts of Europe, though Sir Henry Layard threw doubt upon it, until even the Turks admitted it. Colonel Wellesley, English Military Attache with the Russian Army in Bulgaria, was instructed by his Government to inquire into the conduct of the Russians, and this is his answer :—" The result of the inquiries I have made, not only of Russians, but of English- men, have led me to the firm and honest conviction that the statements of Russian cruelties are entirely without foundation.
I had many opportunities of questioning those gentlemen (correspondents of English newspapers), some of whom represented papers decidedly hostile to the policy of Russia, but they one and all emphatically denied having witnessed any such acts as those of which the Russian soldiers have been accused. On the other hand, they have testified to many acts of kindness on the part of the Russians towards Turkish prisoners, with whom they even shared their rations." Colonel Brackenbury, who went over the Balkans and back with Gourko, testifies as follows :—" With re- gard to the so-called Russian atrocities, I do not believe one word of them The Cossacks certainly plunder, but I have not been able to find a single authenticated case of murder or personal violence, beyond striking ; and then it is more often the Bulgarians who are struck for ill-behaviour to the Turks, than the Turks themselves Having accom- panied more than one army in the field, I can vouch for the fact that the Russian behaviour to the Turks is, as a rule, easier than was the hand of the Germans on the French." Similar evidence might be accumulated indefinitely. And the conduct of the Russian Army in Armenia is vindicated by the same class of testimony. The Times correspondent with the Turkish Army, Captain Norman—an avowed philo-Turk- writes as follows, at the close of the Armenian campaign :- " I must now, in the most emphatic manner, deny all reports of Russian atrocities in Armenia. I have had the privilege of accompanying Sir Arnold Kemball throughout this cam- paign, and should any atrocities have been committed, I should assuredly have seen or heard of them All Mahom- medan villages are left untouched, cattle feeding on the pasture land, the crops ripe for the sickle, and all seems as if smiling peace, not grim war, was around us." Sir H. Layard had reported a frightful massacre of Mussulmans at Ardahan by the Russians. Captain Norman investigated the matter on the spot, and pronounced the accusation abso- lutely false. " The fugitives spoke in the highest terms of the Russians, who treated the sick and wounded with the greatest consideration, sending the worst cases to their own hospitals for treatment, and distributing the others among the neighbouring villages Grain also has been distributed among the frontier (Mussulman) villages, to sow in their fields. This treatment, so foreign to what soldiers and villagers receive from their own Government, has produced a most favourable impression." And this, in spite of the fact, personally vouched for by Captain Norman, that the Turks slew all the Russians who fell into their hands, hale or wounded.
Now, if we accept the evidence collected by the Rhodope Commission, we must believe that an army which behaved in this unusually humane manner changed its nature all of a sud- den, and committed, on a scale of appalling magnitude, atroci- ties of which the following may suffice as specimens :—They decapitated non-combatants of both sexes wholesale. They amused themselves by cutting off men's hands and women's breasts by the score at a time. They beat men almost to death by the bastinado and the knout, varying the amuse- ment by crucifixion. They deliberately roasted men, women, and children to death. They gambled on the sex of an unborn infant, and then ripped up the mother to decide the point. General Skobeleff, of whose gentle heroism we have heard so much, drove myriads of men, women, and tender babes into a cal de sac, and slaughtered them by thousands. Of children alone, 2,000 were sacrificed in one day to the appetite for carnage of this Russian Moloch. Now, seriously, is all this credible ? We do not say that it is not, but we do say that, if true, it is a fact unique in the history of our race. Nemo repente fait turpissimus. Yet what the heathen satirist deemed impossible in the case of any human being is here established against a whole army, if we believe the accusations collected by the Rho- dope Commission. Surely the evidence which would suffice to prove a moral miracle of so startling a nature must be at once irrefragable and overwhelming. Let us examine it. Certain women " fled before musket and artillery three months ago." Such is the accusation. The Commissioners take note of it, and wait for further proof. Their patience is not severely taxed, for we read, " At this moment, the balls which had been fired into their villages are produced." This appears to be considered decisive against the Russians, and so another batch of witnesses enter. A Turk swears that he was present when the wife of a certain Moustapha was " dis- embowelled, and the foetus placed on the point of a bayonet," by some Russians lodging in her house. This outrage was committed for the mere purpose of satisfying an idle curiosity as to the sex of the child. " The narrator of this fact, was present at the scene. Ile even received so severe a bastinado that he nearly died of it." There were two ways of testing the veracity of this witness. The husband of the murdered woman might have been produced, and the feet of the witness might have been examined. So severe a bastinado would cer- tainly make a cripple of him for months, and would leave marks which he would carry to his grave. The Commission simply listen to his evidence, believe him, and let him go. Captain Sinclair, erewhile British officer, Polish insurgent, Brigadier- General of Circassians in Bulgaria, and at the time of the Commission's visit Commander-in-Chief of the Rhodope in- surgents, " learned, through his officers, that an old man was crucified on trees. He did not see this." Yet we think the sight was worth a visit,—if not in the interest of humanity, at least for the novelty of this new kind of crucifixion. (' Trees" is no misprint, for the plural is used in the French version as well.) A group of witnesses from Tirnova depose as follows :- C° They left their country on the arrival of the Russians. The latter made them lay down their arms, and inflicted unheard- of cruelties upon them. They cut off the hands of twenty- four persons, and took them up to a height which might be reckoned at twice that of a minaret, from whence they were hurled over a precipice. The women [not one exception is admitted] were outraged. One of the sufferers succeeded in escaping, and gave information to the Turks, amongst whom were those who are now giving evidence to the Commissioners, and who themselves buried the bodies of the victims."
Here was a remarkable scene, easy of verification. When the Russians entered Tirnova it contained 15,000 inhabitants. The tragedy must have been witnessed by hundreds. The " height " from which the handless men were precipitated must be well known, and equally so the graves of the victims, whose mutilated corpses would still bear witness to the crime. Why did not the Commissioners send a trusty witness to Tirnova, to prove or disprove the evidence ? Why did they not call for the solitary " sufferer " who escaped ? At least, did it not strike them as odd that persons who had left Tirnova " on the arrival of the Russians " should, nevertheless, be still there to "bury the bodies of the victims." No : nothing of all this struck the Commissioners. Credimus quia impossibile would not be a bad motto for the Report to which some of them appended their names. Our faith is less robust ; it pre- fers evidence which is credible to that which is not. And there happens to be credible evidence of what took place in Tirnova " on the arrival of the Russians." Mr. MacGahan, of the Daily News, entered Tirnova with the van of the Russian Army, and his account is that " nearly the whole Turkish population fled " before the Russians arrived, "carrying off their goods and chattels." He adds :—" Fifty Turkish families have remained here, quite undisturbed and unmolested." ("Daily News' Correspondence of the War," Vol. I., p. 243.) But here is "Nazife, of Boyasley (a village, an hour's distance from Kyzanlik)." Let us hear what she has to say, for our friend the Pall Mall Gazette has made much of her evidence :—" The first time the Russian Army arrived at Kyzanlik," says Nazife, " it placed pickets in all the neighbouring villages, to prevent the inhabitants from leaving. Ten days later the battalions arrived, and began to disarm their husbands, and then massacred them. They collected all the women, took the youngest The men were bound, and beheaded. They bound their hands," says Nazif6, " stretched them on the ground, and then slashed them like a salad. In a village of thirty houses, ninety victims have undergone this horrible fate." Such is the story of Nazife, and she " begs these gentlemen to be good enough to make inquiries," in order to test her " simple truth." The "gentlemen," however, are so overcome by the pathos of the scene, that they evidently take Nazife's " simple truth " on trust, and call for the " women of Samakow." This is a pity, for Nazif6's story is not so impressive at a distance ; and we, who have our nerves under control, are, by the negligence of the Commission, put to the trouble of verifying her " simple truth." " The first time the Russian Army arrived at Kyzanlik," it had the good-fortune to be accompanied by Colonel Bracken- bury and other foreign correspondents. Colonel Brackenbury arrived with Gourko's army at Kyzanlik on July 17th, and he stayed there for ten days. He made excursions into the neighbouring villages, and made a special point of investigating accusations of atrocities, which were even then circulated from Constantinople against the Russians. He wrote three letters, detailing his experiences ; they fill four columns of the Times, and they are lying before us as we write. The extracts which we have already given are from these letters ; and no one can read them without seeing at once that the story told by Nazif6 is a pure fiction, carefully conned and rehearsed, in anticipation of the visit of the Rhodope Commission. But the Miso-Russians (if we may coin a phrase) are hard to con- vince. We will therefore support Colonel Brackenbury's testimony by that of a Naval colleague on the staff of the Times. Captain Gambier visited Kyzanlik on August 18th, a month after Colonel Brackenbury, and when Gourko's army had retreated across the Balkans :— I went," ho says, " to find out what they [Turks] had to say about the treatment received from the Russians during the stay of the Russian Army. I think I may say that I cross-questioned at least eighty, many of these being Jews, who have less interest in misrepre- senting the state of affairs, and a few well-to-do Turks, apparently telling tho truth. From all these the same story was obtained,— namely, that while the Russian Regulars [there were no Russian Irregulars, unless the Bulgarian Legion is meant] were there, they wore not only not molested, but kindly treated. The Turkish medical officers who remained throughout the whole Russian occupation testify to the same thing, and say that an officer visited the hospital every morning, and made inquiries as to what was wanted by the sick and wounded." (See Times of September Gth, 1877.) But the story of which most has been made is the "massacre," as it is called, of Harmanli :— " Your Excellency," says Consul Fawcett, "has only to read the de- positions taken by the Commission, to understand the ruthless barbari- ties practised by a savage soldiery on helpless women and children ; anything more horrible than the butchery at Harmanli I cannot imagine over happened in the history of the world. Consider a line of from 15,000 to 20,000 arabas, laden with household goods, with men and children struggling through the deep snow, being suddenly attacked by wild horsemen. The men, with their knives and a few guns, did their best, and kept the cavalry off till nightfall. Next morning infantry and artillery appeared upon the scene, and if testimony given in the most simple manner is to be believed, commenced firing grape and
musketry on this helpless mass of human beings In addition to this, a savage butchery wont on among the arabas, and scenes with the women too horrible to describe."
That picture of "the men with their knives and a few guns" beating off a cavalry charge of " wild horsemen " "till nightfall " does infinite credit to Consul Fawcett's imagina- tion ; and as for " the depositions taken by the Com- mission," even when " given in the most simple manner," we know by this time what to think of them. On the whole, we prefer the testimony of an English eye-witness, whose veracity and pains-taking accuracy have be&n verified beyond the reach of cavil. The correspondent of the Daily News investigated the facts at the time and on the spot. His account of the matter is recorded on pp. 389-392 of the second volume of the " Daily News Correspondence of the War," and we are in possession of other independent accounts substantially the same, but giving fuller details. What happened was this :—When the Russians advanced from Plevna, Suleiman Pasha ordered the whole Turkish population to fly, alleging that the Russians intended to massacre them. He bade them also, as attested by English witnesses, to devastate the country as they went along. These orders were obeyed on a large scale, and how thoroughly the fugitives ravaged the villages through which they passed the despatches of Consul Brophy and other accounts tell but too plainly. The Russians sent a detachment of cavalry in advance to reconnoitre, and also to re- assure the fugitives and turn them back to their homes. Near Harmanli this cavalry detachment came up with a biovuac of some 60,000 retreating Turks, guarded in the rear by two battalions of Turkish infantry. "But they [i.e. the infantry] dispersed," says the Daily News' correspondent, " and retired, with little attempt at resistance." And then the following scene took place :— " A squadron was sent into the great assembly of waggons, to find out what it was. They rode on without receiving a single shot, until they were right alongside, and within a few paces of the train of arabas occupying the road, when, from behind the waggons, out from under the rude coverings, and from all sides, came a rattling volley, which emptied some saddles. Then it became evident that a ferocious resistance was to be made. So this squadron retired, and preparations were made to attack the collection of waggons, for it sheltered not only the rear- guard [of Suleiman's retreating army], but also no one knew how many armed peasants. But before the attack began in earnest, the panic caught in the bivouac, and spread like wild-fire. The immense band of refugees ran away with the soldiers to the mountains, leaving cattle, carts, and all their movables which they could not seize upon at the moment. The cause of the panic was the appearance of Skobeleff's cavalry in the valley of the Maritza, in front of the bivouac. The re- sult of it was, doubtless, the death of thousands upon thousands of Turkish peasants, who are now in the mountains, without clothing or food."
Here, then, we have a most frightful tragedy. The guilt of that tragedy we leave to the equitable decision of the reader. And here we must stop, for lack of space. But there are several most important questions yet to be cleared up, questions which touch closely the honour both of the Russian and English Governments. Meanwhile, we invite the verdict of the public on the facts placed before them in this article. We have supplied them with materials for forming their own conclusions on our statement of the facts. If that statement is fair and accurate—and we challenge the most hostile scrutiny—we are fixed in this dilemma : there has been a most iniquitous con- spiracy against truth and justice on one side, or the other. On the one hand are groups of Turkish peasants, of whom the world knows nothing, except that they have the strongest possible motives for making out a case against the Russians. On the other side are British Consuls and officers of well- known reputation, bearing her Majesty's commission in the Army and Navy, besides independent and honourable wit- nesses belonging to other nationalities. These two classes of witnesses testify to certain alleged facts, at the same time and in the same places, and their testimony is absolutely destruc- tive, the one of the other. The circumstances preclude any possibility of mistake.
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