Januarius MacGahan: Turkish Atrocities in Bulgaria (Part 1)

“A pilgrim from the ends of earth I come
To kneel devoutly at your lowly tomb
To own our debt, we can never repay
To sigh with gratitude, thank God and pray
To bless your name and bless your name
 For this I came.”   ~Stoyan Vatralsky

 “Since my letter of yesterday I have supped full of horrors. Nothing has as yet been said of the Turks that I do not now believe; nothing could be said of them that I should not think probable and likely. There is, it seems, a point in atrocity beyond which discrimination is impossible, when mere comparison, calculation, measurement are out of the question, and this point the Turks have already passed. You can follow them no further.…

But let me tell you what we saw in Batak: We had some difficulty in getting away from Pes[h]tera. The authorities were offended because Mr. Schuyler refused to take any Turkish official with him, and they ordered the inhabitants to tell us that there were no horses, for we had to leave our carriages and take to the saddle. But the people were so anxious that we should go that they furnished horses in spite of the prohibition, only bringing them at first without saddles, by way of showing how reluctantly they did it. We asked them if they could not bring us saddles, also, and this they did with much alacrity and some chuckling at the way in which the Mudir’s orders were walked over. Finally, we mounted and got off. We had been besieged all the morning by the same people who had blockaded us the night before, or who appeared to be the same, their stories were so much alike. We could do nothing but listen in pity to a few of them –  it would have taken all day to hear each separate tale of misery and suffering –  gave vague promises that we would do all in our power to relieve their misery upon our return to Constantinople. But diplomatic help is, alas! very slow. While ambassadors are exchanging notes and compliments inviting each other to dinner, discussing the matter over their coffee and cigars, making representations to the Porte, and obtaining promises which nobody believes in, these poor people are starving and dying. Many of them decided to seize this opportunity and accompany us to Batak, to visit their ruined homes, and others caught our bridle reins, determined to make us listen to their stories before we should start. One woman caught my horse, and held it until she could show me where a bullet had traversed her arm, completely disabling her from work, and this was only the least of her woes. Husband killed, and little children depending on that broken arm for bread; all of this told in a language so much like Russian that I could understand a great deal of it; so like Russian that I could easily have fancied myself amongst peasants of the Volga, or the denizens of the Gostinoidvor, Moscow. The resemblance is striking, and it is no wonder the Russians sympathise with these people….

Batak is situated about thirty miles south of Tatar Bazardjik as the crow flies, high up in a spur of the Balkans that here sweeps around to the south from the main range. The road was only a steep mountain path that in places might have tried the agility of a goat. There was a better one, as we learned upon our return, but with that perversity which distinguishes the Oriental mind, our guide took this one instead….

After three hours’ climbing by paths so steep that we were obliged to dismount and walk half the time without then seeming quite safe from rolling down into some abyss, mounting higher and higher until we seemed to have got among the clouds, we at last emerged from a thick wood into a delightful little valley that spread out a rich carpet of verdure before our eyes…. The mill-wheels are silent now. This little valley with its rich grassy slopes ought to have been covered with herds of sheep and cattle. Not one was to be seen. The pretty little place was as lonely as a graveyard, or as though no living thing had trod its rich greensward for years…. This was the village of Batak, which we were in search of.

…. We turned aside from the road, and passing over the debris of two or three walls and through several gardens, urged our horses up the ascent toward the dogs. They barked at us in an angry manner, and then ran off into the adjoining fields. I observed nothing peculiar as we mounted until my horse stumbled, when looking down I perceived he had stepped on a human skull partly hid among the grass. It was quite hard and dry, and might, to all appearances, have been there two or three years, so well had the dogs done their work. A few steps further there was another and part of a skeleton, likewise, white and dry. As we ascended, bones, skulls, and skeletons became more frequent, but here they had not been picked so clean, for there were fragments of half dry, half putrid flesh attached to them. At last, we came to a little plateau or shelf on the hillside, where the ground was nearly level, with the exception of a little indentation, where the head of a hollow broke through. We rode toward this with the intention of crossing it, but all suddenly drew reign with an exclamation of horror, for right before us, almost beneath our horses’ feet, was a sight that made us shudder. It was a heap of skulls, intermingled with bones from all parts of the human body, skeletons nearly entire and rotting, clothing, human hair and putrid flesh lying there in one foul heap, around which the grass was growing luxuriantly. It emitted a sickening odour, like that of a dead horse, and it was here that the dogs had been seeking a hasty repast when our untimely approach interrupted them.

In the midst of this heap, I could distinguish the slight skeleton form, still enclosed in a chemise, the skull wrapped about with a coloured handkerchief, and the bony ankles encased in the embroidered footless stockings worn by Bulgarian girls. We looked about us. The ground was strewed with bones in every direction, where the dogs had carried them off to gnaw them at their leisure.

At the distance of a hundred yards beneath us lay the town. As seen from our standpoint, it reminded one somewhat of the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. There was not a roof left, not a whole wall standing; all was a mass of ruins, from which arose as we listened a low plaintive wail, like the “keening” of the Irish over their dead, that filled the little valley and gave it voice. We had the explanation of thin curious sound when we afterwards descended into the village. We looked again at the heap of skulls and skeletons before us, and we observed that they were all small and that the articles of clothing intermingled with them and lying about were all women’s apparel. These, then, were all women and girls. From my saddle I counted about a hundred skulls, not including those that were hidden beneath the others in the ghastly heap nor those that were scattered far and wide through the fields. The skulls were nearly all separated from the rest of the bones – the skeletons were nearly all headless. These women had all been beheaded.

We descended into the town. Within the shattered walls of the first house we came to was a woman sitting upon a heap of rubbish rocking herself to and fro, wailing a kind of monotonous chant, half sung, half sobbed, that was not without a wild discordant melody. In her lap she held a babe, and another child sat beside her patiently and silently, and looked at us as we passed with wondering eyes. She paid no attention to us, but we bent our ear to hear what she was saying, and our interpreter said it was as follows: “My home, my home, my poor home, my sweet home; my husband, my husband, my dear husband, my poor husband; my home, my sweet home,” and so on, repeating the same words over again a thousand times. In the next house were two engaged in a similar way; one old, the other young, repeating words nearly identical: “I had a home, now I have none; I had a husband, now I am a widow; I had a son, and now I have none; I had five children, and now I have one,” while rocking themselves to and fro, beating their heads and wringing their hands. These were women who had escaped from the massacre, and had only just returned for the first time, having taken advantage of our visit or that of Mr. Baring to do so. They might hare returned long ago, but their terror was so great that they had not dared without the presence and protection of a foreigner, and now they would go on for hours in this way, “keening” this kind of funeral dirge over their ruined homes. This was the explanation of the curious sound we had heard when up on the hill.

As we advanced there were more and more; some sitting on the heaps of stones that covered the floors of their houses; others walking up and down before their doors, wringing their hands and repeating the same despairing wail. There were few tears in this universal mourning. It was dry, hard, and despairing. The fountain of tears had been dried up weeks before, but the tide of sorrow and misery was as great as ever, and had to find vent without their aid. As we proceeded most of them fell into line behind us, and they finally formed a procession of four or five hundred people, mostly women and children, who followed us about wherever we went with their mournful cries. Such a sound as their united voices sent up to heaven I hope never to hear again.

….A little further on we came to an object that filled us with pity and horror. It was the skeleton of a young girl not more than fifteen lying by the roadside, and partly covered with the debris of a fallen wall. It was still clothed in a chemise; the ankles were enclosed in footless stockings, but the little feet, from which the shoes had been taken, were naked, and owing to the fact that the flesh had dried instead of decomposing were nearly perfect. There was a large gash in the skull, to which a mass of rich brown hair, nearly a yard long, still clung, trailing in the dust. It is to be remarked that all the skeletons found here were dressed in a chemise only, and this poor child had evidently been stripped to her chemise, partly in the search for money and jewels, partly out of mere brutality, and afterwards killed. We have tallied with many women who had passed through all parts of the ordeal but the last, and the procedure seems to have been, as follows: They would seize a woman, strip her carefully to her chemise, laying aside articles of clothing that wore valuable, with any ornaments and jewels she might have about her. Then as many of them as cared would violate her, and the last man would kill her or not as the humour took him.

Dony K. Donev, D.Min., is a prominent researcher and author specializing in Bulgarian Protestant, Evangelical, and Pentecostal history, with over three decades of study. His work, including 19th Century History of Protestantism in Bulgaria and The Unforgotten: Historical and Theological Roots of Pentecostalism in Bulgaria, documents the development of these movements, their suppression under Communism, and the subsequent post-1989 revival. Key aspects of Donev’s research on Bulgarian Protestant history include:
Origins (19th Century): Protestant work began in the 1800s, with denominations like Congregationalists (1856), Methodists (1857), and Baptists (1865) establishing missions, culminating in the first Bulgarian Protestant Church in 1871. Donev also highlights the 1871 publication of the Protestant Bulgarian Bible translation. His research, often in collaboration with the Institute of Bulgarian Protestant History, has focused on preserving, digitizing, and recovering documents, including church diaries, photographs, and, in some cases, saving records from destruction during the communist era.