Greek Massacres - 1821-1827
In 1821-7, during the Greek revolution, thousands of Greeks were put to death who had no other crime than being of the same religion and nationality. Sultan Mohammed was in the habit of replying to every success of the Greek insurgents by ordering massacres, violations and enslavement in regions without defense, where there were none but women, children and inoffensive merchants. The Turkish admiral was beaten at Samos; for that reason thirty days were spent in Cyprus in cutting off heads.
The opulent, fertile, and prosperous island of Chios, the garden of the AEgean Sea, and literally speaking an earthly paradise, if any earthly spot deserves the name, had hitherto remained a stranger to the insurrection. Its eighty thousand inhabitants, satisfied with their condition, and horror-struck with the devastation which they beheld around them, aimed only at preserving the blessings of peace and neutrality. But the Turks, instead of improving on these dispositions by gentle treatment, increased their exactions to such a degree that the rural inhabitants became ripe for revolt; and a Greek squadron, under Logotheti, having appeared off the island in the end of March, the insurrection broke out.
On 12 April 1822, the Turks, rushing sword in hand into the town, commenced an indiscriminate massacre of the Christians, which lasted without interruption for the four following days. Flames soon broke out in every direction, and speedily reduced one of the finest cities in the Levant to ashes : nine thousand men were put to the sword ; the women and children were all sold as slaves; the very graves were rifled in search of concealed treasures; and the bones of the dead tossed about by the infuriated conquerors.
Nothing could assuage the thirst for blood, or appease the fanatical fury of the Mussulmans. Every corner of the island was ransacked; every house burned or sacked ; every human being that could be found, slain or carried off into captivity. Modern Europe had never witnessed such an instance of bloodshed or horror. To find a parallel to it one must go back to the storming of Syracuse or Carthage by the Romans, or the sack of Bagdad or Aleppo by the arms of Timur. All the beautiful streets and superb villas of Chios were destroyed ; its entire sacred edifices ruined ; ninety churches in the island burned ; forty villages delivered to the flames. Nothing was to be seen in the once smiling land but heaps of ruins, and a few ghastly inhabitants wandering in a state of starvation among them.
When the massacre finally ceased from the exhaustion of the assassins, twenty-five thousand persons, chiefly full-grown men, had been slain ; forty-five thousand women and children had been dragged into slavery; and fifteen thousand had escaped into the neighbouring islands, all in the last stage of destitution and misery, where the greater part of them died of grief or starvation.
The patriots had maintained a generally successful war with the Ottoman forces; a war which the latter stained, on the 23rd of April, and following days, by one of the most merciless acts on record. An overwhelming Turkish force landed on the island of Scio, and massacred nearly all the inhabitants, except such women and boys as could be sold for slaves. Upwards of 40,000 were barbarously murdered, and 25,000 consigned to slavery.
For several months the markets of Constantinople, Egypt, and Barbary were so stocked with slaves that their price fell and purchasers were attracted from the farthest parts of Asia and Africa, whither the unhappy Greek captives were scattered.
At length, on the evening of the 31st of June 1822, an attack was resolved on by the Greek fleet ; which with fifteen ships of war and three fireships, entered the channel between Chios and the Asiatic coast. On 31 July 1822 the Turks in Chios took vengeance for their disaster by renewing the massacre of the few unhappy Greeks who yet remained in the island. Twenty thousand of them rushed into the Mastic villages, which had escaped the former devastation from the capitulation, and put every human being they could reach to the sword. In the beginning of August there were not eighteen hundred of the original inhabitants alive in the island, almost all old women, who had been concealed in caves, out of eightyfive thousand who peopled it a few mouths before. But the slaughter of a few thousand unarmed and starving Greeks could not affect the issue of the campaign, or diminish the weight of the blow which had been struck.
The Sultan wished to take new reprisal to terrify the rayas (Christian subjects) and cause the nations of Europe to reflect. In the island of Chios, though the inhabitants were not in rebellion, but most docile and inoffensive, yet "above forty thousand of both sexes had either fallen victims to the sword, or were selected for sale in the bazaars." Some fled to the more inaccessible parts of the island. They were assured of their safety by the Turks, guaranteed by the European consuls. But no sooner did they descend from the heights than the Turks put them to death. The number of those, who became victims of this perfidious act, were estimated at seven thousand.
The women and children escaped death, their beauty and youth saving them from massacre. They were, however, to be delivered over at once to the outrageous assaults or to be reserved for the shameful fate of the harem. They were led off in long troops; they were put on the market and sold in the bazaars of Smyrna, Constantinople and Brousa. Large numbers also suffered death or the worst form of slavery, by the hands of the "unspeakable Turks," who were neither Greeks nor belonged to the same church, and their only crime also was that they, too, were Christians.
After the massacre of Chios, the Turks had thrown themselves out of the pale of civilisation ; they had proved themselves to be pirates, enemies of the human race, and no longer entitled to toleration from the European family. Expulsion from Europe was the natural and legitimate consequence of their flagrant violation of its usages in war. Had this been done in 1822 - had the Congress of Verona acceded to the prayers of the Greeks, and restored the Christian empire of the East under the guarantee of the allied powers - what an ocean of blood would have been dried up, what boundless misery prevented, what prospects of felicity to the human race opened
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