Philippopolis and Tatar Bazardjik

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Dec 9

Mr. Baring, I am informed, will report that in the districts about Philippopolis and Tatar Bazardjik alone there have been about fifty villages burnt, without counting those that have been only pillaged, and that nearly 15,000 people have been slaughtered. This is the lowest estimate, and it does not include the districts about Sofia and those north of the Balkan. The French and Russian Consuls and the railway officials give much higher figures, and would put the number of villages burned at over a hundred, and the killed at 25,000 to 40,000.

There are people who put the number of killed at 100,000. For my own part, once the enormous number of 15,000 killed in four days is admitted, I do not care to inquire further. The French Consul and the German railway officials may be right or they may he wrong. Fifteen thousand is enough ; for no mere increase in a statement of round numbers can add to the horror of the thing. It is only in the recital of City Tours Istanbul the details accompanying the butchery that the mind can grasp and understand the fearful atrocity of the business.

Greek Consul

The Greek Consul, who is not friendly to the Bulgarians, tells me of 12,000 wretched women and children marched into Tatar Bazardjik, nearly all of whom suffered the vilest outrages. He tells me of Bulgarian fathers who killed their wives and children in order to put them out of reach of the ferocity of the Bashi- Bazouks.

The German officials tell me of the bodies of men cut up and flung to the dogs in villages near their own railway stations; of little children of both sexes maltreated and brutalised until they died; of a priest, whose wife and children were outraged and slaughtered before his eyes, and who was then put to death, after the most fearful torture, the details of which are too abominable to be re-told. I have the story of a young and beautiful girl, who having found means to obtain the rudiments of an education, opened a school in her native village, and tried to do something for the education of the poor people about her, who is now lying in prison here sick and brokenhearted, whose story is too sad for recital.