Читать книгу Bleeding Armenia - M. Smbat Gabrielean - Страница 6

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About the year 636 Armenia was invaded by the Saracens. This was the beginning of the most unhappy era in the annals of Armenia. The whole country was shortly plunged into ruin and desolation.

Nothing at first could withstand the onslaught of these fierce warriors, Saracens, Infidels, who knew no word for mercy and regarded all women as but slaves to their worse than bestial passions.

After a fierce battle in which the Armenians were defeated with great slaughter the whole country was ablaze with conflagrations. A city captured after a siege of months was taken by storm. The most dreadful havoc ensued, twelve thousand inhabitants were massacred, churches, palaces pillaged and burned and thirty-five thousand citizens carried into captivity.

These were but the beginning of sorrows and horrors. Invasion after invasion followed until at last peace was bought at the cost of an immense yearly tribute which impoverished the whole people.

Justinian, the Greek Emperor, disregarding all ties of a common faith and heedless of the common danger from the rising power, demanded that they should renounce obedience to the Saracens and return to his authority. They replied: “How often have we been subject to the rule of Greeks, yet how little assistance have they rendered us in time of our distress. * * * Should we at present submit ourselves to your power, our kingdom would be exposed to invasion, we should be delivered up to the sword and our habitations to fire and pillage. * * * We beseech you, therefore to let us remain under the dominion of our present masters by which alone our safety and the safety of our nation can be secured.”

The Emperor enraged at this humble pleading, sent an army to invade Armenia. Twenty-five provinces were almost depopulated by its ravages and thousands were carried away and sold as slaves in foreign lands. The following year another army of forty thousand men came to ravage the remaining territory. The nation was driven to madness and despair by the devastations committed. But as if all the vials of wrath and the horrors of hell were to be let loose at once, the Saracens, believing they had returned to the subjection of the Greeks, again invaded Armenia. They destroyed every town and village on their line of march, and carried away vast multitudes of captives.

Again they returned with greater numbers than before. Cities, towns, villages, fortresses, were razed to the ground, garrisons and people either butchered or carried away captive. What could the poor Armenians do but yield up their country to the power and government of the Saracens?

Again the Greeks returned with a large army, and the weakened, disheartened, impoverished people could only bow in subjection. The emperor taking hostages from among the most distinguished chiefs returned to Constantinople, leaving behind an army of thirty thousand men to protect his vassals. At the expiration of three years all these had departed and the country lay open to the inroads of their fiercest enemies.

The Saracens soon reëstablished their power; the governors being appointed from Damascus. To punish the Armenians for what they termed their rebellion, many of the nobility were decoyed into churches which were then set on fire and the poor Armenians were burnt alive. Their property was then confiscated, their families siezed and put to death with fiendish cruelty on account of their religious faith.

This reads like a chapter of living horrors: for the photographs of to-day are only those of yesterday retouched with human blood.

The governors everywhere oppressed the Armenians with little intermission, levying heavy taxes and inflicting extortionate fines for their own private use. When the Saracens began the building of Bagdad, the tribute was mercilessly increased. The greatest distress prevailed, the evil became intolerable, a dreadful dearth occurred in their harvests because of the furious hailstorms that swept over wide regions of country. Clouds of locusts devoured what the hail had spared and famine and misery untold desolated the land.