The Batak massacre was a massacre of Bulgarians in the town of Batak by Ottoman irregular cavalry troops in 1876, at the beginning of the Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876. The estimate for the number of casualties ranges from 1,200 to 8,000, depending on source, with the most common estimate being 5,000 casualties.Religion, Ethnicity and Contested Nationhood in the Former Ottoman Space, Editors J. Rgen Nielsen, Jørgen S. Nielsen, Publisher BRILL, 2011, , p. 282.More, 1877, pp. 89–90
The indiscriminate slaughter of non-combatant civilians at Batak shocked the general public in Western Europe and came to be known in the press as the Bulgarian Horrors and the Crime of the Century.
The scale of the atrocities caused British commissioner Walter Baring, who had been dispatched by the British embassy in Constantinople to verify the events, to describe the tragedy "as perhaps the most heinous crime that has stained the history of the present century".
The events at Batak caused a public outcry across Europe, mobilized ordinary people and famous intellectuals to demand a reform of the Ottoman model of governance of the Bulgarian lands, and eventually led to the re-establishment of a separate Bulgarian state in 1878.
The anti-Turkish and pro-Bulgarian public mood made it difficult for Benjamin Disraeli to implement his policy, prevented Britain from intervening on behalf of the Ottoman Empire and created the international conditions for the Russian invasion of 1877.
Uprising in Batak
Batak's role in the April Uprising was to take possession of Ottoman storehouses in surrounding villages and ensure that the insurgents would have provisions. Batak was also supposed to block main thoroughfares and prevent Ottoman soldiers from receiving supplies.
If rebel chetas in nearby locations failed to accomplish their tasks, the survivors were supposed to gather in Batak. The only problem expected by the organisers was that Batak would have to defend itself alone against the Ottoman troops. After the April uprising was proclaimed on , part of the armed men in Batak, led by voivode Petar Goranov, attacked the Ottomans.Бойчо (Ангел П. Горанов), "Въстанието и клането в Батак". София, 1892 (repr. София, 1991) They succeeded in eliminating part of the Ottoman leaders, but were reported to the authorities, which sent a paramilitary detachment of some 5,000 irregular soldiers (bashi-bazouk), led by Ahmet Aga from Barutin which surrounded the town.At that time the massacre on Christians in Batak took place, when Bulgarian speaking Muslims from Barutin murdered Christians. Region, Regional Identity and Regionalism in Southeastern Europe, Klaus Roth, Ulf Brunnbauer, LIT Verlag Münster, 2010, , p. 186.The slaughter at Batak by the Pomak Bashi-Bazouks under the command of Ahmed Agha Barutin has been variously estimated to be between 2000 and 5000 persons of both sexes. "Accounts and papers of the House of Commons", Great Britain. Parliament. Ordered to be printed, 1877, p. 50.Прочутото Баташко клане е извършено от среднородопските помаци под водачеството на Ахмед ага Барутанлията. "Време за разхвърляне на камъни" Николай Хайтов, Издателство "Хр. Ботев", 1994, стр. 64.Ахмед ага Барутанлията – палачът на Батак, изклал там 8000 българи, също помак. Че въпросните палачи на българите са помаци, сиреч българи мохамедани, споменавам чак сега... Български хроники. 1878–1943, Том 3, Стефан Цанев, TRUD Publishers, 2008, , стр. 30."През време на Перущенското и Баташкото клане никое друго село в Рупчоската околия не беше изложено на същата опасност освен с. Широка лъка. Това село като най-събудено и богато башибозукът от околните помашки села, които бяха заели участие в Перущица и Батак, дошли в с. Широка лъка...Исторически преглед, Том 28, Българско историческо дружество, Институт за история (Българска академия на науките), 1972, стр. 106.Some Pomaks aided in the suppression by the Turks, perhaps participating in a massacre of Bulgarians in the mountain village of Batak. Encyclopedia of European peoples, Catherine Mason, Carl Waldman, Infobase Publishing, 2006, , p. 607.... and the Pomak Ahmet Agha Barutanlijata was at any event responsible for the mascare of Batak... "The Turks of Bulgaria: the history, culture and political fate of a minority, Kemal H. Karpat, Isis Press, 1990, , p. 192.
After the first battle, the insurgents from Batak decided to negotiate with Ahmet Agha. He pledged to withdraw his troops on condition that Batak disarmed. However, after the rebels laid down their weapons, the paramilitaries attacked and beheaded them.Stoyanov, 1884, Chap. VIII The Rebellion in Batak.More, 1877, p. 105
Massacre
While the leaders of the Revolutionary committee were surrendering the weapons, some of Batak's residents managed to escape the village. After that, the entire village was surrounded, and no one else was let out. The bashi-bozouk went around the houses, raiding and burning them. Many people decided to hide in the houses of the wealthy or in the church, which had a stronger structure and would protect them from fire.More, 1877, p. 111On , those hidden in the House of Bogdan surrendered, as Ahmet Agha had pledged to spare them. The pledge was not kept: in the end, more than 200 men, women and children were led out, stripped out of their valuables and clothes, and brutally killed. The Agha asked some of the wealthy men of Batak to go to his camp and lay down all the arms of the villagers. Amongst them was the mayor, Trendafil Toshev Kerelov, and his son, Petar Trendafilov Kerelov. They had supposedly reached an agreement that if the village disarmed, the paramilitaries would withdraw from Batak. However, once the rebels' arms had been confiscated, all of them were beheaded, burnt alive or impaled.Stoyanov, 1884, Chap. VIII The Rebellion in Batak.More, 1877, p. 111
The murder of the leader Trendafil Kerelov was particularly violent, as described by the witness—his son's wife Bosilka:
One of Bosilka's children, Vladimir, who was still a baby at his mother's breast, was impaled on a sword in front of her eyes:
Januarius MacGahan, a journalist of the New York Herald and the British Daily News wrote of the terrible happenings after his visit to Batak in the company of Eugene Schuyler. They described the burned and destroyed city with the stench of the rot of thousands of piled dismembered corpses and skeletons of innocent victims, including young women, children and unborn babies torn out from the wombs of their pregnant mothers.
The church After the Ottoman paramilitaries destroyed Batak's school, burning 200 people hidden in the basement alive, they headed to the Bulgarian Orthodox church "Sveta Nedelya", which ended up being the last keep of the residents of the village.
On the morning of , the bashi-bazouk took over the yard of the church and advanced to the door, but were unable to get in—–the door was barred by the people inside.More, 1877, pp. 82–119Stoyanov, 1884, pp. 703–705
The defence of the church held for three days, with the paramilitaries shooting ceaselessly at the villagers to make them surrender.More, 1877, p. 111 Some tried to enter the church from the roof but were unsuccessful, even though they were able to shoot some of the people inside.More, 1877, p. 112 There was no water in the church, so the people trapped inside tried to dig into the floor with bare hands in order to find underground water.
Unable to go on without water, the survivors came outside on the third day. When they opened the doors of the church, ruthless slaughter ensued, where only those who accepted to be converted to Islam were spared.More, 1877, p. 89, quote: From 200 to 300 men and women accepted this alternative and by that means escaped slaughter. The plans of the Ottoman leader were to populate the village with the converted villagers, but it turned out that there were not enough of them. Before the bashi-bozouk left the village, they tried to burn the church, yet the stone walls remained, and only the wooden furniture and the icons were destroyed. When a Russian commission went to inspect the village 3 months later, the Ottoman authorities tried to bury the bodies, but they could not hide the smell in the air. They also painted the walls of the church, but the blood stains showed up in time.
After the massacre at the church, Ahmet Agha summoned all the surviving villagers outside, saying that it would be in order to make a list of the slain and the widows. The better part of the survivors gathered, since those who did not obey would be killed. They were divided in two groups of women and men; then the Ottoman commander made the women stand back and slew all the remaining 300 men.Stoyanov, 1884, Chap. VIII The Rebellion in Batak. Those women who protested were also raped and killed. On the same day, another 300 people murdered on the wooden bridge beside the school; first their arms were cut off, then their ears, noses, shoulders, and only after that they were finished.Stoyanov, 1884, Chap. VIII The Rebellion in Batak.
Witness accounts According to the first eyewitness on the site, American diplomat Eugene Schuyler, the number of victims at Batak stood at around 5,000, out of a population of 8,000 people in 900 households. Batak was only one out of 11 villages and 3 towns that Schuyler visited in person for the preparation of his report on the uprising, subsequently published in the Daily News. The report further estimated the total number of Bulgarian casualties, rebels and non-combatants alike, at a minimum of 15,000, versus only 155 Muslim casualties, of whom 12 women and children.MacGahan, 1876, p. 91, 94 Most of all, Schuyler emphasized the extreme level of brutality demonstrated, above all, in Batak, which—given the failure of the rebellion and the quick surrender of the villager—had been completely unnecessary.MacGahan, 1876, p. 95–96 Schuyler writes, as follows:On every side were human bones, skulls, ribs, and even complete skeletons, heads of girls still adorned with braids of long hair, bones of children, skeletons still encased in clothing. Here was a house the floor of which was white with the ashes and charred bones of thirty persons burned alive there.
Here was the spot where the village notable Trendafil was spitted on a pike and then roasted, and where he is now buried; there was a foul hole full of decomposing bodies; here a mill dam filled with swollen corpses; here the school house, where 200 women and children had taken refuge there were burned alive, and here the church and churchyard, where fully a thousand half-decayed forms were still to be seen, filling the enclosure in a heap several feet high, arms, feet, and heads protruding from the stones which had vainly been thrown there to hide them, and poisoning all the air.
Since my visit, by orders of the Mutessarif, the Kaimakam of Tatar Bazardjik was sent to Batak, with some lime to aid in the decomposition of the bodies, and to prevent a pestilence.
Ahmed Agha, who commanded at the massacre, has been decorated and promoted to the rank of Yuz-bashi... Another witness to the aftermath of the Massacre was American journalist Januarius MacGahan, who described the following scene: There was not a roof left, not a whole wall standing; all was a mass of ruins... 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.