Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/431

Rh rounded by their enemies, and after fighting bravely for two hours gave up the contest. Numbers were killed in attempting to escape, and as many as one hundred prisoners, mostly women and children, were afterwards taken from the houses, which were then fired by the Coords, as were the trees and other cultivation in the neighbourhood. These unfortunate victims were then brought before Noorallah Beg and the lieutenant governor of Jezeerah, as they sat near one of the churches, and heard their doom pronounced by those blood-thirsty barbarians: "Make an end of them," said they; "the English Consul at Mosul cannot release them from the grave." A few of the girls, remarkable for their beauty, were spared, the rest were immediately seized and put to death. During this invasion about five hundred Nestorians were murdered, all the villages of Tehoma were destroyed, the churches were razed, the rituals were burned, and the few remaining villagers crossed the frontier and sought safety and support among their brethren in Persia.

After this new outrage the Porte was strongly sued by the foreign representatives, and especially by the Hon. H. Wellesley, the then British Chargé d'Affaires, to put an end to the power of the Coordish Emeers, and Nazim Effendi was sent out as special commissioner to propose that Bedr Khan Beg should go to the capital. There is ground for believing that the expostulations of the Allied Powers were on this occasion backed with something resembling a threat, otherwise I doubt whether the Turks would even then have proceeded to take the steps they did. Had a similar tone been assumed when the first massacre occurred, the annals of humanity would not have been disgraced with such outrages as were suffered to be perpetrated with impunity upon the Nestorian Christians for four successive years; the courts of Europe have bearded the Turks for acts of infinitely less importance, ay, and that too when, diplomatically speaking, the matter in question involved as great an interference with the internal administration of this infidel semi-barbarous government as a zealous protection of the lives and property of the mountain Christians would have been. But even up to this point the Turks seem to have been desirous of avoiding any coercive measures, and would gladly have found an excuse for not employing them. Nazim Effendi espoused the cause of