Martin

The testimony of the German Johann W.A. Streit, a young technician, about the massacres of Greeks in Constantinople in 1822 by the Muslim Turks is horrifying. He writes that as soon as a wool factory finished its shift, the Turkish workers seized the prisons of Katrosan and dragged out 186 Greeks who had been arrested in the preceding days. Many of them they killed on the spot, while they dragged the others through the cobblestone streets until they met a gruesome death: "They tied the Greeks’ feet and hands with ropes and pulled them in all directions, dismembering them. They cut off their heads, impaled them on the tips of their swords, and paraded them triumphantly through the streets. Even though a fire had broken out that evening in one of the outlying districts, a fire that could have destroyed the entire city, no one was bothered by it. Everyone continued with the slaughter and the looting" The next morning, Streit saw many Greeks, both men and women, hanging upside down from their windows. "The victims were writhing and screaming. Knives and swords had been nailed into the buttocks of many. From time to time, they would cut off another piece of flesh". That morning, Streit counted approximately 4,000 corpses of both sexes. He recounts the incident in which a mob broke into the house of a Greek jeweler. One of his daughters jumped out of the window and was killed. "They brought the rest of the family down to the square. There they stripped the other daughter and the maid naked, and first cut off their breasts and then their noses. The son, a robust 24-year-old young man, rushed at a Turk, punched him in the temple, seized the bloodied yataghan from his hand, and with one blow from top to bottom cut off his nose so that it remained hanging from his lips. Within a minute, a hundred swords had hacked him to pieces". Later, the impaling of many Greeks is described: "Around midnight, they brought more Greeks, men and women, among them three small children. They impaled them with their swords and threw them alive into the fire". Streit adds: "I did not see a single Turk whose face showed any compassion. Even six-year-old children vented their hatred on the dead. They stabbed the slain Greeks with knives". Wherever and however they could, the Greek population resisted the barbarity: "A Greek merchant, as soon as the Turks broke into his shop and house, took refuge with his family in the upper floor. He had with him two barrels of gunpowder. And while forty bloodthirsty Turks were climbing the stairs, he set it on fire. The house blew up into the air. A pharmacist killed 200 Turks who were besieging his house. He poisoned all the wine barrels in his cellar with arsenic and then committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor. The Turks drank, were poisoned, and died curled up like worms in front of the house". All of this is described in detail in his book "Constantinople in the Year 1821", which was published in Leipzig in 1822. The Greek title is "Jahann Wilhem August Streit. Η Κωνσταντινούπολη κατά το έτος 1821", and in German "Constantinople im Jahre 1821". If you want to support me in the effort I’m making, please consider becoming a subscriber to my X account for only $2. I write about the ancient, medieval, and modern history of Greece and what Christians went through because of Islam. Always with primary sources and historical facts. Thanks for reading me and for all the support. - Homer Pavlos