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Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
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CLAUDE DELAVAL COBHAM
Exerpta Cypria
page 476

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On July 9 tho officials brought out into the square in front of tho Governor's palace the Archbishop Cyprianos and the three other bishops. The first they hanged on a tree opposite the gates of the palace, the others they beheaded. With them were beheaded some of the Christian notables, and the bodies of all were left lying on the ground for some days. During a space of thirty days after they ceased not to massacre, and often to hack off the limbs of living victims. Two hundred of the leading inhabitants of the towns and villages were sacrificed : those who fled were almost the only ones saved. The property of the slain and the fugitives alike was confiscated and sold. In those terrible days the consuls showed the greatest humanity, especially the French Consul Méchain, offering from the first the consulates as refuges for the proscribed, and afterward sending tlieni out of the island in European vessels. PHILEMON. Onr next extract, translated from Joannes Philemon, Λοκίμιοι* Ιστορικόν irep\ της Ελληνικής 'Eirara-στάσ*ωΓ, vol. in. pp. 258—262, 8vo, Athens, 1860, gives a more florid version of the same catastrophe. Unfortunately it is not supported by references to the documents or other sources from which it is derived. It would be interesting to know how iu 1860 the writer obtained detailed information as to the counsels and correspondence of Kachuk Mehmed ; especially in Cyprus, where still it is not easy to gather from eye-witnesses a faithful account of what happened the day before yesterday. Philippos Georgiou, in his Notices of the Cliurch of Cyprus, 1875, pp. 120—121, observes tliat the numbers of the victims must be reduced by a half; that only one or two families were sold into slavery, and that a great part of the valuables taken from the monasteries and churches was sent bacìi to the new Archbishop Ioakim, who kept them to distribute as bribes or presents to the magnates of the day. The History of the Greek Nation by K. Paparregopoulos, 6 vols. 8vo, Athens. I860, does not notice the massacre. Geo. Finlay {A History of Greeee, 7 vols. 8vo, Oxford, 1877) dismisses it in a line. vi. 191. The next to share in the disasters of Smyrna was the important island of Cyprns, inhabited by 80,000 Greeks aud scarcely 20,000 Turks. Cyprus, which in ancient days was rich, flourishing and populous by reason of its great fertility, and abundance of metals, now full of the ruins of cities destroyed iu various ways, and almost barren by reason of tho tyranny which had wasted its population, excited no suspicion of revolutionary tendencies. First, because its Greek inhabitants, though four times as many as the Turks, were unarmed, downtrodden and absolutely innocent of insurrectionary ideas or manœuvres, and had neither ships nor soldiers trained aud fit for service; secondly, because the surprising sparseness with which the population was scattered over a country whose circumference is reckoned at 420 stadia interposed au insnperable obstacle to any common understanding; and thirdly, because the islaud lay at no great distance from Egypt, and opposite to the shores of Syria and Cilicia, where Islam ruled in strength. Nevertheless, though such was the condition of the country, the Sultan not only gave orders to the Governor of Acre to send a force to check any revolutionary movement on the part of the Greek Cypriote, but left the Governor of Cyprus free to kill at once as many of them as he thought worth killing, as we shall see below. Conformably with the general measure enjoining the disarmament of the Greek rayahs, a special order of the Turkish government was sent to Cyprus ordering the disarming of the Christians of the island, thus worded in very conciliatoiy terms :—"Although, npon examination of our archives, we nowhere find that from the date when this island fell under EXCERPTA CYPRIA.

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