Destruction And Sacking Of Scio

Scio was one of the largest, richest and most beautiful islands of the Grecian Archipelago. It contained at the commencement of the Greek revolution 120,000 inhabitants. Extensive commerce had brought to the island the treasures of the East and the West, and her opulent families, refined in manners by European travel, and with mind highly cultivated, affording the most intelligent and fascinating society of the East. Schools flourished upon the island and richly endowed colleges were crowded with Grecian youth. The traveller lured by the moonlight of that gorgeous clime to evening stroll through the streets of Scio, heard from the dwelling of the wealthy Greeks he tones of the piano and guitar, touched by fingers skilled in all the polite accomplishments. Many of these families were living in enjoyment of highly cultivated minds, and polished manners, rendered doubly attractive by all the establishments of wealth.

Grecian revolt extended to this island, and Sultan Mahommed resolved upon signal vengeance. He proclaimed to all the disperates of Bosphorus that the inhabitants of Scio, male, and female, with all their possessions, were to be entirely surrendered to the adventures, who would embark in the expedition for its destruction. Every ruffian of Constantinople crowded to the Turkish fleet. The ferocious and semi-savage boatmen of the Bosphorus, the scowling Christian-hating wretches, who in poverty and crime thronged the lanes and the alleys of the Moslem city, rushed eagerly to the squadron. Every scoundrel and renegade upon the frontiers of Europe and Asia, who could come with knife or club, was received with a welcome. In this way a reinforcement of about ten thousand assassins, the very refuse of creation, were collected, and other thousands followed on in schooners, and sloops and fishing boats, swelling the number to fifteen thousand men to join the sack and carnage. The fleet droped down the Bosphorus amidst acclamations of Constantinople, Pera, Scutaria, and the reverberations of the parting rolled along the shores of Europe and of Asia.

It was a lovely afternoon in the month of April 1822, when the fleet was seen on the bosom of the Aegean, approaching Scio. It anchored in the bay, and immediately vomited forth upon those ill-fated shores the murderous hordes collected for their distruction. Who can imagine the horrors of the night which ensued! The brutal mob, phrenzied with licentiousness and rape, were let loose with unrestrained liberty, to glut their vengeance. The city was fired in every direction. Indiscriminate massacre ensued.

Men, woman and children were shot down without mercy. Every house was entered, every department was ransacked. The scimitar and pistol of the Turk were every where busy. The frantic cries of the perishing rose above the roar of exploding artillery and musketry, and the clamor of the onset. Mothers and daughters in despair rushed into the flame of their burning dwellings. And thus for six dreadful days and nights did the work of extermination continue, till the city and the island of Scio were a heap of ruins.

Several thousand of the youth of both sexes were saved to be sold as slaves. - The young men taken from the literary seclusion, and intellectual refinement of the College of Scio, were sold to the degrading servitude of hopeless bondage. - The young ladies taken from the parlors of their opulent parents, from the accomplishment of highly cultivated life, and who had visited in the refined circles of London and Paris, who had been brought up as delicately, says an English writer, as luxurious and almost intellectually as those of the same classes among ourselves, became the property of the most ferocious and licentious outcasts of the human race. lt is said that forty-one thousand were thus carried into slavery. For weeks and months they were sold through all the marts of the Roman empire, like slaves in Washington, or cattle in the shambles.

As the fleet returned to Constantinople from its murderous excursion, the whole city was on the alert to witness the triumphant entrance. As the leading ship rounded the point of land, which brought into the view of the whole city, many captured Greeks were seen standing on the deck, with ropes around their necks, and suddenly they were strung up to the bowsprit and every yard arm, struggling in the agonies of death. And thus as ship after ship turned the struggling forms of dying men swung in the breeze.These were the horrid ornaments and trophies of barbarian triumphs. In view of them, the very shores of the Bosphorus seemed to be shaken by the explosion of artillery, and by the exulting shouts of the millions of inhabitants who thronged the streets of Constantinople, Pera and Scutaria.

These outrages however terminated the sway of the Turk over the Greek. -They aroused through all Europe an universal cry of horror and detestation. - The sympathy of the people was so intense, that the governments of England and France could no longer refuse to interfere. Their fleets were allied with that of Russia. The Turkish fleet was annihilated at Navarino, and Greece was free.