Batak massacre

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 April Uprising. 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. However, all three non-Bulgarian and non-Ottoman witnesses who visited the site in the wake of the massacre agree that the brutality of the crime was unparalleled and testify to the existence of an enormous number of corpses of women and children, i.e., non-combatants, in an advanced stage of decomposition, who had been slaughtered after the rebels and the town had surrendered. Batak's role in the April Uprising was to take possession of the storehouses in the surrounding villages and to ensure that the insurgents would have provisions, as well as to block the main thoroughfares and prevent Ottoman soldiers from receiving supplies. Batak's task was also to handle the nearby Muslim villages of Chepino and Korovo if they tried to prevent the uprising. If chetas in nearby locations failed in accomplishing their tasks, 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, but they were willing to take the risk. After the April uprising was proclaimed on , part of the armed men in Batak, led by voivode Petar Goranov, attacked the Ottomans. 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. 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.