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On the same day, the revolutionaries sent a letter to the European major powers, in which they wrote the following: "We are now in the Bank Ottoman building and will not evacuate it before the sultan promises to attend to our demands and hand over the solution of the Armenian Question to an international judge. Otherwise, on the third day, we will blow ourselves and the bank up." 217
During this action, the personnel of the bank were treated well and were told: "We have no quarrel with you and you need not worry. We neither want the money in the bank nor its valuables. We only want to dictate our demands and wishes to the Ottoman government." 218
The Armenian revolutionaries had control over the bank for 14 hours, repelling the attacks of the Turkish government forces with courage that has gone down in history. Finally, the ambassadors of the European major powers and the director of the bank, Sir Edgar Vincent (Lord of Abernon), succeeded in persuading the occupants to evacuate the bank, promising that they would intervene in the Armenian Question and at the same time guaranteeing their safe passage home.
The initial reaction to this heroic act 220 was that the Turks began to massacre the Armenians in Constantinople itself, right under the nose of the major powers, murdering around 7,000 Armenians. 221
This massacre, which took place in the European part of the capital and right in front of the eyes of the representatives of the major powers, was a repetition of the horrible actions which the Turks had carried out two years earlier inside Asia Minor against the Armenians. In protest, the representatives of the major powers addressed an insulting letter to the sultan. 222
Another result of the occupation of Bank Ottoman was the death of Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, the foreign minister of Russia. This enemy of Armenia and the Armenians, together with his Austria-Hungarian colleague, had travelled to Vienna to discuss the prevailing political issues. On the journey home he received a telegram informing him of the Armenian occupation of Bank Ottoman, had a heart attack and died on the spot. Reading this tremendous news, which was highly threatening to his policy, proved too much and ended the life of a long sick man. 223
The most important consequence of the occupation of Bank Ottoman was the military preparations of Russia, deemed necessary by the government after this event. Nelidof, the Russian ambassador to the Ottoman court, in contrast to his deceased foreign minister, had always been in favour of a Russian intervention in the Armenian Question to put an end to the massacres. Nelidof reported to his government that this event was a sign that before long chaos would arise in the Ottoman Empire and that the Armenian revolutionaries were most probably planning further similar deeds, which would threaten to bring Turkey into anarchy. 224
In the eyes of the Russian ambassador, the intervention of the European major powers, to protect the Christian population as well as their own interests, was unavoidable in the prevailing circumstances. Such an intervention could occur through letting the warships in the Mediterranean Sea be relocated to the Bosporus; but it also entailed the risk of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
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217) See the text in the Blue Book, Turkey, 1897, nr. 1, del 2-52
218) Livre Jaune (Yellow Book) , Affaires Arméniennes, Paris, 1897, p. 273-274
220) Oliver Baldwin (the Questing Beast, London, 1932, chapter XIV, p. 172) describes the occupation of Bank Ottoman as "the greatest isolated revolutionay conquest in the history". Pierre Loti writes in his book La Turquie agonisante that: "a group of young conspirators - I mean brave and worth admiring - occupied Bank Ottoman", Paris, 1913, p. 174.
221) About the massacre in Constantinople refer to the telegraph to the French Foreign Ministry which De la Boulinère sent and is published in Livre Jaune (Yellow Book), Affaires Arméniennes, Paris, p. 273-274; See also Victor Bérard's local investigation, La Politique du Sultan, Revue de Paris, December 15, 1896, p. 865-878
222) See the Blue Book, Turkey, 1897, nr. 1, documents 26 and 28. See also Sir Edwin Pears, Life of Sultan Abdul-Hamid, London, 1917, p. 259-260. Moreover one should point out the honesty of the political representatives in the Ottoman Empire who all, but the German ambassador, during the entire Armenian crisis recommended their govrenments to take a mores tern line in this issue. In particular Paul Cambon and Nelidof, the French and the Russian ambassadors, opposed openly the policy of their respective foreign ministers, i.e. Hanotaux and Lobanof. As far as it concerns Austria-Hungarian ambassador, Baron Cailse, Théodore Herzl mentions in his memoirs that when he visited the ambassador he warned Herzl about the forgeries which the Turks were conducting the Armenian Question (Herzl, Tagebücher, Berlin, 1923, vol. I p. 451).
223) Victor Bérard, La Politique du Sultan, Revue de Paris, January 15, 1897, p. 457; See also Paul Cambon, Correspondance, Paris, 1940, vol. I p. 412 and 415
224) Nelidof became more resolute in his claim after the publishing of a manifesto, edited by Ashot Yerkat, which was published in September 7, 1896, a manifesto which among other things mentioned the following sentance: "A new action is at hand, the implementation of which will prove the living force of our species. As long as the existing threat is not delt with in an efficient way, we will once more have to face the death in a battle". For the complete text of this beautiful manifesto refer to Pierre Quillard, Pour l'Armnénie, Mémoire et Dossier, Cahiers de la Quinzaine, série III, book 19, Paris, 1902, p. 145-147
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