Massacres Throughout History
Boston Massacre By Paul Revere Webster's online dictionary defines the word massacre as: “the act or an instance of killing a number of usually helpless, or unresisting human beings under circumstances of atrocity or cruelty” What is considered a massacre by one side, usually is not considered such by the other. A charioteer in Thessalonica was arrested for a sexual crime. The people of that city wanted him released and when he wasn't they rose up in revolt and killed several Roman authorities. The emperor Theodosius order retaliation against the city in the year 390 and over 7,000 of its inhabitants were slaughtered. This became known as the Massacre of Thessalonica. The city was treated as a hostile territory rather than a Roman territory In France in 1572 the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre took place. First several assassinations took place and then after the King had married, the massacre took place six days later. The massacre was related to a religious feud between the Catholics and Huguenots that had gathered for the king's wedding and who were still in Paris. A French Admiral had been assassinated and the king in retaliation ordered the murders of a group of Huguenot leaders. The killing spread to other areas and when all was said and done, it is believed that the number of dead ranged from between 5,000 to 30,000. The Nazis massacred millions of people in perhaps what was the biggest continuing massacre in the history of the world. Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Catholics, the list went on forever. It just may be that this huge massacre will never be topped. Let's hope that this is the case. When World War I ended, the Ottoman Empire decided to try and eliminate all Armenians. This was not only a massacre, but genocide. Genocide is when entire races are wiped out. Webster defines this as, “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.” To this day Armenians refer to this as the Great Crime and the Armenian Holocaust. Death marches were organized and it is believed that between one and one and a half million Armenians died. Things didn't end with the Armenians however. The same tactics were then used on the Assyrians and Greeks. This is where the word Holocaust comes from, it was first used to describe these events. The year was 1692. The place was Glen Coe in Scotland. Clan MacDonald was entertaining guests. Suddenly the guests turned on them, because they felt that the clan had not pledged itself fast enough to new monarchs. Thirty-eight MacDonalds were murdered, while the rest had to flee for their lives. The guests had accepted the hospitality of the MacDonalds and caught them completely off guard. The massacre is known as the massacre of Glencoe. The last conflict between the Sioux and the United States was the Wounded Knee Massacre. A detachment of soldiers from the 7th Calvary, armed with advanced Hotchkiss guns surrounded the Sioux camp. The Sioux had surrendered and were going to turn themselves in. The army was going to make sure that they did. The army was disarming the Sioux, when a deaf Sioux warrior did not understand the order to give up his rifle. This resulted in a battle. Unfortunately for the Sioux, most of them had been disarmed already. The army fired from all sides killing warriors, women and children. These rounds even killed other soldiers. All this resulted in the deaths of 84 men, 44 women, 18 children and 25 soldiers. The bible tells us of a great massacre perpetrated by Herod the Great. He was the king of Judea and had ordered the massacre of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem. We know this was to prevent Jesus from growing to manhood as he saw him as competition. Dozens of children were murdered in this act of infanticide. Another group that committed massacres was the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. In a four year period they not only committed the worst tortures possible, but they killed about 2 million of their own people. They starved them, executed them, tortured them to death and worked them to death. This period was known as the Cambodian Holocaust and Cambodian Genocide, although it is hard to imagine a people committing genocide upon themselves. One of their favorite ways to kill children was to remove their liver and watch them take days to die. They had constructed a special instrument to do this. The Aztecs kept an account of a massacre that occurred in one of their temples by the Spanish. It went on to say that the natives that were celebrating the Fiesta of Huitzilopochti were all murdered by the Spanish. They had all been dancing and singing and enjoying themselves when they were attacked. It states that the Spanish surrounded the temple and cut off the arms of a drummer and then cut his head off. Next they attacked the people slashing them with swords. We all know how the Spanish finally broke the Aztecs and killed thousands of them, it is a matter of history. The St. Valentine's Massacre was a little more unusual. It took place in Chicago in 1929. Criminals dressed like police invaded the area of a rival gang leader. The police were really thugs from the Al Capone gang. The rival gang was commanded by Bugs Moran. When the Moran gang saw the police they complied and lined up against a wall in the building they were in. They didn't realize that these were not cops and the thugs mowed them down using sub-machine guns, shot guns and pistols. Six members of the Moran gang were killed. |
