spotic rule. He then vented his anger on his Armenian subjects by ordering cavalry troops in Anatolia in central Turkey to exterminate much of the Armenian population. Armenians then inhabited six provinces, and there the troops of the sultan slaughtered the unarmed population and destroyed its property. News of this event was slow to reach the West, but it was eventually confirmed primarily by American and German missionaries. They then reported that some 200,000 Armenians had been killed. Ten years later the sultan was deposed by a new political party that would come to be known as the Young Turks. This party consisted of reformers who wanted to erase the dreadful image of Turkey that had been created in the Western world. They wrote a constitution that granted freedom and equal rights to all minorities, including the Armenians. However, they soon betrayed their principles, undercutting their own reforms. With the onset of World War I, they allied with Germany and began a systematic campaign of murder even more cruel than that of Abdul Hamid. The beginning was in April 1915. Talaat Pasha, the leading figure in the Young Turk government, issued a series of decrees to deport every Armenian living from Anatolia to the desert areas of Syria and Mesopotamia, a distance of some 300 miles. While the word "deportation" was used, the truth was that the real process was "death." Most Armenian men were taken outside their villages where they were shot or killed with sabers and axes. The women, children, and elderly were placed in caravans that were miles long, and the caravans were taken on month-long marches to the southern deserts.
The Armenians in World War I assisted Russia once Russia invaded that region, for the Armenians saw the Russians as liberators and allies. The Turkish government used this as an excuse for attacking the Armenians, claiming that a generalized Armenian revolt was about to take place. Originally, th...