This article collects various publications and reports on the disturbing Balkan tradition of military combatants cutting off lips, noses and heads of civilians. This type of atrocity was usually carried out by Montenegrin, Serbian, Bulgarian and Turkish troops against civilians and prisoners. In the Balkan war of 1913, Serbs and Montenegrins would commit these crimes against Albanians and Turkish civilians. This kind of torture was also common in the 16th century as a capital punishment.
16th century torture against Serbian and Turkish criminals
“That same evening, the traveling party witnessed Ottoman jurisprudence when the Beylerbeyi summoned them to a public court.
A Turk who had already been convicted once and escaped from custody was recaptured; as punishment, Sokollu Mustafa Pasha had his arms and legs broken by blows with an iron hammer.
Two Serbs from Lower Hungary, who had kidnapped numerous Christians and Muslims to sell them into slavery, also awaited their draconian punishment. First, they were tied to two pillars, then their noses and ears were cut off, and they were skinned down to their navels. After they had finally confessed their crimes, and a Turk present begged to be released from their suffering, the Beylerbeyi mercifully had them killed and thrown into the Danube.”1
In 1807 the French accused the Montenegrins for their barbaric customs of cutting off the enemy’s head
“The Montenegrins were cruel in all wars. But they learned beheading from their hereditary enemy, the Turks, who had brought this barbaric custom from Asia. Since the Montenegrins themselves generally lacked even the most basic necessities, they could not feed prisoners. After the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, the French Marshal Marmont summoned the Montenegrin Vladika Petar (until Danilo, the prince was also the spiritual leader) to a meeting and accused him, among other things, of the Montenegrins beheading their prisoners like savage barbarians.
Petar replied: “However, we do this to our vengeful enemies, but never to our legitimate kings in the open marketplace, just like the French. Incidentally, this barbaric custom has been abandoned among the Montenegrins.” In the last campaign against the Turks, only the latter still mutilated individual Montenegrins by cutting off their heads, ears, or noses, as was evident from the dead after the Ostrog battles.”2
When Montenegrins decapitated Turkish heads after the Battle of Grahovo of 1858
“In 1858, the Montenegrins defeated the Turks at Grahowo. I will speak about this battle later. The harvest of severed Turkish heads—the Czernagorz folk song calls these heads of the enemy, with cruel jest, wild melons—was so plentiful that transport difficulties arose, and finally, albeit reluctantly, it was decided to leave the heads on the battlefield for the eagles and vultures to eat, and only to take the noses and ears, after carefully separating them from the already severed heads, to deposit them in the aforementioned Turkish tower of the Cettinj Monastery, in perpetuam rei memoriam et in greaterem dei gloriam.
This fact is not recounted by an enemy of the Montenegrins, but by an enthusiastic friend of theirs who rendered them great service. It is the French Admiral Jurien de la Gravière, about whom I will speak more, who recorded it. He was in Cettinje shortly after the battle, and when, as he puts it, a cry of outrage still echoed throughout Europe because of the atrocities committed at Grahowo, or as one might say, horrors.
Prince Danilo writes that Jurien de la Gravière was completely stunned and desolate because of the story, but until then he had not been able to change the customs of his people on this point. When we French later became better acquainted with individual Montenegrin chieftains, we tried to exert our influence on them to persuade them to renounce such great satisfaction.
They listened to us with great attention and from time to time indicated their agreement with our differences by nodding their heads and other gestures. The end result, however, was always that they said, “You are quite right, we will no longer cut off anyone’s head, with the sole exception, of course, of the Turks.”
They have remained at this principle to this day, and in their defense, it can only be said that regarding this the custom of beheading still exists today between Turks and Montenegrins, with complete reciprocity. Each side cites the other as justification.”3
The Montenegrin atrocities by Montenegrin criminal Luka Vukalowich (Luka Vukalovic) of 1862 against Albanians of Cermnicë
“Together, they [Montenegrins] began the most brazen and merciless raids in Turkish territory, stealing herds, murdering people, and burning villages. Cutting off noses, ears, and heads, and mounting the heads as trophies, was still commonplace. The Montenegrins have not progressed an inch in a millennium. Culture has advanced, only the politics of its leaders have become ever more sophisticated through the Russian system of bribery. One must not judge this primitive people too harshly.
On their barren mountains they find no sustenance and must steal it, for their racial pride has not yet degraded itself to factory work. After the Montenegrins committed the most unspeakable atrocities in the Kremnize (Cermnicë) region in March 1862, Omer Pasha finally received orders from the Sultan on April 9th to intervene with Turkish troops. Omer was ill or still hesitant for diplomatic reasons. At least Dervish Pasha, whom he sent ahead, did not accomplish much.
There were repeated reports of his bloody battles at the Duga Pass and of Vukalovich’s attacks on Turkish forts. In general, the Turks remained at a disadvantage, and Omer Pasha did not move. This was because de Moustier, the French envoy, and Labanoff, the Russian envoy, took Montenegro under their protection. Russia had long considered this mountainous country its outpost.
Therefore, it wanted to preserve its existing independence and offensive capabilities at all costs. However, it was less able to see through the situation and therefore placed great value on being supported by France on this issue. It is believed that it was primarily for this reason, and solely as a compliment to France, that Prussia so quickly agreed to recognize the Kingdom of Italy, following the Russian example.”4
Montenegrin atrocities against Austrian prisoners of war in Cattaro in 1869
“However, all the Montenegrins I spoke to denied that they perform the operation of cutting off the head, nose, or ears of living enemies. They claimed it was only trophies they took from the fallen and dead. Austrian officers, on the other hand, who participated in the war at the Bocche di Cattaro in 1869, assert with the greatest certainty the opposite.
Austrian soldiers say they were ambushed individually, disarmed, and stripped, and after having their noses, ears, and genitals cut off, were driven naked back to the Austrian camp. I myself saw a Turkish soldier in Upper Macedonia in 1875 whose nose and ears had not only been cut off, but also his upper lip, including his mustache. The sight was truly appalling, especially…
The perpetual grin caused by cutting off the lip looked gruesome on the face so sadly disfigured by mutilation of the nose and numerous stab wounds and cuts.”5
Montenegrin atrocities against Turks and Albanians in 1877
“[…] This is best done by cutting off the head. Because the blade is razor-sharp, a second is enough to cleanly sever the head with a technical move (the blade is placed at the top and quickly drawn down the neck to the handle), so that the Turk has no time to feel pain.
Stabbing would be too uncertain and painful, while shooting is not used because cartridges are expensive and the poor Montenegrins cannot simply pay 10 cartridges a day, i.e., 50 kreuzers, for such purposes out of their pockets.”6
Atrocities in 1881-1882 in Herzegovina according to the Kikeriki newspaper
“This view is also encountered in connection with the uprising of 1881 and 1882, which broke out again in Herzegovina and southern Dalmatia due to the introduction of conscription. On January 12, 1882, the Kikeriki newspaper once again featured a caricature of an insurgent, this time wearing severed noses strung on a cord instead of cut-off ears.
Besides cutting off the ears and noses of fallen enemies, it also listed “stealing lamps” and “alliance with robbers” among the most popular misdeeds of the insurgents, who were characterized as thoroughly dishonorable.43 However, the ruthless actions of imperial troops, even against the civilian population of the insurrection areas, were naturally not used as a reason to question the honor of the Austro-Hungarian army. Thus, in 1869, the press carelessly mocked “ridiculous” accusations that the Imperial forces had committed certain cruelties against the inhabitants of Krivošije.”7
Chetnik atrocities in The Balkan War (1912-1913):
“Eyewitness accounts document nothing but the perpetrators’ criminal acts. They describe piles of corpses heaped in the streets, noses, ears, or other limbs severed as if in some ritualistic act; they report the killing of infants and children; the raping and/or murder of women of all ages; and they describe beheaded men, split heads, smashed faces, and fatal bayonet and knife wounds. In many cases, it is clear that the victims did not die as a direct result of the fighting itself.
Other accounts attest to crimes against the civilian population caught in the crossfire, left without protection or escape after the withdrawal of regular troops. In these instances, the armies and paramilitary groups often employed tactics of chaos and terror against the opposing population, burning villages, looting, and murdering. The paramilitary groups were organized into gangs outside the regular armies and operated in the tradition of anti-Ottoman insurgents and/or bandits and irregulars known as “komitadjis” or “Chetniks.” The lack of officers further contributed to crimes and massacres against civilians.”8
Edith Durham reports of Montenegrin atrocities against Albanian civilians
“Then came the Balkan wars of 1912-13. By their cunning policy the Serbs had cruelly tricked the Albanians. They had separated them from the Turks and used them to drive the Turks from Kosovo. Far from fulfilling their promises to help the Albanians to liberty, the Serb and Montenegrin armies fell upon them with ferocity. The Albanians were trapped and unable to obtain ammunition from either side. The Serbs ruthlessly massacred wholesale. In Montenegro, at the inn dinner table I heard a Serb officer boast how his men had slaughtered men, women and children of the Luma tribe. “You must kill the women,” he said, “they breed men” and laughed till he choked over his beer. The Montenegrins cut off the lips and noses of prisoners and the dead and showed them as trophies, and burnt and looted. They boasted that when they took Scutari they would cut the throats of its inhabitants. “9
Turkish atrocities in the Balkan War
“The Austrian correspondent Wagner only addressed the atrocities of the war in retrospect in his book about the Bulgarian “bandit war.”. In his account, too, the “atrocities” of the “Bulgarian Komitadji” are merely a reaction to the traditional “cruelty” of the “Turks,” which, Wagner predicted, would belong to a “dark past” once the Ottoman period of rule was over.
In contrast, he described the “terrible atrocities” committed by the “Turkish” troops during their retreat: numerous villages were “nothing but horrific burned-out sites,” “among whose smoldering ruins lay the half-charred bodies of the massacred inhabitants.” He blamed the “Turkish” army for these “atrocities,” because it had “committed a great series of atrocities during its setbacks. The Bulgarian wounded who fell into its hands were tortured and massacred, their ears and noses cut off and their eyes gouged out.
Pauli primarily compiled the observations of various international eyewitnesses from the first weeks of the war in 1912 and, based on these
“reports from fellow combatants and eyewitnesses,” published his indictment of “war atrocities.”
Three chapters are devoted to the “war atrocities” of the First Balkan War; in the others, Pauli discussed the background and course of the war in detail. In his account of the First Balkan War, Pauli differentiated between “Turkish atrocities” on the one hand and atrocities committed by the “Christian peoples” on the other.
Pauli wrote that the “Turks” were responsible for the beginning of the atrocities. Their “misdeeds” were, in principle, to be expected and not “incomprehensible,” because the “soldiers of the Turkish army are composed of peoples who still live in the full brutality of savages, who know no other than blood enmity.” The Ottomans, although “already touched by culture”, behaved just as “cruelly as they were merciless”, with the passages quoted by Pauli repeatedly referring to a specific “Turkish” practice of violence, namely the cutting off of “noses and ears”
Sources
- https://files.core.ac.uk/download/pdf/11581893.pdf ↩︎
- Monatshefte für Politik und Wehrmacht [auch Organ der Gesellschaft für Heereskunde] Volume 93. 1894 ↩︎
- https://www.google.se/books/edition/Reise_Eindrucke_aus_dem_S%C3%BCdosten/acKPiW2mgPwC?hl=sv&gbpv=1&dq=Nasen+Ohren+Abschneiden+Montenegriner&pg=PA12&printsec=frontcover ↩︎
- Die wichtigsten weltbegebenheiten vom ende des lombardischen kriegs bis zum anfang des deutschen kriegs (1860-1866) Volume 2 , Wolfgang Menzel. 1869 ↩︎
- imbid. ↩︎
- 1877. Montenegro und die Montenegriner. Nebst einem Plane von Cetinje”. ↩︎
- https://www.kakanien-revisited.at/beitr/fallstudie/ARathberger1.pdf ↩︎
- https://www.osmikon.de/en/themendossiers/balkankriege-191213/ueberblick-zum-kriegsgeschehen ↩︎
- http://www.albanianhistory.net/1941_Durham/index.html ↩︎
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