ABSTRACT
The revolutionary committees had set out to provoke a situation that must outrage the Christian world, and force one or more of the European powers to intervene in the Ottoman Empire to ‘save’ the Armenians. A casus belli had surely been established as far back as Sasun, and the scenes that took place in the eastern vilayets towards the end of 1895 were even more terrible. Yet the powers were giving no indication that they were prepared to do more than shake a warning finger at the Sultan. Europe, fumed Terrell, was disgracing civilisation with its ‘idiotic diplomacy’ while a Christian nation was being butchered. 1
