Highlight in the history of Peruštitsa is the participation of the entire population in the April Uprising. It was erected on April 23, 1876. Perushtinsi resisted the incessant attacks of the enemy many times superior in number and armament for 7 days.
They were attacked by 5,500 Bashibozuk men of Adil aga Tumrushliatia, and on April 29, a Turkish regular army arrived with artillery led by Reshid Pasha. Only when the cannons destroyed the roof of the rebel fortress - the church of “St. Archangels Gabriel and Michael“, in which about 600 old men, women and children are gathered, the insurgents end the resistance.
347 people died in the church, led by Father Tilev, Dr. Vasil Sokolski and the leader of the uprising in the city, Petar Bonev - comrade and associate of Rakovski and Levski in the Belgrade Legion. The self-sacrifice of Spas Ginev, Kocho Chestimenski, Ivan Hadzhitliev and twenty-three more Perushteni is tragic. In the church “St. Archangel Michael“ the most powerful voice for freedom that humanity has ever heard is being claimed – fathers sacrifice their wives and children, and then themselves, in order not to be slaves and not be Turkified.
In July 1876, Peruštitsa was visited by the French journalist Ivan de Westin, who reported that after the brutal Turkish massacre in the suppression of the uprising, carried out by regular troops and paramilitary Muslim units, 150 "old men and children" remained in the town. ; from the previous population of over 2,000.
Subsequently, the bones of the Bulgarian martyrs were collected and buried in this same church to remember what happened.
Zahari Stoyanov tells about the heroic events in "Notes on the Bulgarian Uprisings" how "...a Frenchman, who was coming from Plovdiv on horseback, started shouting in Turkish: “Don't be afraid, the royal army is coming”. The Bashibozus, not realizing that he was a Frank Gyaur, took him off his horse and cut him with their knives...
About 300-400 people, mostly women, children and infirm men, managed to surrender to the Bashibozus at the Gypsy Mound, in which surrender nothing special followed. Suddenly, however, the beastly voice of their leader, Adil Agha, commanded his subordinates, wild bashibozus, “Deon Gerry!“ and the long scimitars gleamed in the air.
A fearful moment came for the defenseless feathered, who were surrounded on every side by the savage horde. Their desperate cries, their pleas, which they uttered, kneeling before the enraged Turk, the hoarse voices of the little children reached the heavens.
The picture was one of the most heartbreaking. There, the white-bearded old man fainted at the feet of the ravenous Bashibozuk to spare him, who emptied his pisht into his chest and ran forward in search of other victims, without at least glancing at the bloody corpse.
Further on, a young mother kissed the handle of the bloody knife to leave the little child, but the inhuman turban, under which only a human figure was visible, cut both mothers and children...".
And Januarius McGahan describes apocalyptic pictures after the brutal massacres with the savage cruelty of the Bulgarians.
„……………..Perushtitsa was a settlement of 350-400 houses and about 3500-4000 inhabitants. This is the only town that actually resisted the Turks. The people here, no matter how unprepared they were, defended themselves with all their might and to the death.
The people say, and I have no reason to doubt their words, that until they heard of the massacres in other villages, and saw from the hills the flames of the other burning villages, they had neither a thought of insurrection, nor a thought of armed defence.< /p>
On April 29, which was Tuesday morning, one day before the massacre in Batak, a message was received in Peruštitsa that the Bashibozus were coming from Ustina. All – women, children as well as men – immediately left their homes and took refuge in the church.
A few people lost courage and decided to surrender, but after surrendering their weapons, they were slaughtered. This deterred others from following their example.
During Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the Bashibozus amused themselves by looting and burning the houses in the town, shooting from time to time from a long distance at the people in the church, and all this time the unfortunate Bulgarians sat in the churchyard and with desperate eyes watched their burning homes.
There was nothing they could do. Between them there were no more than 200 armed men, while the Bashibozus numbered almost 6 thousand.
I talked to an Armenian girl who remained in the church during the entire siege. She describes the nights spent in the church as a terrible nightmare. The people were so crowded that people slept straight.
On Thursday afternoon, Aziz Pasha arrived in Peruštitsa at the head of regular troops and an artillery battery and without warning began shelling the church.
Imagination can hardly imagine the effect of a projectile which fell through one of the high front windows of the church and exploded with a monstrous thunder among the shrieking women and children.
If someone appeared at the door to escape, the bashibozus who guarded the outside immediately cut him down.
The Armenian girl's account of the events of Friday and Saturday is strange, incoherent, insane. What she told is beyond any human imagination.
I can only present this part of her story on the assumption that she is completely insane.
On Friday, she says, the men hiding in the church decided to kill themselves, but their wives intervened and begged to be killed as well.
Two of the men carried out their decision. Through tears and groans, tearing their hair, beating their heads against the stone wall of the church, they actually killed their wives and children, and then killed themselves.
The girl says that the women knelt on the ground, gathered their children in their arms and cried and sobbed and prayed while the husband and father shot or stabbed them in succession.
That these two men should have stabbed or fired a bullet at weak, tender and small human beings who turned to them for love and protection, shows the desperation to which they had been driven…
But the Armenian continues on. Many young girls and married women, whose husbands had been killed or had fled, also begged to be killed to avoid falling into the hands of the Bashibozus. And their wish was fulfilled.
More than two hundred people were killed at their own will. The floor of the church was covered up to the ankles in blood.
The situation I described in Batak, Panagyurishte and Perushtitsa is the same in more than a hundred Bulgarian settlements…
…Only in the regions of Plovdiv and Pazardzhik there are about 50 burned villages, not counting those that have been looted, and 40,000 people have been brutally slaughtered by the monsters.
The Turks put the number of those killed in Bulgaria at 15,000, but they are much more than even the official version of 40,000 people. Some of the investigators believe that there are even 100,000.
The misfortune is so great that it cannot be talked about calmly. The cries, heart-wrenching sobs and complaints of the wretched women and children still ring in my ears.
They haunt me day and night – everywhere I go when I sleep or wake up. They haunt me like an infinite number of ghosts. I think that's enough…………………
Sorry, reader, if you had the misfortune to read this!