Captain Haddock's Bashi Bazouks

Ever wondered who Bashi-Bazouks are?

I first encountered Bashi Bazouks in The Crab With The Golden Claws. At the time, I didn't really wonder who or what they were. I just accepted them as another Haddock-ism, like lily livered landlubbers, or fancy dress fatimas, or ostrogoths, all good ways of describing people who don't understand that Loch Lomond whiskey is sacred. Nonetheless, I was delighted when I found Bashi Bazouks in a totally different context.

It turns out that the story of the Bashi Bazouks is much sadder than that of odd-toed ungulates, or duck-billed platypuses or even billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles.

I came across Bashi Bazouks while reading about the Ottoman-Russian war in 1876. Bashi Bazouks were irregular fighters in the Ottoman Army. They were unpaid, non-uniformed, and used as lookouts or sentries. They gained international notoriety when they were involved in horrific escalating tit-for-tat violence in Bulgaria, between Christian Bulgarian nationalists and Muslim Ottomans, which culminated in the Bashi Bazouks' massacre of the entire mountain-town of Batak.

It is hard to know what actually happened at this time. Open sources like Wikipedia can be unreliable when describing emotionally-charged political history like this. But to the extent that my Googled-up references can be trusted, the Bashi Bazouks were both tragic victims and brutal aggressors. Many of them were Muslim Circassian refugees from the Crimean wars, displaced from their homeland and repeatedly brutalized by the Bulgarian majority, before retaliating with even more brutality when they were finally given license by the Ottomans.

This story has a surprisingly contemporary feel. The soul-destroying ethnic violence in the Balkans and the Caucuses is still going on. The great powers are still learning that fighting proxy wars with low-cost irregular troops usually ends in tragedy, whether you call them Bashi Bazouks, Tamil Tigers, Sandinistas or mujahedeen.

Changing tack a bit, ever wondered who Archibald is? Captain Haddock's first name is Archibald. Fortunately, this Archie is not a carrot-top.