James F. Clarke, according to whom very few peaceful Muslims were killed. This has been the subject of dispute among modern historians. According to Richard Shannon fewer than 200 Muslims were killed, very few of them non-combatants. According to the report written by Schuyler and American journalist Januarius MacGahan, even the Ottoman government did not claim more than 500 Muslims killed, most of them in battle. By contrast American historian Justin McCarthy claims that during the revolts over 1,000 Muslims were slaughtered and many more expelled. Stanford Shaw claims in History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey that many more Muslims were killed during the April Uprising than Christians. According to Barbara Jelavich the beginning of the April Uprising was accompanied by a massacre of Muslim civilians (without specifying casualties). The Ottoman response was immediate and severe. They mobilized detachments of regular troops and also irregular bashi-bazouks. These forces attacked the first insurgent towns as early as 25 April. The Turkish forces massacred civilian populations, the principal places being Panagurishte, Perushtitza, Bratzigovo, and Batak (see Batak massacre). By the middle of May, the insurrection was completely suppressed; one of the last sparks of resistance was poet Hristo Botev's attempt to come to the rebels' rescue with a detachment of Bulgarian political émigrés resident in Romania, ending with the unit's rout and Botev's death. The most detailed contemporaneous account was that of Eugene Schuyler. After visiting some of the sites, Schuyler published a report detailing the atrocities. He reported that fifty-eight villages had been destroyed, five monasteries demolished, and fifteen thousand rebels killed. The American historian Richard Millman states that Schuyler visited personally only 11 of the villages he reported on. Schuyler, however certainly visited Batak and many other of the destroyed towns and villages, including Perushtitsa and Panagyurishte. Millman also claims that the accepted reality of the massacres is largely a myth. Contemporary Bulgarian historians generally accept the number of Bulgarian casualties at the end of the uprising to be around 30,000. According to British and French figures, 12,000–15,000 Bulgarian civilians were massacred during the uprising. Tomasz Kamusella claims that the numbers of victims may not distinguish between Orthodox Christians and Muslims, while acknowledging that there were about only 500 Muslims deaths according to the report of the Ottoman government. Reaction in the West Press reports News of massacres of Bulgarians reached European embassies in Istanbul in May and