The Batak massacre (1876) was carried out by thousands of bashi-bazouks sent to quell a local rebellion. Likewise, the bashi-bazouks perpetrated the massacres of Candia and Phocaea in 1898 and 1914. During the 1903 Ilinden Uprising in Ottoman Macedonia, these troops burnt 119 villages and destroyed 8400 houses, and over 50,000 Macedonian refugees fled into the mountains.