In August 1894, as if by prearranged signal, a series of Muslim attacks on the Gregorian Armenian subjects of the Porte broke out in eastern Anatolia and spread gradually, province by province, throughout most of Asiatic Turkey. These disorders raged sporadically for two years until finally, in August 1896, they culminated in a similar assault on the Gregorian Armenian community of Istanbul, beneath the very windows of the embassies of the Great Powers. European estimates placed the total of Armenians killed throughout this period at between 250,000 and 300,000 men, women, and children, and 10 percent of the entire Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire.