BULGARIA

The present war is the logical sequel of the successive scenes of the drama enacted in the Balkan theatre. And though original causes may be found still farther back in history, by beginning with the liberation of Bulgaria, the whole story may be fairly well unfolded. All students of Balkan history are fairly well agreed on the point that the Treaty of Berlin is responsible for most of the troubles that have come since.

At that time in 1877 Turkey still controlled all of the Balkan Peninsula except Greece, including Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Rumania. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro, however, were only nominally part of Turkey, since they were allowed to have their own ruling princes and enjoyed almost complete independence. The Bulgars were still governed by Turkish pashas, and were in no way allowed to participate in their own government.

For many years there had been revolutionary activities among them, whose aim was to prepare and stir up the peasants to active revolt against the rule of the Turks. It was part of Russia's policy to encourage these conspirators, for a strong revolutionary uprising might always be the opportunity for intervention and ultimate annexation.

In the spring of 1876 a slight uprising took place under the leadership of some schoolmasters, some of whom had been educated in Russia and had there imbibed the Panslavist idea: the ultimate union of all Slavs under the autocracy of the czar.

At first the uprising attracted little attention; it had occurred down in southern Rumania, not far from Philippopolis. Nor did its suppression at first attract notice, until MacGhan, the American correspondent of an English newspaper, went down to the scene of the troubles and began sending in reports to his paper, and as the European public read these descriptions in the British newspaper, their indignation rose and presently swept all over Europe in a storm of fury against the Turks.

These were what afterward became known as the Bulgarian atrocities. The villagers of Batak had been preparing for some days to join the insurrection when a force of bashi-bazouks, Turkish irregulars, under the command of Achmet Agha and Mohammed Agha arrived at the place. On the two Turkish leaders giving their word of honor that no harm should come to them, the villagers surrendered. No sooner had they laid down their arms than a general massacre of the whole population began; not only the men, but women and children were tortured, outraged, and hacked to pieces. When a British commission appeared on the scene two months later to investigate, the little village church was still piled up to the windows with the corpses of those that had fled there for sanctuary. Skulls with gray hairs still attached to them, tresses which had once adorned the heads of young girls, and the rotting limbs of small children were mingled in one gruesome heap. It is said that the Ottoman High Commissioner, who was sent by the Turkish Government with the British commission to investigate, on beholding this sight, turned to one of the perpetrators who was present and asked him how much Russia had paid him for a deed which, as he phrased it, would be "the beginning of the end of the Ottoman Empire." The Turkish Government evidently did not share this pessimistic view, for it decorated the two Turks who had led the bashi-bazouks in the massacre.

It presently developed that Batak was not an isolated example. Mr. Baring of the British commission estimated that the total number of Bulgars slaughtered in that district during the month of May must have been 12,000. In Batak 5,000 out of a population of 7,000 had been killed.

Never was Europe more aroused. Mr. Gladstone's famous pamphlet, denouncing the Turkish administration in its European provinces, went through edition after edition. Lord Derby, on behalf of the British Government, telegraphed that "any renewal of the outrages would be more fatal to the Turkish Government than the loss of a battle." Bulgaria, which had been forgotten for centuries, became a household word. All over the world swept a fierce popular demand that the Turk be immediately driven out of Europe.

Here was Russia's opportunity. In the face of this world-wide popular sentiment the policy of the European powers, especially of Austria, that Russia should not be allowed to acquire more Turkish territory, could not very well be enforced. The Austrian diplomat who would object to Russia hurrying to the aid of the outraged Bulgars, her own blood kindred, would have been mobbed in his own country. The hearts of people were so moved that they forgot the dark intrigues of diplomats.

So in the following spring Russia declared war against Turkey, and Rumania taking this opportunity to declare her complete independence, sent an army into the field to aid the Russians. The Bulgars, unorganized and untrained as they were, also gave what aid they could, especially in the storming of Shipka Pass, through which the invaders burst out into the plains of Thrace and advanced triumphantly on to the gates of Constantinople. Then the Turks cried for terms, and the famous Treaty of San Stefano, drawn up in the small town by that name just outside the Turkish capital, was the result.

By this treaty there would have been created the "Greater Bulgaria," of which the Bulgarians have been dreaming of and fighting for ever since. The Bulgaria of the San Stefano Treaty would have cut the European territories of the sultan in two, and thus effectively dismembered the Ottoman Empire. In addition to a coast line on the Black Sea extending a little farther north, and considerably farther south than Bulgaria now possesses, she would have had a frontage on the Ægean Sea. Practically all of Macedonia, over to the lakes of Ochrida and Prespa, and down to near Saloniki, would have been included; the Vardar and the Struma would have been Bulgarian streams from their sources to their mouths.

But by this time the great popular indignation against the Turks had spent itself and the diplomatic machinery of the powers began revolving again. England, who had protested against the Bulgarian atrocities strongest, was the first to veto the plan that was to give all the Bulgarians their independence of Turkey. To Lord Beaconsfield, Disraeli, himself one of a race which has suffered oppression for centuries, and then prime minister of Great Britain, belongs the honor of being the first diplomat to set in motion that intervention by the powers which was to give the Bulgars of Macedonia back into the hands of the Turks.

There was a conference of the powers in Berlin, and there it was decided that the Treaty of San Stefano must be revised. The reason was that it was feared that Bulgaria would become merely a Russian province; that through Bulgaria Russia would all but have her hands on the Bosphorus, the aim of all her ambitions. So the Treaty of San Stefano was torn up and the Treaty of Berlin was substituted in its place.

By this new document, which was in force practically up until the First Balkan War, Bulgaria was created an "autonomous and tributary principality under the suzerainty of his Imperial Majesty the Sultan"; its limits were defined to be the Balkans on the south, eastern Rumelia being thus excluded from it; the Danube on the north, the Black Sea from just south of Mangalia to near Cape Emineh on the east, and Serbia on the west from the point where the Timok River joins the Danube to the point at which the two principalities and Macedonia should meet. Thus were not only the Bulgars of eastern Rumelia and Macedonia separated from their kinsmen in the new principality, but the district of Pirot was handed over to Serbia, who had participated in both wars of 1876 and of 1877-78. Austria's share in the spoils was Bosnia and Herzegovina, though ostensibly these two provinces were only to be under her temporary administration. The Berlin Treaty also provided for certain reforms of the Turkish Government in the Macedonian provinces, but as these were never carried out, and were never expected to be carried out by either the Turkish or European statesmen concerned, these provisions, known as "Article XXIII of the Treaty of Berlin," need not be described. This article was a mere sop thrown to whatever might be left of that public opinion which had thundered through Europe a year previously. Macedonia was handed back body and soul to Turkey, to be done with as she pleased. Herein was the cause of all the trouble that was to follow; one of the chief causes of the present Great War.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that Russia's motives had been entirely or even largely altruistic. The powers had expressed the fear that a greater Bulgaria would gradually become part of the Russian Empire. There can be no doubt that Russia thought so too. All her later actions point to that fact. The only mistake, and this was shared by all who participated in the Treaty of Berlin alike, was the assumption that Bulgaria herself would allow this to be done. It only developed later what a stiff-necked people the Bulgars could be.

Bulgaria, as Prince Bismarck expressed it, had been put into the saddle. Her next task was to learn to ride. Under the rule of the Turks there had been no opportunity to acquire political or administrative experience; all the public offices had been filled by Turks or Greeks. All the natural leaders of the people having been killed off by Turks and Greeks alike for centuries, the Bulgars that emerged into independence in 1878 were essentially a nation of peasants. There were very few of them who could read or write; there were no printed Bulgarian books. Small wonder if all Europe and Russia thought that these people would not be able to govern themselves.

Until the Government of the new little nation could be organized and a ruler chosen, a Russian prince was left in the country, with a Russian army to support him to maintain order. And he acted indeed as though he were governing a Russian province. He gave the Bulgarians a taste of what real Russian authority might be like, and they did not like it. This was Russia's first mistake in her capacity as guide through the first difficulties of self-government.

Eventually, however, a General Assembly was called, a constitution drafted and the first ruler was selected. The choice fell on Prince Alexander of Battenberg, a nephew of the Russian Czar Alexander II. At the time of his election he was only twenty-two years of age, and lived as a simple military officer in the barracks of Potsdam in Germany. It is said that he asked the advice of Bismarck, when his election first became known to him, as to whether he should accept, and that Bismarck replied, "at least, a reign in Bulgaria will always be a pleasant reminiscence." Bismarck was one of those who had drafted the Treaty of Berlin and had no faith in the stability of any possible government the Bulgars could organize for themselves. On July 9, 1879, Prince Alexander took the oath to the constitution at Tirnovo. A week later the Russian army of occupation evacuated the country.

But if the Russian soldiers had left the country there were still plenty of Russians left in Bulgaria. The president of the council, the minister of war, the chief of police, the governor of Sofia, the capital, and 300 superior officers in the Bulgarian army that was presently organized, were all Russians. The Russian agent, M. Hitrovo, cleverly worked on the national dread of Austria, and tried to play the part of a British political resident at the court of an Indian prince.

This continued until 1883, when suddenly Prince Alexander dismissed all his Russian advisers, and Bulgarians were established in their places. Naturally, Russia was enraged. By this time Alexander's uncle, the Czar of Russia, had died, and Czar Alexander III, his cousin, was now ruler of Russia.

One night not long after the dismissal of the Russian advisers two Russian generals, Skobeleff and Kaulbars, arrived at the palace and demanded an audience of the prince. The sentry refused them admittance, and when they attempted to force their way past him the soldier drew his side arm and threatened to strike them down. The guard was called; a carriage which stood at the palace gates and from which the two Russian generals had alighted was searched, and evidence was discovered that the prince was to have been kidnapped to the Danube, thence over into Russia. Proclamations announcing Alexander's expulsion from Bulgaria, and the formation of a provisional government under the two leading conspirators, proved conclusively the complicity of Russia. Thanks to the support that he received from the Bulgarian officers about him, Alexander was saved and the plot was exposed to Russia's humiliation. Also, it showed the Bulgars to what measures Russia would resort to force her will upon them.[Back to Contents]