> it is also undeniable that from an aesthetic point of view too much cannot

be said in praise of Mohammedan civilization. Who does not prefer the

minarets of Stambul and Edirne[1] to the architecture of Budapest,

notoriously the ideal of Christian south-eastern Europe? On the other

hand, it cannot be contended that the Pax Ottomana brought prosperity or

happiness to those on whom it was imposed (unless indeed they submerged

their identity in the religion of their conquerors), or that its Influence

was either vivifying or generally popular.



[Footnote 1: The Turkish names for Constantinople and Adrianople.]



To the races they conquered the Turks offered two alternatives--serfdom or

Turkdom; those who could not bring themselves to accept either of these

had either to emigrate or take to brigandage and outlawry in the

mountains. The Turks literally overlaid the European nationalities of the

Balkan peninsula for five hundred years, and from their own point of view

and from that of military history this was undoubtedly a very splendid

achievement; it was more than the Greeks or Romans had ever done. From the

point of view of humanitarianism also it is beyond a doubt that much less

human blood was spilt in the Balkan peninsula during the five hundred

years of Turkish rule than during the five hundred years of Christian rule

which preceded them; indeed it would have been difficult to spill more. It

is also a pure illusion to think of the Turks as exceptionally brutal or

cruel; they are just as good-natured and good-humoured as anybody else; it

is only when their military or religious passions are aroused that they

become more reckless and ferocious than other people. It was not the Turks

who taught cruelty to the Christians of the Balkan peninsula; the latter

had nothing to learn in this respect.



In spite of all this, however, from the point of view of the Slavs of

Bulgaria and Serbia, Turkish rule was synonymous with suffocation. If the

Turks were all that their greatest admirers think them the history of the

Balkan peninsula in the nineteenth century would have been very different

from what it has been, namely, one perpetual series of anti-Turkish

revolts.



Of all the Balkan peoples the Bulgarians were the most completely crushed

and effaced. The Greeks by their ubiquity, their brains, and their money

were soon able to make the Turkish storm drive their own windmill; the

Rumanians were somewhat sheltered by the Danube and also by their distance

from Constantinople; the Serbs also were not so exposed to the full blast

of the Turkish wrath, and the inaccessibility of much of their country

afforded them some protection. Bulgaria was simply annihilated, and its

population, already far from homogeneous, was still further varied by

numerous Turkish and other Tartar colonies.



For the same reasons already mentioned Bulgaria was the last Balkan state

to emancipate itself; for these reasons also it is the least trammelled by

prejudices and by what are considered national predilections and racial

affinities, while its heterogeneous composition makes it vigorous and

enterprising. The treatment of the Christians by the Turks was by no means

always the same; generally speaking, it grew worse as the power of the

Sultan grew less. During the fifteenth century they were allowed to

practise their religion and all their vocations in comparative liberty and

peace. But from the sixteenth century onwards the control of the Sultan

declined, power became decentralized, the Ottoman Empire grew ever more

anarchic and the rule of the provincial governors more despotic.



But the Mohammedan conquerors were not the only enemies and oppressors of

the Bulgars. The role played by the Greeks in Bulgaria during the Turkish

dominion was almost as important as that of the Turks themselves. The

contempt of the Turks for the Christians, and especially for their

religion, was so great that they prudently left the management of it to

them, knowing that it would keep them occupied in mutual altercation. From

1393 till 1767 the Bulgarians were under the Greco-Bulgarian Patriarchate

of Okhrida, an organization in which all posts, from the highest to the

lowest, had to be bought from the Turkish administration at exorbitant and

ever-rising prices; the Phanariote Greeks (so called because they

originated in the Phanar quarter at Constantinople) were the only ones who

could afford those of the higher posts, with the result that the Church

was controlled from Constantinople. In 1767 the independent patriarchates

were abolished, and from that date the religious control of the Greeks was

as complete as the political control of the Turks. The Greeks did all they

could to obliterate the last traces of Bulgarian nationality which had

survived in the Church, and this explains a fact which must never be

forgotten, which had its origin in the remote past, but grew more

pronounced at this period, that the individual hatred of Greeks and

Bulgars of each other has always been far more intense than their

collective hatred of the Turks.



Ever since the marriage of the Tsar Ivan III with the niece of the last

Greek Emperor, in 1472, Russia had considered itself the trustee of the

eastern Christians, the defender of the Orthodox Church, and the direct

heir of the glory and prestige of Constantinople; it was not until the

eighteenth century, however, after the consolidation of the Russian state,

that the Balkan Christians were championed and the eventual possession of

Constantinople was seriously considered. Russian influence was first

asserted in Rumania after the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, in 1774. It was

only the Napoleonic war in 1812 that prevented the Russians from extending

their territory south of the Danube, whither it already stretched. Serbia

was partially free by 1826, and Greece achieved complete independence in

1830, when the Russian troops, in order to coerce the Turks, occupied part

of Bulgaria and advanced as far as Adrianople. Bulgaria, being nearer to

and more easily repressed by Constantinople, had to wait, and tentative

revolts made about this time were put down with much bloodshed and were

followed by wholesale emigrations of Bulgars into Bessarabia and

importations of Tartars and Kurds into the vacated districts. The Crimean

War and the short-sighted championship of Turkey by the western European

powers checked considerably the development at which Russia aimed.

Moldavia and Wallachia were in 1856 withdrawn from the semi-protectorate

which Russia had long exercised over them, and in 1861 formed themselves

into the united state of Rumania. In 1866 a German prince, Charles of

Hohenzollern, came to rule over the country, the first sign of German

influence in the Near East; at this time Rumania still acknowledged the

supremacy of the Sultan.



During the first half of the nineteenth century there took place a

considerable intellectual renascence in Bulgaria, a movement fostered by

wealthy Bulgarian merchants of Bucarest and Odessa. In 1829 a history of

Bulgaria was published by a native of that country in Moscow; in 1835 the

first school was established in Bulgaria, and many others soon followed.

It must be remembered that not only was nothing known at that time about

Bulgaria and its inhabitants in other countries, but the Bulgars had

themselves to be taught who they were. The Bulgarian people in Bulgaria

consisted entirely of peasants; there was no Bulgarian upper or middle or

'intelligent' or professional class; those enlightened Bulgars who existed

were domiciled in other countries; the Church was in the hands of the

Greeks, who vied with the Turks in suppressing Bulgarian nationality.



The two committees of Odessa and Bucarest which promoted the enlightenment

and emancipation of Bulgaria were dissimilar in composition and in aim;

the members of the former were more intent on educational and religious

reform, and aimed at the gradual and peaceful regeneration of their

country by these means; the latter wished to effect the immediate

political emancipation of Bulgaria by violent and, if necessary, warlike

means.



It was the ecclesiastical question which was solved first. In 1856 the

Porte had promised religious reforms tending to the appointment of

Bulgarian bishops and the recognition of the Bulgarian language in Church

and school. But these not being carried through, the Bulgarians took the

matter into their own hands, and in 1860 refused any longer to recognize

the Patriarch of Constantinople. The same year an attempt was made to

bring the Church of Bulgaria under that of Rome, but, owing to Russian

opposition, proved abortive. In 1870, the growing agitation having at last

alarmed the Turks, the Bulgarian Exarchate was established. The Bulgarian

Church was made free and national and was to be under an Exarch who should

reside at Constantinople (Bulgaria being still a Turkish province). The

Greeks, conscious what a blow this would be to their supremacy, managed

for a short while to stave off the evil day, but in 1872 the Exarch was

triumphantly installed in Constantinople, where he resided till 1908.



Meanwhile revolutionary outbreaks began to increase, but were always put

down with great rigour. The most notable was that of 1875, instigated by

Stambulov, the future dictator, in sympathy with the outbreak in

Montenegro, Hercegovina, and Bosnia of that year; the result of this and

of similar movements in 1876 was the series of notorious Bulgarian

massacres in that year. The indignation of Europe was aroused and

concerted representations were urgently made at Constantinople. Midhat

Pasha disarmed his opponents by summarily introducing the British

constitution into Turkey, but, needless to say, Bulgaria's lot was not

improved by this specious device. Russia had, however, steadily been

making her preparations, and, Turkey having refused to discontinue

hostilities against Montenegro, on April 24, 1877, war was declared by the

Emperor Alexander II, whose patience had become exhausted; he was joined

by Prince Charles of Rumania, who saw that by doing so he would be

rewarded by the complete emancipation of his country, then still a

vassal-state of Turkey, and its erection into a kingdom. At the beginning

of the war all went well for the Russians and Rumanians, who were soon

joined by large numbers of Bulgarian insurgents; the Turkish forces were

scattered all over the peninsula. The committee of Bucarest transformed

itself into a provisional government, but the Russians, who had undertaken

to liberate the country, naturally had to keep its administration

temporarily in their own hands, and refused their recognition. The Turks,

alarmed at the early victories of the Russians, brought up better generals

and troops, and defeated the Russians at Plevna in July. They failed,

however, to dislodge them from the important and famous Shipka Pass in

August, and after this they became demoralized and their resistance

rapidly weakened. The Russians, helped by the Bulgarians and Rumanians,

fought throughout the summer with the greatest gallantry; they took

Plevna, after a three months' siege, in December, occupied Sofia and

Philippopolis in January 1878, and pushed forward to the walls of

Constantinople.



The Turks were at their last gasp, and at Adrianople, in March 1878,

Ignatiyev dictated the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano, by which a

principality of Bulgaria, under the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan, was

created, stretching from the Danube to the Aegean, and from the Black Sea

to Albania, including all Macedonia and leaving to the Turks only the

district between Constantinople and Adrianople, Chalcidice, and the town

of Salonika; Bulgaria would thus have regained the dimensions it possessed

under Tsar Simeon nine hundred and fifty years previously.



This treaty, which on ethnological grounds was tolerably just, alarmed the

other powers, especially Great Britain and Germany, who thought they

perceived in it the foundations of Russian hegemony in the Balkans, while

it would, if put into execution, have blighted the aspirations of Greece

and Serbia. The Treaty of Berlin, inspired by Bismarck and Lord Salisbury,

anxious to defend, the former, the interests of (ostensibly)

Austria-Hungary, the latter (shortsightedly) those of Turkey, replaced it

in July 1878. By its terms Bulgaria was cut into three parts; northern

Bulgaria, between the Danube and the Balkans, was made an autonomous

province, tributary to Turkey; southern Bulgaria, fancifully termed

Eastern Rumelia (Rumili was the name always given by the Turks to the

whole Balkan peninsula), was to have autonomous administration under a

Christian governor appointed by the Porte; Macedonia was left to Turkey;

and the Dobrudja, between the Danube and the Black Sea, was adjudged to

Rumania.