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.