Читать книгу Walking in Bulgaria's National Parks. Pirin, Rila and Central Balkans National Parks онлайн

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In April 1876, a long-planned but premature uprising broke out in the Sredna Gora Mountains, which was quickly and brutally crushed by the Ottoman Turks. However, although a failure in itself, it awoke European attention, and the following year Russia declared war on Turkey, eventually liberating Bulgaria in early 1878 after an epic winter campaign.

The Treaty of San Stefano that followed in March 1878 reinstated much of Bulgaria’s traditional lands in Macedonia, Thrace and Moesia. However, the western powers (Britain amongst them) feared the establishment of a Greater Bulgaria that would be closely allied to Russia, and in July 1878 convened the Congress of Berlin. At this, it was decided to do away with the earlier agreement and instead directly hand back to the Turks the territories of Macedonia and Aegean Thrace, while carving up what was left of the country into an independent Principality of Bulgaria in the north, and a Turkish-controlled region known as Eastern Rumelia in the south. Not surprisingly, the Bulgarian people felt betrayed, and this unjust and ill-conceived decision sowed the seeds for Bulgaria’s subsequent involvement in the 1912–13 Balkan Wars, and ultimately in the First and Second World Wars as well, when the lure of regaining former territories of which they had been robbed led them into siding first with the central powers and then with Germany.