Bulgarian April Uprising in the Ottoman Empire 1876

Following the failure of the September Uprising of 1875, Georgi Benkovski reorganized the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee (BRCC) and made plans for a new revolt. BRCC had the avowed goal of achieving independence from the Ottoman Empire. The political atmosphere of the Balkans was charged with revolution, and the Ottoman Empire looked increasingly vulnerable. The April Uprising of 1876 was more widespread than the earlier revolt, but it suffered from poor coordination. Poor security allowed the Turks to locate and destroy many local groups before unified action was possible. Imperial armed forces easily defeated the Bulgarian revolutionaries and proceeded to massacre Bulgarians. Massacres at Batak, Philippolis and other towns further outraged international opinion by showing the insincerity of recent Turkish reform proposals. The deaths of an estimated 15-000 to 30,000 Bulgarians in these massacres (between April and August) spurred the Bulgarian national movement. An international conference in Constantinople produced proposals to curb the Muslim fanaticism responsible for the Bulgarian massacres and give local self-government to the Christians on European territory in the empire. Two autonomous Bulgarian regions were proposed, one centered at Sofia and the other at Turnovo. When the sultan rejected the reforms, Russia declared war unilaterally in early 1877. This was Russia's golden opportunity to gain control of Western trade routes to its southwest and finally destroy the empire that had blocked this ambition for centuries. Shocked by the Turkish massacres, Britain did not oppose Russian advances.

References

Timelines of War, 356; Bulgaria - A Country Study.

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