Bulgaria marks its National Day on 3 March. On this date 136 years ago, a peace treaty was signed in San Stefano near Istanbul which put an end to the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish war that liberated Bulgaria. The treaty signaled the rebirth of the Bulgarian state after five centuries of Ottoman domination. March 3 came after more than a century of national revival and liberation struggles, culminating in the April Uprising of 1876. Its brutal crushing put the Bulgarian question in the European agenda.

One of the people to have contributed most to shedding light on the truth about this uprising was American-born journalist Januarius MacGahan. His career traces some of the most dangerous points in the world. He covered the Franco-Prussian war, the Paris commune, General Skobelev’s Central Asia march, the third Carlist war in Spain, the British Arctic expedition Pandora. In 1876, the British Daily News sent him to Bulgaria after the bloody suppression of the rebellion. MacGahan’s coverage of events overturned public opinion in Great Britain, whose official policy at that time aimed to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman Empire so as to keep Russia away from the Black Sea straits. Together with the American Consul-General in Constantinople, Eugene Schuyler and Russian diplomat Prince Alexey Tseretelev, he travelled in the regions that had risen to reveal to the world what he saw. He visited the places where the worst of the atrocities were committed – for example Batak, a town whose population was all but wiped out by the Turkish soldiers – the “bashibazouk”. What he saw were “babies that had died wondering at the bright gleam of sabres”, “an immense number of bodies that had been partly burnt and the charred and blackened remains” of the people who sought refuge in the church and so on and so forth…

MacGahan entered into argument with British Prime Minister Disraeli about the victims of the uprising. “The great crime in the eyes of Mr. Disraeli was not to have killed many thousands of innocent people, but to have said there were 30,000 killed when there were only 25,000…” The Bulgarian cause was backed by William Gladstone, leader of the Liberal party, who published a pamphlet, Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, in an enormous circulation. A major breakthrough was achieved – hundreds of rallies and meetings in defence of the Bulgarians were organized in Britain.

It was MacGahan’s audacity and brilliant pen that won over people’s hearts. The war correspondent described the atrocities, but also the prosperity of the Bulgarian nation, the tradesmen and teachers whose hands and minds helped it rise from the ashes of history. MacGahan was particularly affectionate when describing the Bulgarian system of education created by the population on its own resources, with no help from the government. “There is scarcely a Bulgarian child that cannot read and write; and, finally, the percentage of people who can read and write is as great in Bulgaria as in England and France.”

His piece on teacher Rayna Popgeorgieva is particularly powerful. Rayna Popgeorgieva made the flag of the rebels in the town of Panagyurishte and as people saw her on horseback waving the flag of rebellion, they called her Rayna Knyaginya or Princess. MacGahan describes her as a beautiful, intelligent young woman with a profession in enslaved Bulgaria, a match to female teachers in Britain or America. He goes on with a heart-rending description of the tortures she was subjected to. Thanks to pressure exerted by the foreign consuls in Plovdiv, Rayna was released and sent to Moscow.

After Russia started the war of liberation in 1877, MacGahan was again dispatched to the most critical points. He had the historical chance of covering the crucial battle for the Shipka pass in August 1877, when a handful of Russian soldiers and Bulgarian volunteers stopped the army of Suleiman Pasha that outnumbered them many times. And when they were left without munitions, they grabbed rocks, trees and the bodies of their dead comrades and continued the fight… Soon the Western world would start calling Shipka “Bulgaria's Thermopylae”, on the analogy of the battle of the Spartans against the Persian invasion of Greece. MacGahan sent dispatches about the siege of Pleven.

Following the advanced guard of General Skobelev who made the unparalleled crossing of the Balkan Range, impossible to pass in wintertime, he reached San Stefano and witnessed there the signing of the peace treaty. The journalist paid frequent visits to a friend who had typhoid. In his efforts to help him, he himself contracted the disease and died on June 9, 1878 in Istanbul, aged 33. 

Later his mortal remains were transported to his home town New Lexington. A monument was raised in the cemetery there, inscribed: “MacGahan – Liberator of Bulgaria.” Next to it stands a bust of the courageous journalist from grateful Bulgaria. Prominent Bulgarian sculptor Lyubomir Dalchev, who lived in the US at the end of the 20th century, made a life-size statue of MacGahan and his work is also on display in Lexington. There are monuments to MacGahan all over Bulgaria; streets in many Bulgarian towns bear his name.

English version: Milena Daynova