April Uprising of 1876

"April Uprising" redirects here. For the John Butler Trio's fifth studio album, see April Uprising (album).
April Uprising
Part of Great Eastern Crisis
Date20 April – mid-May 1876
Location
Ottoman Bulgaria
Result

Uprising suppressed

Belligerents
Bulgarian revolutionaries  Ottoman Empire
Commanders and leaders
Georgi Benkovski †
Ilarion Dragostinov †
Panayot Volov †
Hristo Botev †		 Ottoman Empire Hafiz Pasha
Ottoman Empire Yusuf Aga of Sofya
Ottoman Empire Hasan Pasha of Niş
Strength
around 10,000 men around 100,000 men
Casualties and losses
15,000–30,000 killed (including civilians)[1] 200–4,000 killed[citation needed]

The April Uprising (Bulgarian: Априлско въстание, romanized: Aprilsko vastanie) was an insurrection organised by the Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire from April to May 1876. The rebellion was suppressed by irregular Ottoman bashi-bazouk units that engaged in indiscriminate slaughter of both rebels and non-combatants (see Batak massacre).

The American community around Robert College in Istanbul, the Protestant mission in Plovdiv headed by J.F. Clarke as well as two other Americans, journalist Januarius MacGahan and diplomat Eugene Schuyler, were indispensable in bringing knowledge of Ottoman atrocities to the wider European public.[2][3]

Their reports of the events, which came to be known in the press as the Bulgarian Horrors and the Crime of the Century, caused a public outcry across Europe and mobilised both common folks and famous intellectuals to demand a reform of the failed Ottoman model of governance of the Bulgarian lands.[4][5][6][7]

The shift in public opinion, in particular, in the Ottoman Empire's hitherto closest ally, the British Empire, eventually led to the re-establishment of a separate Bulgarian state in 1878.[8]

  1. ^ Historical Dictionary of Bulgaria, Raymond Detrez, Edition 3, Publisher Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, ISBN 1442241802, p. 38.
  2. ^ "No. 24365". The London Gazette. 19 September 1876. pp. 5140–5144.
  3. ^ "Gladstone, Disraeli and the Bulgarian Horrors".
  4. ^ "The Batak Massacre (1876) | Bulgarian Horrors | J. A. MacGahan | Turkish Atrocities | The W.T. Stead Resource Site". attackingthedevil.co.uk.
  5. ^ "[W]illiam [E]wart Gladstone, "Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East" (1876) | W.T. Stead Resource Site". attackingthedevil.co.uk.
  6. ^ MacGahan, Januarius A. (1876). "Mr. Schuyler's Preliminary Report". Turkish Atrocities in Bulgaria, Letters of the Special Commissioner of the "Daily News," J.A. MacGahan, Esq. London: Bradbury Agnew and Co. p. 89. Retrieved 30 September 2013.
  7. ^ Clarke, J.F.; O. Dwight, Henry (1977). "Reporting the Bulgarian Massacres: The Suffering in Bulgaria, by Henry O. Dwight and the Rev. J. F. Clarke (1876)". Southeastern Europe/L'Europe du Sud-Est. 4 (1): 278–279. doi:10.1163/187633377X00177.
  8. ^ Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Bulgaria/History" . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.