Bulgaria

By Frank Fox

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Bulgaria" by Frank Fox. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Sep 16, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547350187

Book preview

Frank Fox

Bulgaria

EAN 8596547350187

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I PAGE

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS By JAN V. MRKVITCHKA and NOEL POCOCK*

FACING PAGE

CHAPTER I

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER II

BULGARIA AND THE DEATH OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

CHAPTER III

THE SCRAP-HEAP OF RACES

CHAPTER IV

BULGARIA—A POWER AND A TURKISH PROVINCE

CHAPTER V

THE LIBERATION OF BULGARIA

CHAPTER VI

THE WAR OF 1912–1913

CHAPTER VII

A WAR CORRESPONDENT'S TRIALS IN BULGARIA

CHAPTER VIII

INCIDENTS OF BULGARIAN CHARACTER

CHAPTER IX

THE TRAGEDY OF 1914

CHAPTER X

SOME FACTS FOR THE TOURIST AND THE ECONOMIST

CHAPTER XI

HOW BULGARIA IS GOVERNED

CHAPTER XII

THE FUTURE OF BULGARIA

CHAPTER XIII

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF EUROPE

INDEX

CHAPTER I PAGE

Table of Contents

By Way of Introduction1

CHAPTER II

Table of Contents

Bulgaria and the Death of the Roman Empire15

CHAPTER III

Table of Contents

The Scrap-Heap of Races36

CHAPTER IV

Table of Contents

Bulgaria—A Power and a Turkish Province52

CHAPTER V

Table of Contents

The Liberation of Bulgaria65

CHAPTER VI

Table of Contents

The War of 1912–191377

CHAPTER VII

Table of Contents

A War Correspondent's Trials in Bulgaria99

CHAPTER VIII

Table of Contents

Incidents of Bulgarian Character120

CHAPTER IX

Table of Contents

The Tragedy of 1914134

CHAPTER X

Table of Contents

Some Facts for the Tourist and the Economist150

CHAPTER XI

Table of Contents

How Bulgaria is Governed167

CHAPTER XII

Table of Contents

The Future of Bulgaria174

CHAPTER XIII

Table of Contents

The Responsibility of Europe187

INDEX207

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

By

JAN V. MRKVITCHKA

and

NOEL POCOCK*

Table of Contents

1. A Young Shôp Man of the District of SofiaFrontispiece

FACING PAGE

Table of Contents

2. A Contented Turk8

3. A Peasant at Work—District of Tsaribrod17

4. Women of Pordim, in the Plevna District19

5. In the Harvest Fields near Sofia22

6. A Shôp Woman of the District of Sofia24

7. A Woman of Thrace, of the Shôp Tribe, and of Macedonia33

8. *Sistov, on the Danube40

9. Ancient Costume of Balkan Peasant Women near Gabrovo49

10. A Wedding in the Rhodopes56

11. *Roustchouk, on the Danube65

12. Mystery—a Study in the Roustchouk District67

13. A Blind Beggar Woman70

14. A Young Married Shôp Woman72

15. *A Bulgarian Market Town75

16. Blessing the Lamb on St. George's Day78

17. *The Cathedral, Sofia81

18. *An Adrianople Street88

19. *The Shipka Pass97

20. A Young Widow at her Husband's Grave104

21. Gipsies113

22. A Peasant of the Tsaribrod District120

23. The Ratchenitza, the National Dance of Bulgaria129

24. A Bagpiper136

25. A Young Girl of Irn145

26. Guarding the Flocks and Herds;152

27. An Old Street in Philippopolis161

28. A Grave Question168

29. A Young Man of the Choumla District177

30. *A Bulgarian Farm184

31. A Young Woman of the Roustchouk District193

32. At the Well200

Sketch Map at end of Volume.

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BULGARIA

Table of Contents

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CHAPTER I

Table of Contents

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

Table of Contents

Instructed

in the autumn of 1912 to join the Bulgarian army, then mobilising for war against Turkey, as war correspondent for the London Morning Post, I made my preparations with the thought uppermost that I was going to a cut-throat country where massacre was the national sport and human life was regarded with no sentimental degree of respect. The Bulgarians, a generation ago, had been paraded before the eyes of the British people by the fiery eloquence of Mr. Gladstone as a deeply suffering people, wretched victims of Turkish atrocities. After the wide sympathy that followed his Bulgarian Atrocities campaign there came a strong reaction. It was maintained that the Bulgarians were by no means the blameless victims of the Turks; and could themselves initiate massacres as well as suffer from them. Some even charged that there was a good deal of party spirit to account for the heat of Mr. Gladstone's championship. I think that the average British opinion in 1912 was that, regarding the quarrels between Bulgar and Turk, there was a great deal to be said against both sides; and that no Balkan people was worth a moment's sentimental worry. Let dogs delight to bark and bite, for 'tis their nature to, expressed the common view when one heard that there had been murders and village-burnings again in the Balkans.

Certainly there were enthusiasts who held to the old Gladstonian faith that there was some peculiar merit in the Bulgarian people which justified all that they did, and which would justify Great Britain in going into the most dangerous of wars on their behalf. These enthusiasts, as if to make more startlingly clear their love for Bulgaria, commonly took a profoundly pacific view of all other questions of international politics, and would become passionately indignant at the suggestion that the British Power should ever move navy or army in defence of any selfish British interest. They were—they still are, it may be said—the leading lights of what is called the Peace-at-any-price party, detesting war and jingoism, and viewing patriotism, when found growing on British soil, with dry suspicion. Patriotism in Bulgaria is, however, to their view a growth of a different order, worthy to be encouraged and sheltered at any cost.

As a counter-weight to these enthusiasts, Great Britain sheltered a little band, usually known as pro-Turks, who believed, with almost as passionate a sincerity as that of the pro-Bulgarians, that the Turk was the only gentleman in Europe, and that his mild and blameless aspirations towards setting up the perfect State were being cruelly thwarted by the abominable Bulgars and other Balkan riff-raff. Good government in the Balkans would come, they held, if the tide of Turkish rule flowed forward and the restless, semi-savage, murderous Balkan Christian states went back to peace and philosophic calm under the wise rule of Cadi administering the will of the Khalifate.

But pro-Bulgarian and pro-Turk made comparatively few converts in Great Britain. They formed influential little groups and inspired debates in the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and published literature, and went out as missions to their beloved nationalities, and had all their affection confirmed again by the fine appreciation showered upon them. The great mass of British public opinion, however, they did not touch. There was never a second flaming campaign because of Turkish atrocities towards Bulgaria, and the pro-Turks never had a sufficient sense of humour to suggest a counter-campaign when Bulgarians made reprisals. In official circles the general attitude towards Balkan affairs was one of vexation alternating with indifference.

Those detestable Balkans! quoth one diplomat in an undiplomatic moment: and expressed well the official mind. They are six of one and half a dozen of the other, said the man in the street when he heard of massacres, village-burnings, and tortures in the Balkans; and he turned to the football news with undisturbed mind, seeking something on which a fair opinion could be formed without too much worry.

The view of the man in the street was my view in 1912. I can recall being contented in my mind to know that at any rate one's work as a war correspondent would not be disturbed by any sympathy for the one side or the other. Whichever side lost it would deserve to have lost, and whatever reduction in the population of the Balkan Peninsula was caused by the war would be ultimately a benefit to Europe. In parts of America where the race feeling is strongest, they say that the only good nigger is a dead nigger. So I felt about the Balkan populations. The feelings of a man with some interest in flocks of sheep on hearing that war had broken out between the wolves and the jackals would represent fairly well the attitude of mind in which I packed my kit for the Balkans.

It is well to put on record that mental foundation on which I built up my impressions of the Balkans generally, and of the Bulgarian people particularly, for at the present time (1914) I think it may safely be said that the Bulgarian people are somewhat under a cloud, and are not standing too high in the opinion of the civilised world. Yet, to give an honest record of my observations of them, I shall have to praise them very highly in some respects. Whilst it would be going too far to say that the praise is reluctant, it is true that it has been in a way forced from me, for I went to Bulgaria with the prejudice against the Bulgarians that I have indicated. And—to make this explanation complete—I may add that I came back from the Balkans not a pro-Bulgarian in the sense that I was anti-Greek or anti-Servian or even anti-Turk; but with a feeling of general liking for all the peasant peoples whom a cruel fate has cast into the Balkans to fight out there national and racial issues, some of which are older than the Christian era.

Yes, even the Turk, the much-maligned Turk, proved to have decent possibilities if given a decent chance. Certainly he is no longer the Terrible Turk of tradition. Most of the Turks I encountered in Bulgaria were prisoners of war, evidently rather pleased to be in the hands of the Bulgarians who fed them decently, a task which their own commissariat had failed in: or were contented followers of menial occupations in Bulgarian towns. I can recall Turkish boot-blacks and Turkish porters, but no Turks who looked like warriors, and if they are cut-throats by choice (I do not believe they are) they are very mild-mannered cut-throats indeed.

Coming back from the lines of Chatalja towards the end of 1912, I had, for one stage of five days, between Kirk Kilisse and Mustapha Pasha, a Turkish driver. He had been a Bulgarian subject (I gathered) before the war, and with his cart and two horses had been impressed into the transport service. At first with some aid from an interpreter, afterwards mostly by signs and broken fragments of language, I got to be able to converse with this Turk. (In the Balkans the various shreds of races have quaint crazy-quilt patchworks of conversational language. Somehow or other even a British citizen with more than the usual stupidity of our race as to foreign languages can make himself understood in the Balkan Peninsula, which is so polyglottic that its inhabitants understand signs very well.) My Turk friend, from the very first, filled my heart with sympathy because of his love for his horses. Since he had come under the war-rule of the Bulgarians, he complained to me, he had not been allowed to feed his horses properly. They were fading away. He wept over them. Actual tears irrigated the furrows of his weather-beaten and unwashed cheeks.

As a matter of fact the horses were in very good condition indeed, considering all the circumstances; as good, certainly, as any horses I had seen since I left Buda-Pesth. But my heart warmed to this Turcoman and his love for his horses. I had been seeking in vain up to this point for the appearance of the Terrible Turk of tradition; the Turk, with his well-beloved Arabian steed, his quite-secondary-in-consideration Circassian harem; the fierce, unconquerable, disdainful, cruel Turk, manly in his vices as well as in his virtues. My Turk had at least one recognisable characteristic in his love for his horses. As he sorrowed over them I comforted him with a flagon—it was of brandy and water: and the Prophet, when he forbade wine, was ignorant of brandy, so Islam these days has its alcoholic consolation—and I stayed him with cigarettes. He had not had a smoke for a month and, put in possession of tobacco, he plunged into a mood of rapt exultation, rolling cigarette after cigarette, chuckling softly as he inhaled the smoke, turning towards me now and again with a gesture of thanks and of respect. I had taken over the reins and the little horses were doing very well.

A CONTENTED TURK

Back to list of illustrations

That day, though we had started late, the horses carried us thirty-five miles, and I camped at the site of a burned-out village. The Turk made no objection to this. Previously coming over the same route with an ox-cart, my Macedonian driver had objected to camping except in occupied villages where there were garrisons. He feared Bashi-Bazouks (the Turkish irregular bands which occasionally showed themselves in the rear of the Bulgarian army) and wolves. Probably, too, he feared ghosts,