BULGARIA--A POWER AND A TURKISH PROVINCE
King Simeon reigned in Bulgaria thirty-four years, and raised his
country during that time to the highest point of power it ever reached.
Simeon had been educated at Constantinople and had learned all that the
civilisation of the Grecian Empire could teach except a love and respect
for the Grecian rule. He designed the overthrow of the tottering Grecian
Empire, and dreamed of Bulgaria as the heir to the power of the Caesars.
When Simeon came to the throne, for many years the Grecian Empire and
Bulgaria had been at peace. But a trade grievance soon enabled Simeon to
enter upon a war against the feeble Greek Emperor then on the throne in
Constantinople--Leo, known as the Philosopher. The Grecian forces were
defeated and, following the ferocious Balkan custom of the times, the
Grecian prisoners were all mutilated by having their noses cut off, and
thus returned to their city. Constantinople in desperation appealed for
help to the Magyars, who had recently burst into Europe from the steppes
of Russia and occupied the land north of the Danube. The Magyars
responded to the appeal, and at first were successful against the
Bulgars, but King Simeon's strategy overcame them in the final stages of
the campaign. He took advantage then of the temporary absence of their
army in the west, and descended upon their homes in the region now known
as Bessarabia and massacred all their wives and children. This act of
savage cruelty drove the Magyars away finally from the Danube, and they
migrated north and west to found the present kingdom of Hungary.
Relieved of the fear of the Magyars, King Simeon now attacked the
Grecian Empire again, captured Adrianople, and laid siege to
Constantinople. There were two emperors in the city then, in succession
to Leo the Philosopher--Romanus Lecapenus and Constantine
Porphyrogenitus. For all the grandeur of their names they rivalled one
another in incompetency and timidity. Simeon was able to force upon the
Grecian Empire a humiliating peace, which made Bulgaria now the
paramount Power in the Balkans, since Servia had been already subdued by
her arms. From the Roman Pope, Simeon received authority to be called
"Czar of the Bulgarians and Autocrat of the Greeks." His capital at
Preslav--now in ruins--was in his time one of the great cities of
Europe, and a contemporary description of his palace says:
If a stranger coming from afar enters the outer court of the
princely dwelling, he will be amazed, and ask many a question as
he walks up to the gates. And if he goes within, he will see on
either side buildings decorated with stone and wainscoted with
wood of various colours. And if he goes yet farther into the
courtyard he will behold lofty palaces and churches, bedecked
with countless stones and wood and frescoes without, and with
marble and copper and silver and gold within. Such grandeur he
has never seen before, for in his own land there are only
miserable huts of straw. Beside himself with astonishment, he
will scarce believe his eyes. But if he perchance espy the
prince sitting in his robe covered with pearls, with a chain of
coins round his neck and bracelets on his wrists, girt about
with a purple girdle and a sword of gold at his side, while on
either hand his nobles are seated with golden chains, girdles,
and bracelets upon them; then will he answer when one asks him
on his return home what he has seen: "I know not how to
describe it; only thine own eyes could comprehend such
splendour."
Under Simeon, art and literature flourished (in a Middle Ages sense) in
Bulgaria; the Cyrillic alphabet--still used in Russia, Bulgaria, and
Servia--had supplanted the Greek alphabet and had added to the growing
sense of national consciousness. Simeon encouraged the production of
books, and tradition credits him with having himself translated into the
Slav language some of the writings of St. Chrysostom.
[Illustration: A WEDDING IN THE RHODOPES]
But all this Bulgarian prosperity had a serious check when Simeon died
in 927 and the Czar Peter ascended the throne. Scarcely was Simeon cold
in his grave before internal struggles had begun, owing to the
jealousies of some of the nobles and their spirit of adventure. The
boyars (knights) of Bulgaria had always had great authority. Now they
took advantage of a monarch who was more suited for the cloister than
the Court to revive old pretensions to independent power. Czar Peter
turned to the Greek Empire for help, and sought to strengthen his
position at home by a marriage with the grand-daughter of the Emperor
Romanus Lecapenus. That policy served until a vigorous Greek Emperor
came to the throne at Constantinople and set himself to avenge the
victories of Simeon. The Greek Emperor called in the aid of the northern
Russians against their kinsfolk the Bulgarian Slavs. There followed a
typical Balkan year of war. The Russians succeeded only too well against
the Bulgarians, and then the Greeks, in fear, joined with the Bulgarians
to resist their further progress. Then the Servians took advantage of
the war to shake off the Bulgarian suzerainty and regain their
independence. An opposition party in Bulgaria, disgusted with the
misfortunes which had befallen their country under Peter, added to these
misfortunes by a revolt, and seceded to found the kingdom of Western
Bulgaria under the boyar Shishman Mokar (963). To add to the troubles of
the Balkans, the Bogomil heresy appeared, dividing further the strength
of the Bulgarian nation. The Bogomils were the first of a long series of
Slavonic fanatics, ancestors in spirit of the Doukhobors, the Stundists,
and the Tolstoyans of our days, preaching the hermit life as the only
truly holy one, forbidding marriage as well as war and the eating of
meat. It was with such dissensions among the Christian states of the
Balkans that the way was prepared for the coming of the Turk to the
Peninsula.
In 969 Boris II. followed Peter on the Bulgarian throne. He was faced by
a new Russian invasion and by an attack from Czar David of Western
Bulgaria. This latter attack he beat off, but was overwhelmed before the
tide of Russian invasion and himself captured in battle. The Russians
passed over Bulgaria to attack Constantinople, and that brought the
Greeks into line with the Bulgarians to resist the invader. The Emperor
John Zemissius made bold war upon the Russians, and captured from them
their Bulgarian prisoner, the Czar Boris II. The Greek Emperor made no
magnanimous use of his victory. He deposed the Bulgarian Czar and the
Bulgarian Patriarch, emasculated the Czar's brother, and turned Bulgaria
into a Greek province. Only in the rebel province of West Bulgaria did
Bulgarian independence at this time survive, and from that province
there arose in time a deliverer, the Czar Samuel, who was the fourth son
of that boyar Shishman who founded the Western Bulgarian kingdom. At the
beginning of his reign, in 976, Samuel had control only over the
territory which is now known as Macedonia, but soon he united to it all
the old Empire of Bulgaria, and stretched the sway of his race over much
of the land which is now comprised in Albania, Greece, and Servia. He
began, then, a stern war with the Greek Emperor, Basil II., known to
history as "the Bulgar-slayer," against whom is alleged a cruelty
horrible even for the Balkans.
Capturing a Bulgarian army of over 10,000 men, Basil II. had all the
soldiers blinded, leaving to each of their centurions, however, one eye,
so that the mutilated men might be led back to their own country. A
realistically horrible picture in the Sofia National Gallery
commemorates this classic horror.
The war between the Czar Samuel and the Emperor Basil II. was marked by
fluctuating fortunes. At first the Bulgarians were altogether
successful, and in 981 Basil was so completely defeated that for fifteen
years he was obliged to leave Samuel as the real master of the Balkan
Peninsula. Then the tide turned. Near Thermopylae, Samuel was decisively
defeated by the Greeks, and soon after found his Empire reduced to the
dimensions of Albania and West Macedonia. War troubles that the Greeks
had with Asia brought to the Czar Samuel a brief respite, but a
campaign in 1014--this was the one marked by the blinding of the captive
Bulgarian army--shattered finally his power. He died that year
heart-broken, it is said, at the sight of the return of his blinded
army.
Thus, to quote a Bulgarian chronicle:
In 1015 Bulgaria was brought to subjection. A new state of
things began for the Bulgarians, who till then had never felt
the control of an enemy. The people longed for liberty, and
there were many attempts at revolt. Towards 1186, two brothers,
John and Peter Assen, raised a revolt and succeeded in
re-establishing the ancient kingdom, choosing as capital
Tirnova, their native town. It was then that Tirnova became what
it still remains, the historic town of Bulgaria. The reign of
John and Peter Assen was a brilliant time for Bulgaria. Art and
literature flourished as never before, and commerce developed to
a considerable extent. Once more the Bulgarian Empire was
respected and feared abroad.
But this Bulgarian Empire was doomed to as short a life as its
predecessor, though for a brief while it held out the illusionary hope
of permanency. Bulgaria, from the Danube to the Rhodope Mountains, was
won from the Greeks, and John Assen was powerful enough to dream of
entering into alliance with the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. An
assassin's sword, however, ended John Assen's life prematurely. He was
followed on the throne by his brother Peter. He, too, was assassinated,
and was succeeded by his brother Kalojan, who had all the warlike
virtues of John Assen, and re-established the Bulgarian Empire with
territories which embraced more than half the whole Balkan Peninsula.
Seeking to add to the reality of power some validity of title, Kalojan
entered into negotiations with the Pope of Rome, made his submission to
the Roman Church, and was crowned by a Papal nuncio as king.
It was about this time that Constantinople was captured by the
Crusaders, and Count Baldwin of Flanders ascended the throne of the
Caesars. The Greeks, driven from their capital but still holding some
territory, made an alliance with Kalojan, and once again Greek and
Bulgar fought side by side, defeating the Franks and taking the Emperor
Baldwin prisoner. Then the alliance ended--never, it seems, can Bulgar
and Greek be long at peace--and a war raged between the Greek Empire and
Bulgaria, until in 1207 Kalojan was assassinated.
A brief period of prosperity continued for Bulgaria while John Assen
II. was on the throne. He was the most civilised and humane of all the
rulers of ancient Bulgaria, and there is no stain of a massacre or a
murder remembered against his name. He made wars reluctantly, but always
successfully. An inscription in a church at Tirnova records his prowess:
In the year 1230, I, John Assen, Czar and Autocrat of the
Bulgarians, obedient to God in Christ, son of the old Assen,
have built this most worthy church from its foundations, and
completely decked it with paintings in honour of the Forty holy
Martyrs, by whose help, in the 12th year of my reign, when the
church had just been painted, I set out to Roumania to the war
and smote the Greek army and took captive the Czar Theodore
Komnenus with all his nobles. And all lands have I conquered
from Adrianople to Durazzo, the Greek, the Albanian, and the
Servian land. Only the towns round Constantinople and that city
itself did the Franks hold; but these too bowed themselves
beneath the hand of my sovereignty, for they had no other Czar
but me, and prolonged their days according to my will, as God
had so ordained. For without Him no word or work is
accomplished. To Him be honour for ever. Amen.
John Assen II. was a great administrator as well as a great soldier.
Whilst he declared the Church of Bulgaria independent, repudiating alike
the Churches of Rome and of Constantinople, he tolerated all religions
and gave sound encouragement to education. With his death passed away
the last of the glory of ancient Bulgaria. Her story now was to be of
almost unrelieved misfortune until the culminating misery of the Turkish
conquest.
Internal dissensions, wars with the Venetians, the Hungarians, the
Serbs, the Greeks, the Tartars,--all these vexed Bulgaria. The country
became subject for a time to the Tartars, then recovered its
independence, then came under the dominion of Servia after the battle of
Kostendil (1330). The Servians, closely akin by blood, proved kind
conquerors, and for some years the two Slav peoples of the Balkans kept
peace by a common policy in which Bulgaria, if dependent, was not
enslaved. But the Turk was rapidly pouring into Europe. In 1366 the
Bulgarian Czar, Sisman III., agreed to become the vassal of the Turkish
Sultan Murad, and the centuries of subjection to the Turk began. After
the battle of Kossovo the grip of the Turk on Bulgaria was tightened.
Tirnova was captured, the nobles of the nation massacred, the national
freedom obliterated. The desire for independence barely survived. But
there was one happy circumstance:
"It is a noteworthy fact," writes a Bulgarian authority, "that
the Osmanlis, being themselves but little civilised, did not
attempt to assimilate the Bulgarians in the sense in which
civilised nations try to effect the intellectual and ethnic
assimilation of a subject race. Except in isolated cases, where
Bulgarian girls or young men were carried off and forced to
adopt Mohammedanism, the Government never took any general
measures to impose Mohammedanism or assimilate the Bulgarians to
the Moslems. The Turks prided themselves on keeping apart from
the Bulgarians, and this was fortunate for our nationality.
Contented with their political supremacy and pleased to feel
themselves masters, the Turks did not trouble about the
spiritual life of the _rayas_, except to try to trample out all
desires for independence. All these circumstances contributed to
allow the Bulgarian people, crushed and ground down by the
Turkish yoke, to concentrate and preserve their own inner
spiritual life. They formed religious communities attached to
the churches. These had a certain amount of autonomy, and,
beside seeing after the churches, could keep schools. The
national literature, full of the most poetic melancholy, handed
down from generation to generation and developed by tradition,
still tells us of the life of the Bulgarians under the Ottoman
yoke. In these popular songs, the memory of the ancient
Bulgarian kingdom is mingled with the sufferings of the present
hour. The songs of this period are remarkable for the Oriental
character of their tunes, and this is almost the sole trace of
Moslem influence.
"In spite of the vigilance of the Turks, the religious
associations served as centres to keep alive the national
feeling. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when
Russia declared war against Turkey (1827), Bulgaria awoke."
From 1366 to 1827 Bulgaria had been enslaved by the Turk. Now within the
space of a few days and with hardly an effort on her own behalf, she was
suddenly to be restored to independence.
[Illustration: ROUSTCHOUK, ON THE DANUBE]