Rakovski was born at the picturesque little town of Kotel in the
eastern Balkans, and was educated at Constantinople, but his ebullient
temperament did not allow him to pursue his studies to the end. He
turned up at Braila in 1841 and, being hardly twenty years of age, was
dreaming of a revolution of the Orient. With a group of insurgents he
tried to cross the Danube and to rouse the Bulgars. A Roumanian patrol
opens fire, on each side there are several killed and wounded. He is
captured and condemned to death, but having a Greek passport he is
rescued by the Greek Consul and put on board a boat which lands him at
Marseilles. For eighteen months he lives in France--it is not known
where--and is imbued with democratic doctrine. Passing through
Constantinople in 1843 he accepts a post as schoolmaster at Trnovo,
but is immediately at loggerheads with the Greek bishop and departs.
Returning to his birthplace he is irritated by the pride and harshness
of the upper class, and he attempts to make the people rise against
them. They charge him with being a disturber of the peace. "He has
travelled through Europe," says their complaint to the Government,
"and now in this town he bestrides a horse, brandishes his sword and
overwhelms the Turks with insults, both their race and their
religion." In consequence Rakovski and his father are arrested and
dispatched to Constantinople, where they both of them remain in prison
until 1847. After being liberated, he forms a secret society which is
to take advantage of the approaching Russo-Turkish conflict. Its
members are to have themselves enrolled among the Turks, with the
double object of protecting the Bulgarian population from excesses on
the part of the soldiery and also, at the propitious moment, to stir
them up and so assist the Russians. He himself is appointed to the
Turkish staff at Shumen, as first dragoman. His plot being discovered,
he is arrested and sent to Constantinople; on the way he escapes, but
he proceeds to Constantinople and organizes there a company of
heiduks. Turkey's entrance into the European concert fills him with
pessimism. The Bulgars at Constantinople believe that the civilizing
influence of the West will not be in vain. He foresees a more evil
despotism masked by the pseudo-liberal manoeuvres of the Powers, and
henceforward he joins those Bulgars who agitate from Roumania or from
Serbia. He goes to the Banat, where he is not only made most welcome
but is enabled to publish _The Bulgarian News_, which is political,
and a literary supplement, _The Swan of the Danube_. The Turks are
uneasy; they ask the Austrians to suppress these papers. The Austrians
comply and expel the editor. He is persecuted by the Porte in Moldavia
and flies to Russia, where he devotes himself seriously to a long poem
in honour of the heiduks. The first part of this very long work, the
_Gorski Patnik_, had appeared at Novi Sad. It brought him considerable
fame--he was compared with Virgil--but modern readers find this poem
tedious. He likewise wrote a dissertation which established, by
comparative philology, that the Bulgars are the most direct
descendants of the Aryans, that their language is the nearest to
Sanskrit, and that the other European languages, including Greek and
Latin, are derived from it. Rakovski next appears in Belgrade, where
he leads a life of splendour; he had carriages and wonderful horses,
he was arrayed in a princely kind of uniform and was surrounded by a
kind of guard. The source of his revenues, which always seemed to
fluctuate, was never fathomed; but they may at this period have
accrued from his literary labours, which--although the present
generation smile--produced among the Bulgars a vast, patriotic pride.
At Belgrade the visionary historian and whimsical philologist becomes
a most sagacious politician. He is the first Bulgarian publicist to
talk of a free press, and he refuses, unlike many others, to seek help
from Russia only. "We must help ourselves," he cries. "As we are
Orthodox, Russia will desire to keep us under the authority of the
Greek Church; as we are Slavs, she will try to make the Western Powers
suspicious of us." When there was a wave of emigration to Russia he
frantically tried to stop it. "For you it will be suicide," he
exclaimed, "for your children assassination and for Bulgaria ruin!" He
painted Russia in appalling colours, and the would-be emigrants
repented. His personal affairs oppressed him for a time in 1862, when
he left Belgrade to the imprecations of his creditors. The Serbian
statesmen, while appreciating his exalted patriotism, would have
sooner had amongst them a more typical and stable Bulgar. Yet they
declined the Porte's request for extradition. At the beginning of 1863
Rakovski is in Athens, magnificent once more and now accompanied by an
aide-de-camp, a Montenegrin captain, whom he introduces as related to
Nikita. He is forming an alliance of the Balkan States, which,
according to his calculations, will exterminate the Turk in Europe. He
promises himself to furnish 20,000 volunteers--to start with. In the
previous year when he had planned to liberate Bulgaria with 12,000
volunteers, of whom a hundred were to be cavalry and another hundred
gunners, he could gather only 500. And now again he is disillusioned
and leaves Athens.
It was during his stay there that he met the well-known Balkan
travellers, Miss Irby and Miss Muir Mackenzie. They had been up and
down the Peninsula in 1862 and 1863, making very exhaustive inquiries
that were the basis of their book.[48] In 1917 Professor Ivan
Shishmanoff discovered two letters of Miss Muir Mackenzie's in Sofia
and published them in _Sbornik_. The first is dated May 12, and is in
German. "Since we have been here we have made the acquaintance of Mr.
Rakovski," she writes. "He has been so kind as to teach me Serbian,
during Miss Irby's illness. We like him very much, and I know of no
one among the Slavs with whose opinion we so entirely agree; because
he does not think as a Serbian or yet a Montenegrin or a Croat or a
Bulgar, but as a Slav.... I can't tell you how much I fear that their
internal divisions will make impossible the realization of a Yugoslav
country. One can't hope for much from the Greeks; they have exorbitant
ambitions and neither private nor public integrity. Those are bad
faults to find in an ally. And they speak openly of a Byzantine
Empire! And reckon that all the Southern Slavs, Serbs as well as
Bulgars, belong to them.... I hope that England will some day assure
herself that there are other Christians in the East besides the
Greeks."