Bulgaria

o the human mind unless they can be traced to their causes, and thus a chain of events followed link by link to see why

for another to break out as soon as the exhaustion of the moment has passed. Sinc

there is a geographical area, which could house one nation comf

a they have been driven little by little until now they occupy the toe only of the Balkan Peninsula. But the days have not

For centuries their national but not their racial existence was dormant under the heel of the Turk. Gr

, descendants of the old Rom

red Bulgaria in the seventh century as the Normans entered England at a later date, and who mingle

seems to have been that of the Don Cossacks, who also came into the Penin

, who in the fourteenth century, when the Servian Empire

peoples-the Albanians, for example, and the Macedonians, and tribes

f which have past great traditions of Empire, and there is certain to be uneasy house-keeping. But the inquiry has to be pushed further. Why is it that this unhappy Pe

uch as the Phoenicians, the Tyrians, and the Carthaginians, whose race-home was Asia Minor. Whilst this Mediterranean civilisation was being shaped in the south-in the north, in the forests or plains along the shores of the Baltic and of the North Sea, the fecund Teutonic people were swelling to a mighty host and overflowing their boundaries. A flood of these people in time came surging south sea

d on the Alpine, Iberian, Lydian, and Aegean peoples of Southern Europe with irresi

an conquerors of the Mukenaian and Min?an kingdoms. Tribes nearly allied to the Ancient Greeks diverged from

f prehistoric German from what its eastern sister, the Gothic language, was like as late as the fifth century B.C., we can, without too much straining of facts, say that the prehistoric Greeks, when they passed across Hungary into the mountainous regions of the Balkans, and equally the early Italic invaders of Italy, were simply another branch of the Teutonic peoples later in separation than the Kelts, wit

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wer-Persia. Again the Balkan Peninsula was inevitably the scene of the conflict, and such battles as Thermopylae and Marathon made names to resound for ever in the mouths of men. The peril from Persia over, the Balkan Peninsula, after seeing the stru

ack, and the capital was moved from Rome to Constantinople: the Roman Empire became the Greek Empire. Thus, as we have seen in the previous chapter, the Balkan Peninsula was chosen as the arena in which an Empire founded in the Italian Peninsula was to die its long, uneasy death. The fate of this Greek Empire had been hardly deci

Perhaps it is some unconscious effect on the mind of the pity of this that makes the traveller to the Balkans feel so often a sympathy, almost unreasonable in intensit

first great figure in her confused national history, and makes a claim to be the heir of his Macedonian Empire. The Romans appeared in Bulgaria during the period of the second war ag

Danube, began to settle in the great plains between the river and the Balkan Mountains. Later, they went south-wards and formed colonies among the Thraco-Illyrians, the Roumanians, and the Greeks. This Slav occupation went on for several centuries. In the seventh century of the Christian era a Hunnish tribe reached the banks of the Danube. It is known that this tribe came from the Volga and, crossing Russia, proceeded towards ancie

were a people who tilled the soil, cherished free institutions, fought on foot, were gentle in character. The Bulgars were nomads and past

ly in their treatment of their women. Though the Bulgarian is monogamic he submits his wife to an almost harem discipline. Once married she lives for the family alone. Though she does not wear a veil in the streets it is not customary for her to go out from her home except with

s of the Roman Empire of the period thus to attempt to buy safety with bribes. The Emperor Justinian II. stopped this tribute, and a war followed, in which the Bulgarians were successful, and Justinian lost his throne and was driven to exile. Later, Justini

The Bulgarian kings brought their victorious armies to the gates of Constantinople, whose very existe

in Bulgaria weakened the nation, and a great section of it migrated to Asia Minor. The Roman Emperor, Constantine V., took this occasion to exact a full revenge for previous Bulgar attacks on Constantinople. The Bulgar army was routed, and an invading force carried the torch into every Bulgarian town. A new Bulgar King, Cerig

tle, and captured Sofia (809), the present capital of Bulgaria. Warfare was savage in those days, and between the Bulgars and the Greek emperors particularly savage. The defe

the human sacrifices they offered up in their sight, and by the resolute refusal of all quarter in the field. The Empire tried to buy off the Bulgars with the promise of an ann

crush out Christianity by persecutions, but in 864 the Bulgarian King, Boris, adopted Christianity-some say converted by his sister, who had been a prisoner of the Greeks and was baptized by them. His adherence to Christianity was announced in a treaty w

nation to the Roman or to the Greek branch of the Christian Church. He made the issue a matter of close bargaining. The Church was sought which was willing to a

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al bargain could be made there. Two bishops came over from Rome to negotiate. But in time King Boris veered back to a policy of attaching himself to the Greek Church, whic

safeguard national interests. In the nineteenth century the first great concession she wrung from her Turkish masters was the setting up (1870) of a Bulgarian Exarch to be the official head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church independent of the Greek Patriarch. A littl

n places transcending far the religious gap between Turk and Christian, and in that particularly stormy North Macedonian corner of the Balkans a Patriarchate man gives first place in his hatred to an Exarchate

lgarian population in Turkey recognise the authority of the Exarchate, but some still owe allegiance to the Greek Patriarchate. What the religious position will be now that the wars of 1912–1913 have changed boundaries so considerably it is hard to say. The Exarc

ery in 888 to make his peace with the next world. His son Vladimir succeeded to the throne, but ruled so unwisely that King Boris c

to co