THE BULGARIAN NATIONALITY

It is my object to deal with the present and future of Bulgaria, not with the past. But in order to understand the present it is necessary to recall the past; and for this reason, I wish to show how Bulgaria, as now constituted, has a genuine claim to be called a nation.

The Low Countries have been described as the cockpit of Europe. The Balkan Peninsula has a much better title to this historic appellation. Hordes of barbarians, one after another, moved by some unknown impulse, poured in endless succession from Central Asia into Europe during the decline of the Roman Empire, crossed the Balkans on their march southwards; occupied the land, which is now called Bulgaria, for periods of indefinite duration; and after years, or it may be centuries, of sojourn, moved further afield, either in search of new pastures, or because they were themselves driven onwards by the advance of some fresh horde of wanderers, following along the same track that their predecessors had pursued. This page of European history is so utterly obscure, that it is matter of dispute whether the Sclav invasion first crossed the Danube three or six centuries after the birth of Christ. All that seems even approximately certain is that within the above-named limits the Sclavs occupied the various regions which we now know as Russia, Poland, Bohemia, Transylvania, Macedonia, Roumelia, and Bulgaria, and established themselves in these regions as masters, either destroying the original occupants or absorbing them in their own dominant nationality.

The words of Scripture

The whole history of these remote times appears to me to be contained in the words of Scripture, that “ when the strong man fully armed guardeth his own court, his goods are in peace: but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him his whole armour . . . and divideth his spoils.” The Sclavs of the Balkan Peninsula met with their stronger man in the person of the Bulgars, a Tartar tribe, kindred in race to the Turks, who, towards the close of the seventh century, swept down across the Balkans, carrying all before them.

I feel the utmost of diffidence in expressing any opinion of my own as to the history of this obscure and distant era. My knowledge on this subject is of the most superficial kind, derived solely from what little I have read. But I give, for what it is worth, the impression left on my mind from cursory reading, and from local traditions, that the Bulgars, though they have bequeathed their name to the country over which they once ruled, never occupied it or settled themselves in it, in the same sense as their predecessors, the Sclavs, had done.

In common with their kinsmen the Turks, the Bulgars were a ruling race, a tribe of predatory warriors; but as their power and their vigour died away, they became gradually merged in the subject race, over whom they had originally held mastery as conquerors, and adopted the Sclav language and the Sclav nationality. Since the era of the Bulgars, Greeks, Serbs, Turks, have in succession held sway over Bulgaria; but for some twelve centuries the population of Bulgaria have remained Sclavs in race and language, and though for a period of less duration— Sclavs in religion. The Bulgarians, in fact, claim upwards of a thousand years of distinct nationality; and if this claim is not sufficient to constitute a nation, few of the peoples of Europe have any ground to consider themselves an historic nationality.