Newspapers and magazines from all over Europe

The atrocities committed in Bulgaria became the most popular subject tackled by the European press. More than 200 prestigious newspapers and magazines from all over Europe in some 3, 000 articles and reports gave coverage of the bloody events in Bulgaria. Besides the above- mentioned investigators, most helpful for the cause of Bulgaria were Edwin Piers, the Constantinople correspondent of the Daily News, the French consuls in Sofia and Plovdiv Le Gay and DTstria, Emil de Girardin, editor in the La France newspaper, Ives de Woestin, correspondent of Le Figaro, the Italian consuls in Sofia and Plovdiv Vito Positano and Takela, to mention but a few.

A powerful movement in defence of the Bulgarian people who had proved with their own blood that they were worthy of living in freedom, was set afoot in a number of countries. This movement acquired the greatest dimensions in Russia. The ‘Otechestvennye Zapiski’ magazine wrote: ‘No one here would think, listen, speak or read about anything but the developments on the other side of the Danube’. As the great Bulgarian historian Professor Marin Drinov, who was working at that time in Kharkov, wrote, Russia was shaken ‘by one of those movements which involve the whole Russian people only at the greatest moments of their historical life.’

Government of Disraeli

The conservative government of Disraeli was benevolently neutral with regard to Turkey during the up-rising, which determined the widespread movement in defence of the Bulgarian people in Britain. More than 250 meetings were held throughout the country and hundreds of telegrams of protest were addressed to the government. The leader of the opposition, Liberal Party William Gladstone, made scores of speeches and published in a mass circulation the booklets ‘The Bulgarian Horrors and the Eastern Question’ and ‘Lessons in Slaughtering’. Relief funds were collected to help the Bulgarian population. Particularly active in this campaign was Lady Strangford, who Lad visited Bulgaria.

The movement in defence of the Bulgarians developed in a number of other countries, too: Romania, Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, Croatia, Germany. Girar- din’s pamphlet ‘Europe’s Disgrace’, published in France, went through several printings. The brightest minds of the epoch – Darwin, Victor Hugo, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Nekrassov, Dostoyevsky, Mendeleev, Sechenov, Garibaldi and many others spoke ardently in defence of the Bulgarian people. On August 29, L876 the great writer and humanist Victor Hugo pronounced his celebrated speech in the French Parliament, calling upon the governments to take measures to put an end to the sufferings of the heroic Bulgarian people.