April Uprising - Outbreak and Suppression

Outbreak and Suppression

In conformity with the decisions taken at Oborishte, the local committee attacked the headquarters of the Ottoman police in the town and proclaimed the insurrection two weeks in advance. Within several days, the rebellion spread to the whole Sredna Gora and to a number of towns and villages in the northwestern Rhodopes. The insurrection broke out in the other revolutionary districts, as well, though on a much smaller scale. The areas of Gabrovo, Tryavna, and Pavlikeni also revolted in force, as well as several villages north and south of Sliven and near Berovo (in the present-day Republic of Macedonia). According to a contemporary report by Walter Baring, a secretary of the British Embassy to the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim civilian population was not significantly affected, and this was also substantiated by the reports of Eugene Schuyler and James F. Clarke, according to whom very few peaceful Muslims were killed. This has been accepted by modern historians, for example according to Richard Shannon less than 200 Muslims were killed, very few of them non-combatants. In fact, according to the report written by McGahan and Schuyler, even the Ottoman government did not claim more than 500 Muslims killed, most of them in battle.Januarius MacGahan is also know of being a close friend to the Russian general Mikhail Skobelev, with whom he later covered the Russo-Turkish War and the Siege of Plevna. MacGahan was also married to the daughter of a Russian noble family. MacGahan was already favoured in the Russian court after his coverage of the Siege of Khiva with the Russian Army. American historian Justin McCarthy, who is widely considered to have pro-Turkish views, claims that during the revolts over a 1,000 Muslims were slaughtered and many more expelled. According to Stanford Shaw, who is also considered pro-Turkish and whose wife was Turkish, in his behalf claims that many more Muslims were killed during the April Uprising than Christians. According to Barbara Jelavich the beginning of the April Uprising was accompanied by a massacre of Muslim civilians (without specifying casualties). Detachments of regular and irregular Ottoman troops (bashi-bazouks) were mobilised and attacked the first insurgent towns as early as 25 April. Massacres of civilian populations were committed, the principal places being Panagurishte, Perushtitza, Bratzigovo and Batak. By the middle of May, the insurrection was completely suppressed; one of the last sparks of resistance was poet Hristo Botev's attempt to come to the rebels' rescue with a detachment of Bulgarian political emigrees resident in Romania, ending with the unit's rout and Botev's death.

The most detailed contemporaneous account was that of Schuyler. After visiting some of the sites, Eugene Schuyler published a report detailing the atrocities. He reported that fifty-eight villages had been destroyed, five monasteries demolished, and fifteen thousand rebels killed. The American historian Richard Milliman states that Eugene Schuyler visited personally only 11 of the villages he reported on. Schuyler, however certainly visited some Batak and many other of the destroyed towns and villages, including Perushtitsa and Panagyurishte. Millman also claims that the accepted reality of the massacres is largely a myth. Contemporary Bulgarian historians generally accept the number of Bulgarian casualties at the end of the uprising to be around 30 000.