April Uprising The April Uprising ( , " Aprilsko vastanie " ) was an insurrection organised by the Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire from April to May 1876 , which indirectly resulted in the re - establishment of Bulgaria in 1878 . Тhe regular Ottoman Army and irregular bashi - bazouk units brutally suppressed the rebels , leading to a public outcry in Europe and the United States , with many famous intellectuals condemning the Ottoman atrocities and supporting the oppressed Bulgarian population . The 1876 uprising involved only those parts of the Ottoman territories populated predominantly by Bulgarians . The emergence of Bulgarian national sentiments was closely related to the re - establishment of the independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church in 1870 . Together with notions of romantic nationalism the rise of national awareness became known as the Bulgarian National Revival . Background . In Europe , in the eighteenth century , the classic non - national states were the " multi - ethnic empires " such as the Ottoman Empire , ruled by a Sultan and the population belonged to many ethnic groups , which spoke many languages . The idea of nation state was an increasing emphasis during the 19th century , on the ethnic and racial origins of the nations . The most noticeable characteristic was the degree to which nation states use the state as an instrument of " national unity " , in economic , social and cultural life . By the 19th century , the Ottomans had fallen well behind the rest of Europe in science , technology , and industry . However , the Bulgarian population was also suppressed socially and politically under Ottoman rule . Additionally , more immediate causes for the greater mobilisation compared to earlier revolts were the severe internal and external problems which the Ottoman Empire experienced in the middle of the 1870s . In 1875 , taxes levied on non - Muslims were raised for fear of a state bankruptcy , which , in turn , caused additional tension between Muslims and Christians and facilitated the breakout of the Herzegovinian rebellion and the Stara Zagora revolt in Bulgaria . The failure of the Ottomans to handle the Herzegovinian uprising successfully showed the weakness of the Ottoman state while the brutalities which ensued , discredited additionally the empire to the outside world . In the late 19th century European ideas of nationalism were adopted by the Bulgarian elite . Preparation . In November 1875 , activists of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee met in the Romanian town of Giurgiu and decided that the political situation was suitable for a general uprising . The uprising was scheduled for April or May 1876 . The territory of the country was divided into five revolutionary districts with centers in Vratsa , Veliko Tarnovo , Sliven , Plovdiv and Sofia . The rebels had been hoarding arms and ammunition for some time and even constructed makeshift cannon out of cherry - wood . In the progress of the preparation of the uprising , the organisers gave up the idea of a fifth revolutionary district in Sofia due to the deplorable situation of the local revolutionary committees and moved the centre of the fourth revolutionary district from Plovdiv to Panagyurishte . On 14 April 1876 , a general meeting of the committees from the fourth revolutionary district was held in the Oborishte locality near Panagyurishte to discuss the proclamation of the insurrection . One of the delegates , however , disclosed the plot to the Ottoman authorities . On , Ottoman police made an attempt to arrest the leader of the local revolutionary committee in Koprivshtitsa , Todor Kableshkov . Outbreak and suppression . In conformity with the decisions taken at Oborishte , the local rebel committee attacked and surrounded on the 20th of April 1876 the headquarters of the Ottoman police in Koprivshtitsa commanded by Necip Aga . At least two Ottoman police officials were killed and Necip Aga was forced to release arrested Bulgarian rebel suspects . Necip Aga and his close officials managed to escaped the siege , however due to this incident the Bulgarian rebels had to proclaim 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 - bazouk s " ) 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 . Reaction in Europe and the United States . News of massacres of Bulgarians reached Istanbul in May and June 1876 through Bulgarian students at Robert College , the American college in the city . Faculty members at Robert College wrote to the British Ambassador and to the Istanbul correspondents of " The Times " and the " London Daily News " . An article about the massacres in the " Daily News " on June 23 provoked a question in Parliament about Britain ' s support for Turkey , and demands for an investigation . Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli promised to conduct an investigation about what had really happened . In July , the British Embassy in Istanbul sent a second secretary , Walter Baring , to Bulgaria to investigate the stories of atrocities . Baring did not speak Bulgarian ( although he did speak Turkish ) and British policy was officially pro - Turkish , so the Bulgarian community in Istanbul feared he would not report the complete story . They asked the American Consul in Istanbul , Eugene Schuyler , to conduct his own investigation . Schuyler set off for Bulgaria on July 23 , four days after Baring . He was accompanied by a well - known American war correspondent , Januarius MacGahan , by a German correspondent , and by a Russian diplomat , Prince Aleksei Tseretelev . Schuyler ' s group spent three weeks visiting Batak and other villages where massacres had taken place . Schuyler ' s official report , published in November 1876 , said that fifty - eight villages in Bulgaria had been destroyed , five monasteries demolished , and fifteen thousand people in all massacred . The report was reprinted as a booklet and widely circulated in Europe . Baring ' s report to the British government about the massacres was similar , but put the number of victims at about twelve thousand . A century later , one historian claimed that the number killed was exaggerated , and was closer to three thousand . But it is difficult to ignore the accounts of MacGahan , Schuyler and Baring , who visited the massacre sites three months after they occurred , and saw many of the unburied corpses . The actual number of victims will never be known . MacGahan ' s vivid articles from Bulgaria moved British public opinion against Turkey . He described in particular what he had seen in the town of Batak , where five thousand of a total of seven thousand residents had been slaughtered , beheaded or burned alive by Turkish irregulars , and their bodies left in piles around the town square and the church . He described " Skulls with gray hair still attached to them , dark tresses which had once adorned the heads of maidens , the mutilated trunks of men , the rotting limbs of children . . . " The political impact of the reports was immediate and dramatic . The leader of the British opposition , William Ewart Gladstone , wrote a booklet denouncing what he called " the Bulgarian Horrors " , and calling upon Britain to withdraw its support for Turkey . " I entreat my countrymen " , he wrote , " upon whom far more than upon any other people in Europe it depends , to require and to insist that our government , which has been working in one direction , shall work in the other , and shall apply all its vigor to concur with the states of Europe in obtaining the extinction of the Turkish executive power in Bulgaria . Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner , namely , by carrying off themselves . . . " Prominent Europeans , including Charles Darwin , Oscar Wilde , Victor Hugo , and Giuseppe Garibaldi , spoke against the Turkish behavior in Bulgaria . When the war with Russia started in 1877 , the Turkish Government asked Britain for help , but the British government refused , citing public outrage caused by the Bulgarian massacres as the reason . The April uprising was a failure as a revolution , but due to publicity that was given to the reprisals that followed , it led directly to European demands for reform of the Ottoman Empire , and the Russo - Turkish War , which ended in Turkish defeat , and the signing of the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878 , followed in July that year by the Treaty of Berlin . It thus ultimately achieved its original purpose , the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire .