Europe remained in ignorance

For a long while, Europe remained in ignorance of the fate of Christians under the Ottoman yoke. Distracted by bloody wars, she scarcely noticed their slavery for centuries. And yet, the history of the Christians under Turkish rule in the Middle Ages is of the greatest interest. Had the rulers been of the same race and religion as the vanquished, the subjection might have been more tolerable.

Ottoman domination was not, however, a simple political domination. Ottoman tyranny was social as well as political. It was keenly and painfully felt in private as well as in public life; in social liberty, manners and morals; in the free development of national feeling; in short, in the whole scope of human life. According to our present notions, political domination does not infringe upon personal liberty, which is sacred for the conqueror. This is not the case with Turkish rule.

The Bulgarians, like the other Christians of the Balkan peninsula, were, both collectively and individually, slaves. The life, possessions, and honour of private individuals were in constant peril. The bulk of the people, after several generations, calmed down to passivity and inertia. From time to time the more vigorous element, the strongest individualities, protested. Some Bulgarian whose sister had been carried off to the harem of some pacha would take to the mountains and make war on the oppressors. The haidukes and voivodes, celebrated in the national songs, kept up in mountain fastnesses that spirit of liberty which later was to serve as a cement to unite the new Bulgarian nation.

A noteworthy fact that the Osmanlis

But it is a noteworthy fact that the Osmanlis, being themselves but little civilised, did not attempt to assimilate the Bulgarians in the sense in which civilised nations try to effect the intellectual and ethnic assimilation of a subject race. Except in isolated cases, where Bulgarian girls or young men were carried off and forced to adopt Mohammedanism, the government never took any general measures to impose Mohammedanism or assimilate the Bulgarians to the Moslems.

The Turks prided themselves on keeping apart from the Bulgarians, and this was fortunate for our nationality. Contented with their political supremacy and pleased to feel themselves masters, the Turks did not trouble about the spiritual life of the ray as, except to try to trample out all desires for independence. All these circumstances contributed to allow the Bulgarian people, crushed and ground down by the Turkish yoke, to concentrate and preserve its own inner spiritual life.