Checking the advance of the Russians

The retreating Turkish troops, ill armed, ill commanded, and demoralized by defeat, turned to bay at Philippopolis with a forlorn hope of checking the advance of the Russians. On the top of a hill close by the city there stands a stone slab recording the fact that on this spot General Gourkoff had his head-quarters, while he directed the movements of his troops in the plain below. The battle was not long.

The Turks, finding themselves out-numbered and out-manoeuvred, lost heart and fled towards the Rhodope, leaving their guns behind them. With this defeat the war came to an end, and if it had not been for the arrival of the English fleet in the Sea of Marmora, the road to Constantinople would have lain open to the Russians, and in all likelihood Philippopolis would to-day have been the prefecture of a Russian province.

As things turned out, Philippopolis enjoyed a brief period of independent existence as the Capital of Eastern Roumelia. Had it not been for the modifications introduced into the Treaty of San Stefano at the Conference of Berlin, the two Bulgarian provinces would have been converted at once into one united State, of which the city of Philip the Great would have been the natural metropolis.

Deprived Philippopolis

But the fates, as represented by the Western Powers, willed it otherwise; and when, six years later, Eastern Roumelia threw off* the restrictions imposed upon her by the Treaty of Berlin, and proclaimed her incorporation with Bulgaria, Sofia had already been made the seat of government Though I think that the incident which deprived Philippopolis of her claim to be the capital of Bulgaria is not matter for regret, there can be no question that the Roumeliote city was in many respects better fitted than Sofia to be the metropolis of the Principality. It stands in a singularly central position. It has considerable historical and architectural pretensions. It is surrounded by hills not less beautiful than those which encircle Sofia.