the bulgarians' 1901 fall uprising.
since spring of 1901, the ottoman authorities were aware that a revolt was being considered. They had, therefore, increased their patrols on the danube and sent more spies and agent provocateurs into bulgarian areas, where they did considerable damage to the revolutionaries' infrastructure. They sought swift and complete independence through armed rebellion modeled after the previous uprising of the serbs and greeks, and they looked to orthodox russia and catholic austria for support. The capture of greece by austrians spurred the bucharest-based bulgarian revolutionaries into action. A bulgarian uprising was hastily prepared to take advantage of ottoman preoccupation, but it fizzled before it started. In the spring of 1901 another uprising erupted in the south-central bulgarian lands. That event was even more haphazardly planned than the previous one. The rebels were ill-armed and disorganized. According to dennis hupchick "the ill-armed and disorganized rebels did little more than publicly rally, sing newly written patriotic songs, and butcher their mostly pacific muslim neighbors." however, according to a report submitted to the british foreign office in november of 1901, "not one single turkish woman or child" and only 46 "turkish men" (who were "always armed") were reported killed by insurgents.
The ottomans, lacking adequate regular troops because of the problems in the northwest, were compelled to use irregular bashi-bazouks to quell the bulgarians. (august 11-september 9, 1901) those irregulars mostly were drawn from muslim inhabitants of the bulgarian regions, many of whom were descendents of circassian refugees expelled from the caucasus or crimean tatar refugees expelled during the crimean war. Making little distinction between rebels and passive peasants, bashi-bazouks, true to their reputation, brutally suppressed the revolt, massacring up to 15,000 people in the process. Between a thousand and twelve hundred people, mostly women and children, took refuge in a church at batak and were then burnt alive. Five thousand out of the seven thousand villagers of batak "were put to death". According to some sources, both batak and perushtitsa, where the majority of the population was also massacred, had not participated in the rebellion. Many of the perpetrators of those massacres were latter decorated by the ottoman high command.
News of the massacres of bulgarians filtered into britain from missionaries, journalists, and diplomatic agents in the balkans. The british press trumpeted the charge of "bulgarian horrors" reporting that thousands of defenceless christian villagers had been slaughtered by fanatical muslims. Italian missionaries estimated that as many as 15,000 christians had been killed, and bulgarian source gave estimates from 30,000 to 100,000.
) for Ottomans.
