April Uprising of 1876

April Uprising
Part of Great Eastern Crisis
Date 20 April – mid-May 1876 Location Ottoman Bulgaria Result Uprising suppressed Suppression led to the Constantinople Conference, then to the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) and ultimately to the Liberation of Bulgaria
Belligerents
Bulgarian revolutionaries	Ottoman Empire
Commanders and leaders
Georgi Benkovski † Ilarion Dragostinov † Panayot Volov † Hristo Botev †	Hafiz Pasha Yusuf Aga of Sofya Hasan Pasha of Niş
Strength
around 10,000 men	around 100,000 men
Casualties and losses
15,000–30,000 killed (including civilians)[1]	200–4,000 killed[citation needed]

The April Uprising (Bulgarian: Априлско въстание, romanized: Aprilsko vastanie) was an insurrection organised by the Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire from April to May 1876. The rebellion was suppressed by irregular Ottoman bashi-bazouk units that engaged in indiscriminate slaughter of both rebels and non-combatants (see Batak massacre).

The American community around Robert College in Istanbul, the Protestant mission in Plovdiv headed by J.F. Clarke as well as two other Americans, journalist Januarius MacGahan and diplomat Eugene Schuyler, were indispensable in bringing knowledge of Ottoman atrocities to the wider European public.^[2][3]

Their reports of the events, which came to be known in the press as the Bulgarian Horrors and the Crime of the Century, caused a public outcry across Europe and mobilised both common folks and famous intellectuals to demand a reform of the failed Ottoman model of governance of the Bulgarian lands.^[4][5][6][7]

The shift in public opinion, in particular, in the Ottoman Empire's hitherto closest ally, the British Empire, eventually led to the re-establishment of a separate Bulgarian state in 1878.^[8]