es were
destroyed. Isolated risings which took place on the northern side of the
Balkans were crushed with similar barbarity. These atrocities, which were
first made known by an English journalist and an American consular
official, were denounced by Gladstone in a celebrated pamphlet which
aroused the indignation of Europe. The great powers remained inactive, but
Servia declared war in the following month, and her army was joined by 2000
Bulgarian volunteers. A conference of the representatives of the powers,
held at Constantinople towards the end of the year, proposed, among other
reforms, the organization of the Bulgarian provinces, including the greater
part of Macedonia, in two vilayets under Christian governors, with popular
representation. These recommendations were practically set aside by the
Porte, and in April 1877 Russia declared war (see RUSSO-TURKISH WARS, and
PLEVNA). In the campaign which followed the Bulgarian volunteer contingent
in the Russian army played an honourable part; it accompanied Gourko's
advance over the Balkans, behaved with great bravery at Stara Zagora, where
it lost heavily, and rendered valuable services in the defence of Shipka.

_Treaties of San Stefano and Berlin._--The victorious advance of the
Russian army to Constantinople was followed by the treaty of San Stefano
(3rd March 1878), which realized almost to the full the national
aspirations of the Bulgarian race. All the provinces of European Turkey in
which the Bulgarian element predominated were now included in an autonomous
principality, which extended from the Black Sea to the Albanian mountains,
and from the Danube to the Aegean, enclosing Ochrida, the ancient capital
of the Shishmans, Dibra and Kastoria, as well as the districts of Vranya
and Pirot, and possessing a Mediterranean port at Kavala. The Dobrudja,
notwithstanding its Bulgarian population, was not included in the new
state, being reserved as compensation to Rumania for the Russian annexation
of Bessarabia; Adrianople, Salonica and the Chalcidian peninsula were left
to Turkey. The area thus delimited constituted three-fifths of the Balkan
Peninsula, with a population of 4,000,000 inhabitants. The great powers,
however, anticipating that this extensive territory would become a Russian
dependency, intervened; and on the 13th of July of the same year was signed
the treaty of Berlin, which in effect divided the "Big Bulgaria" of the
treaty of San Stefano into three portio