composed the first novel, "The Unfortunate Family." The first attempts at dramatic literature fall within the middle of the century. The first original play, the comedy of "Michael," was written by Sava H. Dobroplodni; he was followed by Dobrjo Popov Vojnikov after 1868, who composed a number of plays, and also by the above-mentioned Drumev, with his "Ivanko" (1872). Of historians who really deserve the name, Marin Stepanović Drinov, who was born in 1838 in Panagjurište, and taught in Russia (Kharkov), is alone worthy of mention. D. THE BEGINNING OF A NEW PERIOD OF INDEPENDENCE AFTER four hundred and eighty-five years of servitude, the hour of Bulgarian freedom was at last to strike. After the last revolts had been crushed, in 1875,1 the great powers summoned a conference at Constantinople (December, 1876, to January, 1877), at which their representatives proposed the formation of two provinces under Christian governors (cf. p. 195). The Porte declined to accept the proposal, and stronger measures were taken against the Bulgarians. Russia declared war, and Turkey and Bulgaria became the scene of a desperate struggle, which ended on March 3, 1878, with the peace of San Stefano. The Congress of Berlin, held immediately afterwards, freed Bulgaria from the Turkish yoke on July 13, 1878 (see the map facing this page, "Roumania, Bulgaria, etc."). On February 22, 1879, the first Bulgarian Assembly of Notables assembled at Trnovo and discussed the preliminary questions from a liberal standpoint (Constitution of Trnovo). This was followed (on April 29) by the first great National Assembly, which appointed to the throne of Bulgaria, on the day of its opening, Prince Alexander of Battenburg,2 then twenty-two years of age and nephew of the Russian Czar, Alexander II. It was under the most unfavourable circumstances that the young prince undertook the government of a country which was torn by every kind of dissension between parties and vested interests. The Radicals and Conservatives were at bitter enmity with one another. Weary of this long feud, Alexander issued a declaration in May, 1881, to the effect that his previous efforts had been of no avail; he asked that a new National Assembly should grant a change in the constitution and give him extraordinary powers for the space of seven years, that he might bring into order the affairs of the principality, which stood in great need of improvement. The National Assembly, which met at Svištov, was composed for the most part of Conservative peasants, and granted the king's desire on July 13. However, a powerful party was working for the fall of Alexander; though there is not sufficient evidence to prove that 1 In September in Stara Zagora, in April and May, 1876, in the Sredna Gora and Rhodope; these were the Bulgarian "atrocities" or "horrors" of W. Baring, E. Schuyler, and Gladstone. they had allied themselves for this purpose with the Russian consul Hitrovo, and with Colonel Stapanov-Popov, who had been sent from Moscow to Bulgaria. In any case the prince demanded of the Czar that General Leonid N. Sobolev should be Prime Minister, and that General Baron Alexander V. Kaulbars should be Minister of War (July 15, 1882); however, in the opinion of their colleagues in the Conservative ministry, which retired at the beginning of March, 1883, their efforts were entirely devoted to the task of transforming Bulgaria into a Russian province in the shortest possible space of time. To put an end to all these intrigues, Alexander sent a vain request for the retirement of the two generals to the new Russian agent, A. S. Jonin, at the beginning of September. A report, not wholly above suspicion, asserts that Jonin then handed over the following ultimatum: (1) Alexander was to renounce the extraordinary powers which he obtained in the year 1881. (2) The National Assembly was to be summoned for an alteration of the Constitution. (3) The prince was to intrust the government to Sobolev and Kaulbars. (4) In the case of refusal, Sobolev was to have the right of absolving the subjects from their oath of fidelity. In view of these dangers, the different parties met together on September 18, and declared the old Constitution of Trnovo restored; on the next day the generals were replaced by a ministry of the Liberal leader, Dragan Cankov. A possible dissension with Russia, on account of the recall of officers on either side, was avoided in November by a fresh convention. On December 17 the alterations desired by Alexander were granted in detail by the Chamber. On September 18, 1885, the Bulgarians living in East Roumania revolted, with the intention of forming a union with the principality of Bulgaria. In 1878 numerous gymnastic societies had been formed in the country on the occasion of the hundredth birthday of the German promoter of gymnastics, Fr. L. Jahn; these and smaller associations had been incidentally working to dissolve their dependence upon the Porte, which the Berlin Congress had reaffirmed, by means of a union with Bulgaria. Alexander immediately started to Philippopolis and there proclaimed the union of the two countries on September 21.1 Milan, the king of Servia, declared war on the Bulgarians in consequence on the 14th of November; the Servians were defeated at Slivnica (November 17 and 19) and at Pirot (November 26 and 27), and peace was concluded at Bucharest on March 3, under the terms of which the old state of affairs was restored. By the protocol of Constantinople, of April 5, Prince Alexander was recognised as the general governor of East Roumania. However, certain dissatisfied officers surprised Alexander in his bedroom on August 20, 1886, and secretly carried him beyond the frontier. But in the next ten days the reactionary movement proved triumphant. The exile was recalled from Lemberg by telegrams from Stefan Stambuloff and from the lieutenant-colonel Mutkuroff. Alexander, however, was so imprudent as to send a telegram to the Czar, asking his countenance for all further steps. When this was bluntly refused, the prince abdicated on September 7. Stambuloff, Mutkuroff, and G. Živkov were now at the head of the regency until the National Assembly elected Prince Waldemar of Denmark, on November 10, 1886; when he declined the proposal, the Assembly appointed the Roman 1 See the small map at the bottom right-hand corner of the map facing page 166. Catholic, Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg (Kohary), who was twenty-six years of age on July 7, 1887. He left the direction of the ministry for a long time in the hands of Stambuloff, "the Bulgarian Bismarck," until the Russophile party again gained the upper hand, on March 30, 1894. Stambuloff, the great champion of national independence, fell at the hand of an assassin on July 15, 1895. Since that period much has been done towards a compromise with Russia (1895-1896 and 1901-1902). Domestic policy suffered partly under the influence of unfavourable financial conditions and under the continual disturbances caused by the Macedonian question (p. 197), for which no solution has yet been found, notwithstanding the agreement of Mürzteg, concluded between Russia and Austria in October, 1903. 3. THE ROUMANIANS A. THE ORIGIN OF THE ROUMANIANS AN infinite number of different theories, both in scientific and in pseudoscientific circles, have continually reappeared until recent times concerning the origin of the Roumanians, a nation which has settled in smaller groups in the Balkan territories in Hungary and Transylvania, and in a coherent body in the modern kingdom of Roumania. This people is known by the Slavs (like all the Roumanians between the Black Sea and the Adriatic) as Wlach, Walach (Vlach, plural Vlasi), which nearly corresponds to the Germanic" Wahl" (Welsh). The Roumanian shepherds of the mountains of Dinai were distinguished from the Italian townspeople of Dalmatia as the "Black Vlachs" (Moroblachi, Morlacchi; cf. also p. 353). Like Italian, Spanish, and French, Roumanian has descended from popular Latin, of the kind spoken by the Romanised subjects of Rome during the first six centuries of our era on the Lower Danube and in ancient Dacia (Transylvania). Hence the name "Daco-Romani" (Daco-Roumanian), to distinguish this from the other Romance languages. For the period of the colonisation of Dacia by the Romans, the best descriptive material is to be found in the bas-reliefs of the Dacian war decorating the pillar of Trajan, which have been well reproduced by W. Froehner and Gust. Arosa (1872-1874), and in most admirable style by Konr. Eichorius (since 1896). During the seventh and eighth centuries A. D. shepherd peoples might have immigrated from the Apennines, from the papal district and from the Romagna, near Ravenna (formerly known as Romania), during the period of the Lombard and the Byzantine confusion by way of Friuli, to Illyricum, to the modern Bosnia and North Albania; Romans may thus have come to the Balkans, and within the Slav districts the dialect of these shepherds may have extended and have become an individual Romance language by correspondence with its environment. All this, however, is mere theory, impossible to prove by the evidence at our disposal, and no longer tenable, for scientific reasons. All that can be said is, that, apart from the phonetic influences of Slavonic and Albanian, the Roumanian language, like the Albanian, places the article at the end of the word, forms the future tense by periphrasis, has borrowed its numeral system from Slavonic, and that both languages have borrowed a large number of technical terms required by civilization. VOL. V-23 H. Tiktin estimates the numerical proportion of Slavonic, Low Latin, Turkish, Greek, Magyar, and Albanian in the vocabulary of literary Roumanians, as about the following: 76; 52; 14; 13; 10; 1. Early history must therefore be regarded as having run something like the following course: the scanty native population of Daco-Thracian origin coalesced with numerous soldiers and colonists, whose popular Latin soon became individual in character, but in spite of all changes preserved its fundamental Romance type. This process of change is best depicted in volume 1 of the "History of the Roumanian People," by N. Jorga (Gotha, 1905). In the year 697 (and to some extent a century earlier; cf. p. 325) the Finno-Ugrian Bulgarians migrated into the country, and preserved their "Turanian" language (cf. p. 375) for three centuries before they were absorbed by the mixed peoples of the Balkan Peninsula; during that time, the influence which they exerted upon Albanian, medieval Greek, etc., was naturally also extended to early Roumanian. Side by side with and subsequent to this influence we have to take into account the strong and permanent influence of the Slav population (p. 273). Not until that time, if we may believe Moses Gaster, did Roumanian, thus transformed, come into contact with Albanian, which had been no less modified by Turanian and Slav influences (the Thracian origin of Albania has been explained on page 220). Of still later date are the modifications which Roumania owes to Bulgarian, Turkish, and Modern Greek. The main dialect of the Roumanian language is spoken by about nine millions of people in Moldavia and Wallachia, in Bessarabia and Transylvania, in the Banat, in part of Hungary and Bukovina, and alone possesses any literature; two subordinate dialects also exist, the South or Macedonian Roumanian of the Kutzo Wallachians or Zingars in Macedonia, Albania, Thessaly, and Epirus (amounting to about one million people; Kucovlasi Limping Wallachians), and the half = Slav Istro-Roumanian, which is spoken by about three thousand people in the neighbourhood of the east coast of Istria and in the interior of the Karst range side by side with the Croatian, which is the dominant language. After the extensive settlements of Roman colonists by Trajan (Vol. IV, p. 438), the former land of Dacia for many decades occupied the position of a frontier territory or outpost of the Roman Empire; as that empire declined to its fall, the barbarians caused increasing disturbances, which only occasionally and for short periods gave way to a sense of security, as under the emperor Maximin (235-238). Aurelian, the "Restorer of the Empire" (270-275), was forced to abandon the further bank of the Danube to the Goths, to transport the colonists over the stream, and to form a new Dacia on the south. From that period the districts to the north of the Lower Danube were invariably the object of the invading hordes of barbarians as they advanced to the southwest. The Huns and Gepids about 450 were succeeded a century later by the Avars (about 555), and by the Slavs (previously the Antes; cf. p. 328), in different advances and attacks. Then in 679 came the Bulgarians (Khazars and Old Ziagirs, p. 327), and after one hundred and fifty or two hundred years the Magyars, from about 840 to 860 (p. 325), whose settlements, in parts at least, were only temporary. Such fragments of Roman colonial civilization as survived those stormy times were hard beset by the repeated raids of the Petshenegs (about 900; pp. 85 and 337) and by the Kumanians or Uzes (about 1050; pp. 92 and 338). It will be obvious that, in view of the disturbed state of the country, no detailed chronology free from suspicion can be given. It can be |