If the question were to be settled purely on ethnical considerations, Bulgaria would acquire the greater part of the interior of Macedonia, the most numerous of the dozen nationalities of which is Bulgarian in sentiment if not in origin
This occurred, as is well known, on June 10, 1903, when, as the result of a military conspiracy, King Alexander, the last of the Obrenovi['c] dynasty, his wife, and her male relatives were murdered. This crime was purely political, and it is absurd to gloss it over or to explain it merely as the result of the family feud between the two dynasties.
In 1826 Russian and Turkish delegates met at Akerman in Bessarabia, and in September of that year signed a convention by which the Russian protectorate over the Serbs was recognized, the Serbs were granted internal autonomy, the right to trade and erect churches, schools, and printing-presses, and the Turks were forbidden to live in Serbia except in eight garrison towns; the garrisons were to be Turkish, and tribute was still to be paid to the Sultan as suzerain.
when Peter the Great initiated his anti-Turkish policy, and, in combination with the expansion of Russia to the south and west, began to champion the cause of the Balkan Christians, he developed intercourse with Montenegro and laid the foundation of that friendship between the vast Russian Empire and the tiny Serb principality on the Adriatic which has been a quaint and persistent feature of eastern European politics ever since.
The consequence of this persecution was a series of revolts which were all quelled with due severity, and finally the emigration of a hundred thousand Serbs to southern Russia, where they founded New Serbia in 1752-3.
