Batak massacre
41°56′33″N 24°13′8″E / 41.94250°N 24.21889°E
The Batak massacre was a massacre of Bulgarians in the town of Batak by Ottoman irregular cavalry troops in 1876, at the beginning of the Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876. The estimate for the number of casualties ranges from 1,200 to 8,000, depending on source, with the most common estimate being 5,000 casualties.
The indiscriminate slaughter of non-combatant civilians at Batak shocked the general public in Western Europe and came to be known in the press as the Bulgarian Horrors and the Crime of the Century.
The scale of the atrocities caused British commissioner Walter Baring, who had been dispatched by the British embassy in Constantinople to verify the events, to describe the tragedy "as perhaps the most heinous crime that has stained the history of the present century".
The events at Batak caused a public outcry across Europe, mobilized ordinary people and famous intellectuals to demand a reform of the Ottoman model of governance of the Bulgarian lands, and eventually led to the re-establishment of a separate Bulgarian state in 1878.
The anti-Turkish and pro-Bulgarian public mood made it difficult for Benjamin Disraeli to implement his policy, prevented Britain from intervening on behalf of the Ottoman Empire and created the international conditions for the Russian invasion of 1877.
The massacre has the significance of a national myth for Bulgaria. In more recent times, there have been fierce disputes about the historical truth, especially in the context of differing views of Islam.