Who was Georgi Benkovski?

A Bulgarian revolutionary, born Gavril Gruev Hlatev in Koprivshtitsa around 1843. He led the Fourth Revolutionary District of the April Uprising of 1876 and commanded the mounted detachment known as the Flying Band. He was ambushed and killed near Ribaritsa on 24 May 1876.

Why is he called Benkovski?

He adopted the surname from a French passport that had belonged to a Polish exile called Anton Benkowski, who had attempted to assassinate the Russian governor of Warsaw and escaped a life sentence on Sakhalin by way of Japan. The passport was traded to the revolutionary Stoyan Zaimov in Diyarbakir for five Turkish liras.

What did Britain have to do with the April Uprising?

Reports of the massacres that followed the uprising reached the British press and caused a major public outcry, known at the time as the Bulgarian Horrors. Gladstone campaigned on it and figures including Charles Darwin and Oscar Wilde spoke out. When the Ottomans asked Britain for help against Russia in 1877, the British government refused and cited that public outrage.

On This Day in Bulgaria: Georgi Benkovski, the Tailor Who Borrowed a Dead Man's Name (21 September), Shumen.UK

📅 ON THIS DAY IN BULGARIA, Monday 21 September

The man who led the most famous rising in Bulgarian history was a tailor's apprentice who left school after the third year, spent a decade knocking about Istanbul and Alexandria, and took his name off a dead Pole's passport. Georgi Benkovski was born on this date in 1843, and he had about eight months of fame before he was shot on a bridge.

What happened on this day

He was born Gavril Gruev Hlatev in Koprivshtitsa, son of a small trader. Money was short, so he left school early and his mother taught him tailoring. He hated it, went into the braid trade instead, and spent roughly ten years in Istanbul, Izmir and Alexandria doing whatever came up. He picked up working competence in seven languages along the way: Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Greek, Italian, Polish, Romanian and Persian. He also claimed to have been bodyguard to the Persian consul, in a uniform so magnificent that people mistook him for the consul.

The name is the best story. A Polish exile called Anton Benkowski had tried to assassinate the Russian governor of Warsaw, drawn a life sentence on Sakhalin, escaped to Japan, and turned up in the Ottoman Empire. In Diyarbakir he sold his French passport to the revolutionary Stoyan Zaimov for five Turkish liras. Hlatev took the passport, kept the surname, and changed the first name to Georgi.

He was meant to be second to Panayot Volov, a Shumen man, in the Fourth Revolutionary District. Volov handed him the leadership voluntarily, and when Zahari Stoyanov asked why, he said simply that he had given way because Benkovski was the worthier man. Shumen's municipal stadium carries Volov's name to this day. When the April Uprising broke out early at Koprivshtitsa on 2 May 1876, Benkovski was in Panagyurishte. He raised a detachment of more than two hundred and rode, and because it never stopped moving it became known as the Flying Band. Its members included six Croats and a German named Albrecht, all railway workers from Belovo, and one woman, Maria Ivanova-Sutic.

It ended badly and quickly. Betrayed by a shepherd, the survivors were ambushed in the Teteven mountains, and on 24 May 1876 Benkovski was shot crossing a river bridge near Ribaritsa, then beheaded. One of the four men with him, Zahari Stoyanov, got away and later wrote the whole thing down in his Memoirs of the Bulgarian Uprisings, which is why we have the detail at all.

Towns celebrating today

Tutrakan marks its city day. It sits on the right bank of the Danube in Silistra province, looking across at Romania, and the part worth your time is the old Fisherman's Quarter, still a working riverside district rather than a restored showpiece.

Why this matters for British expats

This is the episode where Britain enters Bulgarian history, and not flatteringly. The Ottoman irregulars who put the rising down killed civilians on a scale that reached the European press as the Bulgarian Horrors, after faculty at Robert College in Istanbul wrote to the British Ambassador and to the correspondents of The Times and the Daily News. Gladstone built a campaign on it. Charles Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo and Garibaldi all spoke out.

The consequence is the bit most British expats never learn. When Russia went to war with the Ottomans in 1877, the Ottoman government asked Britain for help and Britain refused, citing the public outrage over Bulgaria. British public opinion, roused by what happened to Benkovski's uprising, is part of why the country you now live in exists. It is worth knowing when the subject comes up, and it does. Our about page explains why we take that history seriously here.

Worth a look if you haven't already: the Shumen.UK weather page.

Sources and further reading

The passport, the languages and the Flying Band come from the Bulgarian Wikipedia entry on Georgi Benkovski and the English entry. The British reaction, the press campaign and the 1877 refusal are set out in Wikipedia's article on the April Uprising of 1876.