lowest, had to be bought from the Turkish administration at exorbitant and
ever-rising prices; the Phanariote Greeks (so called because they
originated in the Phanar quarter at Constantinople) were the only ones who
could afford those of the higher posts, with the result that the Church
was controlled from Constantinople. In 1767 the independent patriarchates
were abolished, and from that date the religious control of the Greeks was
as complete as the political control of the Turks. The Greeks did all they
could to obliterate the last traces of Bulgarian nationality which had
survived in the Church, and this explains a fact which must never be
forgotten, which had its origin in the remote past, but grew more
pronounced at this period, that the individual hatred of Greeks and
Bulgars of each other has always been far more intense than their
collective hatred of the Turks.

Ever since the marriage of the Tsar Ivan III with the niece of the last
Greek Emperor, in 1472, Russia had considered itself the trustee of the
eastern Christians, the defender of the Orthodox Church, and the direct
heir of the glory and prestige of Constantinople; it was not until the
eighteenth century, however, after the consolidation of the Russian state,
that the Balkan Christians were championed and the eventual possession of
Constantinople was seriously considered. Russian influence was first
asserted in Rumania after the Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, in 1774. It was
only the Napoleonic war in 1812 that prevented the Russians from extending
their territory south of the Danube, whither it already stretched. Serbia
was partially free by 1826, and Greece achieved complete independence in
1830, when the Russian troops, in order to coerce the Turks, occupied part
of Bulgaria and advanced as far as Adrianople. Bulgaria, being nearer to
and more easily repressed by Constantinople, had to wait, and tentative
revolts made about this time were put down with much bloodshed and were
followed by wholesale emigrations of Bulgars into Bessarabia and