At the time of Emperor Theodosius III, in 716, Kan Tervel concluded a beneficial contract, according to which Bulgarians and Byzantines were compelled to attach a label to their traded goods, to return political fugitives and to settle the border differences of opinion. In 717, Kan Tervel assisted aptly Emperor Leo III Syrian of Byzantium by defeating the army of the Arab commander Maslama in Southeastern Thrace. Thus, he stopped the “unbelievers` attempts” to conquer the whole of Europe. The Arabs lost 30,000 men in this battle and were forced to rethink their strategy of penetrating into Europe. They succeeded in directing their effort via Northern Africa towards the Pyrenees. Some 20,000 Arabs stood against the army of Charles Martel in the battle at Poitiers (732). European historians mention regularly the victory as an act of salvaging Europe from the Arab invasion. One is asking oneself, would they ever remember the Bulgarians of Kan Tervel?
Danube Bulgaria has undergone generally three stages in its development: the period of the Kanate (end of the 7th-middle of the 9th centuries), Principality (middle of the 9th-first quarter of the 10th centuries) and the Tsar`s (King`s) period (first quarter of the 10th-end of the 14th centuries). On the other hand, the time from the end of the 7th to the middle of the 13th centuries is characterised by a strongly centralized structure of government, which later weakens under the decentralisation tendencies. The latter were typical not only of Bulgaria but also of the whole community of the Byzantine-Slavonic Orthodox Oykumene. That tendency was inversely proportional to the processes coming into being in Western Europe. Here is one of the reasons of the political vulnerability of Eastern Europe on the eve of the Ottoman invasion.
Generations of Bulgarians
The centuries-long lack of a separate state caused a nihilistic and hostile attitude of the Bulgarian to the official institutions in the Ottoman Empire. The state became something estranged and religiously different for generations of Bulgarians. The hardship of the daily life and the incessant struggle for survival, of the individual and of the nation as a whole, compelled the subjugated Christian population to “outsmart” constantly the organs of the central and local power.
The Bulgarian compensated his lost statehood by enhancing the role of self organisation and self-government. In that, one can find the roots of the desire for democracy and organic resistance against any violence and injustice, which is typical of the great nations. The struggle against the foreign domination was accompanied by the upkeep of an incredibly stout ancestral memory of the Bulgarians` belonging to a “God- elected” nation, which will, after periods of “oblivion” and “peril”, resurrect for new success and victories. The inner assuredness that sooner or later the Bulgarian state will be revived is cemented in the national ideology by the first Revival forward-looking authors, Paisiy Hilendarski and Sofroniy Vrachanski. Its demonstration can be seen in the efforts of the education reformers and church leaders. The belief in the future and in the mission of the Bulgarian people is particularly apparent in the programmes of the national revolutionary movement of Georgi Sava Rakovski and Lyuben Karavelov, and also in Vasil Levski`s ideal of a “pure and holy … democratic republic” in the 19th century.
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