At nearly opposite ends of Europe, Bulgaria and France would seem to have very little in common. In fact, both nations once shared a common border. Really. This came about by 805 CE when the Bulgars, led by Khan Krum from the east, and the Franks under Emperor Charlemagne to the west, wrestled the land in between them from the Avars. Though most of the dividing line was vague, it was clearly demarcated in one area: 100km along the Danube River to the north and south of the cities of Buda and Pesht. This arrangement lasted until the passing of both leaders in 814.

A Hungarian tour guide even told a group of visitors (from Varna) that the name of their capital city came from Bulgarian. “Buda comes from voda (meaning water), and Pest from pesht (or oven),” he said. “What more do you need in life?”

But this was neither the first nor the last time that people from the two countries encountered each other. In ancient times the region between the Pyrenees Mountains, Rhine River and the English Channel was home to a Celtic-speaking people, the Gauls. In 390 BCE they crossed the Alps and swept through northern and central Italy, burning Rome in the process. By the 270s BCE, three Gallic tribes had invaded Macedonia and Thrace before moving on to Asia Minor (now Turkey) in 278 BCE. They ultimately settled in a region the Romans called Galatia. Their main city was Ancyra (today’s Ankara, capital of modern-day Turkey).

According to Yoto Yotov, a historian at the Dobrich Museum of Archaeology, one group that remained in Bulgaria established their capital in Arkova, now a hamlet near Provadiya, about 45km west of Varna. Their greatest ruler was King Kavar. Another village near Lovech bears the name Galata. Galia – or Galina – is a common female name in Bulgaria, though it could have come from the Italian word for “hen”.

The next invasion took place following a stirring sermon by Pope Urban II in Clermont, France in 1095. Urban II had received a letter from the Byzantine emperor, Alexius Comnenus, appealing for help in his fight against the Seljuk Turks. A preacher by the name of Peter the Hermit and a knight called Walter the Penniless responded by rallying a large group of farmers that rushed ahead of the official expedition. Untrained and undisciplined, members of the Peasants’ Crusade demanded free food and lodging on the way to Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), capital of the Byzantine Empire, robbing locals whenever they saw fit, and getting repaid in kind.

In 1202, at the urging of Pope Innocent III, nobles from Western Europe undertook a fourth crusade in another attempt to recapture Jerusalem from the Saracens. Due to various intrigues, however, they ended up sacking the Byzantine capital. The knights then established the Latin Empire of Constantinople, and set their gaze on the remaining territory of the former Byzantine Empire, starting with Thrace.

Having only recently overthrown nearly 200 years of Byzantine subjugation, Tsar Kaloyan and his men were not about to swap one foreign overlord for another.

The two armies met near the city of Adrianople (present day Edirne, Turkey) in 1205. Kaloyan prevailed. Count Baldwin of Flanders, the Crusader leader and recently crowned emperor, was taken prisoner and brought to Veliko Turnovo. Though treated well at first, he was eventually executed for alleged treachery. To this day the reconstructed tower where he roomed in the Tsaravets Fortress is still known as “Baldwin’s Tower”.

The Bulgarian-Latin Wars raged off and on until 1261, when the Byzantines reclaimed Constantinople. Nevertheless, the Crusades continued.

“Some Crusader knights eventually settled in the places where they had occupied or fought, such as Stani Maka (Assenograd) and Plovdiv,” says Yotov.

In his book Stories from Bulgaria in the Middle Ages, the historian Yordan Andreev puts a human face on all this. He tells of a campaign led by King Sigismund of Hungary.

In 1396, his forces liberated Vidin and Nikopol along the Danube River, before the Ottoman Turks under Sultan Bayazid I regrouped and drove out the Christian coalition.

Among the Crusaders was member of the Knights Hospitallers of Saint John, Gilles Guiton. Wounded in battle, he was nursed by a villager, Maria Iskra. Upon recovery, the two returned to his estate of Carnes in Normandy, where they had a son, Jean. Gilles died soon after. During the English occupation, Maria held an audience with King Henry V, asking him to preserve the estate for her son. He assented and issued a document to her. Jean grew up loyal to the king, and received the title of Marquis. His descendents can be traced to this day.

The last Crusades took place in Varna. In 1444 an army commanded by King Wladyslaw III of Poland and the Hungarian leader Janos Hunyadi was crushed by Sultan Murad II. This cleared the way for Ottoman domination of the Balkans and incursion into central Europe.

Less martial visits from the West began taking place the 1600s in the form of travellers and merchants. By this time France under Louis XIV had become the most civilised country in Europe in terms of art, literature and the lifestyle of the upper classes. Also during this period the French forged a strong alliance with the Ottoman Empire, because they had both found a common enemy in the Hapsburg Dynasty of Central Europe. The Sultans opened up markets in their realm to French traders.

Along with people and goods come new ideas. The French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars spread modern notions of liberty, equality and human rights, as well as nationalism and revolution throughout Europe, eventually leading to the Revolution of 1848 and the German and Italian unification movements. These events influenced Bulgarian writers and revolutionaries such as Georgi Rakovski, Vassil Levksi and Hristo Botev.

Ironically, it was France and Great Britain that also thwarted efforts to liberate Bulgaria. Seeing himself as the protector of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Tsar Peter the Great of Russia in 1695 launched what became more than three centuries of conflict – frequently armed – with the Turks. Constantinople was the ultimate prize.

By 1812, after yet another Russo-Turkish War, Tsar Alexander I gained Bessarabia (present day Moldova and parts of Ukraine), and thus gaining a foothold in the Balkans. Napoleon Bonaparte, alarmed by Russia’s expansionism and its continuing trading with Britain, France’s chief enemy at the time, led his Grand Army into Russia. It ended in disaster for the French.

Following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, Russophobes in the West resumed their viewing of the Tsars as despotic enemies of democracy. When Nicolas I occupied the Danubian principalities (Moldavia and Walachia) in 1853, France and Britain joined forces with the Ottomans against Russia. Nicholas I had mistakenly believed that the British government of prime minister George Hamilton-Gordon, who had earlier negotiated the final European coalition against Napoleon in 1813, would ally itself with Russia against the Turks, and partition the Balkan territories between them.

During this time warships and soldiers from allied nations used Varna as a base of operation in the Crimean War, so called because most fighting took place on the Crimean Peninsula in what is today Ukraine. Some Bulgarian volunteers fought on the Russian side. Seeing them as stalwarts against the Tsars, Sultan Abd al-Madjid granted the victorious allied nations a greater presence in his empire.

Following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877/78, the Great European Powers once again blocked Bulgaria’s bid to gain full sovereignty at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Under the original Treaty of San Stefano, the Ottomans were to give up control of most of their holdings in Europe. However, Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Germany, and especially the United Kingdom, represented by Benjamin Disraeli, opposed it. Disraeli feared a Russian takeover of the Bosporus Straits, and encroachment in the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal would jeopardise vital shipping lanes between the UK, India and Asia.

But it was also the French consul Leandre Legay who had saved Sofia. Incensed by the course of the war, the Ottomans were about to raze the city. Luckily, Legay along with Vito Positano, the Italian consul, talked Turkish authorities out of doing so.

It was not until 1908 that Bulgaria gained full independence; by then, however, Bulgaria had turned irreversibly westwards. Dimitr, a student, bluntly stated in class something that would have unnerved Algerians, the Irish and Americans. “I wish Bulgaria had been a British or French colony.”

Historical influences have not always gone one-way. The 900s witnessed the emergence in Bulgaria of Bogomilism, a blending of Eastern dualism, particularly Armenia Paulicianism and Manichaeism with an evangelical attempt to reform the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. The latter reacted by persecuting its followers, and in 1118, Alexius Comnenus executed their leader. Before their complete suppression, however, the Bogomils had spread to other parts of the Balkans. The mountainous country of Bosnia, in particular, became a stronghold.

The movement soon reached northern Italy and southern France, where it influenced the development of the Albigensian and Cathari groups in the 1100s and 1200s. After peaceful attempts at re-conversion had failed, Pope Innocent III in 120 launched a crusade against the rapidly growing faith. By 1321, Catharism had largely disappeared.

It was also these regions, along with the central part of France that the Huguenots, French Protestant followers of John Calvin, were most concentrated. The French theologian and historian Jacques-Benigne Bossuet posed the question of whether the Bogomils and Cathars had served as a precedent for the later Protestant Reformation. Their dualistic nature might have also helped shape the views of Rene Descartes, considered to be the father of modern philosophy.

And to this day, a few villages in southern France are said to have a tradition of hanging ornaments on tree branches to mark the end of winter and the arrival of spring.