Vasil Levski 
Throughout the 1800s, Ottoman authority in the Balkans had been breaking down, beginning with uprisings in Serbia. Exiled Bulgarian freedom fighters in groups called cheti stepped up armed skirmishes with the Turks from bases in Belgrade and Bucharest - led by revolutionary heroes such as Georgi Rakovski and Vasil Levski.
Levski is most noted for his immense efforts to raise the momentum of the Bulgarian underground rebellion by travelling across the country and setting up secret groups in preparation of a planned popular uprising. He was captured and hung just outside Sofia three years before the revolution started, but became a martyr for the Bulgarian people after his untimely death in 1873.
An uprising in September 1875, in Stara Zagora, was crushed by the Turks, and the following April, another revolt, prematurely started in the town of Koprivshtitsa, was also severely cut short. Tens of thousands of Bulgarians were killed in the rebellion - 15,000 in Plovdiv alone. Almost 58 villages were completely destroyed, including 5,000 men, women and children who were brutally burned and hacked to death in the town of Batak. Reports of these heinous killings reached Western Europe, who denounced the 'atrocities' and called for diplomatic action to resolve the Balkan situation. However, it was finally the Serbs and the Romanians who declared war on Turkey, and Russia also joined in to aid their Slavic Bulgarian relations in 1877, almost a year after the April Uprising.
Led by Alexander II, later called the Tsar Liberator by the Bulgarians, Russian troops won hard-fought victories at key points like Pleven and Shipka Pass, losing 200,000 troops by the war's end the following year. The Turks realized the end was near when Russian troops came to within 50 km of Constantinople. They granted independence to Bulgaria as well as almost two-thirds of the Balkan Peninsula, from the Adriatic to the Aegean. Once again fearing possible future Russian control of the Bosphorus through its Slavic allies, western powers hastily put together the Congress of Berlin in July 1878 and reversed Bulgaria's gains. Most of southern Thrace and Macedonia were returned to the direct control of the Ottomans, and the central territory south of the Balkan Mountains became an autonomous Turkish province called Eastern Rumelia. The land North of the Balkan Mountains was dubbed the Principality of Bulgaria and was a relatively independent state, and Alexander Battenburg, a German aristocrat who had fought under the Russian command during the war, was elected Prince of the constitutional monarchy.
Several decades of conflict and changes in Bulgaria's leadership ensued, including an uprising in Eastern Rumelia and an eventual reunification with the Bulgarian Principality in September 1885, as well as the Serbo-Bulgarian War in the same year. Russia became concerned that its Slavic ally was becoming too bold and pro-Russian army conspirators deposed Prince Battenburg and ushered him out of the country.
Stefan Stambolov took the reins of power as the leader and Prime Minister of a Council of Regents, and brought in German Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to be the new monarch. Stambolov's power was quite repressive and after his dictatorship ended in 1884, he was assassinated on Ferdinand's orders in 1895 - the beginning of an absolute monarchy not afraid to use violence and fear. In 1908, Ferdinand declared himself king of all Bulgaria and complete independence from Turkey.
