On this day in 1908, our political class alone did something significant and unthinkable, without asking anyone outside - as it turns out, for the last time in our recent history.
Our rulers, led by the prince and the government, have the impudence and audacity to violate one of our most hated international treaties, along with the Neuilly-Berlin treaties. A number of factors contributed to the successful undertaking:
The dying Ottoman Empire, which barely found the strength to just grit its teeth for war, as it did during the Unification.
The favorable "indifference" of the great powers to the initiative of Ferdinand and Malinov - the major factors of the "international situation" at that very moment they neither feel like fighting, nor are they that important about what happened, nor do they have the opportunity to wage war.
A huge role in distracting them was also played by the fact that the very next day Austria-Hungary, learning about the act in Tarnovo, annexed the provinces of the wounded empire of Bosnia and Herzegovina in turn.
And last but not least - the rapid subsequent diplomacy of the tripartite Sofia-Sublime Porte-Moscow, with which the declaration from our old capital was officially and internationally legalized.
Period.
Of course, we will also mark the enormous driving force of Her Majesty Vanity. The possibility of Prince Ferdinand proclaiming himself king is not to be ignored at all as a leading factor in his motivation. The same vanity and arrogance that will squander everything achieved with the first Balkan War in just a few years.
No gun fires, no drop of blood is shed - almost like during the Unification, when only Captain Raycho Nikolov dies ridiculously.
Perhaps that is why this holiday has remained somewhat peripheral for Bulgarians compared to the other so-called national ones. There are no monuments, no graves, no memorials. Sirens do not wail for anyone. And our people are used to it, existing for centuries in a kind of permanent All Souls' Day.
For ordinary people, nothing really changes - neither the enslaver is expelled, nor the social order is changed. God knows from the pens and palanquins when they found out about what happened and how much they understood it.
What to do - the declaration of Independence was a "cult" affair. And why should we die when fate and the moment give us the opportunity for everything to happen both "gently" and solemnly.
Happy holiday!