Januarius macgahan biography

How journalist Januarius Aloysius MacGahan, the son of Irish immigrants, helped cause a shift in the European balance of power that made the liberation of Bulgaria possible.

“Since my letter of yesterday, I have supped full of horrors. Nothing has yet been said of the Turks that I do not now believe; nothing could be said of them that I should not think probable or likely…But let me tell you what we saw at Batak.”

With these words a young Irish American war correspondent, Januarius Aloysius MacGahan, opened his description of the Bulgarian town of Batak three months after it had been razed, and its rebellious people massacred, by Turkish irregulars.

MacGahan’s descriptions in this and subsequent dispatches slipped out of Turkish territory in 1876 sent shock waves through Europe, shook British foreign policy to its foundations, and helped cause a shift in the European balance of power that made Bulgaria’s liberation p