Having learned about the activities of the Central Committee and the Committee of Elders, Rakovski returned to Bucharest and started an energetic propaganda against making the Bulgarian national-liberation movement dependent on foreign states1 policies. He succeeded in winning over the majority of the emigrants and formed a 'Supreme National Civil Command' which was guided by the principle of sending armed detachments to Bulgaria. In 1867 Rakovski succeeded in preparing two detachments under the leadership of the voevodesPanayot Hitov and Filip Totyu, but his death put an end to his future plans.
Crossed the Danube and engaged
After Rakovski's death the initiative again passed into the hands of the Committee of Elders, which agreed with the Serbian government that a special military school was to be set up in Belgrade for 200 Bulgarian youths — the Se-cond Bulgarian Legion. The latter, however, had the fate of the First Legion — it was disbanded only several months later. Most of its members went back to Romania and formed a 125-men-strong detachment, headed by the voevodes Hadji Dimiter and Stefan Karadja. In July 1868, the detachment crossed the Danube and engaged in several bloody battles with the Turks. The last of these battles took place on Mount Bouzloudja in the Balkan Range and ended in the death of most of the revolutionaries, including the voevode Hadji Dimiter.
The heroic end of this detachment marked the decline of the detachment tactics. It became obvious that these detachments, sent from outside, in spite of their excellent military schooling, heroism and selflessness of their members were incapable of rousing the people in a mass uprising, History had made it imperative for the Bulgarian national-liberation movement to pass over to a new, higher stage of development and this stage was linked with the name of another great son of Bulgaria – Vassil Levski.
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