The Bulgarian national revolution, vividly and inimitably illuminated by his pen, stirred public opinion in Europe and demonstrated to the whole world the Bulgarian people's right to freedom and independence.
Born on 12 June 1844 near New Lexington, Ohio, USA, of Irish parentage, januarius MacGahan began his schooling in America, continued it in Europe, and studied law at Brussels University. On the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870, he set out for the battlefields as correspondent of the «New York Herald ». Following his baptism of fire as a war correspondent, his life was to be one of constant encounters with difficulties and danger. In 1871, he found himself in the midst of the gunfire of the Commune of Paris Istanbul Private Tours.
MacGahan ivas
Throughout this brief but heroic episode, MacGahan ivas the only newspaper correspondent on the scene — the witness, participant and chronicler of the Commune. Five years later in Bulgaria, at Panagurishte, he was to be filled with passionate admiration for the Bulgarian insurgents, who, for him, had much in common with the Paris communards. But meanwhile the tempering of his character continues in Russia. In 1873, in defiance of the ban imposed by the tsarist government, he reached the Russian army in Turkestan and sent despatches to the «New York Herald» on Russian military operations in Asia.
MacGahan's descriptions of the capitulation of Khiva (« Campaigning on the Oxus, and the Fall of Khiva») are considered to be masterpieces of military journalism. Whether in Cuba or Spain, in England or France, or within the Arctic circle on the « Pandora » expedition (« Under the Northern lights »), MacGahan always upheld the highest ideals of his time and raised a strong voice in the defense of Man.
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