A vestige of April 1876: the Cherry Artillery in the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising

A VESTIGE OF APRIL 1876: THE CHERRY ARTILLERY IN THE ILINDEN-PREOBRAZHENIE UPRISING 

Slavi Slavov 

(Summary) 

In the spring of 1876, during the April Uprising against the Ottoman Empire, the Bulgarians used homemade wooden artillery: the so-called cherry cannons. Its real effect was insignificant, but it had a certain moral impact: it raised the fighting spirit of the insurgents. Nearly thirty years later – during the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising – the Bulgarians again used the same type of cannons. If in 1876 wooden cannons were an extremely outdated technology that was almost without analogue, at least in Europe, then at the beginning of the 20th century their manufacture and attempts to use them appeared to be an absolute, hard-to-explain anachronism. The main explanation for the use of this ‘artillery’ by Ilinden-insurgents was the fact that they were inspired by the same ideals, by the same urge for freedom, as their oppressed countrymen of nearly three decades ago. 

Keywords: cherry cannons, wooden artillery, Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising, April Uprising, national liberation struggles of the Bulgarians against the Ottoman rule