10 Leva 130th Anniversary of Unification

The Unification of 1885 merged the autonomous Principality of Bulgaria with Eastern Rumelia — achieved not through war or great-power negotiation, but a near-bloodless coup staged by local militia officers in Plovdiv on the night of September 5th. Russia, which had created both entities at the 1878 Congress of Berlin, was furious and immediately stripped Prince Alexander of Battenberg of his Russian military commission. The great irony is that the unification Russia opposed was never actually reversed.