Revolutionary Hristo Patrev

Hristo Nikolov Patrev was a Bulgarian revolutionary born in January 1848 in the village of Shipka, then part of the Ottoman Empire. He was educated in his native village before moving temporarily to Varna, where he worked as a servant and petty trader.

He then joined a small hajduk detachment operating in Ludogorie. In 1868, after a battle near the village of Vishovgrad, he was captured by the Ottoman authorities together with his comrade-in-arms Stefan Oreshkov. Patrev was sentenced to lifelong exile in the fortress of Acre, now in northern Palestine. In 1874 he escaped and joined the revolutionary émigrés in Romania.

In the spring of 1876 he was sent as a revolutionary agitator and organiser to the Tarnovo Revolutionary District, in the area between Shipka and Gabrovo. After the April Uprising was proclaimed, he led an insurgent detachment that operated actively in the Gabrovo and Tryavna regions. After the detachment was defeated, Hristo Patrev headed towards the eastern Balkan Mountains, but was killed by bashi-bazouks near the village of Asparuhovo, then called Chenge, in May 1876.

He is remembered and honoured for his self-sacrifice and commitment to the struggle for Bulgaria's freedom.