The New Martyrs of Stara Zagora are the Orthodox Christians of the Bulgarian city of Stara Zagora (Eski Zagra) who were killed during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. They are commemorated together as a named group on July 19, the date associated by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church with the destruction of the city and the death of its faithful.
Their deaths fell within the events known as the Stara Zagora massacre, which took place during the Battle of Eski Zagra. After a Russian advance squad under General Iosif Gurko liberated the city on July 22, 1877, it withdrew in the face of a far larger Ottoman army under Suleyman Husnu Pasha. Regular Ottoman troops, together with irregular Circassian bashi-bazouk units, then attacked the city; over roughly three days the town was burned and largely destroyed, and a great number of civilians were killed. Sources record the dates as 19–21 July (Old Style), corresponding to 31 July – 2 August (New Style), and place the overall civilian death toll at about fourteen thousand.
By tradition the church of the Holy Trinity (Sveta Troitsa) became a particular place of slaughter, where some two thousand five hundred Christians who had sought refuge are said to have died on July 19, 1877. The population of the city had swelled to nearly forty thousand as villagers from the surrounding countryside fled there for protection, and when the assault came the escape routes were blocked, trapping the refugees. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church honours these victims as martyrs of the faith and people; commemorations have included a procession to the ossuary mausoleum dedicated to '19 July 1877'.
