 After both Bulgaria and Armenia were conquered by the Ottoman Empire, many Armenian settlers from Armenia, Crimea, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Asia Minor arrived in what is now Bulgaria due to internal migration.Those coming from Armenia were forced to seek a new homeland because of their country's devastation by Arabs, Persians, and Turks.With Bulgaria gaining autonomy in the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, many Armenians fled the Ottoman Empire because of the Hamidian massacres in the 1890s and settled in the country, particularly in the major cities of Plovdiv and Varna.