The representatives of the intelligentsia wrote in a language which they called Bulgarian and strove for a more even representation of the local Bulgarian dialects spoken in Macedonia in formal Bulgarian. The autonomous Bulgarian Exarchate established in 1870 included northwestern Macedonia. After the overwhelming vote of the districts of Ohrid and Skopje, it grew to include the whole of present-day Vardar and Pirin Macedonia in 1874. This process of Bulgarian national revival in Macedonia, however, was much less successful in historical Macedonia, which beside Slavs had compact Greek and Aromanian populations. The Hellenic idea and the Patriarchate of Constantinople preserved much of their earlier influence among local Bulgarians and the arrival of the Bulgarian idea turned the region into a battlefield between those owing allegiance to the Patriarchate and tose to Exarchate with division lines often separating family and kin.