CHAPTER VIII
THE BUTCHERED “BISMARCK”
The outstanding instance of Ferdinand’s intimacy with the grosser forms of assassination is the murder of Stepan Stambuloff, “the Bismarck of the Balkans.” This gross little being was a forceful, sturdy, fat man, who sprung from an innkeeper of Tirnovo; whence Ferdinand’s favourite name for him—the Tapster. He had been trained to the Bar, and was the foremost advocate of his day in Sofia.
He was almost the foremost conspirator as well, and played a prominent part in the series of rebellions against the Turkish rule which eventually resulted in the creation by Russia of the Principality of Bulgaria, and in the election of Alexander of Battenberg to the throne. His imagination was caught by the dream of the Greater Bulgaria created by the Treaty of San Stefano, and abrogated by the Berlin Conference before it had been actually called into being.
Stambuloff was a typical Bulgarian, coarse, vulgar, violent, and crafty. But he was a patriotic Bulgarian as well; and in his alert mind the danger arising from a benevolent Russia was more acute than that arising from a hostile Turkey. He it was who called Ferdinand to the throne to hold at bay the Russian influence; and to his Bulgarian mind the disfavour in which Ferdinand’s acceptance of the throne had landed him was one of his chief qualifications.
The first meeting of the pair took place upon a little steamer on which Ferdinand was stealing into his new principality by way of the river Danube. They discovered differences at their very first encounter, but the differences were then more important to the Prince than to the statesman. Ferdinand was loth to take Stambuloff into his counsels, and endeavoured to place Stoiloff, who was a member of the deputation which had selected him for Bulgaria, in the position of Prime Minister. But all attempts to form a Ministry were unavailing, and Ferdinand was forced to send for Stambuloff, and for the next six years the Tapster reigned supreme in Bulgaria.
The relations between the two, strained on their first meeting, went steadily from bad to worse as time wore on. Stambuloff was far from impressed by the statecraft which his Prince had imbibed at his mother’s knee, and treated him from the first as a silly schoolboy. Ferdinand’s love of ceremony and state was marked out by him for the most contemptuous treatment; he loved to make the state with which the Prince surrounded himself appear ridiculous and mean.
Ferdinand’s concern about recognition by the Powers was a mere nothing to Stambuloff; it provided a means for playing Russian intrigue off against Turkish hostility, and therefore Stambuloff welcomed it. In a word, he was for Bulgaria, while Ferdinand was only concerned with the interests and the prestige of the Prince of the Bulgarians.
While Ferdinand was settling down in Sofia, and learning the language and corrupting the politicians through his band of spies, he endured the arrogance and authority of Stambuloff patiently enough. But after four years of this he began to strive for some way of ridding himself of his too-powerful Minister. Then began a series of attempts upon the life of Stambuloff, which he evaded by coincidences that were remarkable in their effectiveness.
For instance, in 1891, he was walking home from his club with his friend and colleague, M. Beltcheff, and passed three men at a well-lit corner. Shortly afterwards he changed to the other side of his friend, and they had not walked a score of yards in this order when Beltcheff fell pierced by the bullets of assassins. As Stambuloff ran for the nearest guardhouse, a cry of “Stambuloff is dead” fell on his ears, convincing him that the bullets were intended for him. The murderers remain unpunished to this day. In the next year, the Bulgarian agent, Dr. Vulkovich, was stabbed in the street, in circumstances which point to another mistake by the assassins of the Prince. Once more the murderers, who were well known, contrived to escape punishment.