Really they were deeply impressed.
Ferdinand contrived a number of orders with brilliant decorations; they had had nothing of the kind in Bulgaria before his coming. Hardly a year passed but he added a new order to the list, and conferred on his toadies the glittering decoration it carried. The simple Bulgarians mocked at these orders, and made endless jokes about them. But there was keen competition for the decorations, and no respectable Sofiete can afford to be without one. Moreover, no decorated Bulgarian ever fails to wear the little button which marks him as decorated properly and jewelled in every hole.
A few of the titles of the courtiers surrounding Ferdinand may be specified, in order to show how elaborate is the state maintained among this simple peasant people. We have the Chancellor of Bulgarian Orders, the Chief of the Secret Cabinet, and two Secretaries, the Grand-Almoner of the Prince of Tirnovo, the Court Marshal, the Major-Domo, the Director of the Civil List, the Master of Ceremonies, the Court Physician, the Master of the Horse, the Inspector of Cavalry, the Attaché to the Queen, Mistress of the Robes, Court Poetess, Grand Mistress of the Court, Commandant of the Palace, and such a host of attachés and aides-de-camp as was never dreamt of outside a German Court of the eighteenth century.
All this monstrous ceremony served a double purpose with Ferdinand. It impressed the Bulgarians, who could not themselves go the pace, but had the secret snobbish admiration for such things always found among people who profess to regard simplicity as the chief among virtues. It further gave him a reason for taking offence at breaches of Court etiquette, and allowed him to penalize people against whom he could furbish up no other complaint.
Thus Stambuloff was continually infringing the rules of the Court. The Prime Minister, who had enjoyed a large income as the first advocate in Bulgaria, drew from his grateful country the salary of £500 for controlling its destinies in the teeth of an ungrateful Prince and an inappreciative people. To him the formal Court and the sinful waste it involved was really a source of offence. His open disregard for the childish forms it was sought to impose upon him was soon made a source of offence by the King, and even by the meek little Princess Marie Louise.
The effect of this regal extravagance was felt not only in Sofia itself, but throughout Bulgaria. Ferdinand was pleased to travel widely in his principality, and with some considerable elaboration of ceremony. The little municipalities he honoured with his visits had to prepare a ruinous hospitality in advance. A visit from the Prince beggared a community and left it bankrupt for years. Ferdinand ate up little villages like a locust, and earned the deep detestation of the impoverished peasants.
But he impressed them at the same time. And so he gained his object, he established a moral ascendency over the boors, who professed an exaggerated simplicity, and bowed down before ceremonies which made them look ridiculous, and extravagances which impoverished them.
The needs of the country, when Ferdinand accepted the throne, were many and essential. Roads and railways had to be built to develop the nascent agricultural industry which has been the mainstay of Bulgarian national life. The work was taken in hand by Stambuloff, whose plans for the progress of the country, even more than his foreign policy, reveal him as the statesman that his admirers have always proclaimed him. His policy of internal development entailed heavy taxation, under which the country groaned, and which earned him, more than anything else, the title of Tyrant, which Ferdinand thrust upon him.
With his fall the policy of internal development was brought to a standstill, but the taxation continued. Ferdinand employed much of the money in the creation of a capital city worthy of such a Prince and such a Court. He set about the creation of a new Sofia, taking as his motto “Expense is no object.” A modern city was run up with a celerity and elaboration that reminded visitors of the creation of Johannesburg.
M. Alexandre Hepp, the enthusiastic French biographer of Ferdinand, almost exhausts his enthusiasm in recounting the marvels of this recreation of an old city. “It seems like a new city imposed upon one already renewed,” he writes. “Every time I visit it I find something added—a monument, a museum, a park, a government office, a bank, an hotel, a factory, a theatre, or a school. New boulevards and streets, wide, well-paved, planted with trees, lined with kiosques, cross and re-cross. Lions and eagles ornament the new bridges. Electricity flares, the tramcars roar, motor-cars dash about. Near the statue to the Czar Liberator, designed by Zocchi, rears the finished structure of the great cathedral Newski, built at a cost of £1,000,000 raised by public subscription. Great markets are rising from their foundations.” And so on.