FERDINAND THE AMBITIOUS
“I drink to Czar Ferdinand, the heir to Constantine.”—Some Fuddled Yankee Scribe.
CHAPTER XIV
FERDINAND THE AMBITIOUS
In the summer of 1892 there was a notable sight in the Bavarian city of Munich. The richest goldsmith of the city of breweries displayed in his window a crown, sceptre, orb and sword, which he had made to the order of the Prince of Bulgaria. The rich jewels with which the regalia were decked were the family gems of the Princess Clementine, who had presented them to her pet son, in anticipation of the recognition by the Powers which both fondly believed to be imminent.
But the anticipation was not realized, and Ferdinand had not even the money to pay the goldsmith for his work. A lawsuit was initiated against him, and at the same time the aggrieved tradesman displayed the jewels in his shop window, where they drew a daily crowd. To stop the scandal the Princess Clementine stepped in and footed the bill; and the jewels were stored at her Ebenthal Palace until such time as they should be needed—not, as a matter of fact, until after her death.
The story illustrates the long-cherished ambition of the Bulgar Czar to reign supreme in his own realm; but that, after all, is perhaps a comprehensible ambition for the grandson of Louis Philippe and the descendant of Francis I. But the extent of the ambitions of the lesser Czar is not grasped by those who think that his ambitions are bounded by his wish to rule as the recognized sovereign of that Greater Bulgaria which was set up by Russia through the treaty of San Stefano. Ferdinand’s dreams are wilder by far than those wide boundaries would justify.
In the grounds of his Euxinograd Palace at the port of Varna is a little hill, from the crest of which can be obtained a spacious view across the Black Sea. On the summit the Prince caused to be erected a throne, and to this spot he would daily repair when spending his leisure at Euxinograd. Seated on this throne he would sit for hours gazing over the calm waters toward Constantinople; looking inscrutably out toward the Byzantium which was for so long the centre of Eastern power and the capital of the Empire of the East.
Not long before the outbreak of the great war he employed a well-known Vienna specialist in heraldry and genealogy to trace his descent, and to endeavour to link up his family with that of the ancient Bulgarian Czars. All things are possible to a Vienna specialist with a royal commission, and it is not surprising to learn that the antiquarian was entirely successful.
Ferdinand, it appears, traces his descent, in common with the Kaiser, to Philip of Hohenzollern, who married a descendant of the Byzantine Emperor Alexius Comnenus. Now Alexius had as wife Irene, who was daughter of Maria, the only daughter of the Bulgarian Czar Samuel. What better claim, then, than that of Ferdinand, not only to the Czardom of Bulgaria, but to imperial sway in the new Eastern realm of which the modern Byzantium must inevitably be the capital.