It is interesting to note how Ferdinand played upon this French sympathy, and how adroitly he made use of it. From Paris he arranged the reconciliation with Russia which followed the conversion of Prince Boris to the Orthodox faith, and France was the first country to fête him in the ceremonious way his heart yearned for.
“At the Élysée,” writes Mr. John Macdonald, “the successor of the French kings and emperors royally entertained the Orleanist Prince who was so successfully introducing French culture and manners into a semi-Oriental land; or almost royally, for the Prince was as yet only half a king. Semi-royal honours only could be accorded to the Prince of Bulgaria; half a gala at the Opera, half a military manœuvre, and so on.”
But to Ferdinand half a loaf was indeed better than no bread. When he demanded royal honours prior to a visit to England for the funeral of Queen Victoria he was bluntly told he could not have them. Therefore he decided to stay away. France, however, did her best for Ferdinand.
He paid his debts in a characteristic manner. For the reorganization of the Bulgarian Army he went to France, and there borrowed money, equipment and military advisers. The French artillery enabled the Bulgarians to score so heavily over the Turks in their first encounters, and what of generalship the Bulgarian leaders possess is undoubtedly due to their French tuition. The Bulgarian Black Sea fleet was of French organization, and its first admiral was a French naval officer named Pichon.
If further evidence was needed that Ferdinand wore a golden French heart under his hereditary German and Austrian decorations, as he wore his illicit ribbon of the Legion of Honour, let me tell you one more story from the collection of the excellent M. Hepp.
It was July 14, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, and Ferdinand had asked to his Varna Palace M. Bourgarel, the French Minister at Sofia, and the faithful Hepp. They dined in the open air at the foot of Mount Vitosch. Suddenly, from behind a thicket, there rose the strains of the Marseillaise, while Ferdinand, rising to his feet, shouted “Vive la France!”
Yes, France felt very sure of Ferdinand, and Bulgaria could always count upon warm friendship in Paris, and wherever French influence was felt. His perfidy was not suspected till nearly the end of 1914 when M. Joseph Reinach, who had maintained a long correspondence with him ever since their first meeting in 1906, began to form suspicions. He framed a letter to Ferdinand on February 11, 1915, to the effect that he had to express the uneasiness he was feeling, and which all the French friends of Bulgaria and its Czar felt at recent news.
Ferdinand, in a letter signed “The Good European,” his usual signature in this correspondence, told him not to believe the news, adding, “My sentiments remain unchanged.” Even then he was bargaining with the enemies of France to betray the cause of the Entente and of the small nations!
The Bulgarian treaty with Germany was signed on July 17, but on August 15 Ferdinand’s Minister, M. Dobrovitch, was writing to Paris expressing false hopes of a future Russian success, and holding out elusive promises that Bulgaria would intervene on the side of the Allies.
“A more shameful comedy has never been enacted,” writes M. Reinach, in concluding the story of Ferdinand’s final rupture with the country which he claimed was dearest of all to him, the country of his mother and of his own upbringing.