FERDINAND THE FAITHLESS
“Ingratitude is the only unforgivable sin.”—Old Bulgarian Proverb.
“Ferdinand is a clever man, but not to be trusted.”—King Edward VII.
CHAPTER XVII
FERDINAND THE FAITHLESS
In the chief square of Sofia, near the Newski Cathedral, stands a great statue, the work of the Bulgarian sculptor Zocchi. It is erected to the Russian Czar, Alexander the Second, “the Czar Liberator.” A similar statue has been erected in the ancient Bulgarian capital of Tirnovo. In every peasant hut in Bulgaria a portrait of the same benefactor is hung; sometimes it disputes wall space with pictures of Gladstone and Lord Salisbury. These are some of the outward signs that Bulgaria has allowed a despicable foreigner to lead them into the deadliest ingratitude, and to make them pay their debt for national existence by the basest perfidy of which a whole nation has ever been guilty.
When the Russians discovered the survival of the ancient Bulgarians they found a race of hopeless outcasts, groaning under a Turkish tyranny that has its recent parallel in the Turkish treatment of the Christian Armenians. Later, when the most enterprising Bulgarians sought to free themselves from this intolerable oppression, the only means open to them were those resorted to by outlaws and murderers. They became modern Robin Hoods, without any of the elementary decency which characterized the behaviour of that legendary English hero.
Russia from the very outset recognized the claims imposed upon her by racial and religious affinity to the Bulgarians. How generously she paid that obligation may be read in the terms of the treaty of San Stefano. The Powers of Europe saw fit to revise the terms of that treaty, and Britain’s sympathy for small and oppressed people ensured that the nation so revived by Russia should not be blotted out of existence.
The Bulgaria created by the treaty of Berlin was a small and unimportant Principality. Its aggrandisement has been effected by innumerable breaches of that compact, one of which was the very assumption by Ferdinand of the throne. For that reason the new Prince, as I have already told, was not recognized by the Powers, and his vanity made their recognition all important to him.