“With pride and thanksgiving I accept the title of Bulgarian Czar offered me by the nation and the Government.”—Ferdinand of Bulgaria.
CHAPTER XIX
FERDINAND THE CZAR
The Young Turk revolution could only have been viewed by Ferdinand, and by his master, Franz Ferdinand, as a serious blow to their schemes of aggrandisement in the Balkans. Their whole pretext for interference was supplied by the oppression of the Christian nations in Thrace, Macedonia and Albania by the minions of the Red Sultan. And now the Red Sultan was no more a Sultan, and the new Sultan was put into power with the mission of remedying the grievances of these Christian subjects of Turkey.
Ferdinand was still a vassal Prince, and by the terms of the Treaty of Berlin bound to remain a vassal Prince. The Provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by the terms of the same treaty, only existed under the protection of the Austrian Empire. If the new Turkish administration should prove honest and successful, the schemers would be hard put to it for an excuse for the interference they had planned.
But excuses are easily found by men like Ferdinand of Bulgaria. The new Turkish Ministry gave a dinner in Constantinople to the representatives of the Great Powers. Naturally they left out M. Gueschoff, the Bulgarian political Agent in Constantinople, who was nothing but the servant of Turkey’s own vassal. But Ferdinand took offence at this slight, and seizing a section of the Orient Express railway, promptly proclaimed Bulgaria’s independence of Turkey.
In the same moment Austria took possession in full of the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the breach of the Treaty of Berlin thus became a huge one. The full nature of the plot was revealed when Germany, which was bound like all the other Powers signing the treaty to insist on its observance, backed the position of Austria and Bulgaria. In the words of the Kaiser, Germany stood by “in shining armour.” The prospect of a world struggle, since realized, was afforded to a startled civilization. But it was averted, and the schemers carried out their plan successfully.
The poorest of royal horsemen, Ferdinand enters Sofia as Czar for the first time, with two men at the head of his horse for the purpose of controlling it.
On October 5, 1908, Ferdinand rode into the ancient Bulgarian capital of Tirnovo, incidentally falling off his horse in the process, and was crowned Czar of Bulgaria, the regalia to which allusion has been made in the course of this narrative having been taken out of pawn and furbished up for the occasion. The happy peasantry danced the national dances once more, and the streets of the city afforded a spectacle seldom seen off the stage of the luxurious musical comedy theatres of the pre-war era.