FERDINAND THE MARTYR
“If God and my foes grant me life, we shall go on, and my children, my successors, will follow the road on which I have been the pioneer.”—Ferdinand of Bulgaria.
CHAPTER XXI
FERDINAND THE MARTYR
The Treaty of Bucarest was followed in Bulgaria by what Ferdinand, in an interview with a British newspaper correspondent, pathetically described as a “schemozzle.” You may remember that among his many accomplishments a facile use of Yiddish speech takes high rank.
And really, considering how furiously the Bulgarians had fought, and how freely they shed their blood, it is not surprising that they were angry with him. All their neighbours had got something substantial, even Rumania, which had not taken up arms against the Turks. And Bulgaria was the poorer by a substantial slice of territory extorted from Ferdinand by his Rumanian neighbours. The Turks had regained possession of Macedonia, including the city of Adrianople. The Greeks had the coveted ports of Salonica and Kavalla on the Ægean. The Serbians, though they had not found their way out to the Adriatic, had Thrace, and a long railway line from Belgrade through Uskub, with an outlet through Greek territory to Salonica.
Each of the ten Bulgarian political parties blamed one of the leaders of another party, but all united in giving chief part of the blame to Ferdinand himself. And in this, there can be no doubt, they were quite right.
Ferdinand himself was indeed in a bad way. He had offended Russia beyond all chance of recovery in her good graces. He had lost every trick in the game, and his dreams of being crowned in Constantinople had melted into thin air. In his extremity he turned to his Austrian friends for sympathy. It was characteristic of him that he should go off to Vienna disguised as the Count of Murany. He went for advice and sympathy to his friend Franz Ferdinand. But this astute person refused to see him. Moreover, the semi-official Press of Vienna came out with a demand that Ferdinand should be required to leave the Austrian capital. He was, they said, a dangerous and undesirable visitor. So Ferdinand went quietly back to Sofia, taking with him a sheaf of Press cuttings to prove, at any rate, that the Austrians were no friends of his.
There were no national dances to welcome him home. Instead a crowd assembled under the Palace windows and moaned, “Down with the Balkan Nero.” And the students had got a pot of tar and a big brush and scrawled on the Palace walls, in letters two feet long, “To Let.”
The students had reason to be angry with him. He had never really liked the students of Sofia, and when the attack on his Allies was made, he had arranged that a regiment, mainly composed of students and other advanced thinkers, young men of position in Bulgaria, should be placed in a position without support where they were sure to be badly cut up. This had leaked out, and Ferdinand was more unpopular than ever with the youth and intellect of Sofia. “Down with the Balkan Nero,” they cried; and Ferdinand shuddered to hear them.