Ferdinand of Bulgaria: The Amazing Career of a Shoddy Czar

by Anonymous

Then it was announced that the King was about to abdicate in favour of Prince Boris. The latter had borne himself gallantly in the war, and was popular, compared to his father. The rumour of his impending resignation made things easier for Ferdinand, and he did not deny that rumour. He posed as a martyr and a victim of Russian intrigue. And the curious part of it is that he got people to believe him, and especially English people.

Ferdinand has always been very polite to foreign journalists, and in his hour of need this facile courtesy served him well. By this time few people in this country knew what all the fighting was about, or whether Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria or Rumania was in the wrong about the second Balkan war. What they did know was that the Bulgarians had administered the principal trouncings to the Turk, and had come out of the struggle worse off than when they entered.

On broad principles it was considered that Ferdinand had been most unfairly treated. The theory that the Balkan States should be limited by racial conditions has also prevailed in this country, among such people as were interested enough to give the matter a single thought. It is an excellent theory but for the fact that the average Macedonian peasant prefers to belong to the race which has the strongest band of murderers in the neighbourhood.

In any case, Ferdinand, who had a keen nose for sympathy, saw that his treachery could be covered by a sufficient amount of brazen complaining and posing. If he ever had any thought of abdicating he quickly laid it aside. He was quick to recognize that the worst that could possibly happen to him had already happened, and that the Great Powers would see that Bulgaria was shorn of no more territory. He set diligently to work to obscure the real facts of the second Balkan war; he has been obscuring them ever since.

At home he fomented disputes among the party politicians, and managed to switch them on to a discussion about which the Bulgarians have written whole libraries of books. He did not care who or what they blamed; let them only keep on arguing and their fury would spend itself in words. He was right; they continued to argue about the events of June, 1913, until they had something more cogent to engage their attention.

Meanwhile Ferdinand returned to the simple life. He found in his old hobbies of botany and ornithology a new charm; they took him much into the country and out of the cries of the enraged students. He added a new hobby, and interested himself much in animals. Soon an interested world was informed that he was spending his leisure in taming elephants.

The pro-German party in Bulgaria wished him to strive with his Austrian and German friends for a revision of the Treaty of Bucarest. Our own authorities on Balkan questions openly proclaimed that unless that were done, there was nothing that could save his crown for Ferdinand. The Sofiote Press began to publish stories of Prince Boris, showing what a hero he was, and how well fitted to rule in place of his unworthy father.

But if Ferdinand knows nothing else, he knows how to wait. He had waited many years for the chance of a Principality. He waited ages to bring about the downfall of Stambuloff. He waited even longer for the recognition by the Powers of Europe of his claim to be considered Prince of Bulgaria; and he waited nearly a quarter of a century to declare himself Czar of Bulgaria and independent of Turkey. None knows better than he the virtue of masterly inaction.

From the haven of Euxinograd—“My Sandringham,” as he used to call it when speaking to British visitors—he followed with interest the storm that was raging in Sofia. He cultivated sedulously every influence that was opposed to his old friends and supporters, and threw all his weight into the growing friendship arising between Bulgaria and Turkey, the two sufferers from the Balkan wars. His plans were simple enough; he wished to promote revolutionary outbreaks in Serbian Thrace, and to foster the Austrian influence in Sofia.

But he acted throughout by means of agents. Ostensibly he was living the simple life, and posing as an injured and misunderstood monarch. The fierce winds of controversy in Sofia in which he was made a target by all the controversialists did not blow upon him. He could see the storm-clouds thickening in the Balkans, and spent more and more time on his throne seat on the seashore, looking out to Constantinople.