“What do you want?” he asked.
“Show us where to find the King and the Queen!” was the reply.
“Back, back!” shouted the Lieutenant; but he fell instantly, killed by three or four bullets.
The conspirators advanced, but suddenly the electric lights went out, and all were enveloped in profound darkness. Utterly confounded and slowly feeling their way up the stairs, the revolutionists reached the antechamber of the King’s apartment. It was dark, but one of the officers discovered a wax candle in a chandelier. He lighted it, and they could see their way. This trifling little circumstance, entirely accidental, decided the success of the plot. Without light it would have been impossible for them to find the victims, who might have made their escape through the long corridors and numerous apartments of the palace, with which they were familiar while the conspirators were not, and could not have followed them.
Some of the officers now carried lights, while the others followed them with revolvers in their hands. In breathless haste they hurried through the rooms in search of the royal couple. They opened the closets and raised the curtains, but no trace either of the King or of the Queen. At last Queen Draga’s servant was found. He dangerously wounded Captain Dimitrevitch, who discovered him, but his life was spared for a little, because he was needed. It was in fact this servant who indicated to the officers the place where the King and the Queen had gone to hide themselves. Thereupon he was shot. At this moment Colonel Maschin joined the conspirators and took them to the King’s bedroom, where the King’s adjutant tried to prevent their search, but was shot by the Colonel’s companions.
After a long search a small door was discovered leading to an alcove. The door was locked and had to be burst open with an axe. In this alcove the royal couple had taken refuge. Both were in their night robes. The King was standing in the centre, holding the Queen in his arms, as if to protect her. Colonel Maumovitch commenced reading to the King a document which demanded that he should abdicate the throne because he had dishonored Servia by wedding “a public prostitute.” The King answered by shooting Maumovitch through the heart. Another officer renewed the demand for the King’s abdication; but the younger officers had become impatient and now fired their revolvers at the royal couple until both expired. The body of the King showed thirty wounds, while the body of the Queen was so terribly lacerated by pistol-shot and sword wounds that her features could not be recognized, and the wounds could not be counted. Both died heroically, trying to protect each other with their own bodies.
Together with the King and the Queen, two brothers of the latter, and a number of their most prominent adherents were murdered in cold blood. This terrible butchery reveals the semi-savage ferocity of the Balkan population.
When the people of Belgrade awoke from their sleep early in the morning of June 11, there was not, as might have been expected, a manifestation of horror, pity, and sorrow, among them, but, on the contrary, rejoicing and exultation on all sides. Flags were raised, houses were decorated, salutes were fired; a stranger entering the city might have supposed that a great national festival was being commemorated by the enthusiastic crowds of men, women, and children.
It may be taken as a convincing proof of the sincerity of the wrath and the depth of the contempt which the people of Servia felt for Alexander I and Draga, that of the immense multitude which came to inspect the lacerated bodies of those who but the day before had been their King and their Queen, not one expressed a word of regret, or shed a tear of sorrow. Many, on the contrary, spat on the mangled remains, or mumbled words of execration as they passed by the plain coffins. Death itself had not been able to wipe out the misdeeds of these two persons.
History, the terrible but just avenger, will preserve for many ages the memory of Alexander the First of Servia, not so much for any single crime, as for having persistently insulted the national pride and the moral sentiment of the people over whom Providence had placed him as ruler and protector.