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Ferdinand the Ambitious gazing from his Euxinograd Palace across the Black Sea towards Constantinople.

FERDINAND OF

BULGARIA

THE AMAZING CAREER OF

A SHODDY CZAR

By the Author of

“THE REAL KAISER”

LONDON: ANDREW MELROSE, LTD.

3 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.

1916

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTORY

INTRODUCTORY

“Who is that evil-looking Dago?” asked an Australian friend; “he looks as though he had never been outside a horse in his life.”

We were gazing at the procession of royalties who followed the body of King Edward VII through his mourning capital. The Dago in question was Ferdinand, Czar of the Bulgarians; and one could not but recognize the truth of the Colonial’s brutal description.

He wore, it may be remembered, an Astrakan cap and coat; and the day was a warm one. His fat figure swayed from side to side in the saddle, and he looked thoroughly frightened of the magnificent horse he bestrode with so ill a grace. The perspiration dropped down his flabby cheeks.

He was not in the sort of company where he was calculated to shine. All around him were princes who would not be seen speaking to him. The London crowd hardly knew who he was, and betrayed less interest in him than it would have shown in the latest coloured monarch from the wilds of Africa.

His bright, shifty eyes turned here and there, vainly seeking something friendly and familiar. No doubt but Ferdinand made a poor showing on his last visit to London; the very last, possibly, that he will ever be allowed to pay to the capital of the British Empire.

But I ventured at the time to predict to my friend from the Antipodes that he would one day hear a good deal more of Czar Ferdinand than he had hitherto learned. For though he was then an unconsidered personage in English-speaking countries, he already enjoyed quite another reputation upon the Continent of Europe.

I explained that he was half a Frenchman, and that in Paris, where notabilities are summed up more surely than anywhere else in the wide world, he was esteemed by no means a negligible quantity.

Berlin, I said, had already put him down as a man with a price, and was only seeking to find how great was the price that must be paid. Austria—the new Austria, as represented by the clever heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand—still looked askance at him, but was determined to make him a friend before he should have returned to amity with Russia.

Russia had against his name the big black cross that is never obliterated in the secret archives of the White Empire, if the gossips of the Chancelleries are to be believed. Finally, in the Balkan States, still the slums of Europe by force of circumstances, he was the man to whom politicians looked for the next move.

I little guessed what world-shaking consequences were to derive from that move. But I was able to say enough to my friend to awaken in him a new interest in the man whom his sturdy Colonialism led him to describe as an “evil-looking Dago.”

Since then I have seen Ferdinand in varying circumstances, all of which have tended to increase my interest in him, without in any way adding to the sum of my liking for him, and all that he represents.

I can see him now, riding into Sofia in triumph, with a wreath of green leaves around his head, and a band of victorious Bulgarian warriors as his escort. It was the first time Sofia had ever really acclaimed him, and he looked almost human as he acknowledged the ringing plaudits of a people that was wont to turn away its face as he rode by.

I remember him, too, in Paris; at Longchamps the day of the Grand Prix. The elaborate precautions made that day by the police to prevent any of those untoward incidents of which he has lived in dread for a quarter of a century spoiled the whole day for the Parisians. It was impossible to move about the lawn without encountering cordons of gendarmes, placed there to afford a wide breathing space for the imitation Czar.

I also saw him at Carlsbad, very much at home among the Austrians, who are really the people of his choice. He maintained a monstrous state there, and his comings and goings were as good as any spectacle I have seen.

And always, wherever I encountered him, I heard stories. They were not nice stories, for he was the hero of them. But they represented the Continental opinion that he was distinctly a man of consequence; a man who would one day bulk big in the world’s history.

All these stories threw a bright light on the character of the supposed useless fop, who made Bismarck reverse his first contemptuous estimate of him. The final judgment of the old cynic was that Ferdinand was “a sharp young fellow.” They confounded entirely the British view of him, which has recently had to be revised.

For it is only too true that our attitude was that of the Rugby schoolboy. “We have heard of the Kaiser; and the Czar and the French President are our good friends. But who on earth is King Ferdinand of Bulgaria?”

The answer is plain to be read. He is the parvenu of princes, the outcast among Kings, the Czar of Shoddy. His history and habits, his ambitions and abilities, his amusements and amours, as far as I have been able to trace them, are set out in the following chronicle.

A POT-HOUSE PRINCE

“The Prince of Bulgaria, if there exists in the world a being unfortunate enough to take up that position.” —Bismarck.

CHAPTER I
A POT-HOUSE PRINCE

One day in December, 1886, there slouched into Ronacher’s Circus, a well-known Vienna beer garden, three weary Bulgarian politicians. Some weeks before they had left Sofia full of importance, and very pleased with themselves. In their ears were ringing the injunctions of Stambuloff, the “Bismarck of Bulgaria,” and they were under no kind of misapprehension as to their mission.

They were to come back with a Prince, and not until they had got one dare they show their faces in Sofia again. He was to be a presentable Prince, young, wealthy, a soldier, and, above all, powerfully connected. It seemed easy enough to them, for they were patriotic Bulgarians, and thought that all the unoccupied Princes of Europe would compete for so proud a position as that of Prince of Bulgaria. Possibly their phantasy was not shared by the wise old man who sent them out on their mission; for it is recorded that he grinned sardonically as he saw them go.

From Court to Court they went, hawking the vacant principality and receiving the most surprising rebuffs. They offered the place to the Grand Duke Vladimir of Russia, and he refused it with a rude promptness. Valdemar of Denmark listened to all they had to say, and said he would write and let them know. His answer was in the negative. From Prince Carol of Rumania they received a refusal startling in its emphasis. They rubbed their heads, and decided to try more tentative measures.

Hither and thither they went, hinting at the great opportunity that offered for an enterprising young Prince. Their overtures were everywhere received with a chilliness that was rigid in its iciness. They thought of grim old Stambuloff waiting at home for news, and trudged manfully on to another Court. Soon they realized that they were the laughing-stock of Europe.

So they found their way to Vienna, which was as near home as they dared to venture, and determined to spend a little time in a well-earned vacation from the task of Prince-hunting. Their steps were guided to the famous beer garden by a very pleasant acquaintance they had made in the Austrian pleasure city; and there they rested, well content with a cool drink and a friendly chat.

And while they rested, there came on the scene a Major Laabe, to whom they were introduced by their Viennese friend, who was a smooth-spoken individual of slightly Jewish appearance. Major Laabe was an individual of quite another type, a dashing Austrian cavalry officer who knew everybody and everything. He was sympathetic to the travel-worn Bulgars, and over a bottle or two of wine they confided to him their mission, and its lack of result.

It was then that the Major sprang to his feet and slapped his deerskin riding breeches of spotless white in pure amazement and joy. “Why,” he cried, “I know the very man you want; and by a strange coincidence he is here on this very spot. He is Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, grandson of Louis Philippe of France, and cousin of every crowned head in Europe. He is a prime favourite of both the Emperor of Austria and the Czar of Russia. And, my boys, don’t say I told you so, but he is as rich as Crœsus.”

Grekoff, Galtcheff, and Stoiloff—such were the names of the three simple Bulgars—looked at one another with glistening eyes. It seemed too good to be true. “Come along with me,” urged the genial Major, “and be presented to him. He’s just in here,” and he led the way to the billiard-room.

There the eyes of the three men from Sofia fell upon a tall young man of twenty-six, who with a billiard cue in his hand, was walking round the table with a gait that was curious in its mincing affectation. He was clad in the uniform of an Austrian sub-lieutenant, and was really quite a beautiful thing in the way of princes.

His face was remarkable for its length, and for the cruel hook that marked the prominent nose. The eyes were bright with intelligence, the lips thin and set tight. And in his right eye he wore a monocle with a gilt rim, a rarer embellishment to a young man in those days than in these. As they watched him he posed for the shot—a difficult cannon—and made it with infinite skill and appearance of ease. Then moving to take his place for another shot, he let the monocle fall from his eye and turned and faced them squarely. But even then they noticed that he did not look at them.

Introductions were made, and soon the five men were seated at a table by a quiet bar, with opened bottles before them. In less than half an hour the three Bulgarians were offering this young exquisite the post which all the young princes of Europe had refused in quick succession, and he was staring at them through his monocle with a regard in which shyness and impudence were blended.

At heart he was furious. He had been waiting for this offer for weeks. He and his mother had talked of nothing else. But these clods from the least civilized of the Balkan States had ignored him; had actually been unaware of his existence. So, as they eagerly set out the advantages of their offer, and pressed for its instant acceptance, he smiled sardonically, and framed the words of his answer.

When he delivered it, it filled them with dismay. Very quietly he expressed his sense of the honour they had done him, and of his own unworthiness for so important a post. Then he reminded them that the Powers of Europe must be consulted before he could safely accept. With remarkable cunning he made them feel that, should he accept, he would be doing them a favour. Then he dismissed them, greatly abashed.

Some months later, however, they were received at the Coburg palace in Vienna, and overwhelmed with flatteries by his clever old mother. Difficulties were discussed, their power to make the offer questioned, and a great show of wealth and influence, both of which the Princess Clementine certainly possessed, was made. Eventually an arrangement was reached whereby Stoiloff should visit the Princess’s country palace at Ebenthal, bringing with him two influential Bulgarians of the mission, Vinaroff and Popoff.

This last was a stern old warrior and a keen judge of men. Ferdinand received them in a gorgeous reception-room, surrounded already by the state of a reigning prince. By a writing-table near the window sat the keen-faced old woman who had spent half her life to fulfil her ambition of seating her son upon a throne.

The ordeal was almost too much for Ferdinand. He stood there, affecting the ease he had acquired in his pilgrimages through the Courts of Europe. But old Popoff could smell the perfume with which he reeked, and could see the nervous trembling of his hands as he sought to evade his warrior eye. But for the inspiring presence of his mother, Ferdinand might have thrown away the chance for which his boyhood and young manhood had been spent. But he got through somehow; the offer was made and accepted, conditionally upon the consent of the Powers being given to it.

Then Ferdinand entered upon an experience as strange and disheartening as that of the men who had sought him out to make him prince. He found everywhere that the proposal was received with a surprised distaste. Not all his mother’s tact and influence could make anybody look upon the choice with a favourable eye. The only encouragement he got—if it was encouragement—came from Bismarck, whose advice to his predecessor arose in his mind at this crisis in his affairs.

“Take it!” said the cynical old Prussian to Alexander of Battenberg. “It will at least be a pleasant reminiscence.”

Three weeks passed, and Stambuloff began to demand his prince most urgently. The argument about waiting for the consent of the Powers was ignored by the Statesman. Ferdinand was warned in unmistakable terms that the offer was only open for a few more days. He must come now, or never. Then, forgetting all his protestations that he would only accept if the Powers endorsed the choice of Bulgaria, Ferdinand went.

He went with a cant phrase in his mouth; he has spouted miles of such stuff in the quarter-century and more that has since elapsed. But this first piece of cant that fell from the lips of the new prince caused the Courts of Europe to smile and the Chancelleries to chuckle.

“I regard it as my sacred duty to set foot at the earliest possible moment on the soil of my new country.”

Thus the Pot-house Prince, who bargained for a principality in a beer garden, and who was introduced to the first of his new subjects in a billiard-room through the mediation of a Jewish moneylender and a needy Austrian man-about-town.

But Ferdinand did not care; he had got the job which had been dangled before his eyes since first he could remember. He had fulfilled his mother’s dearest wish, and got his foot in among the Rulers of Europe.

THE TRAINING OF A TRAITOR

“He lived in an atmosphere of womanly luxury, so that sweet perfumes and pretty flowers became necessaries of life to him.”

CHAPTER II
THE TRAINING OF A TRAITOR

Ferdinand owed his principality to his mother, Princess Clementine of Orleans, the youngest and cleverest daughter of the French King Louis Philippe. He owed also his capacity for filling the position to the training bestowed upon him by that truly remarkable woman. It was a peculiar training, for he was trained to fill a hypothetical throne. Make a king of him, was his mother’s motto, and the kingdom is sure to turn up some day.

Clementine of Orleans was one of the stormy petrels of European inner politics. “The Czar’s nightmare, the Austrian Emperor’s bogey, and Bismarck’s sleeping draught” had been the epigrammatic description of the rôle she played, thrown off after deep consideration by an English diplomatist who worked out his impromptus very thoroughly.

She had married Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg Kohary, and by the Kohary hangs a tale. It was supposed by the vulgar to be an additional title, but it really was an excrescence on the Saxe-Coburg appellation, tacked on in return for some millions in hard cash. The original Kohary was a swindling army contractor whose name in England would be Cohen. He had made untold wealth by a system of army contracting which has its feeble imitators at the present day, and he cherished high ambitions for his pretty daughter Tony.

She, and her wealth, attracted the notice of that poverty-stricken prince, Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, grandfather of Bulgaria’s elect. The wedding and the dowry were arranged, and the condition exacted by the man of millions was that the Kohary should appear in the princely title. So it was; though Prince Augustus, at the instigation of his spouse Clementine, dropped the Cohen as soon as he conscientiously could. But there it was, and when, many years afterwards, Ferdinand of Bulgaria was able to address a deputation of Jewish merchants in their native Yiddish, gossips recalled a circumstance which explained why he was the only European ruler who could claim such an accomplishment.

Ferdinand’s Mother, Princess Clementine, at the age of 82.

But the Princess Clementine moved in a circle that had the discernment to see that the brand of Kohary was not upon her. She bore rather the stamp of the Bourbons, and to the very last of her extreme old age preserved the aristocratic air that became a daughter of Louis Philippe. She inherited immense wealth, and knew how to take care of it. Two passions possessed her in her life. The first was to restore the monarchical line in France, and to that end she plotted skilfully and unsuccessfully. The other was to realize in the person of her youngest son a prophecy that affected her most profoundly when it was delivered, and obtained a greater hold upon her with each succeeding year of her life.

The prophecy was delivered by a very old and unsightly gipsy woman who cajoled the Princess into permitting an inspection of her hand. The sybil declared that one of the sons of Clementine would one day reign a crowned king. The forecast was in accordance with the ambition and training of this remarkable woman, who at once decided that Ferdinand, the youngest and brightest of her boys, must be the instrument of its fulfilment.

She had sat at the feet of the most astute statesmen of her time, and had earned the appellation of “a Talleyrand in petticoats.” Those who knew her best believed fondly that she was beyond all delusions; they learned their error when they found what schemes she was cherishing for the unlovable Ferdinand. She set her heart upon a throne for him, though what throne she could not even dimly discern.

The kind of education this boy received from the sparkling, cynical, witty Frenchwoman can be imagined. Every step of his career is eloquent of the lessons he learned, and of how well he learned them. She taught him that love was a weak passion, since it gave some clinging woman the right to impose herself as a burden upon a strong man. She taught him the value of influential friends, and how to take any amount of snubbing from any one who might eventually be of use to him.

From Court to Court of Europe she dragged him at an age when most boys are immersed in manly sports and the hard regime of ordinary education. He became the most accomplished young prince in all Europe in the matter of modern languages, though by a strange oversight she never caused him to learn Bulgarian. He knew everybody, and was seen everywhere. Not one of his great pack of relatives escaped his acquaintance; she insinuated to them, one and all, that in his case the claims of consanguinity could not be overlooked.

She inspired in him a feminine horror of being deceived. To this day he dreads that possibility more than anything else, save only assassination. No better training in the art of deception could possibly be devised than to keep a youth constantly on the look-out for deception. At a comparatively early age Ferdinand became a past master in all the arts of simulation and deceit.

The masculine side of his education was neglected. He never learned to play games like other boys; he never learned the ordinary accomplishment of princes, the mastery of a horse. He lived in an atmosphere of womanly luxury, so that sweet perfumes and pretty flowers became necessaries of life to him.

He was by nature a fop. All the arts of dandyism were practised by him, his clothes affected his gait. He flitted from Court to Court, and the more formal the Court the greater his admiration for it. Display was to him a part of kingship; one of the most tangible and real attributes of royalty.

Thus, although he had not the most remote hope of legitimate succession to a throne, at twenty he was possessed of a complete theory of kingship. His mother, who appraised the whole world at its most just value, and could discriminate between the instant value of a King of England and a Czar of Russia, gave to him the undiscriminating worship that she denied to any other human being, even in a fractional degree. But there was no sign of the throne for which he had been so carefully trained.

Therefore, at the age of twenty Ferdinand had to join the Austrian Army as a sub-lieutenant. He was no soldier by nature, and his training had unfitted him for the vocation in a marked degree. He had inherited a nervous disposition, that made the occupation selected for him a lifelong misery. His first commission was in a cavalry regiment, but his execrable horsemanship soon caused him to be transferred to a foot regiment. It was as a lieutenant of Jaegers that he was apparelled on that memorable day when the tired Bulgarian envoys first saw him in the Vienna beer garden.

The clever old woman and the calculating young man had been expecting them. The net was spread and richly baited from the millions of Clementine. All that money and cunning could do to win him the vacant princedom had been done. The result has already been told.

His mother trained Ferdinand for a throne, and her influence and her wealth made for him the opportunity. As his story is unfolded, we shall see her continually at his elbow, prompting him in all the tangled affairs of his statecraft. Her love for him never waned, and to the last he was the object of adoration of the most sophisticated woman that ever adorned a Court in Europe.

Her death deprived him of the best counsellor and the most powerful friend that such a prince has ever been known to possess. The gap it left in his councils will be illustrated in the course of this narrative. She died in her beloved Vienna in February, 1907, at the age of eighty-nine. Her three sons, Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Augustus son-in-law of the deposed Emperor of Brazil, and Philip, son-in-law of King Leopold of the Belgians, stood at her bedside as she passed away.

The thing she had lived to bring about had not yet come to pass. Ferdinand made himself Czar of the Bulgarians in 1908. The poor old Princess died just a year too soon.

LEARNING THE ROPES

“The position is not particularly brilliant, but where is a better one to be found? I am a reigning Prince.” —Ferdinand of Bulgaria.

CHAPTER III
LEARNING THE ROPES

When Ferdinand found it was his “sacred duty” to occupy the vacant Principality without loss of time, he disguised himself and fled from Vienna. His initial disguise was that of a Viennese cab-driver, but he changed several times before he arrived in Sofia disguised as a Bulgarian general. He has lived a substantial portion of his life in various disguises since that day.

If one had any pity to spare for such a malignant creature, one might almost pity him his first experiences in Bulgaria. The Bulgars did not know him, but his reputation had preceded him from the mouth of that Popoff who had inspected him so critically in the reception-room of his mother’s summer palace. The envoys were bombarded with questions on their return, and those most responsible for the choice mustered up enough courage to describe him as “most diplomatic.”

This was hardly what the Bulgars had been led to expect, and the wise men noted that Popoff held his speech. This led to direct questions, and Popoff let out his opinion. “Pah!” says he, “scented like a civet.” And the Bulgarians, who make scent but do not use it, never forgot the description.

Ferdinand had been elected to fill the shoes of a prince who had been kidnapped for his virtues and abilities. The dashing Alexander of Battenberg is a popular hero of his people, a warrior Prince whom the rough Bulgarian peasants could understand and love. There comes to take his place a finicking, fine gentleman with an eyeglass in his eye, who shows up in the capital for the first time in a general’s uniform, but riding in a carriage. As a matter of fact, he was in such a state of nervous terror that it would not have been safe to let him mount a horse.

And what a country for such an exquisite to rule! Bulgaria in 1915 is bad enough, but words fail to paint the primitive savagery of the country in 1887. Sofia, the capital, was little more than a glorified village, and the new Prince bumped hideously over the ruts in the streets as his carriage passed to the palace. Nearly twenty years later, one of the most tactful great ladies of Europe, wishing to pay Ferdinand a compliment on the great improvement wrought in his capital since his accession, said sweetly:

“I do love Sofia, the railway makes it so easy to run over to Vienna for a little gaiety.”

But even that reason for leaving Sofia did not exist when this cuckoo Prince first drove down its main street.

Bulgarian was one of the few languages his mother had not added to his list of accomplishments, and his hope that his perfect French would carry him through triumphantly was only partly justified. He found many of the most important men of State knew no language but their own, and these he failed to comprehend as completely as they him.

The motley races of this Principality were of all colours and creeds. Bulgars, Serbians, gipsies, Turks, Circassians, Jews, Armenians, Tartars, Russians, Rumanians, Albanians, then as now, were all huddled together cheek by jowl. They were all as strange to him as would have been a race of Maoris. But if he felt any misgivings about his new rôle in life he did not display them. Indeed, he was ready with a cant explanation of his acceptance of the responsibility, and of his flight from Vienna in an ignoble guise.

“I did not seek the Bulgarian crown. It was offered to me with the assurance that I could do much good in the country. The mission was a noble one, and I accepted it.”

His idea of Royalty was centred in the stateliest pageants of the most formal Courts of Europe. He had had a wide experience of Courts, and knew exactly the extreme of outward show that was employed to hedge the greatest monarchs of Christendom. He established a ceremonial that outdid them all. It was Ferdinand’s way of asserting his own importance in a principality where the Prince was treated like an idle and worthless schoolboy.

For Bulgaria had a real ruler, in spite of the kidnapping of its first prince and the appointment of a half-pay lieutenant to take his place. He was a little, fat, dirty man, the son of an innkeeper named Stambuloff. One can measure Bulgarian character by the stamp of the greatest man Bulgaria has yet produced. Stambuloff, the patriot statesman, was not ashamed to admit that he made Sofia the Bulgarian capital, because he owned large holdings of land there, and could reap a fortune from the circumstance.

And before his coronation as Prince of Bulgaria Ferdinand had a sufficing taste of the mastery of this overlord who ruled his new subjects with a rod of iron. The Prince had designed his own coronation robe, a tasteful garment in purple and ermine that became him marvellously. Nicely scented, and jewelled in admirable taste, he encountered his Prime Minister, who was smoking a black cigar that smelt like the burning of old boots—what the Americans call a cooking cigar—and displayed a liberal portion of Bulgarian soil under his long finger-nails.

Stambuloff looked him over with a loud snort. “I cannot, and will not, be seen with you, if you don’t take that rubbish off,” he shouted; and then as a malicious afterthought added: “Why not spend the money on a trusty body-guard?” And the ruffian laughed aloud as Ferdinand went livid in his gorgeous purple and ermine robe. For it was an open secret that Bulgaria held no terror for Ferdinand to compare with his fear of assassination.

But even the fear of assassination could not scare him off his uneasy throne. “Mon Dieu!” said he. “As they leave me here I will remain. The position is not particularly brilliant, but where is a better one to be found? I am a reigning prince. I have a pretty good civil list, and rather pleasant shooting. I might as well be here as anywhere else.” There, you see, is the real Ferdinand, with his habitual cant phrases laid aside for once.

And he soon found an occupation that pleased him infinitely, and filled in the gaps of his time very pleasantly while he was making acquaintance with the language and customs of Bulgaria. He occupied himself with the organization of such a secret police service as has disgraced no other country in the nineteenth century. The ranks of this precious service were recruited from handy foreigners who had established themselves in Bulgaria for some time. In that service promotion was rapid—provided that the agent was a good and trustworthy assassin.

He paid these worthies out of his own pocket, and their work was the constant espionage on all the leading men of Bulgaria. Thus he got acquainted with all the peccadilloes of the men who governed the country for him, while they despised the scented dandy who came among them with such show of royal state.

Where real misbehaviour could not be discovered, imaginary offences were invented in plenty, and Ferdinand soon had evidence against every man of any importance in his realm. How he made use of these secret dossiers can well be imagined. Those most guilty were made his tools by threats of exposure and punishment, and he gathered around him the support of the worst blackguards in Bulgaria.

This work provided congenial employment for the young Prince, who had been nurtured on the morals of Machiavelli and the traditions of Talleyrand. His spies made Sofia the most uncomfortable city for the stranger that Europe possessed, but the habitués of the place paid little heed to his army of Mouchards. For even before the coming of Ferdinand, the customs of the Bulgarian capital were nothing very nice.

And thus Ferdinand learned the language of his subjects, and added his own little improvements to their customs and traditions. But there was something that worried him beyond the boundaries of his principality, and as it worried his devoted mother even more, it soon began to occupy the whole of his attention.

For the Powers of Europe would not recognize his appointment as Prince of Bulgaria.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

“What! My nephew Ferdinand! But it is so long since I have seen you that, like the Powers, I did not recognize you.” —Duc d’Aumale.

CHAPTER IV
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

When Ferdinand was elected Prince of Bulgaria by the Sobranje, and signed the Constitution, no one of the Powers of Europe recognized his sovereignty. On the other hand, the Sultan of Turkey declared his position illegal within a week of his signing the Constitution, and none of his Royal relatives and supposed backers disputed the attitude of the Turk.

Now to be King in one’s own country, even if outsiders do not recognize the kingship, is at least a position of importance. And, more common still, to be recognized as king by the whole world when the kingship is bounded by the mere title is at least honorific. But Ferdinand, having accepted a position as reigning Prince, was not recognized as Prince outside his own realm, and had only those attributes of Royalty in Bulgaria which he chose to assume for himself. The real ruling was done by a fat, cross man, who treated him with open contempt.

The position was an intolerable one for Ferdinand, and for his proud mother as well. Together they plotted how they might end it, and for years left no stone unturned to obtain recognition from the Powers of Europe. They knew the way quite well; it was only necessary that one Great Power should recognize his position, and the rest would follow as a matter of course.

Behold our Ferdinand, then, flitting from Court to Court of Europe in search of a friendly lead.

Austria seemed to him and his mother the most likely place, but the Emperor Francis Joseph proved a stiffer obstacle than they had reckoned for. When he was earnestly approached on the subject, the Emperor gave an uncompromising refusal couched in the most compromising terms. “Besides being an Emperor, I am also an honest man; and I deal only with honest men.”

Then he swung to the other extreme of the pendulum, and paid his court to Russia. The result of this manœuvre was a blunt intimation that he must not even seek a pretext for paying a visit to Petrograd. There were many reasons why Russia should desire to keep him among the outsiders, and the religious one was among the most obvious. Ferdinand was a superstitious, if not a devout, Roman Catholic, ruling a people whose official religion was the Orthodox Church. He had been refused allegiance by the head of the Bulgarian Church, the Patriarch Clement, who had suffered imprisonment in consequence.

With a sigh, mother and son admitted there was small hope at present of Russia.

Then they turned hopeful eyes on England. He had a sentimental claim upon Queen Victoria, as a Coburg Prince who was born in the very year in which the Prince Consort died. Be sure, this little sentimental memory was kept alive by the astute Princess Clementine. As a small boy, he wrote childish letters in the best English he could muster, and at frequent intervals. As a man, he employed to her his best bedside manner, which few old ladies could resist, and which impressed her so strongly that at his wedding she described him as an “enjoleur”—a beguiler. Wherefore he has since borne the nickname of the “Fat Charmer.”

But he got very little out of shrewd Queen Victoria, except a present of a pug dog, of which he made a great fuss. He had it fattened beyond even the stoutness and wheeziness of the ordinary pug, and declared that it was his mascot. Whenever he entertained English notabilities, he made a point of speaking with affectionate reverence of “Her Most Gracious,” as he used to call her. And, as he pronounced the words, a tender moisture obscured his light blue eyes, and just enough huskiness gave them a reverential flavour that was most impressive.

His worldly mother entertained greater hopes of King Edward, then Prince of Wales. The pair used to lay in wait for him at Marienbad, where our late King regarded them in the same light as the mineral water—unpleasant, but part of the cure. He entertained them and was entertained, but those who knew him most intimately could not master their smiles when any significance was attached to this complaisance. Tactful and wise as he ever was, our King Edward gave no offence, but raised no hopes.

He even went to Constantinople, where he had to wear a red fez as a symbol of the Sultan’s overlordship.

Paris, too, saw a great deal of him through these years of seeking recognition. Each year he spent some time in the French capital, behaving in an effusive manner, that on one occasion nearly involved him in a sound kicking. His mother still had great influence in the city of her birth, but it was the wrong kind of influence for Ferdinand. He was more admired than liked by the French, who were the first to appreciate the real nature of his character.

It was in Paris that he incurred the snub that made him vow that he would never set foot in the city again; and part of the bitterness was contained in the fact that the snub was administered by his own uncle, the Duc d’Aumale. He had left the opera, and betook himself to a very exclusive café for some of those good things of life which he knows well how to appreciate. Amid the brilliant company assembled, he noticed the Duc d’Aumale, whom he approached familiarly, holding out his hand with easy confidence.

The old nobleman looked at him curiously, as at a stranger whom he had never before seen.

“What, uncle, don’t you know me?” he cried. “It is I, your nephew Ferdinand.”

“What! My nephew Ferdinand! But it is so long since I have seen you that, like the Powers, I did not recognize you.”

So Ferdinand wandered from one Court to another, seeking the friendly lead, and meeting with nothing but much sly laughter. At home in Bulgaria he knew better than to expect any sympathy. His strong man Stambuloff was intent in holding off Russia on one side and Turkey on the other, with a watchful eye between whiles on Austria. He did not care whether the Prince of Bulgaria were recognized or not, so long as Bulgaria itself remained intact and progressive.

Sometimes he interfered with Ferdinand’s schemes when they seemed to him to endanger his own. For instance, Ferdinand, on some pretext or other of state, sought to impose himself on the Court at Petrograd at a time most inconvenient for Stambuloff. The innkeeper’s son warned the Coburg Prince most promptly that if he crossed the frontier outwards he would most certainly not be allowed to cross it on the return journey. So Ferdinand stayed in Sofia.

Then Clementine had an inspiration; Ferdinand, now a bachelor in the thirties, must marry. A good marriage would give him strong enough influence in some particular direction to force the recognition which was now her whole reason for continuing to exist.

Whereupon the Fat Charmer set out on a new pilgrimage. Ferdinand in search of a wife.

THE COMPLEAT BACHELOR

“Ferdinand is like the traditional British sailor: he has a wife in every one of his ports of refuge.” —Stambuloff.

CHAPTER V
THE COMPLEAT BACHELOR

The young Prince Ferdinand had received almost daily lessons from his mother on the part that women were apt to play in his life. She, the Princess Clementine, his own mother, shrank from no sacrifice when advancing his pursuit of some vacant throne. She held no claim to consideration as compared to the great life object she set before him and herself. And she was determined that no woman breathing should live to become a hindrance to the quest.

Imagine, then, what teaching Ferdinand received, when still an innocent child, about women from the lips of one of the cleverest women that ever lived. No illusions for him, no charming boyish enthusiasm for angels of earth. He had it drilled into him at every hour of the day that for the benefit of great princes like him all women existed—yes, even his own mother. Women were to be courted, wheedled, used, seduced; but not honoured. No tender feeling was ever to enter his mind in connexion with a woman, for that way led to the path of self-sacrifice. And Ferdinand must sacrifice others, never himself.

The weaker side of feminine character was exposed to him by many an object lesson, for the young Ferdinand was brought up in an atmosphere almost essentially feminine. At sixteen he was more cynical about the sex than many a roué of sixty. The doctrine of woman’s eternal pursuit of the male had been so drummed into his ears that he regarded everything in petticoats as a prospective burden upon himself. He told himself everlastingly that he must allow no tender feeling for any woman to occupy his mind, else he would be saddled with a burden for life.

He went from capital to capital with his mother, glancing appraisingly at women of every degree in life, and having his premature adventures with the precautions and blasé indifference of a tired man of the world. He formed a style of conversation for feminine company, in which a brilliant form of double meaning predominated. He wielded his weapon so skilfully that a pure woman, even an understanding one, had no defence against it. The other kind were dazzled by the proficiency of this mere youth in innuendo of the vilest kind, wrapped up so skilfully that even the most alert mind hesitated before its ambiguities.

At the age of 22.

At the Coronation of Czar Alexander III.

At the time of his election as Prince of Bulgaria.

At the opening of the first Sobranje.

He shocked, but he also captivated; and he was firm in never himself becoming a captive. He soon earned the reputation he sought, he was credited with being as fickle as he was successful in love affairs. He left behind him in the capitals of Europe a trail of broken hearts and broken promises; and his mother approved the firmness of his procedure. She never had to accuse him of one generous impulse, where women were concerned. In this matter he was her devoted pupil.

So he came to the throne of Bulgaria with no encumbrances at all; no favourite to offend the ladies of the Bulgarian Court, no dancer in a gorgeous villa very near the Palace. The rôle of a bachelor Prince suited him admirably, and he settled down at Sofia and Varna in that capacity.

Of course, there were scandals. The Prince wished above all things to become possessed of the secrets of the most powerful of his subjects. What better way of worming them out than by means of a love affair with a wife here or a sister there? It was so easy afterwards, when the required information had been gained, to explain that his passion had been simulated and that the lady had deceived herself. Then affairs of State would call Ferdinand to Paris or Carlsbad, where there was fresh wooing to be done. In the meantime the little affair at Sofia had time to blow over.

But chickens have a habit of coming home to roost, even in the palaces of princes. The very real indifference which Ferdinand displayed to all women when his end had been won was well calculated to arouse the deepest sentiment in the minds of some of the sex. He had more difficulty in shaking off some of his conquests than he had ever expected, and remote as the city of Sofia is, and undesirable to women of the gay world, he could not escape the attentions of his infatuated cast-offs even there.

In some cases the result was expensive to a Prince who inculcated generosity in others by refusing any display of it on his own part. In at least one instance, an adventure begun lightly enough by him ended in a tragedy which cast a shadow on the throne itself. Ferdinand owns large estates in Hungary, where he loves to go for hunting expeditions, under the title of Count Murany, a favourite alias of his. In Budapest he encountered and wooed Anne Simon, one of the most beautiful actresses of her day, and a great favourite in the Hungarian capital.

Ferdinand ended the adventure after his approved style, leaving the lady with a jeer at her credulity, and a compliment at the high art of her tragic acting. The passionate gipsy woman pursued him to Sofia, and refused to be shaken off. Soon her claim upon the bachelor prince, and the open eagerness with which she pressed it, became the scandal of Sofia.

The task of getting rid of her he confided to his aide-de-camp, Captain Boitscheff, who bungled the business sorely. Anne Simon raised such violent objection and resistance to the peaceful abduction which the aide-de-camp had planned that he lost his temper. Next day the dead body of the actress was found in a mean street of Sofia, disfigured by knife wounds.

Anne Simon had many friends, including some at the Austrian Court, and Ferdinand’s pursuit of her had been a matter of notoriety in Hungary. Sofia, then as now, teemed with Austrian Secret Service men, and the whole story was known to the Emperor within three days of the tragedy. Francis characterized Ferdinand as a felon, with whom no decent person could associate. He went further, and demanded the arrest and trial of the captain.

The latter took refuge in the palace itself, and was dragged to prison from the very table of his princely patron. The trial was a stern one, and as the evidence was indisputable he was sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted by Ferdinand to imprisonment for life, and that sentence the aide-de-camp is still nominally serving. But he entertains his friends at elaborate luncheon parties, and may be seen in the box of the theatre or in any gay resort of Sofia that may happen to attract him. His name has not been removed from the Bulgarian army list, and every one knows that his sentence of imprisonment is a long-played farce.

So for eight years, Ferdinand played the congenial rôle of the bachelor Prince. His character was well known to his own subjects, though he contrived to prevent the worst of the stories against him from general circulation in Europe. The methods he employed were cynically effective. A prominent gutter journalist of his capital accused him in print of sins unmentionable here, and compared to which the conduct I have sketched is mere youthful indulgence. Ferdinand put him on the pension list and closed his mouth forever.

His predecessor, Prince Alexander of Battenberg, had married an actress, and as long as he lived, Ferdinand had nothing to fear from rival aspirants to his throne. But the time came when that unhappy Prince paid the debt of his bravery and his rash virtues; and the death of Alexander pointed attention to the fact that there was no heir to the throne on which Ferdinand was now firmly seated.

Clementine said it was time that he married, and, like a dutiful son, Ferdinand set off with her in search of a princess. All the humiliations he had previously endured were as nothing compared to the slights heaped upon the Fat Charmer in search of a wife.

THE BROKEN-HEARTED PRINCESS

“If any woman ever died of a broken heart, it was the Princess Marie Louise of Bulgaria.” —“Svoboda.”

CHAPTER VI
THE BROKEN-HEARTED PRINCESS

We have seen Ferdinand waiting for a Crown to turn up. We have seen him striving vainly for a friendly lead to recognition as a Sovereign Prince by the Powers of Europe. Now this Micawber among Monarchs is revealed as waiting anxiously and servilely for a suitable bride to appear. And in the search for a wife he endured the most poignant humiliations that have overtaken even him in a long life spent in eating dirt.

Ambitious Clementine wished him to espouse a princess who would not only furnish an heir to the throne, but would bring influence to his palace, and help materially in the long quest for recognition. But the princesses of Europe, and the advisers who guided their choice of a consort, looked with disdain upon the princely parvenu. Queen Victoria, who was amused at his flattering speech and grand airs, drew the line at an alliance with a prince whose tenure of the throne was so doubtful as that of Ferdinand’s.

That he may have expected; but the conduct of the smaller kingdoms filled him with surprise and resentment. He might not aspire anywhere, and the fact was conveyed to him in a fashion so unmistakable that he was at the utmost pains to conceal his deep chagrin.

Finally a match was made for him by his mother. The victim was a dear little meek soul, a devout Catholic, and one of the gentlest spirits of her time—Princess Marie Louise of Parma, a niece of the Comte de Chambord. She was remarkably beautiful in a tiny way, with reddish-brown hair, large blue eyes, and a simple dignity that won all hearts.

The wedding took place at Lianore, in Lucca, and old Stambuloff paid the Princess the rare compliment of leaving his close watch on the affairs of Bulgaria long enough to attend the wedding. He was charmed with the sweet, pleasant girl of twenty-three, and in a message to her father declared “Bulgaria will honour and watch over her.” As far as he could, he kept the promise he made on that occasion.

Princess Marie Louise of Bulgaria

Stambuloff was just as anxious to see Ferdinand wedded as was Clementine. “We want a dynasty,” he urged on Ferdinand, “and our enemies want you to remain a bachelor. As long as you are unmarried you are in danger of assassination, and we are in danger of anarchy. When you are once married and possessed of a son and heir, they will not try to kill you. But even if you are assassinated, it won’t matter to us then.” It was frankness of this kind which endeared his Premier to Ferdinand.

The Sultan Abdul had the grace to telegraph congratulations to Ferdinand on the occasion of his marriage. “You have strengthened the Bulgarian Principality,” he declared, with other courteous phrases, all of which Ferdinand read as a reminder of his state of vassalage.

The Duke of Parma made one condition of importance when giving his consent to the wedding. He insisted that the children of the marriage should be baptized into the Catholic Church, and should be brought up in that faith. Ferdinand himself was a Catholic, if he was anything at all, and the condition was therefore the more reasonable. But the official religion of Bulgaria is, of course, the Orthodox Church, and the masses are bigoted in their adherence to that faith.

The real difficulty lay in an article of the Bulgarian Constitution that provided that the heir to the throne must be baptized according to the rites of the Orthodox Church. This difficulty was met by Stambuloff in his own downright fashion. He annulled it, to the horror of the Bulgarian Churchmen, and made the marriage possible.

The Princess won the hearts of her new subjects from the very moment of her arrival in Bulgaria. She had the sympathetic notion to enter the Principality attired in the costume of an ordinary Bulgarian woman, and it became her girlish beauty charmingly. Her frank unaffected interest in all she saw, her gracious acceptance of the little gifts, and the somewhat boorish homage paid her on her journey, gave her a reputation that preceded her to Sofia. She retained the instant popularity she won till the day of her death six years later. She was as much loved in Bulgaria as Ferdinand was detested.

The treatment accorded her by her husband, almost from the day of her wedding, was well calculated to shrivel such a gentle soul, and to extinguish the spark of life in so frail a frame. The absurd formality of his Court imposed upon her tasks that wearied her almost to unconsciousness. She had nothing in common with her crafty, ambitious husband, who had taken her into a nightmare land where assassination and worse horrors lurked perpetually in the dark corners of the magnificent palaces she occupied.

Four children she bore him in six years. Once she left him, as a protest against the shameless breach of the conditions under which she consented to wed him. During that period of separation her friends and relatives made public details of the torture of her married life that left Ferdinand’s callous nature exposed to the full gaze of the world.

It was told how, in order to punish one of her favourite Court ladies for some indiscretion of speech, Ferdinand rose to his feet, and remained standing for over an hour. This imposed a standing posture upon the whole of the Court, including the Princess, who had but lately become a mother. The whole Court looked on in horror as this fragile flower grew whiter and whiter in her robes of State, maintaining herself in an upright position with the acme of physical effort.

Unheeding her sufferings, Ferdinand held grimly on, and when she finally fell fainting into the arms of one of her ladies, watched her removal from the chamber with unmoved grimness. That is only one among thousands of instances of refined cruelty alleged against him and credited by his subjects. Little wonder that as he drove through the streets of Sofia the people turned away their faces, unwilling even to look upon so mean-spirited a domestic tyrant.

I shall presently give the details of the blasphemous breach of faith that caused her to leave him, and nearly brought about his excommunication at the hands of the Pope. In the end she was persuaded to return to him, but she did not long survive the reunion. She never rose after the death-birth of her fourth child, the Princess Nadejda, and terminated her unhappy life at the age of thirty.

The real cause of her death was the blow inflicted upon her gentle piety when Ferdinand caused the infant Prince Boris, the heir to the throne, to forswear the faith of his ancestors on both sides at an age when the very meaning of the ceremony was hidden from the child. It was a step which Ferdinand had not even dared to take in his own person. Advantageous as adherence to the Orthodox Church could be to him, his superstitious fears prevented him from the blasphemy he imposed upon a child of three. Let us examine his reasons and excuses for the crime which broke the heart of the unhappy Princess Marie Louise of Parma.

AN APOSTATE BY PROXY

“It is my duty to lay on the altar of the Fatherland the greatest and heaviest of sacrifices.” —Ferdinand of Bulgaria.

CHAPTER VII
AN APOSTATE BY PROXY

Boris Tirnovski, heir to the throne of Bulgaria, was christened in the Roman Catholic faith, according to the terms of the wedding contract, which had necessitated an amendment of the Bulgarian Constitution. But the ceremony gave a fresh offence to Russia, the nation which is champion of the Orthodox Church, and which was at that time the Power from which Ferdinand had most to hope.

Even when this christening took place he had in his mind an act which would be even a more effective conciliation to Russia than the original christening of his heir in the Orthodox faith would have been. He determined to make the child renounce the faith of his fathers, and embrace the official religion of Bulgaria.

The way to this apostasy was smoothed by a mission to Petrograd, undertaken by the ex-Metropolitan Clement, whom Stambuloff put in gaol for refusing allegiance to Ferdinand. That Catholic Prince gave the rebellious prelate strong encouragement in his mission, and received him on his return with the honours usually accorded to a victorious general. Then followed the important step of re-amending the Constitution.

In a letter to the Czar Ferdinand announced his intention of re-baptizing little Boris in the Orthodox faith, and the Czar, having negotiated the matter through Clement, graciously consented to be the godfather of the infant apostate. “For the Czar’s condescension the Prince will submit to any humiliation,” said Stambuloff once, and this event proved how rightly he had estimated the Prince whom he had created.

In a proclamation to the Bulgarian people, that is terrible in its terms of slavery, he announced that the Czar had not only graciously consented to become the godfather to the heir, but that he had “manifested his goodwill to our nation by renewing with it the political relations that had been interrupted.” Then he organized a great national raree-show at Tirnovo, the ancient capital of Bulgaria, where the re-christening took place on February 26.

Tirnovo was crowded with Russians of all degrees for the occasion, and for their benefit were organized the throngs of Bulgarian peasants in national costume who paraded the streets singing the old Bulgarian folk-songs, and displaying the entwined banners of the two countries. These good folk danced the old Bulgarian dances, which they had just learned with an immensity of labour, in the market-place of the ancient city, and then sang the Russian National Anthem in conjunction with their own.

The ceremony in Tirnovo Cathedral was a pitiful business. The poor little heir to the throne, not yet three years of age, was torn from the arms of his mother, who protested with all the force of which her character was capable, and dressed all in white for the baptism. He stood all alone at the altar, a pathetic, uncomprehending little figure, and was made to renounce the faith in which he had been christened.

So Ferdinand committed apostasy by proxy. The official representative of the Czar-godfather, who was accorded royal honours in Tirnovo that day, afterwards described the ceremony as “a blasphemous mockery and an exhibition of political legerdemain.” But Ferdinand cared little for what was said of him. The Sobranje voted to the heir to the throne a sum of £20,000, and the old accusation that he was leading the nation from Orthodoxy to Catholicism was for ever stilled.

Having appeased Russia and confirmed the ancient religion of his subjects in the person of the heir to the throne, Ferdinand was to reap the benefit of his perjury by receiving the long-awaited recognition of his sovereign Lord Abdul the Damned. The Red Sultan issued a firman, recognizing him as Prince of Bulgaria, with the title of Royal Highness, and as Governor-General of Eastern Rumelia.

Meantime the young mother had fled, taking her second son with her. She made her way, almost dead with grief, to her ancestral home, where she claimed the protection of her father. Enraged by Ferdinand’s open violation of the wedding contract, the Duke of Parma espoused her cause with all the vigour of which he was capable, and received the full support of the Church.

Ferdinand was most anxious to end the scandal, and to coax the Princess back to Sofia. With that end in view he obeyed a summons issued by Pope Leo XIII, which, as a good Catholic, he would have had some difficulty in ignoring. Strong in the virtue of his princely rank, and in the dignity of a recent interview with the Sultan of Turkey, a Pagan potentate, in which Ferdinand sported the red fez of vassaldom, Ferdinand made his way to Rome with a quiet confidence in his own rectitude and his mother’s influence.

He entered the Vatican for his interview with every appearance of smirking self-satisfaction. The interview was but a short one; it lasted only a few minutes, but much can happen in a few minutes. No other man was present, and there is no record of what took place at the meeting.

But when Ferdinand sneaked out of the presence, abashed and humiliated, and fled from Rome with no word; when months passed before he entirely recovered the jauntiness of his demeanour, it needs no great quality of imagination to guess that he received a notable rebuke. For some years he endured the stern displeasure of Rome, and the ban, almost amounting to excommunication was only lifted many years later at the strongly expressed wish of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, whose assassination was the signal for the great world conflict in which we are still engaged.

The Princess never recovered from that blow. In course of time she was induced to return to her husband, bringing with her the child Cyril. But now she was a drooping flower, with no hope of ever reviving. She walked through the weary round of her Court duties, and bore two daughters to the father who had made of his son and heir an apostate. She only lived one day after the birth of the second girl, when this gentle woman died of her wrongs.

But Ferdinand was satisfied. He had made his peace with Russia, and the Red Sultan called him Royal Highness. He was now on the side of the clerical plotters of his kingdom, and wore the hall-mark of Bulgarian ecclesiasticism. He even talked of giving his own open adherence to the Orthodox Church, though this has never been done.

In the meantime he had provided an Orthodox heir to the throne, and by the act had mitigated the dread of assassination that had for so long hag-ridden him. For assassination was ever the terror that haunted Ferdinand’s mind. He lived for ever with the dread spectre at his elbow, and he had reason for his dread. For, as we shall now see, assassination was a familiar political weapon in Bulgaria before the arrival of Ferdinand, who can claim credit for remarkable improvements upon the crude methods in vogue before his era of subsidized slaughter.

THE BUTCHERED “BISMARCK”

“If any ordinary citizen of any State had been so incriminated as Prince Ferdinand has been, the man would have been arrested.” —“Vossische Zeitung.”

CHAPTER VIII
THE BUTCHERED “BISMARCK”

The outstanding instance of Ferdinand’s intimacy with the grosser forms of assassination is the murder of Stepan Stambuloff, “the Bismarck of the Balkans.” This gross little being was a forceful, sturdy, fat man, who sprung from an innkeeper of Tirnovo; whence Ferdinand’s favourite name for him—the Tapster. He had been trained to the Bar, and was the foremost advocate of his day in Sofia.

He was almost the foremost conspirator as well, and played a prominent part in the series of rebellions against the Turkish rule which eventually resulted in the creation by Russia of the Principality of Bulgaria, and in the election of Alexander of Battenberg to the throne. His imagination was caught by the dream of the Greater Bulgaria created by the Treaty of San Stefano, and abrogated by the Berlin Conference before it had been actually called into being.

Stambuloff was a typical Bulgarian, coarse, vulgar, violent, and crafty. But he was a patriotic Bulgarian as well; and in his alert mind the danger arising from a benevolent Russia was more acute than that arising from a hostile Turkey. He it was who called Ferdinand to the throne to hold at bay the Russian influence; and to his Bulgarian mind the disfavour in which Ferdinand’s acceptance of the throne had landed him was one of his chief qualifications.

The first meeting of the pair took place upon a little steamer on which Ferdinand was stealing into his new principality by way of the river Danube. They discovered differences at their very first encounter, but the differences were then more important to the Prince than to the statesman. Ferdinand was loth to take Stambuloff into his counsels, and endeavoured to place Stoiloff, who was a member of the deputation which had selected him for Bulgaria, in the position of Prime Minister. But all attempts to form a Ministry were unavailing, and Ferdinand was forced to send for Stambuloff, and for the next six years the Tapster reigned supreme in Bulgaria.

The relations between the two, strained on their first meeting, went steadily from bad to worse as time wore on. Stambuloff was far from impressed by the statecraft which his Prince had imbibed at his mother’s knee, and treated him from the first as a silly schoolboy. Ferdinand’s love of ceremony and state was marked out by him for the most contemptuous treatment; he loved to make the state with which the Prince surrounded himself appear ridiculous and mean.

Ferdinand’s concern about recognition by the Powers was a mere nothing to Stambuloff; it provided a means for playing Russian intrigue off against Turkish hostility, and therefore Stambuloff welcomed it. In a word, he was for Bulgaria, while Ferdinand was only concerned with the interests and the prestige of the Prince of the Bulgarians.

While Ferdinand was settling down in Sofia, and learning the language and corrupting the politicians through his band of spies, he endured the arrogance and authority of Stambuloff patiently enough. But after four years of this he began to strive for some way of ridding himself of his too-powerful Minister. Then began a series of attempts upon the life of Stambuloff, which he evaded by coincidences that were remarkable in their effectiveness.

For instance, in 1891, he was walking home from his club with his friend and colleague, M. Beltcheff, and passed three men at a well-lit corner. Shortly afterwards he changed to the other side of his friend, and they had not walked a score of yards in this order when Beltcheff fell pierced by the bullets of assassins. As Stambuloff ran for the nearest guardhouse, a cry of “Stambuloff is dead” fell on his ears, convincing him that the bullets were intended for him. The murderers remain unpunished to this day. In the next year, the Bulgarian agent, Dr. Vulkovich, was stabbed in the street, in circumstances which point to another mistake by the assassins of the Prince. Once more the murderers, who were well known, contrived to escape punishment.

But men who offended Ferdinand at this time had a way of falling into trouble with mysterious assassins. The case of Dr. Takeff is much in point. Takeff was a journalist who had commented in offensive terms, even for Sofia, upon the extravagance of the Court. Shortly afterwards he was riding near Sofia with the poet Aleko Constantinoff, and the pair changed seats. Again the assassins found the wrong man by reason of this accident, and poor Constantinoff suffered for the writings of his friend. But, as the official Press of Sofia remarked, his death was due to his keeping bad company, and his murderers were never punished.

The double attempt to kill Stambuloff aroused popular sympathy with the Minister, who had become detested because of the rigour with which he suppressed conspiracies, and because of the severity of the taxes in which the progressive policy he instituted involved Bulgaria, and to which are due the great improvements for which Ferdinand gets the credit. Experience had also warned Stambuloff, who instituted precautions which made attempts on his life difficult of execution. Ferdinand then began to scheme in order to force his resignation. In this he was abetted by the pro-Russian group of politicians in Sofia, but their schemes fell down before the imperturbability of the Prime Minister. But a severe blow was dealt at Stambuloff’s influence when he revised the Constitution to permit the wedding with Princess Marie Louise to take place.

He encountered strong opposition, not only in the Sobranje, where the clerical party was very strong, but also with his own Ministerial colleagues. It was the sternest struggle of his career; and after winning the fight he declared to one of his friends that he felt like Jacob felt after wrestling with God. Thereafter a powerful political group plotted with the Prince to force the resignation of Stambuloff.

The head of the most outrageous of the plots was Major Petroff, against whom the Premier obtained incriminating evidence of the most sensational description. He also obtained proof that his Prince was implicated deeply in this plot. The scheme was for the Major, with a band of firebrands, to rush into the Council Chamber where the Premier and the Prince were conferring, and to offer Stambuloff the choice between instant resignation or instant death. The discovery of this plot caused Stambuloff to write to Ferdinand in the following terms:

“Your Highness has not learnt in seven years to know me if you think I can be forced into signing anything. You might cut off my hands and feet, but you could never compel me to do what I now do voluntarily and of my own free will. Here is my resignation... and I warn you, Sire, that if you treat our new Minister as you have treated me, your throne is not worth a louis.”

But Ferdinand refused to accept the resignation proffered in these terms, and waited until a domestic quarrel in which Major Savoff (afterwards Bulgaria’s most celebrated General) was involved, and caused Stambuloff to publish a private letter, a line of conduct which the Prince characterized as “base.” This adjective again drew a resignation from Stambuloff.

Mr. Herbert Vivian, who was in Sofia at the time, vividly describes the closing scenes between Premier and Prince. The latter’s fête day was the occasion of a party at the palace: “Stambuloff sat in an outer room, glittering with decorations like a Christmas tree and smoking a big, bad cigar. After some sulky small-talk he slouched away out of the palace—a gross breach of etiquette. Some courtier mentioned this to the Prince; he shrugged his shoulders and said: ‘I did not know he had been asked.’”

Two days later, on May 30, 1894, Stambuloff was summoned to the presence of Ferdinand, who coldly accepted his resignation. An attempt to patch up the quarrel ended in a riot outside the palace gates, in which the rival factions cried “Down with Stambuloff,” and “Down with Ferdinand.” The fallen Minister walked through the crowd, and was struck and spat upon as he passed to his home. Arrests were made, but they were entirely supporters of Stambuloff, many of whom were not concerned in the disgraceful scene.

From that day forward Stambuloff was kept a prisoner in his own house. His property was sequestrated, and only by the kind offices of friends was he able to save his furniture from an execution for debt. The assassins of his friends were allowed to walk the streets of Sofia unmolested, but the ex-Premier was refused permission to leave the city.

Time and time again Stambuloff said openly that Ferdinand meant to have him murdered, and nobody was so rash as to dispute the truth of the prophecy. The police agents who were posted at his house, nominally to protect him, were in reality his gaolers. In bitter enmity to Ferdinand Stambuloff gave an interview to the Frankfort Zeitung, which resulted in his prosecution for criminal libel against Ferdinand. The trial dragged on, and efforts were once more made to get Stambuloff out of Bulgaria. Medical evidence was forthcoming that his health demanded the change, and all Bulgarians wished him to go. But Ferdinand would not permit it.

In July, 1895, the Mir, an official newspaper, published an article stating that it would be a patriotic deed to tear Stambuloff’s flesh from his bones. Within two days the ex-Premier was driving home from his club with his friend Petkoff, when he was attacked by three ruffians with knives. Petkoff fell to the ground and could render no assistance; and the wretches had Stambuloff at their mercy. With their knives they hacked his prostrate body until it lost almost all human semblance.

That night Ferdinand was at the theatre at Carlsbad, laughing with an unusual gaiety. He found time to send a hypocritical message of sympathy to the widow of the dead statesman, and directed that floral offerings should be sent to the funeral; message and flowers were alike refused. A few days later the Svoboda (Liberty) openly accused Ferdinand of direct and full responsibility for the murder of Stambuloff, an accusation which is supported by such a mass of evidence as would hang any man, prince or commoner, in a community such as our own. But it must be remembered that Ferdinand loves flowers, is kind to animals, and wept when he saw the first Bulgarian wounded in the Balkan War.

THE DEAD HAND

“Wherever you are, in your goings out and your comings in, the blood of Stambuloff will be with you; in your home, among your family, in church and in office, the shadow of Stambuloff will follow you, and will leave you in the world never more.” —“Svoboda.”

CHAPTER IX
THE DEAD HAND

In a little house in Sofia lives the widow of Stambuloff, once the most brilliant and beautiful woman in Sofia, now a withered crone who continues to live on for a cherished purpose. Her most treasured possession is the withered hand of a dead man; the hand of Stambuloff, the Bismarck of the Balkans. The woman and the dead hand wait Christian burial until the day when vengeance shall have been exacted from his murderer, Ferdinand, Czar of Bulgaria.

The evidence that fixes the moral guilt for the murder upon Ferdinand is unassailable. It was not adduced after the crime, but months before it took place. In an interview published at the beginning of 1895, the victim told the Cologne Gazette from his own mouth the manner and the very place of his death. For months beforehand the Svoboda, the Sofiote organ of the Stambulovists, had warned the Government what would take place, and declared that when it happened the moral guilt would lie upon the Prince and his Ministers.

On the day after the murder, the paper accused the Prince of the moral guilt of the crime in unmistakable words that still ring through Europe when the death of Stambuloff is recalled.

“Who are the murderers of Stambuloff?” the Svoboda asked. “Who took the life of such a man as Bulgaria will never see again? Who lifted the yataghan against him?

“They are officially unknown, but all Bulgaria knows them. For the last seven months we have repeatedly and openly declared that the Government was keeping the assassins of Beltcheff and Vulkovitch to murder Stambuloff. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Natchevitch, has given some of these men posts under Government, and daily receives them in his house.

“Whoever struck the blow, the moral murderers are the Prince and his Government, who refused to allow Stambuloff to leave Sofia, and so gave an opportunity to their assassins.

“The blood of Bulgaria’s finest patriot cries aloud for vengeance. Two days ago the official journal, the Mir, called upon its friends to tear the flesh from the bones of M. Stambuloff. Its orders have been executed.”

Stambuloff was murdered in July, 1895. At the beginning of that year the following remarkable interview with him was published by the Cologne Gazette:

“I cannot help thinking that something serious is in the air. Everything takes time. I hear from my friends that things have reached a head. If I must fall, my friends will not desert my wife and my children. I do not grudge my enemies that triumph.

“In influential circles care will be taken that telegrams are sent from all Bulgaria denouncing the murderers, but expressing in the liveliest terms the satisfaction of ‘the people’ at being freed for ever from ‘the tyrant’ and ‘the adulterer.’

“When the attempt on my life—to which Beltcheff fell a victim—was being planned, all Sofia knew of it. The Chief of Police and his people remained in blissful ignorance. To-day, too, numbers of people are aware of the impending attempt on my life, and my friends—and friends I have, thank God, everywhere—are more shrewd than the police.

“I cannot give you names, but my information is to be trusted. The former Chief of Police, Ilija Lukanoff, a man of honour and great ability, who is very sincerely devoted to me, and who has even to-day very extensive connexions with home circles, came to me yesterday. He was quite excited, this grave, reserved man.

“He wished to go to the Prince, and acquaint him with everything. ‘Ilija,’ I said to him, ‘it would be the stupidest thing that you could do. Don’t you see that the murderers have the strongest support?’