Chapter X: The Making of Bulgaria (2)

The Dual Monarchy, especially Hungary, also felt the weight of Russia's displeasure in return for the sympathy manifested for the Prince at Pesth and Vienna; and but for the strength which the friendship of Germany afforded, that Power would almost certainly have encountered war from the irate potentate of the North.

Turkey, having no champion, was in still greater danger; her conduct in condoning the irregularities of Prince Alexander was as odious to Alexander III. as the atrocities of her Bashi-bazouks ten years before had been to his more chivalrous sire. It is an open secret that during the summer of 1886 the Czar was preparing to deal a heavy blow. The Sultan evaded it by adroitly shifting his ground and posing as a well-wisher of the Czar, whereupon M. Nelidoff, the Russian ambassador at Constantinople, proposed an offensive and defensive alliance, and went to the length of suggesting that they should wage war against Austria and England in order to restore the Sultan's authority over Bosnia and Egypt at the expense of those intrusive Powers. How far negotiations went on this matter and why they failed is not known. The ordinary explanation, that the Czar forbore to draw the sword because of his love of peace, hardly tallies with what is now known of his character and his diplomacy. It is more likely that he was appeased by the events now to be described, and thereafter attached less importance to a direct intervention in Balkan affairs.

No greater surprise has happened in this generation than the kidnapping of Prince Alexander by officers of the army which he had lately led to victory. Yet the affair admits of explanation. Certain of their number nourished resentment against him for his imperfect recognition of their services during the Servian War, and for the introduction of German military instructors at its close. Among the malcontents was Bendereff, the hero of Slivnitza, who, having been guilty of discourtesy to the Prince, was left unrewarded. On this discontented knot of men Russian intriguers fastened themselves profitably, with the result that one regiment at least began to waver in its allegiance.

A military plot was held in reserve as a last resort. In the first place, a Russian subject, Captain Nabokoff, sought to simplify the situation by hiring some Montenegrin desperadoes, and by seeking to murder or carry off the Prince as he drew near to Bourgas during a tour in Eastern Bulgaria. This plan came to light through the fidelity of a Bulgarian peasant, whereupon Nabokoff and a Montenegrin priest were arrested (May 18). At once the Russian Consul at that seaport appeared, demanded the release of the conspirators, and, when this was refused, threatened the Bulgarian authorities if justice took its course. It is not without significance that the Czar's warlike speech at Sevastopol startled the world on the day after the arrest of the conspirators at Bourgas. Apparently the arrest of Nabokoff impelled the Czar of all the Russias to uphold the dignity of his Empire by hurling threats against a State which protected itself from conspiracy. The champion of order in Russia thereby figured as the abettor of plotters in the Balkans.

The menaces of the Northern Power availed to defer the trial of the conspirators, and the affair was still undecided when the conspirators at Sofia played their last card. Bendereff was at that time acting as Minister of War, and found means to spread broadcast a rumour that Servia was arming as if for war. Sending northwards some faithful troops to guard against this baseless danger, he left the capital at the mercy of the real enemy.

On August 21, when all was ready, the Struma Regiment hastily marched back by night to Sofia, disarmed the few faithful troops there in garrison, surrounded the palace of the Prince, while the ringleaders burst into his bedchamber. He succeeded in fleeing through a corridor which led to the garden, only to be met with levelled bayonets and cries of hatred. The leaders thrust him into a corner, tore a sheet out of the visitors' book which lay on a table close by, and on it hastily scrawled words implying abdication; the Prince added his signature, along with the prayer, "God save Bulgaria." At dawn the mutineers forced him into a carriage, Bendereff and his accomplices crowding round to dismiss him with jeers and screen him from the sight of the public. Thence he was driven at the utmost speed through byways towards the Danube. There the conspirators had in readiness his own yacht, which they had seized, and carried him down the stream towards Russian territory.

The outburst of indignation with which the civilised world heard of this foul deed had its counterpart in Bulgaria. So general and so keen was the reprobation (save in the Russian and Bismarckian Press) that the Russian Government took some steps to dissociate itself from the plot, while profiting by its results. On August 24, when the Prince was put on shore at Reni, the Russian authorities kept him under guard, and that, too, despite an order of the Czar empowering him to "continue his journey exactly as he might please." Far from this, he was detained for some little time, and then was suffered to depart by train only in a northerly direction. He ultimately entered Austrian territory by way of Lemberg in Galicia, on August 27. The aim of the St. Petersburg Government evidently was to give full time for the conspirators at Sofia to consolidate their power[213].

[Footnote 213: A. von Huhn, _op. cit._ chap. iv.]

Meanwhile, by military display, the distribution of money, and a _Te Deum_ at the Cathedral for "liberation from Prince Battenberg," the mutineers sought to persuade the men of Sofia that peace and prosperity would infallibly result from the returning favour of the Czar. The populace accepted the first tokens of his good-will and awaited developments. These were not promising for the mutineers. The British Consul at Philippopolis, Captain Jones, on hearing of the affair, hurried to the commander of the garrison, General Mutkuroff, and besought him to crush the plotters[214]. The General speedily enlisted his own troops and those in garrison elsewhere on the side of the Prince, with the result that a large part of the army refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new Russophil Ministry, composed of trimmers like Bishop Clement and Zankoff. Karaveloff also cast in his influence against them.

[Footnote 214: See Mr. Minchin's account in the _Morning Advertiser_ for September 23, 1886.]

Above all, Stambuloff worked furiously for the Prince; and when a mitred Vicar of Bray held the seals of office and enjoyed the official counsels of traitors and place-hunters, not all the prayers of the Greek Church and the gold of Russian agents could long avail to support the Government against the attacks of that strong-willed, clean-handed patriot. Shame at the disgrace thus brought on his people doubled his powers; and, with the aid of all that was best in the public life of Bulgaria, he succeeded in sweeping Clement and his Comus rout back to their mummeries and their underground plots. So speedy was the reverse of fortune that the new Provisional Government succeeded in thwarting the despatch of a Russian special Commissioner, General Dolgorukoff, through whom Alexander III. sought to bestow the promised blessings on that "much-tried" Principality.

The voice of Bulgaria now made itself heard. There was but one cry--for the return of Prince Alexander. At once he consented to fulfil his people's desire; and, travelling by railway through Bukharest, he reached the banks of the Danube and set foot on his yacht, not now a prisoner, but the hero of the German, Magyar, and Balkan peoples. At Rustchuk officers and deputies bore him ashore shoulder-high to the enthusiastic people. He received a welcome even from the Consul-General for Russia--a fact which led him to take a false step. Later in the day, when Stambuloff was not present, he had an interview with this agent, and then sent a telegram to the Czar, announcing his return, his thanks for his friendly reception by Russia's chief agent, and his readiness to accept the advice of General Dolgorukoff. The telegram ended thus:--

I should be happy to be able to give to Your Majesty the
definitive proof of the devotion with which I am animated
towards Your august person. The monarchical principle forces
me to re-establish the reign of law (_la légalité_) in
Bulgaria and Roumelia. Russia having given me my crown, I am
ready to give it back into the hands of its Sovereign.

To this the Czar sent the following telegraphic reply, and allowed it to appear at once in the official paper at St. Petersburg:--

I have received Your Highness's telegram. I cannot approve
your return to Bulgaria, as I foresee the sinister
consequences that it may bring on Bulgaria, already so much
tried. The mission of General Dolgorukoff is now inopportune.
I shall abstain from it in the sad state of things to which
Bulgaria is reduced so long as you remain there. Your
Highness will understand what you have to do. I reserve my
judgment as to what is commanded me by the venerated memory
of my father, the interests of Russia, and the peace of the
Orient[215].

[Footnote 215: A. von Huhn, _The Kidnapping of Prince Alexander_, chap. xi. (London, 1887). Article III. of the Treaty of Berlin ran thus: "The Prince of Bulgaria shall be freely elected by the population and confirmed by the Sublime Porte, with the assent of the Powers." Russia had no right to _choose_ the Prince, and her _assent_ to his election was only that of _one_ among the six Great Powers. The mistake of Prince Alexander is therefore inexplicable.]

What led the Prince to use the extraordinary words contained in the last sentence of his telegram can only be conjectured. The substance of his conversation with the Russian Consul-General is not known; and until the words of that official are fully explained he must be held open to the suspicion of having played on the Prince a diplomatic version of the confidence trick. Another version, that of M. Élie de Cyon, is that he acted on instructions from the Russian Chancellor, de Giers, who believed that the Czar would relent. On the contrary, he broke loose, and sent the answer given above[216].

[Footnote 216: _Histoire de l'Entente franco-russe_, by Élie de Cyon, p. 158.]

It is not surprising that, after receiving the Czar's retort, the Prince seemed gloomy and depressed where all around him were full of joy. At Tirnova and Philippopolis he had the same reception; but an attempt to derail his train on the journey to Sofia showed that the malice of his foes was still unsated. The absence of the Russian and German Consuls from the State reception accorded to the Prince at the capital on September 3 showed that he had to reckon with the hostility or disapprobation of those Governments; and there was the ominous fact that the Russian agent at Sofia had recently intervened to prevent the punishment of the mutineers and Bishop Clement. Few, however, were prepared for what followed. On entering his palace, the Prince called his officers about him and announced that, despairing of overcoming the antipathy of the Czar to him, he must abdicate. Many of them burst into tears, and one of them cried, "Without your Highness there is no Bulgaria."

This action, when the Prince seemed at the height of popularity, caused intense astonishment. The following are the reasons that probably dictated it. Firstly, he may have felt impelled to redeem the pledges which he too trustfully made to the Czar in his Rustchuk telegram, and of which that potentate took so unchivalrous an advantage. Secondly, the intervention of Russia to protect the mutineers from their just punishment betokened her intention to foment further plots. In this intervention, strange to say, she had the support of the German Government, Bismarck using his influence at Berlin persistently against the Prince, in order to avert the danger of war, which once or twice seemed to be imminent between Russia and Germany.

Further, we may note that Austria and the other States had no desire to court an attack from the Eastern Power, on account of a personal affair between the two Alexanders. Great Britain also was at that time too hampered by domestic and colonial difficulties to be able to do more than offer good wishes.

Thus the weakness or the weariness of the States friendly to Bulgaria left the Czar a free hand in the personal feud on which he set such store. Accordingly, on September 7, the Prince left Bulgaria amidst the lamentations of that usually stolid people and the sympathy of manly hearts throughout the world. At Buda-Pesth and London there were ominous signs that the Czar must not push his triumph further. Herr Tisza at the end of the month assured the Hungarian deputies that, if the Sultan did not choose to restore the old order of things in Southern Bulgaria, no other Power had the right to intervene there by force of arms. Lord Salisbury, also, at the Lord Mayor's banquet, on November 9, inveighed with startling frankness against the "officers debauched by foreign gold," who had betrayed their Prince. He further stated that all interest in foreign affairs centred in Bulgaria, and expressed the belief that the freedom of that State would be assured.

These speeches were certainly intended as a warning to Russia and a protest against her action in Bulgaria. After the departure of Prince Alexander, the Czar hit upon the device of restoring order to that "much-tried" country through the instrumentality of General Kaulbars, a brother of the General who had sought to kidnap Prince Alexander three years before. It is known that the despatch of the younger Kaulbars was distasteful to the more pacific and Germanophil chancellor, de Giers, who is said to have worked against the success of his mission. Such at least is the version given by his private enemies, Katkoff and de Cyon[217]. Kaulbars soon succeeded in adding to the reputation of his family. On reaching Sofia, on September 25, he ordered the liberation of the military plotters still under arrest, and the adjournment of the forthcoming elections for the Sobranje; otherwise Russia would not regard them as legal. The Bulgarian Regents, Stambuloff at their head, stoutly opposed these demands and fixed the elections for October the 10th; whereupon Kaulbars treated the men of Sofia, and thereafter of all the chief towns, to displays of bullying rhetoric, which succeeded in blotting out all memories of Russian exploits of nine years before[218].

[Footnote 217: Élie de Cyon, _Histoire de l'Entente franco-russe_, pp. 177-178.]

[Footnote 218: The Russophil Drandar (_op. cit._ p. 214) calls these demands "remarqueblement modérées et sages"! For further details of Kaulbars' electioneering devices see Minchin, _op. cit._ pp. 327-330.]

Despite his menace, that 100,000 Russian troops were ready to occupy Bulgaria, despite the murder of four patriots by his bravos at Dubnitza, Bulgaria flung back the threats by electing 470 supporters of independence and unity, as against 30 Russophils and 20 deputies of doubtful views. The Sobranje met at Tirnova, and, disregarding his protest, proceeded to elect Prince Waldemar of Denmark; it then confirmed Stambuloff in his almost dictatorial powers. The Czar's influence over the Danish Royal House led to the Prince promptly refusing that dangerous honour, which it is believed that Russia then designed for the Prince of Mingrelia, a dignitary of Russian Caucasia.

The aim of the Czar and of Kaulbars now was to render all government impossible; but they had to deal with a man far more resolute and astute than Prince Alexander. Stambuloff and his countrymen fairly wearied out Kaulbars, until that imperial agent was suddenly recalled (November 19). He also ordered the Russian Consuls to withdraw.

It is believed that the Czar recalled him partly because of the obvious failure of a hectoring policy, but also owing to the growing restlessness of Austria-Hungary, England, and Italy at Russia's treatment of Bulgaria. For several months European diplomacy turned on the question of Bulgaria's independence; and here Russia could not yet count on a French alliance. As has been noted above, Alexander III. and de Giers had tied their hands by the alliance contracted at Skiernewice in 1884; and the Czar had reason to expect that the Austro-German compact would hold good against him if he forced on his solution of the Balkan Question.

Probably it was this consideration which led him to trust to underground means for assuring the dependence of Bulgaria. If so, he was again disappointed. Stambuloff met his agents everywhere, above ground and below ground. That son of an innkeeper at Tirnova now showed a power of inspiring men and controlling events equal to that of the innkeeper of the Pusterthal, Andreas Hofer. The discouraged Bulgarians everywhere responded to his call; at Rustchuk they crushed a rising of Russophil officers, and Stambuloff had nine of the rebels shot (March 7, 1887). Thereafter he acted as dictator and imprisoned numbers of suspects. His countrymen put up with the loss of civic freedom in order to secure the higher boon of national independence.

In the main, however, the freedom of Bulgaria from Russian control was due to events transpiring in Central Europe. As will appear in Chapter XII. of this work, the Czar and de Giers became convinced, early in the year 1887, that Bismarck was preparing for war against France, and they determined to hold aloof from other questions, in order to be free to checkmate the designs of the war party at Berlin. The organ usually inspired by de Giers, the _Nord_, uttered an unmistakable warning on February 20, 1887, and even stated that, with this aim in view, Russia would let matters take their course in Bulgaria.

Thus, once again, the complexities of the general situation promoted the cause of freedom in the Balkans; and the way was cleared for a resolute man to mount the throne at Sofia. In the course of a tour to the European capitals, a Bulgarian delegation found that man. The envoys were informed that Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, a grandson of Louis Philippe on the spindle-side, would welcome the dangerous honour. He was young, ambitious, and, as events were to prove, equally tactful and forceful according to circumstances. In vain did Russia seek to prevent his election by pushing on the Sultan to intervene. Abdul Hamid was not the man to let himself long be the catspaw of Russia, and now invited the Powers to name one or two candidates for the throne of Bulgaria. Stambuloff worked hard for the election of Prince Ferdinand; and on July 7, 1887, he was unanimously elected by the Sobranje. Alone among the Great Powers, Russia protested against his election and threw many difficulties in his path. In order to please the Czar, the Sultan added his protest; but this act was soon seen to be merely a move in the diplomatic game.

Limits of space, however, preclude the possibility of noting later events in the history of Bulgaria, such as the coolness that clouded the relations of the Prince to Stambuloff, the murder of the latter, and the final recognition of the Prince by the Russian Government after the "conversion" of his little son, Boris, to the Greek Church (Feb. 1896). In this curious way was fulfilled the prophetic advice given by Bismarck to the Prince not long after his acceptance of the crown of Bulgaria: "Play the dead (_faire mort_). . . . Let yourself be driven gently by the stream, and keep yourself, as hitherto, above water. Your greatest ally is time--force of habit. Avoid everything that might irritate your enemies. Unless you give them provocation, they cannot do you much harm, and in course of time the world will become accustomed to see you on the throne of Bulgaria[219]."

[Footnote 219: _Personal Reminiscences of Prince Bismarck_, by S. Whitman, p. 179.]

Time has worked on behalf of Bulgaria, and has helped to strengthen this Benjamin of the European family. Among the events which have made the chief States of to-day, none are more remarkable than those which endowed a population of downtrodden peasants with a passionate desire for national existence. Thanks to the liberating armies of Russia, to the prowess of Bulgarians themselves, to the inspiring personality of Prince Alexander and the stubborn tenacity of Stambuloff, the young State gained a firm grip on life. But other and stranger influences were at work compelling that people to act for itself; these are to be found in the perverse conduct of Alexander III. and of his agents. The policy of Russia towards Bulgaria may be characterised by a remark made by Sir Robert Morier to Sir M. Grant Duff in 1888: "Russia is a great bicephalic creature, having one head European, and the other Asiatic, but with the persistent habit of turning its European face to the East, and its Asiatic face to the West[220]." Asiatic methods, put in force against Slavised Tartars, have certainly played no small part in the upbuilding of this youngest of the European States.

[Footnote 220: Sir M. Grant Duff, _Notes from a Diary (1886-88)_, vol. ii. p. 139.]

In taking leave of the Balkan peoples, we may note the strange tendency of events towards equipoise in the Europe of the present age. Thirty years ago the Turkish Empire seemed at the point of dissolution. To-day it is stronger than ever; and this cause is to be found, not so much in the watchful cunning of Abdul Hamid, as in the vivifying principle of nationality, which has made of Bulgaria and Roumania two strong barriers against Russian aggression in that quarter. The feuds of those States have been replaced by something like friendship, which in its turn will probably ripen into alliance. Together they could put 250,000 good troops in the field--that is, a larger force than that which the Turks had in Europe during the war with Russia. Turkey is therefore fully as safe as she was under Abdul Aziz.

An enlightened ruler could consolidate her position still further. Just as Austria has gained in strength by having Venetia as a friendly and allied land, rather than a subject province heaving with discontent, so, too, it is open to the Porte to secure the alliance of the Balkan States by treating them in an honourable way, and by according good government to Macedonia.

Possibly the future may see the formation of a federation of all the States of European Turkey. If so, Russia will lose all foothold in a quarter where she formerly had the active support of three-fourths of the population. However that may be, it is certain that her mistakes in and after the year 1878 have profoundly modified the Eastern Question. They have served to cancel those which, as it seems to the present writer, Lord Beaconsfield committed in the years 1876-77; and the skilful diplomacy of Lord Salisbury and Sir William White has regained for England the prestige which she then lost among the rising peoples of the Peninsula.

The final solution of the tangled racial problems of Mace donia cannot be long deferred, in spite of the timorous selfishness of the Powers who incurred treaty obligations for the welfare of that land; and, when that question can be no longer postponed or explained away, it is to be hoped that the British people, taking heed of the lessons of the past, will insist on a solution that will conform to the claims of humanity, which have been proved to be those of enlightened statesmanship[221].

[Footnote 221: For the recent developments of the Macedonian Question, see _Turkey in Europe_, by "Odysseus" (1900); _the Middle Eastern Question_, by V. Chirol, 18s. net (Murray); _A Tour in Macedonia_, by G.F. Abbot (1903); _The Burden of the Balkans_, by Miss Edith Durham (1904); _The Balkans from Within_, by R. Wyon (1904); _The Balkan Question_, edited by L. Villari (1904); _Critical Times in Turkey_, by G. King-Lewis (1904); _Pro Macedonia_, by V. Bérard (Paris, 1904); _La Péninsule balkanique_, by Capitaine Lamouche (Paris, 1899).]