Ferdinand Of Bulgaria: The Amazing Career Of A Shoddy Czar

FERDINAND OF BULGARIA

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

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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 si

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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 t

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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 in

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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

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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 sti

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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, w

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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

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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

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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 agai

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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

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CHAPTER X WHO ARE THE BULGARIANS?

Less than a hundred years ago a small Russian army, campaigning against the Turks between the Balkans and the Danube, discovered a race of people who spoke a language almost identical with their own, and who possessed Slavonic features and customs. This discovery was made in a region which for centuries was believed to be given over to Greeks and Turks. It came as a shock to the Russians to find that the supposed extinct race of the Bulgars had survived through the five hundred years that separa

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CHAPTER XI FERDINAND AND HIS CREATURES

Just as the Bulgarians say they are going into Europe when they leave Bulgaria, Ferdinand decided that he was quitting Europe and civilization when he entered his new kingdom. He went with his mind fixed on thoughts of assassination; and turning to account the course of Machiavelli on which he had been reared, he decided that the assassins could be made the servant of the Prince. He has himself confessed that his initial resolve was to have the assassins on his side. Between the resignation of P

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CHAPTER XII FERDINAND THE FEMININE

M. Joseph Reinach , the French publicist, whose articles signed Polybe in the Paris Figaro have been rightly estimated as among the most informative contributions to the public knowledge of European politics, long maintained a private correspondence with Ferdinand. The letters of the ruler of Bulgaria, written in his own handwriting and signed “The Good European,” are masterpieces of hypocrisy and elaborate double dealing. Their tortuous insincerity does not suffice to conceal one outstanding fa

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CHAPTER XIII FERDINAND AND THE BULGARIANS

I have laid some stress upon the primitive boorishness of the Bulgarians as a race, and upon the essential effeminacy of the Prince who, for lack of a better, was called to the throne of this new principality. The contrast is necessary in order that it may be shown by what means Ferdinand established dominion over a people which has always despised and loathed him, and how he has been able to falsify the confident estimate of the shrewdest observers in Europe, and retain for over a quarter of a

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CHAPTER XIV FERDINAND THE AMBITIOUS

In the summer of 1892 there was a notable sight in the Bavarian city of Munich. The richest goldsmith of the city of breweries displayed in his window a crown, sceptre, orb and sword, which he had made to the order of the Prince of Bulgaria. The rich jewels with which the regalia were decked were the family gems of the Princess Clementine, who had presented them to her pet son, in anticipation of the recognition by the Powers which both fondly believed to be imminent. But the anticipation was no

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CHAPTER XV FERDINAND THE FUTILE

The tradition that great monarchs are many-sided men has no warmer adherent than Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who is ever ready to exemplify it in his own person. To those who are familiar with his pursuits and amusements, his method of spending his days constitutes a most cruel parody upon the thousand different avocations of his “glorious ally” the Kaiser. But the Kaiser, as I have had occasion to show elsewhere, is in many respects a remarkable and successful man, who makes practical use of his wid

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CHAPTER XVI FERDINAND THE FRENCHMAN

One of the lessons that Great Britain has been compelled to learn in the last two years is that its respected citizen, Mr. Black, purveyor of meat, is in reality none other than that dangerous alien Herr Schwartz, the maker of German sausages. Our gallant allies of France have been apt to wonder at the laggard hesitation of us British in learning and applying this lesson. Yet when the history of the great war comes to be written frankly and fully, it may well be revealed that one of the hardest

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CHAPTER XVII FERDINAND THE FAITHLESS

In the chief square of Sofia, near the Newski Cathedral, stands a great statue, the work of the Bulgarian sculptor Zocchi. It is erected to the Russian Czar, Alexander the Second, “the Czar Liberator.” A similar statue has been erected in the ancient Bulgarian capital of Tirnovo. In every peasant hut in Bulgaria a portrait of the same benefactor is hung; sometimes it disputes wall space with pictures of Gladstone and Lord Salisbury. These are some of the outward signs that Bulgaria has allowed a

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CHAPTER XVIII FERDINAND THE HUN

When Ferdinand first rode through the streets of Sofia in a carriage, wearing the uniform of a Bulgarian general, there was an ominous murmur in the Bulgarian crowd that rose and swelled to a hoarse cry of “Schwaba.” It was as if a French crowd had cried “ Boche ” or an English mob had roared “Hun.” Austrian rank and French pretence did not blind the Bulgarians at the very outset; they knew they had to do with one of the detested Schwaba, a Hun of the Huns. Do what he might, Ferdinand could not

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CHAPTER XIX FERDINAND THE CZAR

The Young Turk revolution could only have been viewed by Ferdinand, and by his master, Franz Ferdinand, as a serious blow to their schemes of aggrandisement in the Balkans. Their whole pretext for interference was supplied by the oppression of the Christian nations in Thrace, Macedonia and Albania by the minions of the Red Sultan. And now the Red Sultan was no more a Sultan, and the new Sultan was put into power with the mission of remedying the grievances of these Christian subjects of Turkey.

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CHAPTER XX FERDINAND AND THE BALKAN LEAGUE

The independent kingdom of Bulgaria occupied a very different position in the eyes of the Powers to that of the vassal Principality. Soon Ferdinand began to feel some of the disadvantages of greatness, and to recognize the responsibilities he had incurred by his coup with Austria. He had incurred the suspicion of Russia and Rumania on the one side, and the enmity of Serbia on the other, while Turkey was only biding its time to avenge his share in the breaking of the Berlin Treaty. The new régime

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CHAPTER XXI FERDINAND THE MARTYR

The Treaty of Bucarest was followed in Bulgaria by what Ferdinand, in an interview with a British newspaper correspondent, pathetically described as a “schemozzle.” You may remember that among his many accomplishments a facile use of Yiddish speech takes high rank. And really, considering how furiously the Bulgarians had fought, and how freely they shed their blood, it is not surprising that they were angry with him. All their neighbours had got something substantial, even Rumania, which had not

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CHAPTER XXII FERDINAND IN RETIREMENT

Once , in the days when Ferdinand was a sub-lieutenant of Austrian hussars, the Emperor Franz Joseph stood talking to Kossuth, the Hungarian statesman, at the window of the palace. As they talked Ferdinand chanced to pass through the courtyard below, and the Emperor asked the Hungarian his opinion of the young prince. “That boy, sire,” said Kossuth, “has a long nose, but it will not be you who will pull it.” The prophecy may or may not prove an accurate one, but the personal observation was inev

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CHAPTER XXIII FERDINAND THE FALSE

The murder of Franz Ferdinand and the ranging of all the Great Powers of Europe in a struggle for life or death opened up to Ferdinand a new vista of opportunity. He could see at any rate that opportunities would soon come his way to retrieve the losses of the second Balkan war. When Turkey plunged headlong into the quarrel, the opportunities of Bulgaria were multiplied tenfold, and for the first time in its existence this newest of European nations occupied a position of great importance by rea

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CHAPTER XXIV KULTUR IN BULGARIA

The tragedy of the second Balkan war had bitten deep into the hearts of most Bulgarians. As I have already related, the terrible disaster which that war brought upon Bulgaria produced a controversy which only died down when the Bulgarian Army was once more mobilized to fight for the Turk against the nation which liberated Bulgaria from Turkish bondage. In the course of that controversy the argument was elaborated that by the Treaty of Bucarest Bulgaria had liquidated its old debt to Russia, and

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CHAPTER XXV FERDINAND AND THE FARMER

Before finally and openly declaring himself on the side of the Huns, Ferdinand was forced to receive a deputation consisting of five of the most powerful men in Bulgaria. They were the leaders of five of the ten parties which divide Bulgarian politics: namely Gueschoff (Nationalists), Daneff (Progressive Liberals), Malinoff (Democrats), Zanoff (Radicals), and Stambulivski (Country Party). They had come to warn him that Bulgaria was opposed to his policy of active intervention with the Central Po

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CHAPTER XXVI FERDINAND AS WAR LORD

The world has recently been treated to the sublime spectacle of a meeting of the Shoddy Czar and the Bloodstained Kaiser at Nish, the ancient capital of down-trodden Serbia, where the two monarchs, united only by the nefarious nature of the enterprise in which they are engaged, exchanged compliments of a dangerous irony. It was characteristic of Ferdinand that he should veil his impudent jibe under the screen of a dead language, and refer to his partner in crime as “ Victor et gloriosus ,” which

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CHAPTER XXVII FERDINAND IN EXTREMIS

The entry of the Bulgarians into the Great War was sudden, fierce and effective. They threw themselves with characteristic ardour upon the Serbians, who, attacked from three quarters at once, defended themselves sternly. They could not expect to prevail against the overwhelming odds against them, but they took heavy toll of their oppressors, and especially of their detested foes the Bulgarians. The expedition of the Allied Powers from Salonica came too late to save Serbia, or even appreciably to

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