[Footnote 190: J.G.C. Minchin, The Growth of Freedom in the Balkan Peninsula (1886) p. 237. The author, Consul-General for Servia in London, had earlier contributed many articles to the Times and Morning Advertiser on Balkan affairs.]

Even now the scales did not fall from the eyes of the Emperor Alexander III. Bismarck was once questioned by the faithful Busch as to the character of that potentate. The German Boswell remarked that he had heard Alexander III. described as "stupid, exceedingly stupid"; whereupon the Chancellor replied: "In a general way that is saying too much[191]." Leaving to posterity the task of deciding that question, we may here point out that Muscovite policy in the years 1878-85 achieved a truly remarkable feat in uniting all the liberated races of the Balkan Peninsula against their liberators. By the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano, Russia had alienated the Roumanians, Servians, and Greeks; so that when the Princes of those two Slav Principalities decided to take the kingly title (as they did in the spring of 1881 and 1882 respectively), it was after visits to Berlin and Vienna, whereby they tacitly signified their friendliness to the Central Powers.

[Footnote 191: Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, by Dr. M. Busch (Note of January 5, 1886), vol. iii. p. 150 (English edition).]

In the case of Servia this went to the length of alliance. On June 25, 1881, the Foreign Minister, M. Mijatovich, concluded with Austria-Hungary a secret convention, whereby Servia agreed to discourage any movement among the Slavs of Bosnia, while the Dual Monarchy promised to refrain from any action detrimental to Servian hopes for what is known as old Servia. The agreement was for eight years; but it was not renewed in 1889[192]. The fact, however, that such a compact could be framed within three years of the Berlin Congress, shows how keen was the resentment of the Servian Government at the neglect of its interests by Russia, both there and at San Stefano.

[Footnote 192: The treaty has not been published; for this general description of it I am indebted to the kindness of M. Mijatovich himself.]

The gulf between Bulgaria and Russia widened more slowly, but with the striking sequel that will be seen. The Dondukoffs, Soboleffs, and Kaulbars first awakened and then estranged the formerly passive and docile race for whose aggrandisement Russia had incurred the resentment of the neighbouring peoples. Under Muscovite tutelage the "ignorant Bulgarian peasants" were developing a strong civic and political instinct. Further, the Czar's attacks, now on the Prince, and then on the popular party, served to bind these formerly discordant elements into an alliance. Stambuloff, the very embodiment of young Bulgaria in tenacity of purpose and love of freedom, was now the President of the Sobranje, or National Assembly, and he warmly supported Prince Alexander so long as he withstood Russian pretensions. At the outset the strifes at Sofia had resembled a triangular duel, and the Russian agents could readily have disposed of the third combatant had they sided either with the Prince or with the Liberals. By browbeating both they simplified the situation to the benefit both of the Prince and of the nascent liberties of Bulgaria.

Alexander III. and his Chancellor, de Giers, had also tied their hands in Balkan affairs by a treaty which they framed with Austria and Germany, and signed and ratified at the meeting of the three Emperors at Skiernewice (September 1884—see Chapter XII.). The most important of its provisions from our present standpoint was that by which, in the event of two of the three Empires disagreeing on Balkan questions, the casting vote rested with the third Power. This gave to Bismarck the same role of arbiter which he had played at the Berlin Congress.

But in the years 1885 and 1886, the Czar and his agents committed a series of blunders, by the side of which their earlier actions seemed statesmanlike. The welfare of the Bulgarian people demanded an early reversal of the policy decided on at the Congress of Berlin (1878), whereby the southern Bulgarians were divided from their northern brethren in order that the Sultan might have the right to hold the Balkan passes in time of war. That is to say, the Powers, especially Great Britain and Austria, set aside the claims of a strong racial instinct for purely military reasons. The breakdown of this artificial arrangement was confidently predicted at the time; and Russian agents at first took the lead in preparing for the future union. Skobeleff, Katkoff, and the Panslavonic societies of Russia encouraged the formation of "gymnastic societies" in Eastern Roumelia, and the youth of that province enrolled themselves with such ardour that by the year 1885 more than 40,000 were trained to the use of arms. As for the protests of the Sultan and those of his delegates at Philippopolis, they were stilled by hints from St. Petersburg, or by demands for the prompt payment of Turkey's war debt to Russia. All the world knew that, thanks to Russian patronage, Eastern Roumelia had slipped entirely from the control of Abdul Hamid.

By the summer of 1885, the unionist movement had acquired great strength. But now, at the critical time, when Russia should have led that movement, she let it drift, or even, we may say, cast off the tow-rope. Probably the Czar and his Ministers looked on the Bulgarians as too weak or too stupid to act for themselves. It was a complete miscalculation; for now Stambuloff and Karaveloff had made that aim their own, and brought to its accomplishment all the skill and zeal which they had learned in a long career of resistance to Turkish and Russian masters. There is reason to think that they and their coadjutors at Philippopolis pressed on events in the month of September 1885, because the Czar was then known to disapprove any immediate action.

In order to understand the reason for this strange reversal of Russia's policy, we must scrutinise events more closely. The secret workings of that policy have been laid bare in a series of State documents, the genuineness of which is not altogether established. They are said to have been betrayed to the Bulgarian patriots by a Russian agent, and they certainly bear signs of authenticity. If we accept them (and up to the present they have been accepted by well-informed men) the truth is as follows:—

Russia would have worked hard for the union of Eastern Roumelia to Bulgaria, provided that the Prince abdicated and his people submitted completely to Russian control. Quite early in his reign Alexander III. discovered in them an independence which his masterful nature ill brooked. He therefore postponed that scheme until the Prince should abdicate or be driven out. As one of the Muscovite agents phrased it in the spring of 1881, the union must not be brought about until a Russian protectorate should be founded in the Principality; for if they made Bulgaria too strong, it would become "a second Roumania," that is, as "ungrateful" to Russia as Roumania had shown herself after the seizure of her Bessarabian lands. In fact, the Bulgarians could gain the wish of their hearts only on one condition—that of proclaiming the Emperor Alexander Grand Duke of the greater State of the future[193].

[Footnote 193: Documents secrets de la Politique russe en Orient, ed. by R. Leonoff (Berlin, 1893), pp. 8, 48. This work is named by M. Malet in his Bibliographie on the Eastern Question on p. 448, vol. ix., of the Histoire Generale of MM. Lavisse and Rambaud. I have been assured of its genuineness by a gentleman well versed in the politics of the Balkan States.]

The chief obstacles in the way of Russia's aggrandisement were the susceptibilities of "the Battenberger," as her agents impertinently named him, and the will of Stambuloff. When the Czar, by his malevolent obstinacy, finally brought these two men to accord, it was deemed needful to adopt various devices in order to shatter the forces which Russian diplomacy had succeeded in piling up in its own path. But here again we are reminded of the Horatian precept—

Vis consili expers mole ruit sua.

To the hectorings of Russian agents the "peasant State" offered an ever firmer resistance, and by the summer of 1885 it was clear that bribery and bullying were equally futile.

Of course the Emperor of all the Russias had it in his power to harry the Prince in many ways. Thus in the summer of 1885, when a marriage was being arranged between him and the Princess Victoria, daughter of the Crown Princess of Germany, the Czar's influence at Berlin availed to veto an engagement which is believed to have been the heartfelt wish of both the persons most nearly concerned. In this matter Bismarck, true to his policy of softening the Czar's annoyance at the Austro-German alliance by complaisance in all other matters, made himself Russia's henchman, and urged his press-trumpet, Busch, to write newspaper articles abusing Queen Victoria as having instigated this match solely with a view to the substitution of British for Russian influence in Bulgaria[194]. The more servile part of the German Press improved on these suggestions, and stigmatised the Bulgarian Revolution of the ensuing autumn as an affair trumped up at London. So far is it possible for minds of a certain type to read their own pettiness into events.

[Footnote 194: For Bismarck's action and that of the Emperor William I. in 1885, see Bismarck: Some Secret Pages of his History, by M. Busch, vol. iii. pp. 171, 180, 292, also p. 335. Russian agents came to Stambuloff in the summer of 1885 to say that "Prince Alexander must be got rid of before he can ally himself with the German family regnant." Stambuloff informed the Prince of this. See Stambuloff, by A.H. Beaman, p. 52.]

Meanwhile, if we may credit the despatches above referred to, the Russian Government was seeking to drag Bulgaria into fratricidal strife with Roumania over some trifling disputes about the new border near Silistria. That quarrel, if well managed, promised to be materially advantageous to Russia and mentally soothing to her ruler. It would weaken the Danubian States and help to bring them back to the heel of their former protector. Further, seeing that the behaviour of King Charles to his Russian benefactors was no less "ungrateful" than that of Prince Alexander, it would be a fit Nemesis for these ingrats to be set by the ears. Accordingly, in the month of August 1885, orders were issued to Russian agents to fan the border dispute; and on August 12/30 the Director of the Asiatic Department at St. Petersburg wrote the following instructions to the Russian Consul-General at Rustchuk:—

You remember that the union [of the two Bulgarias] must not take place until after the abdication of Prince Alexander. However, the ill-advised and hostile attitude of King Charles of Roumania [to Russia] obliges the imperial government to postpone for some time the projected union of Eastern Roumelia to the Principality, as well as the abdication and expulsion of the Prince of Bulgaria. In the session of the Council of [Russian] Ministers held yesterday it was decided to beg the Emperor to call Prince Alexander to Copenhagen or to St. Petersburg in order to inform him that, according to the will of His Majesty, Bulgaria must defend by armed force her rights over the points hereinbefore mentioned[195].

[Footnote 195: R. Leonoff, op. cit. pp. 81-84.]

The despatch then states that Russia will keep Turkey quiet and will eventually make war on Roumania; also, that if Bulgaria triumphs over Roumania, the latter will pay her in territory or money, or in both. Possibly, however, the whole scheme may have been devised to serve as a decoy to bring Prince Alexander within the power of his imperial patrons, who, in that case, would probably have detained and dethroned him.

Further light was thrown on the tortuous course of Russian diplomacy by a speech of Count Eugen Zichy to the Hungarian Delegations about a year later. He made the startling declaration that in the summer of 1885 Russia concluded a treaty with Montenegro with the aim of dethroning King Milan and Prince Alexander, and the division of the Balkan States between Prince Nicholas of Montenegro and the Karageorgevich Pretender who has since made his way to the throne at Belgrade. The details of these schemes are not known, but the searchlight thrown upon them from Buda-Pesth revealed the shifts of the policy of those "friends of peace," the Czar Alexander III. and his Chancellor, de Giers.

Prince Alexander may not have been aware of these schemes in their full extent, but he and his friends certainly felt the meshes closing around them. There were only two courses open, either completely to submit to the Czar (which, for the Prince, implied abdication) or to rely on the Bulgarian people. The Prince took the course which would have been taken by every man worthy of the name. It is, however, almost certain that he did not foresee the events at Philippopolis. He gave his word to a German officer, Major von Huhn, that he had not in the least degree expected the unionist movement to take so speedy and decisive a step forward as it did in the middle of September. The Prince, in fact, had been on a tour throughout Europe, and expressed the same opinion to the Russian Chancellor, de Giers, at Franzensbad.

But by this time everything was ready at Philippopolis. As the men of Eastern Roumelia were all of one mind in this matter, it was the easiest of tasks to surprise the Sultan's representative, Gavril Pasha, to surround his office with soldiers, and to request him to leave the province (September 18). A carriage was ready to conduct him towards Sofia. In it sat a gaily dressed peasant girl holding a drawn sword. Gavril turned red with rage at this insult, but he mounted the vehicle, and was driven through the town and thence towards the Balkans.

Such was the departure of the last official of the Sultan from the land which the Turks had often drenched with blood; such was the revenge of the southern Bulgarians for the atrocities of 1876. Not a drop of blood was shed; and Major von Huhn, who soon arrived at Philippopolis, found Greeks and Turks living contentedly under the new government. The word "revolution" is in such cases a misnomer. South Bulgaria merely returned to its natural state[196]. But nothing will convince diplomatists that events can happen without the pulling of wires by themselves or their rivals. In this instance they found that Prince Alexander had made the revolution.

[Footnote 196: The Struggle of the Bulgarians for National Independence, by Major A. von Huhn, chap. ii. See, too, Parl. Papers, Turkey, No. 1 (1886), p. 83.]

At first, however, the Prince doubted whether he should accept the crown of a Greater Bulgaria which the men of Philippopolis now enthusiastically offered to him. Stambuloff strongly urged him to accept, even if he thereby still further enraged the Czar: "Sire," he said, "two roads lie before you: the one to Philippopolis and as far beyond as God may lead; the other to Sistova and Darmstadt. I counsel you to take the crown the nation offers you." On the 20th the Prince announced his acceptance of the crown of a united Bulgaria. As he said to the British Consul at Philippopolis, he would have been a "sharper" (filou) not to side with his people[197].

[Footnote 197: Stambuloff, by A.H. Beaman, chap. iii.; Parl. Papers, ibid. p. 81.]

Few persons were prepared for the outburst of wrath of the Czar at hearing this news. Early in his reign he had concentrated into a single phrase—"silly Pole"—the spleen of an essentially narrow nature at seeing a kinsman and a dependant dare to think and act for himself[198]. But on this occasion, as we can now see, the Prince had marred Russia's plans in the most serious way. Stambuloff and he had deprived her of her unionist trump card. The Czar found his project of becoming Grand Duke of a Greater Bulgaria blocked by the action of this same hated kinsman. Is it surprising that his usual stolidity gave way to one of those fits of bull-like fury which aroused the fear of all who beheld them? Thenceforth between the Emperor Alexander and Prince Alexander the relations might be characterised by the curt phrase which Palafox hurled at the French from the weak walls of Saragossa—"War to the knife." Like Palafox, the Prince now had no hope but in the bravery of his people.

[Footnote 198: Bismarck: Reflections and Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 116 (Eng. ed.).]

In the ciphered telegrams of September 19 and 20, which the Director of the Asiatic Department at St. Petersburg sent to the Russian Consul-General at Rustchuk, the note of resentment and revenge was clearly sounded. The events in Eastern Roumelia had changed "all our intentions." The agent was therefore directed to summon the chief Russian officers in Bulgaria and ask them whether the "young" Bulgarian officers could really command brigades and regiments, and organise the artillery; also whether that army could alone meet the army of "a neighbouring State." The replies of the officers being decidedly in the negative, they were ordered to leave Bulgaria[199]. Nelidoff, the Russian ambassador at Constantinople, also worked furiously to spur on the Sultan to revenge the insult inflicted on him by Prince Alexander.

[Footnote 199: R. Leonoff, op. cit. Nos. 75, 77.]

Sir William White believed that the volte face in Russian policy was due solely to Nelidoff's desire to thwart the peaceful policy of the Russian Chancellor, de Giers, who at that time chanced to be absent in Tyrol, while the Czar also was away at Copenhagen[200]. But it now appears that the Russian Foreign Office took Nelidoff's view, and bade him press Turkey to restore the "legal order" of things in Eastern Roumelia. Further, the Ministers of the Czar found that Servia, Greece, and perhaps also Roumania, intended to oppose the aggrandisement of Bulgaria; and it therefore seemed easy to chastise "the Battenberger" for his wanton disturbance of the peace of Europe.

[Footnote 200: Sir William White: Memoirs and Correspondence, by H. Sutherland Edwards, pp. 231-232.]

Possibly Russia would herself have struck at Bulgaria but for the difficulties of the general situation. How great these were will be realised by a perusal of the following chapters, which deal with the spread of Nihilism in Russia, the formation of the Austro-German alliance, and the favour soon shown to it by Italy, the estrangement of England and the Porte owing to the action taken by the former in Egypt, and the sharp collision of interests between Russia and England at Panjdeh on the Afghan frontier. When it is further remembered that France fretted at the untoward results of M. Ferry's forward policy in Tonquin; that Germany was deeply engaged in colonial efforts; and that the United Kingdom was distracted by those efforts, by the failure of the expedition to Khartum, and by the Parnellite agitation in Ireland—the complexity of the European situation will be sufficiently evident. Assuredly the events of the year 1885 were among the most distracting ever recorded in the history of Europe.

This clash of interests among nations wearied by war, and alarmed at the apparition of the red spectre of revolution in their midst, told by no means unfavourably on the fortunes of the Balkan States. The dominant facts of the situation were, firstly, that Russia no longer had a free hand in the Balkan Peninsula in face of the compact between the three Emperors ratified at Skiernewice in the previous autumn (see Chapter XII.); and, secondly, that the traditional friendship between England and the Porte had been replaced by something like hostility. Seeing that the Sultan had estranged the British Government by his very suspicious action during the revolts of Arabi Pasha and of the Mahdi, even those who had loudly proclaimed the need of propping up his authority as essential to the stability of our Eastern Empire now began to revise their prejudices.

Thus, when Lord Salisbury came to office, if not precisely to power, in June 1885, he found affairs in the East rapidly ripening for a change of British policy—a change which is known to have corresponded with his own convictions. Finally, the marriage of Princess Beatrice to Prince Henry of Battenberg, on July 23, 1885, added that touch of personal interest which enabled Court circles to break with the traditions of the past and to face the new situation with equanimity. Accordingly the power of Britain, which in 1876-78 had been used to thwart the growth of freedom in the Balkan Peninsula, was now put forth to safeguard the union of Bulgaria. During these critical months Sir William White acted as ambassador at Constantinople, and used his great knowledge of the Balkan peoples with telling effect for this salutary purpose.

Lord Salisbury advised the Sultan not to send troops into Southern Bulgaria; and the warning chimed in with the note of timorous cunning which formed the undertone of that monarch's thought and policy. Distracted by the news of the warlike preparations of Servia and Greece, Abdul Hamid looked on Russia's advice in a contrary sense as a piece of Muscovite treachery. About the same time, too, there were rumours of palace plots at Constantinople; and the capricious recluse of Yildiz finally decided to keep his best troops near at hand. It appears, then, that Nihilism in Russia and the spectre of conspiracy always haunting the brain of Abdul Hamid played their part in assuring the liberties of Bulgaria.

Meanwhile the Powers directed their ambassadors at Constantinople to hold a preliminary Conference at which Turkey would be represented. The result was a declaration expressing formal disapproval of the violation of the Treaty of Berlin, and a hope that all parties concerned would keep the peace. This mild protest very inadequately reflected the character of the discussions which had been going on between the several Courts. Russia, it is known, wished to fasten the blame for the revolution on Prince Alexander; but all public censure was vetoed by England.

Probably her action was as effective in still weightier matters. A formal Conference of the ambassadors of the Powers met at Constantinople on November 5; and there again Sir William White, acting on instructions from Lord Salisbury, defended the Bulgarian cause, and sought to bring about a friendly understanding between the Porte and "a people occupying so important a position in the Sultan's dominions." Lord Salisbury also warned the Turkish ambassador in London that if Turkey sought to expel Prince Alexander from Eastern Roumelia, she would "be making herself the instrument of those who desired the fall of the Ottoman Empire[201]."

[Footnote 201: Parl. Papers, Turkey, No. 1 (1886), pp. 214-215. See, too, ibid. pp. 197 et seq. for Lord Salisbury's instructions to Sir William White for the Conference. In view of them it is needless to waste space in refuting the arguments of the Russophil A.G. Drandar, op. cit. p. 147, that England sought to make war between the Balkan States.]

This reference to the insidious means used by Russia for bringing the Turks to a state of tutelage, as a preliminary to partition, was an effective reminder of the humiliations which they had undergone at the hands of Russia by the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi (1833). France also showed no disposition to join the Russian and Austrian demand that the Sultan should at once re-establish the status quo; and by degrees the more intelligent Turks came to see that a strong Bulgaria, independent of Russian control, might be an additional safeguard against the Colossus of the North. Russia's insistence on the exact fulfilment of the Treaty of Berlin helped to open their eyes, and lent force to Sir William White's arguments as to the need of strengthening that treaty by "introducing into it a timely improvement[202]."

[Footnote 202: Ibid. pp. 273-274, 288, for Russia's policy; p. 284 for Sir W. White's argument.]

Owing to the opposition offered by Great Britain, and to some extent by France, to the proposed restoration of the old order of things in Eastern Roumelia, the Conference came to an end at the close of November, the three Imperial Powers blaming Sir William White for his obstructive tactics. The charges will not bear examination, but they show the irritation of those Governments at England's championship of the Bulgarian cause[203]. The Bulgarians always remember the names of Lord Salisbury and Sir William White as those of friends in need.

[Footnote 203: Ibid. pp. 370-372.]

In the main, however, the consolidation of Bulgaria was achieved by her own stalwart sons. While the Imperial Powers were proposing to put back the hands of the clock, an alarum sounded forth, proclaiming the advent of a new era in the history of the Balkan peoples. The action which brought about this change was startling alike in its inception, in the accompanying incidents, and still more in its results.

Where Abdul Hamid forebore to enter, even as the mandatory of the Continental Courts, there Milan of Servia rushed in. As an excuse for his aggression, the Kinglet of Belgrade alleged the harm done to Servian trade by a recent revision of the Bulgarian tariff. But the Powers assessed this complaint and others at their due value, and saw in his action merely the desire to seize a part of Western Bulgaria as a set-off to the recent growth of that Principality. On all sides his action in declaring war against Prince Alexander (November 14) met with reprobation, even on the part of his guide and friend, Austria. A recent report of the Hungarian Committee on Foreign Affairs contained a recommendation which implied that he ought to receive compensation; and this seemed to show the wish of the more active part of the Dual Monarchy peacefully but effectively to champion his cause[204].

[Footnote 204: Parl. Papers, Turkey, No. 1 (1886), p. 250.]

Nevertheless, the King decided to carve out his fortunes by his own sword. He had some grounds for confidence. If a Bulgarian fait accompli could win tacit recognition from the Powers, why should not a Servian triumph over Bulgaria force their hands once more? Prince Alexander was unsafe on his throne; thanks to the action of Russia his troops had very few experienced officers; and in view of the Sultan's resentment his southern border could not be denuded of troops. Never did a case seem more desperate than that of the "Peasant State," deserted and flouted by Russia, disliked by the Sultan, on bad terms with Roumania, and publicly lectured by the Continental Powers for her irregular conduct. Servia's triumph seemed assured.

But now there came forth one more proof of the vitalising force of the national principle. In seven years the downtrodden peasants of Bulgaria had become men, and now astonished the world by their prowess. The withdrawal of the Russian officers left half of the captaincies vacant; but they were promptly filled up by enthusiastic young lieutenants. Owing to the blowing up of the line from Philippopolis to Adrianople, only five locomotives were available for carrying back northwards the troops which had hitherto been massed on the southern border; and these five were already overstrained. Yet the engineers now worked them still harder and they did not break down[205]. The hardy peasants tramped impossibly long distances in their longing to meet the Servians. The arrangements were carried through with a success which seems miraculous in an inexperienced race. The explanation was afterwards rightly discerned by an English visitor to Bulgaria. "This is the secret of Bulgarian independence—everybody is in grim earnest. The Bulgarians do not care about amusements[206]." In that remark there is food for thought. Inefficiency has no place among a people that looks to the welfare of the State as all in all. Breakdowns occur when men think more about "sport" and pleasure than about doing their utmost for their country.

[Footnote 205: A. von Huhn, op. cit. p. 105.]

[Footnote 206: E.A.B. Hodgetts, Round about Armenia, p. 7.]

The results of this grim earnestness were to astonish the world. The Servians at first gained some successes in front of Widdin and Slivnitza; but the defenders of the latter place (an all-important position north-west of Sofia) hurried up all possible forces. Two Bulgarian regiments are said to have marched 123 kilometres in thirty hours in order to defend that military outwork of their capital; while others, worn out with marching, rode forward on horseback, two men to each horse, and then threw themselves into the fight. The Bulgarian artillery was well served, and proved to be very superior to that of the Servians.

Thus, on the first two days of conflict at Slivnitza, the defenders beat back the Servians with some loss. On the third day (November 19), after receiving reinforcements, they took the offensive, with surprising vigour. A talented young officer, Bendereff, led their right wing, with bands playing and colours flying, to storm the hillsides that dominated the Servian position. The hardy peasants scaled the hills and delivered the final bayonet charge so furiously that there and on all sides the invaders fled in wild panic, and scarcely halted until they reached their own frontier.

Thenceforth King Milan had hard work to keep his men together. Many of them were raw troops; their ammunition was nearly exhausted; and their morale had vanished utterly. Prince Alexander had little difficulty in thrusting them forth from Pirot, and seemed to have before him a clear road to Belgrade, when suddenly he was brought to a halt by a menace from the north[207].

[Footnote 207: Drandar, Evenements politiques en Bulgarie, pp. 89-116; von Huhn, op. cit. chaps. x. xi.]

A special envoy sent by the Hapsburgs, Count Khevenhueller, came in haste to the headquarters of the Prince on November 28, and in imperious terms bade him grant an armistice to Servia, otherwise Austrian troops would forthwith cross the frontier to her assistance. Before this threat Alexander gave way, and was blamed by some of his people for this act of complaisance. But assuredly he could not well have acted otherwise. The three Emperors, of late acting in accord in Balkan questions, had it in their power to crush him by launching the Turks against Philippopolis, or their own troops against Sofia. He had satisfied the claims of honour; he had punished Servia for her peevish and unsisterly jealousy. Under his lead the Bulgarians had covered themselves with glory, and had leaped at a bound from political youth to manhood. Why should he risk their new-found unity merely in order to abase Servia? The Prince never acted more prudently than when he decided not to bring into the field the Power which, as he believed, had pushed on Servia to war[208].

[Footnote 208: Drandar, op. cit. chap. iii.; Kuhn, op. cit. chap. xviii.]

Had he known that the Russian Chancellor, de Giers, on hearing of Austria's threat to Bulgaria, informed the Court of Vienna of the Czar's condign displeasure if that threat were carried into effect, perhaps he would have played a grand game, advancing on Belgrade, dethroning the already unpopular King Milan, and offering to the Czar the headship of a united Servo-Bulgarian State. He might thus have appeased that sovereign, but at the cost of a European war. Whether from lack of information, or from a sense of prudence and humanity, the Prince held back and decided for peace with Servia. Despite many difficulties thrown in the way by King Milan, this was the upshot of the ensuing negotiations. The two States finally came to terms by the Treaty of Bukharest, where, thanks to the good sense of the negotiators and the efforts of Turkey to compose these strifes, peace was assured on the basis of the status quo ante bellum (March 3, 1886).

Already the Porte had manifested its good-will towards Bulgaria in the most signal manner. This complete reversal of policy may be assigned to several causes. Firstly, Prince Alexander, on marching against the Servians, had very tactfully proclaimed that he did so on behalf of the existing order of things, which they were bent on overthrowing. His actions having corresponded to his words, the Porte gradually came to see in him a potent defender against Russia. This change in the attitude of the Sultan was undoubtedly helped on by the arguments of Lord Salisbury to the Turkish ambassador at London. He summarised the whole case for a recognition of the union of the two Bulgarias in the following remarks (December 23, 1885):—

Every week's experience showed that the Porte had little to dread from the subserviency of Bulgaria to foreign influence, if only Bulgaria were allowed enjoyment of her unanimous desires, and the Porte did not gratuitously place itself in opposition to the general feeling of the people. A Bulgaria, friendly to the Porte, and jealous of foreign influence, would be a far surer bulwark against foreign aggression than two Bulgarias, severed in administration, but united in considering the Porte as the only obstacle to their national development[209].

[Footnote 209: Parl. Papers, Turkey, No. 1 (1886), p. 424.]

Events served to reveal the soundness of this statesmanlike pronouncement. At the close of the year Prince Alexander returned from the front to Sofia and received an overwhelming ovation as the champion of Bulgarian liberties. Further, he now found no difficulty in coming to an understanding with the Turkish Commissioners sent to investigate the state of opinion in Southern Bulgaria. Most significant of all was the wrath of the Czar at the sight of his popularity, and the utter collapse of the Russian party at Sofia.

Meanwhile the Powers found themselves obliged little by little to abandon their pedantic resolve to restore the Treaty of Berlin. Sir Robert Morier, British ambassador at St. Petersburg, in a letter of December 27, 1885, to Sir William White, thus commented on the causes that assured success to the Bulgarian cause:

The very great prudence shown by Lord Salisbury, and the consummate ability with which you played your part, have made it a successful game; but the one crowning good fortune, which we mainly owe to the incalculable folly of the Servian attack, has been that Prince Alexander's generalship and the fighting capacities of his soldiers have placed our rival action [his own and that of Sir W. White] in perfect harmony with the crushing logic of fact. The rivalry is thus completely swamped in the bit of cosmic work so successfully accomplished. A State has been evolved out of the protoplasm of Balkan chaos.

Sir Robert Morier finally stated that if Sir William White succeeded in building up an independent Bulgaria friendly to Roumania, he would have achieved the greatest feat of diplomacy since Sir James Hudson's statesmanlike moves at Turin in the critical months of 1859-60 gained for England a more influential position in Italy than France had secured by her aid in the campaign of Solferino. The praise is overstrained, inasmuch as it leaves out of count the statecraft of Bismarck in the years 1863-64 and 1869-70; but certainly among the peaceful triumphs of recent years that of Sir William White must rank very high.

If, however, we examine the inner cause of the success of the diplomacy of Hudson and White we must assign it in part to the mistakes of the liberating Powers, France and Russia. Napoleon III., by requiring the cession of Savoy and Nice, and by revealing his design to Gallicise the Italian Peninsula, speedily succeeded in alienating the Italians. The action of Russia, in compelling Bulgaria to give up the Dobrudscha as an equivalent to the part of Bessarabia which she took from Roumania, also strained the sense of gratitude of those peoples; and the conduct of Muscovite agents in Bulgaria provoked in that Principality feelings bitterer than those which the Italians felt at the loss of Savoy and Nice. So true is it that in public as in private life the manner in which a wrong is inflicted counts for more than the wrong itself. It was on this sense of resentment (misnamed "ingratitude" by the "liberators") that British diplomacy worked with telling effect in both cases. It conferred on the "liberated" substantial benefits; but their worth was doubled by the contrast which they offered to the losses or the irritation consequent on the actions of Napoleon III. and of Alexander III.

To the present writer it seems that the great achievements of Sir William White were, first, that he kept the Sultan quiet (a course, be it remarked, from which that nervous recluse was never averse) when Nelidoff sought to hound him on against Bulgaria; and, still more, that he helped to bring about a good understanding between Constantinople and Sofia. In view of the hatred which Abdul Hamid bore to England after her intervention in Egypt in 1882, this was certainly a great diplomatic achievement; but possibly Abdul Hamid hoped to reap advantages on the Nile from his complaisance to British policy in the Balkans.

The outcome of it all was the framing of a Turco-Bulgarian Convention (February 1, 1886) whereby the Porte recognised Prince Alexander as Governor of Eastern Roumelia for a term of five years; a few border districts in Rhodope, inhabited by Moslems, were ceded to the Sultan, and (wonder of wonders!) Turkey and Bulgaria concluded an offensive and defensive alliance. In case of foreign aggression on Bulgaria, Turkish troops would be sent thither to be commanded by the Prince; if Turkey were invaded, Bulgarian troops would form part of the Sultan's army repelling the invader. In other respects the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin remained in force for Southern Bulgaria[210].

[Footnote 210: Parl. Papers, Turkey, No. 2 (1886).]

On that same day, as it chanced, the Salisbury Cabinet resigned office, and Mr. Gladstone became Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery taking the portfolio for Foreign Affairs. This event produced little variation in Britain's Eastern policy, and that statement will serve to emphasise the importance of the change of attitude of the Conservative party towards those affairs in the years 1878-85—a change undoubtedly due in the main to the Marquis of Salisbury.

In the official notes of the Earl of Rosebery there is manifest somewhat more complaisance to Russia, as when on February 12 he instructed Sir William White to advise the Porte to modify its convention with Bulgaria by abandoning the stipulation as to mutual military aid. Doubtless this advice was sound. It coincided with the known opinions of the Court of Vienna; and at the same time Russia formally declared that she could never accept that condition[211]. As Germany took the same view the Porte agreed to expunge the obnoxious clause. The Government of the Czar also objected to the naming of Prince Alexander in the Convention. This unlooked-for slight naturally aroused the indignation of the Prince; but as the British Government deferred to Russian views on this matter, the Convention was finally signed at Constantinople on April 5, 1886. The Powers, including Turkey, thereby recognised "the Prince of Bulgaria" (not named) as Governor of Eastern Roumelia for a term of five years, and referred the "Organic Statute" of that province to revision by a joint Conference.

[Footnote 211: Ibid. pp. 96-98.]

The Prince submitted to this arrangement, provisional and humiliating though it was. But the insults inflicted by Russia bound him the more closely to his people; and at the united Parliament, where 182 members out of the total 300 supported his Ministers, he advocated measures that would cement the union. Bulgarian soon became the official language throughout South Bulgaria, to the annoyance of the Greek and Turkish minorities. But the chief cause of unrest continued to be the intrigues of Russian agents.

The anger of the Czar at the success of his hated kinsman showed itself in various ways. Not content with inflicting every possible slight and disturbing the peace of Bulgaria through his agents, he even menaced Europe with war over that question. At Sevastopol on May 19, he declared that circumstances might compel him "to defend by force of arms the dignity of the Empire"—a threat probably aimed at Bulgaria and Turkey. On his return to Moscow he received an enthusiastic welcome from the fervid Slavophils of the old Russian capital, the Mayor expressing in his address the hope that "the cross of Christ will soon shine on St. Sofia" at Constantinople. At the end of June the Russian Government repudiated the clause of the Treaty of Berlin constituting Batoum a free port[212]. Despite a vigorous protest by Lord Rosebery against this infraction of treaty engagements, the Czar and M. de Giers held to their resolve, evidently by way of retort to the help given from London to the union of the two Bulgarias.

[Footnote 212: Parl. Papers, Russia (1886), p. 828.]

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 legalite) 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. Elie 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 Elie 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: Elie de Cyon, Histoire de l'Entente franco-russe, pp. 177-178.]

[Footnote 218: The Russophil Drandar (op. cit. p. 214) calls these demands "remarqueblement moderees 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. Berard (Paris, 1904); La Peninsule balkanique, by Capitaine Lamouche (Paris, 1899).]



CHAPTER XI

NIHILISM AND ABSOLUTISM IN RUSSIA

THE HOUSE OF ROMANOFF

Catharine II. (1762-1796.) Paul. (1796-1801.) Alexander I. Nicholas I. (1801-1825.) (1825-1855.) Alexander II. Constantine. Nicholas. Michael. (1855-1881.) Nicholas. Alexander III. Alexis. Marie. Sergius. Paul. (Died in (1881-1894.) (Duchess of (Assassinated 1865.) Edinburgh.) Feb. 17, 1905.) Nicholas II. (1894 .)

The Whig statesman, Charles James Fox, once made the profound though seemingly paradoxical assertion that the most dangerous part of a Revolution was the Restoration that ended it. In a similar way we may hazard the statement that the greatest danger brought about by war lies in the period of peace immediately following. Just as the strain involved by any physical effort is most felt when the muscles and nerves resume their normal action, so, too, the body politic is liable to depression when once the time of excitement is over and the artificial activities of war give place to the tiresome work of paying the bill. England after Waterloo, France and Germany after the war of 1870, afford examples of this truth; but never perhaps has it been more signally illustrated than in the Russia of 1878-82.

There were several reasons why the reaction should be especially sharp in Russia. The Slav peoples that form the great bulk of her population are notoriously sensitive. Shut up for nearly half the year by the rigours of winter, they naturally develop habits of brooding introspection or coarse animalism—witness the plaintive strains of their folk-songs, the pessimism that haunts their literature, and the dram-drinking habits of the peasantry. The Muscovite temperament and the Muscovite climate naturally lead to idealist strivings against the hardships of life or a dull grovelling amongst them. Melancholy or vodka is the outcome of it all.

The giant of the East was first aroused to a consciousness of his strength by the invasion of Napoleon the Great. The comparative ease with which the Grand Army was engulfed left on the national mind of Russia a consciousness of pride never to be lost even amidst the cruel disappointments of the Crimean War. Holy Russia had once beaten back the forces of Europe marshalled by the greatest captain of all time. She was therefore a match for the rest of the Continent. Such was the belief of every patriotic Muscovite. As for the Turks, they were not worthy of entering the lists against the soldiers of the Czar. Did not every decade bring further proofs of the decline of the Ottomans in governing capacity and military prowess? They might harry Bulgarian peasants and win laurels over the Servian militia. But how could that bankrupt State and its undisciplined hordes hold up against the might of Russia and the fervour of her liberating legions?

After the indulgence of these day dreams the disillusionment caused by the events at Plevna came the more cruelly. One general after another became the scapegoat for the popular indignation. Then the General Staff was freely censured, and whispers went round that the Grand Duke Nicholas, brother of the Czar, was not only incompetent to conduct a great war, but guilty of underhand dealings with the contractors who defrauded the troops and battened on the public funds. Letters from the rank and file showed that the bread was bad, the shoes were rotten, the rifles outclassed by those of the Turks, and that trenching-tools were lacking for many precious weeks[222]. Then, too, the Bulgarian peasants were found to be in a state of comfort superior to that of the bulk of their liberators—a discovery which aroused in the Russian soldiery feelings like those of the troops of the old French monarchy when they fought side by side with the soldiers of Washington for the triumph of democracy in the New World. In both cases the lessons were stored up, to be used when the champions of liberty returned home and found the old order of things clanking on as slowly and rustily as ever.

[Footnote 222: Russia Before and After the War, translated by E.F. Taylor (London, 1880), chap. xvi.: "We have been cheated by blockheads, robbed by people whose incapacity was even greater than their villainy."]

Finally, there came the crushing blow of the Treaty of Berlin. The Russian people had fought for an ideal: they longed to see the cross take the place of the crescent which for five centuries had flashed defiance to Christendom from the summit of St. Sofia at Constantinople. But Britain's ironclads, Austria's legions, and German diplomacy barred the way in the very hour of triumph; and Russia drew back. To the Slav enthusiasts of Moscow even the Treaty of San Stefano had seemed a dereliction of a sacred duty; that of Berlin seemed the most cowardly of betrayals. As the Princess Radziwill confesses in her Recollections—that event made Nihilism possible.

As usual, the populace, whether reactionary Slavophils or Liberals of the type of Western Europe, vented its spleen on the Government. For a time the strongest bureaucracy in Europe was driven to act on the defensive. The Czar returned stricken with asthma and prematurely aged by the privations and cares of the campaign. The Grand Duke Nicholas was recalled from his command, and, after bearing the signs of studied hostility of the Czarevitch, was exiled to his estates in February 1879. The Government inspired contempt rather than fear; and a new spirit of independence pervaded all classes. This was seen even as far back as February 1878, in the acquittal of Vera Zazulich, a lady who had shot the Chief of the Police at St. Petersburg, by a jury consisting of nobles and high officials; and the verdict, given in the face of damning evidence, was generally approved. Similar crimes occurred nearly every week[223]. Everything therefore, favoured the designs of those who sought to overthrow all government. In a word, the outcome of the war was Nihilism.

[Footnote 223: Ibid. chap. xvii. The Government thereafter dispensed with the ordinary forms of justice for political crimes and judged them by special Commissions.]

The father of this sombre creed was a wealthy Russian landlord named Bakunin; or rather, he shares this doubtful honour with the Frenchman Prudhon. Bakunin, who was born in 1814, entered on active life in the time of soulless repression inaugurated by the Czar Nicholas I. (1825-1855). Disgusted by Russian bureaucracy, the youth eagerly drank in the philosophy of Western Europe, especially that of Hegel. During a residence at Paris, he embraced and developed Prudhon's creed that "property is theft," and sought to prepare the way for a crusade against all Governments by forming the Alliance of Social Democracy (1869), which speedily became merged in the famous "Internationale." Driven successively from France and Central Europe, he was finally handed over to the Russians and sent to Siberia; thence he escaped to Japan and came to England, finally settling in Switzerland. His writings and speeches did much to rouse the Slavs of Austria, Poland, and Russia to a sense of their national importance, and of the duty of overthrowing the Governments that cramped their energies.

As in the case of Prudhon his zeal for the non-existent and hatred of the actual bordered on madness, as when he included most of the results of art, literature, and science in his comprehensive anathemas. Nevertheless his crusade for destruction appealed to no small part of the sensitive peoples of the Slavonic race, who, differing in many details, yet all have a dislike of repression and a longing to have their "fling[224]." A union in a Panslavonic League for the overthrow of the Houses of Romanoff, Hapsburg, and Hohenzollern promised to satisfy the vague longings of that much-baffled race, whose name, denoting "glorious," had become the synonym for servitude of the lowest type. Such was the creed that disturbed Eastern and Central Europe throughout the period 1847-78, now and again developing a kind of iconoclastic frenzy among its votaries.

[Footnote 224: For this peculiarity and a consequent tendency to extremes, see Prof. G. Brandes Impressions of Russia, p. 22.]

This revolutionary creed absorbed another of a different kind. The second creed was scientific and self-centred; it had its origin in the Liberal movement of the sixties, when reforms set in, even in governmental circles. The Czar, Alexander II., in 1861 freed the serfs from the control of their lords, and allotted to them part of the plots which they had hitherto worked on a servile tenure. For various reasons, which we cannot here detail, the peasants were far from satisfied with this change, weighted, as it was, by somewhat onerous terms, irksome restrictions, and warped sometimes by dishonest or hostile officials. Limited powers of local government were also granted in 1864 to the local Zemstvos or land-organisations; but these again failed to satisfy the new cravings for a real system of self-government; and the Czar, seeing that his work produced more ferment than gratitude, began at the close of the sixties to fall back into the old absolutist ways[225].

[Footnote 225: See Wallace's Russia, 2 vols.; Russia under the Tzars, by "Stepniak," vol. ii. chap. xxix.; also two lectures on Russian affairs by Prof. Vinogradoff, in Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century (Camb. 1902).]

At that time, too, a band of writers, of whom the novelist Turgenieff is the best known, were extolling the triumphs of scientific research and the benefits of Western democracy. He it was who adapted to scientific or ethical use the word "Nihilism" (already in use in France to designate Prudhon's theories), so as to represent the revolt of the individual against the religious creed and patriarchal customs of old Russia. "The fundamental principle of Nihilism," says "Stepniak," "was absolute individualism. It was the negation, in the name of individual liberty, of all the obligations imposed upon the individual by society, by family life, and by religion[226]."

[Footnote 226: Underground Russia, by "Stepniak," Introduction, p. 4. Or, as Turgenieff phrased it in one of his novels: "a Nihilist is a man who submits to no authority, who accepts not a single principle upon faith merely, however high such a principle may stand in the eyes of men." In short, a Nihilist was an extreme individualist and rationalist.]

For a time these disciples of Darwin and Herbert Spencer were satisfied with academic protests against autocracy; but the uselessness of such methods soon became manifest; the influence of professors and philosophic Epicureans could never permeate the masses of Russia and stir them to their dull depths. What "the intellectuals" needed was a creed which would appeal to the many.

This they gained mainly from Bakunin. He had pointed the way to what seemed a practical policy, the ownership of the soil of Russia by the Mirs, the communes of her myriad villages. As to methods, he advocated a propaganda of violence. "Go among the people," he said, and convert them to your aims. The example of the Paris Communists in 1871 enforced his pleas; and in the subsequent years thousands of students, many of them of the highest families, quietly left their homes, donned the peasants' garb, smirched their faces, tarred their hands, and went into the villages or the factories in the hope of stirring up the thick sedimentary deposit of the Russian system[227]. In many cases their utmost efforts ended in failure, the tragi-comedy of which is finely set forth in Turgenieff's Virgin Soil. Still more frequently their goal proved to be—Siberia. But these young men and women did not toil for nought. Their efforts hastened the absorption of philosophic Nihilism in the creed of Prudhon and Bakunin. The Nihilist of Turgenieff's day had been a hedonist of the clubs, or a harmless weaver of scientific Utopias; the Nihilist of the new age was that most dangerous of men, a desperado girt with a fighting creed.

[Footnote 227: Russia in Revolution, by G.H. Perriss, pp. 204-206, 210-214; Arnaudo, I Nihilismo (Turin, 1879). See, too, the chapters added by Sir D.M. Wallace to the new edition of his work Russia (1905).]

The fusing of these two diverse elements was powerfully helped on by the white heat of indignation that glowed throughout Russia when details of the official peculation and mismanagement of the war with Turkey became known. Everything combined to discredit the Government; and enthusiasts of all kinds felt that the days for scientific propaganda and stealthy agitation were past. Voltaire must give way to Marat. It was time for the bomb and the dagger to do their work.

The new Nihilists organised an executive committee for the removal of the most obnoxious officials. Its success was startling. To name only a few of their chief deeds: on August 15, 1878, a Chief of the Police was slain near one of the Imperial Palaces at the capital; and, in February 1879, the Governor of Kharkov was shot, the Nihilists succeeding in announcing his condemnation by placards mysteriously posted up in every large town. In vain did the Government intervene and substitute a military Commission in place of trial by jury. Exile and hanging only made the Nihilists more daring, and on more than one occasion the Czar nearly fell a victim to their desperadoes.

The most astounding of these attempts was the explosion of a mine under the banqueting-hall of the Winter Palace at St. Petersburg on the evening of February 17, 1880, when the Imperial family escaped owing to a delay in the arrival of the Grand Duke of Hesse. Ten soldiers were killed and forty-eight wounded in and near the guard-room.

The Czar answered outrage by terrorism. A week after this outrage he issued a ukase suspending the few remaining rights of local self-government hitherto spared by the reaction, and vesting practically all executive powers in a special Commission, presided over by General Loris Melikoff. This man was an Armenian by descent, and had distinguished himself as commander in the recent war in Asia, the capture of Kars being largely due to his dispositions. To these warlike gifts, uncommon in the Armenians of to-day, he added administrative abilities of a high order. Enjoying in a peculiar degree the confidence of Alexander II., he was charged with the supervision of all political trials and a virtual control of all the Governors-General of the Empire. Thereupon the central committee of the Nihilists proclaimed war a outrance until the Czar conceded to a popularly elected National Assembly the right to reform the life of Russia.

Here was the strength of the Nihilist party. By violent means it sought to extort what a large proportion of the townsfolk wished for and found no means of demanding in a lawful manner. Loris Melikoff, gifted with the shrewdness of his race, saw that the Government would effect little by terrorism alone. Wholesale arrests, banishment, and hangings only added to the number of the disaffected, especially as the condemned went to their doom with a calm heroism that inspired the desire of imitation or revenge. Repression must clearly be accompanied by reforms that would bridge over the gulf ever widening between the Government and the thinking classes of the people. He began by persuading the Emperor to release several hundreds of suspects and to relax the severe measures adopted against the students of the Universities. Lastly, he sought to induce the Czar to establish representative institutions, for which even the nobles were beginning to petition. Little by little he familiarised him with the plan of extending the system of the Zemstvos, so that there should be elective councils for towns and provinces, as well as delegations from the provincial noblesse. He did not propose to democratise the central Government. In his scheme the deputies of nobles and representatives of provinces and towns were to send delegates to the Council of State, a purely consultative body which Alexander I. had founded in 1802.

Despite the tentative nature of these proposals, and the favourable reception accorded to them by the Council of State, the Czar for several days withheld his assent. On March 9 he signed the ukase, only to postpone its publication until March 12. Not until the morning of March 13 did he give the final order for its publication in the Messager Officiel. It was his last act as lawgiver. On that day (March 1, and Sunday, in the Russian calendar) he went to the usual military parade, despite the earnest warnings of the Czarevitch and Loris Melikoff as to a rumoured Nihilist plot. To their pleadings he returned the answer, "Only Providence can protect me, and when it ceases to do so, these Cossacks cannot possibly help." On his return, alongside of the Catharine Canal, a bomb was thrown under his carriage; the explosion tore the back off the carriage, injuring some of his Cossack escort, but leaving the Emperor unhurt. True to his usual feelings of compassion, he at once alighted to inquire after the wounded. This act cost him his life. Another Nihilist quickly approached and flung a bomb right at his feet. As soon as the smoke cleared away, Alexander was seen to be frightfully mangled and lying in his blood. He could only murmur, "Quick, home; carry to the Palace; there die." There, surrounded by his dearest ones, Alexander II. breathed his last.

In striking down the liberator of the serfs when on the point of recurring to earlier and better methods of rule, the Nihilists had dealt the death-blow to their own cause. As soon as the details of the outrage were known, the old love for the Czar welled forth: his imperfections in public and private life, the seeming weakness of his foreign policy, and his recent use of terrorism against the party of progress were forgotten; and to the sensitive Russian nature, ever prone to extremes, his figure stood forth as the friend of peace, and the would-be reformer, hindered in his efforts by unwise advisers and an untoward destiny.

* * * * *

His successor was a man cast in a different mould. It is one of the peculiarities of the recent history of Russia that her rulers have broken away from the policy of their immediate predecessors, to recur to that which they had discarded. The vague and generous Liberalism of Alexander I. gave way in 1825 to the stern autocracy of his brother, Nicholas I. This being shattered by the Crimean War, Alexander II. harked back to the ideals of his uncle, and that, too, in the wavering and unsatisfactory way which had brought woe to that ruler and unrest to the people. Alexander III., raised to the throne by the bombs of the revolutionaries, determined to mould his policy on the principles of autocracy and orthodoxy. To pose as a reformer would have betokened fear of the Nihilists; and the new ruler, gifted with a magnificent physique, a narrow mind, and a stern will, ever based his conduct on elementary notions that appealed to the peasant and the common soldier. In 1825 Nicholas I. had cowed the would-be rebels at his capital by a display of defiant animal courage. Alexander III. resolved to do the like. He had always been noted for a quiet persistence on which arguments fell in vain. The nickname, "bullock," which his father early gave him (shortened by his future subjects to "bull"), sufficiently summed up the supremacy of the material over the mental that characterised the new ruler. Bismarck, who knew him, had a poor idea of his abilities, and summed up his character by saying that he looked at things from the point of view of a Russian peasant[228]. That remark supplies a key to Russian politics during the years 1881-94.

[Footnote 228: Reminiscences of Bismarck, by S. Whitman, p. 114; Bismarck: some Secret Pages of his History, by M. Busch, vol. iii. p. 150.]

At first, when informed by Melikoff that the late Czar was on the point of making the constitutional experiment described above, Alexander III. exclaimed, "Change nothing in the orders of my father. This shall count as his will and testament." If he had held to this generous resolve the world's history would perhaps have been very different. Had he published his father's last orders; had he appealed to the people, like another Antony over the corpse of Caear, the enthusiastic Slav temperament would have eagerly responded to this mark of Imperial confidence. Loyalty to the throne and fury against the Nihilists would have been the dominant feelings of the age, impelling all men to make the wisest use of the thenceforth sacred bequest of constitutional freedom.

The man who is believed to have blighted these hopes was Pobyedonosteff, the Procureur of the highest Ecclesiastical Court of the Empire. To him had been confided the education of the present Czar; and the fervour of his orthodoxy, as well as the clear-cut simplicity of his belief in old Muscovite customs, had gained complete ascendancy over the mind of his pupil. Different estimates have been formed as to the character of Pobyedonosteff. In the eyes of some he is a conscientious zealot who believes in the mission of Holy Russia to vivify an age corrupted by democracy and unbelief; others regard him as the Russian Macchiavelli, straining his beliefs to an extent which his reason rejects, in order to gain power through the mechanism of the autocracy and the Greek Church. The thin face, passionless gaze, and coldly logical utterance bespeak the politician rather than the zealot; yet there seems to be good reason for believing that he is a "fanatic by reflection," not by temperament[229]. A volume of Reflections which he has given to the world contains some entertaining judgments on the civilisation of the West. It may be worth while to select a few, as showing the views of the man who, through his pupil, influenced the fate of Russia and of the world.