The Regeneration Under Prince Ferdinand Of Saxe-coburg 1886-1908

Stambulov was born at Tirnovo in 1854 and was of humble origin. He took

part in the insurrection of 1876 and in the war of liberation, and in 1884

became president of the Sobraniye (Parliament). From 1886 till 1894 he was

virtually dictator of Bulgaria. He was intensely patriotic and also

personally ambitious, determined, energetic, ruthlessly cruel and

unscrupulous, but incapable of deceit; these qualities were apparent in
< r /> his powerful and grim expression of face, while his manner inspired the

weak with terror and the strongest with respect. His policy in general was

directed against Russia. At the general election held in October 1886 he

had all his important opponents imprisoned beforehand, while armed

sentries discouraged ill-disposed voters from approaching the

ballot-boxes. Out of 522 elected deputies, there were 470 supporters of

Stambulov. This implied the complete suppression of the Russophile party

and led to a rupture with St. Petersburg.



Whatever were Stambulov's methods, and few would deny that they were

harsh, there is no doubt that something of the sort was necessary to

restore order in the country. But once having started on this path he

found it difficult to stop, and his tyrannical bearing, combined with the

delay in finding a prince, soon made him unpopular. There were several

revolutionary outbreaks directed against him, but these were all crushed.

At length the, at that time not particularly alluring, throne of Bulgaria

was filled by Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, who was born in 1861 and

was the son of the gifted Princess Clementine of Bourbon-Orleans, daughter

of Louis-Philippe. This young man combined great ambition and tenacity of

purpose with extreme prudence, astuteness, and patience; he was a

consummate diplomat. The election of this prince was viewed with great

disfavour by Russia, and for fear of offending the Emperor Alexander III

none of the European powers recognized him.



Ferdinand, unabashed, cheerfully installed himself in Sofia with his

mother in July 1886, and took care to make the peace with his suzerain,

the Sultan Abdul Hamid. He wisely left all power in the hands of the

unattractive and to him, unsympathetic prime minister, Stambulov, till he

himself felt secure in his position, and till the dictator should have

made himself thoroughly hated. Ferdinand's clever and wealthy mother cast

a beneficent and civilizing glow around him, smoothing away many

difficulties by her womanly tact and philanthropic activity, and, thanks

to his influential connexions in the courts of Europe and his attitude of

calm expectancy, his prestige in his own country rapidly increased. In

1893 he married Princess Marie-Louise of Bourbon-Parma. In May 1894, as a

result of a social misadventure in which he became involved, Stambulov

sent in his resignation, confidently expecting a refusal. To his

mortification it was accepted; thereupon he initiated a violent press

campaign, but his halo had faded, and on July 15 he was savagely attacked

in the street by unknown men, who afterwards escaped, and he died three

days later. So intense were the emotions of the people that his grave had

to be guarded by the military for two months. In November 1894 followed

the death of the Emperor Alexander III, and as a result of this double

event the road to a reconciliation with Russia was opened. Meanwhile the

German Emperor, who was on good terms with Princess Clementine, had paved

the way for Ferdinand at Vienna, and when, in March 1896, the Sultan

recognized him as Prince of Bulgaria and Governor-General of eastern

Rumelia, his international position was assured. Relations with Russia

were still further improved by the rebaptism of the infant Crown Prince

Boris according to the rites of the eastern Church, in February 1896, and

a couple of years later Ferdinand and his wife and child paid a highly

successful state visit to Peterhof. In September 1902 a memorial church

was erected by the Emperor Nicholas II at the Shipka Pass, and later an

equestrian statue of the Tsar-Liberator Alexander II was placed opposite

the House of Parliament in Sofia.



Bulgaria meanwhile had been making rapid and astonishing material

progress. Railways were built, exports increased, and the general

condition of the country greatly improved. It is the fashion to compare

the wonderful advance made by Bulgaria during the thirty-five years of its

new existence with the very much slower progress made by Serbia during a

much longer period. This is insisted on especially by publicists in

Austria-Hungary and Germany, but it is forgotten that even before the last

Balkan war the geographical position of Bulgaria with its seaboard was

much more favourable to its economic development than that of Serbia,

which the Treaty of Berlin had hemmed in by Turkish and Austro-Hungarian

territory; moreover, Bulgaria being double the size of the Serbia of those

days, had far greater resources upon which to draw.



From 1894 onwards Ferdinand's power in his own country and his influence

abroad had been steadily growing. He always appreciated the value of

railways, and became almost as great a traveller as the German Emperor.

His estates in the south of Hungary constantly required his attention, and

he was a frequent visitor in Vienna. The German Emperor, though he could

not help admiring Ferdinand's success, was always a little afraid of him;

he felt that Ferdinand's gifts were so similar to his own that he would be

unable to count on him in an emergency. Moreover, it was difficult to

reconcile Ferdinand's ambitions in extreme south-eastern Europe with his

own. Ferdinand's relations with Vienna, on the other hand, and especially

with the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand, were both cordial and intimate.



The gradual aggravation of the condition of the Turkish Empire, notably in

Macedonia, the unredeemed Bulgaria, where since the insurrection of 1902-3

anarchy, always endemic, had deteriorated into a reign of terror, and,

also the unmistakably growing power and spirit of Serbia since the

accession of the Karageorgevich dynasty in 1903, caused uneasiness in

Sofia, no less than in Vienna and Budapest. The Young Turkish revolution

of July 1908, and the triumph of the Committee of Union and Progress,

disarmed the critics of Turkey who wished to make the forcible

introduction of reforms a pretext for their interference; but the

potential rejuvenation of the Ottoman Empire which it foreshadowed

indicated the desirability of rapid and decisive action. In September,

after fomenting a strike on the Oriental Railway in eastern Roumelia

(which railway was Turkish property), the Sofia Cabinet seized the line

with a military force on the plea of political necessity. At the same time

Ferdinand, with his second wife, the Protestant Princess Eleonora of

Reuss, whom he had married in March of that year, was received with regal

honours by the Emperor of Austria at Budapest. On October 5, 1908, at

Tirnovo, the ancient capital, Ferdinand proclaimed the complete

independence of Bulgaria and eastern Rumelia under himself as King (Tsar

in Bulgarian), and on October 7 Austria-Hungary announced the annexation

of Bosnia and Hercegovina, the two Turkish provinces administered by it

since 1879, nominally under Turkish suzerainty.