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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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