MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
THE shock occasioned by the murder of Count Folke Bernadotte has been wide and deep. It reminds us that nobility of character and disinterested motives are no protection against the assassin's bullet. It reminds us also' that political murders in this century have become more rife than at any period in the history of mankind. The phase of assassination began at the turn of the epoch when the Empress of Austria, walking quietly towards a pleasure boat in• Geneva, was stabbed by a bare bodkin. In 19oo King Umberto was killed at Monza by the anarchist Bresci, and the next year President McKinley was shot by Leon Czolgolszut Buffalo. In 1903 Alexander of Serbia and Queen Draga were hacked to pieces in their bedroom at Belgrade and their mutilated bodies flung into the garden below. In 1913 the King of the Hellenes was murdered at Salonika by the anarchist Schinas, and the next year Franz Ferdinand and his consort were shot at Sarajevo by Gavrilo Prineip. With the coming of the First World War, the rate of assassination increased rapidly ; it became known as "liquidation." There occurred the dreadful fusil- lade in the cellar at Ekaterinburg, when the Tsar and his family were put to death by Medvediev and the Lettish guards ; there followed the murders of the Young Turk leaders ; and thereafter it has become the fashion in all totalitarian countries to indulge in a series of purges by which your political opponents are finally removed. So accustomed have we become to these methods of liquidation that it is almost a surprise to hear that any controversial figure has been allowed to end his days in peace. Abdul Hamid, who was the least worthy of survival, lived on for many years a bent and haggard captive, pacing the marble terrace of Beylerbey with two armed jailers accompanying him on either side. And one was almost startled the other day to read that king Ferdinand of Bulgaria, after thirty years of retirement, had died peaceably at Coburg.
* * * * The disappearance of this subtle and ambitious man attracted little attention ; his obituaries did not extend beyond a paragraph. Yet there was a time when he played an important and dangerous part in European politics and moved his pawns with skill across the check- board of the balance of power. When in 1878 the Treaty of Berlin created the autonomous principality of Bulgaria under the suzerainty of the Sultan, it was generally assumed that this new State would become no more than a Russian satellite. The first Prince to be elected, Alexander of Battenberg, was at the outset perfectly prepared to act as a satrap for the Tsar of Russia ; but as the years passed, he came under the influence of thi, Bulgarian liberal and patriot Stambulov, and showed increasing resentment of the arrogance of the Russian generals and officers attached to his court. The diver- sionary tendencies which he manifested became so marked that the Russians decided that he must be eliminated ; a military conspiracy was engineered ; Prince Alexander was kidnapped, forced to sign his abdication and escorted out of the country. Having disposed, much to Queen Victoria's indignation, of this disobedient Prince, the Russians in their strange Slav manner suddenly lost interest in Bulgaria. The Council of Regency sent emissaries round Europe to search for a new Prince ; after the humiliations to which Alexander had been exposed, there were few candidates for the post. Touting round the capitals and sub-capitals of the Continent the Bulgarian emissaries discovered a young officer in the Austrian hussars who was willing to make the experiment. He was Ferdinand Maximilian, fifth and youngest son of Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. He became Prince of Bulgaria in August, 1887.
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The young man (he was twenty-sir years of age at the time) was almost totally unknown. If known at all, he was known as a promising botanist. He had accompanied his elder brother upon a botanical expedition to Brazil, and the results of their researches had been published in a volume bearing the seventeenth-century title Itinera Principum S. Coburgi. Oa arrival in Sofia he found himself in a most precarious position. The Tsar of Russia had never approved of his candidature and induced the Sultan to declare him a usurper. The Bulgarian Synod refused to recognise him, the Powers remained indifferent, and he was surrounded by military and political conspiracies on every hand. This obscure officer of the Austrian hussars was, however, the grandson of Louis Philippe, from whom he had inherited a resourceful disposition, consummate secretiveness and infinite political patience. He had perhaps read and remembered a passage 'in the fifth book of Herodotus in which the habits of the ancient Bulgars had been described. "They worship no gods," Herodotus had written, "except Ares, Dionysus and Artemis. But their princes, unlike the majority of Thracians, worship Hermes above all gods, and swear only to him, claiming him as the ancestor of their race." Prince Ferdinand's devotion to the god Hermes was absolute and prolonged ; it was from this facile master that he acquired the nimble cunning which distinguished his reign. With remarkable astuteness, and with great personal courage, he played the politicians and the military against each other. He invested Stambulov with almost dictatorial powers and used him to secure the Sultan's recog- nition. Once this had been obtained, Ferdinand dismissed Stambulov (who was subsequently murdered) and used Dr. Stoilov to make terms with Russia. By 1896 his position, both nationally and inter- nationally, had been rendered secure.
Prince Ferdinand was not an attractive man ; it was said that among his intimates (and they were few) he would indulge his sardonic wit ; but in general soCiety he was stiff, arrogant and anxious to assert his personal importance. One of my earliest memories is seeing him at a children's party in Sofia dispensing chocolates from a green, plush bonbonniere which he held in his hand ; he would give a sweet to each child with an ogre expression, while his wife stood beside him nervously fingering the diamonds at her neck. He made up by intelligence what he lacked in charm, and the methods by which he threw off his vassalage to the Sultan and proclaimed himself King of an independent Bulgaria were models of calculated manoeuvre. Having made his peace with the Porte and secured good relations with Russia he turned his attention to Austria-Hungary. On the outbreak of the Turkish Revolution of July, 1908, he entered into a secret arrangement with the Austrian Government under which their annexation of Bosnia-Herzogovina would be immediately followed by his own declaration of indepen- dence. This time-table worked out with great precision ; the Austrians annexed the Duchies on October 4th, 1908, and Ferdinand proclaimed himself King of an independent Bulgaria on October sth. There remained "the problem of Russian recognition, and it was in this that he displayed his mercurial qualities. The Grand Duke Vladimir died in St. Petersburg and the new King of Bulgaria appeared uninvited at the funeral. He was received with royal honours and could be observed by the assembled diplomatists dropping rosebuds into the grave of the Grand Duke with an expres- sion of profound bereavement on his face. Fortified by this experience, he returned to Sofia and at once began to form the Balkan League against Turkey. The Bulgarian armies in the war that followed rapidly reached the gates of Constantinople. Then Nemesis intervened. Ferdinand treacherously attacked his former allies and was soundly beaten. He took the wrong side in the First World War and on °ember 4th, 1918, he left Bulgaria forever, taking the night train back to Coburg
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He left his young son Boris behind him to clear up the mess. History I feel has not as yet been fair to King Boris. He possessed all his father's intelligence and in addition a gentle, humorous, cultivated charm. He *as almost powerless in his own country and the world around him Was distraught His premature death remains a mystery. His old father meanwhile had returned at Coburg to his botanical pursuits. Dynasties and empires crashed around him, but he remained on for thirty years fiddling with his herbal. Not even a ripple of interest was occasioned by his death. And once again Bulgaria became a Russian satrapy.
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