Prince Alexander of Battenberg, once Prince of Bulgaria, died on
Friday, November 17th, at his castle of Hartenau, near Gratz, of ulcer of the bowels. He was only thirty-six, but he had had a marvellous life. A son of a Hessian Prince by a morganatic marriage, he was hardly Royal; but he was nephew to the Empress of Russia, and in 1879, when he was twenty-two, he was elected Prince of Bulgaria. He showed himself competent to govern, abolished the Constitution, and in the war with Servia he crushed that State, and would have absorbed it but for Austrian interference. The Russians, how- ever, hated his independence ; and on the night of August 21st, 1886, he was seized by his own officers,and carried to Russian territory. An explosion of Bulgarian feeling induced his captors to liberate him; but be had probably been heavily drugged, and on his return, insisted on abdicating the throne. Had he remained firm, with his high ability as a General, he might in the end have become Emperor of Constantinople and lord of the whole Balkan Peninsula ; but there was some root of weakness in him. He sank into private life, married an actress who seems to have the good word of everybody, and died an Austrian General instead of a great Sovereign. It is said that his memoirs will clear up much that is obscure in his conduct; but men who take thrones should keep them, or die defending them, especially when they have roused the love which Bulgarians are still expressing for the " hero of Slivnitza."
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