European Powers and treated

Moreover, the chapter of accidents has caused the Prince’s determination to keep up the outward state and dignity of royalty to assume the character of a national protest If he had been recognized at the outset by the European Powers and treated by them as the chosen sovereign of an independent State, his punctilious insistence on the formalities of a royal Court being observed at Sofia might have been ascribed to mere personal vanity.

But, from the commencement of his reign down to the present day, he has been tabooed, treated with scant courtesy, and, so to speak, left out in the cold by his fellow- sovereigns. Though he has now reigned for seven years as the chosen sovereign of Bulgaria, the choice of the nation has been studiously and persistently ignored by the European Powers. No one of these Powers, however friendly disposed, has ever yet formally recognized the existence of the present Bulgarian monarchy. It is not accorded a place amidst the monarchies whose record is recited in the Almanack de Gotha.

Even Great Britain and Turkey have never made up their minds to treat the Prince with the ceremonial due to the legal sovereign of an independent State. The great majority of the diplomatic body at Sofia never go to Court or hold any personal communication with the sovereign. The few members of the body who break through the rule of absolute non-recognition do so rather on the ground of the Prince’s personal kinship to the dynasties they represent, than to the fact of his being the sovereign of the State to which they are accredited.

Result of causing the Bulgarians to regard

Whether the policy of non-recognition is wise or unwise, it has had the good result of causing the Bulgarians to regard the resolution of Prince Ferdinand to be treated in all respects as a legitimate sovereign in the light of a protest against the slight inflicted by his non-recognition, not so much on himself as on the country over which he rules.

National Movement

This was not because her people had any special preference for Republican institutions, but because, as M. Thiers said in regard to France, “One can make a republic without republicans, but one cannot make a monarchy without a monarch.” Happily, the shrewd good sense which characterized the leaders of the National Movement led them to realize the truth that, under existing conditions, their country could only preserve her independence under a Monarchy. After many abortive attempts and many unsuccessful negotiations, a cadet of one of the royal houses of Europe was found, in the person of Prince Ferdinand, ready to accept the proffered crown.

Previous to his selection by the Regency which was appointed on Prince Alexander’s abdication, and of which M. Stambouloff was the leading member, there were probably not a score of persons in all Bulgaria who had ever heard the name of her future sovereign. No doubt, a similar remark would have held good of his predecessor at the time of his accession. But then Alexander came to Bulgaria as her sovereign at the instance and with the approval of the Czar, the Liberator of Bulgaria; while Ferdinand, on his accession, was not befriended by any great European Power, and was notoriously a persona ingrata to the one Power from whom Bulgaria had most either to hope or fear.

As the younger son of the head of the non-regnant branch of the Saxe-Coburgs, his father being a great Austrian nobleman, and his mother a daughter of the ex-King of the French, he had no other known claim to distinction than that of belonging to an illustrious family, connected by ties of consanguinity with almost all the royal houses of Europe, and occupying a high position in Austria, where their estates were situated.