to exact territorial compensation likewise; but as their mobilization was a slow process, the powers had time to restrain them from entering on active hostilities, first by an ultimatum (April 26, 1886), and afterwards by a blockade of their ports (May 1886). By that time, thanks to the intervention of the powers, a peace between Bulgaria and Servia had been signed at Bucharest (March 3); and with regard to Eastern Rumelia a compromise had been effected by which the formal union with the principality was rejected, and the prince was appointed governor-general of the province for a term of five years. This was in reality union in disguise.
The diplomatic solution of the problem averted the danger of a European war, but it left a great deal of dissatisfaction, which soon produced new troubles. Not only had Prince Alexander escaped punishment for his insubordination to Russia, but he and the anti-Russian party among the Bulgarians had obtained a decided success. This could not well be tolerated. Before six months had passed (August 21, 1886) Prince Alexander was kidnapped by conspirators in his palace at Sofia and conveyed secretly to Russian Bessarabia. As soon as the incident was reported to the tsar, the prince was released, and he at once returned to Sofia, where a counter-revolution had been effected in his favour; but he considered his position untenable, and formally abdicated. A fortnight after his departure General Kaulbars arrived from St Petersburg with instructions from the tsar to restore order in accordance with Russian interests. In St Petersburg it was supposed that the Bulgarian people were still devoted to Russia, and that they were ready to rise against and expel the politicians of the Nationalist party led by Stambolof. General Kaulbars accordingly made a tour in the country and delivered speeches to the assembled multitudes, but Stambolof’s political organization counteracted all his efforts, and on the 20th of November he left Bulgaria and took the Russian consuls with him. Stambolof maintained his position, suppressed energetically several insurrectionary movements, and succeeded in getting Prince Ferdinand of Coburg elected prince (July 7, 1887), in spite of the opposition of Russia, who put forward as candidate a Russian subject, Prince Nicholas of Mingrelia. Prince Ferdinand was not officially recognized by the sultan and the powers, but he continued to reign under the direction of Stambolof, and the Russian government, passively accepting the accomplished facts, awaited patiently a more convenient moment for action.
These events in the Balkan Peninsula necessarily affected the mutual relations of the powers composing the Three Emperors’ League. Austria could not remain a passive and disinterested spectator of the action of Russia in Bulgaria. Her agents had given a certain amount of support to Prince Alexander in his efforts to emancipate himself from Russian domination; and when the prince was kidnapped and induced to abdicate, Count Kalnoky had not concealed his intention of opposing further aggression. Bismarck resisted the pressure brought to bear on him from several quarters in favour of the anti-Russian party in Bulgaria, but he was suspected by the Russians of siding with Russian hostility to Germany. Austria and secretly encouraging the opposition to Russian influence. This revived the hatred against him which had been created by his pro-Austrian leanings after the Russo-Turkish War. The feeling was assiduously fomented by the Russian press, especially by M. Katkoff, the editor of the Moscow Gazette, who exercised great influence on public opinion and had personal relations with Alexander III. On the 31st of July 1886, three weeks before the kidnapping of Prince Alexander, he had begun a regular journalistic campaign against Germany, and advocated strongly a new orientation of Russian policy. M. de Giers, minister of foreign affairs, was openly attacked as a partisan of the German alliance, and his “pilgrimages to Friedrichsruh and Berlin” were compared to the humiliating journeys of the old Russian grand-princes to the Golden Horde in the time of the Tatar domination. The moment had come, it was said, for Russia to emancipate herself from German diplomatic thraldom, and for this purpose a rapprochement with France was suggested. The idea was well received by the public, and it seemed to be not unpalatable to the tsar, for the Moscow Gazette was allowed to continue its attacks on M. de Giers’s policy of maintaining the German alliance. In Berlin such significant facts could not fail to produce uneasiness, because one of the chief aims of Bismarck’s policy had always been to prevent a Russo-French entente cordiale. The German press were instructed to refute the arguments of their Russian colleagues, and to prove that if Russia had really lost her influence in the Balkan Peninsula, the fact was due to the blunders of her own diplomacy. The controversy did not produce at once a serious estrangement between the two cabinets, but it marked the beginning of a period of vacillation on the part of Alexander III. When the treaty of Skiernevice was about to expire in 1887, he positively refused to renew the Three Emperors’ League, but he consented to make, without the cognizance of Austria, a secret treaty of alliance with Germany for three years. Not satisfied with this guarantee against the danger of a Franco-Russian alliance, Bismarck caused attacks to be made in the press on Russian credit, which was rapidly gaining a footing on the Paris bourse, and he imprudently showed his hand by prohibiting the Reichsbank from accepting Russian securities as guarantees. From that moment the tsar’s attitude changed. All his dormant suspicions of German policy revived. When he passed through Berlin in November 1887, Bismarck had a long audience, in which he defended himself with his customary ability, but Alexander remained unmoved in his conviction that the German government had systematically opposed Russian interests, and had paralysed Russian action in the Balkan Peninsula for the benefit of Austria; and he failed to understand the ingenious theory put forward by the German chancellor, that two powers might have a severe economic struggle without affecting their political relations. Bismarck had to recognize that, for the moment at least, the Three Emperors’ League, which had served his purposes so well, could not be resuscitated, but he had still a certain security against the hostility of Russia in the secret treaty. Soon, however, this link was also to be broken. When the treaty expired in 1890 it was not renewed. By that time Bismarck had been dismissed, and he subsequently reproached his successor, Count Caprivi, with not having renewed it, but in reality Count Caprivi was not to blame. Alexander III. was determined not to renew the alliance, and was already gravitating slowly towards an understanding with France.
No treaty or formal defensive engagement of any kind existed between Russia and France, but it was already tolerably certain that in the event of a great war the two nations would be found fighting on the same side, and the military Franco-Russian entente. authorities in both countries felt that if no arrangements were made beforehand for concerted action,—such arrangements having been long ago completed by the powers composing the Triple Alliance—they would begin the campaign at a great disadvantage. This was perfectly understood by both governments; and after some hesitation on both sides. Generals Vannovski and Obruchev, on the one side, and Generals Saussier, Miribel and Boisdeffre on the other, were permitted to discuss plans of co-operation. At the same time a large quantity of Lebel rifles were manufactured in France for the Russian army, and the secret of making smokeless powder was communicated to the Russian military authorities. The French government wished to go further and conclude a defensive alliance, but the tsar was reluctant to bind himself with a government which had so little stability, and which might be induced to provoke a war with Germany by the prospect of Russian support. Even the military convention was not formally ratified until 1894. The enthusiastic partisans of the alliance flattered themselves that the tsar’s reluctance had been overcome, when he received very graciously Admiral Gervais and his officers during the visit of the French fleet to Cronstadt in the summer of 1891, but their joy was premature. The formal rapprochement between the two governments was much slower than the unofficial rapprochement between the two nations. More than two years passed before the Cronstadt visit was returned by the Russian
