In the meantime he had provided an Orthodox heir to the throne, and by the act had mitigated the dread of assassination that had for so long hag-ridden him. For assassination was ever the terror that haunted Ferdinand’s mind. He lived for ever with the dread spectre at his elbow, and he had reason for his dread. For, as we shall now see, assassination was a familiar political weapon in Bulgaria before the arrival of Ferdinand, who can claim credit for remarkable improvements upon the crude methods in vogue before his era of subsidized slaughter. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE BUTCHERED “BISMARCK” “_If any ordinary citizen of any State had been so incriminated as Prince Ferdinand has been, the man would have been arrested._” —“VOSSISCHE ZEITUNG.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VIII THE BUTCHERED “BISMARCK” 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.