The liberation by Russia of the Bulgarians from the Turkish yoke and from Ottoman exactions gave a stimulus to the primary producing industries. Land which had never been scratched since the earliest times was put to the plough, and proved fertile as the cornland on the borders of the Black Sea is fertile. The Bulgarians have improved their long-deferred opportunity, and prosperity has followed the act of liberation. It is a primitive prosperity, and a prosperity upon which the ambition of Bulgarian rulers has cast a heavy tax. At the present time the Bulgarian is emerging from the peasant stage. The leading men of the country are the educated sons of peasants, with the habits of peasants. The traditional simplicity of their class is a convenience to such men, and they have made a fetish of it. Among them has rapidly grown up a military caste, and a bureaucratic caste as well. Both have thriven in the hot-house atmosphere created by Ferdinand, with his ostentatious Court and his extensive secret service. But the soul of Bulgaria is a peasant soul, brutalized by 500 years of repression and stagnation. The Bulgarians are a race apart, even among the Balkan peoples. They have a significant phrase when they talk of a journey beyond their own confines; they say they are going “into Europe.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FERDINAND AND HIS CREATURES “_When I went to Bulgaria, I decided that if there were to be assassinations, I should be on the side of the assassins._”—FERDINAND OF BULGARIA. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XI FERDINAND AND HIS CREATURES Just as the Bulgarians say they are going into Europe when they leave Bulgaria, Ferdinand decided that he was quitting Europe and civilization when he entered his new kingdom. He went with his mind fixed on thoughts of assassination; and turning to account the course of Machiavelli on which he had been reared, he decided that the assassins could be made the servant of the Prince. He has himself confessed that his initial resolve was to have the assassins on his side. Between the resignation of Prince Alexander and the election of Prince Ferdinand, Stambuloff had ruled as dictator, and with the arrival of Ferdinand the situation was only nominally altered. Ferdinand was Prince, but Stambuloff ruled the country. To remedying this state of affairs Ferdinand exercised all his craft, and his mother, the Princess Clementine, all her wealth. The secret police of the country, like all its other services, were controlled by Stambuloff, and it became necessary for Ferdinand to organize a secret service of his own, paid out of his own pocket. The purpose to which this service was applied was not to detect crime and conspiracy, but to gain for Ferdinand information to the detriment of the principal men around him.