"The date for the elections has been fixed for the first part of June. It is considered probable that the Radical members of the Government (four ministers, I believe) will soon withdraw from the cabinet." BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES: A. D. 1903. The murder of King Alexander, Queen Draga, her brothers, and two ministers of state. The military plot. King Alexander, who received the Servian crown, as a mere boy, by the abdication of his father, the erratic King Milan, in 1889, began his reign autocratically, but attempted twelve years later, to propitiate popular favor by the grant of a liberal constitution, in 1901. See, in Volume I. of this work, BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES: A. D. 1879-1889. This failed, however, to win the good will of his subjects, and he annulled it in April, 1903, with much of the legislation it had produced. This intensified public feeling against him, and against his unpopular Queen,—the former lady-in-waiting at his mother’s court, Madame Draga Maschin. This marriage in 1900 is related in: See in Volume VI. of this work BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES: SERVIA. There were fears of an intention to force recognition of Queen Draga's brother as heir apparent to the crown, and feeling in the army became especially bitter against both king and queen. The outcome was an awful tragedy of murder on the night of June 11, 1903, when a party of officers broke into the palace and slew, with barbaric ferocity, the King, the Queen, the Queen’s brothers, the Prime Minister, and the Minister for War. The following account of the horrible tragedy appeared in the next issue of _The Contemporary Review:_