Sir William White believed that the _volte face_ in Russian policy was due solely to Nelidoff's desire to thwart the peaceful policy of the Russian Chancellor, de Giers, who at that time chanced to be absent in Tyrol, while the Czar also was away at Copenhagen[200]. But it now appears that the Russian Foreign Office took Nelidoff's view, and bade him press Turkey to restore the "legal order" of things in Eastern Roumelia. Further, the Ministers of the Czar found that Servia, Greece, and perhaps also Roumania, intended to oppose the aggrandisement of Bulgaria; and it therefore seemed easy to chastise "the Battenberger" for his wanton disturbance of the peace of Europe. [Footnote 200: _Sir William White: Memoirs and Correspondence_, by H. Sutherland Edwards, pp. 231-232.] Possibly Russia would herself have struck at Bulgaria but for the difficulties of the general situation. How great these were will be realised by a perusal of the following chapters, which deal with the spread of Nihilism in Russia, the formation of the Austro-German alliance, and the favour soon shown to it by Italy, the estrangement of England and the Porte owing to the action taken by the former in Egypt, and the sharp collision of interests between Russia and England at Panjdeh on the Afghan frontier. When it is further remembered that France fretted at the untoward results of M. Ferry's forward policy in Tonquin; that Germany was deeply engaged in colonial efforts; and that the United Kingdom was distracted by those efforts, by the failure of the expedition to Khartum, and by the Parnellite agitation in Ireland--the complexity of the European situation will be sufficiently evident. Assuredly the events of the year 1885 were among the most distracting ever recorded in the history of Europe. This clash of interests among nations wearied by war, and alarmed at the apparition of the red spectre of revolution in their midst, told by no means unfavourably on the fortunes of the Balkan States. The dominant facts of the situation were, firstly, that Russia no longer had a free hand in the Balkan Peninsula in face of the compact between the three Emperors ratified at Skiernewice in the previous autumn (see Chapter XII.); and, secondly, that the traditional friendship between England and the Porte had been replaced by something like hostility. Seeing that the Sultan had estranged the British Government by his very suspicious action during the revolts of Arabi Pasha and of the Mahdi, even those who had loudly proclaimed the need of propping up his authority as essential to the stability of our Eastern Empire now began to revise their prejudices.