Thenceforth King Milan had hard work to keep his men together. Many of them were raw troops; their ammunition was nearly exhausted; and their _morale_ had vanished utterly. Prince Alexander had little difficulty in thrusting them forth from Pirot, and seemed to have before him a clear road to Belgrade, when suddenly he was brought to a halt by a menace from the north[207]. [Footnote 207: Drandar, _Événements politiques en Bulgarie_, pp. 89-116; von Huhn, _op. cit._ chaps. x. xi.] A special envoy sent by the Hapsburgs, Count Khevenhüller, came in haste to the headquarters of the Prince on November 28, and in imperious terms bade him grant an armistice to Servia, otherwise Austrian troops would forthwith cross the frontier to her assistance. Before this threat Alexander gave way, and was blamed by some of his people for this act of complaisance. But assuredly he could not well have acted otherwise. The three Emperors, of late acting in accord in Balkan questions, had it in their power to crush him by launching the Turks against Philippopolis, or their own troops against Sofia. He had satisfied the claims of honour; he had punished Servia for her peevish and unsisterly jealousy. Under his lead the Bulgarians had covered themselves with glory, and had leaped at a bound from political youth to manhood. Why should he risk their new-found unity merely in order to abase Servia? The Prince never acted more prudently than when he decided not to bring into the field the Power which, as he believed, had pushed on Servia to war[208]. [Footnote 208: Drandar, _op. cit._ chap. iii.; Kuhn, _op. cit._ chap. xviii.] Had he known that the Russian Chancellor, de Giers, on hearing of Austria's threat to Bulgaria, informed the Court of Vienna of the Czar's condign displeasure if that threat were carried into effect, perhaps he would have played a grand game, advancing on Belgrade, dethroning the already unpopular King Milan, and offering to the Czar the headship of a united Servo-Bulgarian State. He might thus have appeased that sovereign, but at the cost of a European war. Whether from lack of information, or from a sense of prudence and humanity, the Prince held back and decided for peace with Servia. Despite many difficulties thrown in the way by King Milan, this was the upshot of the ensuing negotiations. The two States finally came to terms by the Treaty of Bukharest, where, thanks to the good sense of the negotiators and the efforts of Turkey to compose these strifes, peace was assured on the basis of the _status quo ante bellum_ (March 3, 1886).