ion of the administration, while a council of six
"directors" fulfilled the duties of a ministry.

_Prince Alexander._--On the 29th of April 1879 the assembly at Trnovo, on
the proposal of Russia, elected as first sovereign of Bulgaria Prince
Alexander of Battenberg, a member of the grand ducal house of Hesse and a
nephew of the tsar Alexander II. Arriving in Bulgaria on the 7th of July,
Prince Alexander, then in his twenty-third year, found all the authority,
military and civil, in Russian hands. The history of the earlier portion of
his reign is marked by two principal features--a strong Bulgarian reaction
against Russian tutelage and a vehement struggle against the autocratic
institutions which the young ruler, under Russian guidance, endeavoured to
inaugurate. Both movements were symptomatic of the determination of a
strong-willed and egoistic race, suddenly liberated from secular
oppression, to enjoy to the full the moral and material privileges of
liberty. In the assembly at Trnovo the popular party had adopted the
watchword "Bulgaria for the Bulgarians," and a considerable anti-Russian
contingent was included in its ranks. Young and inexperienced, Prince
Alexander, at the suggestion of the Russian consul-general, selected his
first ministry from a small group of "Conservative" politicians whose views
were in conflict with those of the parliamentary majority, but he was soon
compelled to form a "Liberal" administration under Tzankoff and Karaveloff.
The Liberals, once in power, initiated a violent campaign against
foreigners in general and the Russians in particular; they passed an alien
law, and ejected foreigners from every lucrative position. The Russians
made a vigorous resistance, and a state of chaos ensued. Eventually the
prince, finding good government impossible, obtained the consent of the
tsar to a change of the constitution, and assumed absolute authority on the
9th of May 1881. The Russian general Ernroth was appointed sole minister,
and charged with the duty of holding elections for the Grand Sobranye, to
which the right of revising the constitution appertained. So successfully
did he discharge his mission that the national representatives, almost
without debate, suspended the constitution and invested the prince with
absolute powers for a term of seven years (July 1881). A period of Russian
government followed under Generals Skobelev and Kaulbars, who were
specially despatched from St Petersburg to en