e, endowed with a strain of
sensitiveness which he probably derived from his Polish mother. He early
set forth his feelings in a private letter to Prince Charles of
Roumania:--

Devoted with my whole heart to the Czar Alexander, I am anxious to do
nothing that can be called anti-Russian. Unfortunately the Russian
officials have acted with the utmost want of tact; confusion prevails in
every office, and peculation, thanks to Dondukoff's decrees, is all but
sanctioned. I am daily confronted with the painful alternative of having
to decide either to assent to the Russian demands or to be accused in
Russia of ingratitude and of "injuring the most sacred feelings of the
Bulgarians." My position is truly terrible.

The friction with Russia increased with time. Early in the year 1880,
Prince Alexander determined to go to St. Petersburg to appeal to the
Czar in the hope of allaying the violence of the Panslavonic intriguers.
Matters improved for a time, but only because the Prince accepted the
guidance of the Czar. Thereafter he retained most of his pro-Russian
Ministers, even though the second Legislative Assembly, elected in the
spring of that year, was strongly Liberal and anti-Russian. In April
1881 he acted on the advice of one of his Ministers, a Russian general
named Ehrenroth, and carried matters with a high hand: he dissolved the
Assembly, suspended the constitution, encouraged his officials to
browbeat the voters, and thereby gained a docile Chamber, which carried
out his behests by decreeing a Septennate, or autocratic rule for seven
years. In order to prop up his miniature czardom, he now asked the new
Emperor, Alexander III., to send him two Russian Generals. His request
was granted in the persons of Generals Soboleff and Kaulbars, who became
Ministers of the Interior and for War; a third, General Tioharoff, being
also added as Minister of Justice.

The triumph of Muscovite influence now seemed to be complete, until the
trio just named usurped the functions of the Bulgarian Ministers and
informed the Prince that they took their orders from the Czar, not from
him. Chafing at these self-imposed Russian bonds, the Prince now leant
more on the moderate Liberals, headed by Karaveloff; and on the
Muscovites intriguing in the same quarter, and with the troops, with a
view to his deposition, they met with a complete repulse. An able and
vigorous young Bulgarian, Stambuloff, was now fast rising in importance
among the mo