82 RUSSIA, TURKEY, AND BULGARIA. 



At Slivnitza, Glenitz, Widdin, and other battlefields, the Prince 

 and his army astonished both friends and foes alike, by his per- 

 sonal bravery, his generalship, and devotion to the' National cause, 

 and at every point the undisciplined but brave soldiers of 

 Bulgaria and Roumelia hurled back, and scattered in wild confusion 

 the trained Servian warriors, turning defeat into rout, invasion of 

 Bulgaria into invasion of Servia, and a Servian conquest into 

 a Bulgarian victory, which opened up the road to the capital, 

 Belgrade. 



The Bulgarian nation was roused to enthusiasm, but in the hour of 

 their victory, when Servia lay prostrate at its feet, Austria, who had 

 prompted her to the war, intervened, and demanded a suspension of 

 hostilities and the conclusion, at any cost, of an inglorious peace. 



Then followed, the uprising of Greece for Compensation, and its 

 ludicrous collapse, after frightening all Europe ; the threatened inter- 

 vention of Turkey, in the assertion of her Suzerainty, and for the de- 

 fence of her territory, so rudely shattered by the march of events in 

 Roumelia; in fact, throughout the whole Balkan peninsula, in 

 Montenegro, in Roumelia, in Macedonia, and in Albania, the one 

 cry seemed to have been, as by Servia, for Compensation, a demand 

 everywhere for territorial annexation. 



But the greatest enemy of all, the most cruel and implacable, was 

 the Czar of Russia, and the Autocratic Government of which he is 

 the august Head. 



What could have been more flagrantly unconstitutional than the act 

 of Russia in the deposition of Prince Alexander, by the agency of the 

 paid political emissaries of Russia, the Kankoffs, the Skobeloifs, 

 and the Kaulbars, who planned and executed the midnight seizure 

 in the Bulgarian Capital, and deportation across the Danube into 

 Russian territory, of Prince Alexander, the chosen Ruler of 

 Bulgaria ? 



What a humiliating recital was that arrest, told with such faithful 

 accuracy by the Press of Europe, of outrage, and of wrong, perpetrated 

 with such cool effrontery by the Russian officers against a brave and 

 chivalrous Prince ! 



At one time it was believed he was securely safe in the capital, 

 Sofia, crowned, not with the tawdry of a Romanoff Crown, but 

 crowned with exultations, the loud hurrahs of freedom, which echoed 

 and re-echoed throughout Europe, for it would have been the greatest 

 blow ever struck against tyranny and despotism, the grandest^ victory 

 ever won by a people struggling for political liberty, and national 



