decisions.  It was certainly German policy to weaken and discredit Serbia and to further Austrian influence at Belgrade at the expense of that of Russia.  King Milan returned for a time to Belgrade in 1897, and the reaction, favourable to Austria, which had begun in 1894, increased during his presence and under the ministry of Dr. Vladan Gjorgjevi[’c], which lasted from 1897 till 1900.  This state of repression caused unrest throughout the country.  All its energies were absorbed in fruitless political party strife, and no material or moral progress was possible.  King Alexander, distracted, solitary, and helpless in the midst of this unending welter of political intrigue, committed an extremely imprudent act in the summer of 1900.  Having gone for much-needed relaxation to see his mother at Biarritz, he fell violently in love with her lady in waiting, Madame Draga Ma[)s]in, the divorced wife of a Serbian officer.  Her somewhat equivocal past was in King Alexander’s eyes quite eclipsed by her great beauty and her wit, which had not been impaired by conjugal infelicity.  Although she was thirty-two, and he only twenty-four, he determined to marry her, and the desperate opposition of his parents, his army, his ministers, and his people, based principally on the fact that the woman was known to be incapable of child-birth, only precipitated the accomplishment of his intention.  This unfortunate and headstrong action on the part of the young king, who, though deficient in tact and intuition, had plenty of energy and was by no means stupid, might have been forgiven him by his people if, as was at first thought possible, it had restored internal peace and prosperity in the country and thereby enabled it to prepare itself to take a part in the solution oL those foreign questions which vitally affected Serb interests and were already looming on the horizon.  But it did not.  In 1901 King Alexander granted another constitution and for a time attempted to work with a coalition ministry; but this failed, and a term of reaction with pro-Austrian tendencies, which were favoured by the king and queen, set in.  This reaction, combined with the growing disorganization of the finances and the general sense of the discredit and failure which the follies of its rulers had during the last thirty years brought on the country; completely undermined the position of the dynasty and made a catastrophe inevitable.  This occurred, as is well known, on June 10, 1903, when, as the result of a military conspiracy, King Alexander, the last of the Obrenovi[’c] dynasty, his wife, and her male relatives were murdered.  This crime was purely political, and it is absurd to gloss it over or to explain it merely as the result of the family feud between the two dynasties.  That came to an end in 1868, when the murder of Kara-George in 1817 by the agency of Milo[)s] Obrenovi[’c] was avenged by the lunatic assassination of the brilliant Prince Michael Obrenovi[’c] III.  It is no exaggeration to say that, from the point of view of