Alexander III. and his Chancellor, de Giers, had also tied their hands in Balkan affairs by a treaty which they framed with Austria and Germany, and signed and ratified at the meeting of the three Emperors at Skiernewice (September 1884—­see Chapter XII.).  The most important of its provisions from our present standpoint was that by which, in the event of two of the three Empires disagreeing on Balkan questions, the casting vote rested with the third Power.  This gave to Bismarck the same role of arbiter which he had played at the Berlin Congress.

But in the years 1885 and 1886, the Czar and his agents committed a series of blunders, by the side of which their earlier actions seemed statesmanlike.  The welfare of the Bulgarian people demanded an early reversal of the policy decided on at the Congress of Berlin (1878), whereby the southern Bulgarians were divided from their northern brethren in order that the Sultan might have the right to hold the Balkan passes in time of war.  That is to say, the Powers, especially Great Britain and Austria, set aside the claims of a strong racial instinct for purely military reasons.  The breakdown of this artificial arrangement was confidently predicted at the time; and Russian agents at first took the lead in preparing for the future union.  Skobeleff, Katkoff, and the Panslavonic societies of Russia encouraged the formation of “gymnastic societies” in Eastern Roumelia, and the youth of that province enrolled themselves with such ardour that by the year 1885 more than 40,000 were trained to the use of arms.  As for the protests of the Sultan and those of his delegates at Philippopolis, they were stilled by hints from St. Petersburg, or by demands for the prompt payment of Turkey’s war debt to Russia.  All the world knew that, thanks to Russian patronage, Eastern Roumelia had slipped entirely from the control of Abdul Hamid.

By the summer of 1885, the unionist movement had acquired great strength.  But now, at the critical time, when Russia should have led that movement, she let it drift, or even, we may say, cast off the tow-rope.  Probably the Czar and his Ministers looked on the Bulgarians as too weak or too stupid to act for themselves.  It was a complete miscalculation; for now Stambuloff and Karaveloff had made that aim their own, and brought to its accomplishment all the skill and zeal which they had learned in a long career of resistance to Turkish and Russian masters.  There is reason to think that they and their coadjutors at Philippopolis pressed on events in the month of September 1885, because the Czar was then known to disapprove any immediate action.

In order to understand the reason for this strange reversal of Russia’s policy, we must scrutinise events more closely.  The secret workings of that policy have been laid bare in a series of State documents, the genuineness of which is not altogether established.  They are said to have been betrayed to the Bulgarian patriots by a Russian agent, and they certainly bear signs of authenticity.  If we accept them (and up to the present they have been accepted by well-informed men) the truth is as follows:—­