Russia would have worked hard for the union of Eastern Roumelia to Bulgaria, provided that the Prince abdicated and his people submitted completely to Russian control.  Quite early in his reign Alexander III. discovered in them an independence which his masterful nature ill brooked.  He therefore postponed that scheme until the Prince should abdicate or be driven out.  As one of the Muscovite agents phrased it in the spring of 1881, the union must not be brought about until a Russian protectorate should be founded in the Principality; for if they made Bulgaria too strong, it would become “a second Roumania,” that is, as “ungrateful” to Russia as Roumania had shown herself after the seizure of her Bessarabian lands.  In fact, the Bulgarians could gain the wish of their hearts only on one condition—­that of proclaiming the Emperor Alexander Grand Duke of the greater State of the future[193].

[Footnote 193:  Documents secrets de la Politique russe en Orient, ed. by R. Leonoff (Berlin, 1893), pp. 8, 48.  This work is named by M. Malet in his Bibliographie on the Eastern Question on p. 448, vol. ix., of the Histoire Generale of MM.  Lavisse and Rambaud.  I have been assured of its genuineness by a gentleman well versed in the politics of the Balkan States.]

The chief obstacles in the way of Russia’s aggrandisement were the susceptibilities of “the Battenberger,” as her agents impertinently named him, and the will of Stambuloff.  When the Czar, by his malevolent obstinacy, finally brought these two men to accord, it was deemed needful to adopt various devices in order to shatter the forces which Russian diplomacy had succeeded in piling up in its own path.  But here again we are reminded of the Horatian precept—­

     Vis consili expers mole ruit sua.

To the hectorings of Russian agents the “peasant State” offered an ever firmer resistance, and by the summer of 1885 it was clear that bribery and bullying were equally futile.

Of course the Emperor of all the Russias had it in his power to harry the Prince in many ways.  Thus in the summer of 1885, when a marriage was being arranged between him and the Princess Victoria, daughter of the Crown Princess of Germany, the Czar’s influence at Berlin availed to veto an engagement which is believed to have been the heartfelt wish of both the persons most nearly concerned.  In this matter Bismarck, true to his policy of softening the Czar’s annoyance at the Austro-German alliance by complaisance in all other matters, made himself Russia’s henchman, and urged his press-trumpet, Busch, to write newspaper articles abusing Queen Victoria as having instigated this match solely with a view to the substitution of British for Russian influence in Bulgaria[194].  The more servile part of the German Press improved on these suggestions, and stigmatised the Bulgarian Revolution of the ensuing autumn as an affair trumped up at London.  So far is it possible for minds of a certain type to read their own pettiness into events.