Few persons were prepared for the outburst of wrath of the Czar at hearing this news.  Early in his reign he had concentrated into a single phrase—­“silly Pole”—­the spleen of an essentially narrow nature at seeing a kinsman and a dependant dare to think and act for himself[198].  But on this occasion, as we can now see, the Prince had marred Russia’s plans in the most serious way.  Stambuloff and he had deprived her of her unionist trump card.  The Czar found his project of becoming Grand Duke of a Greater Bulgaria blocked by the action of this same hated kinsman.  Is it surprising that his usual stolidity gave way to one of those fits of bull-like fury which aroused the fear of all who beheld them?  Thenceforth between the Emperor Alexander and Prince Alexander the relations might be characterised by the curt phrase which Palafox hurled at the French from the weak walls of Saragossa—­“War to the knife.”  Like Palafox, the Prince now had no hope but in the bravery of his people.

[Footnote 198:  Bismarck:  Reflections and Reminiscences, vol. ii. p. 116 (Eng. ed.).]

In the ciphered telegrams of September 19 and 20, which the Director of the Asiatic Department at St. Petersburg sent to the Russian Consul-General at Rustchuk, the note of resentment and revenge was clearly sounded.  The events in Eastern Roumelia had changed “all our intentions.”  The agent was therefore directed to summon the chief Russian officers in Bulgaria and ask them whether the “young” Bulgarian officers could really command brigades and regiments, and organise the artillery; also whether that army could alone meet the army of “a neighbouring State.”  The replies of the officers being decidedly in the negative, they were ordered to leave Bulgaria[199].  Nelidoff, the Russian ambassador at Constantinople, also worked furiously to spur on the Sultan to revenge the insult inflicted on him by Prince Alexander.

[Footnote 199:  R. Leonoff, op. cit. Nos. 75, 77.]

Sir William White believed that the volte face in Russian policy was due solely to Nelidoff’s desire to thwart the peaceful policy of the Russian Chancellor, de Giers, who at that time chanced to be absent in Tyrol, while the Czar also was away at Copenhagen[200].  But it now appears that the Russian Foreign Office took Nelidoff’s view, and bade him press Turkey to restore the “legal order” of things in Eastern Roumelia.  Further, the Ministers of the Czar found that Servia, Greece, and perhaps also Roumania, intended to oppose the aggrandisement of Bulgaria; and it therefore seemed easy to chastise “the Battenberger” for his wanton disturbance of the peace of Europe.

[Footnote 200:  Sir William White:  Memoirs and Correspondence, by H. Sutherland Edwards, pp. 231-232.]