On August 21, when all was ready, the Struma Regiment hastily marched back by night to Sofia, disarmed the few faithful troops there in garrison, surrounded the palace of the Prince, while the ringleaders burst into his bedchamber.  He succeeded in fleeing through a corridor which led to the garden, only to be met with levelled bayonets and cries of hatred.  The leaders thrust him into a corner, tore a sheet out of the visitors’ book which lay on a table close by, and on it hastily scrawled words implying abdication; the Prince added his signature, along with the prayer, “God save Bulgaria.”  At dawn the mutineers forced him into a carriage, Bendereff and his accomplices crowding round to dismiss him with jeers and screen him from the sight of the public.  Thence he was driven at the utmost speed through byways towards the Danube.  There the conspirators had in readiness his own yacht, which they had seized, and carried him down the stream towards Russian territory.

The outburst of indignation with which the civilised world heard of this foul deed had its counterpart in Bulgaria.  So general and so keen was the reprobation (save in the Russian and Bismarckian Press) that the Russian Government took some steps to dissociate itself from the plot, while profiting by its results.  On August 24, when the Prince was put on shore at Reni, the Russian authorities kept him under guard, and that, too, despite an order of the Czar empowering him to “continue his journey exactly as he might please.”  Far from this, he was detained for some little time, and then was suffered to depart by train only in a northerly direction.  He ultimately entered Austrian territory by way of Lemberg in Galicia, on August 27.  The aim of the St. Petersburg Government evidently was to give full time for the conspirators at Sofia to consolidate their power[213].

[Footnote 213:  A. von Huhn, op. cit. chap. iv.]

Meanwhile, by military display, the distribution of money, and a Te Deum at the Cathedral for “liberation from Prince Battenberg,” the mutineers sought to persuade the men of Sofia that peace and prosperity would infallibly result from the returning favour of the Czar.  The populace accepted the first tokens of his good-will and awaited developments.  These were not promising for the mutineers.  The British Consul at Philippopolis, Captain Jones, on hearing of the affair, hurried to the commander of the garrison, General Mutkuroff, and besought him to crush the plotters[214].  The General speedily enlisted his own troops and those in garrison elsewhere on the side of the Prince, with the result that a large part of the army refused to take the oath of allegiance to the new Russophil Ministry, composed of trimmers like Bishop Clement and Zankoff.  Karaveloff also cast in his influence against them.

[Footnote 214:  See Mr. Minchin’s account in the Morning Advertiser for September 23, 1886.]