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 CHAPTER XXIII

IN FULL CRY

The night that followed was a memorable one in the history of Bulgaria and, as an incident of the great event, it brought the crisis in our affairs.

It was the night in which by the machinations of the Russian agents the Prince was abducted, and at the point of the pistol was forced to sign an abdication of his throne. It is not necessary for me to write about an event which has been often enough described, nor to tell how the crowd of unpatriotic and disloyal officers led their troops to surround the Palace, ordered them to fire into it, and then breaking in forced his Highness to leave, and hurried him off to Nikopolis, making him a prisoner on board his own yacht, to be landed on Russian territory.

Exactly what led up to this crisis I do not know. My opinion is that General Kolfort's offer to maintain him on the throne on certain relaxed conditions was genuine and would have been fulfilled, but at the same time the alternative plot was already in progress, and this scheme was hastened forward on the Prince's refusal of the Russian terms.

Had our own preparations but been a couple of weeks more forward the issue would have been different; but, as it was, that coup set the final seal on our failure.

The event took us absolutely by surprise. I had re