Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria is for the moment clear of
his internal troubles. The Bulgarians have returned a Chamber in which a large majority is favourable to his Government, and he has crushed a military conspiracy which was organised on the failure of the elections. The conspiring officers intended, it is said, to have offered the Prince the alternatives of deposition or war, and a section of them are suspected of having plotted his assassination. The latter charge is not proved, and though the former is almost unquestion- ably true, the determined action of General Petroff has rendered the conspiracy abortive. He arrested one hundred and forty officers in a day, and the Army, which was undoubtedly discontented, partly from a desire for action and partly from sympathy with the Zankoffists, who are friends of Russia, recovered its discipline. The policy of the Prince is still a little obscure; but he is supposed to be more or less favourable to arrangements with Turkey under which the government of Macedonia would become more lenient, while he himself would be persona grata at Constantinople. He is a keen-witted man, though probably not a scrupulous one, and certainly no hero of romance.
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