13th Tune.
The startling news of the military revolution in Servia, which reached us yesterday morning in an "Ostaasiatische Lloyd" telegram, unfolds a story which carries us back to the Middle Ages, and justifies the wildest inventions of Anthony Hope and his imitators. The conspirators bursting into the palace at night, the King and Queen, seeing that the game was up, shooting themsc! in bed, the murder ofa number the King's aides-de-camp, of the Premier, M. Velimi and the arrest of the other Ministe of State; the whole is a picture for a Rembrandt to have painted, and does not seem if it could possibly have taken place in Europe in the beginning of the twentieth century.
The late Alexander I was born in 1876, and was proclaimed 2<ing when he was 13 years old, on the abdiention of his father, King Milan. He was intended to be under a regency until he was 18, but a year before that he took the power into his own hands, und three years ago he married Drago Maschin, one of the ladies of the Court, who was nine years older than himself. Alexander was the last, of the Obrenovitch family, under whose leadership in 1829 Si oded in throwing off the Turkey, after an insurrection which had lasted three hundred and seventy years, Though only twenty-seven he time of his death, King Ale: der had had a very stormy career, his most recent exploit being to annul the Constitution in order to get rid of a number of members of Parliament and other officials who were obnoxious to him. Having succeeded inst his, he restored the Constitution as summarily as he had annulled it. When he dismissed the late M. Velimirovitch in November last year, it was understood that he intended to rely entirely on the support of the army. He had recently recalled M. Velimirovitch, and the army has ken its revenge in the conspiracy has ended the Obrenovitch ly ly S$ supporters, and the unfortunate Queen Drago and all her family.
The new King of Servia, Peter Karageorgeovitch (Black George's son) is descended from George Czerny, generally known as Kara George, who was the leader of the Servians in their rising against the Turks in 1804. Kara George himself was murdered in 1817, but his family, the Karageorgeovitches, have been untiring in their endeavours oust the Obrenovitches from the Servian throne and occupy it themselves, and success has at last crowned their efforts. The telegram tells us that "the population is very quiet and receives the new Cabinet ina sympathetic way." But there are always two J in Servia, the Russian and the Austrian, It seems that the visit of Count Lamsdorf to Belgrade last Christmas did not, after 5 all, smooth over matters in the Balkans so effectually as it, stated at the time to have done.
Since the above was written, the Reuter telegram which will be found in another column has reached us, giving a rather different account of the atrocious crime of Wednesday night. It seems new that the King and Queen were among the murdered, and that they did not commit suicille: and we gather from this that the German telegram came from the rageorgeovitch party. Reuter, too, tells us that, as we might expect, the crime horrified all Europe and will, it is feared, inflame the whole East. Such a crime cannot beperpetrated without some-one determining to avenge it sooner or later, and when such a determination takes active shape in such a magazine of combustibles as the Balkan States are, the result cannot be predicted.
A later "Ostatiatische Lloyd" telegram tells us that King Alexander, disappointed in his hopes of a son, was contemplating the nomination of Queen Draga's half-brother as Heir Apparent. This it was which decided Peter Karageorgeovitch to take action. Such an occurrence as that of Wednesday night reminds us in how much of old Asia there still is in South-eastern Europe.
I by murder of the reigning King, his queen, and all his enfourpretender to the throne cedents in Asiatic histor, such
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.