Alexander's success sealed the union with Eastern Rumelia,
and after long negotiations he was nominated governor-general
of that province for five years by the sultan (April 5,
1886). This arrangement, however, cost him much of his
popularity in Bulgaria, while discontent prevailed among a
certain number of his officers, who considered themselves
slighted in the distribution of rewards at the close of the
campaign. A military conspiracy was formed, and on the night
of the 20th of August the prince was seized in the palace at
Sofia, and compelled to sign his abdication; he was then
hurried to the Danube at Rakhovo, transported on his yacht to
Reni, and handed over to Russian authorities, by whom he was
allowed to proceed to Lemberg. He soon, however, returned to
Bulgaria, owing to the success of the counter- revolution led
by Stamboloff, which overthrew the provisional government set
up by the Russian party at Sofia. But his position had become
untenable, partly owing to an ill-considered telegram which
he addressed to the tsar on his return; partly in consequence
of the attitude of Prince Bismarck, who, in conjunction
with the Russian and Austrian governments, forbade him to
punish the leaders of the military conspiracy. He therefore
issued a manifesto resigning the throne, and left Bulgaria
on the 8th of September 1886. He now retired into private
life. A few years later he married Fraulein Loisinger, an
actress, and assumed the style of Count Hartenau (February 6,
1889). The last years of his life were spent principally at
Gratz, where he held a local command in the Austrian army.
Here, after a short illness, he died on the 23rd of October
1893. His remains were brought to Sofia, where they received
a public funeral, and were eventually deposited in a mausoleum
erected in his memory. Prince Alexander possessed much
charm and amiability of manner; he was tall, dignified and
strikingly handsome. His capabilities as a soldier have been
generally recognized by competent authorities. As a ruler
he committed some errors, but his youth and inexperience and
the extreme difficulty of his position must be taken into
consideration. He was not without aptitude for diplomacy,
and his intuitive insight and perception of character
sometimes enabled him to outwit the crafty politicians by
whom he was surrounded. His principal fault was a want
of tenacity and resolution; his tendency to unguarded
language undoubtedly increased the number of his enemies.
See Drandar, Le Prince Alexandre de Battenberg en Bulgarie
(Paris, 1884); Koch, Furst Alexander von Bulgarien
(Darmstadt, 1887); Matveyev, Bulgarien nach dem Berliner
Congress (Petersburg, 1887); Bourchier, ``Prince Alexander of
Battenberg,'' in Fortnightly Review, January 1894. (J. D. B.)
ALEXANDER I., king of Epirus about 342 B.C., brother of
Olympias the mother of Alexander the Great, and son-in-law
of Philip of Macedon, whose daughter Cleopatra he married
(336). In 332 he crossed over to Italy to assist the
Tarentines against the Lucanians, Bruttians and Samnites.
He gained considerable successes and made an arrangement
with the Romans for a joint attack upon the Samnites; but
the Tarentines, suspecting him of the design of founding
an independent kingdom, turned against him. Although the
advantage at first rested with Alexander, he gradually lost
it, and his supporters dwindled away. In 330 (or earlier)
he was defeated at Pandosia and slain by a Lucanian emigrant.
See Justin viii. 6, ix. 6, xii. 2; Livy viii. 3, 17, 24;
Aulus Gellius xvii. 21; and article MACEDONIAN EMPIRE.
ALEXANDER II., king of Epirus, succeeded his father Pyrrhus,
272 B.C. He attacked Antigonus Gonatas and conquered the
greater part of Macedonia, but was in turn driven out of both
Epirus and Macedonia by Demetrius the son of Antigonus. He
subsequently recovered his kingdom by the aid of the Acarnanians
and Aetolians. He died about 260 (Polybius ii. 45, ix. 34;
Plutarch, Pyrrhus, 9; Justin xviii. 1, xxvi. 2, xxviii. 1).
See Thirlwall, History of Greece, vol. viii.;
Droysen, Hellenismus; B. Niese, Gesch. d. griech. u.
maked. Staaten; J. Beloch, Griech. Gesch. vol. iii.
ALEXANDER III., known as THE GREAT1 (356-323 B.C.),
king of Macedon, was the son of Philip II. of Macedon, and
Olympias, an Epirote princess. His father was pre-eminent
for practical genius, his mother a woman of half-wild blood,
weird, visionary and terrible; and Alexander himself is singular
among men of action for the imaginative splendours which guided
him, and among romantic dreamers for the things he achieved.
Youth.
We was born in 356 B.C., probably about October (Hogarth,
pp. 284 ff.). The court at which he grew up was the focus
of great activities, for Philip, by war and diplomacy, was
raising Macedon to the headship of the Greek states, and
the air was charged with great ideas. To unite the Greek
race in a war against the Persian empire was set up as the
ultimate mark for ambition, the theme of idealists. The
great literary achievements of the Greeks in the 5th century
lay already far enough behind to have become invested with a
classical dignity; the meaning of Hellenic civilization had
been made concrete in a way which might sustain enthusiasm for
a body of ideal values, authoritative by tradition. And upon
Alexander in his fourteenth year this sum of tradition was
brought to bear through the person of the man who beyond all
others had gathered it up into an organic whole: in 343-342
Aristotle (q.v.) came to Pella at Philip's bidding to
direct the education of his son. We do not know what faculty
the master-thinker may have had for captivating this ardent
spirit; at any rate Alexander carried with him through life
a passion for Homer, however he may have been disposed to
greyer philosophic theory. But his education was not all from
books. The coming and going of envoys from many states, Greek
and Oriental, taught him something of the actual conditions
of the world. He was early schooled in war. At the age of
sixteen he commanded in Macedonia during Philip's absence
and quelled a rising of the hill-tribes on the northern
border; in the following year (338) he headed the charge
which broke the Sacred Band at Chaeronea. Then came family
dissensions such as usually vex the polygamous courts of the
East. In 337 Philip repudiated Olympias for another wife,
Cleopatra, Alexander went with his mother to her home in Epirus,
and, though he soon returned and an outward reconciliation
between father and son was contrived, their hearts were
estranged. The king's new wife was with child; her kinsmen
were in the ascendant; the succession of Alexander was
imperilled. Some negotiations which Pixodarus, the satrap
of Caria, opened with the Macedonian court with a view to
effecting a marriage alliance between his house and Philip's,
brought Alexander into fresh broils. In 336 Philip was
suddenly assassinated whilst celebrating at Aegae the marriage
of his daughter to Alexander I. of Epirus in the presence of
a great concourse from all the Greek world. It is certain
that the hand of the assassin was prompted by some one in the
background; suspicion could not fail to fall upon Alexander among
others. But guilt of that sort would hardly be consistent
with his character as it appears in those early day's.
Accession.
Alexander was not the only claimant to the vacant throne,
but, recognized by the army, he soon swept all rivals from
his path. The newly born son of Philip by Cleopatra, and
Alexander's cousin Amyntas, were put to death, and Alexander
took up the interrupted work of his father. That work was on
the point of opening its most brilliant chapter by an invasion
of the great king's dominions; the army was concentrated
and certain forces had already been sent on to occupy the
opposite shore of the Hellespont. The assassination of
Philip delayed the blow, for it immediately made the base,
Macedonia, insecure, and in such an enterprise, plunging into
the vast territories of the Persian empire, a secure base was
everything. Philip's removal had made all the hill-peoples
of the north and west raise their heads and set the Greek
states free from their fears. A demonstration in Greece,
led by the new king of Macedonia, momentarily checked the
agitation, and at the diet at Corinth Alexander was recognized
as captain-general (egemon autokrator) of the Hellenes
against the barbarians, in the place of his father Philip.
Leader of the Hellenes.
In the spring of 335 he went out from Macedonia northwards,
struck across the Balkans, probably by the Shipka Pass,
frustrating the mountain warfare of its tribes by a precision
of discipline which, probably, no other army of the time could
have approached, and traversed the land of the Triballians
(Rumelia) to the Danube. To gratify his own imagination or
strike the imagination of the world he took his army over
the Danube and burnt a settlement of the Getae upon the other
side. Meanwhile the Illyrians had seized Pelion (Pliassa),
which commanded the passes on the west of Macedonia, and from
the Danube Alexander marched straight thither over the hills.
He had hardly restored Macedonian prestige in this quarter
when he heard that Greece was aflame. Thebes had taken up
arms. By a forced march he took the Thebans completely by
surprise, and in a few days the city, which a generation before
had won the headship of Greece, was taken. There were to
be no half-measures now; the city was wiped out of existence
with the exception of its temples and the house which had been
Pindar's. Greece might now be trusted to lie quiet for some
time to come. The Panhellenic alliance (from which Sparta
still stood aloof) against the barbarians was renewed. Athens,
although known to be hostile at heart to the cities of Macedonian
power, Alexander treated all through with eager courtesy.
Invasion of Asia Minor.
In the spring of 334, Alexander crossed with an army of between
30,000 and 40,000 men, Macedonians, Illyrians, Thracians and
the contingents of the Greek states, into Asia. The place of
concentration was Arisbe on the Hellespont. Alexander himself
first visited the site of Troy and there went through those
dramatic acts of sacrifice to the Ilian Athena, assumption
of the shield believed to be that of Achilles; and offerings
to the great Homeric dead, which are significant of the
poetic glamour shed, in the young king's mind, over the whole
enterprise, and which men will estimate differently according
to the part they assign to imagination in human affairs.
Battle of Granicus.
To meet the invader the great king had in Asia Minor an
army slightly larger, it would seem, than Alexander's,
gathered under the satraps of the western provinces at
Zeleia. He had also, what was more serious, command of the
Aegean. Alexander could communicate with his base only by
the narrow line of the Hellespont, and ran the risk, if he
went far from it, of being cut off altogether. To draw him
after them, while avoiding a conflict, was sound strategy
for the Persian generals. It was urged upon them by their
colleague the Rhodian Memnon. But strategic considerations
were cancelled by the Persian barons' code of chivalry, and
Alexander found them waiting for him on the banks of the
Granicus. It was a cavalry melee, in which the common code
of honour caused Macedonian and Persian chieftains to engage
hand to hand, and at the end of the day the relics of the
Persian army were in flight, leaving the high-roads of Asia
Minor clear for the invader. Alexander could now accomplish
