Tsardom of Bulgaria

The Tsardom of Bulgaria, the Third Bulgarian Tsardom, was the Balkan kingdom raised from a principality on 5 October 1908, when Prince Ferdinand, founder of his royal house, took the tsar's crown to unite all Bulgarian lands. Called the Balkan Prussia, it mobilized over a million men from five million souls and fought three wars in the 1910s, the two Balkan Wars and the First World War, gambling the nation on every throw. Defeat disbanded its army and buried the plans to recover the Berlin-treaty lands. The Balkan Wars opened with triumph in 1912 and disaster in 1913, and the World War cost Ferdinand his throne: mutinies and a proclaimed republic forced his abdication for Boris III in 1918, Neuilly took the Aegean coast, and Stamboliyski's Agrarians briefly governed as democrats. Boris reasserted the crown, Bulgaria switched sides in September 1944, and in 1946 the monarchy was abolished and the last tsar exiled.