The Balkans

PREFACE

The authors of this volume have not worked in conjunction. Widely separated,
engaged on other duties, and pressed for time, we have had no opportunity for
interchange of views. Each must be held responsible, therefore, for his own
section alone. If there be any discrepancies in our writings (it is not
unlikely in so disputed a field of history) we can only regret an unfortunate
result of the circumstances. Owing to rapid change in the relations of our
country to the several Balkan peoples, the tone of a section written earlier
may differ from that of another written later. It may be well to state that the
sections on Serbia and Bulgaria were finished before the decisive Balkan
developments of the past two months. Those on Greece and Rumania represent only
a little later stage of the evolution. That on Turkey, compiled between one
mission abroad and another, was the latest to be finished.

If our sympathies are not all the same, or given equally to friends and foes,
none of us would find it possible to indite a Hymn of Hate about any Balkan
people. Every one of these peoples, on whatever side he be fighting to-day, has
a past worthy of more than our respect and interwoven in some intimate way with
our history. That any one of them is arrayed against us to-day is not to be
laid entirely or chiefly at its own door. They are all fine peoples who have
not obtained their proper places in the sun. The best of the Osmanli nation,
the Anatolian peasantry, has yet to make its physical and moral qualities felt
under civilized conditions. As for the rest—the Serbs and the Bulgars,
who have enjoyed brief moments of barbaric glory in their past, have still to
find themselves in that future which shall be to the Slav. The Greeks, who were
old when we were not as yet, are younger now than we. They are as incalculable
a factor in a political forecast as another Chosen Race, the Jews. Their past
is the world’s glory: the present in the Near East is theirs more than
any people’s: the future—despite the laws of corporate being and
decline, dare we say they will have no part in it? Of Rumania what are we to
think? Her mixed people has had the start of the Balkan Slavs in modern
civilization, and evidently her boundaries must grow wider yet. But the limits
of her possible expansion are easier to set than those of the rest.

We hope we have dealt fairly with all these peoples. Mediaeval history, whether
of the East or the West, is mostly a record of bloodshedding and cruelty; and
the Middle Age has been prolonged to our own time in most parts of the Balkans,
and is not yet over in some parts. There are certain things salutary to bear in
mind when we think or speak of any part of that country to-day. First, that
less than two hundred years ago, England had its highwaymen on all roads, and
its smuggler dens and caravans, Scotland its caterans, and Ireland its
moonlighters. Second, that religious fervour has rarely mitigated and generally
increased our own savagery. Thirdly, that our own policy in Balkan matters has
been none too wise, especially of late. In permitting the Treaty of Bucarest
three years ago, we were parties to making much of the trouble that has ensued,
and will ensue again. If we have not been able to write about the Near East
under existing circumstances altogether sine ira et studio, we have
tried to remember that each of its peoples has a case.

D.G. HOGARTH.

November, 1915.

BULGARIA AND SERBIA

1
Introductory

The whole of what may be called the trunk or massif of the Balkan
peninsula, bounded on the north by the rivers Save and Danube, on the west by
the Adriatic, on the east by the Black Sea, and on the south by a very
irregular line running from Antivari (on the coast of the Adriatic) and the
lake of Scutari in the west, through lakes Okhrida and Prespa (in Macedonia) to
the outskirts of Salonika and thence to Midia on the shores of the Black Sea,
following the coast of the Aegean Sea some miles inland, is preponderatingly
inhabited by Slavs. These Slavs are the Bulgarians in the east and centre, the
Serbs and Croats (or Serbians and Croatians or Serbo-Croats) in the west, and
the Slovenes in the extreme north-west, between Trieste and the Save; these
nationalities compose the southern branch of the Slavonic race. The other
inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula are, to the south of the Slavs, the
Albanians in the west, the Greeks in the centre and south, and the Turks in the
south-east, and, to the north, the Rumanians. All four of these nationalities
are to be found in varying quantities within the limits of the Slav territory
roughly outlined above, but greater numbers of them are outside it; on the
other hand, there are a considerable number of Serbs living north of the rivers
Save and Danube, in southern Hungary. Details of the ethnic distribution and
boundaries will of course be gone into more fully later; meanwhile attention
may be called to the significant fact that the name of Macedonia, the heart of
the Balkan peninsula, has been long used by the French gastronomers to denote a
dish, the principal characteristic of which is that its component parts are
mixed up into quite inextricable confusion.

Of the three Slavonic nationalities already mentioned, the two first, the
Bulgarians and the Serbo-Croats, occupy a much greater space, geographically
and historically, than the third. The Slovenes, barely one and a half million
in number, inhabiting the Austrian provinces of Carinthia and Carniola, have
never been able to form a political state, though, with the growth of Trieste
as a great port and the persistent efforts of Germany to make her influence if
not her flag supreme on the shores of the Adriatic, this small people has from
its geographical position and from its anti-German (and anti-Italian) attitude
achieved considerable notoriety and some importance.

Of the Bulgars and Serbs it may be said that at the present moment the former
control the eastern, and the latter, in alliance with the Greeks, the western
half of the peninsula. It has always been the ambition of each of these three
nationalities to dominate the whole, an ambition which has caused endless waste
of blood and money and untold misery. If the question were to be settled purely
on ethnical considerations, Bulgaria would acquire the greater part of the
interior of Macedonia, the most numerous of the dozen nationalities of which is
Bulgarian in sentiment if not in origin, and would thus undoubtedly attain the
hegemony of the peninsula, while the centre of gravity of the Serbian nation
would, as is ethnically just, move north-westwards. Political considerations,
however, have until now always been against this solution of the difficulty,
and, even if it solved in this sense, there would still remain the problem of
the Greek nationality, whose distribution along all the coasts of the Aegean,
both European and Asiatic, makes a delimitation of the Greek state on purely
ethnical lines virtually impossible. It is curious that the Slavs, though
masters of the interior of the peninsula and of parts of its eastern and
western coasts, have never made the shores of the Aegean (the White Sea, as
they call it) or the cities on them their own. The Adriatic is the only sea on
the shore of which any Slavonic race has ever made its home. In view of this
difficulty, namely, the interior of the peninsula being Slavonic while the
coastal fringe is Greek, and of the approximately equal numerical strength of
all three nations, it is almost inevitable that the ultimate solution of the
problem and delimitation of political boundaries will have to be effected by
means of territorial compromise. It can only be hoped that this ultimate
compromise will be agreed upon by the three countries concerned, and will be
more equitable than that which was forced on them by Rumania in 1913 and laid
down in the Treaty of Bucarest of that year.

If no arrangement on a principle of give and take is made between them, the
road to the East, which from the point of view of the Germanic powers lies
through Serbia, will sooner or later inevitably be forced open, and the
independence, first of Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania, and later of Bulgaria
and Greece, will disappear, de facto if not in appearance, and both
materially and morally they will become the slaves of the central empires. If
the Balkan League could be reconstituted, Germany and Austria would never reach
Salonika or Constantinople.

2
The Balkan Peninsula in Classical Times
400 B.C.–A.D. 500.

In the earlier historical times the whole of the eastern part of the Balkan
peninsula between the Danube and the Aegean was known as Thracia, while the
western part (north of the forty-first degree of latitude) was termed
Illyricum; the lower basin of the river Vardar (the classical Axius) was called
Macedonia. A number of the tribal and personal names of the early Illyrians and
Thracians have been preserved. Philip of Macedonia subdued Thrace in the fourth
century B.C. and in 342 founded the city of Philippopolis. Alexander’s
first campaign was devoted to securing control of the peninsula, but during the
Third century B.C. Thrace was invaded from the north and laid waste by the
Celts, who had already visited Illyria. The Celts vanished by the end of that
century, leaving a few place-names to mark their passage. The city of Belgrade
was known until the seventh century A.D. by its Celtic name of Singidunum.
Naissus, the modern Nish, is also possibly of Celtic origin. It was towards 230
B.C. that Rome came into contact with Illyricum, owing to the piratical
proclivities of its inhabitants, but for a long time it only controlled the
Dalmatian coast, so called after the Delmati or Dalmati, an Illyrian tribe. The
reason for this was the formidable character of the mountains of Illyria, which
run in several parallel and almost unbroken lines the whole length of the shore
of the Adriatic and have always formed an effective barrier to invasion from
the west. The interior was only very gradually subdued by the Romans after
Macedonia had been occupied by them in 146 B.C. Throughout the first century
B.C. conflicts raged with varying fortune between the invaders and all the
native races living between the Adriatic and the Danube. They were attacked
both from Aquileia in the north and from Macedonia in the south, but it was not
till the early years of our era that the Danube became the frontier of the
Roman Empire.

In the year A.D. 6 Moesia, which included a large part of the modern kingdom of
Serbia and the northern half of that of Bulgaria between the Danube and the
Balkan range (the classical Haemus), became an imperial province, and twenty
years later Thrace, the country between the Balkan range and the Aegean, was
incorporated in the empire, and was made a province by the Emperor Claudius in
A.D. 46. The province of Illyricum or Dalmatia stretched between the Save and
the Adriatic, and Pannonia lay between the Danube and the Save. In 107 A.D. the
Emperor Trajan conquered the Dacians beyond the lower Danube, and organized a
province of Dacia out of territory roughly equivalent to the modern Wallachia
and Transylvania, This trans-Danubian territory did not remain attached to the
empire for more than a hundred and fifty years; but within the river line a
vast belt of country, stretching from the head of the Adriatic to the mouths of
the Danube on the Black Sea, was Romanized through and through. The Emperor
Trajan has been called the Charlemagne of the Balkan peninsula; all remains are
attributed to him (he was nicknamed the Wallflower by Constantine the Great),
and his reign marked the zenith of Roman power in this part of the world. The
Balkan peninsula enjoyed the benefits of Roman civilization for three
centuries, from the first to the fourth, but from the second century onwards
the attitude of the Romans was defensive rather than offensive. The war against
the Marcomanni under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in the second half of this
century, was the turning-point. Rome was still victorious, but no territory was
added to the empire. The third century saw the southward movement of the
Germanic peoples, who took the place of the Celts. The Goths invaded the
peninsula, and in 251 the Emperor Decius was killed in battle against them near
Odessus on the Black Sea (the modern Varna). The Goths reached the outskirts of
Thessalonica (Salonika), but were defeated by the Emperor Claudius at Naissus
(Nish) in 269; shortly afterwards, however, the Emperor Aurelian had
definitively to relinquish Dacia to them. The Emperor Diocletian, a native of
Dalmatia, who reigned from 284 to 305, carried out a redistribution of the
imperial provinces. Pannonia and western Illyria, or Dalmatia, were assigned to
the prefecture of Italy, Thrace to that of the Orient, while the whole centre
of the peninsula, from the Danube to the Peloponnese, constituted the
prefecture of Illyria, with Thessalonica as capital. The territory to the north
of the Danube having been lost, what is now western Bulgaria was renamed Dacia,
while Moesia, the modern kingdom of Serbia, was made very much smaller.
Praevalis, or the southern part of Dalmatia, approximately the modern
Montenegro and Albania, was detached from that province and added to the
prefecture of Illyria. In this way the boundary between the province of
Dalmatia and the Balkan peninsula proper ran from near the lake of Scutari in
the south to the river Drinus (the modern Drina), whose course it followed till
the Save was reached in the north.

An event of far-reaching importance in the following century was the elevation
by Constantine the Great of the Greek colony of Byzantium into the imperial
city of Constantinople in 325. This century also witnessed the arrival of the
Huns in Europe from Asia. They overwhelmed the Ostrogoths, between the Dnieper
and the Dniester, in 375, and the Visigoths, settled in Transylvania and the
modern Rumania, moved southwards in sympathy with this event. The Emperor
Valens lost his life fighting against these Goths in 378 at the great battle of
Adrianople (a city established in Thrace by the Emperor Hadrian in the second
century). His successor, the Emperor Theodosius, placated them with gifts and
made them guardians of the northern frontier, but at his death, in 395, they
overran and devastated the entire peninsula, after which they proceeded to
Italy. After the death of the Emperor Theodosius the empire was divided, never
to be joined into one whole again. The dividing line followed that, already
mentioned, which separated the prefecture of Italy from those of Illyria and
the Orient, that is to say, it began in the south, on the shore of the Adriatic
near the Bocche di Cattaro, and went due north along the valley of the Drina
till the confluence of that river with the Save. It will be seen that this
division had consequences which have lasted to the present day. Generally
speaking, the Western Empire was Latin in language and character, while the
Eastern was Greek, though owing to the importance of the Danubian provinces to
Rome from the military point of view, and the lively intercourse maintained
between them, Latin influence in them was for a long time stronger than Greek.
Its extent is proved by the fact that the people of modern Rumania are partly,
and their language very largely, defended from those of the legions and
colonies of the Emperor Trajan.

Latin influence, shipping, colonization, and art were always supreme on the
eastern shores of the Adriatic, just as were those of Greece on the shores of
the Black Sea. The Albanians even, descendants of the ancient Illyrians, were
affected by the supremacy of the Latin language, from which no less than a
quarter of their own meagre vocabulary is derived; though driven southwards by
the Romans and northwards by the Greeks, they have remained in their mountain
fastnesses to this day, impervious to any of the civilizations to which they
have been exposed.

Christianity spread to the shores of the peninsula very early; Macedonia and
Dalmatia were the parts where it was first established, and it took some time
to penetrate into the interior. During the reign of Diocletian numerous martyrs
suffered for the faith in the Danubian provinces, but with the accession of
Constantine the Great persecution came to an end. As soon, however, as the
Christians were left alone, they started persecuting each other, and during the
fourth century the Arian controversy re-echoed throughout the peninsula.

In the fifth century the Huns moved from the shores of the Black Sea to the
plains of the Danube and the Theiss; they devastated the Balkan peninsula, in
spite of the tribute which they had levied on Constantinople in return for
their promise of peace. After the death of Attila, in 453, they again retreated
to Asia, and during the second half of the century the Goths were once more
supreme in the peninsula. Theodoric occupied Singidunum (Belgrade) in 471 and,
after plundering Macedonia and Greece, settled in Novae (the modern Svishtov),
on the lower Danube, in 483, where he remained till he transferred the sphere
of his activities to Italy ten years later. Towards the end of the fifth
century Huns of various kinds returned to the lower Danube and devastated the
peninsula several times, penetrating as far as Epirus and Thessaly.

3
The Arrival of the Slavs in the Balkan Peninsula, A.D. 500–650

The Balkan peninsula, which had been raised to a high level of security and
prosperity during the Roman dominion, gradually relapsed into barbarism as a
result of these endless invasions; the walled towns, such as Salonika and
Constantinople, were the only safe places, and the country became waste and
desolate. The process continued unabated throughout the three following
centuries, and one is driven to one of two conclusions, either that these lands
must have possessed very extraordinary powers of recuperation to make it worth
while for invaders to pillage them so frequently, or, what is more probable,
there can have been after some time little left to plunder, and consequently
the Byzantine historians’ accounts of enormous drives of prisoners and
booty are much exaggerated. It is impossible to count the number of times the
tide of invasion and devastation swept southwards over the unfortunate
peninsula. The emperors and their generals did what they could by means of
defensive works on the frontiers, of punitive expeditions, and of trying to set
the various hordes of barbarians at loggerheads with each other, but, as they
had at the same time to defend an empire which stretched from Armenia to Spain,
it is not surprising that they were not more successful. The growing riches of
Constantinople and Salonika had an irresistible attraction for the wild men
from the east and north, and unfortunately the Greek citizens were more
inclined to spend their energy in theological disputes and their leisure in the
circus than to devote either the one or the other to the defence of their
country. It was only by dint of paying them huge sums of money that the
invaders were kept away from the coast. The departure of the Huns and the Goths
had made the way for fresh series of unwelcome visitors. In the sixth century
the Slavs appear for the first time. From their original homes which were
immediately north of the Carpathians, in Galicia and Poland, but may also have
included parts of the modern Hungary, they moved southwards and
south-eastwards. They were presumably in Dacia, north of the Danube, in the
previous century, but they are first mentioned as having crossed that river
during the reign of the Emperor Justin I (518-27). They were a loosely-knit
congeries of tribes without any single leader or central authority; some say
they merely possessed the instinct of anarchy, others that they were permeated
with the ideals of democracy. What is certain is that amongst them neither
leadership nor initiative was developed, and that they lacked both cohesion and
organisation. The Eastern Slavs, the ancestors of the Russians, were only
welded into anything approaching unity by the comparatively much smaller number
of Scandinavian (Varangian) adventurers who came and took charge of their
affairs at Kiev. Similarly the Southern Slavs were never of themselves able to
form a united community, conscious of its aim and capable of persevering in its
attainment.

The Slavs did not invade the Balkan peninsula alone but in the company of the
Avars, a terrible and justly dreaded nation, who, like the Huns, were of
Asiatic (Turkish or Mongol) origin. These invasions became more frequent during
the reign of the Emperor Justinian I (527-65), and culminated in 559 in a great
combined attack of all the invaders on Constantinople under a certain Zabergan,
which was brilliantly defeated by the veteran Byzantine general Belisarius. The
Avars were a nomad tribe, and the horse was their natural means of locomotion.
The Slavs, on the other hand, moved about on foot, and seem to have been used
as infantry by the more masterful Asiatics in their warlike expeditions.
Generally speaking, the Avars, who must have been infinitely less numerous than
the Slavs, were settled in Hungary, where Attila and the Huns had been settled
a little more than a century previously; that is to say, they were north of the
Danube, though they were always overrunning into Upper Moesia, the modern
Serbia. The Slavs, whose numbers were without doubt very large, gradually
settled all over the country south of the Danube, the rural parts of which, as
a result of incessant invasion and retreat, had become waste and empty. During
the second half of the sixth century all the military energies of
Constantinople were diverted to Persia, so that the invaders of the Balkan
peninsula had the field very much to themselves. It was during this time that
the power of the Avars reached its height. They were masters of all the country
up to the walls of Adrianople and Salonika, though they did not settle there.
The peninsula seems to have been colonized by Slavs, who penetrated right down
into Greece; but the Avars were throughout this time, both in politics and in
war, the directing and dominating force. During another Persian war, which
broke out in 622 and entailed the prolonged absence of the emperor from
Constantinople, the Avars, not satisfied with the tribute extorted from the
Greeks, made an alliance against them with the Persians, and in 626 collected a
large army of Slavs and Asiatics and attacked Constantinople both by land and
sea from the European side, while the Persians threatened it from Asia. But the
walls of the city and the ships of the Greeks proved invincible, and, quarrels
breaking out between the Slavs and the Avars, both had to save themselves in
ignominious and precipitate retreat.

After this nothing more was heard of the Avars in the Balkan peninsula, though
their power was only finally crushed by Charlemagne in 799. In Russia their
downfall became proverbial, being crystallized in the saying, ‘they
perished like Avars’. The Slavs, on the other hand, remained. Throughout
these stormy times their penetration of the Balkan peninsula had been
peacefully if unostentatiously proceeding; by the middle of the seventh century
it was complete. The main streams of Slavonic immigration moved southwards and
westwards. The first covered the whole of the country between the Danube and
the Balkan range, overflowed into Macedonia, and filtered down into Greece.
Southern Thrace in the east and Albania in the west were comparatively little
affected, and in these districts the indigenous population maintained itself.
The coasts of the Aegean and the great cities on or near them were too strongly
held by the Greeks to be affected, and those Slavs who penetrated into Greece
itself were soon absorbed by the local populations. The still stronger Slavonic
stream, which moved westwards and turned up north-westwards, overran the whole
country down to the shores of the Adriatic and as far as the sources of the
Save and Drave in the Alps. From that point in the west to the shores of the
Black Sea in the east became one solid mass of Slavs, and has remained so ever
since. The few Slavs who were left north of the Danube in Dacia were gradually
assimilated by the inhabitants of that province, who were the descendants of
the Roman soldiers and colonists, and the ancestors of the modern Rumanians,
but the fact that Slavonic influence there was strong is shown by the large
number of words of Slavonic origin contained in the Rumanian language.

[Illustration: THE BALKAN PENINSULA ETHNOLOGICAL]

Place-names are a good index of the extent and strength of the tide of Slav
immigration. All along the coast, from the mouth of the Danube to the head of
the Adriatic, the Greek and Roman names have been retained though places have
often been given alternative names by the Slavonic settlers. Thrace, especially
the south-eastern part, and Albania have the fewest Slavonic place-names. In
Macedonia and Lower Moesia (Bulgaria) very few classical names have survived,
while in Upper Moesia (Serbia) and the interior of Dalmatia (Bosnia,
Hercegovina, and Montenegro) they have entirely disappeared. The Slavs
themselves, though their tribal names were known, were until the ninth century
usually called collectively S(k)lavini ([Greek: Sklabaenoi]) by the Greeks, and
all the inland parts of the peninsula were for long termed by them ‘the
S(k)lavonias’ ([Greek: Sklabiniai]).

During the seventh century, dating from the defeat of the Slavs and Avars
before the walls of Constantinople in 626 and the final triumph of the emperor
over the Persians in 628, the influence and power of the Greeks began to
reassert itself throughout the peninsula as far north as the Danube; this
process was coincident with the decline of the might of the Avars. It was the
custom of the astute Byzantine diplomacy to look on and speak of lands which
had been occupied by the various barbarian invaders as grants made to them
through the generosity of the emperor; by this means, by dint also of lavishing
titles and substantial incomes to the invaders’ chiefs, by making the
most of their mutual jealousies, and also by enlisting regiments of Slavonic
mercenaries in the imperial armies, the supremacy of Constantinople was
regained far more effectively than it could have been by the continual and
exhausting use of force.

BULGARIA

4
The Arrival of the Bulgars in the Balkan Peninsula, 600–700

The progress of the Bulgars towards the Balkan peninsula, and indeed all their
movements until their final establishment there in the seventh century, are
involved in obscurity. They are first mentioned by name in classical and
Armenian sources in 482 as living in the steppes to the north of the Black Sea
amongst other Asiatic tribes, and it has been assumed by some that at the end
of the fifth and throughout the sixth century they were associated first with
the Huns and later with the Avars and Slavs in the various incursions into and
invasions of the eastern empire which have already been enumerated. It is the
tendency of Bulgarian historians, who scornfully point to the fact that the
history of Russia only dates from the ninth century, to exaggerate the
antiquity of their own and to claim as early a date as possible for the
authentic appearance of their ancestors on the kaleidoscopic stage of the
Balkan theatre. They are also unwilling to admit that they were anticipated by
the Slavs; they prefer to think that the Slavs only insinuated themselves there
thanks to the energy of the Bulgars’ offensive against the Greeks, and
that as soon as the Bulgars had leisure to look about them they found all the
best places already occupied by the anarchic Slavs.

Of course it is very difficult to say positively whether Bulgars were or were
not present in the welter of Asiatic nations which swept westwards into Europe
with little intermission throughout the fifth and sixth centuries, but even if
they were, they do not seem to have settled down as early as that anywhere
south of the Danube; it seems certain that they did not do so until the seventh
century, and therefore that the Slavs were definitely installed in the Balkan
peninsula a whole century before the Bulgars crossed the Danube for good.

The Bulgars, like the Huns and the Avars who preceded them, and like the
Magyars and the Turks who followed them, were a tribe from eastern Asia, of the
stock known as Mongol or Tartar. The tendency of all these peoples was to move
westwards from Asia into Europe, and this they did at considerable and
irregular intervals, though in alarming and apparently inexhaustible numbers,
roughly from the fourth till the fourteenth centuries. The distance was great,
but the journey, thanks to the flat, grassy, treeless, and well-watered
character of the steppes of southern Russia which they had to cross, was easy.
They often halted for considerable periods by the way, and some never moved
further westwards than Russia. Thus at one time the Bulgars settled in large
numbers on the Volga, near its confluence with the Kama, and it is presumed
that they were well established there in the fifth century. They formed a
community of considerable strength and importance, known as Great or White
Bulgaria. These Bulgars fused with later Tartar immigrants from Asia and
eventually were consolidated into the powerful kingdom of Kazan, which was only
crushed by the Tsar Ivan IV in 1552. According to Bulgarian historians, the
basins of the rivers Volga and Don and the steppes of eastern Russia proved too
confined a space for the legitimate development of Bulgarian energy, and
expansion to the west was decided on. A large number of Bulgars therefore
detached themselves and began to move south-westwards. During the sixth century
they seem to have been settled in the country to the north of the Black Sea,
forming a colony known as Black Bulgaria. It is very doubtful whether the
Bulgars did take part, as they are supposed to have done, in the ambitious but
unsuccessful attack on Constantinople in 559 under Zabergan, chief of another
Tartar tribe; but it is fairly certain that they did in the equally formidable
but equally unsuccessful attacks by the Slavs and Avars against Salonika in 609
and Constantinople in 626.

During the last quarter of the sixth and the first of the seventh century the
various branches of the Bulgar nation, stretching from the Volga to the Danube,
were consolidated and kept in control by their prince Kubrat, who eventually
fought on behalf of the Greeks against the Avars, and was actually baptized in
Constantinople. The power of the Bulgars grew as that of the Avars declined,
but at the death of Kubrat, in 638, his realm was divided amongst his sons. One
of these established himself in Pannonia, where he joined forces with what was
left of the Avars, and there the Bulgars maintained themselves till they were
obliterated by the irruption of the Magyars in 893. Another son, Asparukh, or
Isperikh, settled in Bessarabia, between the rivers Prut and Dniester, in 640,
and some years later passed southwards. After desultory warfare with
Constantinople, from 660 onwards, his successor finally overcame the Greeks,
who were at that time at war with the Arabs, captured Varna, and definitely
established himself between the Danube and the Balkan range in the year 679.
From that year the Danube ceased to be the frontier of the eastern empire.

The numbers of the Bulgars who settled south of the Danube are not known, but
what happened to them is notorious. The well-known process, by which the Franks
in Gaul were absorbed by the far more numerous indigenous population which they
had conquered, was repeated, and the Bulgars became fused with the Slavs. So
complete was the fusion, and so preponderating the influence of the subject
nationality, that beyond a few personal names no traces of the language of the
Bulgars have survived. Modern Bulgarian, except for the Turkish words
introduced into it later during the Ottoman rule, is purely Slavonic. Not so
the Bulgarian nationality; as is so often the case with mongrel products, this
race, compared with the Serbs, who are purely Slav, has shown considerably
greater virility, cohesion, and driving-power, though it must be conceded that
its problems have been infinitely simpler.

5
The Early Years of Bulgaria and the Introduction of Christianity,
700–893

From the time of their establishment in the country to which they have given
their name the Bulgars became a thorn in the side of the Greeks, and ever since
both peoples have looked on one another as natural and hereditary enemies. The
Bulgars, like all the barbarians who had preceded them, were fascinated by the
honey-pot of Constantinople, and, though they never succeeded in taking it,
they never grew tired of making the attempt.

For two hundred years after the death of Asparukh, in 661, the Bulgars were
perpetually fighting either against the Greeks or else amongst themselves. At
times a diversion was caused by the Bulgars taking the part of the Greeks, as
in 718, when they ‘delivered’ Constantinople, at the invocation of
the Emperor Leo, from the Arabs, who were besieging it. From about this time
the Bulgarian monarchy, which had been hereditary, became elective, and the
anarchy of the many, which the Bulgars found when they arrived, and which their
first few autocratic rulers had been able to control, was replaced by an
anarchy of the few. Prince succeeded prince, war followed war, at the will of
the feudal nobles. This internal strife was naturally profitable to the Greeks,
who lavishly subsidized the rival factions.

At the end of the eighth century the Bulgars south of the Danube joined forces
with those to the north in the efforts of the latter against the Avars, who,
beaten by Charlemagne, were again pressing south-eastwards towards the Danube.
In this the Bulgars were completely successful under the leadership of one
Krum, whom, in the elation of victory, they promptly elected to the throne.
Krum was a far more capable ruler than they had bargained for, and he not only
united all the Bulgars north and south of the Danube into one dominion, but
also forcibly repressed the whims of the nobles and re-established the
autocracy and the hereditary monarchy. Having finished with his enemies in the
north, he turned his attention to the Greeks, with no less success. In 809 he
captured from them the important city of Sofia (the Roman Sardica, known to the
Slavs as Sredets), which is to-day the capital of Bulgaria. The loss of this
city was a blow to the Greeks, because it was a great centre of commerce and
also the point at which the commercial and strategic highways of the peninsula
met and crossed. The Emperor Nikiphóros, who wished to take his revenge and
recover his lost property, was totally defeated by the Bulgars and lost his
life in the Balkan passes in 811. After further victories, at Mesembria (the
modern Misivria) in 812 and Adrianople in 813, Krum appeared before the
capital, where he nearly lost his life in an ambush while negotiating for
peace. During preparations for a final assault on Constantinople he died
suddenly in 815. Though Krum cannot be said to have introduced civilisation
into Bulgaria, he at any rate increased its power and gave it some of the more
essential organs of government. He framed a code of laws remarkable for their
rigour, which was undoubtedly necessary in such a community and beneficial in
its effect. He repressed civil strife, and by this means made possible the
reawakening of commerce and agriculture. His successor, of uncertain identity,
founded in 822 the city of Preslav (known to the Russians as Pereyaslav),
situated in eastern Bulgaria, between Varna and Silistria, which was the
capital until 972.

The reign of Prince Boris (852-88) is remarkable because it witnessed the
definitive conversion to Christianity of Bulgaria and her ruler. It is within
this period also that fell the activities of the two great
‘Slavonic’ missionaries and apostles, the brothers Cyril and
Methodius, who are looked upon by all Slavs of the orthodox faith as the
founders of their civilisation. Christianity had of course penetrated into
Bulgaria (or Moesia, as it was then) long before the arrival of the Slavs and
Bulgars, but the influx of one horde of barbarians after another was naturally
not propitious to its growth. The conversion of Boris in 865, which was brought
about largely by the influence of his sister, who had spent many years in
Constantinople as a captive, was a triumph for Greek influence and for
Byzantium. Though the Church was at this time still nominally one, yet the
rivalry between Rome and Constantinople had already become acute, and the
struggle for spheres of spiritual influence had begun. It was in the year 863
that the Prince of Moravia, anxious to introduce Christianity into his country
in a form intelligible to his subjects, addressed himself to the Emperor
Michael III for help. Rome could not provide any suitable missionaries with
knowledge of Slavonic languages, and the German, or more exactly the Bavarian,
hierarchy with which Rome entrusted the spiritual welfare of the Slavs of
Moravia and Pannonia used its greater local knowledge for political and not
religious ends. The Germans exploited their ecclesiastical influence in order
completely to dominate the Slavs politically, and as a result the latter were
only allowed to see the Church through Teutonic glasses.

In answer to this appeal the emperor sent the two brothers Cyril and Methodius,
who were Greeks of Salonika and had considerable knowledge of Slavonic
languages. They composed the Slavonic alphabet which is to-day used throughout
Russia, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro, and in many parts of Austria-Hungary
and translated the gospels into Slavonic; it is for this reason that they are
regarded with such veneration by all members of the Eastern Church. Their
mission proved the greatest success (it must be remembered that at this time
the various Slavonic tongues were probably less dissimilar than they are now),
and the two brothers were warmly welcomed in Rome by Pope Adrian II, who
formally consented to the use, for the benefit of the Slavs, of the Slavonic
liturgy (a remarkable concession, confirmed by Pope John VIII). This triumph,
however, was short-lived; St. Cyril died in 869 and St. Methodius in 885;
subsequent Popes, notably Stephen V, were not so benevolent to the Slavonic
cause; the machinations of the German hierarchy (which included, even in those
days, the falsification of documents) were irresistible, and finally the
invasion of the Magyars, in 893, destroyed what was left of the Slavonic Church
in Moravia. The missionary brothers had probably passed through Bulgaria on
their way north in 863, but without halting. Many of their disciples, driven
from the Moravian kingdom by the Germans, came south and took refuge in
Bulgaria in 886, and there carried on in more favourable circumstances the
teachings of their masters. Prince Boris had found it easier to adopt
Christianity himself than to induce all his subjects to do the same. Even when
he had enforced his will on them at the price of numerous executions of
recalcitrant nobles, he found himself only at the beginning of his
difficulties. The Greeks had been glad enough to welcome Bulgaria into the
fold, but they had no wish to set up an independent Church and hierarchy to
rival their own. Boris, on the other hand, though no doubt full of genuine
spiritual ardour, was above all impressed with the authority and prestige which
the basileus derived from the Church of Constantinople; he also admired the
pomp of ecclesiastical ceremony, and wished to have a patriarch of his own to
crown him and a hierarchy of his own to serve him. Finding the Greeks
unresponsive, he turned to Rome, and Pope Nicholas I sent him two bishops to
superintend the ecclesiastical affairs of Bulgaria till the investiture of
Boris at the hands of the Holy See could be arranged. These bishops set to work
with a will, substituted the Latin for the Greek rite, and brought Bulgaria
completely under Roman influence. But when it was discovered that Boris was
aiming at the erection of an independent Church their enthusiasm abated and
they were recalled to Rome in 867.

Adrian II proved no more sympathetic, and in 870, during the reign of the
Emperor Basil I, it was decided without more ado that the Bulgarian Church
should be directly under the Bishop of Constantinople, on the ground that the
kingdom of Boris was a vassal-state of the basileus, and that from the
Byzantine point of view, as opposed to that of Rome, the State came first and
the Church next. The Moravian Gorazd, a disciple of Methodius, was appointed
Metropolitan, and at his death he was succeeded by his fellow countryman and
co-disciple Clement, who by means of the construction of numerous churches and
monasteries did a great deal for the propagation of light and learning in
Bulgaria. The definite subjection of the Bulgarian Church to that of Byzantium
was an important and far-reaching event. Boris has been reproached with
submitting himself and his country to Greek influence, but in those days it was
either Constantinople or Rome (there was no third way); and in view of the
proximity of Constantinople and the glamour which its civilization cast all
over the Balkans, it is not surprising that the Greeks carried the day.

6
The Rise and Fall of the First Bulgarian Empire, 893–972

During the reign of Simeon, second son of Boris, which lasted from 893 to 927,
Bulgaria reached a very high level of power and prosperity. Simeon, called the
Great, is looked on by Bulgarians as their most capable monarch and his reign
as the most brilliant period of their history. He had spent his childhood at
Constantinople and been educated there, and he became such an admirer of Greek
civilization that he was nicknamed Hèmiargos. His instructors had done
their work so well that Simeon remained spellbound by the glamour of
Constantinople throughout his life, and, although he might have laid the
foundations of a solid empire in the Balkans, his one ambition was to conquer
Byzantium and to be recognized as basileus—an ambition which was not to
be fulfilled. His first campaign against the Greeks was not very fruitful,
because the latter summoned the Magyars, already settled in Hungary, to their
aid and they attacked Simeon from the north. Simeon in return called the
Pechenegs, another fierce Tartar tribe, to his aid, but this merely resulted in
their definite establishment in Rumania. During the twenty years of peace,
which strange to say filled the middle of his reign (894-913), the internal
development of Bulgaria made great strides. The administration was properly
organized, commerce was encouraged, and agriculture flourished. In the wars
against the Greeks which occupied his last years he was more successful, and
inflicted a severe defeat on them at Anchialo (the modern Ahiolu) in 917; but
he was still unable to get from them what he wanted, and at last, in 921, he
was obliged to proclaim himself basileus and autocratōr of all
Bulgars and Greeks, a title which nobody else recognized. He reappeared before
Constantinople the same year, but effected nothing more than the customary
devastation of the suburbs. The year 923 witnessed a solemn reconciliation
between Rome and Constantinople; the Greeks were clever enough to prevent the
Roman legates visiting Bulgaria on their return journey, and thereby
administered a rebuff to Simeon, who was anxious to see them and enter into
direct relations with Rome. In the same year Simeon tried to make an alliance
with the Arabs, but the ambassadors of the latter were intercepted by the
Greeks, who made it worth their while not to continue the journey to Bulgaria.

In 924 Simeon determined on a supreme effort against Constantinople and as a
preliminary he ravaged Macedonia and Thrace. When, however, he arrived before
the city the walls and the catapults made him hesitate, and he entered into
negotiations, which, as usual, petered out and brought him no adequate reward
for all his hopes and preparations. In the west his arms were more successful,
and he subjected most of the eastern part of Serbia to his rule. From all this
it can be seen that he was no diplomat, though not lacking in enterprise and
ambition. The fact was that while he made his kingdom too powerful for the
Greeks to subdue (indeed they were compelled to pay him tribute), yet
Constantinople with its impregnable walls, well-organized army, powerful fleet,
and cunning and experienced statesmen, was too hard a nut for him to crack.

Simeon extended the boundaries of his country considerably, and his dominion
included most of the interior of the Balkan peninsula south of the Danube and
east of the rivers Morava and Ibar in Serbia and of the Drin in Albania. The
Byzantine Church greatly increased its influence in Bulgaria during his reign,
and works of theology grew like mushrooms. This was the only kind of literature
that was ever popular in Bulgaria, and although it is usual to throw contempt
on the literary achievements of Constantinople, we should know but little of
Bulgaria were it not for the Greek historians.

Simeon died in 927, and his son Peter, who succeeded him, was a lover of peace
and comfort; he married a Byzantine princess, and during his reign (927-69)
Greek influence grew ever stronger, in spite of several revolts on the part of
the Bulgar nobles, while the capital Preslav became a miniature Constantinople.
In 927 Rome recognized the kingdom and patriarchate of Bulgaria, and Peter was
duly crowned by the Papal legate. This was viewed with disfavour by the Greeks,
and they still called Peter only archōn or prince (knyaz in
Bulgarian), which was the utmost title allowed to any foreign sovereign. It was
not until 945 that they recognized Peter as basileus, the unique title
possessed by their own emperors and till then never granted to any one else.
Peter’s reign was one of misfortune for his country both at home and
abroad. In 931 the Serbs broke loose under their leader Časlav, whom Simeon had
captured but who effected his escape, and asserted their independence. In 963 a
formidable revolt under one Shishman undermined the whole state fabric. He
managed to subtract Macedonia and all western Bulgaria, including Sofia and
Vidin, from Peter’s rule, and proclaimed himself independent tsar
(tsar or caesar was a title often accorded by Byzantium to relatives
of the emperor or to distinguished men of Greek or other nationality, and
though it was originally the equivalent of the highest title, it had long since
ceased to be so: the emperor’s designations were basileus and
autocratōr). From this time there were two Bulgarias—eastern and
western. The eastern half was now little more than a Byzantine province, and
the western became the centre of national life and the focus of national
aspirations.

Another factor which militated against the internal progress of Bulgaria was
the spread of the Bogomil heresy in the tenth century. This remarkable
doctrine, founded on the dualism of the Paulicians, who had become an important
political force in the eastern empire, was preached in the Balkan peninsula by
one Jeremiah Bogomil, for the rest a man of uncertain identity, who made
Philippopolis the centre of his activity. Its principal features were of a
negative character, and consequently it was very difficult successfully to
apply force against them. The Bogomils recognized the authority neither of
Church nor of State; the validity neither of oaths nor of human laws. They
refused to pay taxes, to fight, or to obey; they sanctioned theft, but looked
upon any kind of punishment as unjustifiable; they discountenanced marriage and
were strict vegetarians. Naturally a heresy so alarming in its individualism
shook to its foundations the not very firmly established Bulgarian society.
Nevertheless it spread with rapidity in spite of all persecutions, and its
popularity amongst the Bulgarians, and indeed amongst all the Slavs of the
peninsula, is without doubt partly explained by political reasons. The
hierarchy of the Greek Church, which supported the ruling classes of the
country and lent them authority at the same time that it increased its own, was
antipathetic to the Slavs, and the Bogomil heresy drew much strength from its
nationalistic colouring and from the appeal which it made to the character of
the Balkan Slavs, who have always been intolerant of government by the Church.
But neither the civil nor the ecclesiastical authorities were able to cope with
the problem; indeed they were apt to minimize its importance, and the heresy
was never eradicated till the arrival on the scene of Islam, which proved as
attractive to the schismatics as the well-regulated Orthodox Church had been
the reverse.

The third quarter of the tenth century witnessed a great recrudescence of the
power of Constantinople under the Emperor Nikiphóros Phokas, who wrested Cyprus
and Crete from the Arabs and inaugurated an era of prosperity for the eastern
empire, giving it a new lease of vigorous and combative life. Wishing to
reassert the Greek supremacy in the Balkan peninsula his first act was to
refuse any further payment of tribute to the Bulgarians as from 966; his next
was to initiate a campaign against them, but in order to make his own success
in this enterprise less costly and more assured he secured the co-operation of
the Russians under Svyatoslav, Prince of Kiev; this potentate’s mother
Olga had visited Constantinople in 957 and been baptized (though her son and
the bulk of the population were still ardent heathens), and commercial
intercourse between Russia and Constantinople by means of the Dnieper and the
Black Sea was at that time lively. Svyatoslav did not want pressing, and
arriving with an army of 10,000 men in boats, overcame northern Bulgaria in a
few days (967); they were helped by Shishman and the western Bulgars, who did
not mind at what price Peter and the eastern Bulgars were crushed. Svyatoslav
was recalled to Russia in 968 to defend his home from attacks by the Tartar
Pechenegs, but that done, he made up his mind to return to Bulgaria, lured by
its riches and by the hope of the eventual possession of Constantinople.

The Emperor Nikiphóros was by now aware of the danger he had imprudently
conjured up, and made a futile alliance with eastern Bulgaria; but in January
969 Peter of Bulgaria died, and in December of the same year Nikiphóros was
murdered by the ambitious Armenian John Tzimisces,[1] who thereupon became
emperor. Svyatoslav, seeing the field clear of his enemies, returned in 970,
and in March of that year sacked and occupied Philippopolis. The Emperor John
Tzimisces, who was even abler both as general and as diplomat than his
predecessor, quietly pushed forward his warlike preparations, and did not meet
the Russians till the autumn, when he completely defeated them at Arcadiopolis
(the modern Lule-Burgas). The Russians retired north of the Balkan range, but
the Greeks followed them. John Tzimisces besieged them in the capital Preslav,
which he stormed, massacring many of the garrison, in April 972. Svyatoslav and
his remaining troops escaped to Silistria (the Durostorum of Trajan) on the
Danube, where again, however, they were besieged and defeated by the
indefatigable emperor. At last peace was made in July 972, the Russians being
allowed to go free on condition of the complete evacuation of Bulgaria and a
gift of corn; the adventurous Svyatoslav lost his life at the hands of the
Pechenegs while making his way back to Kiev. The triumph of the Greeks was
complete, and it can be imagined that there was not much left of the
earthenware Bulgaria after the violent collision of these two mighty iron
vessels on the top of it. Eastern Bulgaria (i.e. Moesia and Thrace) ceased to
exist, becoming a purely Greek province; John Tzimisces made his triumphal
entry into Constantinople, followed by the two sons of Peter of Bulgaria on
foot; the elder was deprived of his regal attributes and created
magistros, the younger was made a eunuch.

[Footnote 1: John the Little.]

7
The Rise and Fall of ‘Western Bulgaria’ and the Greek
Supremacy, 963–1186

Meanwhile western Bulgaria had not been touched, and it was thither that the
Bulgarian patriarch Damian removed from Silistria after the victory of the
Greeks, settling first in Sofia and then in Okhrida in Macedonia, where the
apostate Shishman had eventually made his capital. Western Bulgaria included
Macedonia and parts of Thessaly, Albania, southern and eastern Serbia, and the
westernmost parts of modern Bulgaria. It was from this district that numerous
anti-Hellenic revolts were directed after the death of the Emperor John
Tzimisces in 976. These culminated during the reign of Samuel (977-1014), one
of the sons of Shishman. He was as capable and energetic, as unscrupulous and
inhuman, as the situation he was called upon to fill demanded. He began by
assassinating all his relations and nobles who resented his desire to
re-establish the absolute monarchy, was recognized as tsar by the Holy
See of Rome in 981, and then began to fight the Greeks, the only possible
occupation for any self-respecting Bulgarian ruler. The emperor at that time
was Basil II (976-1025), who was brave and patriotic but young and
inexperienced. In his early campaigns Samuel carried all before him; he
reconquered northern Bulgaria in 985, Thessaly in 986, and defeated Basil II
near Sofia the same year. Later he conquered Albania and the southern parts of
Serbia and what is now Montenegro and Hercegovina. In 996 he threatened
Salonika, but first of all embarked on an expedition against the Peloponnese;
here he was followed by the Greek general, who managed to surprise and
completely overwhelm him, he and his son barely escaping with their lives.

From that year (996) his fortune changed; the Greeks reoccupied northern
Bulgaria, in 999, and also recovered Thessaly and parts of Macedonia. The
Bulgars were subjected to almost annual attacks on the part of Basil II; the
country was ruined and could not long hold out. The final disaster occurred in
1014, when Basil II utterly defeated his inveterate foe in a pass near Seres in
Macedonia. Samuel escaped to Prilip, but when he beheld the return of 15,000 of
his troops who had been captured and blinded by the Greeks he died of syncope.
Basil II, known as Bulgaroctonus, or Bulgar-killer, went from victory to
victory, and finally occupied the Bulgarian capital of Okhrida in 1016. Western
Bulgaria came to an end, as had eastern Bulgaria in 972, the remaining members
of the royal family followed the emperor to the Bosphorus to enjoy comfortable
captivity, and the triumph of Constantinople was complete.

From 1018 to 1186 Bulgaria had no existence as an independent state; Basil II,
although cruel, was far from tyrannical in his general treatment of the
Bulgars, and treated the conquered territory more as a protectorate than as a
possession. But after his death Greek rule became much more oppressive. The
Bulgarian patriarchate (since 972 established at Okhrida) was reduced to an
archbishopric, and in 1025 the see was given to a Greek, who lost no time in
eliminating the Bulgarian element from positions of importance throughout his
diocese. Many of the nobles were transplanted to Constantinople, where their
opposition was numbed by the bestowal of honours. During the eleventh century
the peninsula was invaded frequently by the Tartar Pechenegs and Kumans, whose
aid was invoked both by Greeks and Bulgars; the result of these incursions was
not always favourable to those who had promoted them; the barbarians invariably
stayed longer and did more damage than had been bargained for, and usually left
some of their number behind as unwelcome settlers.

In this way the ethnological map of the Balkan peninsula became ever more
variegated. To the Tartar settlers were added colonies of Armenians and Vlakhs
by various emperors. The last touch was given by the arrival of the Normans in
1081 and the passage of the crusaders in 1096. The wholesale depredations of
the latter naturally made the inhabitants of the Balkan peninsula anything but
sympathetically disposed towards their cause. One of the results of all this
turmoil and of the heavy hand of the Greeks was a great increase in the
vitality of the Bogomil heresy already referred to; it became a refuge for
patriotism and an outlet for its expression. The Emperor Alexis Comnenus
instituted a bitter persecution of it, which only led to its growth and rapid
propagation westwards into Serbia from its centre Philippopolis.

The reason of the complete overthrow of the Bulgarian monarchy by the Greeks
was of course that the nation itself was totally lacking in cohesion and
organization, and could only achieve any lasting success when an exceptionally
gifted ruler managed to discount the centrifugal tendencies of the feudal
nobles, as Simeon and Samuel had done. Other discouraging factors wore the
permeation of the Church and State by Byzantine influence, the lack of a large
standing army, the spread of the anarchic Bogomil heresy, and the fact that the
bulk of the Slav population had no desire for foreign adventure or national
aggrandizement.

8
The Rise and Fall of the Second Bulgarian Empire, 1186–1258

From 1186 to 1258 Bulgaria experienced temporary resuscitation, the brevity of
which was more than compensated for by the stirring nature of the events that
crowded it. The exactions and oppressions of the Greeks culminated in a revolt
on the part of the Bulgars, which had its centre in Tirnovo on the river Yantra
in northern Bulgaria—a position of great natural strength and strategic
importance, commanding the outlets of several of the most important passes over
the Balkan range. This revolt coincided with the growing weakness of the
eastern empire, which, surrounded on all sides by aggressive
enemies—Kumans, Saracens, Turks, and Normans—was sickening for one
of the severe illnesses which preceded its dissolution. The revolt was headed
by two brothers who were Vlakh or Rumanian shepherds, and was blessed by the
archbishop Basil, who crowned one of them, called John Asen, as tsar in
Tirnovo in 1186. Their first efforts against the Greeks were not successful,
but securing the support of the Serbs under Stephen Nemanja in 1188 and of the
Crusaders in 1189 they became more so; but there was life in the Greeks yet,
and victory alternated with defeat. John Asen I was assassinated in 1196 and
was succeeded after many internal discords and murders by his relative Kaloian
or Pretty John. This cruel and unscrupulous though determined ruler soon made
an end of all his enemies at home, and in eight years achieved such success
abroad that Bulgaria almost regained its former proportions. Moreover, he
re-established relations with Rome, to the great discomfiture of the Greeks,
and after some negotiations Pope Innocent III recognized Kaloian as tsar
of the Bulgars and Vlakhs (roi de Blaquie et de Bougrie, in the words of
Villehardouin), with Basil as primate, and they were both duly consecrated and
crowned by the papal legate at Tirnovo in 1204. The French, who had just
established themselves in Constantinople during the fourth crusade, imprudently
made an enemy of Kaloian instead of a friend, and with the aid of the Tartar
Kumans he defeated them several times, capturing and brutally murdering Baldwin
I. But in 1207 his career was cut short; he was murdered while besieging
Salonika by one of his generals who was a friend of his wife. After eleven
years of further anarchy he was succeeded by John Asen II. During the reign of
this monarch, which lasted from 1218 till 1241, Bulgaria reached the zenith of
its power. He was the most enlightened ruler the country had had, and he not
only waged war successfully abroad but also put an end to the internal
confusion, restored the possibility of carrying on agriculture and commerce,
and encouraged the foundation of numerous schools and monasteries. He
maintained the tradition of his family by making his capital at Tirnovo, which
city he considerably embellished and enlarged.

Constantinople at this time boasted three Greek emperors and one French. The
first act of John Asen II was to get rid of one of them, named Theodore, who
had proclaimed himself basileus at Okhrida in 1223. Thereupon he annexed
the whole of Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, and Epirus to his dominions, and made
Theodore’s brother Manuel, who had married one of his daughters, viceroy,
established at Salonika. Another of his daughters had married Stephen
Vladislav, who was King of Serbia from 1233-43, and a third married Theodore,
son of the Emperor John III, who reigned at Nicaea, in 1235. This daughter,
after being sought in marriage by the French barons at Constantinople as a wife
for the Emperor Baldwin II, a minor, was then summarily rejected in favour of
the daughter of the King of Jerusalem; this affront rankled in the mind of John
Asen II and threw him into the arms of the Greeks, with whom he concluded an
alliance in 1234. John Asen II and his ally, the Emperor John III, were,
however, utterly defeated by the French under the walls of Constantinople in
1236, and the Bulgarian ruler, who had no wish to see the Greeks re-established
there, began to doubt the wisdom of his alliance. Other Bulgarian tsars had
been unscrupulous, but the whole foreign policy of this one pivoted on
treachery. He deserted the Greeks and made an alliance with the French in 1237,
the Pope Gregory IX, a great Hellenophobe, having threatened him with
excommunication; he went so far as to force his daughter to relinquish her
Greek husband. The following year, however, he again changed over to the
Greeks; then again fear of the Pope and of his brother-in-law the King of
Hungary brought him back to the side of Baldwin II, to whose help against the
Greeks he went with a large army into Thrace in 1239. While besieging the
Greeks with indifferent success, he learned of the death of his wife and his
eldest son from plague, and incontinently returned to Tirnovo, giving up the
war and restoring his daughter to her lonely husband. This adaptable monarch
died a natural death in 1241, and the three rulers of his family who succeeded
him, whose reigns filled the period 1241-58, managed to undo all the
constructive work of their immediate predecessors. Province after province was
lost and internal anarchy increased. This remarkable dynasty came to an
inglorious end in 1258, when its last representative was murdered by his own
nobles, and from this time onwards Bulgaria was only a shadow of its former
self.

9
The Serbian Supremacy and the Final Collapse, 1258–1393

From 1258 onwards Bulgaria may be said to have continued flickering until its
final extinction as a state in 1393, but during this period it never had any
voice in controlling the destinies of the Balkan peninsula. Owing to the fact
that no ruler emerged capable of keeping the distracted country in order, there
was a regular chassé-croisé of rival princelets, an unceasing tale of
political marriages and murders, conspiracies and revolts of feudal nobles all
over the country, and perpetual ebb and flow of the boundaries of the warring
principalities which tore the fabric of Bulgaria to pieces amongst them. From
the point of view of foreign politics this period is characterized generally by
the virtual disappearance of Bulgarian independence to the profit of the
surrounding states, who enjoyed a sort of rotativist supremacy. It is
especially remarkable for the complete ascendancy which Serbia gained in the
Balkan peninsula.

A Serb, Constantine, grandson of Stephen Nemanja, occupied the Bulgarian throne
from 1258 to 1277, and married the granddaughter of John Asen II. After the
fall of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in 1261, the Hungarians, already
masters of Transylvania, combined with the Greeks against Constantine; the
latter called the Tartars of southern Russia, at this time at the height of
their power, to his help and was victorious, but as a result of his diplomacy
the Tartars henceforward played an important part in the Bulgarian welter. Then
Constantine married, as his second wife, the daughter of the Greek emperor, and
thus again gave Constantinople a voice in his country’s affairs.
Constantine was followed by a series of upstart rulers, whose activities were
cut short by the victories of King Uroš II of Serbia (1282-1321), who conquered
all Macedonia and wrested it from the Bulgars. In 1285 the Tartars of the
Golden Horde swept over Hungary and Bulgaria, but it was from the south that
the clouds were rolling up which not much later were to burst over the
peninsula. In 1308 the Turks appeared on the Sea of Marmora, and in 1326
established themselves at Brussa. From 1295 to 1322 Bulgaria was presided over
by a nobleman of Vidin, Svetoslav, who, unmolested by the Greeks, grown
thoughtful in view of the approach of the Turks, was able to maintain rather
more order than his subjects were accustomed to. After his death in 1322 chaos
again supervened. One of his successors had married the daughter of Uroš II of
Serbia, but suddenly made an alliance with the Greeks against his
brother-in-law Stephen Uroš III and dispatched his wife to her home. During the
war which ensued the unwonted allies were utterly routed by the Serbs at
Kustendil in Macedonia in 1330.

From 1331 to 1365 Bulgaria was under one John Alexander, a noble of Tartar
origin, whose sister became the wife of Serbia’s greatest ruler, Stephen
Dušan; John Alexander, moreover, recognized Stephen as his suzerain, and from
thenceforward Bulgaria was a vassal-state of Serbia. Meanwhile the Turkish
storm was gathering fast; Suleiman crossed the Hellespont in 1356, and Murad I
made Adrianople his capital in 1366. After the death of John Alexander in 1365
the Hungarians invaded northern Bulgaria, and his successor invoked the help of
the Turks against them and also against the Greeks. This was the beginning of
the end. The Serbs, during an absence of the Sultan in Asia, undertook an
offensive, but were defeated by the Turks near Adrianople in 1371, who captured
Sofia in 1382. After this the Serbs formed a huge southern Slav alliance, in
which the Bulgarians refused to join, but, after a temporary success against
the Turks in 1387, they were vanquished by them as the result of treachery at
the famous battle of Kosovo in 1389. Meanwhile the Turks occupied Nikopolis on
the Danube in 1388 and destroyed the Bulgarian capital Tirnovo in 1393, exiling
the Patriarch Euthymus to Macedonia. Thus the state of Bulgaria passed into the
hands of the Turks, and its church into those of the Greeks. Many Bulgars
adopted Islam, and their descendants are the Pomaks or Bulgarian Mohammedans of
the present day. With the subjection of Rumania in 1394 and the defeat of an
improvised anti-Turkish crusade from western Europe under Sigismund, King of
Hungary, at Nikopolis in 1396 the Turkish conquest was complete, though the
battle of Varna was not fought till 1444, nor Constantinople entered till 1453.

10
The Turkish Dominion and the Emancipation, 1393–1878

From 1393 until 1877 Bulgaria may truthfully be said to have had no history,
but nevertheless it could scarcely have been called happy. National life was
completely paralysed, and what stood in those days for national consciousness
was obliterated. It is common knowledge, and most people are now reasonable
enough to admit, that the Turks have many excellent qualities, religious
fervour and military ardour amongst others; it is also undeniable that from an
aesthetic point of view too much cannot be said in praise of Mohammedan
civilization. Who does not prefer the minarets of Stambul and Edirne[1] to the
architecture of Budapest, notoriously the ideal of Christian south-eastern
Europe? On the other hand, it cannot be contended that the Pax Ottomana brought
prosperity or happiness to those on whom it was imposed (unless indeed they
submerged their identity in the religion of their conquerors), or that its
Influence was either vivifying or generally popular.

[Footnote 1: The Turkish names for Constantinople and Adrianople.]

To the races they conquered the Turks offered two alternatives—serfdom or
Turkdom; those who could not bring themselves to accept either of these had
either to emigrate or take to brigandage and outlawry in the mountains. The
Turks literally overlaid the European nationalities of the Balkan peninsula for
five hundred years, and from their own point of view and from that of military
history this was undoubtedly a very splendid achievement; it was more than the
Greeks or Romans had ever done. From the point of view of humanitarianism also
it is beyond a doubt that much less human blood was spilt in the Balkan
peninsula during the five hundred years of Turkish rule than during the five
hundred years of Christian rule which preceded them; indeed it would have been
difficult to spill more. It is also a pure illusion to think of the Turks as
exceptionally brutal or cruel; they are just as good-natured and good-humoured
as anybody else; it is only when their military or religious passions are
aroused that they become more reckless and ferocious than other people. It was
not the Turks who taught cruelty to the Christians of the Balkan peninsula; the
latter had nothing to learn in this respect.

In spite of all this, however, from the point of view of the Slavs of Bulgaria
and Serbia, Turkish rule was synonymous with suffocation. If the Turks were all
that their greatest admirers think them the history of the Balkan peninsula in
the nineteenth century would have been very different from what it has been,
namely, one perpetual series of anti-Turkish revolts.

Of all the Balkan peoples the Bulgarians were the most completely crushed and
effaced. The Greeks by their ubiquity, their brains, and their money were soon
able to make the Turkish storm drive their own windmill; the Rumanians were
somewhat sheltered by the Danube and also by their distance from
Constantinople; the Serbs also were not so exposed to the full blast of the
Turkish wrath, and the inaccessibility of much of their country afforded them
some protection. Bulgaria was simply annihilated, and its population, already
far from homogeneous, was still further varied by numerous Turkish and other
Tartar colonies.

For the same reasons already mentioned Bulgaria was the last Balkan state to
emancipate itself; for these reasons also it is the least trammelled by
prejudices and by what are considered national predilections and racial
affinities, while its heterogeneous composition makes it vigorous and
enterprising. The treatment of the Christians by the Turks was by no means
always the same; generally speaking, it grew worse as the power of the Sultan
grew less. During the fifteenth century they were allowed to practise their
religion and all their vocations in comparative liberty and peace. But from the
sixteenth century onwards the control of the Sultan declined, power became
decentralized, the Ottoman Empire grew ever more anarchic and the rule of the
provincial governors more despotic.

But the Mohammedan conquerors were not the only enemies and oppressors of the
Bulgars. The rôle played by the Greeks in Bulgaria during the Turkish dominion
was almost as important as that of the Turks themselves. The contempt of the
Turks for the Christians, and especially for their religion, was so great that
they prudently left the management of it to them, knowing that it would keep
them occupied in mutual altercation. From 1393 till 1767 the Bulgarians were
under the Greco-Bulgarian Patriarchate of Okhrida, an organization in which all
posts, from the highest to the lowest, had to be bought from the Turkish
administration at exorbitant and ever-rising prices; the Phanariote Greeks (so
called because they originated in the Phanar quarter at Constantinople) were
the only ones who could afford those of the higher posts, with the result that
the Church was controlled from Constantinople. In 1767 the independent
patriarchates were abolished, and from that date the religious control of the
Greeks was as complete as the political control of the Turks. The Greeks did
all they could to obliterate the last traces of Bulgarian nationality which had
survived in the Church, and this explains a fact which must never be forgotten,
which had its origin in the remote past, but grew more pronounced at this
period, that the individual hatred of Greeks and Bulgars of each other has
always been far more intense than their collective hatred of the Turks.

Ever since the marriage of the Tsar Ivan III with the niece of the last Greek
Emperor, in 1472, Russia had considered itself the trustee of the eastern
Christians, the defender of the Orthodox Church, and the direct heir of the
glory and prestige of Constantinople; it was not until the eighteenth century,
however, after the consolidation of the Russian state, that the Balkan
Christians were championed and the eventual possession of Constantinople was
seriously considered. Russian influence was first asserted in Rumania after the
Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainardji, in 1774. It was only the Napoleonic war in 1812
that prevented the Russians from extending their territory south of the Danube,
whither it already stretched. Serbia was partially free by 1826, and Greece
achieved complete independence in 1830, when the Russian troops, in order to
coerce the Turks, occupied part of Bulgaria and advanced as far as Adrianople.
Bulgaria, being nearer to and more easily repressed by Constantinople, had to
wait, and tentative revolts made about this time were put down with much
bloodshed and were followed by wholesale emigrations of Bulgars into Bessarabia
and importations of Tartars and Kurds into the vacated districts. The Crimean
War and the short-sighted championship of Turkey by the western European powers
checked considerably the development at which Russia aimed. Moldavia and
Wallachia were in 1856 withdrawn from the semi-protectorate which Russia had
long exercised over them, and in 1861 formed themselves into the united state
of Rumania. In 1866 a German prince, Charles of Hohenzollern, came to rule over
the country, the first sign of German influence in the Near East; at this time
Rumania still acknowledged the supremacy of the Sultan.

During the first half of the nineteenth century there took place a considerable
intellectual renascence in Bulgaria, a movement fostered by wealthy Bulgarian
merchants of Bucarest and Odessa. In 1829 a history of Bulgaria was published
by a native of that country in Moscow; in 1835 the first school was established
in Bulgaria, and many others soon followed. It must be remembered that not only
was nothing known at that time about Bulgaria and its inhabitants in other
countries, but the Bulgars had themselves to be taught who they were. The
Bulgarian people in Bulgaria consisted entirely of peasants; there was no
Bulgarian upper or middle or ‘intelligent’ or professional class;
those enlightened Bulgars who existed were domiciled in other countries; the
Church was in the hands of the Greeks, who vied with the Turks in suppressing
Bulgarian nationality.

The two committees of Odessa and Bucarest which promoted the enlightenment and
emancipation of Bulgaria were dissimilar in composition and in aim; the members
of the former were more intent on educational and religious reform, and aimed
at the gradual and peaceful regeneration of their country by these means; the
latter wished to effect the immediate political emancipation of Bulgaria by
violent and, if necessary, warlike means.

It was the ecclesiastical question which was solved first. In 1856 the Porte
had promised religious reforms tending to the appointment of Bulgarian bishops
and the recognition of the Bulgarian language in Church and school. But these
not being carried through, the Bulgarians took the matter into their own hands,
and in 1860 refused any longer to recognize the Patriarch of Constantinople.
The same year an attempt was made to bring the Church of Bulgaria under that of
Rome, but, owing to Russian opposition, proved abortive. In 1870, the growing
agitation having at last alarmed the Turks, the Bulgarian Exarchate was
established. The Bulgarian Church was made free and national and was to be
under an Exarch who should reside at Constantinople (Bulgaria being still a
Turkish province). The Greeks, conscious what a blow this would be to their
supremacy, managed for a short while to stave off the evil day, but in 1872 the
Exarch was triumphantly installed in Constantinople, where he resided till
1908.

Meanwhile revolutionary outbreaks began to increase, but were always put down
with great rigour. The most notable was that of 1875, instigated by Stambulóv,
the future dictator, in sympathy with the outbreak in Montenegro, Hercegovina,
and Bosnia of that year; the result of this and of similar movements in 1876
was the series of notorious Bulgarian massacres in that year. The indignation
of Europe was aroused and concerted representations were urgently made at
Constantinople. Midhat Pasha disarmed his opponents by summarily introducing
the British constitution into Turkey, but, needless to say, Bulgaria’s
lot was not improved by this specious device. Russia had, however, steadily
been making her preparations, and, Turkey having refused to discontinue
hostilities against Montenegro, on April 24, 1877, war was declared by the
Emperor Alexander II, whose patience had become exhausted; he was joined by
Prince Charles of Rumania, who saw that by doing so he would be rewarded by the
complete emancipation of his country, then still a vassal-state of Turkey, and
its erection into a kingdom. At the beginning of the war all went well for the
Russians and Rumanians, who were soon joined by large numbers of Bulgarian
insurgents; the Turkish forces were scattered all over the peninsula. The
committee of Bucarest transformed itself into a provisional government, but the
Russians, who had undertaken to liberate the country, naturally had to keep its
administration temporarily in their own hands, and refused their recognition.
The Turks, alarmed at the early victories of the Russians, brought up better
generals and troops, and defeated the Russians at Plevna in July. They failed,
however, to dislodge them from the important and famous Shipka Pass in August,
and after this they became demoralized and their resistance rapidly weakened.
The Russians, helped by the Bulgarians and Rumanians, fought throughout the
summer with the greatest gallantry; they took Plevna, after a three
months’ siege, in December, occupied Sofia and Philippopolis in January
1878, and pushed forward to the walls of Constantinople.

The Turks were at their last gasp, and at Adrianople, in March 1878, Ignatiyev
dictated the terms of the Treaty of San Stefano, by which a principality of
Bulgaria, under the nominal suzerainty of the Sultan, was created, stretching
from the Danube to the Aegean, and from the Black Sea to Albania, including all
Macedonia and leaving to the Turks only the district between Constantinople and
Adrianople, Chalcidice, and the town of Salonika; Bulgaria would thus have
regained the dimensions it possessed under Tsar Simeon nine hundred and fifty
years previously.

This treaty, which on ethnological grounds was tolerably just, alarmed the
other powers, especially Great Britain and Germany, who thought they perceived
in it the foundations of Russian hegemony in the Balkans, while it would, if
put into execution, have blighted the aspirations of Greece and Serbia. The
Treaty of Berlin, inspired by Bismarck and Lord Salisbury, anxious to defend,
the former, the interests of (ostensibly) Austria-Hungary, the latter
(shortsightedly) those of Turkey, replaced it in July 1878. By its terms
Bulgaria was cut into three parts; northern Bulgaria, between the Danube and
the Balkans, was made an autonomous province, tributary to Turkey; southern
Bulgaria, fancifully termed Eastern Rumelia (Rumili was the name always given
by the Turks to the whole Balkan peninsula), was to have autonomous
administration under a Christian governor appointed by the Porte; Macedonia was
left to Turkey; and the Dobrudja, between the Danube and the Black Sea, was
adjudged to Rumania.

11
The Aftermath, and Prince Alexander of Battenberg, 1878–86

The relations between the Russians and the Bulgarians were better before the
liberation of the latter by the former than after; this may seem unjust,
because Bulgaria could never have freed herself so decisively and rapidly
alone, and Russia was the only power in whose interest it was to free her from
the Turks, and who could translate that interest so promptly into action;
nevertheless, the laws controlling the relationships of states and
nationalities being much the same as those which control the relationships of
individuals, it was only to be expected.

What so often happens in the relationships of individuals happened in those
between Russia and Bulgaria. Russia naturally enough expected Bulgaria to be
grateful for the really large amount of blood and treasure which its liberation
had cost Russia, and, moreover, expected its gratitude to take the form of
docility and a general acquiescence in all the suggestions and wishes expressed
by its liberator. Bulgaria was no doubt deeply grateful, but never had the
slightest intention of expressing its gratitude in the desired way; on the
contrary, like most people who have regained a long-lost and unaccustomed
freedom of action or been put under an obligation, it appeared touchy and
jealous of its right to an independent judgement. It is often assumed by
Russophobe writers that Russia wished and intended to make a Russian province
of Bulgaria, but this is very unlikely; the geographical configuration of the
Balkan peninsula would not lend itself to its incorporation in the Russian
Empire, the existence between the two of the compact and vigorous national
block of Rumania, a Latin race and then already an independent state, was an
insurmountable obstacle, and, finally, it is quite possible for Russia to
obtain possession or control of Constantinople without owning all the
intervening littoral.

That Russia should wish to have a controlling voice in the destinies of
Bulgaria and in those of the whole peninsula was natural, and it was just as
natural that Bulgaria should resent its pretensions. The eventual result of
this, however, was that Bulgaria inevitably entered the sphere of Austrian and
ultimately of German influence or rather calculation, a contingency probably
not foreseen by its statesmen at the time, and whose full meaning, even if it
had, would not have been grasped by them.

The Bulgarians, whatever the origin and the ingredients of their nationality,
are by language a purely Slavonic people; their ancestors were the pioneers of
Slavonic civilization as expressed in its monuments of theological literature.
Nevertheless, they have never been enthusiastic Pan-Slavists, any more than the
Dutch have ever been ardent Pan-Germans; it is as unreasonable to expect such a
thing of the one people as it is of the other. The Bulgarians indeed think
themselves superior to the Slavs by reason of the warlike and glorious
traditions of the Tartar tribe that gave them their name and infused the
Asiatic element into their race, thus endowing them with greater stability,
energy, and consistency than is possessed by purely Slav peoples. These latter,
on the other hand, and notably the Serbians, for the same reason affect
contempt for the mixture of blood and for what they consider the Mongol
characteristics of the Bulgarians. What is certain is that between Bulgarians
and Germans (including German Austrians and Magyars) there has never existed
that elemental, ineradicable, and insurmountable antipathy which exists between
German (and Magyar) and Slav wherever the two races are contiguous, from the
Baltic to the Adriatic; nothing is more remarkable than the way in which the
Bulgarian people has been flattered, studied, and courted in Austria-Hungary
and Germany, during the last decade, to the detriment of the purely Slav Serb
race with whom it is always compared. The reason is that with the growth of the
Serb national movement, from 1903 onwards, Austria-Hungary and Germany felt an
instinctive and perfectly well-justified fear of the Serb race, and sought to
neutralize the possible effect of its growing power by any possible means.

It is not too much to say, in summing up, that Russian influence, which had
been growing stronger in Bulgaria up till 1877-8, has since been steadily on
the decline; Germany and Austria-Hungary, who reduced Bulgaria to half the size
that Count Ignatiyev had made it by the Treaty of San Stefano, reaped the
benefit, especially the commercial benefit, of the war which Russia had waged.
Intellectually, and especially as regards the replenishment and renovation of
the Bulgarian language, which, in spite of numerous Turkish words introduced
during the Ottoman rule, is essentially Slavonic both in substance and form,
Russian influence was especially powerful, and has to a certain extent
maintained itself. Economically, owing partly to geographical conditions, both
the Danube and the main oriental railway linking Bulgaria directly with
Budapest and Vienna, partly to the fact that Bulgaria’s best customers
for its cereals are in central and western Europe, the connexion between
Bulgaria and Russia is infinitesimal. Politically, both Russia and Bulgaria
aiming at the same thing, the possession of Constantinople and the hegemony of
the Balkan peninsula, their relations were bound to be difficult.

The first Bulgarian Parliament met in 1879 under trying conditions. Both
Russian and Bulgarian hopes had been dashed by the Treaty of Berlin. Russian
influence was still paramount, however, and the viceroy controlled the
organization of the administration. An ultra-democratic constitution was
arranged for, a fact obviously not conducive to the successful government of
their country by the quite inexperienced Bulgarians. For a ruler recourse had
inevitably to be had to the rabbit-warren of Germanic princes, who were still
ingenuously considered neutral both in religion and in politics. The choice
fell on Prince Alexander of Battenberg, nephew of the Empress of Russia, who
had taken part in the campaign of the Russian army. Prince Alexander was
conscientious, energetic, and enthusiastic, but he was no diplomat, and from
the outset his honesty precluded his success. From the very first he failed to
keep on good terms with Russia or its representatives, who at that time were
still numerous in Bulgaria, while he was helpless to stem the ravages of
parliamentary government. The Emperor Alexander III, who succeeded his father
Alexander II in 1881, recommended him to insist on being made dictator, which
he successfully did. But when he found that this only meant an increase of
Russian influence he reverted to parliamentary government (in September 1883);
this procedure discomfited the representatives of Russia, discredited him with
the Emperor, and threw him back into the vortex of party warfare, from which he
never extricated himself.

Meanwhile the question of eastern Rumelia, or rather southern Bulgaria, still a
Turkish province, began to loom. A vigorous agitation for the reunion of the
two parts of the country had been going on for some time, and on September 18,
1885, the inhabitants of Philippopolis suddenly proclaimed the union under
Prince Alexander, who solemnly announced his approval at Tirnovo and
triumphantly entered their city on September 21. Russia frowned on this
independence of spirit. Serbia, under King Milan, and instigated by Austria,
inaugurated the policy which has so often been followed since, and claimed
territorial compensation for Bulgaria’s aggrandisement; it must be
remembered that it was Bismarck who, by the Treaty of Berlin, had arbitrarily
confined Serbia to its inadequate limits of those day.

On November 13 King Milan declared war, and began to march on Sofia, which is
not far from the Serbo-Bulgarian frontier. Prince Alexander, the bulk of whose
army was on the Turkish frontier, boldly took up the challenge. On November 18
took place the battle of Slivnitsa, a small town about twenty miles north-west
of Sofia, in which the Bulgarians were completely victorious. Prince Alexander,
after hard fighting, took Pirot in Serbia on November 27, having refused King
Milan’s request for an armistice, and was marching on Nish, when Austria
intervened, and threatened to send troops into Serbia unless fighting ceased.
Bulgaria had to obey, and on March 3, 1886, a barren treaty of peace was
imposed on the belligerents at Bucarest. Prince Alexander’s position did
not improve after this, indeed it would have needed a much more skilful
navigator to steer through the many currents which eddied round him. A strong
Russophile party formed itself in the army; on the night of August 21, 1886,
some officers of this party, who were the most capable in the Bulgarian army,
appeared at Sofia, forced Alexander to resign, and abducted him; they put him
on board his yacht on the Danube and escorted him to the Russian town of Reni,
in Bessarabia; telegraphic orders came from St. Petersburg, in answer to
inquiries, that he could proceed with haste to western Europe, and on August 26
he found himself at Lemberg. But those who had carried out this coup
d’état found that it was not at all popular in the country. A
counter-revolution, headed by the statesman Stambulóv, was immediately
initiated, and on September 3 Prince Alexander reappeared in Sofia amidst
tumultuous applause. Nevertheless his position was hopeless; the Emperor
Alexander III forced him to abdicate, and on September 7, 1886, he left
Bulgaria for good, to the regret of the majority of the people. He died in
Austria, in 1893, in his thirty-seventh year. At his departure a regency was
constituted, at the head of which was Stambulóv.

12
The Regeneration under Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, 1886–1908

Stambulóv was born at Tirnovo in 1854 and was of humble origin. He took part in
the insurrection of 1876 and in the war of liberation, and in 1884 became
president of the Sóbraniye (Parliament). From 1886 till 1894 he was virtually
dictator of Bulgaria. He was intensely patriotic and also personally ambitious,
determined, energetic, ruthlessly cruel and unscrupulous, but incapable of
deceit; these qualities were apparent in his powerful and grim expression of
face, while his manner inspired the weak with terror and the strongest with
respect. His policy in general was directed against Russia. At the general
election held in October 1886 he had all his important opponents imprisoned
beforehand, while armed sentries discouraged ill-disposed voters from
approaching the ballot-boxes. Out of 522 elected deputies, there were 470
supporters of Stambulóv. This implied the complete suppression of the
Russophile party and led to a rupture with St. Petersburg.

Whatever were Stambulóv’s methods, and few would deny that they were
harsh, there is no doubt that something of the sort was necessary to restore
order in the country. But once having started on this path he found it
difficult to stop, and his tyrannical bearing, combined with the delay in
finding a prince, soon made him unpopular. There were several revolutionary
outbreaks directed against him, but these were all crushed. At length the, at
that time not particularly alluring, throne of Bulgaria was filled by Prince
Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, who was born in 1861 and was the son of the gifted
Princess Clémentine of Bourbon-Orleans, daughter of Louis-Philippe. This young
man combined great ambition and tenacity of purpose with extreme prudence,
astuteness, and patience; he was a consummate diplomat. The election of this
prince was viewed with great disfavour by Russia, and for fear of offending the
Emperor Alexander III none of the European powers recognized him.

Ferdinand, unabashed, cheerfully installed himself in Sofia with his mother in
July 1886, and took care to make the peace with his suzerain, the Sultan Abdul
Hamid. He wisely left all power in the hands of the unattractive and to him,
unsympathetic prime minister, Stambulóv, till he himself felt secure in his
position, and till the dictator should have made himself thoroughly hated.
Ferdinand’s clever and wealthy mother cast a beneficent and civilizing
glow around him, smoothing away many difficulties by her womanly tact and
philanthropic activity, and, thanks to his influential connexions in the courts
of Europe and his attitude of calm expectancy, his prestige in his own country
rapidly increased. In 1893 he married Princess Marie-Louise of Bourbon-Parma.
In May 1894, as a result of a social misadventure in which he became involved,
Stambulóv sent in his resignation, confidently expecting a refusal. To his
mortification it was accepted; thereupon he initiated a violent press campaign,
but his halo had faded, and on July 15 he was savagely attacked in the street
by unknown men, who afterwards escaped, and he died three days later. So
intense were the emotions of the people that his grave had to be guarded by the
military for two months. In November 1894 followed the death of the Emperor
Alexander III, and as a result of this double event the road to a
reconciliation with Russia was opened. Meanwhile the German Emperor, who was on
good terms with Princess Clémentine, had paved the way for Ferdinand at Vienna,
and when, in March 1896, the Sultan recognized him as Prince of Bulgaria and
Governor-General of eastern Rumelia, his international position was assured.
Relations with Russia were still further improved by the rebaptism of the
infant Crown Prince Boris according to the rites of the eastern Church, in
February 1896, and a couple of years later Ferdinand and his wife and child
paid a highly successful state visit to Peterhof. In September 1902 a memorial
church was erected by the Emperor Nicholas II at the Shipka Pass, and later an
equestrian statue of the Tsar-Liberator Alexander II was placed opposite the
House of Parliament in Sofia.

Bulgaria meanwhile had been making rapid and astonishing material progress.
Railways were built, exports increased, and the general condition of the
country greatly improved. It is the fashion to compare the wonderful advance
made by Bulgaria during the thirty-five years of its new existence with the
very much slower progress made by Serbia during a much longer period. This is
insisted on especially by publicists in Austria-Hungary and Germany, but it is
forgotten that even before the last Balkan war the geographical position of
Bulgaria with its seaboard was much more favourable to its economic development
than that of Serbia, which the Treaty of Berlin had hemmed in by Turkish and
Austro-Hungarian territory; moreover, Bulgaria being double the size of the
Serbia of those days, had far greater resources upon which to draw.

From 1894 onwards Ferdinand’s power in his own country and his influence
abroad had been steadily growing. He always appreciated the value of railways,
and became almost as great a traveller as the German Emperor. His estates in
the south of Hungary constantly required his attention, and he was a frequent
visitor in Vienna. The German Emperor, though he could not help admiring
Ferdinand’s success, was always a little afraid of him; he felt that
Ferdinand’s gifts were so similar to his own that he would be unable to
count on him in an emergency. Moreover, it was difficult to reconcile
Ferdinand’s ambitions in extreme south-eastern Europe with his own.
Ferdinand’s relations with Vienna, on the other hand, and especially with
the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand, were both cordial and intimate.

The gradual aggravation of the condition of the Turkish Empire, notably in
Macedonia, the unredeemed Bulgaria, where since the insurrection of 1902-3
anarchy, always endemic, had deteriorated into a reign of terror, and, also the
unmistakably growing power and spirit of Serbia since the accession of the
Karageorgevich dynasty in 1903, caused uneasiness in Sofia, no less than in
Vienna and Budapest. The Young Turkish revolution of July 1908, and the triumph
of the Committee of Union and Progress, disarmed the critics of Turkey who
wished to make the forcible introduction of reforms a pretext for their
interference; but the potential rejuvenation of the Ottoman Empire which it
foreshadowed indicated the desirability of rapid and decisive action. In
September, after fomenting a strike on the Oriental Railway in eastern Roumelia
(which railway was Turkish property), the Sofia Cabinet seized the line with a
military force on the plea of political necessity. At the same time Ferdinand,
with his second wife, the Protestant Princess Eleonora of Reuss, whom he had
married in March of that year, was received with regal honours by the Emperor
of Austria at Budapest. On October 5, 1908, at Tirnovo, the ancient capital,
Ferdinand proclaimed the complete independence of Bulgaria and eastern Rumelia
under himself as King (Tsar in Bulgarian), and on October 7
Austria-Hungary announced the annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina, the two
Turkish provinces administered by it since 1879, nominally under Turkish
suzerainty.

13
The Kingdom, 1908–13

(cf. Chaps. 14, 20)

The events which have taken place in Bulgaria since 1908 hinge on the
Macedonian question, which has not till now been mentioned. The Macedonian
question was extremely complicated; it started on the assumption that the
disintegration of Turkey, which had been proceeding throughout the nineteenth
century, would eventually be completed, and the question was how in this
eventuality to satisfy the territorial claims of the three neighbouring
countries, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece, claims both historical and
ethnological, based on the numbers and distribution of their
‘unredeemed’ compatriots in Macedonia, and at the same time avoid
causing the armed interference of Europe.

The beginnings of the Macedonian question in its modern form do not go farther
back than 1885, when the ease with which eastern Rumelia (i.e. southern
Bulgaria) threw off the Turkish yoke and was spontaneously united with the
semi-independent principality of northern Bulgaria affected the imagination of
the Balkan statesmen. From that time Sofia began to cast longing eyes on
Macedonia, the whole of which was claimed as ‘unredeemed Bulgaria’,
and Stambulóv’s last success in 1894 was to obtain from Turkey the
consent to the establishment of two bishops of the Bulgarian (Exarchist) Church
in Macedonia, which was a heavy blow for the Greek Patriarchate at
Constantinople.

Macedonia had been envisaged by the Treaty of Berlin, article 23 of which
stipulated for reforms in that province; but in those days the Balkan States
were too young and weak to worry themselves or the European powers over the
troubles of their co-religionists in Turkey; their hands were more than full
setting their own houses in some sort of order, and it was in nobody’s
interest to reform Macedonia, so article 23 remained the expression of a
philanthropic sentiment. This indifference on the part of Europe left the door
open for the Balkan States, as soon as they had energy to spare, to initiate
their campaign for extending their spheres of influence in Macedonia.

From 1894 onwards Bulgarian propaganda in Macedonia increased, and the
Bulgarians were soon followed by Greeks and Serbians. The reason for this
passionate pegging out of claims and the bitter rivalry of the three nations
which it engendered was the following: The population of Macedonia was nowhere,
except in the immediate vicinity of the borders of these three countries,
either purely Bulgar or purely Greek or purely Serb; most of the towns
contained a percentage of at least two of these nationalities, not to mention
the Turks (who after all were still the owners of the country by right of
conquest), Albanians, Tartars, Rumanians (Vlakhs), and others; the city of
Salonika was and is almost purely Jewish, while in the country districts
Turkish, Albanian, Greek, Bulgar, and Serb villages were inextricably confused.
Generally speaking, the coastal strip was mainly Greek (the coast itself purely
so), the interior mainly Slav. The problem was for each country to peg out as
large a claim as possible, and so effectively, by any means in their power, to
make the majority of the population contained in that claim acknowledge itself
to be Bulgar, or Serb, or Greek, that when the agony of the Ottoman Empire was
over, each part of Macedonia would automatically fall into the arms of its
respective deliverers. The game was played through the appropriate media of
churches and schools, for the unfortunate Macedonian peasants had first of all
to be enlightened as to who they were, or rather as to who they were told they
had got to consider themselves, while the Church, as always, conveniently
covered a multitude of political aims; when those methods flagged, a bomb would
be thrown at, let us say, a Turkish official by an agent provocateur of
one of the three players, inevitably resulting in the necessary massacre of
innocent Christians by the ostensibly brutal but really equally innocent Turks,
and an outcry in the European press.

Bulgaria was first in the field and had a considerable start of the other two
rivals. The Bulgars claimed the whole of Macedonia, including Salonika and all
the Aegean coast (except Chalcidice), Okhrida, and Monastir; Greece claimed all
southern Macedonia, and Serbia parts of northern and central Macedonia known as
Old Serbia. The crux of the whole problem was, and is, that the claims of
Serbia and Greece do not clash, while that of Bulgaria, driving a thick wedge
between Greece and Serbia, and thus giving Bulgaria the undoubted hegemony of
the peninsula, came into irreconcilable conflict with those of its rivals. The
importance of this point was greatly emphasized by the existence of the
Nish-Salonika railway, which is Serbia’s only direct outlet to the sea,
and runs through Macedonia from north to south, following the right or western
bank of the river Vardar. Should Bulgaria straddle that, Serbia would be
economically at its mercy, just as in the north it was already, to its bitter
cost, at the mercy of Austria-Hungary. Nevertheless, Bulgarian propaganda had
been so effectual that Serbia and Greece never expected they would eventually
be able to join hands so easily and successfully as they afterwards did.

The then unknown quantity of Albania was also a factor. This people, though
small in numbers, was formidable in character, and had never been effectually
subdued by the Turks. They would have been glad to have a boundary contiguous
with that of Bulgaria (with whom they had no quarrel) as a support against
their hereditary enemies, Serbs in the north and Greeks in the south, who were
more than inclined to encroach on their territory. The population of Macedonia,
being still under Turkish rule, was uneducated and ignorant; needless to say it
had no national consciousness, though this was less true of the Greeks than of
the Slavs. It is the Slav population of Macedonia that has engendered so much
heat and caused so much blood to be spilt. The dispute as to whether it is
rather Serb or Bulgar has caused interminable and most bitter controversy. The
truth is that it was neither the one nor the other, but that, the
ethnological and linguistic missionaries of Bulgaria having been first in the
field, a majority of the Macedonian Slavs had been so long and so persistently
told that they were Bulgars, that after a few years Bulgaria could, with some
truth, claim that this fact was so.

Macedonia had been successively under Greek, Bulgar, and Serb, before Turkish,
rule, but the Macedonian Slavs had, under the last, been so cut off both from
Bulgars and Serbs, that ethnologically and linguistically they did not develop
the characteristics of either of these two races, which originally belonged to
the same southern Slav stock, but remained a primitive neutral Slav type. If
the Serbs had been first in the field instead of the Bulgars, the Macedonian
Slavs could just as easily have been made into Serbs, sufficiently plausibly to
convince the most knowing expert. The well-known recipe for making a Macedonian
Slav village Bulgar is to add -ov or -ev (pronounced -off,
-yeff) on to the names of all the male inhabitants, and to make it Serb it
is only necessary to add further the syllable -ich, -ov and
-ovich being respectively the equivalent in Bulgarian and Serbian of our
termination -son, e. g. Ivanov in Bulgarian, and Jovanovit
in Serbian = Johnson.

In addition to these three nations Rumania also entered the lists, suddenly
horrified at discovering the sad plight of the Vlakh shepherds, who had
probably wandered with unconcern about Macedonia with their herds since Roman
times. As their vague pastures could not possibly ever be annexed to Rumania,
their case was merely used in order to justify Rumania in claiming eventual
territorial compensation elsewhere at the final day of reckoning. Meanwhile,
their existence as a separate and authentic nationality in Turkey was
officially recognized by the Porte in 1906.

The stages of the Macedonian question up to 1908 must at this point be quite
briefly enumerated. Russia and Austria-Hungary, the two ‘most interested
powers’, who as far back as the eighteenth century had divided the
Balkans into their respective spheres of interest, east and west, came to an
agreement in 1897 regarding the final settlement of affairs in Turkey; but it
never reached a conclusive stage and consequently was never applied. The
Macedonian chaos meanwhile grew steadily worse, and the serious insurrections
of 1902-3, followed by the customary reprisals, thoroughly alarmed the powers.
Hilmi Pasha had been appointed Inspector-General of Macedonia in December 1902,
but was not successful in restoring order. In October 1903 the Emperor Nicholas
II and the Emperor of Austria, with their foreign ministers, met at Mürzsteg,
in Styria, and elaborated a more definite plan of reform known as the Mürzsteg
programme, the drastic terms of which had been largely inspired by Lord
Lansdowne, then British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs; the principal
feature was the institution of an international gendarmerie, the whole of
Macedonia being divided up into five districts to be apportioned among the
several great powers. Owing to the procrastination of the Porte and to the
extreme complexity of the financial measures which had to be elaborated in
connexion with this scheme of reforms, the last of the negotiations was not
completed, nor the whole series ratified, until April 1907, though the
gendarmerie officers had arrived in Macedonia in February 1904.

At this point again it is necessary to recall the position in regard to this
question of the various nations concerned. Great Britain and France had no
territorial stake in Turkey proper, and did their utmost to secure reform not
only in the vilayets of Macedonia, but also in the realm of Ottoman
finance. Italy’s interest centred in Albania, whose eventual fate, for
geographical and strategic reasons, could not leave it indifferent.
Austria-Hungary’s only care was by any means to prevent the
aggrandizement of the Serb nationality and of Serbia and Montenegro, so as to
secure the control, if not the possession, of the routes to Salonika, if
necessary over the prostrate bodies of those two countries which defiantly
barred Germanic progress towards the East. Russia was already fatally absorbed
in the Far Eastern adventure, and, moreover, had, ever since the war of 1878,
been losing influence at Constantinople, where before its word had been law;
the Treaty of Berlin had dealt a blow at Russian prestige, and Russia had ever
since that date been singularly badly served by its ambassadors to the Porte,
who were always either too old or too easy-going. Germany, on the other hand,
had been exceptionally fortunate or prudent in the choice of its
representatives. The general trend of German diplomacy in Turkey was not
grasped until very much later, a fact which redounds to the credit of the
German ambassadors at Constantinople. Ever since the triumphal journey of
William II to the Bosphorus in 1889, German influence, under the able guidance
of Baron von Radowitz, steadily increased. This culminated in the régime of the
late Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, who was ambassador from 1897 to 1912. It
was German policy to flatter, support, and encourage Turkey in every possible
way, to refrain from taking part with the other powers in the invidious and
perennial occupation of pressing reforms on Abdul Hamid, and, above all, to
give as much pocket-money to Turkey and its extravagant ruler as they asked
for. Germany, for instance, refused to send officers or to have a district
assigned it in Macedonia in 1904, and declined to take part in the naval
demonstration off Mitylene in 1905. This attitude of Germany naturally
encouraged the Porte in its policy of delay and subterfuge, and Turkey soon
came to look on Germany as its only strong, sincere, and disinterested friend
in Europe. For the indefinite continuance of chaos and bloodshed in Macedonia,
after the other powers had really braced themselves to the thankless task of
putting the reforms into practice, Germany alone was responsible.

The blow which King Ferdinand had inflicted on the prestige of the Young Turks
in October 1908, by proclaiming his independence, naturally lent lustre to the
Bulgarian cause in Macedonia. Serbia, baffled by the simultaneous Austrian
annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina, and maddened by the elevation of Bulgaria
to the rank of a kingdom (its material progress had hitherto been discounted in
Serbian eyes by the fact that it was a mere vassal principality), seemed about
to be crushed by the two iron pots jostling it on either side. Its
international position was at that time such that it could expect no help or
encouragement from western Europe, while the events of 1909 (cf. p. 144) showed
that Russia was not then in a position to render active assistance. Greece,
also screaming aloud for compensation, was told by its friends amongst the
great powers that if it made a noise it would get nothing, but that if it
behaved like a good child it might some day be given Krete. Meanwhile Russia,
rudely awakened by the events of 1908 to the real state of affairs in the Near
East, beginning to realize the growth of German influence at Constantinople,
and seeing the unmistakable resuscitation of Austria-Hungary as a great power,
made manifest by the annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina, temporarily
reasserted its influence in Bulgaria. From the moment when Baron Aehrenthal
announced his chimerical scheme of an Austrian railway through the
Sandjak of Novi Pazar in January 1908— everybody knows that the
railway already built through Serbia along the Morava valley is the only
commercially remunerative and strategically practicable road from Berlin,
Vienna, and Budapest to Salonika and Constantinople—Russia realized that
the days of the Mürzsteg programme were over, that henceforward it was to be a
struggle between Slav and Teuton for the ownership of Constantinople and the
dominion of the Near East, and that something must be done to retrieve the
position in the Balkans which it was losing. After Baron Aehrenthal, in January
1909, had mollified the Young Turks by an indemnity, and thus put an end to the
boycott, Russia in February of the same year liquidated the remains of the old
Turkish war indemnity of 1878 still due to itself by skilfully arranging that
Bulgaria should pay off its capitalized tribute, owed to its ex-suzerain the
Sultan, by very easy instalments to Russia instead.

The immediate effects of the Young Turk revolution amongst the Balkan States,
and the events, watched benevolently by Russia, which led to the formation of
the Balkan League, when it was joyfully realized that neither the setting-up of
parliamentary government, nor even the overthrow of Abdul Hamid, implied the
commencement of the millennium in Macedonia and Thrace, have been described
elsewhere (pp. 141, 148). King Ferdinand and M. Venezelos are generally
credited with the inception and realisation of the League, though it was so
secretly and skilfully concerted that it is not yet possible correctly to
apportion praise for the remarkable achievement. Bulgaria is a very democratic
country, but King Ferdinand, owing to his sagacity, patience, and experience,
and also thanks to his influential dynastic connexions and propensity for
travel, has always been virtually his own foreign minister; in spite of the
fact that he is a large feudal Hungarian landlord, and has temperamental
leanings towards the Central European Empires, it is quite credible that King
Ferdinand devoted all his undeniable talents and great energy to the formation
of the League when he saw that the moment had come for Bulgaria to realize its
destiny at Turkey’s expense, and that, if the other three Balkan States
could be induced to come to the same wise decision, it would be so much the
better for all of them. That Russia could do anything else than whole-heartedly
welcome the formation of the Balkan League was absolutely impossible.
Pan-Slavism had long since ceased to be the force it was, and nobody in Russia
dreamed of or desired the incorporation of any Balkan territory in the Russian
Empire. It is possible to control Constantinople without possessing the
Balkans, and Russia could only rejoice if a Greco-Slavonic league should
destroy the power of the Turks and thereby make impossible the further advance
of the Germanic powers eastward.

That Russia was ever in the least jealous of the military successes of the
league, which caused such gnashing of teeth in Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest, is
a mischievous fiction, the emptiness of which was evident to any one who
happened to be in Russia during the winter of 1912-13.

The years 1908 to 1912 were outwardly uneventful in Bulgaria, though a great
deal of quiet work was done in increasing the efficiency of the army, and the
material prosperity of the country showed no falling off. Relations with the
other Balkan States, especially with Serbia and Montenegro, improved
considerably, and there was ample room for such improvement. This was outwardly
marked by frequent visits paid to each other by members of the several royal
families of the three Slavonic kingdoms of the Balkans. In May 1912 agreements
for the eventual delimitation of the provinces to be conquered from Turkey in
the event of war were signed between Bulgaria and Serbia, and Bulgaria and
Greece. The most controversial district was, of course, Macedonia. Bulgaria
claimed central Macedonia, with Monastir and Okhrida, which was the
lion’s share, on ethnical grounds which have been already discussed, and
it was expected that Greece and Serbia, by obtaining other acquisitions
elsewhere, would consent to have their territories separated by the large
Bulgarian wedge which was to be driven between them. The exact future line of
demarcation between Serbian and Bulgarian territory was to be left to
arbitration. The possible creation of an independent Albania was not
contemplated.

In August 1912 the twenty-fifth anniversary of King Ferdinand’s arrival
in Bulgaria was celebrated with much rejoicing at the ancient capital of
Tirnovo, and was marred only by the news of the terrible massacre of Bulgars by
Turks at Kochana in Macedonia; this event, however, opportune though mournful,
tended considerably to increase the volume of the wave of patriotism which
swept through the country. Later in the same month Count Berchtold startled
Europe with his ‘progressive decentralization’ scheme of reform for
Macedonia. The manner in which this event led to the final arrangements for the
declaration of war on Turkey by the four Balkan States is given in full
elsewhere (cf. p. 151).

The Bulgarian army was fully prepared for the fray, and the autumn manoeuvres
had permitted the concentration unobserved of a considerable portion of it,
ready to strike when the time came. Mobilisation was ordered on September 30,
1912. On October 8 Montenegro declared war on Turkey. On October 13 Bulgaria,
with the other Balkan States, replied to the remonstrances of Russia and
Austria by declaring that its patience was at length exhausted, and that the
sword alone was able to enforce proper treatment of the Christian populations
in European Turkey. On October 17 Turkey, encouraged by the sudden and
unexpected conclusion of peace with Italy after the Libyan war, declared war on
Bulgaria and Serbia, and on October 18 King Ferdinand addressed a sentimental
exhortation to his people to liberate their fellow-countrymen, who were still
groaning under the Crescent.

The number of Turkish troops opposing the Bulgarians in Thrace was about
180,000, and they had almost exactly the same number wherewith to oppose the
Serbians in Macedonia; for, although Macedonia was considered by the Turks to
be the most important theatre of war, yet the proximity of the Bulgarian
frontier to Constantinople made it necessary to retain a large number of troops
in Thrace. On October 19 the Bulgarians took the frontier town of Mustafa
Pasha. On October 24 they defeated the Turks at Kirk-Kilissé (or Lozengrad),
further east. From October 28 to November 2 raged the terrific battle of
Lule-Burgas, which resulted in a complete and brilliant victory of the
Bulgarians over the Turks. The defeat and humiliation of the Turks was as rapid
and thorough in Thrace as it had been in Macedonia, and by the middle of
November the remains of the Turkish army were entrenched behind the impregnable
lines of Chataldja, while a large garrison was shut up in Adrianople, which had
been invested by the end of October. The Bulgarian army, somewhat exhausted by
this brilliant and lightning campaign, refrained from storming the lines of
Chataldja, an operation which could not fail to involve losses such as the
Bulgarian nation was scarcely in a position to bear, and on December 3 the
armistice was signed. The negotiations conducted in London for two months led,
however, to no result, and on February 3, 1913, hostilities were resumed.
These, for the Bulgarians, resolved themselves into the more energetic
prosecution of the siege of Adrianople, which had not been raised during the
armistice. To their assistance Serbia, being able to spare troops from
Macedonia, sent 50,000 men and a quantity of heavy siege artillery, an arm
which the Bulgarians lacked. On March 26, 1913, the fortress surrendered to the
allied armies.

The Conference of London, which took place during the spring of that year,
fixed the new Turco-Bulgarian boundary by drawing the famous Enos-Midia line,
running between these two places situated on the shores respectively of the
Aegean and the Black Sea. This delimitation would have given Bulgaria
possession of Adrianople. But meanwhile Greece and especially Serbia, which
latter country had been compelled to withdraw from the Adriatic coast by
Austria, and was further precluded from ever returning there by the creation of
the independent state of Albania, determined to retain possession of all that
part of Macedonia, including the whole valley of the Vardar with its important
railway, which they had conquered, and thus secure their common frontier. In
May 1913 a military convention was concluded between them, and the Balkan
League, the relations between the members of which had been becoming more
strained ever since January, finally dissolved. Bulgaria, outraged by this
callous disregard of the agreements as to the partition of Macedonia signed a
year previously by itself and its ex-allies, did not wait for the result of the
arbitration which was actually proceeding in Russia, but in an access of
indignation rushed to arms.

This second Balkan war, begun by Bulgaria during the night of June 30, 1913, by
a sudden attack on the Serbian army in Macedonia, resulted in its undoing. In
order to defeat the Serbs and Greeks the south-eastern and northern frontiers
were denuded of troops. But the totally unforeseen happened. The Serbs were
victorious, defeating the Bulgars in Macedonia, the Turks, seeing Thrace empty
of Bulgarian troops, re-occupied Adrianople, and the Rumanian army, determined
to see fair play before it was too late, invaded Bulgaria from the north and
marched on Sofia. By the end of July the campaign was over and Bulgaria had to
submit to fate.

By the terms of the Treaty of Bucarest, which was concluded on August 10, 1913,
Bulgaria obtained a considerable part of Thrace and eastern Macedonia,
including a portion of the Aegean coast with the seaport of Dedeagach, but it
was forced to ‘compensate’ Rumania with a slice of its richest
province (the districts of Dobrich and Silistria in north-eastern Bulgaria),
and it lost central Macedonia, a great part of which it would certainly have
been awarded by Russia’s arbitration. On September 22, 1913, the Treaty
of Constantinople was signed by Bulgaria and Turkey; by its terms Turkey
retained possession of Adrianople and of a far larger part of Thrace than its
series of ignominious defeats in the autumn of 1912 entitled it to.

In the fatal quarrel between Bulgaria and Serbia which caused the disruption of
the Balkan League, led to the tragic second Balkan war of July 1913, and
naturally left behind the bitterest feelings, it is difficult to apportion the
blame. Both Serbia and Bulgaria were undoubtedly at fault in the choice of the
methods by which they sought to adjust their difference, but the real guilt is
to be found neither in Sofia nor in Belgrade, but in Vicuna and Budapest. The
Balkan League barred the way of the Germanic Powers to the East; its disruption
weakened Bulgaria and again placed Serbia at the mercy of the Dual Monarchy.
After these trying and unremunerative experiences it is not astonishing that
the Bulgarian people and its ambitious ruler should have retired to the remote
interior of their shell.

Explanation of Serbian orthography

c = ts
č = ch (as in church)
ć = ” ” ” but softer
š = sh
ž = zh (as z in azure)
gj = g (as in George)
j = y

[Illustration: THE BALKAN PENINSULA]

SERBIA

14
The Serbs under Foreign Supremacy, 650–1168

The manner of the arrival of the Slavs in the Balkan peninsula, of that of the
Bulgars, and of the formation of the Bulgarian nationality has already been
described (cf. p. 26). The installation of the Slavs in the lands between the
Danube, the Aegean, and the Adriatic was completed by about A.D. 650. In the
second half of the seventh century the Bulgars settled themselves in the
eastern half of the peninsula and became absorbed by the Slavs there, and from
that time the nationality of the Slavs in the western half began to be more
clearly defined. These latter, split up into a number of tribes, gradually
grouped themselves into three main divisions: Serbs (or Serbians), Croats (or
Croatians), and Slovenes. The Serbs, much the most numerous of the three,
occupied roughly the modern kingdom of Serbia (including Old Serbia and
northern Macedonia), Montenegro, and most of Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Dalmatia;
the Croats occupied the more western parts of these last three territories and
Croatia; the Slovenes occupied the modern Carniola and southern Carinthia.
Needless to say, none of these geographical designations existed in those days
except Dalmatia, on the coast of which the Latin influence and nomenclature
maintained itself. The Slovenes, whose language is closely akin to but not
identical with Serbian (or Croatian), even to-day only number one and a half
million, and do not enter into this narrative, as they have never played any
political rôle in the Balkan peninsula.

The Serbs and the Croats were, as regards race and language, originally one
people, the two names having merely geographical signification. In course of
time, for various reasons connected with religion and politics, the distinction
was emphasized, and from a historical point of view the Serbo-Croatian race has
always been divided into two. It is only within the last few years that a
movement has taken place, the object of which is to reunite Serbs and Croats
into one nation and eventually into one state. The movement originated in
Serbia, the Serbs maintaining that they and the Croats are one people because
they speak the same language, and that racial and linguistic unity outweighs
religious divergence. A very large number of Croats agree with the Serbs in
this and support their views, but a minority for long obstinately insisted that
there was a racial as well as a religious difference, and that fusion was
impossible. The former based their argument on facts, the latter theirs on
prejudice, which is notoriously difficult to overcome. Latterly the movement in
favour of fusion grew very much stronger among the Croats, and together with
that in Serbia resulted in the Pan-Serb agitation which, gave the pretext for
the opening of hostilities in July 1914.

The designation Southern Slav (or Jugo-Slav, jug, pronounced yug, =
south in Serbian) covers Serbs and Croats, and also includes Slovenes;
it is only used with reference to the Bulgarians from the point of view of
philology (the group of South Slavonic languages including Bulgarian,
Serbo-Croatian and Slovene; the East Slavonic, Russian; and the West Slavonic,
Polish and Bohemian).

In the history of the Serbs and Croats, or of the Serbo-Croatian race, several
factors of a general nature have first to be considered, which have influenced
its whole development. Of these, the physical nature of the country in which
they settled, between the Danube and Save and the Adriatic, is one of the most
important. It is almost everywhere mountainous, and though the mountains
themselves never attain as much as 10,000 feet in height, yet they cover the
whole country with an intricate network and have always formed an obstacle to
easy communication between the various parts of it. The result of this has been
twofold. In the first place it has, generally speaking, been a protection
against foreign penetration and conquest, and in so far was beneficial.
Bulgaria, further east, is, on the whole, less mountainous, in spite of the
Balkan range which stretches the whole length of it; for this reason, and also
on account of its geographical position, any invaders coming from the north or
north-east, especially if aiming at Constantinople or Salonika, were bound to
sweep over it. The great immemorial highway from the north-west to the Balkan
peninsula crosses the Danube at Belgrade and follows the valley of the Morava
to Nish; thence it branches off eastwards, going through Sofia and again
crossing all Bulgaria to reach Constantinople, while the route to Salonika
follows the Morava southwards from Nish and crosses the watershed into the
valley of the Vardar, which flows into the Aegean. But even this road,
following the course of the rivers Morava and Vardar, only went through the
fringe of Serb territory, and left untouched the vast mountain region between
the Morava and the Adriatic, which is really the home of the Serb race.

In the second place, while it has undoubtedly been a protection to the Serb
race, it has also been a source of weakness. It has prevented a welding
together of the people into one whole, has facilitated the rise of numerous
political units at various times, and generally favoured the dissipation of the
national strength, and militated against national organization and cohesion. In
the course of history this process has been emphasized rather than diminished,
and to-day the Serb race is split up into six political divisions, while
Bulgaria, except for those Bulgars claimed as ‘unredeemed’ beyond
the frontier, presents a united whole. It is only within the last thirty years,
with the gradual improvement of communications (obstructed to an incredible
extent by the Austro-Hungarian government) and the spread of education, that
the Serbs in the different countries which they inhabit have become fully
conscious of their essential identity and racial unity.

No less important than the physical aspect of their country on the development
of the Serbs has been the fact that right through the middle of it from south
to north there had been drawn a line of division more than two centuries before
their arrival. Artificial boundaries are proverbially ephemeral, but this one
has lasted throughout the centuries, and it has been baneful to the Serbs. This
dividing line, drawn first by the Emperor Diocletian, has been described on p.
14; at the division of the Roman Empire into East and West it was again
followed, and it formed the boundary between the dioceses of Italy and Dacia;
the line is roughly the same as the present political boundary between
Montenegro and Hercegovina, between the kingdom of Serbia and Bosnia; it
stretched from the Adriatic to the river Save right across the Serb territory.
The Serbo-Croatian race unwittingly occupied a country that was cut in two by
the line that divides East from West, and separates Constantinople and the
Eastern Church from Rome and the Western. This curious accident has had
consequences fatal to the unity of the race, since it has played into the hands
of ambitious and unscrupulous neighbours. As to the extent of the country
occupied by the Serbs at the beginning of their history it is difficult to be
accurate.

The boundary between the Serbs in the west of the peninsula and the Bulgars in
the east has always been a matter of dispute. The present political frontier
between Serbia and Bulgaria, starting in the north from the mouth of the river
Timok on the southern bank of the Danube and going southwards slightly east of
Pirot, is ethnographically approximately correct till it reaches the newly
acquired and much-disputed territories in Macedonia, and represents fairly
accurately the line that has divided the two nationalities ever since they were
first differentiated in the seventh century. In the confused state of Balkan
politics in the Middle Ages the political influence of Bulgaria often extended
west of this line and included Nish and the Morava valley, while at other times
that of Serbia extended east of it. The dialects spoken in these frontier
districts represent a transitional stage between the two languages; each of the
two peoples naturally considers them more akin to its own, and resents the fact
that any of them should be included in the territory of the other. Further
south, in Macedonia, conditions are similar. Before the Turkish conquest
Macedonia had been sometimes under Bulgarian rule, as in the times of Simeon,
Samuel, and John Asen II, sometimes under Serbian, especially during the height
of Serbian power in the fourteenth century, while intermittently it had been a
province of the Greek Empire, which always claimed it as its own. On historical
grounds, therefore, each of the three nations can claim possession of
Macedonia. From an ethnographic point of view the Slav population of Macedonia
(there were always and are still many non-Slav elements) was originally the
same as that in the other parts of the peninsula, and probably more akin to the
Serbs, who are pure Slavs, than to the Slavs of Bulgaria, who coalesced with
their Asiatic conquerors. In course of time, however, Bulgarian influences,
owing to the several periods when the Bulgars ruled the country, began to make
headway. The Albanians also (an Indo-European or Aryan race, but not of the
Greek, Latin, or Slav families), who, as a result of all the invasions of the
Balkan peninsula, had been driven southwards into the inaccessible mountainous
country now known as Albania, began to spread northwards and eastwards again
during the Turkish dominion, pushing back the Serbs from the territory where
they had long been settled. During the Turkish dominion neither Serb nor Bulgar
had any influence in Macedonia, and the Macedonian Slavs, who had first of all
been pure Slavs, like the Serbs, then been several times under Bulgar, and
finally, under Serb influence, were left to themselves, and the process of
differentiation between Serb and Bulgar in Macedonia, by which in time the
Macedonian Slavs would have become either Serbs or Bulgars, ceased. The further
development of the Macedonian question is treated elsewhere (cf. chap. 13).

The Serbs, who had no permanent or well-defined frontier in the east, where
their neighbours were the Bulgars, or in the south, where they were the Greeks
and Albanians, were protected on the north by the river Save and on the west by
the Adriatic. They were split up into a number of tribes, each of which was
headed by a chief called in Serbian župan and in Greek archōn.
Whenever any one of these managed, either by skill or by good fortune, to
extend his power over a few of the neighbouring districts he was termed
veliki (=great) župan. From the beginning of their history, which
is roughly put at A.D. 650, until A.D. 1196, the Serbs were under foreign
domination. Their suzerains were nominally always the Greek emperors, who had
‘granted’ them the land they had taken, and whenever the emperor
happened to be energetic and powerful, as were Basil I (the Macedonian,
867-86), John Tzimisces (969-76), Basil II (976-1025), and Manuel Comnenus
(1143-80), the Greek supremacy was very real. At those times again when
Bulgaria was very powerful, under Simeon (893-927), Samuel (977-1014), and John
Asen II (1218-41), many of the more easterly and southerly Serbs came under
Bulgarian rule, though it is instructive to notice that the Serbs themselves do
not recognize the West Bulgarian or Macedonian kingdom of Samuel to have been a
Bulgarian state. The Bulgars, however, at no time brought all the Serb lands
under their sway.

Intermittently, whenever the power of Byzantium or of Bulgaria waned, some Serb
princeling would try to form a political state on a more ambitious scale, but
the fabric always collapsed at his death, and the Serbs reverted to their
favourite occupation of quarrelling amongst themselves. Such wore the attempts
of Časlav, who had been made captive by Simeon of Bulgaria, escaped after his
death, and ruled over a large part of central Serbia till 960, and later of
Bodin, whose father, Michael, was even recognized as king by Pope Gregory VII;
Bodin formed a state near the coast, in the Zeta river district (now
Montenegro), and ruled there from 1081 to 1101. But as a rule the whole of the
country peopled by the Serbs was split into a number of tiny principalities
always at war with one another. Generally speaking, this country gradually
became divided into two main geographical divisions: (1) the Pomorje, or
country by the sea, which included most of the modern Montenegro and the
southern halves of Hercegovina and Dalmatia, and (2) the Zagorje, or
country behind the hills, which included most of the modern Bosnia, the
western half of the modern kingdom of Serbia, and the northern portions of
Montenegro and Hercegovina, covering all the country between the Pomorje
and the Save; to the north of the Pomorje and Zagorje lay
Croatia. Besides their neighbours in the east and south, those in the north and
west played an important part in Serbian history even in those early days.

Towards the end of the eighth century, after the decline of the power of the
Avars, Charlemagne extended his conquests eastwards (he made a great impression
on the minds of the Slavs, whose word for king, kral or korol, is
derived directly from his name), and his son Louis conquered the Serbs settled
in the country between the rivers Save and Drave. This is commemorated in the
name of the mass of hill which lies between the Danube and the Save, in eastern
Slavonia, and is to this day known as Fruška Gora, or French Hill. The
Serbs and Bulgars fought against the Franks, and while the Bulgars held their
own, the Serbs were beaten, and those who did not like the rule of the
new-comers had to migrate southwards across the Save; at the same time the
Serbs between the rivers Morava and Timok (eastern Serbia) were subjected by
the Bulgars. With the arrival of the Magyars, in the ninth century, a wall was
raised between the Serbs and central and western Europe on land. Croatia and
Slavonia (between the Save and the Drave) were gradually drawn into the orbit
of the Hungarian state, and in 1102, on the death of its own ruler, Croatia was
absorbed by Hungary and has formed part of that country ever since. Hungary,
aiming at an outlet on the Adriatic, at the same time subjected most of
Dalmatia and parts of Bosnia. In the west Venice had been steadily growing in
power throughout the tenth century, and by the end of it had secured control of
all the islands off Dalmatia and of a considerable part of the coast. All the
cities on the mainland acknowledged the supremacy of Venice and she was
mistress of the Adriatic.

In the interior of the Serb territory, during the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, three political centres came into prominence and shaped themselves
into larger territorial units. These were: (1) Raska, which had been
Caslav’s centre and is considered the birth-place of the Serbian state
(this district, with the town of Ras as its centre, included the south-western
part of the modern kingdom of Serbia and what was the Turkish sandjak or
province of Novi-Pazar); (2) Zeta, on the coast (the modern Montenegro); and
(3) Bosnia, so called after the river Bosna, which runs through it. Bosnia,
which roughly corresponded to the modern province of that name, became
independent in the second half of the tenth century, and was never after that
incorporated in the Serbian state. At times it fell under Hungarian influence;
in the twelfth century, during the reign of Manuel Comnenus, who was victorious
over the Magyars, Bosnia, like all other Serb territories, had to acknowledge
the supremacy of Constantinople.

It has already been indicated that the Serbs and Croats occupied territory
which, while the Church was still one, was divided between two dioceses, Italy
and Dacia, and when the Church itself was divided, in the eleventh century, was
torn apart between the two beliefs. The dividing line between the jurisdictions
of Rome and Constantinople ran from north to south through Bosnia, but
naturally there has always been a certain vagueness about the extent of their
respective jurisdictions. In later years the terms Croat and Roman Catholic on
the one hand, and Serb and Orthodox on the other, became interchangeable.
Hercegovina and eastern Bosnia have always been predominantly Orthodox,
Dalmatia and western Bosnia predominantly Roman Catholic. The loyalty of the
Croatians to Austria-Hungary has been largely owing to the influence of Roman
Catholicism.

During the first centuries of Serbian history Christianity made slow progress
in the western half of the Balkan peninsula. The Dalmatian coast was always
under the influence of Rome, but the interior was long pagan. It is doubtful
whether the brothers Cyril and Methodius (cf. chap. 5) actually passed through
Serb territory, but in the tenth century their teachings and writings were
certainly current there. At the time of the division of the Churches all the
Serb lands except the Dalmatian coast, Croatia, and western Bosnia, were
faithful to Constantinople, and the Greek hierarchy obtained complete control
of the ecclesiastical administration. The elaborate organisation and opulent
character of the Eastern Church was, however, especially in the hands of the
Greeks, not congenial to the Serbs, and during the eleventh and twelfth
centuries the Bogomil heresy (cf. chap, 6), a much more primitive and
democratic form of Christianity, already familiar in the East as the Manichaean
heresy, took hold of the Serbs’ imagination and made as rapid and
disquieting progress in their country as it had already done in the
neighbouring Bulgaria; inasmuch as the Greek hierarchy considered this teaching
to be socialistic, subversive, and highly dangerous to the ecclesiastical
supremacy of Constantinople, all of which indeed it was, adherence to it became
amongst the Serbs a direct expression of patriotism.

15
The Rise and Fall of the Serbian Empire and the Extinction of Serbian
Independence, 1168–1496

From 1168 the power of the Serbs, or rather of the central Serb state of Raska,
and the extent of its territory gradually but steadily increased. This was
outwardly expressed in the firm establishment on the throne of the national
Nemanja dynasty, which can claim the credit of having by its energy, skill, and
good fortune fashioned the most imposing and formidable state the Serb race has
ever known. This dynasty ruled the country uninterruptedly, but not without
many quarrels, feuds, and rivalries amongst its various members, from 1168
until 1371, when it became extinct.

There were several external factors which at this time favoured the rise of the
Serbian state. Byzantium and the Greek Empire, to which the Emperor Manuel
Comnenus had by 1168 restored some measure of its former greatness and
splendour, regaining temporary control, after a long war with Hungary, even
over Dalmatia, Croatia, and Bosnia, after this date began definitively to
decline, and after the troublous times of the fourth crusade (1204), when for
sixty years a Latin empire was established on the Bosphorus, never again
recovered as a Christian state the position in the Balkan peninsula which it
had so long enjoyed. Bulgaria, too, after the meteoric glory of its second
empire under the Asen dynasty (1186-1258), quite went to pieces, the eastern
and northern parts falling under Tartar, the southern under Greek influence,
while the western districts fell to Serbia. In the north, on the other hand,
Hungary was becoming a dangerous and ambitious neighbour. During the thirteenth
century, it is true, the attention of the Magyars was diverted by the irruption
into and devastation of their country by their unwelcome kinsmen from Asia, the
Tartars, who wrought great havoc and even penetrated as far as the Adriatic
coast. Nevertheless Hungary was always a menace to Serbia; Croatia, Slavonia,
and the interior of Dalmatia, all purely Serb territories, belonged to the
Hungarian crown, and Bosnia was under the supremacy of the Magyars, though
nominally independent.

The objects of the Magyars were twofold—to attain the hegemony of the
Balkan peninsula by conquering all the still independent Serb territories, and
to bring the peninsula within the pale of Rome. They were not successful in
either of these objects, partly because their wars with the Serbian rulers
always failed to reach a decision, partly because their plans conflicted with
those of the powerful Venetian republic. The relations between Venice and
Serbia were always most cordial, as their ambitions did not clash; those of
Venice were not continental, while those of Serbia were never maritime. The
semi-independent Slavonic city-republic of Ragusa (called Dubrovnik in Serbian)
played a very important part throughout this period. It was under Venetian
supremacy, but was self-governing and had a large fleet of its own. It was the
great place of exchange between Serbia and western Europe, and was really the
meeting-place of East and West. Its relations with Serbia were by no means
always peaceful; it was a Naboth’s vineyard for the rulers and people of
the inland kingdom, and it was never incorporated within their dominions.
Ragusa and the other cities of the Dalmatian coast were the home during the
Middle Ages of a flourishing school of Serbian literature, which was inspired
by that of Italy. The influence of Italian civilization and of the Italian
Church was naturally strong in the Serb province, much of which was under
Venetian rule; the reason for this was that communication by sea with Italy was
easier and safer than that by land with Serbia. The long, formidable ranges of
limestone mountains which divide the Serbian interior from the Adriatic in
almost unbroken and parallel lines have always been a barrier to the extension
of Serb power to the coast, and an obstacle to free commercial intercourse.
Nevertheless Ragusa was a great trade centre, and one of the factors which most
contributed to the economic strength of the Serbian Empire.

The first of the Nemanja dynasty was Stephen, whose title was still only
Veliki Župan; he extended Serb territory southwards at the expense of
the Greeks, especially after the death of Manuel Comnenus in 1180. He also
persecuted the Bogomils, who took refuge in large numbers in the adjacent Serb
state of Bosnia. Like many other Serbian rulers, he abdicated in later life in
favour of his younger son, Stephen, called Nemanjié (= Nemanya’s son),
and himself became a monk (1196), travelling for this purpose to Mount Athos,
the great monastic centre and home of theological learning of the Eastern
Church. There he saw his youngest son, who some years previously had also
journeyed thither and entered a monastery, taking the name of Sava.

It was the custom for every Serbian ruler to found a sort of memorial church,
for the welfare of his own soul, before his death, and to decorate and endow it
lavishly. Stephen and his son together superintended the erection in this sense
of the church and monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos, which became a famous
centre of Serbian church life. Stephen died shortly after the completion of the
building in 1199, and was buried in it, but in 1207 he was reinterred in the
monastery of Studenica, in Serbia, also founded by him.

The reign of Stephen Nernanjić (1196-1223) opened with a quarrel between him
and his elder brother, who not unnaturally felt he ought to have succeeded his
father; the Bulgarians profited by this and seized a large part of eastern
Serbia, including Belgrade, Nish, Prizren, and Skoplje. This, together with the
fall of Constantinople and the establishment of the Latin Empire in 1204,
alarmed the Serbs and brought about a reconciliation between the brothers, and
in 1207 Sava returned to Serbia to organise the Church on national lines. In
1219 he journeyed to Nicaea and extracted from the Emperor Theodore Lascaris,
who had fallen on evil days, the concession for the establishment of an
autonomous national Serbian Church, independent of the Patriarch of
Constantinople. Sava himself was at the head of the new institution. In 1220 he
solemnly crowned his brother King (Kralj) of Serbia, the natural
consequence of his activities in the previous year. For this reason Stephen
Nemanjić is called ‘The First-Crowned’. He was succeeded in 1223 by
his son Stephen Radoslav, and he in turn was deposed by his brother Stephen
Vladislav in 1233. Both these were crowned by Sava, and Vladislav married the
daughter of Tsar John Asen II, under whom Bulgaria was then at the height of
her power. Sava journeyed to Palestine, and on his return paid a visit to the
Bulgarian court at Tirnovo, where he died in 1236. His body was brought to
Serbia and buried in the monastery of Mileševo, built by Vladislav. This
extremely able churchman and politician, who did a great deal for the peaceful
development of his country, was canonized and is regarded as the patron saint
of Serbia.

The reign of Vladislav’s son and successor, Stephen Uroš I (1242-76), was
characterized by economic development and the strengthening of the internal
administration. In external affairs he made no conquests, but defeated a
combination of the Bulgarians with Ragusa against him, and after the war the
Bulgarian ruler married his daughter. In his wars against Hungary he was
unsuccessful, and the Magyars remained in possession of a large part of
northern Serbia. In 1276 he was deposed by his son, Stephen Dragutin, who in
his turn, after an unsuccessful war against the Greeks, again masters of
Constantinople since 1261, was deposed and succeeded by his brother, Stephen
Uroš II, named Milutin, in 1282. This king ruled from 1282 till 1321, and
during his reign the country made very great material progress; its mineral
wealth especially, which included gold and silver mines, began to be exploited.
He extended the boundaries of his kingdom in the north, making the Danube and
the Save the frontier. The usual revolt against paternal authority was made by
his son Stephen, but was unsuccessful, and the rebel was banished to
Constantinople.

It was the custom of the Serbian kings to give appanages to their sons, and the
inevitable consequence of this system was the series of provincial rebellions
which occurred in almost every reign. When the revolt succeeded, the father (or
brother) was granted in his turn a small appanage. In this case it was the son
who was exiled, but he was recalled in 1319 and a reconciliation took place.
Milutin died in 1321 and was succeeded by his son, Stephen Uroš III, who
reigned till 1331. He is known as Stephen Dečanski, after the memorial church
which he built at Dečani in western Serbia. His reign was signalized by a great
defeat of the combined Bulgarians and Greeks at Kustendil in Macedonia in 1330.
The following year his son, Stephen Dušan, rebelled against him and deposed
him. Stephen Dušan, who reigned from 1331 till 1355, was Serbia’s
greatest ruler, and under him the country reached its utmost limits. Provincial
and family revolts and petty local disputes with such places as Ragusa became a
thing of the past, and he undertook conquest on a grand scale. Between 1331 and
1344 he subjected all Macedonia, Albania, Thessaly, and Epirus. He was careful
to keep on good terms with Ragusa and with Hungary, then under Charles Robert.
He married the sister of the Bulgarian ruler, and during his reign Bulgaria was
completely under Serbian supremacy. The anarchy and civil war which had become
perennial at Constantinople, and the weakening of the Greek Empire in face of
the growing power of the Turks, no doubt to some extent explain the facility
and rapidity of his conquests; nevertheless his power was very formidable, and
his success inspired considerable alarm in western Europe. This was increased
when, in 1345, he proclaimed his country an empire. He first called together a
special Church council, at which the Serbian Church, an archbishopric, whose
centre was then at Peć (in Montenegro, Ipek in Turkish), was proclaimed a
Patriarchate, with Archbishop Joannice as Patriarch; then this prelate,
together with the Bulgarian Patriarch, Simeon, and Nicholas, Archbishop of
Okhrida, crowned Stephen Tsar of the Serbs, Bulgars, and Greeks. Upon this the
Patriarch of Constantinople gave himself the vain satisfaction of
anathematizing the whole of Serbia, as a punishment for this insubordination.

In 1353 the Pope, Innocent VI, persuaded King Louis of Hungary to undertake a
crusade against Serbia in the name of Catholicism, but Stephen defeated him and
re-established his frontier along the Save and Danube. Later he conquered the
southern half of Dalmatia, and extended his empire as far north as the river
Cetina. In 1354 Stephen Dušan himself approached the Pope, offering to
acknowledge his spiritual supremacy, if he would support him against the
Hungarians and the Turks. The Pope sent him an embassy, but eventually Stephen
could not agree to the papal conditions, and concluded an alliance, of greater
practical utility, with the Venetians. In 1355, however, he suddenly died, at
the age of forty-six, and thus the further development and aggrandisement of
his country was prematurely arrested.

Stephen Dušan made a great impression on his contemporaries, both by his
imposing personal appearance and by his undoubted wisdom and ability. He was
especially a great legislator, and his remarkable code of laws, compiled in
1349 and enlarged in 1354, is, outside his own country, his greatest title to
fame. During Stephen Dušan’s reign the political centre of Serbia, which
had for many years gradually tended to shift southwards towards Macedonia, was
at Skoplje (Üsküb in Turkish), which he made his capital. Stephen Dušan’s
empire extended from the Adriatic in the west to the river Maritsa in the east,
from the Save and Danube in the north to the Aegean; it included all the modern
kingdoms of Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and most of Greece, Dalmatia as far
north as the river Cetina, as well as the fertile Morava valley, with Nish and
Belgrade—the whole eastern part of Serbia, which had for long been under
either Bulgar or Magyar control. It did not include the cities of Salonika or
Ragusa, nor any considerable part of the modern kingdom of Bulgaria, nor
Bosnia, Croatia, North Dalmatia, nor Slavonia (between the Save and Drave),
ethnologically all purely Serb lands. From the point of view of nationality,
therefore, its boundaries were far from ideal.

Stephen Dušan was succeeded by his son, known as Tsar Uroš, but he was as weak
as his father had been strong. Almost as soon as he succeeded to the throne,
disorders, rebellions, and dissensions broke out and the empire rapidly fell to
pieces. With Serbia, as with Bulgaria, the empire entirely hinged on the
personality of one man, and when he was gone chaos returned. Such an event for
Serbia at this juncture was fatal, as a far more formidable foe than the
ruler’s rebellious relations was advancing against it. The Turkish
conquests were proceeding apace; they had taken Gallipoli in 1354 and Demotika
and Adrianople in 1361. The Serbs, who had already had an unsuccessful brush
with the advance guard of the new invaders near Demotika in 1351, met them
again on the Maritsa river in 1371, and were completely defeated. Several of
the upstart princes who had been pulling Stephen Dušan’s empire to pieces
perished, and Tsar Uroš only survived the battle of the Maritsa two months; he
was unmarried, and with him died the Nemanja dynasty and the Serbian Empire.

After this disaster the unity of the Serbian state was completely destroyed,
and it has never since been restored in the same measure.

That part of the country to the south of Skoplje fell completely under Turkish
control; it was here that the famous national hero, Marko Kraljević (or
King’s son), renowned for his prowess, ruled as a vassal prince and
mercenary soldier of the Turks; his father was one of the rebel princes who
fell at the battle of the river Maritsa in 1371. North of Skoplje, Serbia, with
Kruševac as a new political centre, continued to lead an independent but
precarious existence, much reduced in size and glory, under a native ruler,
Prince Lazar; all the conquests of Stephen Dušan were lost, and the important
coastal province of Zeta, which later developed into Montenegro, had broken
away and proclaimed its autonomy directly after the death of Tsar Uroš.

In 1375 a formal reconciliation was effected with the Patriarch of
Constantinople; the ban placed on the Serbian Church in 1352 was removed and
the independence of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć (Ipek) recognised.
Meanwhile neither Greeks, Bulgars, nor Serbs were allowed any peace by the
Turks.

In 1389 was fought the great battle of Kosovo Polje, or the Field of
Blackbirds, a large plain in Old Serbia, at the southern end of which is
Skoplje. At this battle Serbian armies from all the Serb lands, including
Bosnia, joined together in defence of their country for the last time. The
issue of the battle was for some time in doubt, but was decided by the
treachery and flight at the critical moment of one of the Serb leaders, Vuk
Branković, son-in-law of Prince Lazar, with a large number of troops. Another
dramatic incident was the murder of Sultan Murad in his tent by another Serbian
leader, Miloš Obilić, who, accused of treachery by his own countrymen, vowed he
would prove his good faith, went over to the Turks and, pretending to be a
traitor, gained admission to the Sultan’s presence and proved his
patriotism by killing him. The momentary dismay was put an end to by the
energetic conduct of Bayezid, son of Murad, who rallied the Turkish troops and
ultimately inflicted total defeat on the Serbians. From the effects of this
battle Serbia never recovered; Prince Lazar was captured and executed; his
wife, Princess Milica, had to give her daughter to Bayezid in marriage, whose
son thus ultimately claimed possession of Serbia by right of inheritance.
Princess Milica and her son Stephen continued to live at Kruševac, but Serbia
was already a tributary of Turkey. In the north, Hungary profited by the course
of events and occupied Belgrade and all northern Serbia, but in 1396 the Turks
defeated the Magyars severely at the battle of Nikopolis, on the Danube, making
the Serbs under Stephen fight on the Turkish side. Stephen also had to help
Sultan Bajazet against the Tartars, and fought at the battle of Angora, in
1402, when Tamerlane captured Bayezid.

After Stephen returned to Serbia he made an alliance with Hungary, which gave
him back Belgrade and northern Serbia; it was at this time (1403) that Belgrade
first became the capital, the political centre having in the course of fifty
years moved from the Vardar to the Danube. The disorders which followed the
defeat of Bayezid gave some respite to the Serbs, but Sultan Murad II (1421-51)
again took up arms against him, and invaded Serbia as far as Kruševac.

At the death of Stephen (Lazarević), in 1427, he was succeeded as Despot
by his nephew, George Branković; but the Sultan, claiming Serbia as his own,
immediately declared war on him. The Serbian ruler had to abandon Belgrade to
the Magyars, and Nish and Kruševac to the Turks. He then built and fortified
the town of Smederevo (or Semendria) lower down on the Danube, in 1428, and
made this his capital. He gave his daughter in marriage to the Sultan, but in
spite of this war soon broke out again, and in 1441 the Turks were masters of
nearly the whole of Serbia. Later George Branković made another alliance with
Hungary, and in 1444, with the help of John Hunyadi, defeated the Turks and
liberated the whole of Serbia as far as the Adriatic, though he remained a
tributary of the Sultan. The same year, however, the Magyars broke the treaty
of peace just concluded with the Turks, and marched against them under their
Polish king, Ladislas; this ended in the disastrous battle of Varna, on the
Black Sea, where the king lost his life. In 1451 Sultan Murad II died and was
succeeded by the Sultan Mohammed. In 1453 this sultan captured Constantinople
(Adrianople had until then been the Turkish capital); in 1456 his armies were
besieging Belgrade, but were defeated by John Hunyadi, who, unfortunately for
the Serbs, died of the plague shortly afterwards. George Branković died the
same year, and at his death general disorder spread over the country. The Turks
profited by this, overran the whole of Serbia, and in 1459 captured Smederevo,
the last Serbian stronghold.

Meanwhile Bosnia had been for nearly a hundred years enjoying a false security
as an independent Serb kingdom. Its rulers had hitherto been known by the title
of Ban, and were all vassals of the King of Hungary; but in 1377 Ban
Tvrtko profited by the embarrassments of his suzerain in Poland and proclaimed
himself king, the neighbouring kingdom of Serbia having, after 1371, ceased to
exist, and was duly crowned in Saint Sava’s monastery of Mileševo. The
internal history of the kingdom was even more turbulent than had been that of
Serbia. To the endemic troubles of succession and alternating alliances and
wars with foreign powers were added those of confession. Bosnia was always a no
man’s land as regards religion; it was where the Eastern and Western
Churches met, and consequently the rivalry between them there was always, as it
is now, intense and bitter. The Bogomil heresy, too, early took root in Bosnia
and became extremely popular; it was the obvious refuge for those who did not
care to become involved in the strife of the Churches. One of the kings of
Bosnia, Stephen Thomas, who reigned from 1444 till 1461, was himself a Bogomil,
and when at the insistence of the Pope and of the King of Hungary, whose
friendship he was anxious to retain, he renounced his heresy, became ostensibly
a Roman Catholic, and began to persecute the Bogomils, he brought about a
revolution. The rebels fled to the south of Bosnia, to the lands of one
Stephen, who sheltered them, proclaimed his independence of Bosnia, and on the
strength of the fact that Saint Sava’s monastery of Mileševo was in his
territory, announced himself Herzog, or Duke (in Serbian Herceg, though the
real Serb equivalent is Vojvoda) of Saint Sava, ever since when (1448)
that territory has been called Hercegovina. In spite of many promises, neither
the Pope nor the King of Hungary did anything to help Bosnia when the Turks
began to invade the country after their final subjection of Serbia in 1459. In
1463 they invaded Bosnia and pursued, captured, and slew the last king; their
conquest of the country was complete and rapid. A great exodus of the Serb
population took place to the south, west, and north; but large numbers,
especially of the landowning class, embraced the faith of their conquerors in
order to retain possession of their property. In 1482 a similar fate befell
Hercegovina. Albania had already been conquered after stubborn resistance in
1478. There remained only the mountainous coastal province of Zeta, which had
been an independent principality ever since 1371. Just as inland Serbia had
perished between the Turkish hammer and the Hungarian anvil, so maritime Serbia
was crushed between Turkey and Venice, only its insignificance and
inaccessibility giving it a longer lease of independent life. Ivan Crnojević,
one of the last independent rulers of Zeta, who had to fly to Italy in 1480,
abandoning his capital, Žabljak, to the Turks, returned in 1481, when the death
of Sultan Mohammed temporarily raised the hopes of the mountaineers, and
founded Cetinje and made it his capital. His son George, who succeeded him and
ruled from 1490 till 1496, is famous as having set up the first Serbian
printing-press there. Its activities were naturally not encouraged by the
Turkish conquest, but it was of great importance to the national Serbian
Church, for which books were printed with it.

In 1496, Venice having wisely made peace with the Sultan some years previously,
this last independent scrap of Serb territory was finally incorporated in the
Turkish dominions. At the end of the fifteenth century the Turks were masters
of all the Serb lands except Croatia, Slavonia, and parts of Dalmatia, which
belonged to Hungary, and the Dalmatian coast and islands, which were Venetian.
The Turkish conquest of Serbia, which began in 1371 at the battle of the
Maritsa, and was rendered inevitable by the battle of Kosovo Polje, in 1389,
thus took a hundred and twenty-five years to complete.

16
The Turkish Dominion, 1496–1796

The lot of the Serbs under Turkish rule was different from that of their
neighbours the Bulgars; and though it was certainly not enviable, it was
undoubtedly better. The Turks for various reasons never succeeded in subduing
Serbia and the various Serb lands as completely as they had subdued, or rather
annihilated, Bulgaria. The Serbs were spread over a far larger extent of
territory than were the Bulgars, they were further removed from the Turkish
centre, and the wooded and mountainous nature of their country facilitated even
more than in the case of Bulgaria the formation of bands of brigands and rebels
and militated against its systematic policing by the Turks. The number of
centres of national life, Serbia proper, Bosnia, Hercogovina, and Montenegro,
to take them in the chronological order of their conquest by the Turks, had
been notoriously a source of weakness to the Serbian state, as is still the
case to-day, but at the same time made it more difficult for the Turks to stamp
out the national consciousness. What still further contributed to this
difficulty was the fact that many Serbs escaped the oppression of Turkish rule
by emigrating to the neighbouring provinces, where they found people of their
own race and language, even though of a different faith. The tide of emigration
flowed in two directions, westwards into Dalmatia and northwards into Slavonia
and Hungary. It had begun already after the final subjection of Serbia proper
and Bosnia by the Turks in 1459 and 1463, but after the fall of Belgrade, which
was the outpost of Hungary against the Turks, in 1521, and the battle of
Mohacs, in 1526, when the Turks completely defeated the Magyars, it assumed
great proportions. As the Turks pushed their conquests further north, the Serbs
migrated before them; later on, as the Turks receded, large Serb colonies
sprang up all over southern Hungary, in the Banat (the country north of the
Danube and east of the Theiss), in Syrmia (or Srem, in Serbian, the extreme
eastern part of Slavonia, between the Save and the Danube), in Bačka (the
country between the Theiss and Danube), and in Baranya (between the Danube and
the Drave). All this part of southern Hungary and Croatia was formed by the
Austrians into a military borderland against Turkey, and the Croats and
immigrant Serbs were organized as military colonists with special privileges,
on the analogy of the Cossacks in southern Russia and Poland. In Dalmatia the
Serbs played a similar rôle in the service of Venice, which, like
Austria-Hungary, was frequently at war with the Turks. During the sixteenth
century Ragusa enjoyed its greatest prosperity; it paid tribute to the Sultan,
was under his protection, and never rebelled. It had a quasi monopoly of the
trade of the entire Balkan peninsula. It was a sanctuary both for Roman
Catholic Croats and for Orthodox Serbs, and sometimes acted as intermediary on
behalf of its co-religionists with the Turkish authorities, with whom it
wielded great influence. Intellectually also it was a sort of Serb oasis, and
the only place during the Middle Ages where Serbian literature was able to
flourish.

Montenegro during the sixteenth century formed part of the Turkish province of
Scutari. Here, as well as in Serbia proper, northern Macedonia (known after the
removal northwards of the political centre, in the fourteenth century, as Old
Serbia), Bosnia, and Hercegovina, the Turkish rule was firmest, but not
harshest, during the first half of the sixteenth century, when the power of the
Ottoman Empire was at its height. Soon after the fall of Smederevo, in 1459,
the Patriarchate of Peć (Ipek) was abolished, the Serbian Church lost its
independence, was merged in the Greco-Bulgar Archbishopric of Okhrida (in
southern Macedonia), and fell completely under the control of the Greeks. In
1557, however, through the influence of a Grand Vizier of Serb nationality, the
Patriarchate of Peć was revived. The revival of this centre of national life
was momentous; through its agency the Serbian monasteries were restored,
ecclesiastical books printed, and priests educated, and more fortunate than the
Bulgarian national Church, which remained under Greek management, it was able
to focus the national enthusiasms and aspirations and keep alive with hope the
flame of nationality amongst those Serbs who had not emigrated.

Already, in the second half of the sixteenth century, people began to think
that Turkey’s days in Europe were numbered, and they were encouraged in
this illusion by the battle of Lepanto (1571). But the seventeenth century saw
a revival of Turkish power; Krete was added to their empire, and in 1683 they
very nearly captured Vienna. In the war which followed their repulse, and in
which the victorious Austrians penetrated as far south as Skoplje, the Serbs
took part against the Turks; but when later the Austrians were obliged to
retire, the Serbs, who had risen against the Turks at the bidding of their
Patriarch Arsen III, had to suffer terrible reprisals at their hands, with the
result that another wholesale emigration, with the Patriarch at its head, took
place into the Austro-Hungarian military borderland. This time it was the very
heart of Serbia which was abandoned, namely, Old Serbia and northern Macedonia,
including Peć and Prizren. The vacant Patriarchate was for a time filled by a
Greek, and the Albanians, many of whom were Mohammedans and therefore
Turcophil, spread northwards and eastwards into lands that had been Serb since
the seventh century. From the end of the seventeenth century, however, the
Turkish power began unmistakably to wane. The Treaty of Carlowitz (1699) left
the Turks still in possession of Syrmia (between the Danube and Save) and the
Banat (north of the Danube), but during the reign of the Emperor Charles VI
their retreat was accelerated. In 1717 Prince Eugen of Savoy captured Belgrade,
then, as now, a bulwark of the Balkan peninsula against invasion from the
north, and by the Treaty of Passarowitz (Požarevac, on the Danube), in 1718,
Turkey not only retreated definitively south of the Danube and the Save, but
left a large part of northern Serbia in Austrian hands. By the same treaty
Venice secured possession of the whole of Dalmatia, where it had already gained
territory by the Treaty of Curlowitz in 1699.

But the Serbs soon found out that alien populations fare little better under
Christian rule, when they are not of the same confession as their rulers, than
under Mohammedan. The Orthodox Serbs in Dalmatia suffered thenceforward from
relentless persecution at the hands of the Roman Catholics. In Austria-Hungary
too, and in that part of Serbia occupied by the Austrians after 1718, the Serbs
discovered that the Austrians, when they had beaten the Turks largely by the
help of Serbian levies, were very different from the Austrians who had
encouraged the Serbs to settle in their country and form military colonies on
their frontiers to protect them from Turkish invasion. The privileges promised
them when their help had been necessary were disregarded as soon as their
services could be dispensed with. Austrian rule soon became more oppressive
than Turkish, and to the Serbs’ other woes was now added religious
persecution. The result of all this was that a counter-emigration set in and
the Serbs actually began to return to their old homes in Turkey. Another war
between Austria-Hungary and Turkey broke out in 1737, in which the Austrians
were unsuccessful. Prince Eugen no longer led them, and though the Serbs were
again persuaded by their Patriarch, Arsen IV, to rise against the Turks, they
only did so half-heartedly. By the Treaty of Belgrade, in 1739, Austria had to
withdraw north of the Save and Danube, evacuating all northern Serbia in favour
of the Turks. From this time onwards the lot of the Serbs, both in
Austria-Hungary and in Turkey, went rapidly from bad to worse. The Turks, as
the power of their empire declined, and in return for the numerous Serb
revolts, had recourse to measures of severe repression; amongst others was that
of the final abolition of the Patriarchate of Peé in 1766, whereupon the
control of the Serbian Church in Turkey passed entirely into the hands of the
Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople.

The Austrian Government similarly, perceiving now for the first time the
elements of danger which the resuscitation of the Serbian nationality would
contain for the rule of the Hapsburgs, embarked on a systematic persecution of
the Orthodox Serbs in southern Hungary and Slavonia. During the reign of Maria
Theresa (1740-80), whose policy was to conciliate the Magyars, the military
frontier zone was abolished, a series of repressive measures was passed against
those Serbs who refused to become Roman Catholics, and the Serbian nationality
was refused official recognition. The consequence of this persecution was a
series of revolts which were all quelled with due severity, and finally the
emigration of a hundred thousand Serbs to southern Russia, where they founded
New Serbia in 1752-3.

During the reigns of Joseph II (1780-90) and Leopold II (1790-2) their
treatment at the hands of the Magyars somewhat improved. From the beginning of
the eighteenth century Montenegro began to assume greater importance in the
extremely gradual revival of the national spirit of the Serbs. During the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it had formed part of the Turkish
dominions, though, thanks to the inaccessible nature of its mountain
fastnesses, Turkish authority was never very forcibly asserted. It was ruled by
a prince-bishop, and its religious independence thus connoted a certain secular
freedom of thought if not of action. In the seventeenth century warlike
encounters between the Turks and the Montenegrins increased in frequency, and
the latter tried to enlist the help of Venice on their side but with
indifferent success. The fighting in Montenegro was often rather civil in
character, being caused by the ill-feeling which existed between the numerous
Montenegrins who had become Mohammedans and those who remained faithful to
their national Church. In the course of the eighteenth century the rôle which
fell to Montenegro became more important. In all the other Serb countries the
families which naturally took a leading part in affairs were either extinct or
in exile, as in Serbia, or had become Mohammedan, and therefore to all intents
and purposes Turkish, as in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Ragusa, since the great
earthquake in 1667, had greatly declined in power and was no longer of
international importance. In Montenegro, on the other hand, there had survived
both a greater independence of spirit (Montenegro was, after all, the ancient
Zeta, and had always been a centre of national life) and a number of at any
rate eugenic if not exactly aristocratic Serb families; these families
naturally looked on themselves and on their bishop as destined to play an
important part in the resistance to and the eventual overthrow of the Turkish
dominion. The prince-bishop had to be consecrated by the Patriarch of Peć, and
in 1700 Patriarch Arsen III consecrated one Daniel, of the house (which has
been ever since then and is now still the reigning dynasty of Montenegro) of
Petrović-Njegoš, to this office, after he had been elected to it by the council
of notables at Cetinje. Montenegro, isolated from the Serbs in the north, and
precluded from participating with them in the wars between Austria and Turkey
by the intervening block of Bosnia, which though Serb by nationality was
solidly Mohammedan and therefore pro-Turkish, carried on its feuds with the
Turks independently of the other Serbs. But when Peter the Great initiated his
anti-Turkish policy, and, in combination with the expansion of Russia to the
south and west, began to champion the cause of the Balkan Christians, he
developed intercourse with Montenegro and laid the foundation of that
friendship between the vast Russian Empire and the tiny Serb principality on
the Adriatic which has been a quaint and persistent feature of eastern European
politics ever since. This intimacy did not prevent the Turks giving Montenegro
many hard blows whenever they had the time or energy to do so, and did not
ensure any special protective clauses in favour of the mountain state whenever
the various treaties between Russia and Turkey were concluded. Its effect was
rather psychological and financial. From the time when the Vladika (=
Bishop) Daniel first visited Peter the Great, in 1714, the rulers of Montenegro
often made pilgrimages to the Russian capital, and were always sure of finding
sympathy as well as pecuniary if not armed support. Bishops in the Orthodox
Church are compulsorily celibate, and the succession in Montenegro always
descended from uncle to nephew. When Peter I Petrović-Njegoš succeeded, in
1782, the Patriarchate of Peć was no more, so he had to get permission from the
Austrian Emperor Joseph II to be consecrated by the Metropolitan of Karlovci
(Carlowitz), who was then head of the Serbian national Church.

About the same time (1787) an alliance was made between Russia and
Austria-Hungary to make war together on Turkey and divide the spoils between
them. Although a great rising against Turkey was organised at the same time
(1788) in the district of Šumadija, in Serbia, by a number of Serb patriots, of
whom Kara-George was one and a certain Captain Koča, after whom the whole war
is called Kočina Krajina (=Koča’s country), another, yet the Austrians
were on the whole unsuccessful, and on the death of Joseph II, in 1790, a peace
was concluded between Austria and Turkey at Svishtov, in Bulgaria, by which
Turkey retained the whole of Bosnia and Serbia, and the Save and Danube
remained the frontier between the two countries. Meanwhile the Serbs of
Montenegro had joined in the fray and had fared better, inflicting some
unpleasant defeats on the Turks under their bishop, Peter I. These culminated
in two battles in 1796 (the Montenegrins, not being mentioned in the treaty of
peace, had continued fighting), in which the Turks were driven back to Scutari.
With this triumph, which the Emperor Paul of Russia signalized by decorating
the Prince-Bishop Peter, the independence of the modern state of Montenegro,
the first Serb people to recover its liberty, was de facto established.

17
The Liberation of Serbia under Kara-George (1804–13) and Miloš
Obrenović (1815–30): 1796–1830

The liberation of Serbia from the Turkish dominion and its establishment as an
independent state were matters of much slower and more arduous accomplishment
than were the same processes in the other Balkan countries. One reason for this
was that Serbia by its peculiar geographical position was cut off from outside
help. It was easy for the western powers to help Greece with their fleets, and
for Russia to help Rumania and, later, Bulgaria directly with its army, because
communication between them was easy. But Serbia on the one hand was separated
from the sea, first by Dalmatia, which was always in foreign possession, and
then by Bosnia, Hercegovina, and the sandjak (or province) of
Novi-Pazar, all of which territories, though ethnically Serb, were strongholds
of Turkish influence owing to their large Mohammedan population. The energies
of Montenegro, also cut off from the sea by Dalmatia and Turkey, were absorbed
in self-defence, though it gave Serbia all the support which its size
permitted. Communication, on the other hand, between Russia and Serbia was too
difficult to permit of military help being rapidly and effectively brought to
bear upon the Turks from that quarter. Bessarabia, Wallachia, and Moldavia were
then still under Turkish control, and either they had to be traversed or the
Danube had to be navigated from its mouth upwards through Turkish territory.
The only country which could have helped Serbia was Austria, but as it was
against their best interests to do so, the Austrians naturally did all they
could not to advance, but to retard the Serbian cause. As a result of all this
Serbia, in her long struggle against the Turks, had to rely principally on its
own resources, though Russian diplomacy several times saved the renascent
country from disaster.

Another reason for the slowness of the emancipation and development of modern
Serbia has been the proneness of its people to internal dissension. There was
no national dynasty on whom the leadership of the country would naturally
devolve after the first successful revolution against Turkish rule, there was
not even any aristocracy left, and no foreign ruler was ever asked for by the
Serbs or was ever imposed on them by the other nations as in the case of
Greece, Rumania, and Bulgaria. On the other hand the rising against Turkey was
a rising of the whole people, and it was almost inevitable that as soon as some
measure of independence was gained the unity the Serbs had shown when fighting
against their oppressors should dissolve and be replaced by bitter rivalries
and disputes amongst the various local leaders who had become prominent during
the rebellion.

These rivalries early in the nineteenth century resolved themselves into a
blood-feud between two families, the Karagjorgjević and the Obrenović, a
quarrel that filled Serbian history and militated against the progress of the
Serb people throughout the nineteenth century.

The same reasons which restricted the growth of the political independence of
Serbia have also impeded, or rather made impossible, its economic development
and material prosperity. Until recent years Austria-Hungary and Turkey between
them held Serbia territorially in such a position that whenever Serbia either
demurred at its neighbours’ tariffs or wished to retaliate by means of
its own, the screw was immediately applied and economic strangulation
threatened. Rumania and Bulgaria economically could never be of help to Serbia,
because the products and the requirements of all three are identical, and
Rumania and Bulgaria cannot be expected to facilitate the sale of their
neighbours’ live stock and cereals, when their first business is to sell
their own, while the cost of transit of imports from western Europe through
those countries is prohibitive.

After the unsuccessful rebellion of 1788, already mentioned, Serbia remained in
a state of pseudo-quiescence for some years. Meanwhile the authority of the
Sultan in Serbia was growing ever weaker and the real power was wielded by
local Turkish officials, who exploited the country, looked on it as their own
property, and enjoyed semi-independence. Their exactions and cruelties were
worse than had been those of the Turks in the old days, and it was against them
and their troops, not against those of the Sultan, that the first battles in
the Serbian war of independence were fought. It was during the year 1803 that
the Serbian leaders first made definite plans for the rising which eventually
took place in the following year. The ringleader was George Petrović, known as
Black George, or Kara-George, and amongst his confederates was Miloš Obrenović.
The centre of the conspiracy was at Topola, in the district of Šumadija in
central Serbia (between the Morava and the Drina rivers), the native place of
Kara-George. The first two years of fighting between the Serbians and, first,
the provincial janissaries, and, later, the Sultan’s forces, fully
rewarded the bravery and energy of the insurgents. By the beginning of 1807
they had virtually freed all northern Serbia by their own unaided efforts and
captured the towns of Požarevac, Smederevo, Belgrade, and Šabac. The year 1804
is also notable as the date of the formal opening of diplomatic relations
directly between Serbia and Russia. At this time the Emperor Alexander I was
too preoccupied with Napoleon to be able to threaten the Sultan (Austerlitz
took place in November 1805), but he gave the Serbs financial assistance and
commended their cause to the especial care of his ambassador at Constantinople.

In 1807 war again broke out between Russia and Turkey, but after the Peace of
Tilsit (June 1807) fighting ceased also between the Turks and the Russians and
the Serbs, not before the Russians had won several successes against the Turks
on the Lower Danube. It was during the two following years of peace that
dissensions first broke out amongst the Serbian leaders; fighting the Turks was
the sole condition of existence which prevented them fighting each other. In
1809-10 Russia and the Serbs again fought the Turks, at first without success,
but later with better fortune. In 1811 Kara-George was elected Gospodar,
or sovereign, by a popular assembly, but Serbia still remained a Turkish
province. At the end of that year the Russians completely defeated the Turks at
Rustchuk in Bulgaria, and, if all had gone well, Serbia might there and then
have achieved complete independence.

But Napoleon was already preparing his invasion and Russia had to conclude
peace with Turkey in a hurry, which necessarily implied that the Sultan
obtained unduly favourable terms. In the Treaty of Bucarest between the two
countries signed in May 1812, the Serbs were indeed mentioned, and promised
vague internal autonomy and a general amnesty, but all the fortified towns they
had captured were to be returned to the Turks, and the few Russian troops who
had been helping the Serbs in Serbia had to withdraw. Negotiations between the
Turks and the Serbs for the regulation of their position were continued
throughout 1812, but finally the Turks refused all their claims and conditions
and, seeing the European powers preoccupied with their own affairs, invaded the
country from Bosnia in the west, and also from the east and south, in August
1813. The Serbs, left entirely to their own resources, succumbed before the
superior forces of the Turks, and by the beginning of October the latter were
again masters of the whole country and in possession of Belgrade. Meanwhile
Kara-George, broken in health and unable to cope with the difficulties of the
situation, which demanded successful strategy both against the overwhelming
forces of the Turks in the field and against the intrigues of his enemies at
home, somewhat ignominiously fled across the river to Semlin in Hungary, and
was duly incarcerated by the Austrian authorities.

The news of Napoleon’s defeat at Leipsic (October 1813) arrived just
after that of the re-occupation of Belgrade by the Turks, damped
feu-de-joie which they were firing at Constantinople, and made them
rather more conciliatory and lenient to the Serbian rebels. But this attitude
did not last long, and the Serbs soon had reason to make fresh efforts to
regain their short-lived liberty. The Congress of Vienna met in the autumn of
1814, and during its whole course Serbian emissaries gave the Russian envoys no
peace. But with the return of Napoleon to France in the spring of 1815 and the
break-up of the Congress, all that Russia could do was, through its ambassador
at Constantinople, to threaten invasion unless the Turks left the Serbs alone.
Nevertheless, conditions in Serbia became so intolerable that another rebellion
soon took shape, this time under Miloš Obrenović. This leader was no less
patriotic than his rival, Kara-George, but he was far more able and a
consummate diplomat. Kara-George had possessed indomitable courage, energy, and
will-power, but he could not temporize, and his arbitrary methods of enforcing
discipline and his ungovernable temper had made him many enemies. While the
credit for the first Serbian revolt (1804-13) undoubtedly belongs chiefly to
him, the second revolt owed its more lasting success to the skill of Miloš
Obrenović. The fighting started at Takovo, the home of the Obrenović family, in
April 1815, and after many astonishing successes against the Turks, including
the capture of the towns of Rudnik, Čačak, Požarevac, and Kraljevo, was all
over by July of the same year. The Turks were ready with large armies in the
west in Bosnia, and also south of the Morava river, to continue the campaign
and crush the rebellion, but the news of the final defeat of Napoleon, and the
knowledge that Russia would soon have time again to devote attention to the
Balkans, withheld their appetites for revenge, and negotiations with the
successful rebels were initiated. During the whole of this period, from 1813
onwards, Miloš Obrenović, as head of a district, was an official of the Sultan
in Serbia, and it was one of his principles never to break irreparably with the
Turks, who were still suzerains of the country. At the same time, owing to his
skill and initiative he was recognized as the only real leader of the movement
for independence. From the cessation of the rebellion in 1815 onwards he
himself personally conducted negotiations in the name of his people with the
various pashas who were deputed to deal with him. While these negotiations went
on and the armistice was in force, he was confronted, or rather harassed from
behind, by a series of revolts against his growing authority on the part of his
jealous compatriots.

In June 1817 Kara-George, who had been in Russia after being released by the
Austrians in 1814, returned surreptitiously to Serbia, encouraged by the
brighter aspect which affairs in his country seemed to be assuming. But the
return of his most dangerous rival was as unwelcome to Miloš as it was to the
Turkish authorities at Belgrade, and, measures having been concerted between
them, Kara-George was murdered on July 26,1817, and the first act in the
blood-feud between the two families thus committed. In November of the same
year a skupština, or national assembly, was held at Belgrade, and Miloš
Obrenović, whose position was already thoroughly assured, was elected
hereditary prince (knez) of the country.

Meanwhile events of considerable importance for the future of the Serb race had
been happening elsewhere. Dalmatia, the whole of which had been in the
possession of Venice since the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699, passed into the
hands of Austria by the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, when the Venetian
republic was extinguished by Napoleon. The Bocche di Cuttaro, a harbour both
strategically and commercially of immense value, which had in the old days
belonged to the Serb principality of Zeta or Montenegro, and is its only
natural outlet on the Adriatic, likewise became Venetian in 1699 and Austrian
in 1797, one year after the successful rebellion of the Montenegrins against
the Turks.

By the Treaty of Pressburg between France and Austria Dalmatia became French in
1805. But the Montenegrins, supported by the Russians, resisted the new owners
and occupied the Bocche; at the Peace of Tilsit in 1807, however, this
important place was assigned to France by Russia, and Montenegro had to submit
to its loss. In 1806 the French occupied Ragusa, and in 1808 abolished the
independence of the ancient Serb city-republic. In 1812 the Montenegrins,
helped by the Russians and British, again expelled the French and reoccupied
Cattaro; but Austria was by now fully alive to the meaning this harbour would
have once it was in the possession of Montenegro, and after the Congress of
Vienna in 1815 took definitive possession of it as well as of all the rest of
Dalmatia, thus effecting the complete exclusion of the Serb race for all
political and commercial purposes from the Adriatic, its most natural and
obvious means of communication with western Europe.

Though Miloš had been elected prince by his own people, it was long before he
was recognized as such by the Porte. His efforts for the regularization of his
position entailed endless negotiations in Constantinople; these were enlivened
by frequent anti-Obrenović revolts in Serbia, all of which Miloš successfully
quelled. The revolution in Greece in 1821 threw the Serbian question from the
international point of view into the shade, but the Emperor Nicholas I, who
succeeded his brother Alexander I on the Russian throne in 1825, soon showed
that he took a lively and active interest in Balkan affairs. Pan-Slavism had
scarcely become fashionable in those days, and it was still rather as the
protector of its co-religionists under the Crescent that Russia intervened. In
1826 Russian and Turkish delegates met at Akerman in Bessarabia, and in
September of that year signed a convention by which the Russian protectorate
over the Serbs was recognized, the Serbs were granted internal autonomy, the
right to trade and erect churches, schools, and printing-presses, and the Turks
were forbidden to live in Serbia except in eight garrison towns; the garrisons
were to be Turkish, and tribute was still to be paid to the Sultan as suzerain.
These concessions, announced by Prince Miloš to his people at a special
skupština held at Kragujevac in 1827, evoked great enthusiasm, but the
urgency of the Greek question again delayed their fulfilment. After the battle
of Navarino on October 20, 1827, in which the British, French, and Russian
fleets defeated the Turkish, the Turks became obstinate and refused to carry
out the stipulations of the Convention of Akerman in favour of Serbia.
Thereupon Russia declared war on Turkey in April 1828, and the Russian armies
crossed the Danube and the Balkans and marched on Constantinople.

Peace was concluded at Adrianople in 1829, and Turkey agreed to carry out
immediately all the stipulations of the Treaty of Bucarest (1812) and the
Convention of Akerman (1826). The details took some time to settle, but in
November 1830 the hatti-sherif of the Sultan, acknowledging Miloš as
hereditary prince of Serbia, was publicly read in Belgrade. All the concessions
already promised were duly granted, and Serbia became virtually independent,
but still tributary to the Sultan. Its territory included most of the northern
part of the modern kingdom of Serbia, between the rivers Drina, Save, Danube,
and Timok, but not the districts of Nish, Vranja, and Pirot. Turkey still
retained Bosnia and Hercegovina, Macedonia, the sandjak of Novi-Pazar,
which separated Serbia from Montenegro, and Old Serbia (northern Macedonia).

18
The Throes of Regeneration: Independent Serbia, 1830–1903

During his rule of Serbia, which lasted virtually from 1817 till 1839, Prince
Miloš did a very great deal for the welfare of his country. He emancipated the
Serbian Church from the trammels of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople in
1831, from which date onwards it was ruled by a Metropolitan of Serb
nationality, resident at Belgrade. He encouraged the trade of the country, a
great deal of which he held in his own hands; he was in fact a sort of
prototype of those modern Balkan business-kings of whom King George of Greece
and King Carol of Rumania were the most notable examples. He raised an army and
put it on a permanent footing, and organized the construction of roads,
schools, and churches. He was, however, an autocratic ruler of the old school,
and he had no inclination to share the power for the attainment of which he had
laboured so many years and gone through so much. From his definite installation
as hereditary prince discontent at his arbitrary methods of government amongst
his ex-equals increased, and after several revolts he was forced eventually to
grant a constitution in 1835. This, however, remained a dead letter, and things
went on as before. Later in the same year he paid a prolonged visit to his
suzerain at Constantinople, and while he was there the situation in Serbia
became still more serious. After his return he was, after several years of
delay and of growing unpopularity, compelled to agree to another constitution
which was forced on him, paradoxically enough, by the joint efforts of the Tsar
and of the Sultan, who seemed to take an unnatural pleasure in supporting the
democratic Serbians against their successful colleague in autocracy, who had
done so much for his turbulent subjects. Serbia even in those days was
essentially and uncompromisingly democratic, but even so Miloš obstinately
refused to carry out the provisions of the constitution or in any way to submit
to a curtailment of his power, and in 1839 he left his ungrateful principality
and took refuge in Rumania, where he possessed an estate, abdicating in favour
of his elder son Milan. This Prince Milan, known as Obrenović II, was seriously
ill at the time of his accession, and died within a month of it. He was
succeeded by his younger brother Michael, known as Obrenović III, who was then
only sixteen years of age. This prince, though young, had a good head on his
shoulders, and eventually proved the most gifted ruler modern Serbia has ever
had. His first reign (1840-2), however, did not open well. He inaugurated it by
paying a state visit to Constantinople, but the Sultan only recognized him as
elective prince and insisted on his having two advisers approved and appointed
by the Porte. Michael on his return showed his determination to have nothing to
do with them, but this led to a rebellion headed by one of them, Vučić, and,
though Michael’s rule was not as arbitrary as his father’s, he had
to bow to the popular will which supported Vučić and cross the river to Semlin.
After a stormy interval, during which the Emperor Nicholas I tried to intervene
in favour of Michael, Alexander Karagjorgjević, son of Kara-George, was elected
prince (1843). No sooner was this representative of the rival dynasty
installed, however, than rebellions in favour of Michael occurred. These were
thrown into the shade by the events of 1848, In that memorable year of
revolutions the Magyars rose against Austria and the Serbs in southern Hungary
rose against the Magyars. Prince Alexander resolved to send military help to
his oppressed countrymen north of the Save and Danube, and, though the
insurgents were unsuccessful, Prince Alexander gained in popularity amongst the
Serbs by the line of action he had taken. During the Crimean War, on the other
hand, Serbia remained strictly neutral, to the annoyance of the Tsar; at the
Congress of Paris (1856) the exclusive protectorate of Russia was replaced by
one of all the powers, and Russian influence in the western Balkans was thereby
weakened. Prince Alexander’s prudence, moreover, cost him his popularity,
and in 1858 he in his turn had to bid farewell to his difficult countrymen.

In December of the same year the veteran Prince Miloš Obrenović I was recalled
to power as hereditary prince. His activities during his second reign were
directed against Turkish influence, which was still strong, and he made efforts
to have the Turkish populations removed from the eight garrison towns,
including Belgrade, where they still lived in spite of the fact that their
emigration had been stipulated for in 1830. Unfortunately he did not live long
enough to carry out his plans, for he fell ill at Topchider, the summer palace
near Belgrade, in the autumn of 1860, and died a few days afterwards. He was
again succeeded by his son Michael Obrenović III, who was already thirty-six
years of age. This able prince’s second reign was brilliantly successful,
and it was a disaster for which his foolish countrymen had to pay dearly, when,
by their fault, it was prematurely cut short in 1868. His first act was with
the consent of a specially summoned skupština to abolish the law by
which he could only appoint and remove his counsellers with the approval of the
Porte. Next he set about the organization and establishment of a regular army
of 30,000 men. In 1862 an anti-Turkish rebellion broke out amongst the Serbs in
Hercegovina (still, with Bosnia, a Turkish province), and the Porte, accusing
Prince Michael of complicity, made warlike preparations against him.

Events, however, were precipitated in such a way that, without waiting for the
opening of hostilities, the Turkish general in command of the fortress of
Belgrade turned his guns on the city; this provoked the intervention of the
powers at Constantinople, and the entire civilian Turkish population had to
quit the country (in accordance with the stipulations of 1830), only Turkish
garrisons remaining in the fortresses of Šabac, Belgrade, Smederevo, and
Kladovo, along the northern river frontier, still theoretically the boundary of
the Sultan’s dominions. After this success Prince Michael continued his
military preparations in order to obtain final possession of the fortresses
when a suitable occasion should arise. This occurred in 1866, when Austria was
engaged in the struggle with Prussia, and the policy of Great Britain became
less Turcophil than it had hitherto been. On April 6, 1867, the four
fortresses, which had been in Serbian possession from 1804 to 1813, but had
since then been garrisoned by the Turks, were delivered over to Serbia and the
last Turkish soldier left Serbian soil without a shot having been fired. Though
Serbia after this was still a vassal state, being tributary to the Sultan,
these further steps on the road to complete independence were a great triumph,
especially for Prince Michael personally. But this very triumph actuated his
political opponents amongst his own countrymen, amongst whom were undoubtedly
adherents of the rival dynasty, to revenge, and blind to the interests of their
people they foolishly and most brutally murdered this extremely capable and
conscientious prince in the deer park near Topchider on June 10, 1868. The
opponents of the Obrenović dynasty were, however, baulked in their plans, and a
cousin of the late prince was elected to the vacant and difficult position.
This ruler, known as Milan Obrenović IV, who was only fourteen years of age at
the time of his accession (1868), was of a very different character from his
predecessor. The first thing that happened during his minority was the
substitution of the constitution of 1838 by another one which was meant to give
the prince and the national assembly much more power, but which, eventually,
made the ministers supreme.

The prince came of age in 1872 when he was eighteen, and he soon showed that
the potential pleasures to be derived from his position were far more
attractive to him than the fulfilment of its obvious duties. He found much to
occupy him in Vienna and Paris and but little in Belgrade. At the same time the
Serb people had lost, largely by its own faults, much of the respect and
sympathy which it had acquired in Europe during Prince Michael’s reign.
In 1875 a formidable anti-Turkish insurrection (the last of many) broke out
amongst the Serbs of Bosnia and Hercegovina, and all the efforts of the Turks
to quell it were unavailing. In June 1876 Prince Milan was forced by the
pressure of public opinion to declare war on Turkey in support of the
‘unredeemed’ Serbs of Bosnia, and Serbia was joined by Montenegro.
The country was, however, not materially prepared for war, the expected
sympathetic risings in other parts of Turkey either did not take place or
failed, and the Turks turned their whole army on to Serbia, with the result
that in October the Serbs had to appeal to the Tsar for help and an armistice
was arranged, which lasted till February 1877. During the winter a conference
was held in Constantinople to devise means for alleviating the lot of the
Christians in Turkey, and a peace was arranged between Turkey and Serbia
whereby the status quo ante was restored. But after the conference the
heart of Turkey was again hardened and the stipulations in favour of the
Christians were not carried out.

In 1877 Russia declared war on Turkey (cf. chap. 10), and in the autumn of the
same year Serbia joined in. This time the armies of Prince Milan were more
successful, and conquered and occupied the whole of southern Serbia including
the towns and districts of Nish, Pirot, Vranja, and Leskovac, Montenegro, which
had not been included in the peace of the previous winter, but had been
fighting desperately and continuously against the Turks ever since it had begun
actively to help the Serb rebels of Hercegovina in 1875, had a series of
successes, as a result of which it obtained possession of the important
localities of Nikšić, Podgorica, Budua, Antivari, and Dulcigno, the last three
on the shore of the Adriatic. By the Treaty of San Stefano the future interests
of both Serbia and Montenegro were jeopardised by the creation of a Great
Bulgaria, but that would not have mattered if in return they had been given
control of the purely Serb provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina, which
ethnically they can claim just as legitimately as Bulgaria claims most of
Macedonia. The Treaty of San Stefano was, however, soon replaced by that of
Berlin. By its terms both Serbia and Montenegro achieved complete independence
and the former ceased to be a tributary state of Turkey. The Serbs were given
the districts of southern Serbia which they had occupied, and which are all
ethnically Serb except Pirot, the population of which is a sort of cross
between Serb and Bulgar. The Serbs also undertook to build a railway through
their country to the Turkish and Bulgarian frontiers. Montenegro was nearly
doubled in size, receiving the districts of Nikšić, Podgorica, and others;
certain places in the interior the Turks and Albanians absolutely refused to
surrender, and to compensate for these Montenegro was given a strip of coast
with the townlets of Antivari and Dulcigno. The memory of Gladstone, who
specially espoused Montenegro’s cause in this matter, is held in the
greatest reverence in the brave little mountain country, but unfortunately the
ports themselves are economically absolutely useless. Budua, higher up the
Dalmatian coast, which would have been of some use, was handed over to Austria,
to which country, already possessed of Cattaro and all the rest of Dalmatia, it
was quite superfluous. Greatest tragedy of all for the future of the Serb race,
the administration of Bosnia and Hercegovina was handed over
‘temporarily’ to Austria-Hungary, and Austrian garrisons were
quartered throughout those two provinces, which they were able to occupy only
after the most bitter armed opposition on the part of the inhabitants, and also
in the Turkish sandjak or province of Novi-Pazar, the ancient Raska and
cradle of the Serb state; this strip of mountainous territory under Turkish
administrative and Austrian military control was thus converted into a
fortified wedge which effectually kept the two independent Serb states of
Serbia and Montenegro apart. After all these events the Serbs had to set to
work to put their enlarged house in order. But the building of railways and
schools and the organization of the services cost a lot of money, and as public
economy is not a Serbian virtue the debt grew rapidly. In 1882 Serbia
proclaimed itself a kingdom and was duly recognized by the other nations. But
King Milan did not learn to manage the affairs of his country any better as
time went on. He was too weak to stand alone, and having freed himself from
Turkey he threw himself into the arms of Austria, with which country he
concluded a secret military convention. In 1885, when Bulgaria and
‘Eastern Rumelia’ successfully coalesced and Bulgaria thereby
received a considerable increase of territory and power, the Serbs, prompted by
jealousy, began to grow restless, and King Milan, at the instigation of
Austria, foolishly declared war on Prince Alexander of Battenberg. This
speedily ended in the disastrous battle of Slivnitsa (cf. chap. II); Austria
had to intervene to save its victim, and Serbia got nothing for its trouble but
a large increase of debt and a considerable decrease of military reputation. In
addition to all this King Milan was unfortunate in his conjugal relations; his
wife, the beautiful Queen Natalie, was a Russian, and as he himself had
Austrian sympathies, they could scarcely be expected to agree on politics. But
the strife between them extended from the sphere of international to that of
personal sympathies and antipathies. King Milan was promiscuous in affairs of
the heart and Queen Natalie was jealous. Scenes of domestic discord were
frequent and violent, and the effect of this atmosphere on the character of
their only child Alexander, who was born in 1876, was naturally bad.

The king, who had for some years been very popular with, his subjects with all
his failings, lost his hold on the country after the unfortunate war of 1885,
and the partisans of the rival dynasty began to be hopeful once more. In 1888
King Milan gave Serbia a very much more liberal constitution, by which the
ministers were for the first time made really responsible to the
skupština or national assembly, replacing that of 1869, and the
following year, worried by his political and domestic failures, discredited and
unpopular both at home and abroad, he resigned in favour of his son Alexander,
then aged thirteen. This boy, who had been brought up in what may be called a
permanent storm-centre, both domestic and political, was placed under a
regency, which included M. Ristić, with a radical ministry under M. Pašić, an
extremely able and patriotic statesman of pro-Russian sympathies, who ever
since he first became prominent in 1877 had been growing in power and
influence. But trouble did not cease with the abdication of King Milan. He and
his wife played Box and Cox at Belgrade for the next four years, quarrelling
and being reconciled, intriguing and fighting round the throne and person of
their son. At last both parents agreed to leave the country and give the
unfortunate youth a chance. King Milan settled in Vienna, Queen Natalie in
Biarritz. In 1893 King Alexander suddenly declared himself of age and arrested
all his ministers and regents one evening while they were dining with him. The
next year he abrogated the constitution of 1888, under which party warfare in
the Serbian parliament had been bitter and uninterrupted, obstructing any real
progress, and restored that of 1869. Ever since 1889 (the date of the accession
of the German Emperor) Berlin had taken more interest in Serbian affairs, and
it has been alleged that it was William II who, through the wife of the
Rumanian minister at his court, who was sister of Queen Natalie, influenced
King Alexander in his abrupt and ill-judged decisions. It was certainly German
policy to weaken and discredit Serbia and to further Austrian influence at
Belgrade at the expense of that of Russia. King Milan returned for a time to
Belgrade in 1897, and the reaction, favourable to Austria, which had begun in
1894, increased during his presence and under the ministry of Dr. Vladan
Gjorgjević, which lasted from 1897 till 1900. This state of repression caused
unrest throughout the country. All its energies were absorbed in fruitless
political party strife, and no material or moral progress was possible. King
Alexander, distracted, solitary, and helpless in the midst of this unending
welter of political intrigue, committed an extremely imprudent act in the
summer of 1900. Having gone for much-needed relaxation to see his mother at
Biarritz, he fell violently in love with her lady in waiting, Madame Draga
Mašin, the divorced wife of a Serbian officer. Her somewhat equivocal past was
in King Alexander’s eyes quite eclipsed by her great beauty and her wit,
which had not been impaired by conjugal infelicity. Although she was
thirty-two, and he only twenty-four, he determined to marry her, and the
desperate opposition of his parents, his army, his ministers, and his people,
based principally on the fact that the woman was known to be incapable of
child-birth, only precipitated the accomplishment of his intention. This
unfortunate and headstrong action on the part of the young king, who, though
deficient in tact and intuition, had plenty of energy and was by no means
stupid, might have been forgiven him by his people if, as was at first thought
possible, it had restored internal peace and prosperity in the country and
thereby enabled it to prepare itself to take a part in the solution o£ those
foreign questions which vitally affected Serb interests and were already
looming on the horizon. But it did not. In 1901 King Alexander granted another
constitution and for a time attempted to work with a coalition ministry; but
this failed, and a term of reaction with pro-Austrian tendencies, which were
favoured by the king and queen, set in. This reaction, combined with the
growing disorganization of the finances and the general sense of the discredit
and failure which the follies of its rulers had during the last thirty years
brought on the country; completely undermined the position of the dynasty and
made a catastrophe inevitable. This occurred, as is well known, on June 10,
1903, when, as the result of a military conspiracy, King Alexander, the last of
the Obrenović dynasty, his wife, and her male relatives were murdered. This
crime was purely political, and it is absurd to gloss it over or to explain it
merely as the result of the family feud between the two dynasties. That came to
an end in 1868, when the murder of Kara-George in 1817 by the agency of Miloš
Obrenović was avenged by the lunatic assassination of the brilliant Prince
Michael Obrenović III. It is no exaggeration to say that, from the point of
view of the Serbian patriot, the only salvation of his country in 1903 lay in
getting rid of the Obrenović dynasty, which had become pro-Austrian, had no
longer the great gifts possessed by its earlier members, and undoubtedly by its
vagaries hindered the progress of Serbia both in internal and external
politics. The assassination was unfortunately carried out with unnecessary
cruelty, and it is this fact that made such a bad impression and for so long
militated against Serbia in western Europe; but it must be remembered that
civilization in the Balkans, where political murder, far from being a product
of the five hundred years of Turkish dominion, has always been endemic, is not
on the same level in many respects as it is in the rest of Europe. Life is one
of the commodities which are still cheap in backward countries.

Although King Alexander and his wife can in no sense be said to have deserved
the awful fate that befell them, it is equally true that had any other course
been adopted, such as deposition and exile, the wire-pulling and intriguing
from outside, which had already done the country so much harm, would have
become infinitely worse. Even so, it was long before things in any sense
settled down. As for the alleged complicity of the rival dynasty in the crime,
it is well established that that did not exist. It was no secret to anybody
interested in Serbian affairs that something catastrophic was about to happen,
and when the tragedy occurred it was natural to appeal to the alternative
native dynasty to step into the breach. But the head of that dynasty was in no
way responsible for the plot, still less for the manner in which it was carried
out, and it was only after much natural hesitation and in the face of his
strong disinclination that Prince Peter Karagjorgjević was induced to accept
the by no means enviable, easy, or profitable task of guiding Serbia’s
destiny. The Serbian throne in 1903 was a source neither of glory nor of
riches, and it was notoriously no sinecure.

After the tragedy, the democratic constitution of 1888 was first of all
restored, and then Prince Peter Karagjorgjević, grandson of Kara-George, the
leader of the first Serbian insurrection of 1804-13, who was at that time
fifty-nine years of age, was unanimously elected king. He had married in 1883 a
daughter of Prince Nicholas of Montenegro and sister of the future Queen of
Italy, but she had been dead already some years at the time of his accession,
leaving him with a family of two sons and a daughter.

19
Serbia, Montenegro, and the Serbo-Croats in Austria-Hungary, 1903–8

It was inevitable that, after the sensation which such an event could not fail
to cause in twentieth-century Europe, it should take the country where it
occurred some time to live down the results. Other powers, especially those of
western Europe, looked coldly on Serbia and were in no hurry to resume
diplomatic intercourse, still less to offer diplomatic support. The question of
the punishment and exile of the conspirators was almost impossible of solution,
and only time was able to obliterate the resentment caused by the whole affair.
In Serbia itself a great change took place. The new sovereign, though he
laboured under the greatest possible disadvantages, by his irreproachable
behaviour, modesty, tact, and strictly constitutional rule, was able to
withdraw the court of Belgrade from the trying limelight to which it had become
used. The public finances began to be reorganized, commerce began to improve in
spite of endless tariff wars with Austria-Hungary, and attention was again
diverted from home to foreign politics. With the gradual spread of education
and increase of communication, and the growth of national self-consciousness
amongst the Serbs and Croats of Austria-Hungary and the two independent Serb
states, a new movement for the closer intercourse amongst the various branches
of the Serb race for south Slav unity, as it was called, gradually began to
take shape. At the same time a more definitely political agitation started in
Serbia, largely inspired by the humiliating position of economic bondage in
which the country was held by Austria-Hungary, and was roughly justified by the
indisputable argument: ‘Serbia must expand or die.’ Expansion at
the cost of Turkey seemed hopeless, because even the acquisition of Macedonia
would give Serbia a large alien population and no maritime outlet. It was
towards the Adriatic that the gaze of the Serbs was directed, to the coast
which was ethnically Serbian and could legitimately be considered a heritage of
the Serb race.

Macedonia was also taken into account, schools and armed bands began their
educative activity amongst those inhabitants of the unhappy province who were
Serb, or who lived in places where Serbs had lived, or who with sufficient
persuasion could be induced to call themselves Serb; but the principal stream
of propaganda was directed westwards into Bosnia and Hercegovina. The
antagonism between Christian and Mohammedan, Serb and Turk, was never so bitter
as between Christian and Christian, Serb and German or Magyar, and the Serbs
were clever enough to see that Bosnia and Hercegovina, from every point of
view, was to them worth ten Macedonias, though it would he ten times more
difficult to obtain. Bosnia and Hercegovina, though containing three
confessions, were ethnically homogeneous, and it was realised that these two
provinces were as important to Serbia and Montenegro as the rest of Italy had
been to Piedmont.

It must at this time be recalled in what an extraordinary way the Serb race had
fortuitously been broken up into a number of quite arbitrary political
divisions. Dalmatia (three per cent. of the population of which is Italian and
all the rest Serb or Croat, preponderatingly Serb and Orthodox in the south and
preponderating Croat or Roman Catholic in the north) was a province of Austria
and sent deputies to the Reichsrath at Vienna; at the same time it was
territorially isolated from Austria and had no direct railway connexion with
any country except a narrow-gauge line into Bosnia. Croatia and Slavonia,
preponderatingly Roman Catholic, were lands of the Hungarian crown, and though
they had a provincial pseudo-autonomous diet at Agram, the capital of Croatia,
they sent deputies to the Hungarian parliament at Budapest. Thus what had in
the Middle Ages been known as the triune kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia, and
Dalmatia, with a total Serbo-Croat population of three millions, was divided
between Austria and Hungary.

Further, there were about 700,000 Serbs and Croats in the south of Hungary
proper, cast and north of the Danube, known as the Banat and Bačka, a district
which during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was the hearth and
home of Serb literature and education, but which later waned in importance in
that respect as independent Serbia grew. These Serbs were directly dependent on
Budapest, the only autonomy they possessed being ecclesiastical. Bosnia and
Hercegovina, still nominally Turkish provinces, with a Slav population of
nearly two million (850,000 Orthodox Serbs, 650,000 Mohammedan Serbs, and the
rest Roman Catholics), were to all intents and purposes already imperial lands
of Austria-Hungary, with a purely military and police administration; the
shadow of Turkish sovereignty provided sufficient excuse to the de facto
owners of these provinces not to grant the inhabitants parliamentary government
or even genuine provincial autonomy. The Serbs in Serbia numbered nearly three
millions, those in Montenegro about a quarter of a million; while in Turkey, in
what was known as Old Serbia (the sandjak of Novi-Pasar between Serbia
and Montenegro and the vilayet of Korovo), and in parts of northern and central
Macedonia, there were scattered another half million. These last, of course,
had no voice at all in the management of their own affairs. Those in Montenegro
lived under the patriarchal autocracy of Prince Nicholas, who had succeeded his
uncle, Prince Danilo, in 1860, at the age of nineteen. Though no other form of
government could have turned the barren rocks of Montenegro into fertile
pastures, many of the people grew restless with the restricted possibilities of
a career which the mountain principality offered them, and in latter years
migrated in large numbers to North and South America, whither emigration from
Dalmatia and Croatia too had already readied serious proportions. The Serbs in
Serbia were the only ones who could claim to be free, but even this was a
freedom entirely dependent on the economic malevolence of Austria-Hungary and
Turkey. Cut up in this way by the hand of fate into such a number of helpless
fragments, it was inevitable that the Serb race, if it possessed any vitality,
should attempt, at any cost, to piece some if not all of them together and form
an ethnical whole which, economically and politically, should be master of its
own destinies. It was equally inevitable that the policy of Austria-Hungary
should be to anticipate or definitively render any such attempt impossible,
because obviously the formation of a large south Slav state, by cutting off
Austria from the Adriatic and eliminating from the dual monarchy all the
valuable territory between the Dalmatian coast and the river Drave, would
seriously jeopardize its position as a great power; it must be remembered,
also, that Austria-Hungary, far from decomposing, as it was commonly assumed
was happening, had been enormously increasing in vitality ever since 1878.

The means adopted by the governments of Vienna and Budapest to nullify the
plans of Serbian expansion were generally to maintain the political
émiettement of the Serb race, the isolation of one group from another,
the virtually enforced emigration of Slavs on a large scale and their
substitution by German colonists, and the encouragement of rivalry and discord
between Roman Catholic Croat and Orthodox Serb. No railways were allowed to be
built in Dalmatia, communication between Agram and any other parts of the
monarchy except Fiume or Budapest was rendered almost impossible; Bosnia and
Hercegovina were shut off into a watertight compartment and endowed with a
national flag composed of the inspiring colours of brown and buff; it was made
impossible for Serbs to visit Montenegro or for Montenegrins to visit Serbia
except via Fiume, entailing the bestowal of several pounds on the Hungarian
state steamers and railways. As for the sandjak of Novi-Pazar, it was
turned into a veritable Tibet, and a legend was spread abroad that if any
foreigner ventured there he would be surely murdered by Turkish brigands;
meanwhile it was full of Viennese ladies giving picnics and dances and tennis
parties to the wasp-waisted officers of the Austrian garrison. Bosnia and
Hercegovina, on the other hand, became the model touring provinces of
Austria-Hungary, and no one can deny that their great natural beauties were
made more enjoyable by the construction of railways, roads, and hotels. At the
same time this was not a work of pure philanthropy, and the emigration
statistics are a good indication of the joy with which the Bosnian peasants
paid for an annual influx of admiring tourists. In spite of all these
disadvantages, however, the Serbo-Croat provinces of Austria-Hungary could not
be deprived of all the benefits of living within a large and prosperous customs
union, while being made to pay for all the expenses of the elaborate imperial
administration and services; and the spread of education, even under the
Hapsburg régime, began to tell in time. Simultaneously with the agitation which
emanated from Serbia and was directed towards the advancement, by means of
schools and religious and literary propaganda, of Serbian influence in Bosnia
and Hercegovina, a movement started in Dalmatia and Croatia for the closer
union of those two provinces. About 1906 the two movements found expression in
the formation of the Serbo-Croat or Croato-Serb coalition party, composed of
those elements in Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia which favoured closer union
between the various groups of the Serb race scattered throughout those
provinces, as well as in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Turkey.
Owing to the circumstances already described, it was impossible for the
representatives of the Serb race to voice their aspirations unanimously in any
one parliament, and the work of the coalition, except in the provincial diet at
Agram, consisted mostly of conducting press campaigns and spreading propaganda
throughout those provinces. The most important thing about the coalition was
that it buried religious antagonism and put unity of race above difference of
belief. In this way it came into conflict with the ultramontane Croat party at
Agram, which wished to incorporate Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Dalmatia with
Croatia and create a third purely Roman Catholic Slav state in the empire, on a
level with Austria and Hungary; also to a lesser extent with the intransigent
Serbs of Belgrade, who affected to ignore Croatia and Roman Catholicism, and
only dreamed of bringing Bosnia, Hercegovina, and as much of Dalmatia as they
could under their own rule; and finally it had to overcome the hostility of the
Mohammedan Serbs of Bosnia, who disliked all Christians equally, could only
with the greatest difficulty be persuaded that they were really Serbs and not
Turks, and honestly cared for nothing but Islam and Turkish coffee, thus
considerably facilitating the germanization of the two provinces. The coalition
was wisely inclined to postpone the programme of final political settlement,
and aimed immediately at the removal of the material and moral barriers placed
between the Serbs of the various provinces of Austria-Hungary, including Bosnia
and Hercegovina. If they had been sure of adequate guarantees they would
probably have agreed to the inclusion of all Serbs and Croats within the
monarchy, because the constitution of all Serbs and Croats in an independent
state (not necessarily a kingdom) without it implied the then problematic
contingencies of a European war and the disruption of Austria-Hungary.
Considering the manifold handicaps under which Serbia and its cause suffered,
the considerable success which its propaganda met with in Bosnia and
Hercegovina and other parts of Austria-Hungary, from 1903 till 1908, is a
proof, not only of the energy and earnestness of its promoters and of the
vitality of the Serbian people, but also, if any were needed, of the extreme
unpopularity of the Hapsburg régime in the southern Slav provinces of the dual
monarchy. Serbia had no help from outside. Russia was entangled in the Far East
and then in the revolution, and though the new dynasty was approved in St.
Petersburg Russian sympathy with Serbia was at that time only lukewarm.
Relations with Austria-Hungary were of course always strained; only one single
line of railway connected the two countries, and as Austria-Hungary was the
only profitable market, for geographical reasons, for Serbian products, Serbia
could be brought to its knees at any moment by the commercial closing of the
frontier. It was a symbol of the economic vassalage of Serbia and Montenegro
that the postage between both of these countries and any part of
Austria-Hungary was ten centimes, that for letters between Serbia and
Montenegro, which had to make the long détour through Austrian territory, was
twenty-five. But though this opened the Serbian markets to Austria, it also
incidentally opened Bosnia, when the censor could be circumvented to propaganda
by pamphlet and correspondence. Intercourse with western Europe was restricted
by distance, and, owing to dynastic reasons, diplomatic relations were
altogether suspended for several years between this country and Serbia. The
Balkan States Exhibition held in London during the summer of 1907, to encourage
trade between Great Britain and the Balkans, was hardly a success. Italy and
Serbia had nothing in common. With Montenegro even, despite the fact that King
Peter was Prince Nicholas’s son-in-law, relations were bad. It was felt
in Serbia that Prince Nicholas’s autocratic rule acted as a brake on the
legitimate development of the national consciousness, and Montenegrin students
who visited Belgrade returned to their homes full of wild and unsuitable ideas.
However, the revolutionary tendencies, which some of them undoubtedly
developed, had no fatal results to the reigning dynasty, which continued as
before to enjoy the special favour as well as the financial support of the
Russian court, and which, looked on throughout Europe as a picturesque and
harmless institution, it would have been dangerous, as it was quite
unnecessary, to touch.

Serbia was thus left entirely to its own resources in the great propagandist
activity which filled the years 1903 to 1908. The financial means at its
disposal were exiguous in the extreme, especially when compared with the
enormous sums lavished annually by the Austrian and German governments on their
secret political services, so that the efforts of its agents cannot be ascribed
to cupidity. Also it must be admitted that the kingdom of Serbia, with its
capital Belgrade, thanks to the internal chaos and dynastic scandals of the
previous forty years, resulting in superficial dilapidation, intellectual
stagnation, and general poverty, lacked the material as well as the moral
glamour which a successful Piedmont should possess. Nobody could deny, for
instance, that, with all its natural advantages, Belgrade was at first sight
not nearly such an attractive centre as Agram or Sarajevo, or that the
qualities which the Serbs of Serbia had displayed since their emancipation were
hardly such as to command the unstinted confidence and admiration of their as
yet unredeemed compatriots. Nevertheless the Serbian propaganda in favour of
what was really a Pan-Serb movement met with great success, especially in
Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Old Serbia (northern Macedonia).

Simultaneously the work of the Serbo-Croat coalition in Dalmatia, Croatia, and
Slavonia made considerable progress in spite of clerical opposition and
desperate conflicts with the government at Budapest. Both the one movement and
the other naturally evoked great alarm and emotion in the Austrian and
Hungarian capitals, as they were seen to be genuinely popular and also
potentially, if not actually, separatist in character. In October 1906 Baron
Achrenthal succeeded Count Goluchowski as Minister for Foreign Affairs at
Vienna, and very soon initiated a more vigorous and incidentally anti-Slav
foreign policy than his predecessor. What was now looked on as the Serbian
danger had in the eyes of Vienna assumed such proportions that the time for
decisive action was considered to have arrived. In January 1908 Baron
Achrenthal announced his scheme for a continuation of the Bosnian railway
system through the sandjak of Novi-Pazar to link up with the Turkish
railways in Macedonia. This plan was particularly foolish in conception,
because, the Bosnian railways being narrow and the Turkish normal gauge, the
line would have been useless for international commerce, while the engineering
difficulties were such that the cost of construction would have been
prohibitive. But the possibilities which this move indicated, the palpable
evidence it contained of the notorious Drang nach Osten of the Germanic
powers towards Salonika and Constantinople, were quite sufficient to fill the
ministries of Europe, and especially those of Russia, with extreme uneasiness.
The immediate result of this was that concerted action between Russia and
Austria-Hungary in the Balkans was thenceforward impossible, and the Mürzsteg
programme, after a short and precarious existence, came to an untimely end (cf.
chap. 12). Serbia and Montenegro, face to face with this new danger which
threatened permanently to separate their territories, were beside themselves,
and immediately parried with the project, hardly more practicable in view of
their international credit, of a Danube-Adriatic railway. In July 1908 the
nerves of Europe were still further tried by the Young Turk revolution in
Constantinople. The imminence of this movement was known to Austro-German
diplomacy, and doubtless this knowledge, as well as the fear of the Pan-Serb
movement, prompted the Austrian foreign minister to take steps towards the
definitive regularization of his country’s position in Bosnia and
Hercegovina—provinces whose suzerain was still the Sultan of Turkey. The
effect of the Young Turk coup in the Balkan States was as any one who visited
them at that time can testify, both pathetic and intensely humorous. The
permanent chaos of the Turkish empire, and the process of watching for years
its gradual but inevitable decomposition, had created amongst the neighbouring
states an atmosphere of excited anticipation, which was really the breath of
their nostrils; it had stimulated them during the endless Macedonian
insurrections to commit the most awful outrages against each other’s
nationals and then lay the blame at the door of the unfortunate Turk; and if
the Turk should really regenerate himself, not only would their occupation be
gone, but the heavily-discounted legacies would assuredly elude their grasp. At
the same time, since the whole policy of exhibiting and exploiting the horrors
of Macedonia, and of organizing guerilla bands and provoking intervention, was
based on the refusal of the Turks to grant reforms, as soon as the
ultra-liberal constitution of Midhat Pasha, which, had been withdrawn after a
brief and unsuccessful run in 1876, was restored by the Young Turks, there was
nothing left for the Balkan States to do but to applaud with as much enthusiasm
as they could simulate. The emotions experienced by the Balkan peoples during
that summer, beneath the smiles which they had to assume, were exhausting even
for southern temperaments. Bulgaria, with its characteristic
matter-of-factness, was the first to adjust itself to the new and trying
situation in which the only certainty was that something decisive had got to be
done with all possible celerity. On October 5, 1908, Prince Ferdinand sprang on
an astonished continent the news that he renounced the Turkish suzerainty (ever
since 1878 the Bulgarian principality had been a tributary and vassal state of
the Ottoman Empire, and therefore, with all its astonishingly rapid progress
and material prosperity, a subject for commiseration in the kingdoms of Serbia
and Greece) and proclaimed the independence of Bulgaria, with himself, as Tsar
of the Bulgars, at its head. Europe had not recovered from this shock, still
less Belgrade and Athens, when, two days later. Baron Aehrenthal announced the
formal annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina by the Emperor Francis Joseph.
Whereas most people had virtually forgotten the Treaty of Berlin and had come
to look on Austria as just as permanently settled in these two provinces as was
Great Britain in Egypt and Cyprus, yet the formal breach of the stipulations of
that treaty on Austria’s part, by annexing the provinces without notice
to or consultation with the other parties concerned, gave the excuse for a
somewhat ridiculous hue and cry on the part of the other powers, and especially
on that of Russia. The effect of these blows from right and left on Serbia was
literally paralysing. When Belgrade recovered the use of its organs, it started
to scream for war and revenue, and initiated an international crisis from which
Europe did not recover till the following year. Meanwhile, almost unobserved by
the peoples of Serbia and Montenegro, Austria had, in order to reconcile the
Turks with the loss of their provinces, good-naturedly, but from the Austrian
point of view short-sightedly, withdrawn its garrisons from the sandjak
of Novi-Pazar, thus evacuating the long-coveted corridor which was the one
thing above all else necessary to Serbia and Montenegro for the realization of
their plans.

20
Serbia and Montenegro, and the two Balkan Wars, 1908–13 (cf. Chap,
13)

The winter of 1908-9 marked the lowest ebb of Serbia’s fortunes. The
successive coups and faits accomplis carried out by Austria,
Turkey, and Bulgaria during 1908 seemed destined to destroy for good the
Serbian plans for expansion in any direction whatever, and if these could not
be realized then Serbia must die of suffocation. It was also well understood
that for all the martial ardour displayed in Belgrade the army was in no
condition to take the field any more than was the treasury to bear the cost of
a campaign; Russia had not yet recovered from the Japanese War followed by the
revolution, and indeed everything pointed to the certainty that if Serbia
indulged in hostilities against Austria-Hungary it would perish ignominiously
and alone. The worst of it was that neither Serbia nor Montenegro had any legal
claim to Bosnia and Hercegovina: they had been deluding themselves with the
hope that their ethnical identity with the people of these provinces, supported
by the effects of their propaganda, would induce a compassionate and generous
Europe at least to insist on their being given a part of the coveted territory,
and thus give Serbia access to the coast, when the ambiguous position of these
two valuable provinces, still nominally Turkish but already virtually Austrian,
came to be finally regularized. As a matter of fact, ever since Bismarck,
Gorchakóv, and Beaconsfield had put Austria-Hungary in their possession in
1878, no one had seriously thought that the Dual Monarchy would ever
voluntarily retire from one inch of the territory which had been conquered and
occupied at such cost, and those who noticed it were astonished at the
evacuation by it of the sandjak of Novi-Pazar. At the same time Baron
Achrenthal little foresaw what a hornet’s nest he would bring about his
ears by the tactless method in which the annexation was carried out. The first
effect was to provoke a complete boycott of Austro-Hungarian goods and trading
vessels throughout the Ottoman Empire, which was so harmful to the Austrian
export trade that in January 1909 Count Achrenthal had to indemnify Turkey with
the sum of £2,500,000 for his technically stolen property. Further, the
attitude of Russia and Serbia throughout the whole winter remained so
provocative and threatening that, although war was generally considered
improbable, the Austrian army had to be kept on a war footing, which involved
great expense and much popular discontent. The grave external crisis was only
solved at the end of March 1909; Germany had had to deliver a veiled ultimatum
at St. Petersburg, the result of which was the rescue of Austria-Hungary from
an awkward situation by the much-advertised appearance of its faithful ally in
shining armour. Simultaneously Serbia had to eat humble pie and declare, with
complete absence of truth, that the annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina had
not affected its interests.

Meanwhile the internal complications in the southern Slav provinces of
Austria-Hungary were growing formidable. Ever since the summer of 1908 arrests
had been going on among the members of the Croato-Serb coalition, who were
accused of favouring the subversive Pan-Serb movement. The press of
Austria-Hungary magnified the importance of this agitation in order to justify
abroad the pressing need for the formal annexation of Bosnia and Hercegovina.
The fact was that, though immediate danger to the monarchy as a result of the
Pan-Serb agitation was known not to exist, yet in the interests of Austrian
foreign policy, the Serbs had to be compromised in the eyes of Europe, the
Croato-Serb coalition within the Dual Monarchy had to be destroyed to gratify
Budapest in particular, and the religious and political discord between Croat
and Serb, on which the foundation of the power of Austria-Hungary, and
especially that of Hungary, in the south rested, and which was in a fair way of
being eliminated through the efforts of the coalition, had to be revived by
some means or other. It is not possible here to go into the details of the
notorious Agram high treason trial, which was the outcome of all this. It
suffices to say that it was a monstrous travesty of justice which lasted from
March till October 1909, and though it resulted in the ostensible destruction
of the coalition and the imprisonment of many of its members, it defeated its
own ends, as it merely fanned the flame of nationalistic feeling against Vienna
and Budapest, and Croatia has ever since had to be governed virtually by
martial law. This was followed in December 1909 by the even more famous
Friedjung trial. In March 1909 Count Achrenthal had begun in Vienna a violent
press campaign against Serbia, accusing the Serbian Government and dynasty of
complicity in the concoction of nefarious designs and conspiracies against the
integrity of Austria-Hungary. This campaign was thought to be the means of
foreshadowing and justifying the immediate military occupation of Serbia.
Unfortunately its instigator had not been sufficiently particular as to the
choice of his tools and his methods of using them. Among the contributors of
the highly tendencious articles was the well-known historian Dr. Friedjung, who
made extensive use of documents supplied him by the Vienna Foreign Office. His
accusations immediately provoked an action for libel on the part of three
leaders of the Croato-Serb coalition who were implicated, in December 1909. The
trial, which was highly sensational, resulted in the complete vindication and
rehabilitation both of those three Austrian subjects in the eyes of the whole
of Austria-Hungary and of the Belgrade Foreign Office in those of Europe; the
documents on which the charges were based were proven to be partly forgeries,
partly falsified, and partly stolen by various disreputable secret political
agents of the Austrian Foreign Office, and one of the principal Serbian
‘conspirators’, a professor of Belgrade University, proved that he
was in Berlin at the time when he had been accused of presiding over a
revolutionary meeting at Belgrade. But it also resulted in the latter
discrediting of Count Achrenthal as a diplomat and of the methods by which he
conducted the business of the Austrian Foreign Office, and involved his country
in the expenditure of countless millions which it could ill afford.

There never was any doubt that a subversive agitation had been going on, and
that it emanated in part from Serbia, but the Serbian Foreign Office, under the
able management of Dr. Milovanović and Dr. Spalajković (one of the principal
witnesses at the Friedjung trial), was far too clever to allow any of its
members, or indeed any responsible person in Serbia, to be concerned in it, and
the brilliant way in which the clumsy and foolish charges were refuted
redounded greatly to the credit of the Serbian Government. Count Achrenthal had
overreached himself, and moreover the wind had already been taken out of his
sails by the public recantation on Serbia’s part of its pretensions to
Bosnia, which, as already mentioned, took place at the end of March 1909, and
by the simultaneous termination of the international crisis marked by
Russia’s acquiescence in the fait accompli of the annexation. At
the same time the Serbian Crown Prince George, King Peter’s elder son,
who had been the leader of the chauvinist war-party in Serbia, and was somewhat
theatrical in demeanour and irresponsible in character, renounced his rights of
succession in favour of his younger brother Prince Alexander, a much steadier
and more talented young man. It is certain that when he realized how things
were going to develop Count Achrenthal tried to hush up the whole incident, but
it was too late, and Dr. Friedjung insisted on doing what he could to save his
reputation as a historian. In the end he was made the principal scapegoat,
though the press of Vienna voiced its opinion of the Austrian Foreign Office in
no measured tones, saying, amongst other things, that if the conductors of its
diplomacy must use forgeries, they might at any rate secure good ones.
Eventually a compromise was arranged, after the defendant had clearly lost his
case, owing to pressure being brought to bear from outside, and the Serbian
Government refrained from carrying out its threat of having the whole question
threshed out before the Hague Tribunal.

The cumulative effect of all these exciting and trying experiences was the
growth of a distinctly more sympathetic feeling towards Serbia in Europe at
large, and especially a rallying of all the elements throughout the Serb and
Croat provinces of Austria-Hungary, except the extreme clericals of Agram, to
the Serbian cause; briefly, the effect was the exact opposite of that desired
by Vienna and Budapest. Meanwhile events had been happening elsewhere which
revived the drooping interest and flagging hopes of Serbia in the development
of foreign affairs. The attainment of power by the Young Turks and the
introduction of parliamentary government had brought no improvement to the
internal condition of the Ottoman Empire, and the Balkan peoples made no effort
to conceal their satisfaction at the failure of the revolution to bring about
reform by magic. The counter-revolution of April 1909 and the accession of the
Sultan Mohammed V made things no better. In Macedonia, and especially in
Albania, they had been going from bad to worse. The introduction of universal
military service and obligatory payment of taxes caused a revolution in
Albania, where such innovations were not at all appreciated. From 1909 till
1911 there was a state of perpetual warfare in Albania, with which the Young
Turks, in spite of cruel reprisals, were unable to cope, until, in the summer
of that year, Austria threatened to intervene unless order were restored; some
sort of settlement was patched up, and an amnesty was granted to the rebels by
the new Sultan. This unfortunate man, after being rendered almost half-witted
by having been for the greater part of his life kept a prisoner by his brother
the tyrant Abdul Hamid, was now the captive of the Young Turks, and had been
compelled by them to make as triumphal a progress as fears for his personal
safety would allow through the provinces of European Turkey. But it was obvious
to Balkan statesmen that Turkey was only changed in name, and that, if its
threatened regeneration had slightly postponed their plans for its partition
amongst themselves, the ultimate consummation of these plans must be pursued
with, if possible, even greater energy and expedition than before. It was also
seen by the more perspicacious of them that the methods hitherto adopted must
in future be radically altered. A rejuvenated though unreformed Turkey, bent on
self-preservation, could not be despised, and it was understood that if the
revolutionary bands of the three Christian nations (Greece, Serbia, and
Bulgaria) were to continue indefinitely to cut each others’ throats in
Macedonia the tables might conceivably be turned on them.

From 1909 onwards a series of phenomena occurred in the Balkans which ought to
have given warning to the Turks, whose survival in Europe had been due solely
to the fact that the Balkan States had never been able to unite. In the autumn
of 1909 King Ferdinand of Bulgaria met Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia and
made an expedition in his company to Mount Kopaonik in Serbia, renowned for the
beauty of its flora. This must have struck those who remembered the bitter
feelings which had existed between the two countries for years and had been
intensified by the events of 1908. Bulgaria had looked on Serbia’s
failures with persistent contempt, while Serbia had watched Bulgaria’s
successful progress with speechless jealousy, and the memory of Slivnitsa was
not yet obliterated. In the summer of 1910 Prince Nicholas of Montenegro
celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his reign and his golden wedding. The
festivities were attended by King Ferdinand of Bulgaria and the Crown Prince
Boris, by the Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia and his sister, grandchildren of
Prince Nicholas, by his two daughters the Queen of Italy and the Grand Duchess
Anastasia of Russia, and by their husbands, King Victor Emmanuel and the Grand
Duke Nicholas. The happiness of the venerable ruler, who was as respected
throughout Europe as he was feared throughout his principality, was at the same
time completed by his recognition as king by all the governments and sovereigns
of the continent. The hopes that he would simultaneously introduce a more
liberal form of government amongst his own people were unfortunately
disappointed.

The year 1911, it need scarcely be recalled, was extremely fateful for the
whole of Europe. The growing restlessness and irritability manifested by the
German Empire began to make all the other governments feel exceedingly uneasy.
The French expedition to Fez in April was followed by the Anglo-Franco-German
crisis of July; war was avoided, and France was recognized as virtually master
of Morocco, but the soreness of the diplomatic defeat rendered Germany a still
more trying neighbour than it had been before. The first repercussion was the
war which broke out in September 1911 between Italy and Turkey for the
possession of Tripoli and Cyrenaica, which Italy, with its usual insight, saw
was vital to its position as a Mediterranean power and therefore determined to
acquire before any other power had time or courage to do so. In the Balkans
this was a year of observation and preparation. Serbia, taught by the bitter
lesson of 1908 not to be caught again unprepared, had spent much money and care
on its army during the last few years and had brought it to a much higher state
of efficiency. In Austria-Hungary careful observers wore aware that something
was afoot and that the gaze of Serbia, which from 1903 till 1908 had been
directed westwards to Bosnia and the Adriatic, had since 1908 been fixed on
Macedonia and the Aegean. The actual formation of the Balkan League by King
Ferdinand and M. Venezelos may not have been known, but it was realized that
action of some sort on the part of the Balkan States was imminent, and that
something must be done to forestall it. In February 1912 Count Aehrenthal died,
and was succeeded by Count Berchtold as Austro-Hungarian Minister for Foreign
Affairs. In August of the same year this minister unexpectedly announced his
new and startling proposals for the introduction of reforms in Macedonia, which
nobody in the Balkans who had any material interest in the fate of that
province genuinely desired at that moment; the motto of the new scheme was
‘progressive decentralization’, blessed words which soothed the
great powers as much as they alarmed the Balkan Governments. But already in May
1912 agreements between Bulgaria and Greece and between Bulgaria and Serbia had
been concluded, limiting their respective zones of influence in the territory
which they hoped to conquer. It was, to any one who has any knowledge of Balkan
history, incredible that the various Governments had been able to come to any
agreement at all. That arrived at by Bulgaria and Serbia divided Macedonia
between them in such a way that Bulgaria should obtain central Macedonia with
Monastir and Okhrida, and Serbia northern Macedonia or Old Serbia; there was an
indeterminate zone between the two spheres, including Skoplje (Üsküb, in
Turkish), the exact division of which it was agreed to leave to arbitration at
a subsequent date.

The Macedonian theatre of war was by common consent regarded as the most
important, and Bulgaria here promised Serbia the assistance of 100,000 men. The
Turks meanwhile were aware that all was not what it seemed beyond the
frontiers, and in August 1912 began collecting troops in Thrace, ostensibly for
manoeuvres. During the month of September the patience of the four Governments
of Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro, which had for years with the
utmost self-control been passively watching the awful sufferings of their
compatriots under Turkish misrule, gradually became exhausted. On September 28
the four Balkan Governments informed Russia that the Balkan League was an
accomplished fact, and on the 30th the representatives of all four signed the
alliance, and mobilization was ordered in Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia. The
population of Montenegro was habitually on a war footing, and it was left to
the mountain kingdom from its geographically favourable position to open
hostilities. On October 8 Montenegro declared war on Turkey, and after a series
of brilliant successes along the frontier its forces settled down to the
wearisome and arduous siege of Scutari with its impregnable sentinel, Mount
Taraboš, converted into a modern fortress; the unaccustomed nature of these
tasks, to which the Montenegrin troops, used to the adventures of irregular
warfare, were little suited, tried the valour and patience of the intrepid
mountaineers to the utmost. By that time Europe was in a ferment, and both
Russia and Austria, amazed at having the initiative in the regulation of Balkan
affairs wrested from them, showered on the Balkan capitals threats and
protests, which for once in a way were neglected.

On October 13 Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia replied that the offer of outside
assistance and advice had come too late, and that they had decided themselves
to redress the intolerable and secular wrongs of their long-suffering
compatriots in Macedonia by force of arms. To their dismay a treaty of peace
was signed at Lausanne about the same time between Turkey and Italy, which
power, it had been hoped, would have distracted Turkey’s attention by a
continuance of hostilities in northern Africa, and at any rate immobilized the
Turkish fleet. Encouraged by this success Turkey boldly declared war on
Bulgaria and Serbia on October 17, hoping to frighten Greece and detach it from
the league; but on the 18th the Greek Government replied by declaring war on
Turkey, thus completing the necessary formalities. The Turks were confident of
an early and easy victory, and hoped to reach Sofia, not from Constantinople
and Thrace, but pushing up north-eastwards from Macedonia. The rapid offensive
of the Serbian army, however, took them by surprise, and they were completely
overwhelmed at the battle of Kumanovo in northern Macedonia on October 23-4,
1912. On the 31st King Peter made his triumphal entry into Skoplje (ex-Üsküb),
the ancient capital of Serbia under Tsar Stephen Dušan in the fourteenth
century. From there the Serbian army pursued the Turks southward, and at the
battles of Prilep (November 5) and Monastir (November 19), after encountering
the most stubborn opposition, finally put an end to their resistance in this
part of the theatre of war. On November 9 the Greeks entered Salonika.

Meanwhile other divisions of the Serbian army had joined hands with the
Montenegrins, and occupied almost without opposition the long-coveted
sandjak of Novi-Pazar (the ancient Serb Raška), to the inexpressible
rage of Austria-Hungary, which had evacuated it in 1908 in favour of its
rightful owner, Turkey. At the same time a Serbian expeditionary corps marched
right through Albania, braving great hardships on the way, and on November 30
occupied Durazzo, thus securing at last a foothold on the Adriatic. Besides all
this, Serbia, in fulfilment of its treaty obligations, dispatched 50,000
splendidly equipped men, together with a quantity of heavy siege artillery, to
help the Bulgarians at the siege of Adrianople. On December 3 an armistice was
signed between the belligerents, with the condition that the three besieged
Turkish fortresses of Adrianople, Scutari, and Yanina must not be
re-victualled, and on December 16, 1912, peace negotiations were opened between
representatives of the belligerent countries in London. Meanwhile the Germanic
powers, dismayed by the unexpected victories of the Balkan armies and
humiliated by the crushing defeats in the field of the German-trained Turkish
army, had since the beginning of November been doing everything in their power
to support their client Turkey and prevent its final extinction and at the same
time the blighting of their ambitions eventually to acquire the Empire of the
Near East. During the conference in London between the plenipotentiaries of the
belligerents, parallel meetings took place between the representatives of the
great powers, whose relations with each other were strained and difficult in
the extreme. The Turkish envoys prolonged the negotiations, as was their
custom; they naturally were unwilling to concede their European provinces to
the despised and hated Greek and Slavonic conquerors, but the delays implied
growing hardships for their besieged and starving garrisons in Thrace, Epirus,
and Albania. On January 23, 1913, a quasi-revolution occurred in the Turkish
army, headed by Enver Bey and other Young Turk partisans, and approved by the
Austrian and German embassies, with the object of interrupting the negotiations
and staking all on the result of a final battle. As a result of these events,
and of the palpable disingenuousness of the Turks in continuing the
negotiations in London, the Balkan delegates on January 29 broke them off, and
on February 3, 1913, hostilities were resumed. At length, after a siege of
nearly five months, Adrianople, supplied with infinitely better artillery than
the allies possessed, was taken by the combined Serbian and Bulgarian forces on
March 26, 1913. The Serbian troops at Adrianople captured 17,010 Turkish
prisoners, 190 guns, and the Turkish commander himself, Shukri Pasha.

At the outbreak of the war in the autumn of 1912 the Balkan States had observed
all the conventions, disavowing designs of territorial aggrandizement and
proclaiming their resolve merely to obtain guarantees for the better treatment
of the Christian inhabitants of Macedonia; the powers, for their part, duly
admonished the naughty children of south-eastern Europe to the effect that no
alteration of the territorial status quo ante would under any
circumstances be tolerated. During the negotiations in London, interrupted in
January, and resumed in the spring of 1913 after the fall of Adrianople, it was
soon made clear that in spite of all these magniloquent declarations nothing
would be as it had been before. Throughout the winter Austria-Hungary had been
mobilizing troops and massing them along the frontiers of Serbia and
Montenegro, any increase in the size of which countries meant a crushing blow
to the designs of the Germanic powers and the end to all the dreams embodied in
the phrase ‘Drang nach Osten’ (‘pushing eastwards’).

In the spring of 1913 Serbia and Montenegro, instead of being defeated by the
brave Turks, as had been confidently predicted in Vienna and Berlin would be
the case, found themselves in possession of the sandjak of Novi-Pazar,
of northern and central Macedonia (including Old Serbia), and of the northern
half of Albania. The presence of Serbian troops on the shore of the Adriatic
was more than Austria could stand, and at the renewed conference of London it
was decided that they must retire. In the interests of nationality, in which
the Balkan States themselves undertook the war, it was desirable that at any
rate an attempt should be made to create an independent state of Albania,
though no one who knew the local conditions felt confident as to its ultimate
career. Its creation assuaged the consciences of the Liberal Government in
Great Britain and at the same time admirably suited the strategic plans of
Austria-Hungary. It left that country a loophole for future diplomatic efforts
to disturb the peace of south-eastern Europe, and, with its own army in Bosnia
and its political agents and irregular troops in Albania, Serbia and
Montenegro, even though enlarged as it was generally recognized they must be,
would be held in a vice and could be threatened and bullied from the south now
as well as from the north whenever it was in the interests of Vienna and
Budapest to apply the screw. The independence of Albania was declared at the
conference of London on May 30, 1913. Scutari was included in it as being a
purely Albanian town, and King Nicholas and his army, after enjoying its
coveted flesh-pots for a few halcyon weeks, had, to their mortification, to
retire to the barren fastnesses of the Black Mountain. Serbia, frustrated by
Austria in its attempts, generally recognized as legitimate, to obtain even a
commercial outlet on the Adriatic, naturally again diverted its aims southwards
to Salonika. The Greeks were already in possession of this important city and
seaport, as well as of the whole of southern Macedonia. The Serbs were in
possession of central and northern Macedonia, including Monastir and Okhrida,
which they had at great sacrifices conquered from the Turks. It had been agreed
that Bulgaria, as its share of the spoils, should have all central Macedonia,
with Monastir and Okhrida, although on ethnical grounds the Bulgarians have
only very slightly better claim to the country and towns west of the Vardar
than any of the other Balkan nationalities. But at the time that the agreement
had been concluded it had been calculated in Greece and Serbia that Albania,
far from being made independent, would be divided between them, and that
Serbia, assured of a strip of coast on the Adriatic, would have no interest in
the control of the river Vardar and of the railway which follows its course
connecting the interior of Serbia with the port of Salonika. Greece and Serbia
had no ground whatever for quarrel and no cause for mutual distrust, and they
were determined, for political and commercial reasons, to have a considerable
extent of frontier from west to east in common. The creation of an independent
Albania completely altered the situation. If Bulgaria should obtain central
Macedonia and thus secure a frontier from north to south in common with the
newly-formed state of Albania, then Greece would be at the mercy of its
hereditary enemies the Bulgars and Arnauts (Albanians) as it had previously
been at the mercy of the Turks, while Serbia would have two frontiers between
itself and the sea instead of one, as before, and its complete economic
strangulation would be rendered inevitable and rapid. Bulgaria for its own part
naturally refused to waive its claim to central Macedonia, well knowing that
the master of the Vardar valley is master of the Balkan peninsula. The first
repercussion of the ephemeral treaty of London of May 30, 1913, which created
Albania and shut out Serbia from the Adriatic, was, therefore, as the diplomacy
of the Germanic powers had all along intended it should be, the beginning of a
feud between Greece and Serbia on the one hand, and Bulgaria on the other, the
disruption of the Balkan League and the salvation, for the ultimate benefit of
Germany, of what was left of Turkey in Europe.

The dispute as to the exact division of the conquered territory in Macedonia
between Serbia and Bulgaria had, as arranged, been referred to arbitration,
and, the Tsar of Russia having been chosen as judge, the matter was being
threshed out in St. Petersburg during June 1913. Meanwhile Bulgaria, determined
to make good its claim to the chestnuts which Greece and Serbia had pulled out
of the Turkish fire, was secretly collecting troops along its temporary
south-western frontier[1] with the object, in approved Germanic fashion, of
suddenly invading and occupying all Macedonia, and, by the presentation of an
irrevocable fait accompli, of relieving the arbitrator of his invidious
duties or at any rate assisting him in the task.

[Footnote 1: This was formed by the stream Zletovska, a tributary of the river
Bregalnica, which in its turn falls into the Vardar on its left or eastern bank
about 40 miles south of Skoplje (Üsküb).]

On the other hand, the relations between Bulgaria and its two allies had been
noticeably growing worse ever since January 1913; Bulgaria felt aggrieved that,
in spite of its great sacrifices, it had not been able to occupy so much
territory as Greece and Serbia, and the fact that Adrianople was taken with
Serbian help did not improve the feeling between the two Slav nations. The
growth of Bulgarian animosity put Greece and Serbia on their guard, and, well
knowing the direction which an eventual attack would take, these two countries
on June 2, 1913, signed a military convention and made all the necessary
dispositions for resisting any aggression on Bulgaria’s part. At one
o’clock in the morning of June 30 the Bulgarians, without provocation,
without declaration of war, and without warning, crossed the Bregalnica (a
tributary of the Vardar) and attacked the Serbs. A most violent battle ensued
which lasted for several days; at some points the Bulgarians, thanks to the
suddenness of their offensive, were temporarily successful, but gradually the
Serbs regained the upper hand and by July 1 the Bulgarians were beaten. The
losses were very heavy on both sides, but the final issue was a complete
triumph for the Serbian army. Slivnitsa was avenged by the battle of the
Bregalnica, just as Kosovo was by that of Kumanovo. After a triumphant campaign
of one month, in which the Serbs were joined by the Greeks, Bulgaria had to bow
to the inevitable. The Rumanian army had invaded northern Bulgaria, bent on
maintaining the Balkan equilibrium and on securing compensation for having
observed neutrality during the war of 1912-13, and famine reigned at Sofia. A
conference was arranged at Bucarest, and the treaty of that name was signed
there on August 10, 1913. By the terms of this treaty Serbia retained the whole
of northern and central Macedonia, including Monastir and Okhrida, and the
famous sandjak of Novi-Pazar was divided between Serbia and Montenegro.
Some districts of east-central Macedonia, which were genuinely Bulgarian, were
included in Serbian territory, as Serbia naturally did not wish, after the
disquieting and costly experience of June and July 1913, to give the Bulgarians
another chance of separating Greek from Serbian territory by a fresh surprise
attack, and the further the Bulgarians could be kept from the Vardar river and
railway the less likelihood there was of this. The state of feeling in the
Germanic capitals and in Budapest after this ignominious defeat of their
protégé Bulgaria and after this fresh triumph of the despised and hated
Serbians can be imagined. Bitterly disappointed first at seeing the Turks
vanquished by the Balkan League—their greatest admirers could not even
claim that the Turks had had any ‘moral’ victories—their
chagrin, when they saw the Bulgarians trounced by the Serbians, knew no bounds.
That the secretly prepared attack on Serbia by Bulgaria was planned in Vienna
and Budapest there is no doubt. That Bulgaria was justified in feeling
disappointment and resentment at the result of the first Balkan War no one
denies, but the method chosen to redress its wrongs could only have been
suggested by the Germanic school of diplomacy.

In Serbia and Montenegro the result of the two successive Balkan Wars, though
these had exhausted the material resources of the two countries, was a
justifiable return of national self-confidence and rejoicing such as the
people, humiliated and impoverished as it had habitually been by its internal
and external troubles, had not known for very many years. At last Serbia and
Montenegro had joined hands. At last Old Serbia was restored to the free
kingdom. At last Skoplje, the mediaeval capital of Tsar Stephen Dušan, was
again in Serbian territory. At last one of the most important portions of
unredeemed Serbia had been reclaimed. Amongst the Serbs and Croats of Bosnia,
Hercegovina, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, and southern Hungary the effect of
the Serbian victories was electrifying. Military prowess had been the one
quality with which they, and indeed everybody else, had refused to credit the
Serbians of the kingdom, and the triumphs of the valiant Serbian peasant
soldiers immediately imparted a heroic glow to the country whose very name, at
any rate in central Europe, had become a byword, and a synonym for failure;
Belgrade became the cynosure and the rallying-centre of the whole
Serbo-Croatian race. But Vienna and Budapest could only lose courage and
presence of mind for the moment, and the undeniable success of the Serbian arms
merely sharpened their appetite for revenge. In August 1913 Austria-Hungary, as
is now known, secretly prepared an aggression on Serbia, but was restrained,
partly by the refusal of Italy to grant its approval of such action, partly
because the preparations of Germany at that time were not complete. The
fortunate Albanian question provided, for the time being, a more convenient rod
with which to beat Serbia. Some Serbian troops had remained in possession of
certain frontier towns and districts which were included in the territory of
the infant state of Albania pending the final settlement of the frontiers by a
commission. On October 18, 1913, Austria addressed an ultimatum to Serbia to
evacuate these, as its continued occupation of them caused offence and disquiet
to the Dual Monarchy. Serbia meekly obeyed. Thus passed away the last rumble of
the storms which had filled the years 1912-13 in south-eastern Europe.

The credulous believed that the Treaty of Bucarest had at last brought peace to
that distracted part of the world. Those who knew their central Europe realized
that Berlin had only forced Vienna to acquiesce in the Treaty of Bucarest
because the time had not yet come. But come what might, Serbia and Montenegro,
by having linked up their territory and by forming a mountain barrier from the
Danube to the Adriatic, made it far more difficult for the invader to push his
way through to the East than it would have been before the battles of Kumanovo
and Bregalnica.

GREECE

1
From Ancient to Modern Greece

The name of Greece has two entirely different associations in our minds.
Sometimes it calls up a wonderful literature enshrined in a ‘dead
language’, and exquisite works of a vanished art recovered by the spade;
at other times it is connected with the currant-trade returns quoted on the
financial page of our newspapers or with the ‘Balance of Power’
discussed in their leading articles. Ancient and Modern Greece both mean much
to us, but usually we are content to accept them as independent phenomena, and
we seldom pause to wonder whether there is any deeper connexion between them
than their name. It is the purpose of these pages to ask and give some answer
to this question.

The thought that his own Greece might perish, to be succeeded by another Greece
after the lapse of more than two thousand years, would have caused an Ancient
Greek surprise. In the middle of the fifth century B.C., Ancient Greek
civilization seemed triumphantly vigorous and secure. A generation before, it
had flung back the onset of a political power which combined all the momentum
of all the other contemporary civilizations in the world; and the victory had
proved not merely the superiority of Greek arms—the Spartan spearman and
the Athenian galley—but the superior vitality of Greek politics—the
self-governing, self-sufficing city-state. In these cities a wonderful culture
had burst into flower—an art expressing itself with equal mastery in
architecture, sculpture, and drama, a science which ranged from the most
practical medicine to the most abstract mathematics, and a philosophy which
blended art, science, and religion into an ever-developing and ever more
harmonious view of the universe. A civilization so brilliant and so versatile
as this seemed to have an infinite future before it, yet even here death lurked
in ambush.

When the cities ranged themselves in rival camps, and squandered their strength
on the struggle for predominance, the historian of the Peloponnesian war could
already picture Athens and Sparta in ruins,[1] and the catastrophe began to
warp the soul of Plato before he had carried Greek philosophy to its zenith.
This internecine strife of free communities was checked within a century by the
imposition of a single military autocracy over them all, and Alexander the
Great crowned his father Philip’s work by winning new worlds for
Hellenism from the Danube to the Ganges and from the Oxus to the Nile. The
city-state and its culture were to be propagated under his aegis, but this
vision vanished with Alexander’s death, and Macedonian militarism proved
a disappointment. The feuds of these crowned condottieri harassed the cities
more sorely than their own quarrels, and their arms could not even preserve the
Hellenic heritage against external foes. The Oriental rallied and expelled
Hellenism again from the Asiatic hinterland, while the new cloud of Rome was
gathering in the west. In four generations[2] of the most devastating warfare
the world had seen, Rome conquered all the coasts of the Mediterranean. Greek
city and Greek dynast went down before her, and the political sceptre passed
irrevocably from the Hellenic nation.

[Footnote 1: Thucydides, Book I, chap. 10.]

[Footnote 2: 264-146 B.C.]

Yet this political abdication seemed to open for Hellenic culture a future more
brilliant and assured than ever. Rome could organize as well as conquer. She
accepted the city-state as the municipal unit of the Roman Empire, thrust back
the Oriental behind the Euphrates, and promoted the Hellenization of all the
lands between this river-frontier and the Balkans with much greater intensity
than the Macedonian imperialists. Her political conquests were still further
counterbalanced by her spiritual surrender, and Hellenism was the soul of the
new Latin culture which Rome created, and which advanced with Roman government
over the vast untutored provinces of the west and north, bringing them, too,
within the orbit of Hellenic civilization. Under the shadow of the Roman
Empire, Plutarch, the mirror of Hellenism, could dwell in peace in his little
city-state of Chaeronea, and reflect in his writings all the achievements of
the Hellenic spirit as an ensample to an apparently endless posterity.

Yet the days of Hellenic culture were also numbered. Even Plutarch lived[1] to
look down from the rocky citadel of Chaeronea upon Teutonic raiders wasting the
Kephisos vale, and for more than three centuries successive hordes of Goths
searched out and ravaged the furthest corners of European Greece. Then the
current set westward to sweep away[2] the Roman administration in the Latin
provinces, and Hellenism seemed to have been granted a reprieve. The Greek
city-state of Byzantium on the Black Sea Straits had been transformed into the
Roman administrative centre of Constantinople, and from this capital the
Emperor Justinian in the sixth century A.D. still governed and defended the
whole Greek-speaking world. But this political glamour only threw the symptoms
of inward dissolution into sharper relief. Within the framework of the Empire
the municipal liberty of the city-state had been stifled and extinguished by
the waxing jungle of bureaucracy, and the spiritual culture which the
city-state fostered, and which was more essential to Hellenism than any
political institutions, had been part ejected, part exploited, and wholly
compromised by a new gospel from the east.

[Footnote 1: About A.D. 100]

[Footnote 2: A.D. 404-476]

While the Oriental had been compelled by Rome to draw his political frontier at
the Euphrates, and had failed so far to cross the river-line, he had maintained
his cultural independence within sight of the Mediterranean. In the hill
country of Judah, overlooking the high road between Antioch and Alexandria, the
two chief foci of Hellenism in the east which the Macedonians had founded, and
which had grown to maturity under the aegis of Rome, there dwelt a little
Semitic community which had defied all efforts of Greek or Roman to assimilate
it, and had finally given birth to a world religion about the time that a Roman
punitive expedition razed its holy city of Jerusalem to the ground.[1]
Christianity was charged with an incalculable force, which shot like an
electric current from one end of the Roman Empire to the other. The
highly-organized society of its adherents measured its strength in several
sharp conflicts with the Imperial administration, from which it emerged
victorious, and it was proclaimed the official religious organization of the
Empire by the very emperor that founded Constantinople.[2]

[Footnote 1: A.D. 70.]

[Footnote 2: Constantine the Great recognized Christianity in A.D. 313 and
founded Constantinople in A.D. 328.]

The established Christian Church took the best energies of Hellenism into its
service. The Greek intellectuals ceased to become lecturers and professors, to
find a more human and practical career in the bishop’s office. The Nicene
Creed, drafted by an ‘oecumenical’ conference of bishops under the
auspices of Constantine himself,[1] was the last notable formulation of Ancient
Greek philosophy. The cathedral of Aya Sophia, with which Justinian adorned
Constantinople, was the last original creation of Ancient Greek art.[2] The
same Justinian closed the University of Athens, which had educated the world
for nine hundred years and more, since Plato founded his college in the
Academy. Six recalcitrant professors went into exile for their spiritual
freedom, but they found the devout Zoroastrianism of the Persian court as
unsympathetic as the devout Christianity of the Roman. Their humiliating return
and recantation broke the ‘Golden Chain’ of Hellenic thought for
ever.

Hellenism was thus expiring from its own inanition, when the inevitable
avalanche overwhelmed it from without. In the seventh century A.D. there was
another religious eruption in the Semitic world, this time in the heart of
Arabia, where Hellenism had hardly penetrated, and under the impetus of Islam
the Oriental burst his bounds again after a thousand years. Syria was reft away
from the Empire, and Egypt, and North Africa as far as the Atlantic, and their
political severance meant their cultural loss to Greek civilization. Between
the Koran and Hellenism no fusion was possible. Christianity had taken
Hellenism captive, but Islam gave it no quarter, and the priceless library of
Alexandria is said to have been condemned by the caliph’s order to feed
the furnaces of the public baths.

[Footnote 1: A.D. 325.]

[Footnote 2: Completed A.D. 538.]

While Hellenism was thus cut short in the east, a mortal blow was struck at its
heart from the north. The Teuton had raided and passed on, but the lands he had
depopulated were now invaded by immigrants who had come to stay. As soon as the
last Goth and Lombard had gone west of the Isonzo, the Slavs poured in from the
north-eastern plains of Europe through the Moravian gap, crossed the Danube
somewhere near the site of Vienna, and drifted down along the eastern face of
the Alps upon the Adriatic littoral. Rebuffed by the sea-board, the Slavonic
migration was next deflected east, and filtered through the Bosnian mountains,
scattering the Latin-speaking provincials before it to left and right, until it
debouched upon the broad basin of the river Morava. In this concentration-area
it gathered momentum during the earlier part of the seventh century A.D., and
then burst out with irresistible force in all directions, eastward across the
Maritsa basin till it reached the Black Sea, and southward down the Vardar to
the shores of the Aegean.

Beneath this Slavonic flood the Greek race in Europe was engulfed. A few
fortified cities held out, Adrianople on the Maritsa continued to cover
Constantinople; Salonika at the mouth of the Vardar survived a two hundred
years siege; while further south Athens, Korinth, and Patras escaped
extinction. But the tide of invasion surged around their walls. The Slavs
mastered all the open country, and, pressing across the Korinthian Gulf,
established themselves in special force throughout the Peloponnesos. The
thoroughness of their penetration is witnessed to this day by the Slavonic
names which still cling to at least a third of the villages, rivers, and
mountains in European Greece, and are found in the most remote as well as in
the most accessible quarters of the land.[1]

[Footnote 1: For example: Tsimova and Panitsa in the Tainaron peninsula
(Maina); Tsoupana and Khrysapha in Lakonia; Dhimitzana, Karytena, and
Andhritsena in the centre of Peloponnesos, and Vostitsa on its north coast;
Dobrena and Kaprena in Boiotia; Vonitza on the Gulf of Arta; Kardhitsa in the
Thessalian plain.]

With the coming of the Slavs darkness descends like a curtain upon Greek
history. We catch glimpses of Arab hosts ranging across Anatolia at will and
gazing at Slavonic hordes across the narrow Bosphorus. But always the Imperial
fleet patrols the waters between, and always the triple defences of
Constantinople defy the assailant. Then after about two centuries the floods
subside, the gloom disperses, and the Greek world emerges into view once more.
But the spectacle before us is unfamiliar, and most of the old landmarks have
been swept away.

By the middle of the ninth century A.D., the Imperial Government had reduced
the Peloponnesos to order again, and found itself in the presence of three
peoples. The greater part of the land was occupied by
‘Romaioi’—normal, loyal, Christian subjects of the
empire—but in the hilly country between Eurotas, Taygetos, and the sea,
two Slavonic tribes still maintained themselves in defiant savagery and
worshipped their Slavonic gods, while beyond them the peninsula of Tainaron,
now known as Maina, sheltered communities which still clung to the pagan name
of Hellene and knew no other gods but Zeus, Athena, and Apollo. Hellene and
Slav need not concern us. They were a vanishing minority, and the Imperial
Government was more successful in obliterating their individuality than in
making them contribute to its exchequer. The future lay with the Romaioi.

The speech of these Romaioi was not the speech of Rome. ‘Romaikà,’
as it is still called popularly in the country-side, is a development of the
‘koinè’ or ‘current’ dialect of Ancient Greek, in which
the Septuagint and the New Testament are written. The vogue of these books
after the triumph of Christianity and the oncoming of the Dark Age, when they
were the sole intellectual sustenance of the people, gave the idiom in which
they were composed an exclusive prevalence. Except in Tzakonia—the
iron-bound coast between Cape Malea and Nauplia Bay—all other dialects of
Ancient Greek became extinct, and the varieties of the modern language are all
differentiations of the ‘koinè’, along geographical lines which in
no way correspond with those which divided Doric from Ionian. Yet though Romaic
is descended from the ‘koinè’, it is almost as far removed from it
as modern Italian is from the language of St. Augustine or Cicero. Ancient
Greek possessed a pitch-accent only, which allowed the quantitative values of
syllables to be measured against one another, and even to form the basis of a
metrical system. In Romaic the pitch-accent has transformed itself into a
stress-accent almost as violent as the English, which has destroyed all
quantitative relation between accented and unaccented syllables, often wearing
away the latter altogether at the termination of words, and always
impoverishing their vowel sounds. In the ninth century A.D. this new
enunciation was giving rise to a new poetical technique founded upon accent and
rhyme, which first essayed itself in folk-songs and ballads,[1] and has since
experimented in the same variety of forms as English poetry.

[Footnote 1: The earliest products of the modern technique were called
‘city’ verses, because they originated in Constantinople, which has
remained ‘the city’ par excellence for the Romaic Greek ever
since the Dark Age made it the asylum of his civilization.]

These humble beginnings of a new literature were supplemented by the rudiments
of a new art. Any visitor at Athens who looks at the three tiny churches [1]
built in this period of first revival, and compares them with the rare
pre-Norman churches of England, will find the same promise of vitality in the
Greek architecture as in his own. The material—worked blocks of marble
pillaged from ancient monuments, alternating with courses of contemporary
brick—produces a completely new aesthetic effect upon the eye; and the
structure—a grouping of lesser cupolas round a central dome— is the
very antithesis of the ‘upright-and-horizontal’ style which
confronts him in ruins upon the Akropolis.

[Footnote 1: The Old Metropolitan, the Kapnikaria, and St. Theodore.]

These first achievements of Romaic architecture speak by implication of the
characteristic difference between the Romaios and the Hellene. The linguistic
and the aesthetic change were as nothing compared to the change in religion,
for while the Hellene had been a pagan, the Romaios was essentially a member of
the Christian Church. Yet this new and determining characteristic was already
fortified by tradition. The Church triumphant had swiftly perfected its
organisation on the model of the Imperial bureaucracy. Every Romaios owed
ecclesiastical allegiance, through a hierarchy of bishops and metropolitans, to
a supreme patriarch at Constantinople, and in the ninth century this
administrative segregation of the imperial from the west-European Church had
borne its inevitable fruit in a dogmatic divergence, and ripened into a schism
between the Orthodox Christianity of the east on the one hand and the
Catholicism of the Latin world on the other.

The Orthodox Church exercised an important cultural influence over its Romaic
adherents. The official language of its scriptures, creeds, and ritual had
never ceased to be the Ancient Greek ‘koinè’ and by keeping the
Romaios familiar with this otherwise obsolete tongue it kept him in touch with
the unsurpassable literature of his Ancient Greek predecessors. The vast body
of Hellenic literature had perished during the Dark Age, when all the energies
of the race were absorbed by the momentary struggle for survival; but about a
third of the greatest authors’ greatest works had been preserved, and now
that the stress was relieved, the wreckage of the remainder was sedulously
garnered in anthologies, abridgements, and encyclopaedias. The rising
monasteries offered a safe harbourage both for these compilations and for such
originals as survived unimpaired, and in their libraries they were henceforth
studied, cherished, and above all recopied with more or less systematic care.

The Orthodox Church was thus a potent link between past and present, but the
most direct link of all was the political survival of the Empire. Here, too,
many landmarks had been swept away. The marvellous system of Roman Law had
proved too subtle and complex for a world in the throes of dissolution. Within
a century of its final codification by Justinian’s commissioners) it had
begun to fall into disuse, and was now replaced by more summary legislation,
which was as deeply imbued with Mosaic principles as the literary language with
the Hebraisms of the New Testament, and bristled with barbarous applications of
the Lex Talionis. The administrative organization instituted by Augustus
and elaborated by Diocletian had likewise disappeared, and the army-corps
districts were the only territorial units that outlasted the Dark Age. Yet the
tradition of order lived on. The army itself preserved Roman discipline and
technique to a remarkable degree, and the military districts were already
becoming the basis for a reconstituted civil government. The wealth of Latin
technicalities incorporated in the Greek style of ninth-century officialdom
witnesses to this continuity with the past and to the consequent political
superiority of the Romaic Empire over contemporary western Europe.

Within the Imperial frontiers the Romaic race was offered an apparently secure
field for its future development. In the Balkan peninsula the Slav had been
expelled or assimilated to the south of a line stretching from Avlona to
Salonika. East of Salonika the empire still controlled little more in Europe
than the ports of the littoral, and a military highway linking them with each
other and with Constantinople. But beyond the Bosphorus the frontier included
the whole body of Anatolia as far as Taurus and Euphrates, and here was the
centre of gravity both of the Romaic state and of the Romaic nation.

A new Greek nation had in fact come into being, and it found itself in touch
with new neighbours, whom the Ancient Greek had never known. Eastward lay the
Armenians, reviving, like the Greeks, after the ebb of the Arab flood, and the
Arabs themselves, quiescent within their natural bounds and transfusing the
wisdom of Aristotle and Hippokrates into their native culture. Both these
peoples were sundered from the Orthodox Greek by religion[1] as well as by
language, but a number of nationalities established on his opposite flank had
been evangelized from Constantinople and followed the Orthodox patriarch in his
schism with Rome. The most important neighbour of the Empire in this quarter
was the Bulgarian kingdom, which covered all the Balkan hinterland from the
Danube and the Black Sea to the barrier-fortresses of Adrianople and Salonika.
It had been founded by a conquering caste of non-Slavonic nomads from the
trans-Danubian steppes, but these were completely absorbed in the Slavonic
population which they had endowed with their name and had preserved by
political consolidation from the fate of their brethren further south. This
Bulgarian state included a large ‘Vlach’ element descended from
those Latin-speaking provincials whom the Slavs had pushed before them in their
original migration; while the main body of the ‘Rumans’, whom the
same thrust of invasion had driven leftwards across the Danube, had established
itself in the mountains of Transylvania, and was just beginning to push down
into the Wallachian and Moldavian plains. Like the Bulgars, this Romance
population had chosen the Orthodox creed, and so had the purely Slavonic Serbs,
who had replaced the Rumans in the basin of the Morava and the Bosnian hills,
as far westward as the Adriatic coast. Beyond, the heathen Magyars had pressed
into the Danubian plains like a wedge, and cut off the Orthodox world from the
Latin-Teutonic Christendom of the west; but it looked as though the two
divisions of Europe were embarked upon the same course of development. Both
were evolving a system of strongly-knit nationalities, neither wholly
interdependent nor wholly self-sufficient, but linked together in their
individual growth by the ties of common culture and religion. In both the
darkness was passing. The future of civilization seemed once more assured, and
in the Orthodox world the new Greek nation seemed destined to play the leading
part.

[Footnote 1: The Armenians split off from the Catholic Church four centuries
before the schism between the Roman and Orthodox sections of the latter.]

His cultural and political heritage from his ancient predecessors gave the
Romaic Greek in this period of revival an inestimable advantage over his cruder
neighbours, and his superiority declared itself in an expansion of the Romaic
Empire. In the latter half of the tenth century A.D. the nest of Arab pirates
from Spain, which had established itself in Krete and terrorized the Aegean,
was exterminated by the Emperor Nikiphóros Phokas, and on the eastern marches
Antioch was gathered within the frontier at the Arabs’ expense, and
advanced posts pushed across Euphrates. In the first half of the eleventh
century Basil, ‘Slayer of the Bulgars’, destroyed the Balkan
kingdom after a generation of bitter warfare, and brought the whole interior of
the peninsula under the sway of Constantinople. His successors turned their
attention to the cast again, and attracted one Armenian principality after
another within the Imperial protectorate. Nor was the revival confined to
politics. The conversion of the Russians about A.D. 1000 opened a boundless
hinterland to the Orthodox Church, and any one who glances at a series of Greek
ivory carvings or studies Greek history from the original sources, will here
encounter a literary and artistic renaissance remarkable enough to explain the
fascination which the barbarous Russian and the outlandish Armenian found in
Constantinople. Yet this renaissance had hardly set in before it was paralysed
by an unexpected blow, which arrested the development of Modern Greece for
seven centuries.

Modern, like Ancient, Greece was assailed in her infancy by a conqueror from
the east, and, unlike Ancient Greece, she succumbed. Turkish nomads from the
central Asiatic steppes had been drifting into the Moslem world as the vigour
of the Arabs waned. First they came as slaves, then as mercenaries, until at
last, in the eleventh century, the clan of Seljuk grasped with a strong hand
the political dominion of Islam. As champions of the caliph the Turkish sultans
disputed the infidels encroachment on the Moslem border. They challenged the
Romaic Empire’s progress in Armenia, and in A.D. 1071—five years
after the Norman founded at Hastings the strong government which has been the
making of England—the Seljuk Turk shattered at the battle of Melasgerd
that heritage of strong government which had promised so much to Greece.

Melasgerd opened the way to Anatolia. The Arab could make no lodgement there,
but in the central steppe of the temperate plateau the Turk found a miniature
reproduction of his original environment. Tribe after tribe crossed the Oxus,
to make the long pilgrimage to these new marches which their race had won for
Islam on the west, and the civilization developed in the country by fifteen
centuries of intensive and undisturbed Hellenization was completely blotted
out. The cities wore isolated from one another till their commerce fell into
decay. The elaborately cultivated lands around them were left fallow till they
were good for nothing but the pasturage which was all that the nomad required.
The only monuments of architecture that have survived in Anatolia above ground
are the imposing khans or fortified rest-houses built by the Seljuk sultans
themselves after the consolidation of their rule, and they are the best
witnesses of the vigorous barbarism by which Romaic culture was effaced. The
vitality of the Turk was indeed unquestionable. He imposed his language and
religion upon the native Anatolian peasantry, as the Greek had imposed his
before him, and in time adopted their sedentary life, though too late to repair
the mischief his own nomadism had wrought. Turk and Anatolian coalesced into
one people; every mountain, river, lake, bridge, and village in the country
took on a Turkish name, and a new nation was established for ever in the heart
of the Romaic world, which nourished itself on the life-blood of the Empire and
was to prove the supreme enemy, of the race.

This sequel to Melasgerd sealed the Empire’s doom. Robbed of its
Anatolian governing class and its Anatolian territorial army, it ceased to be
self-sufficient, and the defenders it attracted from the west were at least as
destructive as its eastern foes. The brutal régime of the Turks in the
pilgrimage places of Syria had roused a storm of indignation in Latin Europe,
and a cloud gathered in the west once more. It was heralded by adventurers from
Normandy, who had first served the Romaic Government as mercenaries in southern
Italy and then expelled their employers, about the time of Melasgerd, from
their last foothold in the peninsula. Raids across the straits of Otranto
carried the Normans up to the walls of Salonika, their fleets equipped in
Sicily scoured the Aegean, and, before the eleventh century was out, they had
followed up these reconnoitring expeditions by conducting Latin Christendom on
its first crusade. The crusaders assembled at Constantinople, and the Imperial
Government was relieved when the flood rolled on and spent itself further east.
But one wave was followed by another, and the Empire itself succumbed to the
fourth. In A.D. 1204, Constantinople was stormed by a Venetian flotilla and the
crusading host it conveyed on board, and more treasures of Ancient Hellenism
were destroyed in the sack of its hitherto inviolate citadel than had ever
perished by the hand of Arab or Slav.

With the fall of the capital the Empire dissolved in chaos, Venice and Genoa,
the Italian trading cities whose fortune had been made by the crusades, now
usurped the naval control of the Mediterranean which the Empire had exercised
since Nikiphóros pacified Krete. They seized all strategical points of vantage
on the Aegean coasts, and founded an ‘extra-territorial’ community
at Pera across the Golden Horn, to monopolize the trade of Constantinople with
the Black Sea. The Latins failed to retain their hold on Constantinople itself,
for the puppet emperors of their own race whom they enthroned there were
evicted within a century by Romaic dynasts, who clung to such fragments of
Anatolia as had escaped the Turk. But the Latin dominion was less ephemeral in
the southernmost Romaic provinces of Europe. The Latins’ castles, more
conspicuous than the relics of Hellas, still crown many high hills in Greece,
and their French tongue has added another strain, to the varied nomenclature of
the country.[1] Yet there also pandemonium prevailed. Burgundian barons,
Catalan condottieri, and Florentine bankers snatched the Duchy of Athens from
one another in bewildering succession, while the French princes of Achaia were
at feud with their kindred vassals in the west of the Peloponnesos whenever
they were not resisting the encroachments of Romaic despots in the south and
east. To complete the anarchy, the non-Romaic peoples in the interior of the
Balkan peninsula had taken the fall of Constantinople as a signal to throw off
the Imperial yoke. In the hinterland of the capital the Bulgars had
reconstituted their kingdom. The Romance-speaking Vlachs of Pindus moved down
into the Thessalian plains. The aboriginal Albanians, who with their back to
the Adriatic had kept the Slavs at bay, asserted their vitality and sent out
migratory swarms to the south, which entered the service of the warring
princelets and by their prowess won broad lands in every part of continental
Greece, where Albanian place-names are to this day only less common than
Slavonic. South-eastern Europe was again in the throes of social dissolution,
and the convulsions continued till they were stilled impartially by the numbing
hand of their ultimate author the Turk.

[Footnote 1: e.g. Klemoutsi, Glarentsa (Clarence) and Gastouni—villages
of the currant district in Peloponnesos—and Sant-Omeri, the mountain that
overlooks them.]

The Seljuk sultanate in Anatolia, shaken by the crusades, had gone the way of
all oriental empires to make room for one of its fractions, which showed a most
un-oriental faculty of organic growth. This was the extreme march on the
north-western rim of the Anatolian plateau, overlooking the Asiatic littoral of
the Sea of Marmora. It had been founded by one of those Turkish chiefs who
migrated with their clans from beyond the Oxus; and it was consolidated by
Othman his son, who extended his kingdom to the cities on the coast and
invested his subjects with his own name. In 1355 the Narrows of Gallipoli
passed into Ottoman hands, and opened a bridge to unexpected conquests in
Europe. Serbia and Bulgaria collapsed at the first attack, and the hosts which
marched to liberate them from Hungary and from France only ministered to
Ottoman prestige by their disastrous discomfiture. Before the close of the
fourteenth century the Ottoman sultan had transferred his capital to
Adrianople, and had become immeasurably the strongest power in the Balkan
peninsula.

After that the end came quickly. At Constantinople the Romaic dynasty of
Palaiologos had upheld a semblance of the Empire for more than a century after
the Latin was expelled. But in 1453 the Imperial city fell before the assault
of Sultan Mohammed; and before his death the conqueror eliminated all the other
Romaic and Latin principalities from Peloponnesos to Trebizond, which had
survived as enclaves to mar the uniformity of the Ottoman domain. Under his
successors the tide of Ottoman conquest rolled on for half a century more over
south-eastern Europe, till it was stayed on land beneath the ramparts of
Vienna,[1] and culminated on sea, after the systematic reduction of the
Venetian strongholds, in the capture of Rhodes from the Knights of St. John.[2]
The Romaic race, which had been split into so many fragments during the
dissolution of the Empire, was reunited again in the sixteenth century under
the common yoke of the Turk.

[Footnote 1: 1526.]

[Footnote 2: 1522.]

Even in the Dark Age, Greece had hardly been reduced to so desperate a
condition as now. Through the Dark Age the Greek cities had maintained a
continuous life, but Mohammed II depopulated Constantinople to repeople it with
a Turkish majority from Anatolia. Greek commerce would naturally have benefited
by the ejection of the Italians from the Levant, had not the Ottoman Government
given asylum simultaneously to the Jews expelled from Spain. These Sephardim
established themselves at Constantinople, Salonika, and all the other
commercial centres of the Ottoman dominion, and their superiority in numbers
and industry made them more formidable urban rivals of the Greeks than the
Venetians and Genoese had ever been.

Ousted from the towns, the Greek race depended for its preservation on the
peasantry, yet Greece had never suffered worse rural oppression than under the
Ottoman régime. The sultan’s fiscal demands were the least part of the
burden. The paralysing land-tax, collected in kind by irresponsible middlemen,
was an inheritance from the Romaic Empire, and though it was now reinforced by
the special capitation-tax levied by the sultan on his Christian subjects, the
greater efficiency and security of his government probably compensated for the
additional charge. The vitality of Greece was chiefly sapped by the ruthless
military organization of the Ottoman state. The bulk of the Ottoman army was
drawn from a feudal cavalry, bound to service, as in the mediaeval Latin world,
in return for fiefs or ‘timaria’ assigned to them by their
sovereign; and many beys and agas have bequeathed their names in perpetuity to
the richest villages on the Messenian and Thessalian plains, to remind the
modern peasant that his Christian ancestors once tilled the soil as serfs of a
Moslem timariot. But the sultan, unlike his western contemporaries, was not
content with irregular troops, and the serf-communes of Greece had to deliver
up a fifth of their male children every fourth year to be trained at
Constantinople as professional soldiers and fanatical Moslems. This corps of
‘Janissaries’[1] was founded in the third generation of the Ottoman
dynasty, and was the essential instrument of its military success. One race has
never appropriated and exploited the vitality of another in so direct or so
brutal a fashion, and the institution of ‘tribute-children’, so
long as it lasted, effectually prevented any recovery of the Greek nation from
the untimely blows which had stricken it down.

[Footnote 1: Yeni Asker—New soldiery.]

2
The Awakening of the Nation

During the two centuries that followed the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople,
the Greek race was in serious danger of annihilation. Its life-blood was
steadily absorbed into the conquering community—quite regularly by the
compulsory tribute of children and spasmodically by the voluntary conversion of
individual households. The rich apostasized, because too heavy a material
sacrifice was imposed upon them by loyalty to their national religion; the
destitute, because they could not fail to improve their prospects by adhering
to the privileged faith. Even the surviving organization of the Church had only
been spared by the Ottoman Government in order to facilitate its own political
system—by bringing the peasant, through the hierarchy of priest, bishop,
and patriarch, under the moral control of the new Moslem master whom the
ecclesiastics henceforth served.

The scale on which wholesale apostasy was possible is shown by the case of
Krete, which was conquered by the Turks from Venice just after these two
centuries had closed, and was in fact the last permanent addition to the
Turkish Empire. No urban or feudal settlers of Turkish blood were imported into
the island. To this day the uniform speech of all Kretans is their native
Greek. And yet the progressive conversion of whole clans and villages had
transferred at least 20 per cent. of the population to the Moslem ranks before
the Ottoman connexion was severed again in 1897.

The survival of the Greek nationality did not depend on any efforts of the
Greeks themselves. They were indeed no longer capable of effort, but lay
passive under the hand of the Turk, like the paralysed quarry of some beast of
prey. Their fate was conditional upon the development of the Ottoman state,
and, as the two centuries drew to a close, that state entered upon a phase of
transformation and of consequent weakness.

The Ottoman organism has always displayed (and never more conspicuously than at
the present moment) a much greater stability and vitality than any of its
oriental predecessors. There was a vein of genius in its creators, and its
youthful expansion permeated it with so much European blood that it became
partly Europeanized in its inner tissues—sufficiently to partake, at any
rate, in that faculty of indefinite organic growth which has so far revealed
itself in European life. This acquired force has carried it on since the time
when the impetus of its original institutions became spent—a time when
purely oriental monarchies fall to pieces, and when Turkey herself hesitated
between reconstruction and dissolution. That critical period began for her with
the latter half of the seventeenth century, and incidentally opened new
opportunities of life to her subject Greeks.

Substantial relief from their burdens—the primary though negative
condition of national revival—accrued to the Greek peasantry from the
decay of Ottoman militarism in all its branches. The Turkish feudal
aristocracy, which had replaced the landed nobility of the Romaic Empire in
Anatolia and established itself on the choicest lands in conquered Europe, was
beginning to decline in strength. We have seen that it failed to implant itself
in Krete, and its numbers were already stationary elsewhere. The Greek peasant
slowly began to regain ground upon his Moslem lord, and he profited further by
the degeneration of the janissary corps at the heart of the empire.

The janissaries had started as a militant, almost monastic body, condemned to
celibacy, and recruited exclusively from the Christian tribute-children. But in
1566 they extorted the privilege of legal marriage for themselves, and of
admittance into the corps for the sons of their wedlock. The next century
completed their transformation from a standing army into a hereditary urban
militia—an armed and privileged bourgeoisie, rapidly increasing in
numbers and correspondingly jealous of extraneous candidates for the coveted
vacancies in their ranks. They gradually succeeded in abolishing the enrolment
of Christian recruits altogether, and the last regular levy of children for
that purpose was made in 1676. Vested interests at Constantinople had freed the
helpless peasant from the most crushing burden of all.

At the same moment the contemporary tendency in western Europe towards
bureaucratic centralization began to extend itself to the Ottoman Empire. Its
exponents were the brothers Achmet and Mustapha Köprili, who held the
grand-vizierate in succession. They laid the foundations of a centralized
administration, and, since the unadaptable Turk offered no promising material
for their policy, they sought their instruments in the subject race. The
continental Greeks were too effectively crushed to aspire beyond the
preservation of their own existence; but the islands had been less sorely
tried, and Khios, which had enjoyed over two centuries[1] of prosperity under
the rule of a Genoese chartered company, and exchanged it for Ottoman
sovereignty under peculiarly lenient conditions, could still supply Achmet a
century later with officials of the intelligence and education he required,
Khiots were the first to fill the new offices of ‘Dragoman of the
Porte’ (secretary of state) and ‘Dragoman of the Fleet’
(civil complement of the Turkish capitan-pasha); and they took care in their
turn to staff the subordinate posts of their administration with a host of
pushing friends and dependants. The Dragoman of the Fleet wielded the fiscal,
and thereby in effect the political, authority over the Greek islands in the
Aegean; but this was not the highest power to which the new Greek bureaucracy
attained. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth century Moldavia and
Wallachia—the two ‘Danubian Provinces’ now united in the
kingdom of Rumania—were placed in charge of Greek officials with the rank
of voivode or prince, and with practically sovereign power within their
delegated dominions. A Danubian principality became the reward of a successful
dragoman’s career, and these high posts were rapidly monopolized by a
close ring of official families, who exercised their immense patronage in
favour of their race, and congregated round the Greek patriarch in the
‘Phanari’,[2] the Constantinopolitan slum assigned him for his
residence by Mohammed the Conqueror.

[Footnote 1: 1346-1566.]

[Footnote 2: ‘Lighthouse-quarter.’]

The alliance of this parvenu ‘Phanariot’ aristocracy with the
conservative Orthodox Church was not unnatural, for the Church itself had
greatly extended its political power under Ottoman suzerainty. The Ottoman
Government hardly regarded its Christian subjects as integral members of the
state, and was content to leave their civil government in the hands of their
spiritual pastors to an extent the Romaic emperors would never have tolerated.
It allowed the Patriarchate at Constantinople to become its official
intermediary with the Greek race, and it further extended the Greek
patriarch’s authority over the other conquered populations of Orthodox
faith—Bulgars, Rumans, and Serbs—which had never been incorporated
in the ecclesiastical or political organization of the Romaic Empire, but which
learnt under Ottoman rule to receive their priests and bishops from the Greek
ecclesiastics of the capital, and even to call themselves by the Romaic name.
In 1691 Mustapha Köprili recognized and confirmed the rights of all Christian
subjects of the Sultan by a general organic law.

Mustapha’s ‘New Ordinance’ was dictated by the reverses which
Christians beyond the frontier were inflicting upon the Ottoman arms, for
pressure from without had followed hard upon disintegration within.
Achmet’s pyrrhic triumph over Candia in 1669 was followed in 1683 by his
brother Mustapha’s disastrous discomfiture before the walls of Vienna,
and these two sieges marked the turn of the Ottoman tide. The ebb was slow, yet
the ascendancy henceforth lay with Turkey’s Christian neighbours, and
they began to cut short her frontiers on every side.

The Venetians had never lost hold upon the ‘Ionian’ chain of
islands— Corfù, Cefalonia, Zante, and Cerigo—which flank the
western coast of Greece, and in 1685 they embarked on an offensive on the
mainland, which won them undisputed possession of Peloponnesos for twenty
years.[1] Venice was far nearer than Turkey to her dissolution, and spent the
last spasm of her energy on this ephemeral conquest. Yet she had maintained the
contact of the Greek race with western Europe during the two centuries of
despair, and the interlude of her rule in Peloponnesos was a fitting
culmination to her work; for, brief though it was, it effectively broke the
Ottoman tradition, and left behind it a system of communal self-government
among the Peloponnesian Greeks which the returning Turk was too feeble to sweep
away. The Turks gained nothing by the rapid downfall of Venice, for Austria as
rapidly stepped into her place, and pressed with fresh vigour the attack from
the north-west. North-eastward, too, a new enemy had arisen in Russia, which
had been reorganized towards the turn of the century by Peter the Great with a
radical energy undreamed of by any Turkish Köprili, and which found its destiny
in opposition to the Ottoman Empire. The new Orthodox power regarded itself as
the heir of the Romaic Empire from which it had received its first Christianity
and culture. It aspired to repay the Romaic race in adversity by championing it
against its Moslem oppressors, and sought its own reward in a maritime outlet
on the Black Sea. From the beginning of the eighteenth century Russia
repeatedly made war on Turkey, either with or without the co-operation of
Austria; but the decisive bout in the struggle was the war of 1769-74. A
Russian fleet appeared in the Mediterranean, raised an insurrection in
Peloponnesos, and destroyed the Turkish squadron in battle. The Russian armies
were still more successful on the steppes, and the Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji
not only left the whole north coast of the Black Sea in Russia’s
possession, but contained an international sanction for the rights of the
sultan’s Orthodox subjects. In 1783 a supplementary commercial treaty
extorted for the Ottoman Greeks the right to trade under the Russian flag. The
territorial sovereignty of Turkey in the Aegean remained intact, but the
Russian guarantee gave the Greek race a more substantial security than the
shadowy ordinance of Mustapha Köprili. The paralysing prestige of the Porte was
broken, and Greek eyes were henceforth turned in hope towards Petersburg.

[Footnote 1: 1699-1718.]

By the end of the eighteenth century the condition of the Greeks had in fact
changed remarkably for the better, and the French and English travellers who
now began to visit the Ottoman Empire brought away the impression that a
critical change in its internal equilibrium was at hand. The Napoleonic wars
had just extinguished the Venetian Republic and swept the Ionian Islands into
the struggle between England and France for the mastery of the Mediterranean.
England had fortified herself in Cefalonia and Zante, France in Corfù, and
interest centred on the opposite mainland, where Ali Pasha of Yannina
maintained a formidable neutrality towards either power.

The career of Ali marked that phase in the decline of an Oriental empire when
the task of strong government becomes too difficult for the central authority
and is carried on by independent satraps with greater efficiency in their more
limited sphere. Ali governed the Adriatic hinterland with practically sovereign
power, and compelled the sultan for some years to invest his sons with the
pashaliks of Thessaly and Peloponnesos. The greater part of the Greek race thus
came in some degree under his control, and his policy towards it clearly
reflected the transition from the old to the new. He waged far more effective
war than the distant sultan upon local liberties, and, though the elimination
of the feudal Turkish landowner was pure gain to the Greeks, they suffered
themselves from the loss of traditional privileges which the original Ottoman
conquest had left intact. The Armatoli, a local Christian militia who kept
order in the mountainous mainland north of Peloponnesos where Turkish
feudatories were rare, were either dispersed by Ali or enrolled in his regular
army. And he was ruthless in the extermination of recalcitrant communities,
like Agrapha on the Aspropotarno, which had never been inscribed on the
taxation-rolls of the Romaic or the Ottoman treasury, or Suli, a robber clan
ensconced in the mountains Immediately west of Ali’s capital. On the
other hand, the administration of these pacified and consolidated dominions
became as essentially Greek in character as the Phanariot régime beyond the
Danube. Ali was a Moslem and an Albanian, but the Orthodox Greeks were in a
majority among his subjects, and he knew how to take advantage of their
abilities. His business was conducted by Greek secretaries in the Greek tongue,
and Yannina, his capital, was a Greek city. European visitors to Yannina (for
every one began the Levantine tour by paying his respects to Ali) were struck
by the enterprise and intelligence of its citizens. The doctors were competent,
because they had taken their education in Italy or France; the merchants were
prosperous, because they had established members of their family at Odessa,
Trieste, or even Hamburg, as permanent agents of their firm. A new Greek
bourgeoisie had arisen, in close contact with the professional life of
western Europe, and equally responsive to the new philosophical and political
ideas that were being propagated by the French Revolution.

This intellectual ferment was the most striking change of all. Since the sack
of Constantinople in 1204, Greek culture had retired into the
monasteries—inaccessible fastnesses where the monks lived much the same
life as the clansmen of Suli or Agrapha. Megaspélaion, the great cave quarried
in the wall of a precipitous Peloponnesian ravine; Metéora, suspended on half a
dozen isolated pinnacles of rock in Thessaly, where the only access was by
pulley or rope-ladder; ‘Ayon Oros’, the confederation of
monasteries great and small upon the mountain-promontory of Athos—these
succeeded in preserving a shadow of the old tradition, at the cost of isolation
from all humane influences that might have kept their spiritual inheritance
alive. Their spirit was mediaeval, ecclesiastical, and as barren as their
sheltering rocks; and the new intellectual disciples of Europe turned to the
monasteries in vain. The biggest ruin on Athos is a boys’ school planned
in the eighteenth century to meet the educational needs of all the Orthodox in
the Ottoman Empire, and wrecked on the reefs of monastic obscurantism. But its
founder, the Corfiot scholar Evyénios Voulgáris, did not hesitate to break with
the past. He put his own educational ideas into practice at Yannina and
Constantinople, and contributed to the great achievement of his contemporary,
the Khiot Adhamandios Koráis, who settled in Paris and there evolved a literary
adaptation of the Romaic patois to supersede the lifeless travesty of Attic
style traditionally affected by ecclesiastical penmen. But the renaissance was
not confined to Greeks abroad. The school on Athos failed, but others
established themselves before the close of the eighteenth century in the
people’s midst, even in the smaller towns and the remoter villages. The
still flourishing secondary school of Dhimitzána, in the heart of Peloponnesos,
began its existence in this period, and the national revival found expression
in a new name. Its prophets repudiated the ‘Romaic’ name, with its
associations of ignorance and oppression, and taught their pupils to think of
themselves as ‘Hellenes’ and to claim in their own right the
intellectual and political liberty of the Ancient Greeks.

This spiritual ‘Hellenism’, however, was only one manifestation of
returning vitality, and was ultimately due to the concrete economic development
with which it went hand in hand. The Greeks, who had found culture in western
Europe, had come there for trade, and their commercial no less than their
intellectual activity reacted in a penetrating way upon their countrymen at
home. A mountain village like Ambelakia in Thessaly found a regular market for
its dyed goods in Germany, and the commercial treaty of 1783 between Turkey and
Russia encouraged communities which could make nothing of the land to turn
their attention to the sea. Galaxhidi, a village on the northern shore of the
Korinthian Gulf, whose only asset was its natural harbour, and Hydhra, Spetza,
and Psarà, three barren little islands in the Aegean, had begun to lay the
foundations of a merchant marine, when Napoleon’s boycott and the British
blockade, which left no neutral flag but the Ottoman in the Mediterranean,
presented the Greek shipmen that sailed under it with an opportunity they
exploited to the full. The whitewashed houses of solid stone, rising tier above
tier up the naked limestone mountainside, still testify to the prosperity which
chance thus suddenly brought to the Hydhriots and their fellow islanders, and
did not withdraw again till it had enabled them to play a decisive part in
their nation’s history.

Their ships were small, but they were home-built, skilfully navigated, and
profitably employed in the carrying trade of the Mediterranean ports. Their
economic life was based on co-operation, for the sailors, as well as the
captain and owner of the ship, who were generally the same person, took shares
in the outlay and profit of each voyage; but their political organization was
oligarchical—an executive council elected by and from the owners of the
shipping. Feud and intrigue were rife between family and family, class and
class, and between the native community and the resident aliens, without
seriously affecting the vigour and enterprise of the commonwealth as a whole.
These seafaring islands on the eve of the modern Greek Revolution were an exact
reproduction of the Aigina, Korinth, and Athens which repelled the Persian from
Ancient Greece. The germs of a new national life were thus springing up among
the Greeks in every direction— in mercantile colonies scattered over the
world from Odessa to Alexandria and from Smyrna to Trieste; among Phanariot
princes in the Danubian Provinces and their ecclesiastical colleagues at
Constantinople; in the islands of the Aegean and the Ionian chain, and upon the
mountains of Suli and Agrapha. But the ambitions this national revival aroused
were even greater than the reality itself. The leaders of the movement did not
merely aspire to liberate the Greek nation from the Turkish yoke. They were
conscious of the assimilative power their nationality possessed. The Suliots,
for example, were an immigrant Albanian tribe, who had learnt to speak Greek
from the Greek peasants over whom they tyrannized. The Hydhriot and Spetziot
islanders were Albanians too, who had even clung to their primitive language
during the two generations since they took up their present abode, but had
become none the less firmly linked to their Greek-speaking neighbours in
Peloponnesos by their common fellowship in the Orthodox Church. The numerous
Albanian colonies settled up and down the Greek continent were at least as
Greek in feeling as they. And why should not the same prove true of the
Bulgarian population, in the Balkans, who had belonged from the beginning to
the Orthodox Church, and had latterly been brought by improvident Ottoman
policy within the Greek patriarch’s fold? Or why should not the Greek
administrators beyond the Danube imbue their Ruman subjects with a sound
Hellenic sentiment? In fact, the prophets of Hellenism did not so much desire
to extricate the Greek nation from the Ottoman Empire as to make it the ruling
element in the empire itself by ejecting the Moslem Turks from their privileged
position and assimilating all populations of Orthodox faith. These dreams took
shape in the foundation of a secret society—the ‘Philikì
Hetairía’ or ‘League of Friends’—which established
itself at Odessa in 1814 with the connivence of the Russian police, and opened
a campaign of propaganda in anticipation of an opportunity to strike.

The initiative came from the Ottoman Government itself. At the weakest moment
in its history the empire found in Sultan Mahmud a ruler of peculiar strength,
who saw that the only hope of overcoming his dangers lay in meeting them
half-way. The national movement of Hellenism was gathering momentum in the
background, but it was screened by the personal ambitions of Ali of Yannina,
and Mahmud reckoned to forestall both enemies by quickly striking Ali down.

In the winter of 1819-20 Ali was outlawed, and in the spring the invasion of
his territories began. Both the Moslem combatants enlisted Christian Armatoli,
and all continental Greece was under arms. By the end of the summer Ali’s
outlying strongholds had fallen, his armies were driven in, and he himself was
closely invested in Yannina; but with autumn a deadlock set in, and the
sultan’s reckoning was thrown out. In November 1820 the veteran soldier
Khurshid was appointed to the pashalik of Peloponnesos to hold the Greeks in
check and close accounts with Ali. In March 1821, after five months spent in
organizing his province, Khurshid felt secure enough to leave it for the
Yannina lines. But he was mistaken; for within a month of his departure
Peloponnesos was ablaze.

The ‘Philikì Hetairía’ had decided to act, and the Peloponnesians
responded enthusiastically to the signal. In the north Germanòs, metropolitan
bishop of Patras, rallied the insurgents at the monastery of Megaspélaion, and
unfurled the monastic altar-cloth as a national standard. In the south the
peninsula of Maina, which had been the latest refuge of ancient Hellenism, was
now the first to welcome the new, and to throw off the shadowy allegiance it
had paid for a thousand years to Romaic archonts and Ottoman capitan-pashas.
Led by Petros Mavromichalis, the chief of the leading clan, the Mainates issued
from their mountains. This was in April, and by the middle of May all the open
country had been swept clear, and the hosts joined hands before Tripolitza,
which was the seat of Ottoman government at the central point of the province.
The Turkish garrison attacked, but was heavily defeated at Valtetzi by the
tactical skill of Theodore Kolokotrónis the ‘klepht’, who had
become experienced in guerrilla warfare through his alternate professions of
brigand and gendarme—a career that had increased its possibilities as the
Ottoman system decayed. After Kolokotrónis’s victory, the Greeks kept
Tripolitza under a close blockade. Early in October it fell amid frightful
scenes of pillage and massacre, and Ottoman dominion in the Peloponnesos fell
with it. On January 22, 1822, Korinth, the key to the isthmus, passed into the
Greeks’ hands, and only four fortresses—Nauplia, Patras, Koron, and
Modhon—still held out within it against Greek investment. Not a Turk
survived in the Peloponnesos beyond their walls, for the slaughter at
Tripolitza was only the most terrible instance of what happened wherever a
Moslem colony was found. In Peloponnesos, at any rate, the revolution had been
grimly successful.

There had also been successes at sea. The merchant marine of the Greek islands
had suffered grievously from the fall of Napoleon and the settlement at Vienna,
which, by restoring normal conditions of trade, had destroyed their abnormal
monopoly. The revolution offered new opportunities for profitable venture, and
in April 1821 Hydhra, Spetza and Psarà hastened to send a privateering fleet to
sea. As soon as the fleet crossed the Aegean, Samos rid itself of the Turks. At
the beginning of June the rickety Ottoman squadron issued from the Dardanelles,
but it was chased back by the islanders under the lee of Mitylini. Memories of
Russian naval tactics in 1770 led the Psariots to experiment in fire-ships, and
one of the two Turkish ships of the line fell a victim to this attack. Within a
week of setting sail, the diminished Turkish squadron was back again in the
Dardanelles, and the islanders were left with the command of the sea.

The general Christian revolution thus seemed fairly launched, and in the first
panic the threatened Moslems began reprisals of an equally general kind. In the
larger Turkish cities there were massacres of Christian minorities, and the
Government lent countenance to them by murdering its own principal Christian
official Gregorios, the Greek patriarch at Constantinople, on April 22, 1821.
But Sultan Mahmud quickly recovered himself. He saw that his empire could not
survive a racial war, and determined to prevent the present revolt from
assuming such a character. His plan was to localize it by stamping out the more
distant sparks with all his energy, before concentrating his force at leisure
upon the main conflagration.

This policy was justified by the event. On March 6 the ‘Philikì
Hetairia’ at Odessa had opened its own operations in grandiose style by
sending a filibustering expedition across the Russo-Turkish frontier under
command of Prince Alexander Hypsilantis, a Phanariot in the Russian service.
Hypsilantis played for a general revolt of the Ruman population in the Danubian
Principalities and a declaration of war against Turkey on the part of Russia.
But the Rumans had no desire to assist the Greek bureaucrats who oppressed
them, and the Tsar Alexander had been converted by the experiences of 1812-13
to a pacifistic respect for the status quo. Prince Hypsilantis was
driven ignominiously to internment across the Austrian frontier, little more
than a hundred days after his expedition began; and his fiasco assured the
Ottoman Government of two encouraging facts—that the revolution would not
carry away the whole Orthodox population but would at any rate confine itself
to the Greeks; and that the struggle against it would be fought out for the
present, at least, without foreign intervention.

In the other direction, however, rebellion was spreading northward from
Peloponnesos to continental Greece. Galaxídhi revolted in April, and was
followed in June by Mesolonghi—a prosperous town of fishermen,
impregnably situated in the midst of the lagoons at the mouth of the
Aspropotamo, beyond the narrows of the Korinthian Gulf. By the end of the
month, north-western Greece was free as far as the outposts of Khurshid Pasha
beyond the Gulf of Arta.

Further eastward, again, in the mountains between the Gulf of Korinth and the
river Elládha (Sperkheiòs), the Armatoli of Ali’s faction had held their
ground, and gladly joined the revolution on the initiative of their captains
Dhiakos and Odhyssèvs. But the movement found its limits. The Turkish garrison
of Athens obstinately held out during the winter of 1821-2, and the Moslems of
Negrepont (Euboía) maintained their mastery in the island. In Agrapha they
likewise held their own, and, after one severely punished raid, the Agraphiot
Armatoli were induced to re-enter the sultan’s service on liberal terms.
The Vlachs in the gorges of the Aspropotamo were pacified with equal success;
and Dramali, Khurshid’s lieutenant, who guarded the communications
between the army investing Yannina and its base at Constantinople, was easily
able to crush all symptoms of revolt in Thessaly from his head-quarters at
Lárissa. Still further east, the autonomous Greek villages on the mountainous
promontories of Khalkidhiki had revolted in May, in conjunction with the
well-supplied and massively fortified monasteries of the ‘Ayon
Oros’; but the Pasha of Salonika called down the South Slavonic Moslem
landowners from the interior, sacked the villages, and amnestied the monastic
confederation on condition of establishing a Turkish garrison in their midst
and confiscating their arms. The monks’ compliance was assisted by the
excommunication under which the new patriarch at Constantinople had placed all
the insurgents by the sultan’s command.

The movement was thus successfully localised on the European continent, and
further afield it was still more easily cut short. After the withdrawal of the
Turkish squadron, the Greek fleet had to look on at the systematic destruction
of Kydhonies,[1] a flourishing Greek industrial town on the mainland opposite
Mitylini which had been founded under the sultan’s auspices only forty
years before. All that the islanders could do was to take off the survivors in
their boats; and when they dispersed to their ports in autumn, the Ottoman
ships came out again from the Dardanelles, sailed round Peloponnesos into the
Korinthian Gulf, and destroyed Galaxídhi. A still greater catastrophe followed
the reopening of naval operations next spring. In March 1822 the Samians landed
a force on Khios and besieged the Turkish garrison, which was relieved after
three weeks by the arrival of the Ottoman fleet. A month later the Greek fleet
likewise appeared on the scene, and on June 18 a Psariot captain, Constantine
Kanaris, actually destroyed the Ottoman flag-ship by a daring fire-ship attack.
Upon this the Ottoman fleet fled back as usual to the Dardanelles; yet the only
consequence was the complete devastation, in revenge, of helpless Khios. The
long-shielded prosperity of the island was remorselessly destroyed, the people
were either enslaved or massacred, and the victorious fleet had to stand by as
passively this time as at the destruction of Kydhonies the season before. In
the following summer, again, the same fate befell Trikéri, a maritime community
on the Gulf of Volo which had gained its freedom when the rest of Thessaly
stirred in vain; and so in 1823 the revolution found itself confined on sea, as
well as on land, to the focus where it had originated in April 1821.

[Footnote 1: Turkish Aivali.]

This isolation was a practical triumph for Sultan Mahmud. The maintenance of
the Ottoman Empire on the basis of Moslem ascendancy was thereby assured; but
it remained to be seen whether the isolated area could now be restored to the
status quo in which the rest of his dominions had been retained.

During the whole season of 1821 the army of Khurshid had been held before
Yannina. But in February 1822 Yannina fell, Ali was slain, his treasure seized,
and his troops disbanded. The Ottoman forces were liberated for a counterattack
on Peloponnesos. Already in April Khurshid broke up his camp at Lárissa, and
his lieutenant Dramali was given command of the new expedition towards the
south. He crossed the Sperkheiòs at the beginning of July with an army of
twenty thousand men.[1] Athens had capitulated to Odhyssèvs ten days before;
but it had kept open the road for Dramali, and north-eastern Greece fell
without resistance into his hands. The citadel of Korinth surrendered as tamely
as the open country, and he was master of the isthmus before the end of the
month. Nauplia meanwhile had been treating with its besiegers for terms, and
would have surrendered to the Greeks already if they had not driven their
bargain so hard. Dramali hurried on southward into the plain to the
fortress’s relief, raised the siege, occupied the town of Argos, and
scattered the Greek forces into the hills. But the citadel of Argos held out
against him, and the positions were rapidly reversed. Under the experienced
direction of Kolokotrónis, the Greeks from their hill-fastnesses ringed round
the plain of Argos and scaled up every issue. Dramali’s supplies ran out.
An attempt of his vanguard to break through again towards the north was
bloodily repulsed, and he barely succeeded two days later in extricating the
main body in a demoralized condition, with the loss of all his baggage-train.
The Turkish army melted away, Dramali was happy to die at Korinth, and Khurshid
was executed by the sultan’s command. The invasion of Peloponnesos had
broken down, and nothing could avert the fall of Nauplia. The Ottoman fleet
hovered for one September week in the offing, but Kanaris’s fire-ships
took another ship of the line in toll at the roadsteads of Tenedos before it
safely regained the Dardanelles. The garrison of Nauplia capitulated in
December, on condition of personal security and liberty, and the captain of a
British frigate, which arrived on the spot, took measures that the compact
should be observed instead of being broken by the customary massacre. But the
strongest fortress in Peloponnesos was now in Greek hands.

[Footnote 1: Including a strong contingent of Moslem Slavs—Bulgarian
Pomaks from the Aegean hinterland and Serbian Bosniaks from the Adriatic.]

In the north-west the season had not passed so well. When the Turks invested
Ali in Yannina, they repatriated the Suliot exiles in their native mountains.
But a strong sultan was just as formidable to the Suliots as a strong pasha, so
they swelled their ranks by enfranchising their peasant-serfs, and made common
cause with their old enemy in his adversity. Now that Ali was destroyed, the
Suliots found themselves in a precarious position, and turned to the Greeks for
aid. But on July 16 the Greek advance was checked by a severe defeat at Petta
in the plain of Arta. In September the Suliots evacuated their impregnable
fortresses in return for a subsidy and a safe-conduct, and Omer Vrioni, the
Ottoman commander in the west,[1] was free to advance in turn towards the
south. On November 6 he actually laid siege to Mesolonghi, but here his
experiences were as discomfiting as Dramali’s. He could not keep open his
communications, and after heavy losses retreated again to Arta in January 1823.

[Footnote 1: He was a renegade officer of Ali’s.]

In 1823 the struggle seemed to be lapsing into stalemate. The liberated
Peloponnesos had failed to propagate the revolution through the remainder of
the Ottoman Empire; the Ottoman Government had equally failed to reconquer the
Peloponnesos by military invasion. This season’s operations only seemed
to emphasize the deadlock. The Ottoman commander in the west raised an
auxiliary force of Moslem and Catholic clansmen from northern Albania, and
attempted to reach Mesolonghi once more. But he penetrated no further than
Anatolikòn—the Mesolonghiots’ outpost village at the head of the
lagoons—and the campaign was only memorable for the heroic death of Marko
Botzaris the Suliot in a night attack upon the Ottoman camp. At sea, the two
fleets indulged in desultory cruises without an encounter, for the Turks were
still timid and incompetent, while the growing insubordination and dissension
on the Greek ships made concerted action there, too, impossible. By the end of
the season it was clear that the struggle could only definitively be decided by
the intervention of a third party on one side or the other—unless the
Greeks brought their own ruin upon themselves.

This indeed was not unlikely to happen; for the new house of Hellenism had
hardly arisen before it became desperately divided against itself. The vitality
of the national movement resided entirely in the local communes. It was they
that had found the fighting men, kept them armed and supplied, and by
spontaneous co-operation expelled the Turk from Peloponnesos. But if the
co-operation was to be permanent it must have a central organization, and with
the erection of this superstructure the troubles began. As early as June 1821 a
‘Peloponnesian Senate’ was constituted and at once monopolized by
the ‘Primates’, the propertied class that had been responsible for
the communal taxes under the Romaic and Ottoman régimes and was allowed to
control the communal government in return. About the same time two Phanariot
princes threw in their lot with the revolution— Alexander Mavrokordatos
and Demetrius, the more estimable brother of the futile Alexander Hypsilantis.
Both were saturated with the most recent European political theory, and they
committed the peasants and seamen of the liberated districts to an ambitious
constitutionalism. In December 1821 a ‘National Assembly’ met at
Epidauros, passed an elaborate organic law, and elected Mavrokordatos first
president of the Hellenic Republic.

The struggle for life and death in 1822 had staved off the internal crisis, but
the Peloponnesian Senate remained obstinately recalcitrant towards the National
Government in defence of its own vested interests; and the insubordination of
the fleet in 1823 was of one piece with the political faction which broke out
as soon as the immediate danger from without was removed.

Towards the end of 1823 European ‘Philhellenes’ began to arrive in
Greece. In those dark days of reaction that followed Waterloo, self-liberated
Hellas seemed the one bright spot on the continent; but the idealists who came
to offer her their services were confronted with a sorry spectacle. The people
were indifferent to their leaders, and the leaders at variance among
themselves. The gentlemanly Phanariots had fallen into the background.
Mavrokordatos only retained influence in north-western Greece. In Peloponnesos
the Primates were all-powerful, and Kolokotrónis the klepht was meditating a
popular dictatorship at their expense. In the north-east the adventurer
Odhyssévs had won a virtual dictatorship already, and was suspected of intrigue
with the Turks; and all this factious dissension rankled into civil war as soon
as the contraction of a loan in Great Britain had invested the political
control of the Hellenic Republic with a prospective value in cash. The first
civil war was fought between Kolokotrónis on the one side and the Primates of
Hydhra and Peloponnesos on the other; but the issue was decided against
Kolokotrónis by the adhesion to the coalition of Kolettis the Vlach, once
physician to Mukhtar Pasha, the son of Ali, and now political agent for all the
northern Armatoli in the national service. The fighting lasted from November
1823 to June 1824, and was followed by another outbreak in November of the
latter year, when the victors quarrelled over the spoils, and the Primates were
worsted in turn by the islanders and the Armatoli. The nonentity Kondouriottis
of Hydhra finally emerged as President of Greece, with the sharp-witted
Kolettis as his principal wire-puller, but the disturbances did not cease till
the last instalment of the loan had been received and squandered and there was
no more spoil to fight for.

Meanwhile, Sultan Mahmud had been better employed. Resolved to avert stalemate
by the only possible means, he had applied in the course of 1823 to Mohammed
Ali Pasha of Egypt, a more formidable, though more distant, satrap than Ali of
Yannina himself. Mohammed Ali had a standing army and navy organized on the
European model. He had also a son Ibrahim, who knew how to manoeuvre them, and
was ambitious of a kingdom. Mahmud hired the father’s troops and the
son’s generalship for the re-conquest of Peloponnesos, under engagement
to invest Ibrahim with the pashalik as soon as he should effectively make it
his own. By this stroke of diplomacy a potential rebel was turned into a
willing ally, and the preparations for the Egyptian expedition went forward
busily through the winter of 1823-4.

The plan of campaign was systematically carried out. During the season of
respite the Greek islanders had harried the coasts and commerce of Anatolia and
Syria at will. The first task was to deprive them of their outposts in the
Aegean, and an advanced squadron of the Egyptian fleet accordingly destroyed
the community of Kasos in June 1824, while the Ottoman squadron sallied out of
the Dardanelles a month later and dealt out equal measure to Psarà. The two
main flotillas then effected a junction off Rhodes; and, though the crippled
Greek fleet still ventured pluckily to confront them, it could not prevent
Ibrahim from casting anchor safely in Soudha Bay and landing his army to winter
in Krete. In February 1825 he transferred these troops with equal impunity to
the fortress of Modhon, which was still held for the sultan by an Ottoman
garrison. The fire-ships of Hydhra came to harry his fleet too late, and on
land the Greek forces were impotent against his trained soldiers. The
Government in vain promoted Kolokotrónis from captivity to
commandership-in-chief. The whole south-western half of Peloponnesos passed
into Ibrahim’s hands, and in June 1825 he even penetrated as far as the
mills of Lerna on the eastern coast, a few miles south of Argos itself.

At the same time the Ottoman army of the west moved south again under a new
commander, Rashid Pasha of Yannina, and laid final siege on April 27 to
Mesolonghi, just a year after Byron had died of fever within its walls. The
Greeks were magnificent in their defence of these frail mud-bastions, and they
more than held their own in the amphibious warfare of the lagoons. The struggle
was chequered by the continual coming and going of the Greek and Ottoman
fleets. They were indeed the decisive factor; for without the supporting
squadron Rashid would have found himself in the same straits as his
predecessors at the approach of autumn, while the slackness of the islanders in
keeping the sea allowed Mesolonghi to be isolated in January 1826. The rest was
accomplished by the arrival of Ibrahim on the scene. His heavy batteries opened
fire in February; his gunboats secured command of the lagoons, and forced
Anatolikòn to capitulate in March. In April provisions in Mesolonghi itself
gave out, and, scorning surrender, the garrison—men, women, and children
together— made a general sortie on the night of April 22. Four thousand
fell, three thousand were taken, and two thousand won through. It was a
glorious end for Mesolonghi, but it left the enemy in possession of all
north-western Greece.

The situation was going from bad to worse. Ibrahim returned to Peloponnesos,
and steadily pushed forward his front, ravaging as steadily as he went. Rashid,
after pacifying the north-west, moved on to the north-eastern districts, where
the national cause had been shaken by the final treachery and speedy
assassination of Odhyssèvs. Siege was laid to Athens in June, and the Greek
Government enlisted in vain the military experience of its Philhellenes.
Fabvier held the Akropolis, but Generalissimo Sir Richard Church was heavily
defeated in the spring of 1827 in an attempt to relieve him from the Attic
coast; Grand Admiral Cochrane saw his fleet sail home for want of payment in
advance, when he summoned it for review at Poros; and Karaiskakis, the Greek
captain of Armatoli, was killed in a skirmish during his more successful
efforts to harass Rashid’s communications by land. On June 5, 1827, the
Greek garrison of the Akropolis marched out on terms.

It looked as if the Greek effort after independence would be completely
crushed, and as if Sultan Mahmud would succeed in getting his empire under
control. In September 1826 he had rid it at last of the mischief at its centre
by blowing up the janissaries in their barracks at Constantinople. Turkey
seemed almost to have weathered the storm when she was suddenly overborne by
further intervention on the other side.

Tsar Alexander, the vaccillator, died in November 1825, and was succeeded by
his son Nicholas I, as strong a character and as active a will as Sultan Mahmud
himself. Nicholas approached the Greek question without any disinclination
towards a Turkish war; and both Great Britain and France found an immediate
interest in removing a ground of provocation which might lead to such a rude
disturbance of the European ‘Balance of Power’. On July 6, 1827, a
month after Athens surrendered, the three powers concluded a treaty for the
pacification of Greece, in which they bound over both belligerent parties to
accept an armistice under pain of military coercion. An allied squadron
appeared off Navarino Bay to enforce this policy upon the Ottoman and Egyptian
fleet which lay united there, and the intrusion of the allied admirals into the
bay itself precipitated on October 20 a violent naval battle in which the
Moslem flotilla was destroyed. The die was cast; and in April 1828 the Russian
and Ottoman Governments drifted into a formal war, which brought Russian armies
across the Danube as far as Adrianople, and set the Ottoman Empire at bay for
the defence of its capital. Thanks to Mahmud’s reorganization, the empire
did not succumb to this assault; but it had no more strength to spare for the
subjugation of Greece. The Greeks had no longer to reckon with the sultan as a
military factor; and in August 1828 they wore relieved of Ibrahim’s
presence as well, by the disembarkation of 14,000 French troops in Peloponnesos
to superintend the withdrawal of the Egyptian forces. In March 1829 the three
powers delimited the Greek frontier. The line ran east and west from the Gulf
of Volo to the Gulf of Arta, and assigned to the new state no more and no less
territory than the districts that had effectively asserted their independence
against the sultan in 1821. This settlement was the only one possible under the
circumstances; but it was essentially transitory, for it neglected the natural
line of nationality altogether, and left a numerical majority of the Greek
race, as well as the most important centres of its life, under the old régime
of servitude.

Even the liberated area was not at the end of its troubles. In the spring of
1827, when they committed themselves into the hands of their foreign patrons,
the Greeks had found a new president for the republic in John Kapodistrias, an
intimate of Alexander the tsar. Kapodistrias was a Corfiote count, with a
Venetian education and a career in the Russian diplomatic service, and no one
could have been more fantastically unsuitable for the task of reconstructing
the country to which he was called. Kapodistrias’ ideal was the
fin-de-siècle ‘police-state’; but ‘official
circles’ did not exist in Greece, and he had no acquaintance with the
peasants and sailors whom he hoped to redeem by bureaucracy. He instituted a
hierarchically centralized administration which made the abortive constitution
of Mavrokordatos seem sober by comparison; he trampled on the liberty of the
rising press, which was the most hopeful educational influence in the country;
and he created superfluous ministerial portfolios for his untalented brothers.
In fact he reglamented Greece from his palace at Aigina like a divinely
appointed autocrat, from his arrival in January 1828 till the summer of 1831,
when he provoked the Hydhriots to open rebellion, and commissioned the Russian
squadron in attendance to quell them by a naval action, with the result that
Poros was sacked by the President’s regular army and the national fleet
was completely destroyed. After that, he attempted to rule as a military
dictator, and fell foul of the Mavromichalis of Maina. The Mainates knew better
how to deal with the ‘police-state’ than the Hydhriots; and on
October 9, 1831, Kapodistrias was assassinated in Nauplia, at the church door,
by two representatives of the Mavromichalis clan.

The country lapsed into utter anarchy. Peloponnesians and Armatoli,
Kolokotronists and Kolettists, alternately appointed and deposed subservient
national assemblies and governing commissions by naked violence, which
culminated in a gratuitous and disastrous attack upon the French troops
stationed in Peloponnesos for their common protection. The three powers
realized that it was idle to liberate Greece from Ottoman government unless
they found her another in its place. They decided on monarchy, and offered the
crown, in February 1832, to Prince Otto, a younger son of the King of Bavaria.
The negotiations dragged on many months longer than Greece could afford to
wait. But in July 1832 the sultan recognized the sovereign independence of the
kingdom of Hellas in consideration of a cash indemnity; and in February 1833,
just a year after the first overtures had been made, the appointed king arrived
at Nauplia with a decorative Bavarian staff and a substantial loan from the
allies.

3
The Consolidation of the State

Half the story of Greece is told. We have watched the nation awake and put
forth its newly-found strength in a great war of independence, and we have
followed the course of the struggle to its result—the foundation of the
kingdom of Hellas.

It is impossible to close this chapter of Greek history without a sense of
disappointment. The spirit of Greece had travailed, and only a principality was
born, which gathered within its frontiers scarcely one-third of the race, and
turned for its government to a foreign administration which had no bond of
tradition or affinity with the population it was to rule. And yet something had
been achieved. An oasis had been wrested from the Turkish wilderness, in which
Hellenism could henceforth work out its own salvation untrammelled, and extend
its borders little by little, until it brought within them at last the whole of
its destined heritage. The fleeting glamour of dawn had passed, but it had
brought the steady light of day, in which the work begun could be carried out
soberly and indefatigably to its conclusion. The new kingdom, in fact, if it
fulfilled its mission, might become the political nucleus and the spiritual
ensample of a permanently awakened nation—an ‘education of
Hellas’ such as Pericles hoped to see Athens become in the greatest days
of Ancient Greece.

When, therefore, we turn to the history of the kingdom, our disappointment is
all the more intense, for in the first fifty years of its existence there is
little development to record. In 1882 King Otto’s principality presented
much the same melancholy spectacle as it did in 1833, when he landed in Nauplia
Bay, except that Otto himself had left the scene. His Bavarian staff belonged
to that reactionary generation that followed the overthrow of Napoleon in
Europe, and attempted, heedless of Kapodistrias’ fiasco, to impose on
Greece the bureaucracy of the ancien régime. The Bavarians’ work
was entirely destructive. The local liberties which had grown up under the
Ottoman dominion and been the very life of the national revival, were
effectively repressed. Hydhriot and Spetziot, Suliot and Mainate, forfeited
their characteristic individuality, but none of the benefits of orderly and
uniform government were realized. The canker of brigandage defied all efforts
to root it out, and in spite of the loans with which the royal government was
supplied by the protecting powers, the public finance was subject to periodical
breakdowns. In 1837 King Otto, now of age, took the government into his own
hands, only to have it taken out of them again by a revolution in 1843.
Thereafter he reigned as a constitutional monarch, but he never reconciled
himself to the position, and in 1862 a second revolution drove him into exile,
a scapegoat for the afflictions of his kingdom. Bavarian then gave place to
Dane, yet the afflictions continued. In 1882 King George had been nineteen
years on the throne[1] without any happier fortune than his
predecessor’s. It is true that the frontiers of the kingdom had been
somewhat extended. Great Britain had presented the new sovereign with the
Ionian Islands as an inaugural gift, and the Berlin Conference had recently
added the province of Thessaly. Yet the major part of the Greek race still
awaited liberation from the Turkish yoke, and regarded the national kingdom,
chronically incapacitated by the twin plagues of brigandage and bankruptcy,
with increasing disillusionment. The kingdom of Hellas seemed to have failed in
its mission altogether.

[Footnote 1: King George, like King Otto, was only seventeen years old when he
received his crown.]

What was the explanation of this failure? It was that the very nature of the
mission paralysed the state from taking the steps essential to its
accomplishment. The phenomenon has been, unhappily, only too familiar in the
Nearer East, and any one who travelled in the Balkans in 1882, or even so
recently as 1912, must at once have become aware of it.

Until a nation has completely vindicated its right to exist, it is hard for it
to settle down and make its life worth living. We nations of western Europe
(before disaster fell upon us) had learnt to take our existence for granted,
and ‘Politics’ for us had come to mean an organized effort to
improve the internal economy of our community. But a foreigner who picked up a
Greek newspaper would have found in it none of the matter with which he was
familiar in his own, no discussion of financial policy, economic development,
or social reconstruction. The news-columns would have been monopolized by
foreign politics, and in the cafes he would have heard the latest oscillation
in the international balance of power canvassed with the same intense and
minute interest that Englishmen in a railway-carriage would have been devoting
to Old Age Pensions, National Health Insurance, or Land Valuation. He would
have been amazed by a display of intimate knowledge such as no British quidnunc
could have mustered if he had happened to stumble across these intricacies of
international competition, and the conversation would always have terminated in
the same unanswered but inconscionable challenge to the future: ‘When
will the oppressed majority of our race escape the Turkish yoke? If the Ottoman
dominion is destroyed, what redistribution of its provinces will follow? Shall
we then achieve our national unity, or will our Balkan neighbours encroach upon
the inheritance which is justly ours?’

This preoccupation with events beyond the frontiers was not caused by any lack
of vital problems within them. The army was the most conspicuous object of
public activity, but it was not an aggressive speculation, or an investment of
national profits deliberately calculated to bring in one day a larger return.
It was a necessity of life, and its efficiency was barely maintained out of the
national poverty. In fact, it was almost the only public utility with which the
nation could afford to provide itself, and the traveller from Great Britain
would have been amazed again at the miserable state of all reproductive public
works. The railways were few and far between, their routes roundabout, and
their rolling-stock scanty, so that trains were both rare and slow. Wheel-roads
were no commoner a feature in Greece than railways are here, and such stretches
as had been constructed had often never come into use, because they had just
failed to reach their goal or were still waiting for their bridges, so that
they were simply falling into decay and converting the outlay of capital upon
them into a dead loss. The Peiraeus was the only port in the country where
steamers could come alongside a quay, and discharge their cargoes directly on
shore. Elsewhere, the vessel must anchor many cables’ lengths out, and
depend on the slow and expensive services of lighters, for lack of pier
construction and dredging operations. For example, Kalamata, the economic
outlet for the richest part of Peloponnesos, and the fifth largest port in the
kingdom,[1] was and still remains a mere open roadstead, where all ships that
call are kept at a distance by the silt from a mountain torrent, and so placed
in imminent danger of being driven, by the first storm, upon the rocks of a
neighbouring peninsula.

[Footnote 1: The four chief ports being Peiraeus, Patras, Syra, and Volos.]

These grave shortcomings were doubtless due in part to the geographical
character of the country, though it was clear, from what had actually been
accomplished, that it would have been both possible and profitable to attempt
much more, if the nation’s energy could have been secured for the work.
But it is hard to tinker at details when you are kept in a perpetual fever by a
question of life and death, and the great preliminary questions of national
unity and self-government remained still unsettled.

Before these supreme problems all other interests paled, for they were no
will-o’-the-wisps of theoretical politics. It needs a long political
education to appreciate abstract ideas, and the Greeks were still in their
political infancy, but the realization of Greater Greece implied for them the
satisfaction of all their concrete needs at once.

So long as the status quo endured, they were isolated from the rest of
Europe by an unbroken band of Turkish territory, stretching from the Aegean to
the Adriatic Sea. What was the use of overcoming great engineering difficulties
to build a line of European gauge from Athens right up to the northern
frontier, if Turkey refused to sanction the construction of the tiny section
that must pass through her territory between the Greek railhead and the actual
terminus of the European system at Salonika? Or if, even supposing she withdrew
her veto, she would have it in her power to bring pressure on Greece at any
moment by threatening to sever communications along this vital artery? So long
as Turkey was there, Greece was practically an island, and her only
communication with continental Europe lay through her ports. But what use to
improve the ports, when the recovery of Salonika, the fairest object of the
national dreams, would ultimately change the country’s economic centre of
gravity, and make her maritime as well as her overland commerce flow along
quite other channels than the present?

Thus the Greek nation’s present was overshadowed by its future, and its
actions paralysed by its hopes. Perhaps a nation with more power of application
and less of imagination would have schooled itself to the thought that these
sordid, obtrusive details were the key to the splendours of the future, and
would have devoted itself to the systematic amelioration of the cramped area
which it had already secured for its own. This is what Bulgaria managed to do
during her short but wonderful period of internal growth between the Berlin
Treaty of 1878 and the declaration of war against Turkey in 1912. But Bulgaria,
thanks to her geographical situation, was from the outset freer from the
tentacles of the Turkish octopus than Greece had contrived to make herself by
her fifty years’ start, while her temperamentally sober ambitions were
not inflamed by such past traditions as Greece had inherited, not altogether to
her advantage. Be that as it may, Greece, whether by fault or misfortune, had
failed during this half-century to apply herself successfully to the cure of
her defects and the exploitation of her assets, though she did not lack leaders
strong-minded enough to summon her to the dull business of the present. Her
history during the succeeding generation was a struggle between the parties of
the Present and the Future, and the unceasing discomfiture of the former is
typified in the tragedy of Trikoupis, the greatest modern Greek statesman
before the advent of Venezelos.

Trikoupis came into power in 1882, just after the acquisition of the rich
agricultural province of Thessaly under the Treaty of Berlin had given the
kingdom a fresh start. There were no such continuous areas of good arable land
within the original frontiers, and such rare patches as there were had been
desolated by those eight years of savage warfare[1] which had been the price of
liberty. The population had been swept away by wholesale massacres of racial
minorities in every district; the dearth of industrious hands had allowed the
torrents to play havoc with the cultivation-terraces on the mountain slopes;
and the spectre of malaria, always lying in wait for its opportunity, had
claimed the waterlogged plains for its own. During the fifty years of
stagnation little attempt had been made to cope with the evil, until now it
seemed almost past remedy.

[Footnote 1: 1821-28]

If, however, the surface of the land offered little prospect of wealth for the
moment, there were considerable treasures to be found beneath it. A
metalliferous bolt runs down the whole east coast of the Greek mainland,
cropping up again in many of the Aegean islands, and some of the ores, of which
there is a great variety, are rare and valuable. The lack of transit facilities
is partly remedied by the fact that workable veins often lie near enough to the
sea for the produce to be carried straight from mine to ship, by an
endless-chain system of overhead trolleys; so that, once capital is secured for
installing the plant and opening the mine, profitable operations can be carried
on irrespective of the general economic condition of the country. Trikoupis saw
how much potential wealth was locked up in these mineral seams. The problem was
how to attract the capital necessary to tap it. The nucleus round which have
accumulated those immense masses of mobilised capital that are the life-blood
of modern European industry and commerce, was originally derived from the
surplus profits of agriculture. But a country that finds itself reduced, like
Greece in the nineteenth century, to a state of agricultural bankruptcy, has
obviously failed to save any surplus in the process, so that it is unable to
provide from its own pocket the minimum outlay it so urgently needs in order to
open for itself some new activity. If it is to obtain a fresh start on other
lines, it must secure the co-operation of the foreign investor, and the
capitalist with a ready market for his money will only put it into enterprises
where he has some guarantee of its safety. There was little doubt that the
minerals of Greece would well repay extraction; the uncertain element was the
Greek nation itself. The burning question of national unity might break out at
any moment into a blaze of war, and, in the probable case of disaster, involve
the whole country and all interests connected with it in economic as well as
political ruin. Western Europe would not commit itself to Greek mining
enterprise, unless it felt confident that the statesman responsible for the
government of Greece would and could restrain his country from its instinctive
impulse towards political adventure.

The great merit of Trikoupis was that he managed to inspire this confidence.
Greece owes most of the wheelroads, railways, and mines of which she can now
boast to the dozen years of his more or less consecutive administration. But
the roads are unfinished, the railway-network incomplete, the mines exploited
only to a fraction of their capacity, because the forces against Trikoupis were
in the end too strong for him. It may be that his eye too rigidly followed the
foreign investor’s point of view, and that by adopting a more
conciliatory attitude towards the national ideal, he might have strengthened
his position at home without impairing his reputation abroad; but his position
was really made impossible by a force quite beyond his control, the
irresponsible and often intolerable behaviour which Turkey, under whatever
régime, has always practised towards foreign powers, and especially towards
those Balkan states which have won their freedom in her despite, while perforce
abandoning a large proportion of their race to the protracted outrage of
Turkish misgovernment.

Several times over the Porte, by wanton insults to Greece, wrecked the efforts
of Trikoupis to establish good relations between the two governments, and
played the game of the chauvinist party led by Trikoupis’ rival,
Deliyannis. Deliyannis’ tenures of office were always brief, but during
them he contrived to undo most of the work accomplished by Trikoupis in the
previous intervals. A particularly tense ‘incident’ with Turkey put
him in power in 1893, with a strong enough backing from the country to warrant
a general mobilization. The sole result was the ruin of Greek credit. Trikoupis
was hastily recalled to office by the king, but too late. He found himself
unable to retrieve the ruin, and retired altogether from politics in 1895,
dying abroad next year in voluntary exile and enforced disillusionment.

With the removal of Trikoupis from the helm, Greece ran straight upon the
rocks. A disastrous war with Turkey was precipitated in 1897 by events in
Krete. It brought the immediate débâcle of the army and the reoccupation
of Thessaly for a year by Turkish troops, while its final penalties were the
cession of the chief strategical positions along the northern frontier and the
imposition of an international commission of control over the Greek finances,
in view of the complete national bankruptcy entailed by the war. The fifteen
years that followed 1895 were almost the blackest period in modern Greek
history; yet the time was not altogether lost, and such events as the draining
of the Kopais-basin by a British company, and its conversion from a malarious
swamp into a rich agricultural area, marked a perceptible economic advance.

This comparative stagnation was broken at last by the Young Turk
pronunciamiento at Salonika in 1908, which produced such momentous
repercussions all through the Nearer East. The Young Turks had struck in order
to forestall the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, but the opportunity was
seized by every restive element within it to extricate itself, if possible,
from the Turkish coils. Now, just as in 1897, Greece was directly affected by
the action of the Greek population in Krete. As a result of the revolt of
1896-7, Krete had been constituted an autonomous state subject to Ottoman
suzerainty, autonomy and suzerainty alike being guaranteed by four great
powers. Prince George of Greece, a son of the King of the Hellenes, had been
placed at the head of the autonomous government as high commissioner; but his
autocratic tendency caused great discontent among the free-spirited Kretans,
who had not rid themselves of the Turkish régime in order to forfeit their
independence again in another fashion. Dissension culminated in 1906, when the
leaders of the opposition took to the mountains, and obtained such support and
success in the guerrilla fighting that followed, that they forced Prince George
to tender his resignation. He was succeeded as high commissioner by Zaimis,
another citizen of the Greek kingdom, who inaugurated a more constitutional
régime, and in 1908 the Kretans believed that the moment for realizing the
national ideal had come. They proclaimed their union with Greece, and elected
deputies to the Parliament at Athens. But the guarantor powers carried out
their obligations by promptly sending a combined naval expedition, which hauled
down the Greek flag at Canea, and prevented the deputies from embarking for
Peiraeus. This apparently pedantic insistence upon the status quo was
extremely exasperating to Greek nationalism. It produced a ferment in the
kingdom, which grew steadily for nine months, and vented itself in July 1909 in
the coup d’état of the ‘Military League’, a
second-hand imitation of the Turkish ‘Committee of Union and
Progress’. The royal family was cavalierly treated, and constitutional
government superseded by a junta of officers. But at this point the policy of
the four powers towards Krete was justified. Turkey knew well that she had lost
Krete in 1897, but she could still exploit her suzerainty to prevent Greece
from gaining new strength by the annexation of the island. The Young Turks had
seized the reins of government, not to modify the policy of the Porte, but to
intensify its chauvinism, and they accordingly intimated that they would
consider any violation of their suzerain rights over Krete a casus belli
against Greece. Greece, without army or allies, was obviously not in a position
to incur another war, and the ‘Military League’ thus found that it
had reached the end of its tether. There ensued a deadlock of another eight
months, only enlivened by a naval mutiny, during which the country lay
paralysed, with no programme whatsoever before it.

Then the man demanded by the situation appeared unexpectedly from the centre of
disturbance, Krete. Venezelos started life as a successful advocate at Canea.
He entered Kretan politics in the struggle for constitutionalism, and
distinguished himself in the successful revolution of 1906, of which he was the
soul. Naturally, he became one of the leading statesmen under Zaimis’
régime, and he further distinguished himself by resolutely opposing the
‘Unionist’ agitation as premature, and yet retaining his hold over
a people whose paramount political preoccupation was their national unity. The
crisis of 1908-9 brought him into close relations with the government of the
Greek kingdom; and the king, who had gauged his calibre, now took the patriotic
step of calling in the man who had expelled his son from Krete, to put his own
house in order. It speaks much for both men that they worked together in
harmony from the beginning. Upon the royal invitation Venezelos exchanged
Kretan for Greek citizenship, and took in hand the ‘Military
League’. After short negotiations, he persuaded it to dissolve in favour
of a national convention, which was able to meet in March 1910.

Thus Greece became a constitutional country once more, and Venezelos the first
premier of the new era. During five years of continuous office he was to prove
himself the good genius of his country. When he resigned his post in April
1915, he left the work of consolidating the national state on the verge of
completion, and it will be his country’s loss if he is baulked of
achievement. Results speak for themselves, and the remainder of this pamphlet
will be little more than a record of his statesmanship; but before we pass on
to review his deeds, we must say a word about the character to which they are
due. In March 1912 the time came for the first general election since Venezelos
had taken office. Two years’ experience of his administration had already
won him such popularity and prestige, that the old party groups, purely
personal followings infected with all the corruption, jingoism, and insincerity
of the dark fifteen years, leagued themselves in a desperate effort to cast him
out. Corruption on a grand scale was attempted, but Venezelos’ success at
the polls was sweeping. The writer happened to be spending that month in Krete.
The Kretans had, of course, elected deputies in good time to the parliament at
Athens, and once more the foreign warships stopped them in the act of boarding
the steamer for Peiraeus, while Venezelos, who was still responsible for the
Greek Government till the new parliament met, had declared with characteristic
frankness that the attendance of the Kretan deputies could not possibly be
sanctioned, an opening of which his opponents did not fail to take advantage.
Meanwhile, every one in Krete was awaiting news of the polling in the kingdom.
They might have been expected to feel, at any rate, lukewarmly towards a man
who had actually taken office on the programme of deferring their cherished
‘union’ indefinitely; but, on the contrary, they greeted his
triumph with enormous enthusiasm. Their feeling was explained by the comment of
an innkeeper. ‘Venezelos!’ he said: ‘Why, he is a man who can
say “No”. He won’t stand any nonsense. If you try to get
round him, he’ll put you in irons.’ And clearly he had hit the
mark. Venezelos would in any case have done well, because he is a clever man
with an excellent power of judgement; but acuteness is a common Greek virtue,
and if he has done brilliantly, it is because he has the added touch of genius
required to make the Greek take ‘No’ for an answer, a quality, very
rare indeed in the nation, which explains the dramatic contrast between his
success and Trikoupis’ failure. Greece has been fortunate indeed in
finding the right man at the crucial hour.

In the winter of 1911-12 and the succeeding summer, the foreign traveller met
innumerable results of Venezelos’ activity in every part of the country,
and all gave evidence of the same thing: a sane judgement and its inflexible
execution. For instance, a resident in Greece had needed an escort of soldiers
four years before, when he made an expedition into the wild country north-west
of the Gulf of Patras, on account of the number of criminals
‘wanted’ by the government who were lurking in that region as
outlaws. In August 1912 an inquiry concerning this danger was met with a smile:
‘Oh, yes, it was so,’ said the gendarme, ‘but since then
Venezelos has come. He amnestied every one “out” for minor
offences, and then caught the “really bad ones”, so there are no
outlaws in Akarnania now.’ And he spoke the truth. You could wander all
about the forests and mountains without molestation.

So far Venezelos had devoted himself to internal reconstruction, after the
precedent of Trikoupis, but he was not the man to desert the national idea. The
army and navy were reorganized by French and British missions, and when the
opportunity appeared, he was ready to take full advantage of it. In the autumn
of 1912, Turkey had been for a year at war with Italy; her finances had
suffered a heavy drain, and the Italian command of the sea not only locked up
her best troops in Tripoli, but interrupted such important lines of
communication between her Asiatic and European provinces as the direct route by
sea from Smyrna to Salonika, and the devious sea-passage thence round Greece to
Scutari, which was the only alternative for Turkish troops to running the
gauntlet of the Albanian mountaineers. Clearly the Balkan nations could find no
better moment for striking the blow to settle that implacable
‘preliminary question.’ of national unity which had dogged them all
since their birth. Their only chance of success, however, was to strike in
concert, for Turkey, handicapped though she was, could still easily outmatch
them singly. Unless they could compromise between their conflicting claims,
they would have to let this common opportunity for making them good slip by
altogether.

Of the four states concerned, two, Serbia and Montenegro, were of the same
South-Slavonic nationality, and had been drawn into complete accord with each
other since the formal annexation of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary in 1908, which
struck a hard blow at their common national idea, while neither of them had any
conflicting claims with Greece, since the Greek and South-Slavonic
nationalities are at no point geographically in contact. With Bulgaria, a
nation of Slavonic speech and culture, though not wholly Slavonic in origin,
Serbia had quarrelled for years over the ultimate destiny of the Üsküb district
in north-western Macedonia, which was still subject to Turkey; but in the
summer of 1912 the two states compromised in a secret treaty upon their
respective territorial ambitions, and agreed to refer the fate of one debatable
strip to the arbitration of Russia, after their already projected war with
Turkey had been carried through. There was a more formidable conflict of
interests between Bulgaria and Greece. These two nationalities are conterminous
over a very wide extent of territory, stretching from the Black Sea on the east
to the inland Lake of Okhrida on the west, and there is at no point a sharp
dividing line between them. The Greek element tends to predominate towards the
coast and the Bulgar towards the interior, but there are broad zones where
Greek and Bulgar villages are inextricably interspersed, while purely Greek
towns are often isolated in the midst of purely Bulgar rural districts. Even if
the racial areas could be plotted out on a large-scale map, it was clear that
no political frontier could be drawn to follow their convolutions, and that
Greece and Bulgaria could only divide the spoils by both making up their minds
to give and take. The actual lines this necessary compromise would follow,
obviously depended on the degree of the allies’ success against Turkey in
the common war that was yet to be fought, and Venezelos rose to the occasion.
He had the courage to offer Bulgaria the Greek alliance without stipulating for
any definite minimum share in the common conquests, and the tact to induce her
to accept it on the same terms. Greece and Bulgaria agreed to shelve all
territorial questions till the war had been brought to a successful close; and
with the negotiation of this understanding (another case in which Venezelos
achieved what Trikoupis had attempted only to fail) the Balkan League was
complete.

The events that followed are common knowledge. The Balkan allies opened the
campaign in October, and the Turks collapsed before an impetuous attack. The
Bulgarians crumpled up the Ottoman field armies in Thrace at the terrific
battle of Lule Burgas; the Serbians disposed of the forces in the Macedonian
interior, while the Greeks effected a junction with the Serbians from the
south, and cut their way through to Salonika. Within two months of the
declaration of war, the Turks on land had been driven out of the open
altogether behind the shelter of the Chataldja and Gallipoli lines, and only
three fortresses—Adrianople, Yannina, and Scutari—held out further
to the west. Their navy, closely blockaded by the Greek fleet within the
Dardanelles, had to look on passively at the successive occupation of the
Aegean Islands by Greek landing-parties. With the winter came negotiations,
during which an armistice reigned at Adrianople and Scutari, while the Greeks
pursued the siege of Yannina and the Dardanelles blockade. The negotiations
proved abortive, and the result of the renewed hostilities justified the action
of the Balkan plenipotentiaries in breaking them off. By the spring of 1913 the
three fortresses had fallen, and, under the treaty finally signed at London,
Turkey ceded to the Balkan League, as a whole, all her European territories
west of a line drawn from Ainos on the Aegean to Midía on the Black Sea,
including Adrianople and the lower basin of the river Maritsa.

The time had now come for Greece and Bulgaria to settle their account, and the
unexpected extent of the common gains ought to have facilitated their division.
The territory in question included the whole north coast of the Aegean and its
immediate hinterland, and Venezelos proposed to consider it in two sections.
(1) The eastern section, conveniently known as Thrace, consisted of the lower
basin of the Maritsa. As far as Adrianople the population was Bulgar, but south
of that city it was succeeded by a Greek element, with a considerable
sprinkling of Turkish settlements, as far as the sea. Geographically, however,
the whole district is intimately connected with Bulgaria, and the railway that
follows the course of the Maritsa down to the port of Dedeagatch offers a
much-needed economic outlet for large regions already within the Bulgarian
frontier. Venezelos, then, was prepared to resign all Greek claims to the
eastern section, in return for a corresponding concession by Bulgaria in the
west. (2) The western section, consisting of the lower basins of the Vardar and
Struma, lay in the immediate neighbourhood of the former frontier of Greece;
but the Greek population of Salonika,[1] and the coast-districts east of it,
could not be brought within the Greek frontier without including as well a
certain hinterland inhabited mainly by Bulgarians. The cession of this was the
return asked for by Venezelos, and he reduced it to a minimum by abstaining
from pressing the quite well-founded claims of Greece in the Monastir district,
which lay further inland still.

[Footnote 1: The predominant element within the walls of Salonika itself is
neither Greek nor Bulgarian, but consists of about 80,000 of those
Spanish-speaking Jews who settled in Turkey as refugees during the sixteenth
century.]

But Venezelos’ conciliatory proposals met with no response from the
Bulgarian Government, which was in an ‘all or nothing’ mood. It
swallowed Venezelos’ gift of Thrace, and then proceeded to exploit the
Bulgar hinterland of Salonika as a pretext for demanding the latter city as
well. This uncompromising attitude made agreement impossible, and it was
aggravated by the aggressive action of the Bulgarian troops in the occupied
territory, who persistently endeavoured to steal ground from the Greek forces
facing them. In May there was serious fighting to the east of the Struma, and
peace was only restored with difficulty. Bulgarian relations with Serbia were
becoming strained at the same time, though in this case Bulgaria had more
justice on her side. Serbia maintained that the veto imposed by Austria upon
her expansion to the Adriatic, in coincidence with Bulgaria’s unexpected
gains on the Maritsa to which Serbian arms had contributed, invalidated the
secret treaty of the previous summer, and she announced her intention of
retaining the Monastir district and the line of the Salonika railway as far as
the future frontier of Greece. Bulgaria, on the other hand, shut her eyes to
Serbia’s necessity for an untrammelled economic outlet to one sea-board
or the other, and took her stand on her strictly legal treaty-rights. However
the balance of justice inclined, a lasting settlement could only have been
reached by mutual forbearance and goodwill; but Bulgaria put herself hopelessly
in the wrong towards both her allies by a treacherous night-attack upon them
all along the line, at the end of June 1913. This disastrous act was the work
of a single political party, which has since been condemned by most sections of
Bulgarian public opinion; but the punishment, if not the responsibility for the
crime, fell upon the whole nation. Greece and Serbia had already been drawn
into an understanding by their common danger. They now declared war against
Bulgaria in concert. The counter-strokes of their armies met with success, and
the intervention of Rumania made Bulgaria’s discomfiture certain.

The results of the one month’s war were registered in the Treaty of
Bucarest. Many of its provisions were unhappily, though naturally, inspired by
the spirit of revenge; but the Greek premier, at any rate, showed a
statesmanlike self-restraint in the negotiations. Venezelos advocated the
course of taking no more after the war than had been demanded before it. He
desired to leave Bulgaria a broad zone of Aegean littoral between the Struma
and Maritsa rivers, including ports capable of satisfying Bulgaria’s
pressing need for an outlet towards the south. But, in the exasperated state of
public feeling, even Venezelos’ prestige failed to carry through his
policy in its full moderation. King George had just been assassinated in his
year of jubilee, in the streets of the long-desired Salonika; and King
Constantine, his son, flushed by the victory of Kilkish and encouraged by the
Machiavellian diplomacy of his Hohenzollern brother-in-law, insisted on
carrying the new Greek frontier as far east as the river Mesta, and depriving
Bulgaria of Kavala, the natural harbour for the whole Bulgarian hinterland in
the upper basins of the Mesta and Struma.

It is true that Greece did not exact as much as she might have done. Bulgaria
was still allowed to possess herself of a coastal strip east of the Mesta,
containing the tolerable harbours of Porto Lagos and Dedeagatch, which had been
occupied during hostilities by the Greek fleet, and thus her need for an Aegean
outlet was not left unsatisfied altogether; while Greece on her part was
cleverly shielded for the future from those drawbacks involved in immediate
contact with Turkish territory, which she had so often experienced in the past.
It is also true that the Kavala district is of great economic value in
itself—it produces the better part of the Turkish Régie tobacco
crop—and that on grounds of nationality alone Bulgaria has no claim to
this prize, since the tobacco-growing peasantry is almost exclusively Greek or
Turk, while the Greek element has been extensively reinforced during the last
two years by refugees from Anatolia and Thrace.

Nevertheless, it is already clear that Venezelos’ judgement was the
better. The settlement at the close of the present war may even yet bring
Bulgaria reparation in many quarters. If the Ruman and South Slavonic
populations at present included in the complexus of Austria-Hungary are freed
from their imprisonment and united with the Serbian and Rumanian national
states, Bulgaria may conceivably recover from the latter those Bulgarian lands
which the Treaty of Bucarest made over to them in central Macedonia and the
Dobrudja, while it would be still more feasible to oust the Turk again from
Adrianople, where he slipped back in the hour of Bulgaria’s prostration
and has succeeded in maintaining himself ever since. Yet no amount of
compensation in other directions and no abstract consideration for the national
principle will induce Bulgaria to renounce her claim on Greek Kavala. Access to
this district is vital to Bulgaria from the geographical point of view, and she
will not be satisfied here with such rights as Serbia enjoys at
Salonika—free use of the port and free traffic along a railway connecting
it with her own hinterland. Her heart is set on complete territorial ownership,
and she will not compose her feud with Greece until she has had her way.

So long, therefore, as the question of Kavala remains unsettled, Greece will
not be able to put the preliminary problem of ‘national
consolidation’ behind her, and enter upon the long-deferred chapter of
‘internal development’. To accomplish once for all this vital
transition, Venezelos is taking the helm again into his hands, and it is his
evident intention to close the Greek account with Bulgaria just as Serbia and
Rumania hope to close theirs with the same state—by a bold territorial
concession conditional upon adequate territorial compensation elsewhere.[1]

[Footnote 1: The above paragraph betrays its own date; for, since it was
written, the intervention of Bulgaria on the side of the Central Powers has
deferred indefinitely the hope of a settlement based upon mutual agreement.]

The possibility of such compensation is offered by certain outstanding problems
directly dependent upon the issue of the European conflict, and we must glance
briefly at these before passing on to consider the new chapter of internal
history that is opening for the Greek nation.

The problems in question are principally concerned with the ownership of
islands.

The integrity of a land-frontier is guaranteed by the whole strength of the
nation included within it, and can only be modified by a struggle for existence
with the neighbor on whom it borders; but islands by their geographical nature
constitute independent political units, easily detached from or incorporated
with larger domains, according to the momentary fluctuation in the balance of
sea-power. Thus it happened that the arrival of the Goeben and
Breslau at the Dardanelles in August 1914 led Turkey to reopen promptly
certain questions concerning the Aegean. The islands in this sea are uniformly
Greek in population, but their respective geographical positions and political
fortunes differentiate them into several groups.

1. The Cyclades in the south-west, half submerged vanguards of mountain ranges
in continental Greece, have formed part of the modern kingdom from its birth,
and their status has never since been called into question.

2. Krete, the largest of all Greek islands, has been dealt with already. She
enjoyed autonomy under Turkish suzerainty for fifteen years before the Balkan
War, and at its outbreak she once more proclaimed her union with Greece. This
time at last her action was legalized, when Turkey expressly abandoned her
suzerain rights by a clause in the Treaty of London.

3. During the war itself, the Greek navy occupied a number of islands which had
remained till then under the more direct government of Turkey, The parties to
the Treaty of London agreed to leave their destiny to the decision of the
powers, and the latter assigned them all to Greece, with the exception of
Imbros and Tenedos which command strategically the mouth of the Dardanelles.

The islands thus secured to Greece fall in turn into several sub-groups.

Two of these are (a) Thasos, Samothraki, and Lemnos, off the European
coast, and (b) Samos and its satellite Nikarià, immediately off the west
coast of Anatolia; and these five islands seem definitely to have been given up
by Turkey for lost. The European group is well beyond the range of her present
frontiers; while Samos, though it adjoins the Turkish mainland, does not mask
the outlet from any considerable port, and had moreover for many years
possessed the same privileged autonomy as Krete, so that the Ottoman Government
did not acutely feel its final severance.

(c) A third group consists of Mitylini and Khios,[1] and concerning this
pair Greece and Turkey have so far come to no understanding. The Turks pointed
out that the littoral off which these islands lie contains not only the most
indispensable ports of Anatolia but also the largest enclaves of Greek
population on the Asiatic mainland, and they declared that the occupation of
this group by Greece menaced the sovereignty of the Porte in its home
territory. ‘See’, they said, ‘how the two islands flank both
sides of the sea-passage to Smyrna, the terminus of all the railways which
penetrate the Anatolian interior, while Mitylini barricades Aivali and Edremid
as well. As soon as the Greek Government has converted the harbours of these
islands into naval bases, Anatolia will be subject to a perpetual Greek
blockade, and this violent intimidation of the Turkish people will be
reinforced by an insidious propaganda among the disloyal Greek elements in our
midst.’ Accordingly the Turks refused to recognize the award of the
powers, and demanded the re-establishment of Ottoman sovereignty in Mitylini
and Khios, under guarantee of an autonomy after the precedent of Krete and
Samos.

[Footnote 1: Including its famous satellite Psarà.]

To these arguments and demands the Greeks replied that, next to Krete; these
are the two largest, most wealthy, and most populous Greek islands in the
Aegean; that their inhabitants ardently desire union with the national kingdom;
and that the Greek Government would hesitate to use them as a basis for
economic coercion and nationalistic propaganda against Turkey, if only because
the commerce of western Anatolia is almost exclusively in the hands of the
Greek element on the Asiatic continent. Greek interests were presumably bound
up with the economic prosperity and political consolidation of Turkey in Asia,
and the Anatolian Greeks would merely have been alienated from their
compatriots by any such impolitic machinations. ‘Greek sovereignty in
Mitylini and Khios’, the Greeks maintained, ‘does not threaten
Turkish sovereignty on the Continent. But the restoration of Turkish suzerainty
over the islands would most seriously endanger the liberty of their
inhabitants; for Turkish promises are notoriously valueless, except when they
are endorsed by the guarantee of some physically stronger power.’

Negotiations were conducted between Greece and Turkey from these respective
points of view without leading to any result, and the two standpoints were in
fact irreconcilable, since either power required the other to leave vital
national interests at the mercy of an ancient enemy, without undertaking to
make corresponding sacrifices itself. The problem probably would never have
been solved by compromise; but meanwhile the situation has been entirely
transformed by the participation of Turkey in the European War, and the issue
between Greece and Turkey, like the issue between Greece and Bulgaria, has been
merged in the general problem of the European settlement.

The Balkan War of 1912 doomed the Ottoman power in Europe, but left its Asiatic
future unimpaired. By making war against the Quadruple Entente, Turkey has
staked her existence on both continents, and is threatened with political
extinction if the Central Powers succumb in the struggle. In this event Greece
will no longer have to accommodate her régime in the liberated islands to the
susceptibilities of a Turkey consolidated on the opposite mainland, but will be
able to stretch out her hand over the Anatolian coast and its hinterland, and
compensate herself richly in this quarter for the territorial sacrifices which
may still be necessary to a lasting understanding with her Bulgarian neighbour.

The shores that dominate the Dardanelles will naturally remain beyond her
grasp, but she may expect to establish herself on the western littoral from a
point as far north as Mount Ida and the plain of Edremid. The Greek coast-town
of Aivali will be hers, and the still more important focus of Greek commerce
and civilization at Smyrna; while she will push her dominion along the railways
that radiate from Smyrna towards the interior. South-eastward, Aidin will be
hers in the valley of the Mendere (Maiandros). Due eastward she will re-baptize
the glistening city of Ala Shehr with its ancient name of Philadelphia, under
which it held out heroically for Hellenism many years after Aidin had become
the capital of a Moslem principality and the Turkish avalanche had rolled past
it to the sea. Maybe she will follow the railway still further inland, and
plant her flag on the Black Castle of Afiun, the natural railway-centre of
Anatolia high up on the innermost plateau. All this and more was once Hellenic
ground, and the Turkish incomer, for all his vitality, has never been able here
to obliterate the older culture or assimilate the earlier population. In this
western region Turkish villages are still interspersed with Greek, and under
the government of compatriots the unconquerable minority would inevitably
reassert itself by the peaceful weapons of its superior energy and
intelligence.

4. If Greece realizes these aspirations through Venezelos’ statesmanship,
she will have settled in conjunction her outstanding accounts with both
Bulgaria and Turkey; but a fourth group of islands still remains for
consideration, and these, though formerly the property of Turkey, are now in
the hands of other European powers.

(a) The first of those in question are the Sporades, a chain of islands
off the Anatolian coast which continues the line of Mitylini, Khios, and Samos
towards the south-east, and includes Kos, Patmos, Astypalià, Karpathos, Kasos,
and, above all, Rhodes. The Sporades were occupied by Italy during her war with
Turkey in 1911-12, and she stipulated in the Peace of Lausanne that she should
retain them as a pledge until the last Ottoman soldier in Tripoli had been
withdrawn, after which she would make them over again to the Porte. The
continued unrest in Tripoli may or may not have been due to Turkish intrigues,
but in any case it deferred the evacuation of the islands by Italy until the
situation was transformed here also by the successive intervention of both
powers in the European War. The consequent lapse of the Treaty of Lausanne
simplifies the status of the Sporades, but it is doubtful what effect it will
have upon their destiny. In language and political sympathy their inhabitants
are as completely Greek as all the other islanders of the Aegean, and if the
Quadruple Entente has made the principle of nationality its own, Italy is
morally bound, now that the Sporades are at her free disposal, to satisfy their
national aspirations by consenting to their union with the kingdom of Greece.
On the other hand, the prospective dissolution of the Ottoman Empire has
increased Italy’s stake in this quarter. In the event of a partition, the
whole southern littoral of Anatolia will probably fall within the Italian
sphere, which will start from the Gulf of Iskanderun, include the districts of
Adana and Adalia, and march with the new Anatolian provinces of Greece along
the line of the river Mendere. This continental domain and the adjacent islands
are geographically complementary to one another, and it is possible that Italy
may for strategical reasons insist on retaining the Sporades in perpetuity if
she realizes her ambitions on the continent. This solution would be less ideal
than the other, but Greece would be wise to reconcile herself to it, as Italy
has reconciled herself to the incorporation of Corsica in France; for by
submitting frankly to this detraction from her national unity she would give
her brethren in the Sporades the best opportunity of developing their national
individuality untrammelled under a friendly Italian suzerainty.

(b) The advance-guard of the Greek race that inhabits the great island
of Cyprus has been subject to British government since 1878, when the
provisional occupation of the island by Great Britain under a contract similar
to that of Lausanne was negotiated in a secret agreement between Great Britain
and Turkey on the eve of the Conference at Berlin. The condition of evacuation
was in this case the withdrawal of Russia from Kars, and here likewise it never
became operative till it was abrogated by the outbreak of war. Cyprus, like the
Sporades, is now at the disposal of its de facto possessor, and on
November 5, 1914, it was annexed to the British Empire. But whatever decision
Italy may take, it is to be hoped that our own government at any rate will not
be influenced exclusively by strategical considerations, but will proclaim an
intention of allowing Cyprus ultimately to realize its national aspirations by
union with Greece.[1]

[Footnote 1: Since the above was written, this intention, under a certain
condition, has definitely been expressed.]

The whole population of the island is Greek in language, while under an
excellent British administration its political consciousness has been awakened,
and has expressed itself in a growing desire for national unity among the
Christian majority. It is true that in Cyprus, as in Krete, there is a
considerable Greek-speaking minority of Moslems[1] who prefer the status
quo; but, since the barrier of language is absent, their antipathy to union
may not prove permanent. However important the retention of Cyprus may be to
Great Britain from the strategical point of view, we shall find that even in
the balance of material interests it is not worth the price of alienating the
sympathy of an awakened and otherwise consolidated nation.

[Footnote 1: In Cyprus about 22 per cent.]

This rather detailed review of problems in the islands and Anatolia brings out
the fact that Greek nationalism is not an artificial conception of theorists,
but a real force which impels the most scattered and down-trodden populations
of Greek speech to travail unceasingly for political unity within the national
state. Yet by far the most striking example of this attractive power in
Hellenism is the history of it in ‘Epirus’.[1]

[Footnote 1: The name coined to include the districts of Himarra, Argyrokastro,
and Koritsà.]

The Epirots are a population of Albanian race, and they still speak an Albanian
dialect in their homes; while the women and children, at any rate, often know
no other language. But somewhat over a century ago the political organism
created by the remarkable personality of Ali Pasha in the hinterland of the
Adriatic coast, and the relations of Great Britain and France with this new
principality in the course of their struggle for the Mediterranean, began to
awaken in the Epirots a desire for civilization. Their Albanian origin opened
to them no prospects, for the race had neither a literature nor a common
historical tradition; and they accordingly turned to the Greeks, with whom they
were linked in religion by membership of the Orthodox Church, and in politics
by subjection to Ali’s Government at Yannina, which had adopted Greek as
its official language.

They had appealed to the right quarter; for we have seen how Greek culture
accumulated a store of latent energy under the Turkish yoke, and was expending
it at this very period in a vigorous national revival. The partially successful
War of Liberation in the ‘twenties of the nineteenth century was only the
political manifestation of the new life. It has expressed itself more typically
in a steady and universal enthusiasm for education, which throughout the
subsequent generations of political stagnation has always opened to individual
Greeks commercial and professional careers of the greatest brilliance, and
often led them to spend the fortunes so acquired in endowing the nation with
further educational opportunities. Public spirit is a Greek virtue. There are
few villages which do not possess monuments of their successful sons, and a
school is an even commoner gift than a church; while the State has supplemented
the individual benefactor to an extent remarkable where public resources are so
slender. The school-house, in fact, is generally the most prominent and
substantial building in a Greek village, and the advantage offered to the
Epirots by a rapprochement with the Greeks is concretely symbolized by
the Greek schools established to-day in generous numbers throughout their
country.

For the Epirot boy the school is the door to the future. The language he learns
there makes him the member of a nation, and opens to him a world wide enough to
employ all the talent and energy he may possess, if he seeks his fortune at
Patras or Peiraeus, or in the great Greek commercial communities of Alexandria
and Constantinople; while, if he stays at home, it still affords him a link
with the life of civilized Europe through the medium of the ubiquitous Greek
newspaper.[1] The Epirot has thus become Greek in soul, for he has reached the
conception of a national life more liberal than the isolated existence of his
native village through the avenue of Greek culture. ‘Hellenism’ and
nationality have become for him identical ideas; and when at last the hour of
deliverance struck, he welcomed the Greek armies that marched into his country
from the south and the east, after the fall of Yannina in the spring of 1913,
with the same enthusiasm with which all the enslaved populations of native
Greek dialect greeted the consummation of a century’s hopes.

[Footnote 1: There is still practically no literature printed in the Albanian
language.]

The Greek troops arrived only just in time, for the ‘Hellenism’ of
the Epirots had been terribly proved by murderous attacks from their Moslem
neighbours on the north. The latter speak a variety of the same Albanian
tongue, but were differentiated by a creed which assimilated them to the ruling
race. They had been superior to their Christian kinsmen by the weight of
numbers and the possession of arms, which under the Ottoman régime were the
monopoly of the Moslem. At last, however, the yoke of oppression was broken and
the Greek occupation seemed a harbinger of security for the future. Unluckily,
however, Epirus was of interest to others besides its own inhabitants. It
occupies an important geographical position facing the extreme heel of Italy,
just below the narrowest point in the neck of the Adriatic, and the Italian
Government insisted that the country should be included in the newly erected
principality of Albania, which the powers had reserved the right to delimit in
concert by a provision in the Treaty of London.

Italy gave two reasons for her demand. First, she declared it incompatible with
her own vital interests that both shores of the strait between Corfù and the
mainland should pass into the hands of the same power, because the combination
of both coasts and the channel between them offered a site for a naval base
that might dominate the mouth of the Adriatic. Secondly, she maintained that
the native Albanian speech of the Epirots proved their Albanian nationality,
and that it was unjust to the new Albanian state to exclude from it the most
prosperous and civilized branch of the Albanian nation. Neither argument is
cogent.

The first argument could easily be met by the neutralization of the Corfù
straits,[1] and it is also considerably weakened by the fact that the position
which really commands the mouth of the Adriatic from the eastern side is not
the Corfù channel beyond it but the magnificent bay of Avlona just within its
narrowest section, and this is a Moslem district to which the Epirots have
never laid claim, and which would therefore in any case fall within the
Albanian frontier. The second argument is almost ludicrous. The destiny of
Epirus is not primarily the concern of the other Albanians, of for that matter
of the Greeks, but of the Epirots themselves, and it is hard to see how their
nationality can be defined except in terms of their own conscious and expressed
desire; for a nation is simply a group of men inspired by a common will to
co-operate for certain purposes, and cannot be brought into existence by the
external manipulation of any specific objective factors, but solely by the
inward subjective impulse of its constituents. It was a travesty of justice to
put the Orthodox Epirots at the mercy of a Moslem majority (which had been
massacring them the year before) on the ground that they happened to speak the
same language. The hardship was aggravated by the fact that all the routes
connecting Epirus with the outer world run through Yannina and Salonika, from
which the new frontier sundered her; while great natural barriers separate her
from Avlona and Durazzo, with which the same frontier so ironically signalled
her union.

[Footnote 1: Corfù itself is neutralized already by the agreement under which
Great Britain transferred the Ionian Islands to Greece in 1863.]

The award of the powers roused great indignation in Greece, but Venezelos was
strong enough to secure that it should scrupulously be respected; and the
‘correct attitude’ which he inflexibly maintained has finally won
its reward. As soon as the decision of the powers was announced, the Epirots
determined to help themselves. They raised a militia, and asserted their
independence so successfully, that they compelled the Prince of Wied, the first
(and perhaps the last) ruler of the new ‘Albania’, to give them
home rule in matters of police and education, and to recognise Greek as the
official language for their local administration. They ensured observance of
this compact by the maintenance of their troops under arms. So matters
continued, until a rebellion among his Moslem subjects and the outbreak of the
European War in the summer of 1914 obliged the prince to depart, leaving
Albania to its natural state of anarchy. The anarchy might have restored every
canton and village to the old state of contented isolation, had it not been for
the religious hatred between the Moslems and the Epirots, which, with the
removal of all external control, began to vent itself in an aggressive assault
of the former upon the latter, and entailed much needless misery in the autumn
months.

The reoccupation of Epirus by Greek troops had now become a matter of life and
death to its inhabitants, and in October 1914 Venezelos took the inevitable
step, after serving due notice upon all the signatories to the Treaty of
London. Thanks in part to the absorption of the powers in more momentous
business, but perhaps even in a greater degree to the confidence which the
Greek premier had justly won by his previous handling of the question, this
action was accomplished without protest or opposition. Since then Epirus has
remained sheltered from the vicissitudes of civil war within and punitive
expeditions from without, to which the unhappy remnant of Albania has been
incessantly exposed; and we may prophesy that the Epiroi, unlike their
repudiated brethren of Moslem or Catholic faith, have really seen the last of
their troubles. Even Italy, from whom they had most to fear, has obtained such
a satisfactory material guarantee by the occupation on her own part of Avlona,
that she is as unlikely to demand the evacuation of Epirus by Greece as she is
to withdraw her own force from her long coveted strategical base on the eastern
shore of the Adriatic. In Avlona and Epirus the former rivals are settling down
to a neighbourly contact, and there is no reason to doubt that the de
facto line of demarcation between them will develop into a permanent and
officially recognized frontier. The problem of Epirus, though not,
unfortunately, that of Albania, may be regarded as definitely closed.

The reclamation of Epirus is perhaps the most honourable achievement of the
Greek national revival, but it is by no means an isolated phenomenon. Western
Europe is apt to depreciate modern ‘Hellenism’, chiefly because its
ambitious denomination rather ludicrously challenges comparison with a vanished
glory, while any one who has studied its rise must perceive that it has little
more claim than western Europe itself to be the peculiar heir of ancient Greek
culture. And yet this Hellenism of recent growth has a genuine vitality of its
own. It displays a remarkable power of assimilating alien elements and
inspiring them to an active pursuit of its ideals, and its allegiance supplants
all others in the hearts of those exposed to its charm. The Epirots are not the
only Albanians who have been Hellenized. In the heart of central Greece and
Peloponnesus, on the plain of Argos, and in the suburbs of Athens, there are
still Albanian enclaves, derived from those successive migrations between the
fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries; but they have so entirely forgotten
their origin that the villagers, when questioned, can only repeat: ‘We
can’t say why we happen to speak “Arvanitikà”, but we are
Greeks like everybody else.’ The Vlachs again, a Romance-speaking tribe
of nomadic shepherds who have wandered as far south as Akarnania and the shores
of the Korinthian Gulf, are settling down there to the agricultural life of the
Greek village, so that Hellenism stands to them for the transition to a higher
social phase. Their still migratory brethren in the northern ranges of Pindus
are already ‘Hellenes’ in political sympathy,[1] and are moving
under Greek influence towards the same social evolution. In distant Cappadocia,
at the root of the Anatolian peninsula, the Orthodox Greek population,
submerged beneath the Turkish flood more than eight centuries ago, has retained
little individuality except in its religion, and nothing of its native speech
but a garbled vocabulary embedded in a Turkified syntax. Yet even this
dwindling rear-guard has been overtaken just in time by the returning current
of national life, bringing with it the Greek school, and with the school a
community of outlook with Hellenism the world over. Whatever the fate of
eastern Anatolia may be, the Greek element is now assured a prominent part in
its future.

[Footnote 1: Greece owed her naval supremacy in 1912-13 to the new cruiser
Georgios Averof, named after a Vlach millionaire who made his fortune in
the Greek colony at Alexandria and left a legacy for the ship’s
construction at his death.]

These, moreover, are the peripheries of the Greek world; and at its centre the
impulse towards union in the national state readies a passionate intensity.
‘Aren’t you better off as you are?’ travellers used to ask in
Krete during the era of autonomy. ‘If you get your “Union”,
you will have to do two years’ military service instead of one
year’s training in the militia, and will be taxed up to half as much
again.’ ‘We have thought of that,’ the Kretans would reply,
‘but what does it matter, if we are united with Greece?’

On this unity modern Hellenism has concentrated its efforts, and after nearly a
century of ineffective endeavour it has been brought by the statesmanship of
Venezelos within sight of its goal. Our review of outstanding problems reveals
indeed the inconclusiveness of the settlement imposed at Bucarest; but this
only witnesses to the wisdom of the Greek nation in reaffirming its confidence
in Venezelos at the present juncture, and recalling him to power to crown the
work which he has so brilliantly carried through. Under Venezelos’
guidance we cannot doubt that the heart’s desire of Hellenism will be
accomplished at the impending European settlement by the final consolidation of
the Hellenic national state.[1]

[Footnote 1: This paragraph, again, has been superseded by the dramatic turn of
events; but the writer has left it unaltered, for the end is not yet.]

Yet however attractive the sincerity of such nationalism may be, political
unity is only a negative achievement. The history of a nation must be judged
rather by the positive content of its ideals and the positive results which it
attains, and herein the Hellenic revival displays certain grave shortcomings.
The internal paralysis of social and economic life has already been noted and
ascribed to the urgency of the ‘preliminary question’; but we must
now add to this the growing embitterment which has poisoned the relations of
Greece with her Balkan neighbours during the crises through which the
‘preliminary question’ has been worked out to its solution. Now
that this solution is at hand, will Hellenism prove capable of casting out
these two evils, and adapt itself with strength renewed to the new phase of
development that lies before it?

The northern territories acquired in 1913 will give a much greater impetus to
economic progress than Thessaly gave a generation ago; for the Macedonian
littoral west as well as east of the Struma produces a considerable proportion
of the Turkish Régie tobacco, while the pine-forests of Pindus, if judiciously
exploited, will go far to remedy the present deficiency of home-grown timber,
even if they do not provide quantities sufficient for export abroad. If we take
into account the currant-crop of the Peloponnesian plain-lands which already
almost monopolizes the world-market, the rare ores of the south-eastern
mountains and the Archipelago, and the vintages which scientific treatment
might bring into competition with the wines of the Peninsula and France, we can
see that Greece has many sources of material prosperity within her reach, if
only she applies her liberated energy to their development. Yet these are all
of them specialized products, and Greece will never export any staple commodity
to rival the grain which Rumania sends in such quantities to central Europe
already, and which Bulgaria will begin to send within a few years’ time.
Even the consolidated Greek kingdom will be too small in area and too little
compact in geographical outline to constitute an independent economic unit, and
the ultimate economic interests of the country demand co-operation in some
organization more comprehensive than the political molecule of the national
state.

Such an association should embrace the Balkans in their widest extent—
from the Black Sea to the Adriatic and from the Carpathians to the Aegean; for,
in sharp contrast to the inextricable chaos of its linguistic and
ecclesiastical divisions, the region constitutes economically a homogeneous and
indivisible whole, in which none of the parts can divest themselves of their
mutual interdependence. Greece, for example, has secured at last her direct
link with the railway system of the European continent, but for free transit
beyond her own frontier she still depends on Serbia’s good-will, just, as
Serbia depends on hers for an outlet to the Aegean at Salonika. The two states
have provided for their respective interests by a joint proprietorship of the
section of railway between Salonika and Belgrade; and similar railway problems
will doubtless bring Rumania to terms with Serbia for access to the Adriatic,
and both with Bulgaria for rights of way to Constantinople and the Anatolian
hinterland beyond. These common commercial arteries of the Balkans take no
account of racial or political frontiers, but link the region as a whole with
other regions in a common economic relation.

South-eastern and central Europe are complementary economic areas in a special
degree. The industries of central Europe will draw upon the raw products of the
south-east to an increasing extent, and the south-east will absorb in turn
increasing quantities of manufactured plant from central Europe for the
development of its own natural resources. The two areas will become parties in
a vast economic nexus, and, as in all business transactions, each will try to
get the best of the continually intensified bargaining. This is why
co-operation is so essential to the future well-being of the Balkan States.
Isolated individually and mutually competitive as they are at present, they
must succumb to the economic ascendancy of Vienna and Berlin as inevitably as
unorganized, unskilled labourers fall under the thraldom of a well-equipped
capitalist. Central Europe will have in any event an enormous initial
superiority over the Balkans in wealth, population, and business experience;
and the Balkan peoples can only hope to hold their own in this perilous but
essential intercourse with a stronger neighbour, if they take more active and
deliberate steps towards co-operation among themselves, and find in railway
conventions the basis for a Balkan zollverein. A zollverein should be the first
goal of Balkan statesmanship in the new phase of history that is opening for
Europe; but economic relations on this scale involve the political factor, and
the Balkans will not be able to deal with their great neighbours on equal terms
till the zollverein has ripened into a federation. The alternative is
subjection, both political and economic; and neither the exhaustion of the
Central Powers in the present struggle nor the individual consolidation of the
Balkan States in the subsequent settlement will suffice by themselves to avert
it in the end.

The awakening of the nation and the consolidation of the state, which we have
traced in these pages, must accordingly lead on to the confederation of the
Balkans, if all that has been so painfully won is not to perish again without
result; and we are confronted with the question: Will Balkan nationalism rise
to the occasion and transcend itself?

Many spectators of recent history will dismiss the suggestion as Utopian.
‘Nationality’, they will say, ‘revealed itself first as a
constructive force, and Europe staked its future upon it; but now that we are
committed to it, it has developed a sinister destructiveness which we cannot
remedy. Nationality brought the Balkan States into being and led them to final
victory over the Turk in 1912, only to set them tearing one another to pieces
again in 1913. In the present catastrophe the curse of the Balkans has
descended upon the whole of Europe, and laid bare unsuspected depths of chaotic
hatred; yet Balkan antagonisms still remain more ineradicable than ours. The
cure for nationality is forgetfulness, but Balkan nationalism is rooted
altogether in the past. The Balkan peoples have suffered one shattering
experience in common—the Turk, and the waters of Ottoman oppression that
have gone over their souls have not been waters of Lethe. They have endured
long centuries of spiritual exile by the passionate remembrance of their Sion,
and when they have vindicated their heritage at last, and returned to build up
the walls of their city and the temple of their national god, they have
resented each other’s neighbourhood as the repatriated Jew resented the
Samaritan. The Greek dreams with sullen intensity of a golden age before the
Bulgar was found in the land, and the challenge implied in the revival of the
Hellenic name, so far from being a superficial vanity, is the dominant
characteristic of the nationalism which has adopted it for its title. Modern
Hellenism breathes the inconscionable spirit of the émigré.’

This is only too true. The faith that has carried them to national unity will
suffice neither the Greeks nor any other Balkan people for the new era that has
dawned upon them, and the future would look dark indeed, but for a strange and
incalculable leaven, which is already potently at work in the land.

Since the opening of the present century, the chaotic, unneighbourly races of
south-eastern Europe, whom nothing had united before but the common impress of
the Turk, have begun to share another experience in common— America. From
the Slovak villages in the Carpathians to the Greek villages in the Laconian
hills they have been crossing the Atlantic in their thousands, to become
dockers and navvies, boot-blacks and waiters, confectioners and barbers in
Chicago, St. Louis, Omaha, and all the other cities that have sprung up like
magic to welcome the immigrant to the hospitable plains of the Middle West. The
intoxication of his new environment stimulates all the latent industry and
vitality of the Balkan peasant, and he abandons himself whole-heartedly to
American life; yet he does not relinquish the national tradition in which he
grew up. In America work brings wealth, and the Greek or Slovak soon worships
his God in a finer church and reads his language in a better-printed newspaper
than he ever enjoyed in his native village. The surplus flows home in
remittances of such abundance that they are steadily raising the cost of living
in the Balkans themselves, or, in other words, the standard of material
civilization; and sooner or later the immigrant goes the way of his money
orders, for home-sickness, if not a mobilization order, exerts its compulsion
before half a dozen years are out.

It is a strange experience to spend a night in some remote mountain-village of
Greece, and see Americanism and Hellenism face to face. Hellenism is
represented by the village schoolmaster. He wears a black coat, talks a little
French, and can probably read Homer; but his longest journey has been to the
normal school at Athens, and it has not altered his belief that the ikon in the
neighbouring monastery was made by St. Luke and the Bulgar beyond the mountains
by the Devil. On the other side of you sits the returned emigrant, chattering
irrepressibly in his queer version of the ‘American language’, and
showing you the newspapers which are mailed to him every fortnight from the
States. His clean linen collar and his well-made American boots are conspicuous
upon him, and he will deprecate on your behalf and his own the discomfort and
squalor of his native surroundings. His home-coming has been a disillusionment,
but it is a creative phenomenon; and if any one can set Greece upon a new path
it is he. He is transforming her material life by his American savings, for
they are accumulating into a capital widely distributed in native hands, which
will dispense the nation from pawning its richest mines and vineyards to the
European exploiter, and enable it to carry on their development on its own
account at this critical juncture when European sources of capital are cut off
for an indefinite period by the disaster of the European War. The emigrant will
give Greece all Trikoupis dreamed of, but his greatest gift to his country will
be his American point of view. In the West he has learnt that men of every
language and religion can live in the same city and work at the same shops and
sheds and mills and switch-yards without desecrating each other’s
churches or even suppressing each other’s newspapers, not to speak of
cutting each other’s throats; and when next he meets Albanian or Bulgar
on Balkan ground, he may remember that he has once dwelt with him in fraternity
at Omaha or St. Louis or Chicago. This is the gospel of Americanism, and unlike
Hellenism, which spread downwards from the patriarch’s residence and the
merchant’s counting-house, it is being preached in all the villages of
the land by the least prejudiced and most enterprising of their sons (for it is
these who answer America’s call); and spreading upward from the peasant
towards the professor in the university and the politician in parliament.

Will this new leaven conquer, and cast out the stale leaven of Hellenism before
it sours the loaf? Common sense is mighty, but whether it shall prevail in
Greece and the Balkans and Europe lies on the knees of the gods.

RUMANIA: HER HISTORY AND POLITICS

1
Introduction

The problem of the origin and formation of the Rumanian nation has always
provided matter for keen disputation among historians, and the theories which
have been advanced are widely divergent. Some of these discussions have been
undertaken solely for political reasons, and in such cases existing data prove
conveniently adaptable. This elastic treatment of the historical data is
facilitated by the fact that a long and important period affecting the
formation and the development of the Rumanian nation (270-1220) has bequeathed
practically no contemporary evidence. By linking up, however, what is known
antecedent to that period with the precise data available regarding the
following it, and by checking the inferred results with what little evidence
exists respecting the obscure epoch of Rumanian history, it has been possible
to reconstruct, almost to a certainty, the evolution of the Rumanians during
the Middle Ages.

A discussion of the varying theories would be out of proportion, and out of
place, in this essay. Nor is it possible to give to any extent a detailed
description of the epic struggle which the Rumanians carried on for centuries
against the Turks. I shall have to deal, therefore, on broad lines, with the
historical facts—laying greater stress only upon the three fundamental
epochs of Rumanian history: the formation of the Rumanian nation; its initial
casting into a national polity (foundation of the Rumanian principalities); and
its final evolution into the actual unitary State; and shall then pass on to
consider the more recent internal and external development of Rumania, and her
present attitude.

2
Formation of the Rumanian Nation

About the fifth century B.C., when the population of the Balkan-Carpathian
region consisted of various tribes belonging to the Indo-European family, the
northern portion of the Balkan peninsula was conquered by the Thracians and the
Illyrians. The Thracians spread north and south, and a branch of their race,
the Dacians, crossed the Danube. The latter established themselves on both
sides of the Carpathian ranges, in the region which now comprises the provinces
of Oltenia (Rumania), and Banat and Transylvania (Hungary). The Dacian Empire
expanded till its boundaries touched upon those of the Roman Empire. The Roman
province of Moesia (between the Danube and the Balkans) fell before its armies,
and the campaign that ensued was so successful that the Dacians were able to
compel Rome to an alliance.

Two expeditions undertaken against Dacia by the Emperor Trajan (98-117)
released Rome from these ignominious obligations, and brought Dacia under Roman
rule (A.D. 106). Before his second expedition Trajan erected a stone bridge
over the Danube, the remains of which can still be seen at Turnu-Severin, a
short distance below the point where the Danube enters Rumanian territory.
Trajan celebrated his victory by erecting at Adam Klissi (in the province of
Dobrogea) the recently discovered Tropaeum Traiani, and in Rome the
celebrated ‘Trajan’s Column’, depicting in marble reliefs
various episodes of the Dacian wars.

The new Roman province was limited to the regions originally inhabited by the
Dacians, and a strong garrison, estimated by historians at 25,000 men, was left
to guard it. Numerous colonists from all parts of the Roman Empire were brought
here as settlers, and what remained of the Dacian population completely
amalgamated with them. The new province quickly developed under the impulse of
Roman civilization, of which numerous inscriptions and other archaeological
remains are evidence. It became one of the most flourishing dependencies of the
Roman Empire, and was spoken of as Dacia Felix.

About a century and a half later hordes of barbarian invaders, coming from the
north and east, swept over the country. Under the strain of those incursions
the Roman legions withdrew by degrees into Moesia, and in A.D. 271 Dacia was
finally evacuated. But the colonists remained, retiring into the Carpathians,
where they lived forgotten of history.

The most powerful of these invaders were the Goths (271-375), who, coming from
the shores of the Baltic, had shortly before settled north of the Black Sea.
Unaccustomed to mountain life, they did not penetrate beyond the plains between
the Carpathians and the Dnjester. They had consequently but little intercourse
with the Daco-Roman population, and the total absence in the Rumanian language
and in Rumanian place-names of words of Gothic origin indicates that their stay
had no influence upon country or population. Material evidence of their
occupation is afforded, however, by a number of articles made of gold found in
1837 at Petroasa (Moldavia), and now in the National Museum at Bucarest.

After the Goths came the Huns (375-453), under Attila, the Avars (566-799),
both of Mongolian race, and the Gepidae (453-566), of Gothic race—all
savage, bloodthirsty raiders, passing and repassing over the Rumanian regions,
pillaging and burning everywhere. To avoid destruction the Daco-Roman
population withdrew more and more into the inaccessible wooded regions of the
mountains, and as a result were in no wise influenced by contact with the
invaders.

But with the coming of the Slavs, who settled in the Balkan peninsula about the
beginning of the seventh century, certain fundamental changes took place in the
ethnical conditions prevailing on the Danube. The Rumanians were separated from
the Romans, following the occupation by the Slavs of the Roman provinces
between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. Such part of the population as was not
annihilated during the raids of the Avars was taken into captivity, or
compelled to retire southwards towards modern Macedonia and northwards towards
the Dacian regions.

Parts of the Rumanian country became dependent upon the new state founded
between the Balkans and the Danube in 679 by the Bulgarians, a people of
Turanian origin, who formerly inhabited the regions north of the Black Sea
between the Volga and the mouth of the Danube.

After the conversion of the Bulgarians to Christianity (864) the Slovenian
language was introduced into their Church, and afterwards also into the Church
of the already politically dependent Rumanian provinces.[1] This finally
severed the Daco-Rumanians from the Latin world. The former remained for a long
time under Slav influence, the extent of which is shown by the large number of
words of Slav origin contained in the Rumanian language, especially in
geographical and agricultural terminology.

[Footnote 1: The Rumanians north and south of the Danube embraced the Christian
faith after its introduction into the Roman Empire by Constantine the Great
(325), with Latin as religious language and their church organization under the
rule of Rome. A Christian basilica, dating from that period, has been
discovered by the Rumanian; archaeologist, Tocilescu, at Adam Klissi
(Dobrogea).]

The coming of the Hungarians (a people of Mongolian race) about the end of the
ninth century put an end to the Bulgarian domination in Dacia. While a few of
the existing Rumanian duchies were subdued by Stephen the Saint, the first King
of Hungary (995-1038), the ‘land of the Vlakhs’ (Terra
Blacorum), in the south-eastern part of Transylvania, enjoyed under the
Hungarian kings a certain degree of national autonomy. The Hungarian chronicles
speak of the Vlakhs as ‘former colonists of the Romans’. The
ethnological influence of the Hungarians upon the Rumanian population has been
practically nil. They found the Rumanian nation firmly established, race and
language, and the latter remained pure of Magyarisms, even in Transylvania.
Indeed, it is easy to prove—and it is only what might be expected, seeing
that the Rumanians had attained a higher state of civilization than the
Hungarian invaders—that the Hungarians were largely influenced by the
Daco-Romans. They adopted Latin as their official language, they copied many of
the institutions and customs of the Rumanians, and recruited a large number of
their nobles from among the Rumanian nobility, which was already established on
a feudal basis when the Hungarians arrived.

A great number of the Rumanian nobles and freemen were, however, inimical to
the new masters, and migrated to the regions across the mountains. This the
Hungarians used as a pretext for bringing parts of Rumania under their
domination, and they were only prevented from further extending it by the
coming of the Tartars (1241), the last people of Mongolian origin to harry
these regions. The Hungarians maintained themselves, however, in the parts
which they had already occupied, until the latter were united into the
principality of the ‘Rumanian land’.

To sum up: ‘The Rumanians are living to-day where fifteen centuries ago
their ancestors were living. The possession of the regions on the Lower Danube
passed from one nation to another, but none endangered the Rumanian nation as a
national entity. “The water passes, the stones remain”; the hordes
of the migration period, detached from their native soil, disappeared as mist
before the sun. But the Roman element bent their heads while the storm passed
over them, clinging to the old places until the advent of happier days, when
they were able to stand up and stretch their limbs.’[1]

[Footnote 1: Traugott Tamm, Über den Ursprung der Rumänen,, Bonn, 1891.]

3
The Foundation and Development of the Rumanian Principalities

The first attempt to organize itself into a political entity was made by the
Rumanian nation in the thirteenth century, when, under the impulse of the
disaffected nobles coming from Hungary, the two principalities of
‘Muntenia’ (Mountain Land), commonly known as Wallachia and
‘Moldavia’, came into being. The existence of Rumanians on both
sides of the Carpathians long before Wallachia was founded is corroborated by
contemporary chroniclers. We find evidence of it in as distant a source as the
History of the Mongols, of the Persian chronicler, Rashid Al-Din, who,
describing the invasion of the Tartars, says: ‘In the middle of spring
(1240) the princes (Mongols or Tartars) crossed the mountains in order to enter
the country of the Bulares (Bulgarians) and of the Bashguirds (Hungarians).
Orda, who was marching to the right, passed through the country of the Haute
(Olt), where Bazarambam met him with an army, but was beaten. Boudgek crossed
the mountains to enter the Kara-Ulak, and defeated the Ulak (Vlakh)
people.’[1] Kara-Ulak means Black Wallachia; Bazarambam is certainly the
corrupted name of the Ban Bassarab, who ruled as vassal of Hungary over the
province of Oltenia, and whose dynasty founded the principality of Muntenia.
The early history of this principality was marked by efforts to free it from
Hungarian domination, a natural development of the desire for emancipation
which impelled the Rumanians to migrate from the subdued provinces in Hungary.

[Footnote 1: Xenopol, Histoire des Roumains, Paris, 1896, i, 168.]

The foundation of Moldavia dates from after the retreat of the Tartars, who had
occupied the country for a century (1241-1345). They were driven out by an
expedition under Hungarian leadership, with the aid of Rumanians from the
province of Maramuresh. It was the latter who then founded the principality of
Moldavia under the suzerainty of Hungary, the chroniclers mentioning as its
first ruler the Voivod Dragosh.[1]

[Footnote 1: The legend as to the foundation of Moldavia tells us that Dragosh,
when hunting one day in the mountains, was pursuing a bison through the dense
forest. Towards sunset, just when a successful shot from his bow had struck and
killed the animal, he emerged at a point from which the whole panorama of
Moldavia was unfolded before his astonished eyes. Deeply moved by the beauty of
this fair country, he resolved to found a state there. It is in commemoration
of this event that Moldavia bears the head of a wild bison on her banner.]

The rudimentary political formations which already existed before the
foundation of the principalities were swept away by the invasion of the
Tartars, who destroyed all trace of constituted authority in the plains below
the Carpathians. In consequence the immigrants from Transylvania did not
encounter any resistance, and were even able to impose obedience upon the
native population, though coming rather as refugees than as conquerors. These
new-comers were mostly nobles (boyards). Their emigration deprived the masses
of the Rumanian population of Transylvania of all moral and political
support—especially as a part of the nobility had already been won over by
their Hungarian masters—and with time the masses fell into servitude. On
the other hand the immigrating nobles strengthened and secured the predominance
of their class in the states which were to be founded. In both cases the
situation of the peasantry became worse, and we have, curiously enough, the
same social fact brought about by apparently contrary causes.

Though the Rumanians seem to have contributed but little, up to the nineteenth
century, to the advance of civilization, their part in European history is
nevertheless a glorious one, and if less apparent, perhaps of more fundamental
importance. By shedding their blood in the struggle against the Ottoman
invasion, they, together with the other peoples of Oriental Europe, procured
that security which alone made possible the development of western
civilization. Their merit, like that of all with whom they fought, ‘is
not to have vanquished time and again the followers of Mohammed, who always
ended by gaining the upper hand, but rather to have resisted with unparalleled
energy, perseverance, and bravery the terrible Ottoman invaders, making them
pay for each step advanced such a heavy price, that their resources were
drained, they were unable to carry on the fight, and thus their power came to
an end’.[1]

[Footnote 1: Xenopol, op. cit., i. 266.]

From the phalanx of Christian warriors stand out the names of a few who were
the bravest of a time when bravery was common; but while it is at least due
that more tribute than a mere mention of their names should be paid to the
patriot princes who fought in life-long conflict against Turkish domination,
space does not permit me to give more than the briefest summary of the wars
which for centuries troubled the country.

It was in 1389, when Mircea the Old was Prince of Wallachia, that the united
Balkan nations attempted for the first time to check Ottoman invasion. The
battle of Kosovo, however, was lost, and Mircea had to consent to pay tribute
to the Turks. For a short space after the battle of Rovine (1398), where Mircea
defeated an invading Turkish army, the country had peace, until Turkish
victories under the Sultan Mohammed resulted, in 1411, in further submissions
to tribute.

It is worthy of mention that it was on the basis of tribute that the relations
between Turkey and Rumania rested until 1877, the Rumanian provinces becoming
at no time what Hungary was for a century and a half, namely, a Turkish
province.

In a battle arising following his frustration—by means not unconnected
with his name—of a Turkish plot against his person, Vlad the Impaler
(1458-62) completely defeated the Turks under Mohammed II; but an unfortunate
feud against Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldavia, put an end to the reign of
Vlad—a fierce but just prince.

A period of the most lamentable decadence followed, during which Turkish
domination prevailed more and more in the country. During an interval of
twenty-five years (1521-46) no less than eleven princes succeeded one another
on the throne of Muntenia, whilst of the nineteen princes who ruled during the
last three-quarters of the sixteenth century, only two died a natural death
while still reigning.

In Moldavia also internal struggles were weakening the country. Not powerful
enough to do away with one another, the various aspirants to the throne
contented themselves with occupying and ruling over parts of the province.
Between 1443-7 there were no less than three princes reigning simultaneously,
whilst one of them, Peter III, lost and regained the throne three times.

For forty-seven years (1457-1504) Stephen the Great fought for the independence
of Moldavia. At Racova, in 1475, he annihilated an Ottoman army in a victory
considered the greatest ever secured by the Cross against Islam. The Shah of
Persia, Uzun Hasan, who was also fighting the Turks, offered him an alliance,
urging him at the same time to induce all the Christian princes to unite with
the Persians against the common foe. These princes, as well as Pope Sixtus IV,
gave him great praise; but when Stephen asked from them assistance in men and
money, not only did he receive none, but Vladislav, King of Hungary, conspired
with his brother Albert, King of Poland, to conquer and divide Moldavia between
them. A Polish army entered the country, but was utterly destroyed by Stephen
in the forest of Kosmin.

Having had the opportunity of judging at its right value the friendship of the
Christian princes, on his death-bed Stephen advised his son Bogdan to make
voluntary submission to the Turks. Thus Moldavia, like Wallachia, came under
Turkish suzerainty.

For many years after Stephen’s death the Turks exploited the Rumanian
countries shamelessly, the very candidates for the throne having to pay great
sums for Turkish support. The country groaned under the resultant taxation and
the promiscuousness of the tribute exacted till, in 1572, John the Terrible
ascended the Moldavian throne. This prince refused to pay tribute, and
repeatedly defeated the Turks. An army of 100,000 men advanced against John;
but his cavalry, composed of nobles not over-loyal to a prince having the
peasant cause so much at heart, deserted to the enemy, with the result that,
after a gallant and prolonged resistance, he suffered defeat.

Michael the Brave, Prince of Muntenia (1593-1601), was the last of the Vlakhs
to stand up against Turkish aggression. This prince not only succeeded in
crushing a Turkish army sent against him, but he invaded Transylvania, whose
prince had leanings towards Turkey, pushed further into Moldavia, and succeeded
in bringing the three Rumanian countries under his rule. Michael is described
in the documents of the time as ‘Prince of the whole land of
Hungro-Wallachia, of Transylvania, and of Moldavia’. He ruled for eight
years. ‘It was not the Turkish sword which put an end to the exploits of
Michael the Brave. The Magyars of Transylvania betrayed him; the German emperor
condemned him; and a Greek in Austria’s service, General Basta, had him
sabred: as though it were fated that all the enemies of the Rumanian race, the
Magyar, the German, and the Greek, should unite to dip their hands in the blood
of the Latin hero.’[1] The union of the Rumanian lands which he realized
did not last long; but it gave form and substance to the idea which was from
that day onward to be the ideal of the Rumanian nation.

[Footnote 1: Alfred Rumbaud, Introduction to Xenopol, op, cit., i. xix.]

The fundamental cause of all the sufferings of the Rumanian principalities was
the hybrid ‘hereditary-elective’ system of succession to the
throne, which prevailed also in most of the neighbouring countries. All members
of the princely family were eligible for the succession; but the right of
selecting among them lay with an assembly composed of the higher nobility and
clergy. All was well if a prince left only one successor. But if there were
several, even if illegitimate children, claiming the right to rule, then each
endeavoured to gain over the nobility with promises, sometimes, moreover,
seeking the support of neighbouring countries. This system rendered easier and
hastened the establishment of Turkish domination; and corruption and intrigues,
in which the Sultan’s harem had a share, became capital factors in the
choice and election of the ruler.

Economically and intellectually all this was disastrous. The Rumanians were an
agricultural people. The numerous class of small freeholders (moshneni and
razeshi), not being able to pay the exorbitant taxes, often had their lands
confiscated by the princes. Often, too, not being able to support themselves,
they sold their property and their very selves to the big landowners. Nor did
the nobles fare better. Formerly free, quasi-feudal warriors, seeking fortune
in reward for services rendered to their prince, they were often subjected to
coercive treatment on his part now that the throne depended upon the goodwill
of influential personages at Constantinople. Various civil offices were created
at court, either necessitated by the extension of the relations of the country
or intended to satisfy some favourite of the prince. Sources of social position
and great material benefit, these offices were coveted greedily by the boyards,
and those who obtained none could only hope to cheat fortune by doing their
best to undermine the position of the prince.

4
The Phanariote Rule

These offices very presently fell to the lot of the Phanariotes (Greek
merchants and bankers inhabiting the quarter of Phanar), who had in some way or
another assisted the princes to their thrones, these being now practically put
up to auction in Constantinople. As a natural consequence of such a state of
affairs the thoughts of the Rumanian princes turned to Russia as a possible
supporter against Ottoman oppression. A formal alliance was entered into in
1711 with Tsar Peter the Great, but a joint military action against the Turks
failed, the Tsar returned to Russia, and the Porte threatened to transform
Moldavia, in order to secure her against incipient Russian influence, into a
Turkish province with a pasha as administrator. The nobles were preparing to
leave the country, and the people to retire into the mountains, as their
ancestors had done in times of danger. It is not to be wondered at that, under
the menace of losing their autonomy, the Rumanians ‘welcomed the
nomination of the dragoman of the Porte, Nicholas Mavrocordato, though he was a
Greek. The people greeted with joy the accession of the first Phanariote to the
throne of the principality of Moldavia’[1] (1711).

[Footnote 1: Xenopol, op. cit., ii. 138]

Knowledge of foreign languages had enabled the Phanariotes to obtain important
diplomatic positions at Constantinople, and they ended by acquiring the thrones
of the Rumanian principalities as a recompense for their services. But they had
to pay for it, and to make matters more profitable the Turks devised the
ingenious method of transferring the princes from one province to another, each
transference being considered as a new nomination. From 1730 to 1741 the two
reigning princes interchanged thrones in this way three times. They acquired
the throne by gold, and they could only keep it by gold. All depended upon how
much they wore able to squeeze out of the country. The princes soon became past
masters in the art of spoliation. They put taxes upon chimneys, and the
starving peasants pulled their cottages down and went to live in mountain
caves; they taxed the animals, and the peasants preferred to kill the few
beasts they possessed. But this often proved no remedy, for we are told that
the Prince Constantin Mavrocordato, having prescribed a tax on domestic animals
at a time when an epidemic had broken out amongst them, ordered the tax to be
levied on the carcasses. ‘The Administrative régime during the Phanariote
period was, in general, little else than organized brigandage,’ says
Xenopol[1]. In fact the Phanariote rule was instinct with corruption, luxury,
and intrigue. Though individually some of them may not deserve blame, yet
considering what the Phanariotes took out of the country, what they introduced
into it, and to what extent they prevented its development, their era was the
most calamitous in Rumanian history.

[Footnote 1: Ibid, op. cit., ii. 308]

The war of 1768 between Russia and Turkey gave the former power a vague
protectorate over the Rumanian provinces (Treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji). In 1774
Austria acquired from the Turks, by false promises, the northern part of
Moldavia, the pleasant land of Bucovina. During the new conflict between Turkey
and Russia, the Russian armies occupied and battened upon the Rumanian
provinces for six years. Though they had again to abandon their intention of
making the Danube the southern boundary of their empire—to which Napoleon
had agreed by the secret treaty with Tsar Alexander (Erfurt, September 27,
1808)—they obtained from Turkey the cession of Bessarabia (Treaty of
Bucarest, May 28, 1812), together with that part of Moldavia lying between the
Dnjester and the Pruth, the Russians afterwards giving to the whole region the
name of Bessarabia.

5
Modern Period to 1866

In 1821 the Greek revolution, striving to create an independent Greece, broke
out on Rumanian ground, supported by the princes of Moldavia and Muntenia. Of
this support the Rumanians strongly disapproved, for, if successful, the
movement would have strengthened the obnoxious Greek domination; If
unsuccessful, the Turks were sure to take a terrible revenge for the assistance
given by the Rumanian countries. The movement, which was started about the same
time by the ennobled peasant, Tudor Vladimirescu, for the emancipation of the
lower classes, soon acquired, therefore, an anti-Greek tendency. Vladimirescu
was assassinated at the instigation of the Greeks; the latter were completely
checked by the Turks, who, grown suspicious after the Greek rising and
confronted with the energetic attitude of the Rumanian nobility, consented in
1822 to the nomination of two native boyards, Jonitza Sturdza and Gregory
Ghica, recommended by their countrymen, as princes of Moldavia and Wallachia.
The iniquitous system of ‘the throne to the highest bidder’ had
come to an end.

The period which marks the decline of Greek influence in the Rumanian
principalities also marks the growth of Russian influence; the first meant
economic exploitation, the second was a serious menace to the very existence of
the Rumanian nation. But if Russia seemed a possible future danger, Turkey with
its Phanariote following was a certain and immediate menace. When, therefore,
at the outbreak of the conflict with Turkey in 1828 the Russians once more
passed the Pruth, the country welcomed them. Indeed, the Rumanian boyards, who
after the rising of 1821 and the Turkish occupation had taken refuge in
Transylvania, had even more than once invited Russian intervention.[1] Hopes
and fears alike were realized. By the Treaty of Adrianople (1829) the rights of
Turkey as suzerain were limited to the exaction of a monetary tribute and the
right of investiture of the princes, one important innovation being that these
last were to be elected by national assemblies for life. But, on the other
hand, a Russian protectorate was established, and the provinces remained in
Russian military occupation up to 1834, pending the payment of the war
indemnity by Turkey. The ultimate aim of Russia may be open to discussion. Her
immediate aim was to make Russian influence paramount in the principalities;
this being the only possible explanation of the anomalous fact that, pending
the payment of the war indemnity, Russia herself was occupying the provinces
whose autonomy she had but now forcibly retrieved from Turkey. The Règlement
Organique, the new constitutional law given to the principalities by their
Russian governor, Count Kisseleff, truly reflected the tendency. From the
administrative point of view it was meant to make for progress; from the
political point of view it was meant to bind the two principalities to the will
of the Tsar. The personal charm of Count Kisseleff seemed to have established
as it were an unbreakable link between Russians and Rumanians. But when he left
the country in 1834 ‘the liking for Russia passed away to be replaced
finally by the two sentiments which always most swayed the Rumanian heart: love
for their country, and affection towards France’.

[Footnote 1: Sec P. Eliade, Histoire de l’Esprit Public en
Roumanie, i, p. 167 et seq.]

French culture had been introduced into the principalities by the Phanariote
princes who, as dragomans of the Porte, had to know the language, and usually
employed French secretaries for themselves and French tutors for their
children. With the Russian occupation a fresh impetus was given to French
culture, which was pre-eminent in Russia at the time; and the Russian
officials, not speaking the language of the country, generally employed French
in their relations with the Rumanian authorities, French being already widely
spoken in Rumania. The contact with French civilization, at an epoch when the
Rumanians were striving to free themselves from Turkish, Greek, and Russian
political influence, roused in them the sleeping Latin spirit, and the younger
generation, in constantly increasing numbers, flocked to Paris in search of new
forms of civilization and political life. At this turning-point in their
history the Rumanians felt themselves drawn towards France, no less by racial
affinity than by the liberal ideas to which that country had so passionately
given herself during several decades.

By the Treaty of Adrianople the Black Sea was opened to the commercial vessels
of all nations. This made for the rapid economic development of the
principalities by providing an outlet for their agricultural produce, the chief
source of their wealth. It also brought them nearer to western Europe, which
began to be interested in a nation whose spirit centuries of sufferings had
failed to break. Political, literary, and economic events thus prepared the
ground for the Rumanian Renascence, and when in 1848 the great revolution broke
out, it spread at once over the Rumanian countries, where the dawn of freedom
had been struggling to break since 1821. The Rumanians of Transylvania rose
against the tyranny of the Magyars; those of Moldavia and Muntenia against the
oppressive influence of Russia. The movement under the gallant, but
inexperienced, leadership of a few patriots, who, significantly enough, had
almost all been educated in France, was, however, soon checked in the
principalities by the joint action of Russian and Turkish forces which remained
in occupation of the country. Many privileges were lost (Convention of Balta
Liman, May 1, 1849); but the revolution had quickened the national sentiment of
the younger generation in all classes of society, and the expatriated leaders,
dispersed throughout the great capitals of Europe, strenuously set to work to
publish abroad the righteous cause of their country. In this they received the
enthusiastic and invaluable assistance of Edgar Quinet, Michelet, Saint-Marc
Girardin, and others.

This propaganda had the fortune to be contemporaneous and in agreement with the
political events leading to the Crimean War, which was entered upon to check
the designs of Russia. A logical consequence was the idea, raised at the Paris
Congress of 1856, of the union of the Rumanian principalities as a barrier to
Russian expansion. This idea found a powerful supporter in Napoleon III, ever a
staunch upholder of the principle of nationality. But at the Congress the
unexpected happened. Russia favoured the idea of union, ‘to swallow the
two principalities at a gulp,’ as a contemporary diplomatist maliciously
suggested; while Austria opposed it strongly. So, inconceivably enough, did
Turkey, whose attitude, as the French ambassador at Constantinople, Thouvenel,
put it, ‘was less influenced by the opposition of Austria than by the
approval of Russia’.[1] Great Britain also threw in her weight with the
powers which opposed the idea of union, following her traditional policy of
preserving the European equilibrium. The treaty of March 30, 1856,
re-incorporated with Moldavia the southern part of Bessarabia, including the
delta of the Danube, abolished the Russian protectorate, but confirmed the
suzerainty of Turkey—not unnaturally, since the integrity of the Ottoman
Empire had been the prime motive of the war. By prohibiting Turkey, however,
from entering Rumanian territory, save with the consent of the great powers, it
was recognized indirectly that the suzerainty was merely a nominal one. Article
23 of the treaty, by providing that the administration of the principalities
was to be on a national basis, implicitly pointed to the idea of union, as the
organization of one principality independently of the other would not have been
national. But as the main argument of Turkey and Austria was that the Rumanians
themselves did not desire the union, it was decided to convene in both
principalities special assemblies (divans ad hoc) representing all
classes of the population, whose wishes were to be embodied, by a European
commission, in a report for consideration by the Congress.

[Footnote 1: A. Xenopol, Unionistii si Separatistii (Paper read before
the Rumanian Academy), 1909.]

To understand the argument of the two powers concerned and the decision to
which it led, it must be borne in mind that the principalities were in the
occupation of an Austrian army, which had replaced the Russian armies withdrawn
in 1854, and that the elections for the assemblies were to be presided over by
Turkish commissaries. Indeed, the latter, in collaboration with the Austrian
consuls, so successfully doctored the election lists,[1] that the idea of union
might once more have fallen through, had it not been for the invaluable
assistance which Napoleon III gave the Rumanian countries. As Turkish policy
was relying mainly on England’s support, Napoleon brought about a
personal meeting with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, at Osborne (August
1857), the result of which was a compromise: Napoleon agreed to defer for the
time being the idea of an effective union of the two principalities, England
undertaking, on the other hand, to make the Porte cancel the previous
elections, and proceed to new ones after revision of the electoral lists. The
corrupt Austrian and Turkish influence on the old elections was best
demonstrated by the fact that only three of the total of eighty-four old
members succeeded in securing re-election. The assemblies met and proclaimed as
imperatively necessary to the future welfare of the provinces, their union,
‘for no frontier divides us, and everything tends to bring us closer, and
nothing to separate us, save the ill-will of those who desire to see us
disunited and weak’; further, a foreign hereditary dynasty, because
‘the accession to the throne of princes chosen from amongst us has been a
constant pretext for foreign interference, and the throne has been the cause of
unending feud among the great families of this country’. Moreover, if the
union of the two principalities was to be accomplished under a native prince,
it is obvious that the competition would have become doubly keen; not to speak
of the jealousies likely to be arousal between Moldavians and Muntenians.

[Footnote 1: The edifying correspondence between the Porte and its commissary
Vorgoridès regarding the arrangements for the Rumanian elections fell into the
hands of Rumanian politicians, and caused a great sensation when it appeared in
L’Etoile du Danube, published in Brussels by Rumanian
émigrés.]

Such were the indisputable wishes of the Rumanians, based on knowledge of men
and facts, and arising out of the desire to see their country well started on
the high road of progress. But Europe had called for the expression of these
wishes only to get the question shelved for the moment, as in 1856 everybody
was anxious for a peace which should at all costs be speedy. Consequently, when
a second Congress met in Paris, in May 1858, three months of discussion and the
sincere efforts of France only resulted in a hybrid structure entitled the
‘United Principalities’. These were to have a common legislation, a
common army, and a central committee composed of representatives of both
assemblies for the discussion of common affairs; but were to continue to form
two separate states, with independent legislative and executive institutions,
each having to elect a prince of Rumanian descent for life.

Disappointed in their hopes and reasonable expectations, the Rumanians adopted
the principle of ‘help yourself and God will help you’, and
proceeded to the election of their rulers. Several candidates competed in
Moldavia. To avoid a split vote the name of an outsider was put forward the day
before the election, and on January 17, 1859, Colonel Alexander Ioan Cuza was
unanimously elected. In Wallachia the outlook was very uncertain when the
assembly met, amid great popular excitement, on February 5. The few patriots
who had realized that the powers, seeking only their own interests, were
consciously and of set purpose hampering the emancipation of a long-suffering
nation, put forth and urged the election of Cuza, and the assembly unanimously
adopted this spirited suggestion. By this master-stroke the Rumanians had
quietly accomplished the reform which was an indispensable condition towards
assuring a better future. The political moment was propitious. Italy’s
military preparation prevented Austria from intervening, and, as usual when
confronted with an accomplished fact, the great powers and Turkey finished by
officially recognizing the action of the principalities in December 1861. The
central commission was at once abolished, the two assemblies and cabinets
merged into one, and Bucarest became the capital of the new state
‘Rumania’.

If the unsympathetic attitude of the powers had any good result, it was to
bring home for the moment to the Rumanians the necessity for national unity.
When the danger passed, however, the wisdom which it had evoked followed suit.
Cuza cherished the hope of realizing various ideal reforms. Confronted with
strong opposition, he did not hesitate to override the constitution by
dissolving the National Assembly (May 2, 1864) and arrogating to himself the
right, till the formation of a new Chamber, to issue decrees which had all the
force of law. He thus gave a dangerous example to the budding constitutional
polity; political passions were let loose, and a plot organized by the
Opposition led to the forced abdication of Cuza on February 23, 1866. The
prince left the country for ever a few days later. No disturbance whatever took
place, not one drop of blood was shed.

A series of laws, mostly adapted from French models, was introduced by Cuza.
Under the Education Act of 1864 all degrees of education were free, and
elementary education compulsory. A large number of special and technical
schools were founded, as well as two universities, one at Jassy (1860) and one
at Bucarest (1864). After the coup d’état of 1864 universal
suffrage was introduced, largely as an attempt to ‘swamp’ the
fractious political parties with the peasant vote; while at the same time a
‘senate’ was created as a ‘moderating assembly’ which,
composed as it was of members by right and members nominated by the prince, by
its very nature increased the influence of the crown. The chief reforms
concerned the rural question. Firstly, Cuza and his minister, Cogalniceanu,
secularized and converted to the state the domains of the monasteries, which
during the long period of Greek influence had acquired one-fifth of the total
area of the land, and were completely in the hands of the Greek clergy (Law of
December 13, 1863). More important still, as affecting fundamentally the social
structure of the country, was the Rural Law (promulgated on August 26, 1864),
which had been the cause of the conflict between Cuza and the various political
factions, the Liberals clamouring for more thorough reforms, the Conservatives
denouncing Cuza’s project as revolutionary. As the peasant question is
the most important problem left for Rumania to solve, and as I believe that, in
a broad sense, it has a considerable bearing upon the present political
situation in that country, it may not be out of place here to devote a little
space to its consideration.

Originally the peasant lived in the village community as a free land-owner. He
paid a certain due (one-tenth of his produce and three days’ labour
yearly) to his leader (cneaz) as recompense for his leadership in peace
and war. The latter, moreover, solely enjoyed the privilege of carrying on the
occupations of miller and innkeeper, and the peasant was compelled to mill with
him. When after the foundation of the principalities the upper class was
established on a feudal basis, the peasantry were subjected to constantly
increasing burdens. Impoverished and having in many cases lost their land, the
peasants were also deprived at the end of the sixteenth century of their
freedom of movement. By that time the cneaz, from being the leader of the
community, had become the actual lord of the village, and his wealth was
estimated by the number of villages he possessed. The peasant owners paid their
dues to him in labour and in kind. Those peasants who owned no land were his
serfs, passing with the land from master to master.

Under the Turkish domination the Rumanian provinces became the granary of the
Ottoman Empire. The value of land rose quickly, as did also the taxes. To meet
these taxes—from the payment of which the boyards (the descendants of the
cneazi) were exempt—the peasant owners had frequently to sacrifice their
lands; while, greedy after the increased benefits, the boyards used all
possible means to acquire more land for themselves. With the increase of their
lands they needed more labour, and they obtained permission from the ruler not
only to exact increased labour dues from the peasantry, but also to determine
the amount of work that should be done in a day. This was effected in such a
way that the peasants had, in fact, to serve three and four times the number of
days due.

The power to acquire more land from the freeholders, and to increase the amount
of labour due by the peasants, was characteristic of the legislation of the
eighteenth century. By a decree of Prince Moruzi, in 1805, the lords were for
the first time empowered to reserve to their own use part of the estate,
namely, one-fourth of the meadow land, and this privilege was extended in 1828
to the use of one-third of the arable land. The remaining two-thirds were
reserved for the peasants, every young married couple being entitled to a
certain amount of land, in proportion to the number of traction animals they
owned. When the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829 opened the western markets to
Rumanian corn, in which markets far higher prices were obtainable than from the
Turks, Rumanian agriculture received an extraordinary impetus. Henceforth the
efforts of the boyards were directed towards lessening the amount of land to
which the peasants were entitled. By the Règlement Organique they
succeeded in reducing such land to half its previous area, at the same time
maintaining and exacting from the peasant his dues in full. It is in the same
Act that there appears for the first time the fraudulent title ‘lords of
the land’, though the boyards had no exclusive right of property; they
had the use of one-third of the estate, and a right to a due in labour and in
kind from the peasant holders, present or prospective, of the other two-thirds.

With a view to ensuring, on the one hand, greater economic freedom to the
land-owners, and, on the other, security for the peasants from the enslaving
domination of the upper class, the rural law of 1864 proclaimed the
peasant-tenants full proprietors of their holdings, and the land-owners full
proprietors of the remainder of the estate. The original intention of creating
common land was not carried out in the Bill. The peasant’s holding in
arable land being small, he not infrequently ploughed his pasture, and, as a
consequence, had either to give up keeping beasts, or pay a high price to the
land-owners for pasturage. Dues in labour and in kind were abolished, the
land-owners receiving an indemnity which was to be refunded to the state by the
peasants in instalments within a period of fifteen years. This reform is
characteristic of much of the legislation of Cuza: despotically pursuing the
realization of some ideal reform, without adequate study of and adaptation to
social circumstances, his laws provided no practical solution of the problem
with which they dealt. In this case, for example, the reform benefited the
upper class solely, although generally considered a boon to the peasantry. Of
ancient right two-thirds of the estate were reserved for the peasants; but the
new law gave them possession of no more than the strip they were holding, which
barely sufficed to provide them with the mere necessaries of life. The
remainder up to two-thirds of the estate went as a gift, with full
proprietorship; to the boyard. For the exemption of their dues in kind and in
labour, the peasants had to pay an indemnity, whereas the right of their sons
to receive at their marriage a piece of land in proportion to the number of
traction animals they possessed was lost without compensation. Consequently,
the younger peasants had to sell their labour, contracting for periods of a
year and upwards, and became a much easier prey to the spoliation of the upper
class than when they had at least a strip of land on which to build a hut, and
from which to procure their daily bread; the more so as the country had no
industry which could compete with agriculture in the labour market. An
investigation undertaken by the Home Office showed that out of 1,265 labour
contracts for 1906, chosen at random, only 39.7 per cent, were concluded at
customary wages; the others were lower in varying degrees, 13.2 per cent. of
the cases showing wages upwards of 75 per cent. below the usual rates.

Under these conditions of poverty and economic serfdom the peasantry was not
able to participate in the enormous development of Rumanian agriculture, which
had resulted from increased political security and the establishment of an
extensive network of railways. While the boyards found an increasing attraction
in politics, a new class of middlemen came into existence, renting the land
from the boyards for periods varying generally from three to five years. Owing
to the resultant competition, rents increased considerably, while conservative
methods of cultivation kept production stationary. Whereas the big cultivator
obtained higher prices to balance the increased cost of production, the
peasant, who produced for his own consumption, could only face such increase by
a corresponding decrease in the amount of food consumed. To show how much alive
the rural question is, it is enough to state that peasant risings occurred in
1888, 1889, 1894, 1900, and 1907; that new distributions of land took place in
1881 and 1889; that land was promised to the peasants as well at the time of
the campaign of 1877 as at that of 1913; and that more or less happily
conceived measures concerning rural questions have been passed in almost every
parliamentary session. The general tendency of such legislation partook of the
‘free contract’ nature, though owing to the social condition of the
peasantry the acts in question had to embody protective measures providing for
a maximum rent for arable and pasture land, and a minimum wage for the peasant
labourer.

Solutions have been suggested in profusion. That a solution is possible no one
can doubt. One writer, basing his arguments on official statistics which show
that the days of employment in 1905 averaged only ninety-one for each peasant,
claims that only the introduction of circulating capital and the creation of
new branches of activity can bring about a change. The suggested remedy may be
open to discussion; but our author is undoubtedly right when, asking himself
why this solution has not yet been attempted, he says: ‘Our country is
governed at present by an agrarian class…. Her whole power rests in her
ownership of the land, our only wealth. The introduction of circulating capital
would result in the disintegration of that wealth, in the loss of its unique
quality, and, as a consequence, in the social decline of its
possessors.’[1] This is the fundamental evil which prevents any solution
of the rural question. A small class of politicians, with the complicity of a
large army of covetous and unscrupulous officials, live in oriental indolence
out of the sufferings of four-fifths of the Rumanian nation. Though elementary
education is compulsory, more than 60 per cent. of the population are still
illiterate, mainly on account of the inadequacy of the educational budget.
Justice is a myth for the peasant. Of political rights he is, in fact,
absolutely deprived. The large majority, and by far the sanest part of the
Rumanian nation, are thus fraudulently kept outside the political and social
life of the country. It is not surmising too much, therefore, to say that the
opportunity of emancipating the Transylvanians would not have been wilfully
neglected, had that part of the Rumanian nation in which the old spirit still
survives had any choice in the determination of their own fate.

[Footnote 1: St. Antim, Cbestiunea Socială în România, 1908, p. 214.]

6
Contemporary Period: Internal Development

In order to obviate internal disturbances or external interference, the leaders
of the movement which had dethroned Prince Cuza caused parliament to proclaim,
on the day of Cuza’s abdication, Count Philip of Flanders— the
father of King Albert of Belgium—Prince of Rumania. The offer was,
however, not accepted, as neither France nor Russia favoured the proposal.
Meanwhile a conference had met again in Paris at the instance of Turkey and
vetoed the election of a foreign prince. But events of deeper importance were
ripening in Europe, and the Rumanian politicians rightly surmised that the
powers would not enforce their protests if a candidate were found who was
likely to secure the support of Napoleon III, then ‘schoolmaster’
of European diplomacy. This candidate was found in the person of Prince Carol
of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, second son of the head of the elder branch of the
Hohenzollerns (Catholic and non-reigning). Prince Carol was cousin to the King
of Prussia, and related through his grandmother to the Bonaparte family. He
could consequently count upon the support of France and Prussia, while the
political situation fortunately secured him from the opposition of Russia,
whose relations with Prussia were at the time friendly, and also from that of
Austria, whom Bismarck proposed to ‘keep busy for some time to
come’. The latter must have viewed with no little satisfaction the
prospect of a Hohenzollern occupying the throne of Rumania at this juncture;
and Prince Carol, allowing himself to be influenced by the Iron
Chancellor’s advice, answered the call of the Rumanian nation, which had
proclaimed him as ‘Carol I, Hereditary Prince of Rumania’.
Travelling secretly with a small retinue, the prince second class, his suite
first, Prince Carol descended the Danube on an Austrian steamer, and landed on
May 8 at Turnu-Severin, the very place where, nearly eighteen centuries before,
the Emperor Trajan had alighted and founded the Rumanian nation.

By independent and energetic action, by a conscious neglect of the will of the
powers, which only a young constitutional polity would have dared, by an active
and unselfish patriotism, Rumania had at last chosen and secured as her ruler
the foreign prince who alone had a chance of putting a stop to intrigues from
within and from without. And the Rumanians had been extremely fortunate in
their hasty and not quite independent choice. A prince of Latin origin would
probably have been more warmly welcomed to the hearts of the Rumanian people;
but after so many years of political disorder, corrupt administration, and
arbitrary rule, a prince possessed of the German spirit of discipline and order
was best fitted to command respect and impose obedience and sobriety of
principle upon the Rumanian politicians.

Prince Carol’s task was no easy one. The journal compiled by the
provisional government, which held the reins for the period elapsing between
the abdication of Cuza and the accession of Prince Carol, depicts in the
darkest colours the economic situation to which the faults, the waste, the
negligence, and short-sightedness of the previous régime had reduced the
country, ‘the government being in the humiliating position of having
brought disastrous and intolerable hardship alike upon its creditors, its
servants, its pensioners, and its soldiers’.[1] Reforms were badly
needed, and the treasury had nothing in hand but debts. To increase the income
of the state was difficult, for the country was poor and not economically
independent. Under the Paris Convention of 1858, Rumania remained bound, to her
detriment, by the commercial treaties of her suzerain, Turkey, the powers not
being willing to lose the privileges they enjoyed under the Turkish
capitulations. Moreover, she was specially excluded from the arrangement of
1860, which allowed Turkey to increase her import taxes. The inheritance of
ultra-liberal measures from the previous regime made it difficult to cope with
the unruly spirit of the nation. Any attempt at change in this direction would
have savoured of despotism to the people, who, having at last won the right to
speak aloud, believed that to clamour against anything that meant
‘rule’ was the only real and full assertion of liberty. And the
dissatisfied were always certain of finding a sympathetic ear and an open purse
in the Chancellories of Vienna and St. Petersburg.

[Footnote 1: D.A. Sturdza, Treizeci de ani de Domnie ai Regelui Carol,
1900, i.82.]

Prince Carol, not being sufficiently well acquainted with the conditions of the
country nor possessing as yet much influence with the governing class, had not
been in a position to influence at their inception the provisions of the
extremely liberal constitution passed only a few weeks after his accession to
the throne. The new constitution, which resembled that of Belgium more nearly
than any other, was framed by a constituent assembly elected on universal
suffrage, and, except for slight modifications introduced in 1879 and 1884, is
in vigour to-day. It entrusts the executive to the king and his ministers, the
latter alone being responsible for the acts of the government.[1] The
legislative power is vested in the king and two assemblies—a senate and a
chamber—the initiative resting with any one of the three.[2] The budget
and the yearly bills fixing the strength of the army, however, must first be
passed by the Chamber. The agreement of the two Chambers and the sanction of
the king are necessary before any bill becomes law. The king convenes,
adjourns, and dissolves parliament. He promulgates the laws and is invested
with the right of absolute veto. The constitution proclaims the inviolability
of domicile, the liberty of the press and of assembly, and absolute liberty of
creed and religion, in so far as its forms of celebration do not come into
conflict with public order and decency. It recognizes no distinction of class
and privilege; all the citizens share equally rights and duties within the law.
Education is free in the state schools, and elementary education compulsory
wherever state schools exist. Individual liberty and property are guaranteed;
but only Rumanian citizens can acquire rural property. Military service is
compulsory, entailing two years in the infantry, three years in the cavalry and
artillery, one year in all arms for those having completed their studies as far
as the university stage. Capital punishment does not exist, except for military
offences in time of war.

[Footnote 1: There are at present nine departments: Interior, Foreign Affairs,
Finance, War, Education and Religion, Domains and Agriculture, Public Works,
Justice, and Industry and Commerce. The President of the Cabinet is Prime
Minister, with or without portfolio.]

[Footnote 2: All citizens of full age paying taxes, with various exemptions,
are electors, voting according to districts and census. In the case of the
illiterate country inhabitants, with an income from land of less than £12 a
year, fifty of them choose one delegate having one vote in the parliamentary
election. The professorial council of the two universities of Jassy and
Bucarest send one member each to the Senate, the heir to the throne and the
eight bishops being members by right.]

The state religion is Greek Orthodox. Up to 1864 the Rumanian Church was
subordinate to the Patriarchate of Constantinople. In that year it was
proclaimed independent, national, and autocephalous, though this change was not
recognized by the Patriarchate till 1885, while the secularization of the
property of the monasteries put an end de facto to the influence of the
Greek clergy. Religious questions of a dogmatic nature are settled by the Holy
Synod of Bucarest, composed of the two metropolitans of Bucarest and Jassy and
the eight bishops; the Minister for Education, with whom the administrative
part of the Church rests, having only a deliberative vote. The maintenance of
the Church and of the clergy is included in the general budget of the country,
the ministers being state officials (Law of 1893).

Religion has never played an important part in Rumanian national life, and was
generally limited to merely external practices. This may be attributed largely
to the fact that as the Slavonic language had been used in the Church since the
ninth century and then was superseded by Greek up to the nineteenth century,
the clergy was foreign, and was neither in a position nor did it endeavour to
acquire a spiritual influence over the Rumanian peasant. There is no record
whatever in Rumanian history of any religious feuds or dissensions. The
religious passivity remained unstirred even during the domination of the Turks,
who contented themselves with treating the unbelievers with contempt, and
squeezing as much money as possible out of them. Cuza having made no provision
for the clergy when he converted the wealth of the monasteries to the state,
they were left for thirty years in complete destitution, and remained as a
consequence outside the general intellectual development of the country. Though
the situation has much improved since the Law of 1893, which incorporated the
priests with the other officials of the Government, the clergy, recruited
largely from among the rural population, are still greatly inferior to the
Rumanian priests of Bucovina and Transylvania. Most of them take up Holy orders
as a profession: ‘I have known several country parsons who were thorough
atheists.’[1]

[Footnote 1: R. Rosetti, Pentru ce s-au răsculat țăranii, 1907, p. 600]

However difficult his task, Prince Carol never deviated from the strictly
constitutional path: his opponents were free to condemn the prince’s
opinions; he never gave them the chance of questioning his integrity.

Prince Carol relied upon the position in which his origin and family alliances
placed him in his relations with foreign rulers to secure him the respect of
his new subjects. Such considerations impressed the Rumanians. Nor could they
fail to be aware of ‘the differences between the previously elected
princes and the present dynasty, and the improved position which the country
owed to the latter’.[1]

[Footnote 1: Augenzeuge, Aus dem Leben König Karls von Rumănien,
1894-1900, iii. 177.]

To inculcate the Rumanians with the spirit of discipline the prince took in
hand with energy and pursued untiringly, in spite of all obstacles, the
organization of the army. A reliable and well-organized armed force was the
best security against internal trouble-mongers, and the best argument in
international relations, as subsequent events amply proved.

The Rumanian political parties were at the outset personal parties, supporting
one or other of the candidates to the throne. When Greek influence, emanating
from Constantinople, began to make itself felt, in the seventeenth century, a
national party arose for the purpose of opposing it. This party counted upon
the support of one of the neighbouring powers, and its various groups were
known accordingly as the Austrian, the Russian, &c., parties. With the
election of Cuza the external danger diminished, and the politicians divided
upon principles of internal reform. Cuza not being in agreement with either
party, they united to depose him, keeping truce during the period preceding the
accession of Prince Carol, when grave external dangers wore threatening, and
presiding in a coalition ministry at the introduction of the new constitution
of 1866. But this done, the truce was broken. Political strife again awoke with
all the more vigour for having been temporarily suppressed.

The reforms which it became needful to introduce gave opportunity for the
development of strong divergence of views between the political parties. The
Liberals—the Red Party, as they were called at the time—(led by
C.A. Rosetti and Ioan Bratianu, both strong Mazzinists, both having taken an
important part in the revolutionary movements of 1848 and in that which led to
the deposition of Cuza) were advocating reforms hardly practicable even in an
established democracy; the Conservatives (led by Lascar Catargiu) were striving
to stem the flood of ideal liberal measures on which all sense of reality was
being carried away.[1] In little more than a year there were four different
Cabinets, not to mention numerous changes in individual ministers.
‘Between the two extreme tendencies Prince Carol had to strive constantly
to preserve unity of direction, he himself being the only stable element in
that ever unstable country.’ It was not without many untoward incidents
that he succeeded. His person was the subject of more than one unscrupulous
attack by politicians in opposition, who did not hesitate to exploit the German
origin and the German sympathies of the prince in order to inflame the masses.
These internal conflicts entered upon an acute phase at the time of the
Franco-German conflict of 1870. Whilst, to satisfy public opinion, the Foreign
Secretary of the time, M.P.P. Carp, had to declare in parliament, that
‘wherever the colours of France are waving, there are our interests and
sympathies’, the prince wrote to the King of Prussia assuring him that
‘his sympathies will always be where the black and white banner is
waving’. In these so strained circumstances a section of the population
of Bucarest allowed itself to be drawn into anti-German street riots.
Disheartened and despairing of ever being able to do anything for that
‘beautiful country’, whose people ‘neither know how to govern
themselves nor will allow themselves to be governed’, the prince decided
to abdicate.

[Footnote 1: A few years ago a group of politicians, mainly of the old
Conservative party, detached themselves and became the Conservative-Democratic
party under the leadership of M. Take Ionescu.]

So strong was the feeling in parliament roused by the prince’s decision
that one of his most inveterate opponents now declared that it would be an act
of high treason for the prince to desert the country at such a crisis. We have
an inkling of what might have resulted in the letter written by the Emperor of
Austria to Prince Carol at the time, assuring him that ‘my Government
will eagerly seize any opportunity which presents itself to prove by deeds the
interest it takes in a country connected by so many bonds to my empire’.
Nothing but the efforts of Lascar Catargiu and the sound patriotism of a few
statesmen saved the country from what would have been a real misfortune. The
people were well aware of this, and cheers lasting several minutes greeted that
portion of the message from the throne which conveyed to the new parliament the
decision of the prince to continue reigning.

The situation was considerably strengthened during a period of five
years’ Conservative rule. Prince Carol’s high principles and the
dignified example of his private life secured for him the increasing respect of
politicians of all colours; while his statesmanlike qualities, his patience and
perseverance, soon procured him an unlimited influence in the affairs of the
state. This was made the more possible from the fact that, on account of the
political ignorance of the masses, and of the varied influence exercised on the
electorate by the highly centralized administration, no Rumanian Government
ever fails to obtain a majority at an election. Any statesman can undertake to
form a Cabinet if the king assents to a dissolution of parliament. Between the
German system, where the emperor chooses the ministers independently of
parliament, and the English system, where the members of the executive are
indicated by the electorate through the medium of parliament, independently of
the Crown, the Rumanian system takes a middle path. Neither the crown, nor the
electorate, nor parliament possesses exclusive power in this direction. The
Government is not, generally speaking, defeated either by the electorate or by
parliament. It is the Crown which has the final decision in the changes of
régime, and upon the king falls the delicate task of interpreting the
significance of political or popular movements. The system—which comes
nearest to that of Spain—undoubtedly has its advantages in a young and
turbulent polity, by enabling its most stable element, the king, to ensure a
continuous and harmonious policy. But it also makes the results dangerously
dependent on the quality of that same element. Under the leadership of King
Carol it was an undoubted success; the progress made by the country from an
economic, financial, and military point of view during the last half-century is
really enormous. Its position was furthermore strengthened by the proclamation
of its independence, by the final settlement of the dynastic question,[1] and
by its elevation on May 10, 1881, to the rank of kingdom, when upon the head of
the first King of Rumania was placed a crown of steel made from one of the guns
captured before Plevna from an enemy centuries old.

[Footnote 1: In the absence of direct descendants and according to the
constitution, Prince Ferdinand (born 1865), second son of King Carol’s
elder brother, was named Heir Apparent to the Rumanian throne. He married in
1892 Princess Marie of Coburg, and following the death of King Carol in 1914,
he acceded to the throne as Ferdinand I.]

From the point of view of internal politics progress has been less
satisfactory. The various reforms once achieved, the differences of principle
between the political parties degenerated into mere opportunism, the Opposition
opposing, the Government disposing. The parties, and especially the various
groups within the parties, are generally known by the names of their leaders,
these denominations not implying any definite political principle or Government
programme. It is, moreover, far from edifying that the personal element should
so frequently distort political discussion. ‘The introduction of modern
forms of state organization has not been followed by the democratization of all
social institutions…. The masses of the people have remained all but completely
outside political life. Not only are we yet far from government of the people
by the people, but our liberties, though deeply graven on the facade of our
constitution, have not permeated everyday life nor even stirred in the
consciousness of the people.’[1]

[Footnote 1: C. Stere, Social-democratizm sau Poporanizm, Jassy.]

It is strange that King Carol, who had the welfare of the people sincerely at
heart, should not have used his influence to bring about a solution of the
rural question; but this may perhaps be explained by the fact that, from
Cuza’s experience, he anticipated opposition from all political factions.
It would almost seem as if, by a tacit understanding, and anxious to establish
Rumania’s international position, King Carol gave his ministers a free
hand in the rural question, reserving for himself an equally free hand in
foreign affairs. This seems borne out by the fact that, in the four volumes in
which an ‘eyewitness’, making use of the king’s private
correspondence and personal notes, has minutely described the first fifteen
years of the reign, the peasant question is entirely ignored.[1]

[Footnote 1: The ‘eyewitness’ was Dr. Schaeffer, formerly tutor to
Prince Carol.]

Addressing himself, in 1871, to the Rumanian representative at the Porte, the
Austrian ambassador, von Prokesch-Osten, remarked: ‘If Prince Carol
manages to pull through without outside help, and make Rumania governable, it
will be the greatest tour de force I have ever witnessed in my
diplomatic career of more than half a century. It will be nothing less than a
conjuring trick.’ King Carol succeeded; and only those acquainted with
Rumanian affairs can appreciate the truth of the ambassador’s words.

7
Contemporary Period: Foreign Affairs

Up to 1866 Rumanian foreign politics may be said to have been non-existent. The
offensive or defensive alliances against the Turks concluded by the Rumanian
rulers with neighbouring princes during the Middle Ages were not made in
pursuance of any definite policy, but merely to meet the moment’s need.
With the establishment of Turkish suzerainty Rumania became a pawn in the
foreign politics of the neighbouring empires, and we find her repeatedly
included in their projects of acquisition, partition, or compensation (as, for
instance, when she was put forward as eventual compensation to Poland for the
territories lost by that country in the first partition).[1] Rumania may be
considered fortunate in not having lost more than Bucovina to Austria (1775),
Bessarabia to Russia (1812), and, temporarily, to Austria the region between
the Danube and the Aluta, called Oltenia (lost by the Treaty of Passarowitz,
1718; recovered by the Treaty of Belgrade, 1739).

[Footnote 1: See Albert Sorel, The Eastern Question in the Eighteenth
Century (Engl. ed.), 1898, pp. 141, 147 &c.]

While her geographical position made of Rumania the cynosure of many covetous
eyes, it at the same time saved her from individual attack by exciting
countervailing jealousies. Moreover, the powers came at last to consider her a
necessary rampart to the Ottoman Empire, whose dissolution all desired but none
dared attempt. Austria and Russia, looking to the future, were continually
competing for paramount influence in Rumania, though it is not possible to
determine where their policy of acquisition ended and that of influence began.

The position of the principalities became more secure after the Paris Congress
of 1858, which placed them under the collective guarantee of the great powers;
but this fact, and the maintenance of Turkish suzerainty, coupled with their
own weakness, debarred them from any independence in their foreign relations.

A sudden change took place with the accession of Prince Carol; a Hohenzollern
prince related to the King of Prussia and to Napoleon III could not be treated
like one of the native boyards. The situation called for the more delicacy of
treatment by the powers in view of the possibility of his being able to better
those internal conditions which made Rumania ‘uninteresting’ as a
factor in international politics. In fact, the prince’s personality
assured for Rumania a status which she could otherwise have attained only with
time, by a political, economic, and military consolidation of her home affairs;
and the prince does not fail to remark in his notes that the attentions
lavished upon him by other sovereigns were meant rather for the Hohenzollern
prince than for the Prince of Rumania. Many years later even, after the war of
1878, while the Russians were still south of the Danube with their lines of
communication running through Rumania, Bratianu begged of the prince to give up
a projected journey on account of the difficulties which might at any moment
arise, and said: ‘Only the presence of your Royal Highness keeps them
[the Russians] at a respectful distance.’ It was but natural under these
circumstances that the conduct of foreign affairs should have devolved almost
exclusively on the prince. The ascendancy which his high personal character,
his political and diplomatic skill, his military capacity procured for him over
the Rumanian statesmen made this situation a lasting one; indeed it became
almost a tradition. Rumania’s foreign policy since 1866 may be said,
therefore, to have been King Carol’s policy. Whether one agrees with it
or not, no one can deny with any sincerity that it was inspired by the
interests of the country, as the monarch saw them. Rebuking Bismarck’s
unfair attitude towards Rumania in a question concerning German investors,
Prince Carol writes to his father in 1875: ‘I have to put Rumania’s
interests above those of Germany. My path is plainly mapped out, and I must
follow It unflinchingly, whatever the weather.’

Prince Carol was a thorough German, and as such naturally favoured the
expansion of German influence among his new subjects. But if he desired Rumania
to follow in the wake of German foreign policy, it was because of his unshaken
faith in the future of his native country, because he considered that Rumania
had nothing to fear from Germany, whilst it was all in the interest of that
country to see Rumania strong and firmly established. At the same time, acting
on the advice of Bismarck, he did not fail to work toward a better
understanding with Russia, ‘who might become as well a reliable friend as
a dangerous enemy to the Rumanian state’. The sympathy shown him by
Napoleon III was not always shared by the French statesmen,[1] and the
unfriendly attitude of the French ambassador in Constantinople caused Prince
Carol to remark that ‘M. de Moustier is considered a better Turk than the
Grand Turk himself’. Under the circumstances a possible alliance between
France and Russia, giving the latter a free hand in the Near East, would have
proved a grave danger to Rumania; ‘it was, consequently, a skilful, if
imperious act, to enter voluntarily, and without detriment to the existing
friendly relations with France, within the Russian sphere of influence, and not
to wait till compelled to do so.’

[Footnote 1: See Revue des Deux Mondes, June 15, 1866, article by Eugène
Forcade.]

The campaigns of 1866 and 1870 having finally established Prussia’s
supremacy in the German world, Bismarck modified his attitude towards Austria.
In an interview with the Austrian Foreign Secretary, Count Beust (Gastein,
October 1871), he broached for the first time the question of an alliance and,
touching upon the eventual dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, ‘obligingly
remarked that one could not conceive of a great power not making of its faculty
for expansion a vital question’.[2] Quite in keeping with that change
were the counsels henceforth tendered to Prince Carol. Early that year Bismarck
wrote of his sorrow at having been forced to the conclusion that Rumania had
nothing to expect from Russia, while Prince Anthony, Prince Carol’s
father and faithful adviser, wrote soon after the above interview (November
1871), that ‘under certain circumstances it would seem a sound policy for
Rumania to rely upon the support of Austria’. Persevering in this
crescendo of suggestion, Austria’s new foreign secretary, Count Andrassy,
drifted at length to the point by plainly declaring not long afterwards that
‘Rumania is not so unimportant that one should deprecate an alliance with
her’.

[Footnote 2: Gabriel Hanotaux, La Guerre des Balkans et l’Europe
(Beust, Mémoires), Paris, 1914, p. 297.]

Prince Carol had accepted the throne with the firm intention of shaking off the
Turkish suzerainty at the first opportunity, and not unnaturally he counted
upon Germany’s support to that end. He and his country were bitterly
disappointed, therefore, when Bismarck appealed directly to the Porte for the
settlement of a difference between the Rumanian Government and a German company
entrusted with the construction of the Rumanian railways; the more so as the
Paris Convention had expressly forbidden any Turkish interference in
Rumania’s internal affairs. It thus became increasingly evident that
Rumania could not break away from Russia, the coming power in the East. The
eyes of Russia were steadfastly fixed on Constantinople: by joining her,
Rumania had the best chance of gaining her independence; by not doing so, she
ran the risk of being trodden upon by Russia on her way to Byzantium. But
though resolved to co-operate with Russia in any eventual action in the
Balkans, Prince Carol skilfully avoided delivering himself blindfold into her
hands by deliberately cutting himself away from the other guaranteeing powers.
To the conference which met in Constantinople at the end of 1876 to settle
Balkan affairs he addressed the demand that ‘should war break out between
one of the guaranteeing powers and Turkey, Rumania’s line of conduct
should be dictated, and her neutrality and rights guaranteed, by the other
powers’. This démarche failed. The powers had accepted the
invitation to the conference as one accepts an invitation to visit a dying man.
Nobody had any illusions on the possibility of averting war, least of all the
two powers principally interested. In November 1876 Ali Bey and M. de Nelidov
arrived simultaneously and secretly in Bucarest to sound Rumania as to an
arrangement with their respective countries, Turkey and Russia. In opposition
to his father and Count Andrassy, who counselled neutrality and the withdrawal
of the Rumanian army into the mountains, and in sympathy with Bismarck’s
advice, Prince Carol concluded a Convention with Russia on April 16, 1877.
Rumania promised to the Russian army ‘free passage through Rumanian
territory and the treatment due to a friendly army’; whilst Russia
undertook to respect Rumania’s political rights, as well as ‘to
maintain and defend her actual integrity’. ‘It is pretty
certain’, wrote Prince Carol to his father, ‘that this will not be
to the liking of most of the great powers; but as they neither can nor will
offer us anything, we cannot do otherwise than pass them by. A successful
Russian campaign will free us from the nominal dependency upon Turkey, and
Europe will never allow Russia to take her place.’

On April 23 the Russian armies passed the Pruth. An offer of active
participation by the Rumanian forces in the forthcoming campaign was rejected
by the Tsar, who haughtily declared that ‘Russia had no need for the
cooperation of the Rumanian army’, and that ‘it was only under the
auspices of the Russian forces that the foundation of Rumania’s future
destinies could be laid’. Rumania was to keep quiet and accept in the end
what Russia would deign to give her, or, to be more correct, take from her.
After a few successful encounters, however, the Tsar’s soldiers met with
serious defeats before Plevna, and persistent appeals were now urged for the
participation of the Rumanian army in the military operations. The moment had
come for Rumania to bargain for her interests. But Prince Carol refused to make
capital out of the serious position of the Russians; he led his army across the
Danube and, at the express desire of the Tsar, took over the supreme command of
the united forces before Plevna. After a glorious but terrible struggle Plevna,
followed at short intervals by other strongholds, fell, the peace preliminaries
were signed, and Prince Carol returned to Bucarest at the head of his
victorious army.

Notwithstanding the flattering words in which the Tsar spoke of the Rumanian
share in the success of the campaign, Russia did not admit Rumania to the Peace
Conference. By the Treaty of San Stefano (March 3,1878) Rumania’s
independence was recognized; Russia obtained from Turkey the Dobrudja and the
delta of the Danube, reserving for herself the right to exchange these
territories against the three southern districts of Bessarabia, restored to
Rumania by the Treaty of Paris, 1856. This stipulation was by no means a
surprise to Rumania, Russia’s intention to recover Bessarabia was well
known to the Government, who hoped, however, that the demand would not be
pressed after the effective assistance rendered by the Rumanian army. ‘If
this be not a ground for the extension of our territory, it is surely none for
its diminution,’ remarked Cogalniceanu at the Berlin Congress. Moreover,
besides the promises of the Tsar, there was the Convention of the previous
year, which, in exchange for nothing more than free passage for the Russian
armies, guaranteed Rumania’s integrity. But upon this stipulation
Gorchakov put the jesuitical construction that, the Convention being concluded
in view of a war to be waged against Turkey, it was only against Turkey that
Russia undertook to guarantee Rumania’s integrity; as to herself, she was
not in the least bound by that arrangement. And should Rumania dare to protest
against, or oppose the action of the Russian Government, ‘the Tsar will
order that Rumania be occupied and the Rumanian army disarmed’.
‘The army which fought at Plevna’, replied Prince Carol through his
minister, ‘may well be destroyed, but never disarmed.’

There was one last hope left to Rumania: that the Congress which met in Berlin
in June 1878 for the purpose of revising the Treaty of San Stefano, would
prevent such an injustice. But Bismarck was anxious that no ‘sentiment de
dignité blessée’ should rankle in Russia’s future policy; the
French representative, Waddington, was ‘above all a practical man’;
Corti, the Italian delegate, was ‘nearly rude’ to the Rumanian
delegates; while Lord Beaconsfield, England’s envoy, receiving the
Rumanian delegates privately, had nothing to say but that ‘in politics
the best services are often rewarded with ingratitude’. Russia strongly
opposed even the idea that the Rumanian delegates should be allowed to put
their case before the Congress, and consent was obtained only with difficulty
after Lord Salisbury had ironically remarked that ‘having heard the
representatives of Greece, which was claiming foreign provinces, it would be
but fair to listen also to the representatives of a country which was only
seeking to retain what was its own’. Shortly before, Lord Salisbury,
speaking in London to the Rumanian special envoy, Callimaki Catargiu, had
assured him of England’s sympathy and of her effective assistance in case
either of war or of a Congress. ‘But to be quite candid he must add that
there are questions of more concern to England, and should she be able to come
to an understanding with Russia with regard to them, she would not wage war for
the sake of Rumania.’ Indeed, an understanding came about, and an
indiscretion enabled the Globe to make its tenor public early in June
1878. ‘The Government of her Britannic Majesty’, it said,
‘considers that it will feel itself bound to express its deep regret
should Russia persist in demanding the retrocession of Bessarabia….
England’s interest in this question is not such, however, as to justify
her taking upon herself alone the responsibility of opposing the intended
exchange.’ So Bessarabia was lost, Rumania receiving instead Dobrudja
with the delta of the Danube. But as the newly created state of Bulgaria was at
the time little else than a detached Russian province, Russia, alone amongst
the powers, opposed and succeeded in preventing the demarcation to the new
Rumanian province of a strategically sound frontier. Finally, to the
exasperation of the Rumanians, the Congress made the recognition of
Rumania’s independence contingent upon the abolition of Article 7 of the
Constitution—which denied to non-Christians the right of becoming
Rumanian citizens—and the emancipation of the Rumanian Jews.[1]

[Footnote 1: Rumania only partially gave way to this intrusion of the powers
into her internal affairs. The prohibition was abolished; but only individual
naturalization was made possible, and that by special Act of Parliament. Only a
very small proportion of the Jewish population has since been naturalized. The
Jewish question in Rumania is undoubtedly a very serious one; but the matter is
too controversial to be dealt with in a few lines without risking
misrepresentation or doing an injustice to one or other of the parties. For
which reason it has not been included in this essay.]

It was only after innumerable difficulties and hardships that, at the beginning
of 1880, Rumania secured recognition of an independence which she owed to
nobody but herself. Whilst Russia was opposing Rumania at every opportunity in
the European conferences and commissions, she was at pains to show herself more
amenable in tête-à-tête, and approached Rumania with favourable
proposals. ‘Rather Russia as foe than guardian,’ wrote Prince Carol
to his father; and these words indicate an important turning-point in
Rumania’s foreign policy.

In wresting Bessarabia from Rumania merely as a sop to her own pride, and to
make an end of all that was enacted by the Treaty of Paris, 1856, Russia made a
serious political blunder. By insisting that Austria should share in the
partition of Poland, Frederick the Great had skilfully prevented her from
remaining the one country towards which the Poles would naturally have turned
for deliverance. Such an opportunity was lost by Russia through her
short-sighted policy in Bessarabia—that of remaining the natural ally of
Rumania against Rumania’s natural foe, Austria-Hungary.

Rumania had neither historical, geographical, nor any important ethnographical
points of contact with the region south of the Danube; the aims of a future
policy could only have embraced neighbouring tracts of foreign territory
inhabited by Rumanians. Whereas up to the date of the Berlin Congress such
tracts were confined to Austria-Hungary, by that Congress a similar sphere of
attraction for Rumanian aspirations was created in Russia.[1] The interests of
a peaceful development demanded that Rumania should maintain friendly relations
with both the powers striving for domination in the Near East; it was a vital
necessity for her, however, to be able to rely upon the effective support of at
least one of them in a case of emergency. Russia’s conduct had aroused a
deep feeling of bitterness and mistrust in Rumania, and every lessening of her
influence was a step in Austria’s favour. Secondary considerations tended
to intensify this: on the one hand lay the fact that through Russia’s
interposition Rumania had no defendable frontier against Bulgaria; on the other
hand was the greatly strengthened position created for Austria by her alliance
with Germany, in whose future Prince Carol had the utmost confidence.

[Footnote 1: It is probable that this confederation had much to do with the
readiness with which Bismarck supported the demands of his good friend,
Gorchakov.]

Germany’s attitude towards Rumania had been curiously hostile during
these events; but when Prince Carol’s father spoke of this to the German
Emperor, the latter showed genuine astonishment: Bismarck had obviously not
taken the emperor completely into his confidence. When, a few days later,
Sturdza had an interview with Bismarck at the latter’s invitation, the
German Chancellor discovered once more that Rumania had nothing to expect from
Russia. Indeed, Rumania’s position between Russia and the new Slav state
south of the Danube might prove dangerous, were she not to seek protection and
assistance from her two ‘natural friends’, France and Germany. And,
with his usual liberality when baiting his policy with false hopes, Bismarck
went on to say that ‘Turkey is falling to pieces; nobody can resuscitate
her; Rumania has an important role to fulfil, but for this she must be wise,
cautious, and strong’. This new attitude was the natural counterpart of
the change which was at that time making itself felt in Russo-German relations.
While a Franco-Russian alliance was propounded by Gorchakov in an interview
with a French journalist, Bismarck and Andrassy signed in Gastein the treaty
which allied Austria to Germany (September 1879). As Rumania’s interests
were identical with those of Austria—wrote Count Andrassy privately to
Prince Carol a few months later—namely, to prevent the fusion of the
northern and the southern Slavs, she had only to express her willingness to
become at a given moment the third party in the compact. In 1883 King Carol
accepted a secret treaty of defensive alliance from Austria. In return for
promises relating to future political partitions in the Balkans, the monarch
pledged himself to oppose all developments likely to speed the democratic
evolution, of Rumania. Though the treaty was never submitted to parliament for
ratification, and notwithstanding a tariff war and a serious difference with
Austria on the question of control of the Danube navigation, Rumania was, till
the Balkan wars, a faithful ‘sleeping partner’ of the Triple
Alliance.

All through that externally quiet period a marked discrepancy existed and
developed between that line of policy and the trend of public opinion. The
interest of the Rumanians within the kingdom centred increasingly on their
brethren in Transylvania, the solution of whose hard case inspired most of the
popular national movements. Not on account of the political despotism of the
Magyars, for that of the Russians was in no way behind it. But whilst the
Rumanians of Bessarabia were, with few exceptions, illiterate peasants, in
Transylvania there was a solidly established and spirited middle class, whose
protests kept pace with the oppressive measures. Many of them—and of
necessity the more turbulent—migrated to Rumania, and there kept alive
the ‘Transylvanian Question’. That the country’s foreign
policy has nevertheless constantly supported the Central Powers is due, to some
extent, to the fact that the generation most deeply impressed by the events of
1878 came gradually to the leadership of the country; to a greater extent to
the increasing influence of German education,[1] and the economic and financial
supremacy which the benevolent passivity of England and France enabled Germany
to acquire; but above all to the personal influence of King Carol. Germany, he
considered, was at the beginning of her development and needed, above all,
peace; as Rumania was in the same position the wisest policy was to follow
Germany, neglecting impracticable national ideals. King Carol outlined his
views clearly in an interview which he had in Vienna with the Emperor Franz
Joseph in 1883: ‘No nation consents to be bereaved of its political
aspirations, and those of the Rumanians are constantly kept at fever heat by
Magyar oppression. But this was no real obstacle to a friendly understanding
between the two neighbouring states.’

[Footnote 1: Many prominent statesmen like Sturdza, Maiorescu, Carp, &c.
were educated in Germany, whereas the school established by the German
community (Evangelische Knaben und Realschule), and which it under the
direct control of the German Ministry of Education, is attended by more pupils
than any other school in Bucarest.]

Such was the position when the Balkan peoples rose in 1912 to sever the last
ties which bound them to the decadent Turkish Empire. King Carol, who had,
sword in hand, won the independence of his country, could have no objection to
such a desire for emancipation. Nor to the Balkan League itself, unfortunately
so ephemeral; for by the first year of his reign he had already approached the
Greek Government with proposals toward such a league, and toward freeing the
Balkans from the undesirable interference of the powers.[1] It is true that
Rumania, like all the other states, had not foreseen the radical changes which
were to take place, and which considerably affected her position in the Near
East. But she was safe as long as the situation was one of stable equilibrium
and the league remained in existence. ‘Rumania will only be menaced by a
real danger when a Great Bulgaria comes into existence,’ remarked Prince
Carol to Bismarck in 1880, and Bulgaria had done nothing since to allay
Rumanian suspicions. On the contrary, the proviso of the Berlin Convention that
all fortifications along the Rumania frontier should be razed to the ground had
not been carried out by the Bulgarian Government. Bulgarian official
publications regarded the Dobrudja as a ‘Bulgaria Irredenta’, and
at the outset of the first Balkan war a certain section of the Bulgarian press
speculated upon the Bulgarian character of the Dobrudja.

[Footnote 1: See Augenzeuge, op. cit., i. 178]

The Balkan League having proclaimed, however, that their action did not involve
any territorial changes, and the maintenance of the status quo having
been insisted upon by the European Concert, Rumania declared that she would
remain neutral. All this jugglery of mutual assurances broke down with the
unexpected rout of the Turks; the formula ‘the Balkans to the Balkan
peoples’ made its appearance, upon which Bulgaria was at once notified
that Rumania would insist upon the question of the Dobrudja frontier being
included in any fundamental alteration of the Berlin Convention. The Bulgarian
Premier, M. Danev, concurred in this point of view, but his conduct of the
subsequent London negotiations was so ‘diplomatic’ that their only
result was to strain the patience of the Rumanian Government and public opinion
to breaking point. Nevertheless, the Rumanian Government agreed that the point
in dispute should be submitted to a conference of the representatives of the
great powers in St. Petersburg, and later accepted the decision of that
conference, though the country considered it highly unsatisfactory.

The formation of the Balkan League, and especially the collapse of Turkey, had
meant a serious blow to the Central Powers’ policy of peaceful
penetration. Moreover, ‘for a century men have been labouring to solve
the Eastern. Question. On the day when it shall be considered solved, Europe
will inevitably witness the propounding of the Austrian Question.’[1] To
prevent this and to keep open a route to the East Austro-German diplomacy set
to work, and having engineered the creation of Albania succeeded in barring
Serbia’s way to the Adriatic; Serbia was thus forced to seek an outlet in
the south, where her interests were doomed to clash with Bulgarian aspirations.
The atmosphere grew threatening. In anticipation of a conflict with Bulgaria,
Greece and Serbia sought an alliance with Rumania. The offer was declined; but,
in accordance with the policy which Bucarest had already made quite clear to
Sofia, the Rumanian army was ordered to enter Bulgaria immediately that country
attacked her former allies. The Rumanians advanced unopposed to within a few
miles of Sofia, and in order to save the capital Bulgaria declared her
willingness to comply with their claims. Rumania having refused, however, to
conclude a separate peace, Bulgaria had to give way, and the Balkan premiers
met in conference at Bucarest to discuss terms. The circumstances were not
auspicious. The way in which Bulgaria had conducted previous negotiations, and
especially the attack upon her former allies, had exasperated the Rumanians and
the Balkan peoples, and the pressure of public opinion hindered from the outset
a fair consideration of the Bulgarian point of view. Moreover, cholera was
making great ravages in the ranks of the various armies, and, what threatened
to be even more destructive, several great powers were looking for a crack in
the door to put their tails through, as the Rumanian saying runs. So anxious
were the Balkan statesmen to avoid any such interference that they agreed
between themselves to a short time limit: on a certain day, and by a certain
hour, peace was to be concluded, or hostilities were to start afresh. The
treaty was signed on August 10, 1913, Rumania obtaining the line
Turtukai-Dobrich-Balchik, this being the line already demanded by her at the
time of the London negotiations. The demand was put forth originally as a
security against the avowed ambitions of Bulgaria; it was a strategical
necessity, but at the same time a political mistake from the point of view of
future relations. The Treaty of Bucarest, imperfect arrangement as it was, had
nevertheless a great historical significance. ‘Without complicating the
discussion of our interests, which we are best in a position to understand, by
the consideration of other foreign, interests,’ remarked the President of
the Conference, ‘we shall have established for the first time by
ourselves peace and harmony amongst our peoples.’ Dynastic interests and
impatient ambitions, however, completely subverted this momentous step towards
a satisfactory solution of the Eastern Question.

[Footnote 1: Albert Sorel, op, cit., p. 266.]

The natural counter-effect of the diplomatic activity of the Central Powers was
a change in Rumanian policy. Rumania considered the maintenance of the Balkan
equilibrium a vital question, and as she had entered upon a closer union with
Germany against a Bulgaria subjected to Russian influence, so she now turned to
Russia as a guard against a Bulgaria under German influence. This breaking away
from the ‘traditional’ policy of adjutancy-in-waiting to the
Central Powers was indicated by the visit of Prince Ferdinand—now King of
Rumania—to St. Petersburg, and the even more significant visit which Tsar
Nicholas afterwards paid to the late King Carol at Constanza. Time has been too
short, however, for those new relations so to shape themselves as to exercise a
notable influence upon Rumania’s present attitude.

8
Rumania and the Present War

(a) The Rumanians outside the Kingdom

The axis on which Rumanian foreign policy ought naturally to revolve is the
circumstance that almost half the Rumanian nation lives outside Rumanian
territory. As the available official statistics generally show political bias
it is not possible to give precise figures; but roughly speaking there are
about one million Rumanians in Bessarabia, a quarter of a million in Bucovina,
three and a half millions in Hungary, while something above half a million form
scattered colonies in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Macedonia. All these live in more
or less close proximity to the Rumanian frontiers.

That these Rumanian elements have maintained their nationality is due to purely
intrinsic causes. We have seen that the independence of Rumania in her foreign
relations had only recently been established, since when the king, the factor
most influential in foreign politics, had discouraged nationalist tendencies,
lest the country’s internal development might be compromised by friction
with neighbouring states. The Government exerted its influence against any
active expression of the national feeling, and the few
‘nationalists’ and the ‘League for the cultural unity of all
Rumanians’ had been, as a consequence, driven to seek a justification for
their existence in antisemitic agitation.

The above circumstances had little influence upon the situation in Bucovina.
This province forms an integral part of the Habsburg monarchy, with which it
was incorporated as early as 1775. The political situation of the Rumanian
principalities at the time, and the absence of a national cultural movement,
left the detached population exposed to Germanization, and later to the Slav
influence of the rapidly expanding Ruthene element. That language and national
characteristics have, nevertheless, not been lost is due to the fact that the
Rumanian population of Bucovina is peasant almost to a man—a class little
amenable to changes of civilization.

This also applies largely to Bessarabia, which, first lost in 1812, was
incorporated with Rumania in 1856, and finally detached in 1878. The few
Rumanians belonging to the landed class were won over by the new masters. But
while the Rumanian population was denied any cultural and literary activities
of its own, the reactionary attitude of the Russian Government towards
education has enabled the Rumanian peasants to preserve their customs and their
language. At the same time their resultant ignorance has kept them outside the
sphere of intellectual influence of the mother country.

The Rumanians who live in scattered colonies south of the Danube are the
descendants of those who took refuge in these regions during the ninth and
tenth centuries from the invasions of the Huns. Generally known as
Kutzo-Vlakhs, or, among themselves, as Aromuni, they are—as even Weigand,
who undoubtedly has Bulgarophil leanings, recognizes—the most intelligent
and best educated of the inhabitants of Macedonia. In 1905 the Rumanian
Government secured from the Porte official recognition of their separate
cultural and religious organizations on a national basis. Exposed as they are
to Greek influence, it will be difficult to prevent their final assimilation
with that people. The interest taken in them of late by the Rumanian Government
arose out of the necessity to secure them against pan-Hellenic propaganda, and
to preserve one of the factors entitling Rumania to participate in the
settlement of Balkan affairs.

I have sketched elsewhere the early history of the Rumanians of Transylvania,
the cradle of the Rumanian nation. As already mentioned, part of the Rumanian
nobility of Hungary went over to the Magyars, the remainder migrating over the
mountains. Debarred from the support of the noble class, the Rumanian peasantry
lost its state of autonomy, which changed into one of serfdom to the soil upon
which they toiled. Desperate risings in 1324, 1437, 1514, 1600, and 1784 tended
to case the Hungarian oppression, which up to the nineteenth century strove
primarily after a political and religious hegemony. But the Magyars having
failed in 1848 in their attempt to free themselves from Austrian domination
(defeated with the assistance of a Russian army at Villagos, 1849), mainly on
account of the fidelity of the other nationalities to the Austrian Crown, they
henceforth directed their efforts towards strengthening their own position by
forcible assimilation of those nationalities. This they were able to do,
however, only after Königgrätz, when a weakened Austria had to give way to
Hungarian demands. In 1867 the Dual Monarchy was established, and Transylvania,
which up to then formed a separate duchy enjoying full political rights, was
incorporated with the new Hungarian kingdom. The Magyars were handicapped in
their imperialist ambitions by their numerical inferiority. As the next best
means to their end, therefore, they resorted to political and national
oppression, class despotism, and a complete disregard of the principles of
liberty and humanity.[1] Hungarian was made compulsory in the administration,
even in districts where the bulk of the population did not understand that
language. In villages completely inhabited by Rumanians so-called
‘State’ schools were founded, in which only Hungarian was to be
spoken, and all children upwards of three years of age had to attend them. The
electoral regulations were drawn up in such a manner that the Rumanians of
Transylvania, though ten times more numerous than the Magyars, sent a far
smaller number than do the latter to the National Assembly. To quash all
protest a special press law was introduced for Transylvania. But the Rumanian
journalists being usually acquitted by the juries a new regulation prescribed
that press offences should be tried only at Kluj (Klausenburg)—the sole
Transylvanian town with a predominating Hungarian population—a measure
which was in fundamental contradiction to the principles of justice.[2] In 1892
the Rumanian grievances were embodied in a memorandum which was to have been
presented to the emperor by a deputation. An audience was, however, refused,
and at the instance of the Hungarian Government the members of the deputation
were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for having plotted against the
unity of the Magyar state.

[Footnote 1: The Rumanians inhabit mainly the province of Transylvania, Banat,
Crishiana, and Maramuresh. They represent 46.2 per cent. of the total
population of these provinces, the Magyars 32.5 per cent., the Germans 11.5 per
cent., and the Serbs 4.5 per cent. These figured are taken from official
Hungarian statistics, and it may therefore be assumed that the Rumanian
percentage represents a minimum.]

[Footnote 2: Over a period of 22 years (1886-1908) 850 journalists were
charged, 367 of whom were Rumanians; the sentences totalling 216 years of
imprisonment, the fines amounting to Fcs. 138,000.]

Notwithstanding these disabilities the Rumanians of Transylvania enjoyed a long
period of comparative social and economic liberty at a time when Turkish and
Phanariote domination was hampering all progress in Rumania. Office under the
Government growing increasingly difficult to obtain, the Rumanians in
Transylvania turned largely to commercial and the open professions, and, as a
result, a powerful middle class now exists. In their clergy, both of the
Orthodox and the Uniate Church—which last, while conducting its ritual in
the vernacular, recognizes papal supremacy— the Rumanians have always
found strong moral support, while the national struggle tends to unite the
various classes. The Rumanians of Hungary form by far the sanest element in the
Rumanian nation. From the Rumanians within the kingdom they have received
little beside sympathy. The important part played by the country at the Peace
of Bucarest, and her detachment from Austria-Hungary, must necessarily have
stimulated the national consciousness of the Transylvanians; while at the same
time all hope for betterment from within must have ceased at the death of
Archduke Francis Ferdinand, an avowed friend of the long-suffering
nationalities. It is, therefore, no mere matter of conjecture that the passive
attitude of the Rumanian Government at the beginning of the present conflict
must have been a bitter disappointment to them.

(b) Rumania’s Attitude

The tragic development of the crisis in the summer of 1914 threw Rumania into a
vortex of unexpected hopes and fears. Aspirations till then considered little
else than Utopian became tangible possibilities, while, as suddenly, dangers
deemed far off loomed large and near. Not only was such a situation quite
unforeseen, nor had any plan of action been preconceived to meet it, but it was
in Rumania’s case a situation unique from the number of conflicting
considerations and influences at work within it. Still under the waning
influence of the thirty years quasi-alliance with Austria, Rumania was not yet
acclimatized to her new relations with Russia. Notwithstanding the inborn
sympathy with and admiration for France, the Rumanians could not be blind to
Germany’s military power. The enthusiasm that would have sided with
France for France’s sake was faced by the influence of German finance.
Sympathy with Serbia existed side by side with suspicion of Bulgaria. Popular
sentiment clashed with the views of the king; and the bright vision of the
‘principle of nationality’ was darkened by the shadow of Russia as
despot of the Near East.

One fact in the situation stood out from the rest, namely, the unexpected
opportunity of redeeming that half of the Rumanian nation which was still under
foreign rule; the more so as one of the parties in the conflict had given the
‘principle of nationality’ a prominent place in its programme. But
the fact that both Austria-Hungary and Russia had a large Rumanian population
among their subjects rendered a purely national policy impossible, and Rumania
could do nothing but weigh which issue offered her the greater advantage.

Three ways lay open: complete neutrality, active participation on the side of
the Central Powers, or common cause with the Triple Entente. Complete
neutrality was advocated by a few who had the country’s material security
most at heart, and also, as a pis aller, by those who realized that
their opinion that Rumania should make common cause with the Central Powers had
no prospect of being acted upon.

That King Carol favoured the idea of a joint action with Germany is likely
enough, for such a policy was in keeping with his faith in the power of the
German Empire. Moreover, he undoubtedly viewed with satisfaction the
possibility of regaining Bessarabia, the loss of which must have been bitterly
felt by the victor of Plevna. Such a policy would have met with the approval of
many Rumanian statesmen, notably of M. Sturdza, sometime leader of the Liberal
party and Prime Minister; of M. Carp, sometime leader of the Conservative party
and Prime Minister; of M. Maiorescu, ex-Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary,
who presided at the Bucarest Conference of 1913; of M. Marghiloman, till
recently leader of the Conservative party, to name only the more important. M.
Sturdza, the old statesman who had been one of King Carol’s chief
coadjutors in the making of modern Rumania, and who had severed for many years
his connexion with active politics, again took up his pen to raise a word of
warning. M. Carp, the political aristocrat who had retired from public life a
few years previously, and had professed a lifelong contempt for the
‘Press and all its works’, himself started a daily paper
(Moldova) which, he intended should expound his views. Well-known
writers like M. Radu Rosetti wrote[1] espousing the cause favoured by the king,
though not for the king’s reasons: Carol had faith in Germany, the
Rumanians mistrusted Russia. They saw no advantage in the dismemberment of
Austria, the most powerful check to Russia’s plans in the Near East. They
dreaded the idea of seeing Russia on the Bosphorus, as rendering illusory
Rumania’s splendid position at the mouth of the Danube. For not only is a
cheap waterway absolutely necessary for the bulky products forming the chief
exports of Rumania; but these very products, corn, petroleum, and timber, also
form the chief exports of Russia, who, by a stroke of the pen, may rule Rumania
out of competition, should she fail to appreciate the political leadership of
Petrograd. Paris and Rome were, no doubt, beloved sisters; but Sofia, Moscow,
and Budapest were next-door neighbours to be reckoned with.

[Footnote 1: See R. Rosetti, Russian Politics at Work in the Rumanian
Countries, facts compiled from French official documents, Bucarest, 1914.]

Those who held views opposed to those, confident in the righteousness of the
Allies’ cause and in their final victory, advocated immediate
intervention, and to that end made the most of the two sentiments which
animated public opinion: interest in the fate of the Transylvanians, and
sympathy with France. They contended that though a purely national policy was
not possible, the difference between Transylvania and Bessarabia in area and in
number and quality of the population was such that no hesitation was
admissible. The possession of Transylvania was assured if the Allies were
successful; whereas Russia would soon recover if defeated, and would regain
Bessarabia by force of arms, or have it once more presented to her by a
Congress anxious to soothe her ‘sentiment de dignité blessée’. A
Rumania enlarged in size and population had a better chance of successfully
withstanding any eventual pressure from the north, and it was clear that any
attempt against her independence would be bound to develop into a European
question. Rumania could not forget what she owed to France; and if
circumstances had made the Transylvanian question one ‘à laquelle on
pense toujours et dont on ne parle jamais’, the greater was the duty, now
that a favourable opportunity had arisen, to help the brethren across the
mountains. It was also a duty to fight for right and civilization, proclaimed
M. Take Ionescu, the exponent of progressive ideas in Rumanian politics; and
he, together with the prominent Conservative statesman, M. Filipescu, who
loathes the idea of the Rumanians being dominated by the inferior Magyars, are
the leaders of the interventionist movement. It was due to M. Filipescu’s
activity, especially, that M. Marghiloman was forced by his own party to resign
his position as leader on account of his Austrophil sentiments—an event
unparalleled in Rumanian politics.

These were the two main currents of opinion which met in conflict at the Crown
Council—a committee ad hoc consisting of the Cabinet and the
leaders of the Opposition—summoned by the king early in August 1914, when
Rumania’s neutrality was decided upon. The great influence which the
Crown can always wield under the Rumanian political system was rendered the
more potent in the present case by the fact that the Premier, M. Bratianu, is
above all a practical man, and the Liberal Cabinet over which he presides one
of the most colourless the country ever had: a Cabinet weak to the point of
being incapable of realizing its own weakness and the imperative necessity at
this fateful moment of placing the helm in the hands of a national ministry. M.
Bratianu considered that Rumania was too exposed, and had suffered too much in
the past for the sake of other countries, to enter now upon such an adventure
without ample guarantees. There would always be time for her to come in. This
policy of opportunism he was able to justify by powerful argument. The supply
of war material for the Rumanian army had been completely in the hands of
German and Austrian arsenals, and especially in those of Krupp. For obvious
reasons Rumania could no longer rely upon that source; indeed, Germany was
actually detaining contracts for war and sanitary material placed with her
before the outbreak of the war. There was the further consideration that, owing
to the nature of Rumania’s foreign policy in the past, no due attention
had been given to the defence of the Carpathians, nor to those branches of the
service dealing with mountain warfare. On the other hand, a continuous line of
fortifications running from Galatz to Focshani formed, together with the lower
reaches of the Danube, a strong barrier against attack from the north.
Rumania’s geographical position is such that a successful offensive from
Hungary could soon penetrate to the capital, and by cutting the country in two
could completely paralyse its organization. Such arguments acquired a magnified
importance in the light of the failure of the negotiations with Bulgaria, and
found many a willing ear in a country governed by a heavily involved landed
class, and depending almost exclusively in its banking organization upon German
and Austrian capital.

From the point of view of practical politics only the issue of the conflict
will determine the wisdom or otherwise of Rumania’s attitude. But, though
it is perhaps out of place to enlarge upon it here, it is impossible not to
speak of the moral aspect of the course adopted. By giving heed to the unspoken
appeal from Transylvania the Rumanian national spirit would have been
quickened, and the people braced to a wholesome sacrifice. Many were the
wistful glances cast towards the Carpathians by the subject Rumanians, as they
were being led away to fight for their oppressors; but, wilfully unmindful, the
leaders of the Rumanian state buried their noses in their ledgers, oblivious of
the fact that in these times of internationalism a will in common, with
aspirations in common, is the very life-blood of nationality. That sentiment
ought not to enter into politics is an argument untenable in a country which
has yet to see its national aspirations fulfilled, and which makes of these
aspirations definite claims. No Rumanian statesman can contend that possession
of Transylvania is necessary to the existence of the Rumanian state. What they
can maintain is that deliverance from Magyar oppression is vital to the
existence of the Transylvanians. The right to advance such a claim grows out of
their very duty of watching over the safety of the subject Rumanians.
‘When there are squabbles in the household of my brother-in-law,’
said the late Ioan Bratianu when speaking on the Transylvanian question,
‘it is no affair of mine; but when he raises a knife against his wife, it
is not merely my right to intervene, it is my duty.’ It is difficult to
account for the obliquity of vision shown by so many Rumanian politicians.
‘The whole policy of such a state [having a large compatriot population
living in close proximity under foreign domination] must be primarily
influenced by anxiety as to the fate of their brothers, and by the duty of
emancipating them,’ affirms one of the most ardent of Rumanian
nationalist orators; and he goes on to assure us that ‘if Rumania waits,
it is not from hesitation as to her duty, but simply in order that she may
discharge it more completely’.[1] Meantime, while Rumania waits,
regiments composed almost completely of Transylvanians have been repeatedly and
of set purpose placed in the forefront of the battle, and as often annihilated.
Such could never be the simple-hearted Rumanian peasant’s conception of
his duty, and here, as in so many other cases in the present conflict, the
nation at large must not be judged by the policy of the few who hold the reins.

[Footnote 1: Quarterly Review, London, April, 1915, pp. 449-50.]

Rumania’s claims to Transylvania are not of an historical nature. They
are founded upon the numerical superiority of the subject Rumanians in
Transylvania, that is upon the ‘principle of nationality’, and are
morally strengthened by the treatment the Transylvanians suffer at the hands of
the Magyars. By its passivity, however, the Rumanian Government has sacrificed
the prime factor of the ‘principle of nationality’ to the
attainment of an object in itself subordinate to that factor; that is, it has
sacrificed the ‘people’ in order to make more sure of the
‘land’. In this way the Rumanian Government has entered upon a
policy of acquisition; a policy which Rumania is too weak to pursue save under
the patronage of one or a group of great powers; a policy unfortunate inasmuch
as it will deprive her of freedom of action in her external politics. Her
policy will, in its consequences, certainly react to the detriment of the
position acquired by the country two years ago, when independent action made
her arbiter not only among the smaller Balkan States, but also among those and
her late suzerain, Turkey.

Such, indeed, must inevitably be the fate of Balkan politics in general.
Passing from Turkish domination to nominal Turkish suzerainty, and thence to
independence within the sphere of influence of a power or group of powers, this
gradual emancipation of the states of south-eastern Europe found its highest
expression in the Balkan League. The war against Turkey was in effect a
rebellion against the political tutelage of the powers. But this emancipation
was short-lived. By their greed the Balkan States again opened up a way to the
intrusion of foreign diplomacy, and even, as we now see, of foreign troops. The
first Balkan war marked the zenith of Balkan political emancipation; the second
Balkan war was the first act in the tragic débâcle out of which the
present situation developed. The interval between August 1913 (Peace of
Bucarest) and August 1914 was merely an armistice during which Bulgaria and
Turkey recovered their breath, and German and Austrian diplomacy had time to
find a pretext for war on its own account.

‘Exhausted but not vanquished we have had to furl our glorious standards
in order to await better days,’ said Ferdinand of Bulgaria to his
soldiers after the conclusion of the Peace of Bucarest; and Budapest, Vienna,
and Berlin have no doubt done their best to keep this spirit of revenge alive
and to prevent a renascence of the Balkan Alliance. They have succeeded. They
have done more: they have succeeded in causing the ‘principle of
nationality’—that idea which involves the disruption of
Austria—to be stifled by the very people whom it was meant to save. For
whilst the German peoples are united in this conflict, the majority of the
southern Slavs, in fighting the German battles, are fighting to perpetuate the
political servitude of the subject races of Austria-Hungary.

However suspicious Rumania may be of Russia, however bitter the quarrels
between Bulgars, Greeks, and Serbs, it is not, nor can it ever be natural, that
peoples who have groaned under Turkish despotism for centuries should, after
only one year of complete liberation, join hands with an old and dreaded enemy
not only against their fellow sufferers, but even against those who came
‘to die that they may live’. These are the Dead Sea fruits of
dynastic policy. Called to the thrones of the small states of the Near East for
the purpose of creating order and peace, the German dynasties have overstepped
their function and abused the power entrusted to them. As long as, in normal
times, political activities were confined to the diplomatic arena there was no
peril of rousing the masses out of their ignorant indolence; but, when times
are abnormal, it is a different and a dangerous thing to march these peoples
against their most intimate feelings. When, as the outcome of the present false
situation, sooner or later the dynastic power breaks, it will then be for the
powers who are now fighting for better principles not to impose their own views
upon the peoples, or to place their own princes upon the vacant thrones. Rather
must they see that the small nations of the Near East are given a chance to
develop in peace and according to their proper ideals; that they be not again
subjected to the disintegrating influence of European diplomacy; and that,
above all, to the nations in common, irrespective of their present attitude,
there should be a just application of the ‘principle of
nationality’.