THE SCRAP-HEAP OF RACES
The historian, rightly, must always march under a banner inscribed
"Why?" The facts of history bring no real informing to the human mind
unless they can be traced to their causes, and thus a chain of events
followed link by link to see why some happening was so fruitful in
results, and to search for the relation of apparently isolated and
accidental incidents.
The Balkan Peninsula has to-day just emerged from a most bloody war. It
prepares for another to break out as soon as the exhaustion of the
moment has passed. Since ever the pages of history were inscribed it has
been vexed by savage wars. Why?
There is an explanation near at hand and clear. In the Balkans there is
a geographical area, which could house one nation comfortably, and is
occupied by the scraps of half a dozen nations.
(1) There are the remnants of the Turks who at one time threatened the
conquest of all Europe. Back from the walls of Vienna they have been
driven little by little until now they occupy the toe only of the Balkan
Peninsula. But the days have not far departed when they held almost all
the Peninsula, and the present smallness of their portion dates back
only from 1913.
(2) There are the Greeks, heirs of the traditions of Philip and
Alexander, and of the old Roman Empire. For centuries their national but
not their racial existence was dormant under the heel of the Turk. Greek
independence was restored recently, and since the war of 1912-1913 has
established itself vigorously.
(3) There are the Roumanians, descendants of the old Roman colony of
Trajan in Dacia.
(4) There are the Bulgars, originally a Tartar people coming from the
banks of the Volga, who entered Bulgaria in the seventh century as the
Normans entered England at a later date, and who mingled with a Slav
race they found there--at first as conquerors, afterwards becoming the
absorbed race.
(5) There are the Serbs, somewhat akin to the Bulgars, whose original
home seems to have been that of the Don Cossacks, who also came into the
Peninsula in the seventh century. They are of purer Slav blood than the
Bulgars.
(6) There are the Montenegrins, an off-shoot of the Serbs, who in the
fourteenth century, when the Servian Empire fell, took to the hills and
maintained their independence.
Those are the six main racial elements. But there are other scraps of
peoples--the Albanians, for example, and the Macedonians, and tribes of
Moslem Bulgars, and some Asiatic elements brought in by the Turks.
So far, then, the answer to the question, "Why are the Balkans so often
at war?" is easy of answer. Given the existence on one peninsula of six
different races, four of which have past great traditions of Empire, and
there is certain to be uneasy house-keeping. But the inquiry has to be
pushed further. Why is it that this unhappy Peninsula should have been
made thus a scrap-heap for bits of nations, a refuge for sore-headed
remnants of Imperial peoples? The answer to that is chiefly
geographical.
A study of the map will show that when there was a great movement from
the north of Europe to the south, its easiest line of march was down the
valley of the Danube along the Balkan Peninsula. In prehistoric times
the peoples around the European shores of the Mediterranean brought to
accomplishment a very advanced type of civilisation. It owed its
foundations to Egypt or to the Semitic peoples, such as the Phoenicians,
the Tyrians, and the Carthaginians, whose race-home was Asia Minor.
Whilst this Mediterranean civilisation was being shaped in the south--in
the north, in the forests or plains along the shores of the Baltic and
of the North Sea, the fecund Teutonic people were swelling to a mighty
host and overflowing their boundaries. A flood of these people in time
came surging south searching for new lands. The natural course of that
flood was by the valley of the Danube to the Balkan Peninsula. Down that
peninsula they cut their path--not without bloodshed one may guess--and
founded the Grecian civilisation. Of this prehistoric movement there is
no written evidence; but it is accepted by anthropologists as certain.
Thus Sir Harry Johnston records, not as a surmise but as a fact:
The Nordic races, armed with iron or steel swords, spears and
arrow-heads, descended on the Alpine, Iberian, Lydian, and
Aegean peoples of Southern Europe with irresistible strength. It
was iron against bronze, copper, and stone; and iron won the
day.
Prehistoric invasions of the Balkan Peninsula brought in the
fair-haired, blue-eyed Greeks, the semi-barbarian conquerors of
the Mukenaian and Minoan kingdoms. Tribes nearly allied to the
Ancient Greeks diverged from them in Illyria, invaded the
Italian Peninsula, and became the ancestors of the Sabines,
Oscans, Latins, etc.
The parent ancestral speech of the German tribes about four to
five thousand years ago was probably closely approximated in
syntax, and in the form and pronunciation of words, to the other
progenitors of European Aryan languages, especially the
Lithuanian, Slav, Greek, and Italic dialects. Keltic speech was
perhaps a little more different owing to its absorption of
non-Aryan elements; but if we can judge of prehistoric German
from what its eastern sister, the Gothic language, was like as
late as the fifth century B.C., we can, without too much
straining of facts, say that the prehistoric Greeks, when they
passed across Hungary into the mountainous regions of the
Balkans, and equally the early Italic invaders of Italy, were
simply another branch of the Teutonic peoples later in
separation than the Kelts, with whom, however, both the Italic
and the Hellenic tribes were much interwoven.... Very English or
German in physiognomy were most of the notabilities in the palmy
days of Greece, to judge by their portrait-busts and the types
of male and female beauty most in favour--as far south as
Cyprus--in the periods when Greek art had become realistic and
was released from the influence of an Aegean standard of beauty.
[Illustration: SISTOV, ON THE DANUBE]
The invasion from the North of people flowing south by way of the
Balkan Peninsula began that unhappy area's record of race-struggles and
constant warfare. The Greek civilisation had scarcely established itself
before it was attacked by an Asiatic Power--Persia. Again the Balkan
Peninsula was inevitably the scene of the conflict, and such battles as
Thermopylae and Marathon made names to resound for ever in the mouths of
men. The peril from Persia over, the Balkan Peninsula, after seeing the
struggles between the different Greek states for supremacy, was given
another great ordeal of blood by Philip of Macedonia and Alexander the
Great. Alexander carried a great invasion from Greece into the very
heart of Asia, but founded no permanent empire.
The next phase of Balkan history was under the Roman Power. When the
Roman strength had reached its zenith and entered upon the curve of
decay, it was on the Balkan boundaries of the Empire that the main
attack came. Finally, the rulers of the Roman Empire found it necessary
to concentrate their strength close to the point of attack, and the
capital was moved from Rome to Constantinople: the Roman Empire became
the Greek Empire. Thus, as we have seen in the previous chapter, the
Balkan Peninsula was chosen as the arena in which an Empire founded in
the Italian Peninsula was to die its long, uneasy death. The fate of
this Greek Empire had been hardly decided when a new racial element came
on the scene, and over the tottering Empire, already fighting fiercely
with Bulgar and Serb for its small surviving patch of territory, strode
the Turk in the full flush of his youthful strength, giving the last
blow to the rule of the Caesars, and threatening all Christian Europe
with conquest.
Made thus by the Fates the cockpit of the great struggles for
World-Empire, the Balkan Peninsula was doomed to a bloody history: and
the doom has not yet passed away. Perhaps it is some unconscious effect
on the mind of the pity of this that makes the traveller to the Balkans
feel so often a sympathy, almost unreasonable in intensity, for the
Balkan peoples. The Balkan acres which they till are home to them. To
civilisation those acres are the tournament field for the battles of
races and nations.
What is now Bulgaria was in the days of Herodotus inhabited by Thracian
and Illyrian tribes. They were united under the strong hand of Philip
of Macedonia, and Bulgaria counts him the first great figure in her
confused national history, and makes a claim to be the heir of his
Macedonian Empire. The Romans appeared in Bulgaria during the period of
the second war against Carthage. The Roman conquest of the Balkan
country was slow, but shortly before the Christian era the Roman
provinces of Moesia and Thracia comprised most of what is now Bulgaria.
In the days of Constantine, who removed the capital of his Empire to the
Balkan Peninsula, Roman civilisation in what is now Bulgaria was already
being swamped by barbarian invasions. The Goths and the Huns ravaged the
land fiercely without attempting to colonise it. The Slavs were invaders
of another type. They came to stay. It was at the beginning of the third
century that the Slavs made their first appearance, and, crossing the
Danube, began to settle in the great plains between the river and the
Balkan Mountains. Later, they went south-wards and formed colonies among
the Thraco-Illyrians, the Roumanians, and the Greeks. This Slav
occupation went on for several centuries. In the seventh century of the
Christian era a Hunnish tribe reached the banks of the Danube. It is
known that this tribe came from the Volga and, crossing Russia,
proceeded towards ancient Moesia, where it took possession of the whole
north-east territory of the Balkans between the Danube and the Black
Sea. These were the Bulgars, or Bolgars. The Slavs had already imposed
on the races they had found in the Peninsula their language and customs.
The Bulgars, too, assumed the language of the Slavs, and some of their
customs. The Bulgars, however, gave their name to the mixed race, and
assumed the political supremacy.
The analogy I have before suggested of the Norman invasion of England
and the Bulgar invasion of Bulgaria generally holds good. The Slavs were
a people who tilled the soil, cherished free institutions, fought on
foot, were gentle in character. The Bulgars were nomads and
pastoralists, obeying despotic chiefs, fighting as cavalry. They came as
conquerors, but in time were absorbed in the more stable Slavonic type.
Without a doubt the Bulgars were racially nearly akin to the
Turks--first cousins at least. Mingling with the Slavs they adopted
their language and many of their customs. But something of the Turk
survives to this day in the character of the Bulgarian people. It shows
particularly in their treatment of their women. Though the Bulgarian is
monogamic he submits his wife to an almost _harem_ discipline. Once
married she lives for the family alone. Though she does not wear a veil
in the streets it is not customary for her to go out from her home
except with her husband, nor to receive company except in his presence,
nor to frequent theatres, restaurants, or other places of public
amusement. There is thus no social life in Bulgaria in the European
sense of the term, and there is great scope there for a campaign for
"women's rights."
The Bulgars taking command over the Slav population in Bulgaria began a
warfare against the enfeebled Greek Empire. That Empire gave up Moesia
to the Bulgarian King, Isperich, and agreed to pay him a tribute, it
being the custom of the degenerate descendants of the Roman Empire of
the period thus to attempt to buy safety with bribes. The Emperor
Justinian II. stopped this tribute, and a war followed, in which the
Bulgarians were successful, and Justinian lost his throne and was driven
to exile. Later, Justinian made another treaty with the Bulgarians and
offered his daughter in marriage to the new Bulgarian King, Tervel, and
with Bulgarian help he was restored to his throne. But war between the
Bulgars and the Empire was chronic. To quote a Bulgarian chronicler:
The chief characteristics of the Bulgars were warlike virtues,
discipline, patriotism, and enthusiasm. The Bulgarian kings
brought their victorious armies to the gates of Constantinople,
whose very existence they threatened. The Greek Emperor sought
their friendship, and even consented to pay them tribute.
Bulgaria attained her greatest empire in the reign of King Kroum.
Between King Isperich and King Kroum, however, Bulgaria had many ups and
downs. The Bulgarian King, Kormisos, once almost reached the walls of
Constantinople. But trouble among his own people prevented his victories
being pushed home. Then a series of civil wars in Bulgaria weakened the
nation, and a great section of it migrated to Asia Minor. The Roman
Emperor, Constantine V., took this occasion to exact a full revenge for
previous Bulgar attacks on Constantinople. The Bulgar army was routed,
and an invading force carried the torch into every Bulgarian town. A new
Bulgar King, Cerig, restored his country's position somewhat by a
secretly plotted massacre of all its enemies within its boundaries. The
Empress Irene then ascended the Imperial throne at Constantinople and
found herself unable to withstand the Bulgar power, and went back to the
system of paying tribute to the Bulgarians as the price of safety.
King Kroum next ascended the throne of Bulgaria and, capable and savage
warrior as he was, raised its power vastly. He defeated and slew the
Greek Emperor, Nicephorus, in battle, and captured Sofia (809), the
present capital of Bulgaria. Warfare was savage in those days, and
between the Bulgars and the Greek emperors particularly savage. The
defeated Imperial army was massacred to a man, from the Emperor down to
the foot-soldier. King Kroum afterwards used the skull of the descendant
of the Caesars as a drinking-cup.
A siege of Constantinople followed the defeat and death of the Emperor
Nicephorus. The Bulgars affrighted the defenders of the city by their
fierce orgies before the walls, by the human sacrifices they offered up
in their sight, and by the resolute refusal of all quarter in the field.
The Empire tried to buy off the Bulgars with the promise of an annual
tribute of gold, of cloth, and of young girls. The invaders finally
retired with a great booty, and the death of King Kroum soon after
relieved the anxiety of Constantinople.
Bulgaria seems now (the ninth century) to have suffered again from
internal dissensions. These arose mostly out of religious issues. Many
of the Slavs had become Christians, and some of the Bulgars also adopted
the new faith. For a time the kings tried to crush out Christianity by
persecutions, but in 864 the Bulgarian King, Boris, adopted
Christianity--some say converted by his sister, who had been a prisoner
of the Greeks and was baptized by them. His adherence to Christianity
was announced in a treaty with the Greek Emperor, Michael III. Some of
King Boris's subjects kept their affection for paganism and objected to
the conversion of their king. Following the customs of the time they
were all massacred, and Bulgaria became thus a wholly Christian kingdom.
King Boris, whom the Bulgarians look up to as the actual founder of the
Bulgarian nation of to-day, hesitated long as to whether he should
attach himself and his nation to the Roman or to the Greek branch of
the Christian Church. He made the issue a matter of close bargaining.
The Church was sought which was willing to allow to Bulgaria the highest
degree of ecclesiastical independence, and which seemed to offer as the
price of adhesion the greatest degree of political advantage.
[Illustration: ANCIENT COSTUME OF BALKAN PEASANT WOMEN NEAR GABROVO]
At first the Greek Church would not allow Bulgaria to have a Patriarch
of her own. King Boris sent, then, a deputation to Pope Nicholas at
Rome, seeking if a better national bargain could be made there. Two
bishops came over from Rome to negotiate. But in time King Boris veered
back to a policy of attaching himself to the Greek Church, which now
offered Bulgaria an Archbishop with a rank in the Church second only to
that of the Greek Patriarch. In 869 Bulgaria definitely threw in her lot
with the Greek Church.
Curiously those old religious controversies of the ninth century were
revived in the nineteenth. Bulgaria has a persistent sense of
nationalism, and looks upon religion largely in a national sense. In the
ninth century her first care in changing her religion was to safeguard
national interests. In the nineteenth century the first great
concession she wrung from her Turkish masters was the setting up (1870)
of a Bulgarian Exarch to be the official head of the Bulgarian Orthodox
Church independent of the Greek Patriarch. A little later in the days of
her freedom, when to her Roman Catholic ruler, King Ferdinand, was born
a son (named Boris after the first Christian king of Bulgaria), the
Bulgarians had him transferred in 1896 from the Roman to the Greek
Church as a matter of national policy.
The controversy to-day between "Patriarchate" adherents of the Orthodox
Church--_i.e._ Greeks, and the Exarchate adherents--_i.e._ Bulgarians,
is perhaps the most bitter of all Balkan controversies. I have found it
in places transcending far the religious gap between Turk and Christian,
and in that particularly stormy North Macedonian corner of the Balkans a
Patriarchate man gives first place in his hatred to an Exarchate man and
second place to a Turk; and the Exarchate man reciprocates in like
manner. Yet, as the Bulgarians insist, "the autonomous orthodox
Bulgarian Church forms an inseparable part of the Holy Orthodox Church."
The Bulgarian Exarchate used to comprise all the Bulgarian dioceses in
the provinces of the Turkish Empire, as they were enumerated explicitly
or in general terms by the Firman of 1870 as well as the dioceses of the
Bulgarian Principality. Most of the orthodox Bulgarian population in
Turkey recognise the authority of the Exarchate, but some still owe
allegiance to the Greek Patriarchate. What the religious position will
be now that the wars of 1912-1913 have changed boundaries so considerably
it is hard to say. The Exarchate dioceses which used to be in Turkish
territory but are now in Bulgarian territory, will, of course, pass into
the main current of Bulgarian church life. But those Exarchate dioceses
which have passed to Servia and to Greece will probably not find
toleration.
King Boris of Bulgaria having raised his country to a great fame, and
having endowed it with a national church, retired to a monastery in 888
to make his peace with the next world. His son Vladimir succeeded to the
throne, but ruled so unwisely that King Boris came back from the
cloister to depose Vladimir and to set in his stead upon the throne
Simeon, who created the first Bulgarian Empire.