King Peter of Serbia consecrated his church of white marble, built in
Topola, the birthplace of his grandfather, Karageorge, the protagonist
of Balkan liberation. On the same hill, on which Karageorge took the
resolution to begin one of the greatest things that ever happened on the
troublesome Balkan soil, on the hill of Oplenaz, Karageorge's grandson,
King Peter, erected a beautiful church and then declared war on Turkey.
It was one of many wars that we had with Turkey, one of many--known and
unknown to you--during five hundred years. We have had our old accounts
with the Turks. We despised them as the slaves will despise their lords,
and they despised us as the lords will despise their slaves. Yet we
respected their virtues, and they recognised some of ours. With the
sword they conquered our country, and we knew that only with the sword
we could reconquer it from them. Our Christian drama with the Turks in
the Balkans began with blood, and we all believed it must finish with
blood. In our bloody conflict with the Turks we, the Christians, lost
three kings--one of them was King Constantine of Byzantium, and two were
the Serbian kings, Vukashin and Lazare--during a period of seventeen
years. As well as Serbia and Greece, Roumania also offered great
resistance to the Turks. It is a historic fact, that after the decisive
Balkan battle on the field of Kossovo, the Roumanians also fought
against the Turks. In the battle of Rovina between the Turks and
Roumanians, our epic Serbian hero, Marko Kralevich, the last king of
Macedonia, called Marko of Prilep, also participated, and was killed
there. He was the third Serbian king killed in the defence of Christian
freedom in the Balkans. That was the time when the Albanians, too,
showed their virtues more than ever before. Under Skenderbeg, the
prince from Croya, they resisted the Mussulmans very bravely. But they
fell into slavery in the same way as Serbia, Greece, Roumania and
Croatia. The only country in the Balkans which surrendered without any
resistance was Bulgaria. The only country in the Balkans that never was
conquered by the Turks was Montenegro. Poor Montenegro, a skeleton of
rocky mountains, has shown during five hundred years more heroic beauty
and idealistic enthusiasm than many great empires in Asiatic and
European history, which fought their selfish battles for power and
comfort, and have been respected and adored merely because of their
numbers and dimensions.
Now, in the year of our Lord, 1912, two Serbian kingdoms, Serbia and
Montenegro, with two other Christian kingdoms, Greece and Bulgaria,
declared war on the Turks. The Roumanians were with their sympathies on
the side of the Christian allies. The Albanians, degenerate and
disorganised, very different from Skenderbeg's contemporaries, standing
now under the influence of Austria, were pro-Turks and against the
Christian warriors.
Shall I remind you of the results? I suppose the surprising fact is
fresh in your memories even now that only two months after the Balkan
war had been declared the delegates of the belligerents for peace stayed
in Hyde Park Hotel in London. Turkey lost and the Christians won.
The Serbian troops crossed the frontier and fighting proceeded in three
different directions, towards Skoplje and Prilep, towards Adrianople
and towards Scutari. A foreigner never can realise what a Serbian
soldier thought and felt at that time. Skoplje had been the centre of
our mediaeval kingdom; in Prilep lived and ruled king Marko, our
national hero; under the walls of. Adrianople King Vukashin, Marko's
father, was killed resisting the Turkish invasion; Scutari was the last
free dominion of the Serbian kings Balshic before universal darkness
covered the whole of the Balkans, except Montenegro. In every direction
the Serbian soldiers faced their own history. Their past glory has been
revived; their heroes of old excited their imagination; many saw them in
visions or in dreams, all imitated them in heroic deeds and in
sufferings.
Here succumbed the Saint King Lazare! exclaimed our soldier in the field
of Kossovo. Here fell the Duke Milosh after he killed the Turkish Sultan
Murad! Here lived Marko of Prilep! From this fortress he protected the
remnants of the Serbian people and their past glory after the fatal
battle of Kossovo! Here on the stones the hoofs of Shiraz, Marko's
cherished horse, are to be seen. There are churches built by King Urosh,
or Stephen, or Milutin, or Dushan, or Lazare! Here on the Mariza River
fell Vukashin with sixty thousand of the most splendid Serbian warriors
defending the freedom of the Balkans. There on Scutari stand lofty
walls constructed by the same King Vukashin. This is the way by which
the Byzantine princesses had come to be the wives of our kings or dukes.
There is the town where King Dushan, in allegiance with Kantakusen and
the Greeks, fought against the first Turkish invaders. On this lake of
Ochrida was a beautiful church with a Serbian archbishopric. That is the
mountain where the _villas_ (fairies) lived and from which they flew
down to help our heroes or to preserve the Serbian down-trodden rights.
In this town King Nemanja met the Crusaders from the West proceeding to
the East and gave them hospitality. In that town our greatest king
proclaimed the famous codex of laws, _Zakonik_, which is comparable with
the best codexes of that kind. Here are the tombs of our patriarchs, who
led and protected the nation during centuries of oppression and slavery.
There are the towers built from the skeletons of the Serbian leaders,
who were slaughtered for their ideals of freedom; and there again is the
spot where were hanged several _voivodas_ and _bishops_. Bones upon
bones, blood upon blood, sin upon sin, heroism upon heroism! Kossovo,
Scutari, Kumanovo, Skoplje, Prilep, Bitolj, Adrianople--all these names
were well known by every Serbian soldier. In their childhood and boyhood
they sang these very names, they sang them and knew the historical
events and heroes connected with them. And so they came now not as
guests and strangers, but they returned home after a long absence. It
seems to every one of them like a dream: the land which has been for
generations and generations the topic of poetry now stood before the
Serbian warriors as a reality. The Serbian brothers from Austria-Hungary
came to Macedonia, kissed the sacred soil, and each one took a handful
of the sacred dust from the tombs of our kings and heroes of old. Two
months after the outbreak of war King Peter returned to Topola and
prayed gratefully in his white church to God and to Saint George. This
democratic king, who has been elected by the Serbian Parliament
(_Skupshtina_), thanked God that he with his people had finished the
work of liberation from the Turkish yoke, which work was started by
Karageorge, his grandfather, who also was elected by the people to be
their leader.