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.