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.