The Balkan Wars: 1912 to 1913 by Jacob Gould Schurman
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Jacob Gould Schurman >> The Balkan Wars: 1912 to 1913
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6 THE BALKAN WARS
1912-1913
JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN
THIRD EDITION
1916
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
The interest in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 has exceeded the
expectations of the publishers of this volume. The first edition,
which was published five months ago, is already exhausted and a
second is now called for. Meanwhile there has broken out and is now
in progress a war which is generally regarded as the greatest of all
time--a war already involving five of the six Great Powers and three
of the smaller nations of Europe as well as Japan and Turkey and
likely at any time to embroil other countries in Europe, Asia, and
Africa, which are already embraced in the area of military
operations.
This War of Many Nations had its origin in Balkan situation. It
began on July 28 with the declaration of the Dual Monarchy to the
effect that from that moment Austria-Hungary was in a state of war
with Servia. And the fundamental reason for this declaration as
given in the note or ultimatum to Servia was the charge that the
Servian authorities had encouraged the Pan-Serb agitation which
seriously menaced the integrity of Austria-Hungary and had already
caused the assassination at Serajevo of the Heir to the Throne.
No one could have observed at close range the Balkan Wars of
1912-1913 without perceiving, always in the background and
occasionally in the foreground, the colossal rival figures of Russia
and Austria-Hungary. Attention was called to the phenomenon at
various points in this volume and especially in the concluding
pages.
The issue of the Balkan struggles of 1912-1913 was undoubtedly
favorable to Russia. By her constant diplomatic support she retained
the friendship and earned the gratitude of Greece, Montenegro, and
Servia; and through her championship, belated though it was, of the
claims of Roumania to territorial compensation for benevolent
neutrality during the war of the Allies against Turkey, she won the
friendship of the predominant Balkan power which had hitherto been
regarded as the immovable eastern outpost of the Triple Alliance.
But while Russia was victorious she did not gain all that she had
planned and hoped for. Her very triumph at Bukarest was a proof
that she had lost her influence over Bulgaria. This Slav state after
the war against Turkey came under the influence of Austria-Hungary,
by whom she was undoubtedly incited to strife with Servia and her
other partners in the late war against Turkey. Russia was unable to
prevent the second Balkan war between the Allies. The Czar's summons
to the Kings of Bulgaria and Servia on June 9, 1913, to submit, in
the name of Pan-Slavism, their disputes to his decision failed to
produce the desired effect, while this assumption of Russian
hegemony in Balkan affairs greatly exacerbated Austro-Hungarian
sentiment. That action of the Czar, however, was clear notification
and proof to all the world that Russia regarded the Slav States in
the Balkans as objects of her peculiar concern and protection.
The first Balkan War--the war of the Allies against Turkey--ended in
a way that surprised all the world. Everybody expected a victory for
the Turks. That the Turks should one day be driven out of Europe was
the universal assumption, but it was the equally fixed belief that
the agents of their expulsion would be the Great Powers or some of
the Great Powers. That the little independent States of the Balkans
should themselves be equal to the task no one imagined,--no one with
the possible exception of the government of Russia. And as Russia
rejoiced over the victory of the Balkan States and the defeat of her
secular Mohammedan neighbor, Austria-Hungary looked on not only with
amazement but with disappointment and chagrin.
For the contemporaneous diplomacy of the Austro-Hungarian government
was based on the assumption that the Balkan States would be
vanquished by Turkey. And its standing policy had been on the one
hand to keep the Kingdom of Servia small and weak (for the Dual
Monarchy was itself an important Serb state) and on the other hand
to broaden her Adriatic possessions and also to make her way through
Novi Bazar and Macedonia to Saloniki and the Aegean, when the time
came to secure this concession from the Sultan without provoking a
European war. It seemed in 1908 as though the favorable moment had
arrived to make a first move, and the Austro-Hungarian government
put forward a project for connecting the Bosnian and Macedonian
railway systems. But the only result was to bring to an end the
co-operation which had for some years been maintained between the
Austrian and Russian governments in the enforcement upon the Porte
of the adoption of reforms in Macedonia.
And now the result of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 was the practical
expulsion of Turkey from Europe and the territorial aggrandizement
of Servia and the sister state of Montenegro through the annexation
of those very Turkish domains which lay between the Austro-Hungarian
frontier and the Aegean. At every point Austro-Hungarian policies
had met with reverses.
Only one success could possibly be attributed to the diplomacy of
the Ballplatz. The exclusion of Servia from the Adriatic Sea and the
establishment of the independent State of Albania was the
achievement of Count Berchtold, the Austro-Hungarian Minister of
Foreign Affairs. The new State has been a powder magazine from the
beginning, and since the withdrawal of Prince William of Wied, the
government, always powerless, has fallen into chaos. Intervention on
the part of neighboring states is inevitable. And only last month
the southern part of Albania--that is, Northern Epirus--was occupied
by a Greek army for the purpose of ending the sanguinary anarchy
which has hitherto prevailed. This action will be no surprise to the
readers of this volume. The occupation, or rather re-occupation, is
declared by the Greek Government to be provisional and it is
apparently approved by all the Great Powers. Throughout the rest of
Albania similar intervention will be necessary to establish order,
and to protect the life and property of the inhabitants without
distinction of race, tribe, or creed. Servia might perhaps have
governed the country, had she not been compelled by the Great
Powers, at the instigation of Austria-Hungary, to withdraw her
forces. And her extrusion from the Adriatic threw her back toward
the Aegean, with the result of shutting Bulgaria out of Central
Macedonia, which was annexed by Greece and Servia presumably under
arrangements satisfactory to the latter for an outlet to the sea at
Saloniki. The war declared by Austria-Hungary against Servia may be
regarded to some extent as an effort to nullify in the interests of
the former the enormous advantages which accrued directly to Servia
and indirectly to Russia from the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. That
Russia should have come to the support of Servia was as easy to
foresee as any future political event whatever. And the action of
Germany and France once war had broken out between their respective
allies followed as a matter of course. If the Austro-German
Alliance wins in the War of Many Nations it will doubtless control
the eastern Adriatic and open up a way for itself to the Aegean.
Indeed, in that event, German trade and German political influence
would spread unchallenged across the continents from the North Sea
to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. Turkey is a friend and
ally; but even if Turkey were hostile she would have no strength to
resist such victorious powers. And the Balkan States, with the
defeat of Russia, would be compelled to recognize Germanic
supremacy.
If on the other hand the Allies come out victorious in the War of
Many Nations, Servia and perhaps Roumania would be permitted to
annex the provinces occupied by their brethren in the Dual Monarchy
and Servian expansion to the Adriatic would be assured. The Balkan
States would almost inevitably fall under the controlling influence
of Russia, who would become mistress of Constantinople and gain an
unrestricted outlet to the Mediterranean through the Bosphorus, the
Sea of Marmora, and the Dardanelles.
In spite of themselves the destiny of the peoples of the Balkans is
once more set on the issue of war. It is not inconceivable,
therefore, that some or all of those States may be drawn into the
present colossal conflict. In 1912-1913 the first war showed
Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Servia allied against Turkey; and
in the second war Greece, Montenegro, and Servia were joined by
Roumania in the war against Bulgaria, who was also independently
attacked by Turkey. What may happen in 1914 or 1915 no one can
predict. But if this terrible conflagration, which is already
devastating Europe and convulsing all the continents and vexing all
the oceans of the globe, spreads to the Balkans, one may hazard the
guess that Greece, Montenegro, Servia, and Roumania will stand
together on the side of the Allies and that Bulgaria if she is not
carried away by marked Austro-German victories will remain
neutral,--unless indeed the other Balkan States win her over, as
they not inconceivably might do, if they rose to the heights of
unwonted statesmanship by recognizing her claim to that part of
Macedonia in which the Bulgarian element predominates but which was
ceded to her rivals by the Treaty of Bukarest.
But I have said enough to indicate that as in its origin so also in
its results this awful cataclysm under which the civilized world is
now reeling will be found to be vitally connected with the Balkan
Wars of 1912-1913. And I conclude with the hope that the present
volume, which devotes indeed but little space to military matters
and none at all to atrocities and massacres, may prove helpful to
readers who seek light on the underlying conditions, the causes, and
the consequences of those historic struggles. The favor already
accorded to the work and the rapid exhaustion of the first edition*
seem to furnish some justification of this hope.
JACOB GOULD SCHURMAN.
November 26, 1914.
* The present work is rather, a reprint than a new edition, few
changes having been made except the correction of typographical
errors.
INTRODUCTION
The changes made in the map of Europe by the Balkan Wars of
1912-1913 were not merely the occasion but a cause and probably the
most potent, and certainly the most urgent, of all the causes that
led to the World War which has been raging with such titanic fury
since the summer of 1914.
Had the Balkan Allies after their triumph over Turkey not fallen out
amongst themselves, had there been no second Balkan War in 1913, had
the Turkish provinces wrested from the Porte by the united arms of
Bulgaria, Greece, Servia, and Montenegro been divided amongst the
victors either by diplomacy or arbitration substantial justice would
have been done to all, none of them would have been humiliated, and
their moderation and concord would have commended their achievement
to the Great Powers who might perhaps have secured the acquiescence
of Austria-Hungary in the necessary enlargement of Servia and the
expansion of Greece to Saloniki and beyond.
But the outbreak of the second Balkan War nullified all these fair
prospects. And Bulgaria, who brought it on, found herself encircled
by enemies, including not only all her recent Allies against Turkey,
but also Turkey herself, and even Roumania, who had remained a
neutral spectator of the first Balkan War. Of course Bulgaria was
defeated. And a terrible punishment was inflicted on her. She was
stripped of a large part of the territory she had just conquered
from Turkey, including her most glorious battle-fields; her original
provinces were dismembered; her extension to the Aegean Sea was
seriously obstructed, if not practically blocked; and, bitterest and
most tragic of all, the redemption of the Bulgarians in Macedonia,
which was the principal object and motive of her war against Turkey
in 1912, was frustrated and rendered hopeless by Greek and Servian
annexations of Macedonian territory extending from the Mesta to the
Drin with the great cities of Saloniki, Kavala, and Monastir, which
in the patriotic national consciousness had long loomed up as fixed
points in the "manifest destiny" of Bulgaria.
That the responsibility for precipitating the second Balkan War
rests on Bulgaria is demonstrated in the latter portion of this
volume. Yet the intransigent and bellicose policy of Bulgaria was
from the point of view of her own interests so short-sighted, so
perilous, so foolish and insane that it seemed, even at the time, to
be directed by some external power and for some ulterior purpose. No
proof, however, was then available. But hints of that suspicion were
clearly conveyed even in the first edition of this volume, which, it
may be recalled, antedates the outbreak of the great European War.
Thus, on page 103, the question was put:
"Must we assume that there is some ground for suspecting that
Austria-Hungary was inciting Bulgaria to war?"
And again, on page 108, with reference to General Savoff's order
directing the attack on the Greek and Servian forces which initiated
the second Balkan War, the inquiry was made:
"Did General Savoff act on his own responsibility? Or is there
any truth in the charge that King Ferdinand, after a long
consultation with the Austro-Hungarian Minister, instructed the
General to issue the order?"
These questions may now be answered with positive assurance. What
was only surmise when this volume was written is to-day indubitable
certainty. The proof is furnished by the highest authorities both
Italian and Russian.
When the second Balkan War broke out San Giuliano was Prime Minister
of Italy. And he has recently published the fact that at that
time--the summer of 1913--the Austro-Hungarian government
communicated to the Italian government its intention of making war
on Servia and claimed under the terms of the Triple Alliance the
co-operation of Italy and Germany. The Italian government repudiated
the obligation imputed to it by Austria-Hungary and flatly declared
that the Triple Alliance had nothing to do with a war of aggression.
That Austria-Hungary did not proceed to declare war against Servia
at that time--perhaps because she was discouraged by Germany as well
as by Italy--makes it all the more intelligible, in view of her
bellicose attitude, that she should have been urgent and insistent
in pushing Bulgaria forward to smite their common rival.
This conclusion is confirmed by the positive statement of the
Russian government. The communication accompanying the declaration
of war against Bulgaria, dated October 18, contains the following
passage:
"The victorious war of the united Balkan people against their
ancient enemy, Turkey, assured to Bulgaria an honorable place in
the Slavic family. But under Austro-German suggestion, contrary
to the advice of the Russian Emperor and without the knowledge of
the Bulgarian government, the Coburg Prince on June 29, 1913,
moved Bulgarian armies against the Serbians."
The "Coburg Prince" is of course Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria. That
he acted under Austro-Hungarian influences in attacking his Balkan
Allies on that fateful Sunday, June 29, 1913, is no longer
susceptible of doubt. But whatever other inferences may be drawn
from that conclusion it certainly makes the course of Bulgaria in
launching the second Balkan War, though its moral character remains
unchanged, look less hopeless and desperate than it otherwise
appeared. Had she not Austria-Hungary behind her? And had not
Austria-Hungary at that very time informed her Italian ally that she
intended making war against Servia?
But, whatever the explanation, the thunderbolt forged in 1913 was
not launched till July 28, 1914, when Austria-Hungary formally
declared war on Servia. The occasion was the assassination, a month
earlier, of the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his
wife, the Duchess of Hohenburg, in the streets of Sarajevo. The
occasion, however, was not the cause of the war. The cause was that
which moved the Dual Monarchy to announce a war on Servia in the
summer of 1913, namely, dissatisfaction with the territorial
aggrandizement of Servia as a result of the first Balkan War and
alarm at the Pan-Serb agitation and propaganda which followed the
Servian victories over Turkey. These motives had subsequently been
much intensified by the triumph of Servia over Bulgaria in the
second Balkan War. The relations of Austria-Hungary to Servia had
been acutely strained since October, 1908, when the former annexed
the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which under the
terms of the treaty of Berlin she had been administering since 1878.
The inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina are Serb, and Serb also
are the inhabitants of Dalmatia on the west and Croatia on the
north, which the Dual Monarchy had already brought under its
sceptre. The new annexation therefore seemed a fatal and a final
blow to the national aspirations of the Serb race and it was
bitterly resented by those who had already been gathered together
and "redeemed" in the Kingdom of Servia. A second disastrous
consequence of the annexation was that it left Servia hopelessly
land-locked. The Serb population of Dalmatia and Herzegovina looked
out on the Adriatic along a considerable section of its eastern
coast, but Servia's long-cherished hope of becoming a maritime state
by the annexation of the Serb provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina
was now definitively at an end. She protested, she appealed, she
threatened; but with Germany behind the Dual Monarchy and Russia
still weak from the effects of the war with Japan, she was quickly
compelled to submit to superior force.
During the war of the Balkan Allies against Turkey Servia made one
more effort to get to the Adriatic,--this time by way of Albania.
She marched her forces over the mountains of that almost impassable
country and reached the sea at Durazzo. But she was forced back by
the European powers at the demand of Austria-Hungary, as some weeks
later on the same compulsion she had to withdraw from the siege of
Scutari. Then she turned toward the Aegean, and the second Balkan
War gave her a new opportunity. The treaty of Bukarest and the
convention with Greece assured her of an outlet to the sea at
Saloniki. But this settlement proved scarcely less objectionable to
Austria-Hungary than the earlier dream of Servian expansion to the
Adriatic by the annexation of the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and
Herzegovina.
The fact is that, if we look at the matter dispassionately and in a
purely objective spirit, we shall find that there really was a
hopeless incompatibility between the ideals, aims, policies, and
interests of the Servians and the Serb race and those of the
Austrians and Hungarians. Any aggrandizement of the Kingdom of
Servia, any enlargement of its territory, any extension to the sea
and especially to the Adriatic, any heightening and intensifying of
the national consciousness of its people involved some danger to the
Dual Monarchy. For besides the Germans who control Austria, and the
Hungarians who control Hungary, the Austro-Hungarian Empire embraces
many millions of Slavs, and the South Slavs are of the same family
and speak practically the same language as the inhabitants of the
Kingdom of Servia. And Austria and Hungary can not get to their
outlets on the Adriatic--Trieste and Fiume--without passing through
territory inhabited by these South Slavs.
If, therefore, Austria and Hungary were not to be left land-locked
they must at all hazards prevent the absorption of their South Slav
subjects by the Kingdom of Servia. Pan-Serbism at once menaced the
integrity of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and jeopardized its
position on the Adriatic. Hence the cardinal features in the Balkan
policy of Austria-Hungary were a ruthless repression of national
aspiration among its South Slav subjects--the inhabitants of
Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina; a watchful and jealous
opposition to any increase of the territory or resources of the
Kingdom of Servia; and a stern and unalterable determination to
prevent Servian expansion to the Adriatic.
The new Servia which emerged from the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 was
an object of anxiety and even of alarm to the statesmen of Vienna
and Buda-Pesth. The racial and national aspirations already astir
among the South Slavs of the Dual Monarchy were quickened and
intensified by the great victories won by their Servian brethren
over both Turks and Bulgarians and by the spectacle of the
territorial aggrandizement which accrued from those victories to the
independent Kingdom of Servia. Might not this Greater Servia prove a
magnet to draw the kindred Slavs of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia,
and Croatia away from their allegiance to an alien empire? The
diplomacy of Vienna had indeed succeeded in excluding Servia from
the Adriatic but it had neither prevented its territorial
aggrandizement nor blocked its access to the Aegean.
Access to the Aegean was not, however, as serious a matter as access
to the Adriatic. Yet the expansion of Servia to the south over the
Macedonian territory she had wrested from Turkey, as legalized in
the Treaty of Bukarest, nullified the Austro-Hungarian dream of
expansion through Novi Bazar and Macedonia to the Aegean and the
development from Saloniki as a base of a great and profitable
commerce with all the Near and Middle East.
Here were the conditions of a national tragedy. They have developed
into a great international war, the greatest and most terrible ever
waged on this planet.
It may be worth while in concluding to note the relations of the
Balkan belligerents of 1912-1913 to the two groups of belligerents
in the present world-conflict.
The nemesis of the treaties of London and Bukarest and the fear of
the Great Powers pursue the Balkan nations and determine their
alignments. The declaration of war by Austria-Hungary against
Servia, which started the present cataclysm, fixed the enemy status
of Servia and also Montenegro. The good relations long subsisting
between Emperor William and the Porte were a guarantee to the
Central Powers of the support of Turkey, which quickly declared in
their favor. The desire of avenging the injury done her by the
treaty of Bukarest and the prospect of territorial aggrandizement at
the expense of her sister Slav nation on the west drew Bulgaria
(which was influenced also by the victories of the Germanic forces)
into the same group in company with Turkey, her enemy in both the
Balkan Wars of 1912-1913. Bulgaria's opportunity for revenge soon
arrived. It was the Bulgarian army, in cooperation with the
Austro-German forces, that overran Servia and Montenegro and drove
the national armies beyond their own boundaries into foreign
territory. If the fortunes of war turn and the Entente Powers get
the upper hand in the Balkans, these expelled armies of Servia and
Montenegro, who after rest and reorganization and re-equipping in
Corfu have this summer been transported by France and England to
Saloniki, may have the satisfaction of devastating the territory of
the sister Slav state of Bulgaria, quite in the divisive and
internecine spirit of all Balkan history. The fate and future of
Bulgaria, Servia, and Montenegro now depend on the issue of the
great European conflict. The same thing is true of Turkey, into
which meanwhile Russian forces, traversing the Caucasus, have driven
a dangerous wedge through Armenia towards Mesopotamia. Roumania has
thus far maintained the policy of neutrality to which she adhered so
successfully in the first Balkan war--a policy which in view of her
geographical situation, with Bulgaria to the south, Russia to the
north, and Austria-Hungary to the west, she cannot safely abandon
till fortune has declared more decisively for one or the other group
of belligerents. The only remaining party to the Balkan Wars is
Greece, and the situation of Greece, though not tragic like that of
Servia, must be exceedingly humiliating to the Greek nation and to
the whole Hellenic race.
When the war broke out, Mr. Venizelos was still prime minister of
Greece. His policy was to go loyally to the assistance of Servia, as
required by the treaty between the two countries; to defend New
Greece against Bulgaria, to whom, however, he was ready to make some
concessions on the basis of a quid pro quo; and to join and
co-operate actively with the Entente Powers on the assurance of
receiving territorial compensation in Asia Minor. King Constantine,
on the other hand, seems to have held that the war of the Great
Powers in the Balkans practically abrogated the treaty between
Greece and Servia and that, in any event, Greek resistance to the
Central Powers was useless. The positive programme of the King was
to maintain neutrality between the two groups of belligerents and at
the same time to keep the Greek army mobilized. Between these two
policies the Greek nation wavered and hesitated; but the King, who
enjoyed the complete confidence of the general staff, had his way
and the cabinet of Mr. Venizelos was replaced by another in
sympathy with the policy of the neutrality of Greece and the
mobilization of the Greek army.
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