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THE BALKANS
MARCH 1913
At the turn of the century the moribund Ottoman Empire still
exercised a tenuous sovereignty over much of south-eastern
Europe. Greeks and Serbs, Bosnians and Albanians co-existed in
an uneasy mix, their mutual contempt for each other only held in
check by their greater loathing for their Ottoman overseers. All
this was to change in 1908. The long and oppressive reign of
Sultan Abdul Hamid — Abdul the Damned of popular legend — was to
end, against expectations, in a bloodless revolution (or as
bloodless as these things ever are). Seizing their chance,
following the upheaval caused by the Young Turk revolution, in
October 1908 the Austrians (after the Italians, and due to their
lack of confidence in their Great Power status, the most cynical
players in the game of diplomacy) formally annexed the provinces
of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were still nominally Turkish.
Simultaneously, Bulgaria, whose undisputed status as a very
minor power excused such opportunism), declared her
independence. These actions provided the signal for the rise of
Albanian and Serb nationalism and made the collapse of
Turkey-in-Europe ever more likely.
Envious and covetous in equal measure, the Greeks longed for
their chance. Too weak militarily to force the issue at the time
the Greeks sought strength on land through a system of loose
alliances with neighbouring states and strength at sea through a
revivified navy. Adding a sense of urgency to the plans for
Greek re-armament was the increasingly parlous state of the
Ottoman Empire, which, by 1911 was beginning to crumble — a
lumbering wounded animal surrounded by snapping dogs.
Ironically, the certainty of the Empire soon becoming involved
in a war was only partly offset by the surprise felt that it
should be the Italians who began the process of dismantling the
Empire. Using the excuse of long standing ambitions on the
African littoral Rome declared war on Turkey on 29 September
1911. The first hole had been gouged out of the ramshackle
edifice of the Ottoman Empire. It should come as no surprise,
however, that Italian military ambitions did not live up to
Italian diplomatic ambitions; the fighting was anything but
one-sided. Eventually, after protracted negotiations a treaty of
peace, recognizing Italian sovereignty over Libya, was signed on
18 October 1912. But Turkey had finished with one war only to be
embroiled, before the ink was dry on the peace treaty, in a far
more dangerous conflict against that unholy alliance, the Balkan
League. What one alone could not accomplish, together the uneasy
allies hoped to achieve. The attempt to reconcile the competing
aims of the restless states was only partially successful: the
Serbs, above all, desired an outlet to the sea; the Bulgarians
and Greeks looked to carve up Macedonia between them; and King
Nicholas of Montenegro? Well, Nikita wanted whatever he could
lay his hands on.
Tension mounted throughout the summer of 1912, fanned by further
Albanian unrest, until, finally, the Balkan League mobilized on
30 September. By arrangement (or so it was thought at the time),
Montenegro made the first move, declaring war on Turkey on 8
October; Serbia, Bulgaria and Greece followed suit on 17
October. From the start the war went disastrously for the Turks
as three of the four members of the League quickly marched to
their respective primary objectives: before the end of the
month, the Montenegrins had invested Scutari and the Serbs had
besieged Uskub, while Salonica surrendered to the Greeks on 8
November, just hours before a flying column of the Bulgarian
army arrived. In the interim the two sets of troops of the
erstwhile allies warily occupied the city. Meanwhile, the bulk
of the Bulgarian army, involved in the heaviest fighting and
directed against the main Turkish army rather than towards easy
territorial conquest, had invested the strategic city of
Adrianople (modern Edirne) by 23 October, when it appeared that
the fall of the Turkish capital could not be long delayed.
Finally, the last bastion of defence for Constantinople – the
Tchatalja lines – is assaulted by a massive Bulgarian attack in
mid-November, despite an earlier request by the Turks for an
armistice.
To general surprise, the Turkish lines held. Following this
unexpected check and a perhaps more predictable outbreak of
cholera amongst their troops, the Bulgarians were forced to
adopt a more conciliatory tone and (in conjunction with the
Serbs) an armistice was arranged on 3 December; the Greeks,
however, refused to sign as they wished to continue their naval
blockade. Despite this cynical Greek opportunism, all the
warring states sent representatives to the St James’s Conference
which convened in London on 16 December. Taking advantage of the
armistice, the Turks regrouped and gathered strength behind the
Tchatalja lines while remaining in possession of Adrianople,
Scutari and Janina. Past military disasters were soon forgotten,
to be replaced by a new-found belligerency, as the Turks refused
to lie down and submit following the coup d’etat in
Constantinople which brought Enver Pasha and his cohorts to
power. However, with the expiration of the armistice on 3
February 1913, the bombardment of Adrianople recommenced and,
one by one, the Turkish garrisons began to capitulate.
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