Central Asia ports of the Azof

The valuable products of Central Asia which found their way into the ports of the Azof and the Enxine, and which had been reserved jealously by the citizens of Constantinople for themselves, even at the time when the emperors were granting capitulations for trade in every other part of the empire, all these now went to Venice. Most of this trade was carried on by sea; but the dangers which beset maritime commerce now that the shadow of Pax Jiomana had passed away caused a considerable portion of the valuable and less bulky products of India and Central Asia to be taken up the Indus, thence by camels to the Caspian, and then partly overland and partly by rivers to Venice or other European states. The great bulk of the trade between Asia and Europe was diverted from the Bosphorus into the Adriatic. Venetian ships for a time replaced in the Black Sea, not only those of Constantinople, but even those of Genoa. The Tartar races in the Euxine, as well as the Saracens in Egypt and Syria, traded almost exclusively with the citizens of Venice.

Innocent continued to condemn the conduct of the Crusaders Evil results of an the Venetians in terms which show that they the conquest. are deliberately formed opinion and that of the great churchmen by whom he was surrounded. We have seen that at times his language is that of profound indignation at the iniquities which have been committed; at other times it is that of expostulation and of calm reasoning. But throughout the many letters in which he addresses the actors in this huge fiasco or alludes to their conduct, the sentiment most predominant is one of sadness that the Crusaders should have abandoned the object for which they were brought together. His letters leave the impression that he never ceased to regret the failure of the crusade, which had been so carefully organized and from which so much might reasonably have been expected.

Interests of Europe and civilization

He appears on many occasions to feel that it is impossible to make those whom he addresses understand what is the greatness of the opportunity which they had missed. In the comprehension of the Eastern question of his day and of what statesmanship required for the interests of Europe and civilization, he seems to stand at the opening of the thirteenth century head and shoulders above all other kings and potentates. The tone of his letters, their gloom, when speaking of the prospects of Romania, of Asia Minor, and of Syria, almost appear as if he alone in his generation foresaw how disastrous the conquest of the imperial city would be; as if he alone recognized that it was the interest of Europe to make a supreme effort to strike a blow at Mahometanism, which should make its further advance upon Christian territory impossible. He tried and, no doubt, to a certain extent succeeded in finding consolation in the union of the churches, which he fondly hoped was to be brought about by the conquest; and though, as we have seen, he recognized that the manner of the conquest had placed a great obstacle in the way of union, he yet hoped that the “loathing” felt by the Greeks towards the Latins would in time be softened down or entirely removed.

Former attachment to Austria-Hungary

Though it had withdrawn from its former attachment to Austria-Hungary, it had not become a protag of Russia. The visit of the Czar in June 1914 was considered an unprecedented honor and emphasized the predominant place of Rumania in the Balkans. The visit was regarded in Germany as an attempt to win Rumania to the side of the Triple Entente. But Rumania coveted the land of no other Balkan state and was a factor in favor of peace. It devoted itself to a policy of domestic reform which bade fair to result in great improvement in the condition of the masses.
Bulgaria had seen every one of its ambitions ruined, and was burning for revenge against its enemies. The elections which were held December 7, 1913, resulted in the defeat of the government which was blamed for the disasters that had befallen the country. But the new Sobranje was overwhelmingly Russophobe, and Bulgaria definitely aligned itself with Austria-Hungary.

Bulgarian government

Though a group of French banks were prepared to grant the Bulgarian government a loan of $100,000,000 on more favorable terms, the loan was made from German bankers, who received in return valuable railway and mining concessions. By means of the money thus obtained strenuous efforts were made to rehabilitate the army. By the Treaty of Bucharest, Greece had secured not only Saloniki, but the only other valuable Egean port, Kavala. Bulgarian hatred was intensified by the appearance of thousands of Bulgars driven from Greek Macedonia into Bulgaria, and this resulted in similar reprisals upon Greek residents in Bulgaria. But it was against Serbia that Bulgarians felt the greatest bitterness. Serbia had broken her ante-bellum pact with Bulgaria and by the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest had obtained almost the whole of Macedonia, and was engaged in “ nationalizing ” its Bulgarian inhabitants, who fled by thousands to the mother country.

No one of the combatants had fared so badly in the Balkan wars as Turkey. She had lost seven-eighths of her European possessions, which were now reduced practically to a backyard for Constantinople. Her Asiatic dominions were in a wretched condition. The thousands of exiled officials and discontented soldiers who had returned from Macedonia gave cause for great concern.

In the political science quarterly

In the political science quarterly March and for December 1913, the writer discussed the diplomacy of the two Balkan wars terminated by the Treaty of Bucharest of August 10, 1913. Sufficient time has elapsed since then to obtain a fair perspective and to bring the story down to date.

The events that followed the Treaty of Bucharest soon proved that a generation of experience in subservience to a dominant nation and in suffering the evils of a deliberate fomenting of race hatreds had taught the Balkan peoples no lesson in the wisdom of political toleration. The shifting of geographical boundaries resulting from the treaty was followed at once by a shifting of populations resulting from persecutions. Every one of the Balkan states inaugurated a policy of “ nationalizing ” the new inhabitants that had fallen to it under the terms of the treaty. Though all of them except Rumania had lost the finest of their manhood in the two Balkan wars and had burdened themselves with enormous debts, they at once undertook to strengthen their military establishments, either to defend their spoils or to secure revenge for their losses. The degree to which they accomplished their aims was restricted only by their capacity to borrow from any of the great powers.

Balkan wars one of the anxieties

For a decade before the Balkan wars one of the anxieties of the Rumanian government had been the patriotic campaign in Bulgaria to secure Bulgaria irredenta, the province of Dobrudja, the majority of the inhabitants of which are Bulgarians. This province had been given to Rumania by the Treaty of Berlin of 1878 in exchange for the province of Bessarabia, which was inhabited chiefly by Rumanians but which had been demanded and obtained by Russia under the treaty. It was to secure herself against that danger that Rumania had entered the second Balkan war and obtained a military boundary of great strategic value which brought to her 2983 square miles of territory and 250,000 inhabitants, chiefly Bulgarians, with a sprinkling of Turks but with few Rumanians.

The right of suffrage which the peasants had enjoyed under democratic Bulgaria and which was denied the peasantry in aristocratic Rumania was at once withdrawn in the ceded district. Local self-government was replaced by Rumanian bureaucracy. Rumanian priests superseded Bulgarian in the churches, and Bulgarian schools were compelled to close. Many Bulgarians sacrificed their property to emigrate to Bulgaria and intensified the hatred already felt against Rumania. After the Balkan wars Rumania pursued a wise and independent foreign policy.

The Arabs of Syria

The Arabs of Syria demanded practically local self- government, and the Armenians, autonomy. The treasury was bankrupt and money could be secured from the powers only by valuable concessions. In the resulting scramble for concessions, Germany, France and Russia secured control of railroad expansion for the next generation.

Turkey resembled a sucked egg with an unbroken shell. The money secured by the con-cessions, instead of being used to consolidate Turkey’s Asiatic possessions and introduce sorely needed domestic reforms, was spent on the improvement of the army and the navy. Turkey was now governed by a triumvirate, Enver Pasha, minister of war, Talaat Bey, minister of the interior, and Djemal Bey, minister of foreign affairs, but of this triumvirate Enver Pasha was the Augustus. He placed upon the retired list some 300 army officers, among whom were some famous leaders not considered safe enough adherents of the Committee of Union and Progress.

Triple Alliance

He was, moreover, a pro-German and, despite the protests of Russia, invited General Liman von Sanders and a group of German officers to reorganize the army. The general soon became the guiding spirit of the Supreme Council of War. The government also invited a British naval commission to reorganize the navy, and two dreadnoughts were ordered built in England. Convinced that the Balkan Federation had been the work of Russia, and influenced by the skilful diplomacy of Germany, Turkey, while professing an independent foreign policy, was controlled by the Triple Alliance.

But its immediate foreign policy was dictated by a determination to secure possession by war, if necessary, of the islands taken by Greece, and in case of war with Greece it hoped to have the support of Bulgaria. To pay for the dreadnoughts, a “ patriotic” loan was started to which all wealthy Greeks in Turkey were “ invited” to contribute. Thousands of poor Greeks were compelled to emigrate penniless from recovered Thrace and from Asia Minor to make way for the thousands of Turks who were expelled, the Turkish government maintained, from the part of Macedonia secured by Greece by the terms of the Treaty of Bucharest.

The question of the Egean islands

The question of the Egean islands had been relegated for solution to the Concert of Europe by the Treaty of London, but Turkey had little respect for the Concert and determined to defy it in this crisis as she had successfully defied it in the Adrianople affair.

And she was right. The “ voice of Europe,” as the Concert was called, could give utterance only when the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente were united, and that was seldom the case. It fell again to Rumania to play the part of deal ex manchette. Determined to maintain the Treaty of Bucharest by which she had profited and acquired such great prestige, she warned Turkey that in case of war between Turkey and Greece she would not see Greece humiliated, and she was supported by Serbia in this action. This relieved the tension between Turkey and Greece, and on November II, 1913, the Treaty of Athens was signed. It disposed of many troublesome problems of domicile, nationality, property, and religion, but did not mention the islands.

Egean islands problem

Greece had fared better than any other combatant in the Balkan wars. She had almost doubled her territory and population, had acquired the greatest prize of the war, Saloniki, had secured possession of the rich tobacco-raising country around Drama and Seres with its port, Kavala, and had occupied the islands of the Aigean for which Greeks had always longed. On December 13, 1913, Great Britain recommended to the Powers that except for Imbros and Tenedos, which controlled the entrance to the Dardanelles, Greece should retain the islands occupied by her troops, including those, like Mitylene and Chios, along the coast of Asiatic Turkey. Despite Turkey’s announcement that she would never consent to such an arrangement, even her friends of the Triple Alliance consented to this solution of the Egean-islands problem.

Greece had hoped to secure also the islands taken by Italy during the Italo-Turkish war, which were to be restored by Italy, according to the Treaty of Lausanne, when certain conditions respecting Tripoli were fulfilled by Turkey. But Italy gave no evidence of intention to relinquish them, and was greatly disturbed by the increase of power and prestige made by Greece in the eastern Mediterranean. It was obvious that Greece was entering upon a great commercial career and was now in a position to control the Near-Eastern trade and trade routes which Italy had hoped to control. The two countries also came into conflict in southern Albania, inhabited by Epirote Greeks. Though Greek troops had evacuated the territory at the demand of the Powers, the rebellion against incorporation with the new state, Albania, was probably led by Greek officers and financed by Greek money.

Italy had marked out southern Albania

Italy had marked out southern Albania with its fine port of Avlona as her own sphere of influence and was determined to prevent its acquisition by Greece. The diplomacy of the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente had been for several years a struggle for mastery in the Mediterranean. The increasing strength of Greece gave her unusual diplomatic importance, and both France and Germany made flattering overtures for friendship. M. Venizelos, the premier, to whose skillful diplomacy the aggrandizement of Greece had been chiefly due, leaned to France, which had supported him in securing Kavala and the region about it. But a bad impression was caused in France by the speech made by King Constantine while at Potsdam attending the German army maneuvers. In this speech he paid a glowing tribute to German military training.

The new state of Albania was in a wretched condition when peace finally settled upon the Balkans. The International Boundary Commissions appointed by the Concert to delimit its boundaries worked very deliberately in order to draw the boundary lines according to the races predominating in the frontier villages. Serbs in the northern districts and Greeks in the southern immediately began to change the racial complexion of the debatable territory by means of oppression and expulsion. When the work of the commissions approached completion the populations of the delimited territory refused to accept the solution.

Koritza and Arzyrocastro

The Epirotes about Koritza and Arzyrocastro in southern Albania revolted, with a demand for autonomous administration of their two provinces, and the new Albanian government had neither troops nor officers with which to oppose them. The Northern Boundary Commission had given to Serbia and Montenegro Albanian towns like Dibra and Djakova which are absolutely necessary to the Albanian peasants in the neighboring mountains for purchase and sale. Moreover, Serbia and Montenegro began a systematic policy of expelling Albanians from their new territories, with the result that thousands of refugees were thrown upon the Albanian government for support.

The International Commission of Control, composed of a representative of each of the six great powers and an Albanian, appointed by the powers to assist the new king, William of Wied, to organize the government, was so torn with internal jealousies as to nullify the little good that that impotent prince could accomplish. The Dutch officers selected by the powers to form a gendarmerie found it impossible to execute the orders of either prince or commission, and the Albanian chiefs refused to obey anybody* The Moslems, who formed a large majority of the inhabitants, were represented in the king’s cabinet by the most influential man in Albania, Essad Pasha.

Bulgarians and Albanians

The measures necessary to Verbize the regions were undertaken through the schools and churches; “ disaffected ” Bulgarians and Albanians were driven out by thousands, their land being occupied by Serbs. This firm policy in domestic matters was paralleled by a vigorous policy in foreign affairs, directed toward strengthening Serbia against the enemy across the Danube who by the erection of the independent state of Albania had prevented the realization of Serbian hopes of access to the sea. The fine statesmanship of the premier, M. Pashitch, secured the passage by the Skupshtina of a bill authorizing the government to conclude a treaty with Montenegro forming a military, diplomatic, and customs union between the two countries. He strengthened the cordial understanding with Greece by the support he gave in her controversy with Turkey, and secured a commercial treaty which gave Serbian commerce considerable advantages in using the port of Saloniki. He concluded an agreement with Rumania for the building of a great bridge across the Danube better to improve communication and commerce between the two countries. In preparation for the struggle with Austria-Hungary which he was anxious to avoid but which seemed inevitable, he leaned more and more upon Russia. Serbia was justly regarded as the point of Russian influence in the Balkans.

Narodna Obrana

The constructive work of M. Pashitch was much impeded by the military clique whose prestige and arrogance had been largely increased by the success of the army in the Balkan wars. Army officers were most influential in the Narodna Obrana (National Union) which conducted Pan-Serbian conspiracies in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the aim of uniting them to “ Mother ” Serbia. This agitation was particularly obnoxious to the Austro-Hungarian heir-apparent, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was a real friend of the Slavs of the Dual Monarchy. He was known to favor the organization of the Haps- burg dominions into a federal empire instead of a dual monarchy in order to place the Slavs upon an equal footing with the Germans and the Magyars. Hence his very efforts to conciliate the discontented Slavs within the empire made him a dangerous enemy to the Pan-Serbian cause. Moreover, he was hated by the Serbians as the instigator of the coup of 1908, whereby Bosnia and Herzegovina were annexed to Austria- Hungary, and he was known to favor for the Dual Monarchy a vigorous foreign policy which included spreading Austro- Hungarian influence in the Balkans.

Upon the capital Durazzo

When Essad raised an army among his coreligionists to take the field against the Epirote rebels, he was suspected of acting as the agent of the Young Turks who were spending money lavishly in Albania in the hope of repeating there their successful coup at Adrianople. The King had him arrested, therefore, and deported to Italy May 29, 1914. A new rebellion broke out, and the rebels marched upon the capital, Durazzo. The King fled to an Italian warship and the rebels demanded of the International Commission of Control that he abdicate and that the commission appoint a Moslem ruler in his stead.

The commission refused, but as it had only few forces to operate against the rebels, the country relapsed into a state of anarchy as bad as that which characterized the old regime of Abdul Hamid. Nothing operated more to bring about this condition than the intrigues of Austria-Hungary and Italy within the new state. While they were united in impos¬ing a noli me tangere policy upon Albania so far as Serbia and Greece were concerned, they were each determined that the other should not acquire an ascendency. On July io, 1914, Prince William made a final appeal to the powers for aid, but the powers were too much concerned with the Austro-Serbian difficulty to give any attention to the state which they had created and neglected. Shortly after the outbreak of the Great War, Prince William, though refusing to abdicate, returned to Germany.

Though Serbia had more than doubled her territory and largely increased her population, it was with alien peoples— Bulgarians in the eastern parts of the acquired territory and Albanians in the western, both of which peoples maintained the greatest hatred of the Serbs. The Serbs fell back upon the old principle of government through fear. They organized the conquered territory under the name of New Serbia, depriving the inhabitants for ten years of representation in the Skupshtina, of trial by jury, of freedom of the press or public assembly, and of local self-government.

Constantinopolitan history

Thus the great brunt of the struggle fell upon the empire alone, and, in spite of the efforts of rulers like Manuel to persuade the Western nations to come to their aid, Latin and German Europe preferred to fight Islam in its own way rather than to make common cause against the common enemy. The traditional feeling in the West against those who recognized the sway of the Emperor of the Hew Borne has affected Western historians of this period of Constantinopolitan history. As the descendants of peoples who acknowledged the rule of the Latin Church, we have taken our ideas and our prejudices from our fathers, and are in this sense all of us the sons of the Crusaders.

Western Europe has been only too ready to find evidence of the corruption and the effeminacy of the Eastern capital, to recognize that Asiatic influences had lessened the vigor which had characterized its government during the centuries preceding the Crusade, and to regret that its Church had less power in arousing enthusiasm than had the sister Church of our fathers. Hence it is that justice has not been done to the unceasing struggle of a century and a half previous to 1204, made by the Greek-speaking Boman empire and by the Christians of Armenia and Georgia. The facts that have been remembered are that the Eastern Church had refused to accept the supremacy of the pope; that Constantinople was taken by the Crusaders; that her population was powerless to prevent the capture of the city in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks.

The facts that are forgotten are that if the Turks were unable to find a footing in Europe until one hundred and fifty years after 1204, it was because the Eastern empire had made so gallant a resistance during a like period before 1204; that she received a fatal blow from the huge expedition called the Fourth Crusade, but that,recovering fora while from this blow,she was yet able, unaided, to prolong the struggle long enough to pour forth a stream of learning and literature over the West; and that the time gained while she kept back the Turks greatly diminished their strength, delayed their arrival in Europe, and enabled the West to grow strong enough to resist the Ottoman Turks when, two centuries after they had made good their hold upon Europe, they attained the period of their greatest strength, barely more than two centuries ago. That John Sobieski was able to drive back the Turks who were besieging Vienna in 1683 was due to the fact that the Eastern empire had sacrificed itself as the vanguard of Europe.

Bulgarians

Again and again they succeeded in inflicting what was apparently a crushing defeat on the Mahometan armies. But the battle had to be fought again after the lapse of a few years, when new fanatics had come to take the place of those who had fallen. The flow of savage or barbarian hordes had, during the two centuries which preceded the disaster of 1204, been as constant on the north of the Black Sea as it had been on the south. Bulgarians, Comans, Patchinaks, Uzes, and other non-Christian peoples had attacked the imperial city in the rear while she was defending European civilization in Asia Minor. The Sicilian expedition and internal troubles, arising partly from dynastic rivalries, partly from the weakness which had come upon her owing to Asiatic influences, and especially to the weakening of the despotic forms of government before the oligarchical had become sufficiently strong to take its place, had lessened her strength, so that she was not able to offer the resistance which she had done two centuries earlier.

But she gained breathing-time from the divisions of the Seljukian Turks and from her victories over the Bulgarians and the Comans, and there appears good reason to believe that had she not been destroyed by the people of the West and her organization put an end to during a period of sixty years, she would have been able at a later period to have made a stouter, and probably a successful, resistance to the Ottoman Turks. That this new body of Mahometan invaders was able a century and a half later to occupy several important positions in what they called, as their descendants still call it, Roumelia, or the territory of Rome, and that two centuries and a half later they were able to capture the Hew Home itself, was due to the fatal blow which had been inflicted by Philip of Swabia, by Boniface of Montferrat, and by Henry Dandolo.

That blow had been struck at the moment when the resources of the empire had been expended. We ought not, however, to forget that its strength had been spent in stemming the torrent of barbarism, in fighting the battle of Europe against Asia, of Christianity against Mosleraism. The empire had maintained this struggle not altogether single-handed, for the efforts of the Crusaders had been on behalf of the same cause. But the Saracens were the special object of their at-tack, and the fact that the deliverance of the Iloly Land was the peculiar aim set before them prevented anything like hearty co-operation with the empire in attacking the Turks, even had there not been other reasons which made such cooperation impossible.