War Begins

Owing to the mistakes made in its creation, the Turkish Empire has been for a long time an Empire in the process of disintegration.

Continuing The First Balkan War,
Today is our final installment from J. Ellis Barker and then we begin the second part of the series with Frederick Palmer. The selections are presented in eight easy 5-minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in The First Balkan War.

Time: 1912

The Young Turks followed faithfully in Abdul Hamid’s footsteps. However, Abdul Hamid was clever enough always to play off one nationality or race against the other. In his Balkan policy, for instance, he encouraged Greek Christians to slay Christian Bulgarians and Serbians and allowed Bulgarian bands to make war upon Serbians and Greeks, supporting, on principle, one nationality against the other. But the Young Turks persecuted indiscriminately and simultaneously all non-Turkish races, Albanians, Bulgarians, Serbians, and Greeks, and thus they brought about the union of the Balkan States against themselves.

The outbreak of the war could scarcely have been prevented by the European Powers. It was bound to come. It was as inevitable as was the breakdown of the Young Turkish régime. Since the earliest times the Turks have been a race of nomadic warriors. Their policy has always been to conquer nations, to settle among the conquered, and to rule them, keeping them in strict and humiliating subjection. They have always treated the subject peoples harshly and contemptuously. Unlike other conquerors, they have never tried to create among the conquered a great and homogeneous State which would have promised permanence, but, nomad-like, have merely created military settlement among aliens. Therefore, the alien subjects of the Turks have remained aliens in Turkey. They have not become citizens of the Empire. As the Turks did not try to convert the conquered to Islam — the Koran forbids proselytism by force — and to nationalize them, the subjected and ill-treated alien masses never amalgamated with the ruling Turks, but always strove to regain their liberty by rebellion. Owing to the mistakes made in its creation, the Turkish Empire has been for a long time an Empire in the process of disintegration. Its later history consists of a long series of revolts, of which the present outbreak is the latest, but scarcely the last, instance.

The failure of the new Turkish régime has increased to the utmost the century-old antagonism between the ruling Turks and their Christian subjects. The accounts of the sufferings of their brothers across the borderline, inflicted upon them by Constitutional Turkey, which had promised such great things, had raised the indignation of the Balkan peoples to fever heat and had made an explosion of popular fury inevitable. The war fever increased when it was discovered that Serbians, Bulgarians, and Greeks were at last of one mind, and that Turkey’s strength had been undermined by revolts in all parts of the Empire and by the Turkish-Italian war. The Turks, on the other hand, were not unnaturally indignant with the perfidy of the Christian Powers, which, instead of supporting Turkey in her attempts at reform, had snatched valuable territories from her immediately after her revolution. Not unnaturally, they attributed the failure of the new régime and the revolts of their subjects to the machinations of the Christian States, and the Balkan troubles to the hostile policy of the Balkan States. The tension on both sides became intolerable. If the Balkan States had not mobilized, a revolution would have broken out in Sofia and Belgrade, for the people demanded war. If the Turkish Government had given way to the Balkan States, a revolution would have broken out in Constantinople. The instinct of self-preservation forced the Balkan Governments and Turkey into war. The passions of race-hatred had become uncontrollable.

Frederick Palmer

Now we begin the second the second part of our series with our selection from special article to Great Events by Famous Historians, volume 21 by Frederick Palmer.  The selection is presented in 3 easy 5-minute installments.

Frederick Palmer (1873-1958) was an American journalist and writer who covered world conflicts from the 1890’s up to World War II.

Against any one of his little Christian neighbors the Turk had superior numbers and had only to concentrate on a single section of his many-sided frontier line. It had never entered his mind that the little neighbors would form an alliance. He had trusted to their jealousies to keep them apart. United, they could strike him on the front and both sides simultaneously. He was due for an attack coming down the main street and from alleys to the right and left.

In this situation he must temporarily accept the defensive. Meanwhile, he foresaw the battalions of “chocolate soldiers” beating themselves to pieces against the breastworks of his garrisons, and Greek turning on Serb and Serb on Bulgar after a taste of real war. Against divided counsels would be one mind, which, with reinforcements of the faithful from Asia Minor, would send the remnants of the opéra bouffe invasion flying back over their passes.

But the allies fully realized the danger of quarreling among themselves, which would have been much harder to avert if their armies had been acting together as a unit under a single command. Happily, each army was to make a separate campaign under its own generals; each had its own separate task; each was to strike at the force in front of its own borders. Prompt, staggering blows before the Turkish reserves could arrive were essential.

The Montenegrins in the northwest, who had the side-show (while Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece had the three rings under the main tent), did their part when they invested the garrison of Scutari.

Advancing northward, the Greeks, with strong odds in their favor, easily took care of the Turkish force at Elassona and continued their advance toward Salonika.

Advancing southward, the Serbs, one hundred thousand strong (that is, the army of their first line), moved on Kumanova among the hills, where the forty thousand Turks defending the city of Uskub would make their stand as inevitably as a board of army engineers would select Sandy Hook as a site for some of the defenses of New York harbor. Confidently, the Turkish commander staked all on the issue.

The Serbs did not depend alone on mass or envelopment by flank. They murderously and swiftly pressed the attack in the front as well as on the sides; and the cost of victory was seven or eight thousand casualties. Two or three fragments of the Turkish army escaped along the road; otherwise, there was complete disintegration.

Uskub was now undefended. It was the ancient capital of Serbia; and the feelings of the Serbs, as they marched in, approximated what ours would be if our battalions were swinging down Pennsylvania Avenue after a Mexican proconsul had occupied the White House for five hundred years. Meanwhile, at Monastir were forty thousand more Turks. So far as helping their comrades at Kumanova was concerned, they might as well have been in jail in Kamchatka. You can imagine them sitting cross-legged, Turkish fashion, waiting their turn. They broke the precedent of Plevna, which the garrisons of Adrianople and Scutari gloriously kept, by yielding rather easily. There must have been a smile on the golden dome of the tomb of Napoleon, who thrashed the armies of Europe in detail.

J. Ellis Barker begins here. Frederick Palmer begins here.

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