They drew towards one another; old feuds and jealousies were put on one side; and at last, in the summer of 1912, a Holy League of Balkan States, inspired by Venezelos, the new Kretan Prime Minister of Greece, and by Ferdinand of Bulgaria, was formed with a view to common action against the oppressor of Greek, Serbian, and Bulgarian nationals in Macedonia.  Montenegro, always spoiling for a fight, was deputed to fire the train, and at the approach of autumn the first Balkan war blazed up.

8

Balkan War

The course of the struggle is described elsewhere in this volume.  Its event illustrates the danger of an alliance succeeding beyond the expectations in which it was formed.  The constituent powers had looked for a stiff struggle with the Ottoman armies, but for final success sufficient to enable them, at the best, to divide Macedonia among themselves, at the worst, to secure its autonomy under international guarantee.  Neither they nor any one else expected such an Ottoman collapse as was in store.  Their moment of attack was better chosen than they knew.  The Osmanli War Office was caught fairly in the middle of the stream.  Fighting during the revolution, subsequently against Albanians and other recalcitrant provincials, and latterly against the Italians, who had snatched at Tripoli the year before, had reduced the Nizam, the first line of troops, far below strength.  The Redif, the second line, had received hardly more training, thanks to the disorganization of Abdul Hamid’s last years and of the first years of the new order, than the Mustafuz, the third and last line.  Armament, auxiliary services, and the like had been disorganized preparatory to a scheme for thorough reorganization, which had been carried, as yet, but a very little way.  A foreign (German) element, introduced into the command, had had time to impair the old spirit of Ottoman soldiers, but not to create a new one.  The armies sent against the Bulgarians in Thrace were so many mobs of various arms; those which met the Serbs, a little better; those which opposed the Greeks, a little worse.

It followed that the Bulgarians, who had proposed to do no more in Thrace than block Adrianople and immobilize the Constantinople forces, were carried by their own momentum right down to Chataldja, and there and at Adrianople had to prosecute siege operations when they ought to have been marching to Kavala and Salonika.  The Serbs, after hard fighting, broke through not only into Macedonia but into Albania, and reached the Adriatic, but warned off this by the powers, consoled themselves with the occupation of much more Macedonian territory than the concerted plans of the allies had foreseen.  The Greeks, instead of hard contests for the Haliacmon Valley and Epirus—­their proper Irredenta—­pushed such weak forces before them that they got through to Salonika just in time to forestall a Bulgarian column.  Ottoman collapse was complete everywhere, except on the Chataldja front.  It remained to divide the spoil.  Serbia might not have Adriatic Albania, and therefore wanted as much Macedonia as she had actually overrun.  Greece wanted the rest of Macedonia and had virtually got it.  Remained Bulgaria who, with more of Thrace than she wanted, found herself almost entirely crowded out of Macedonia, the common objective of all.