In Albania affairs were in a very disturbed state throughout the year. In January an Austrian steamer arrived at Valona from Constantinople with Turkish troops to proclaim Izzet Pasha, the late Turkish War Minister, as sovereign of Albania, but they were at once arrested by the Provisional Government in agreement with the International Commission of Control and the Dutch gendarmerie officers. A more formidable candidate for the throne was Essad Pasha (A.R., 1913, p. 356), whose troops had a sharp fight on January 11 with those of the Provisional Government. On January 15 Ismail Kemal Bey handed to the International Commission his resignation of the Presidency of the Provisional Government, which he had held since the winter of 1912 (A.R., 1912, p. 356), and Essad Pasha then concluded an agreement with the British and German delegates on the International Commission of Control to the effect that he would resign his position as Minister of the Interior and meet Prince William of Wied as the representative of the people of Albania. On February 8, the Powers having agreed to guarantee a loan of 3,000,000l. to Albania, Austria-Hungary and Italy made an advance to the Prince of 500,000l. for immediate requirements, and Essad Pasha started from Durazzo at the head of a deputation of Albanians for Neuwied, the ancestral castle of the Prince, who was to bear in Albania the title of "Mpret," a corruption of "Imperator." The deputation, whose leader was described by the Bishop of Durazzo as "a brigand in the best and worst sense of the term," and "a fox who would require an iron hand to keep him under control," were received at Neuwied by the Prince on February 21, one of its members bringing with him a small casket containing sand, earth, and water from Albania. Addressing the Prince in Albanian, Essad Pasha said that the deputation represented the whole of Albania, and that the Albanians were happy to welcome their new sovereign, to which the Prince replied in German, formally accepting the Crown. The difficulties and responsibilities, he said, had at first made him hesitate, but now that he had decided to meet them he would give all his heart and strength to Albania. He proceeded to St. Petersburg, however, on a visit to the Tsar, before taking up his new duties. Meanwhile an insurrection broke out in Epirus, the Greeks in the districts assigned to Albania demanding a Government of their own under M. Zographos as its chief.
Prince William arrived at Durazzo on March 7, and was welcomed by two members of the International Commission and Essad Pasha, whom the Prince at once appointed an Albanian general. On reaching the palace he appeared on the balcony, while deputations from the neighbouring towns and Albanian societies abroad marched in file before him, but the Albanian people were scantily represented, as the date of his coming was not generally known. The difficulties of his task were considerably greater than those with which the sovereigns of newly formed States have in past times had to contend; the northern clans of the country are totally different in character, language and religion from those of the south, the former, 140,000 in number, being Roman Catholics, and the latter, about 260,000, followers of the "Orthodox" Church, while there were 600,000 Mohammedans scattered all over the country; and the Albanians generally, who had been the spoilt children of Turkey, to whom they furnished some of her best statesmen, generals, and soldiers, had not only hitherto never been taxed, but had received substantial grants of money from the Sultan, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. Moreover, Albania is a land of barren mountains, without roads or railways, which it would require a considerable State revenue to develop. Only a week after the Prince's arrival, the Albanians attacked the Greeks at Koritza, and an intertribal feud broke out between the partisans of Essad Pasha and those of Ismail Kemal Bey; a force of 100 gendarmes under Dutch officers was sent to restore order, but the officers were imprisoned and the fighting went on, houses in the villages being ransacked and women outraged.
On March 18 the first Albanian Cabinet was formed under Turkhan Pasha. Of the other Ministers two were Roman Catholic, two "Orthodox," and the rest, including Essad Pasha, the War Minister, Mohammedans. The first task of the Minister was to deal with the rising in Epirus. The Dutch officer who had been appointed High Commissioner for Southern Albania offered the Epirotes an autonomy which almost limited the union with Albania to a personal one, though he rejected their claim that the Greek language should be allowed absolute equality with Albanian; but the Government repudiated even the concessions he had offered. On March 29 the Ministry requested the Powers, through their representatives at Durazzo, to use their influence with the Greek Government in order that "the regrettable situation in Epirus" should come to an end, pointing out that while the Greek troops were being withdrawn from the districts to be evacuated their place was being taken by insurgent bands (Komitadjis) organised and armed by the Greek authorities; and as no steps were taken to put down the rising, the Prince decided to take over by force if necessary the territory occupied by the insurgents, and himself to take the command of the troops to be sent against them. Meanwhile men were arming in all parts of Albania for the liberation of the threatened territory, and a force of some 10,000 volunteers marched against them. Several encounters took place between them and the Epirotes with varying success.
Events now took a sudden and unexpected turn. Essad Pasha, Minister of War and of the Interior, and hitherto the virtual ruler of the country, was arrested by Austro-Hungarian and Italian sailors on May 19. Essad's house, which was within 300 yards of the Prince's palace, had for some time been filled with armed retainers, and it was no secret that he was planning to dethrone the Prince and take the Crown for himself. On the evening of the 18th it was ascertained that a number of insurgents were marching on Durazzo, and at daybreak on the following morning the Dutch commandant of the gendarmerie called upon Essad's men to lay down their arms. Essad then ordered his men to fire, upon which 300 Austro-Hungarian and Italian marines landed and occupied the town, sending a detachment to Essad's house to escort him to the jetty, where he was placed on board an Austro-Hungarian man-of-war and deported to Italy. The insurgents, however, who had now come within gunshot of Durazzo, assumed such a threatening attitude that on May 24 the Prince and his wife and children took refuge on board an Italian warship, though they returned to the palace two days afterwards. Negotiations were opened with the insurgents by the International Control Commission, but without result. Their demands were chiefly of a religious character, as they asked for guarantees that the Catholic Albanians (the Malissori) would not be sent against them, and they objected to the banishment of Essad Pasha, whom they regarded as a martyr to the Mohammedan religion; but the promoters of the rising appear to have been some officers of the Young Turkish party at Constantinople who were present in the insurgents' camp. One of the demands of the insurgents was for the appointment of a Mohammedan member of the Control Commission. They attacked Durazzo on June 15, but were repulsed by the Prince's adherents, chiefly Mirdites. A two days' armistice was concluded between the Prince and the insurgents on June 22, but at its conclusion the fighting was renewed without any decisive result. On July 9 Koritza was captured by the Epirotes after three days' fighting, and a severe bombardment by the regular Greek Army. As no progress was made in dealing with the insurgents either before Durazzo or elsewhere, a meeting of the loyal populations was held on July 19 at Valona, at the instigation of many influential Albanians, including Ismail Kemal Bey, at which it was unanimously decided to beg the Prince and the protecting Powers to dismiss the Cabinet and place the Government in the hands of the International Commission of Control, as no Albanian Cabinet could deal with the existing crisis, and the Commission alone "can maintain the sovereign on the throne, assure national unity and territorial integrity, and save from certain death over 100,000 refugees." The Prince on his part summoned to the palace the Ministers of Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, and Italy (Great Britain and Russia having no representatives at Durazzo), and addressed them in a brief speech, stating that from the outset the Albanian problem had been complicated by the Epirote question and that the slightest sign of unrest elsewhere only increased the trouble in the South; that the Powers who had placed him on the throne had shown singularly little readiness to assist him in coping with his difficulties; they had helped all the other Balkan States, but had rendered little or no assistance to their special creation; that immediate help was imperative, and he therefore urged the Ministers to address a final appeal to their Governments for military and financial aid. A collapse of the Albanian Government seemed to be imminent; the towns of Klisura and Tepelen, as well as Koritza, were captured by irregular Greek bands with, it was said, Greek troops in disguise, the Mohammedan villages were in flames and horrible atrocities were committed upon their inhabitants. M. Venezelos, the Greek Premier, admitted that deserters from the Greek Army had assisted the Epirotes, but declared that he was powerless to prevent "Greek national sympathies being so strongly engaged on the Epirote side." He added that he thought "the Powers had taken insufficient measures for the creation of an Albanian State." On August 31 a detachment of insurgents with the Turkish flag occupied Valona without opposition, and on the same day another, with artillery, attacked Durazzo, firing several shots at the palace. Next morning they sent a letter to the representatives of the Powers, stating that they expected the Prince to leave the country, and issued a proclamation to the people declaring that as the Prince had not left, the town would be bombarded unless its inhabitants agreed at once to surrender. The Prince then left Durazzo (Sept. 4), and on September 11 Burhan Eddin Effendi, son of the ex-Sultan Abdul Hamid, who was practically the leader of the insurrection, succeeded him, though in the proclamation issued by Prince William to the people on leaving he did not abdicate, but stated that he thought it was best for the task "to which he had sacrificed his strength and life" that he should go for a time to Western Europe, and that the International Commission of Control would carry on the Government during his absence. The Government, however, was taken over by Burhan Eddin, the self-constituted Prince, with Essad Pasha as his Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief. At the end of the year Albania was under six different regimes. Scutari and its neighbourhood was governed by a local Commission composed of Moslems and Christians. Valona was also administered by a Commission. The Mirdites formed a separate State under Prenk Bib Doda. The Malissors remained isolated under their patriarchal institutions. The southern districts had been appropriated by the Greek invaders. Durazzo and the central regions obeyed Essad Pasha, who enjoyed the title of Prime Minister and was recognised by the International Commission.
On October 1 a noteworthy declaration was made by M. Venezelos in the Greek Chamber, to the effect that Greece would remain neutral, but that she had treaty obligations with regard to Serbia which she would fulfil; he hoped, however, that nothing would occur which should bind her to interfere, as Greece desired that the European War should not spread to the Balkan Peninsula, whose people required peace after the late war. Greece at any rate would not take the initiative in disturbing the peace. As to Epirus he had said on March 10 that the decision of the Powers involved a great disaster for the nation, and nobody could suggest that Greece was in a position to fight Austria and Italy. Greece considered Albania now necessary to the preservation of the balance of power in the Balkans, and, with Serbia, hoped for the success of the new State. On March 19 the Minister of Marine announced in the Chamber, amid enthusiastic cheers from all parties, that three battleships of the Dreadnought type, three armoured cruisers, and a proportionate number of lighter vessels, would be added to the Fleet. On June 13 Greece annexed Chios and Mytilene, the islands which the Powers had agreed were to be ceded to her on the evacuation of Northern Epirus and the cession of the Island of Saseno to Albania; but in October she announced her intention of reoccupying provisionally Northern Epirus owing, among other reasons, to the breakdown of the Albanian Government substituted by the Powers under the Prince of Wied and the expediency of putting an end to the sanguinary anarchy prevailing in that country, as the forces collected by the head of the provisional Epirote Government, M. Zographos, had not been capable of maintaining order or security for life and property against the Albanian insurgents. The Powers not having raised any objection, Greece occupied Northern Epirus with her troops, and at the same time Italy occupied the Island of Saseno, which completely dominates the sea approaches to Valona.
In Bulgaria Parliament opened on January 1 in a new guise, as the general election which had taken place at the end of the previous year in consequence of the resignation of the Cabinet (A.R., 1913, p. 358) had been conducted under a system of proportional representation, and had resulted in a considerable increase of the number of Agrarian and Socialist deputies, doubtless due to the disastrous issue of the last war. There were ninety-nine Ministerialists in the new Chamber, forty-nine Agrarians, thirty-six Socialists, fourteen Democrats, five Nationalists, five Radicals, and one Zankovist. As the Royal party entered the Chamber a Socialist member shouted, "Down with Monarchy, long live the Republic," and when the King began to read the Speech from the throne another Socialist member interrupted him with similar exclamations, saying that 60,000 of the sons of Bulgaria had been sacrificed to the ambition of the Monarchy; after which all the Socialists left the Chamber. The Speech laid stress on the resumption of friendly relations with Roumania and Turkey, and expressed the conviction that the Bulgarian people would now "recuperate its forces in lasting peace and work, and dream only of winning victories in the domain of peaceful development and progress." On the following day the Premier, M. Radoslavoff, resigned to test the strength of his party, and on January 5 the King re-appointed him together with the whole of his Cabinet. Another general election took place to include the newly annexed districts in Macedonia and Western Thrace, which were to elect forty-one members in addition to the 204 of whom the old Chamber was formed. The result of the election was that in the new chamber there were 128 Ministerialists, fifty Agrarians, twenty-eight Democrats, twenty-one Socialists, nine Nationalists, five Radicals, and three Zankovists, giving the Government a majority of twelve over all the Opposition parties, and showing a considerable loss for the Socialists, who seemed to have few supporters in the annexed districts, where the whole Turkish population voted for the Ministerial candidates, with the result that twelve Mohammedan deputies were elected, besides four from Northern Bulgaria. A provisional budget for the months of April and May was introduced by M. Jencheff, Minister of Finance, on April 12. As a reassuring symptom he pointed to the fall in the rate of exchange from 20 per cent. at the end of 1913 to 7½ per cent. The expenditure for 1913 he estimated at 8,000,000l., and the floating debt of 19,000,000l. was to be consolidated. Diplomatic relations with Serbia were resumed on February 17. On June 9 the Prime Minister conveyed the regret of the Government for the attacks which had been made on Greek churches at Sofia, Varna, and Burgas by the people, who had been incited by the priests and an official of the Russian Consulate. During a debate in the Sobranje on the subject the Premier said Bulgaria would do everything to preserve neighbourly relations with the other Balkan States, but that it was difficult to follow this policy owing to the ill-treatment suffered by Bulgarians in Greece and Serbia; a number of refugees who had been beaten and outraged had arrived only on the previous day. Both the Greek and Serbian Governments had ever since the partition of Macedonia done their utmost to destroy all trace of Bulgarian life and culture in the districts which they had annexed. As regards the European War the Premier declared on October 29 that the Bulgarian Government felt it a duty to proclaim the neutrality of Bulgaria and to preserve such neutrality strictly and loyally, in accordance with international needs and principles and the interests of the country, and on the same day the organ of the Bulgarian Foreign Office, Echo de Bulgarie, said that now the dissensions between Turkey and Bulgaria had been settled by force of arms, a bond of friendship had been created by the persecutions to which both the Turks and Bulgarians were being subjected in Macedonia.
In Roumania, which also proclaimed her neutrality at the beginning of the war, at the same time informing the Russian Government that she would not agree to the Russian troops crossing her frontier, a very drastic law was proposed by the Government in May with regard to the districts annexed by her under the Treaty of Bucharest (A.R., 1913, p. 352). It deprived the population of Parliamentary representation, which it had enjoyed for upwards of thirty years under Bulgarian rule, denied them the right of association or public meeting, deprived of his land every landed proprietor who did not accept the Roumanian nationality within one year, and provided that all the Bulgarian schools should be closed or reopened under Roumanian teachers and their revenues confiscated. On June 14 the Tsar arrived with his family on board the Imperial yacht at Constanza, the Roumanian port on the Black Sea, and was enthusiastically received, the Liberal Government and its adherents among the people being in sympathy with the Triple Entente, though the King and his Court were notoriously in favour of Germany and Austria-Hungary. One of the strongest advocates of a policy of friendship with Austria-Hungary, the Roumanian statesman and historian Demetrius Stourdza, died at the beginning of October in his eighty-first year, and King Charles, who with Stourdza was regarded as the founder of the Roumanian State, also died a few days after his old companion and friend. On October 15, as the funeral procession was on its way from the palace to the railway station, an attempt was made on the life of Messrs. Charles and Noel Buxton, happily without any serious result, though both were wounded, by an Albanian Mohammedan who said he acted from political motives, as the Buxtons had been agitating against Turkey. King Charles was succeeded by his nephew Ferdinand of Hohenzollern, like his uncle a Roman Catholic, and married to the daughter of the late Duke of Edinburgh; their six children, however, are members of the Roumanian "Orthodox" Church.
In Serbia the War Minister stated to the Skupshtina on February 23 that the losses of the Serbian Army during the war with Turkey were 5,000 dead and 18,000 wounded, and in the Bulgarian War 7,000 to 8,000 dead and 30,000 wounded. In both wars 2,500 died of their wounds, 11,000 to 12,000 from sickness, and 4,300 from cholera, mostly during the Bulgarian War. A treaty of peace with Turkey was signed on March 13, under which Serbia agreed not to make any distinction as regards the franchise between her new Mohammedan and Christian subjects in the annexed territories, and to allow former Ottoman subjects residing in them three years to decide whether they would remain of the Turkish nationality or accept the Serbian, during which they were not to be liable for military service. In June a Ministerial crisis occurred in consequence of a Government decree giving the civil authorities precedence over the military in the newly annexed provinces. This measure was strongly opposed by the military party, and the Premier, M. Pashitch, asked the King to dissolve the Skupshtina in order to give the people an opportunity of expressing their views on the matter. The King refused unless the decree was first rescinded, upon which M. Pashitch resigned, but, all attempts to form a coalition Cabinet having failed, he was reinstated (June 11). On June 24 the King left Belgrade for the baths at Vranya on account of ill-health, and before leaving delegated full royal authority to his son, the Crown Prince Alexander, for the period of the King's illness.
When Austria-Hungary declared the answer to her ultimatum to Serbia (p. [330]) insufficient, and her Minister accordingly demanded his passports and left Belgrade on July 26, the Serbian troops were at once mobilised. Austria-Hungary declared war on July 28, and on July 30 the Serbians partly destroyed by explosion the bridge connecting Belgrade with the Hungarian town of Semlin and attempted some raids across the frontier which were repelled by the Austro-Hungarian frontier guards. The Austrian artillery replied by a bombardment of the upper and lower forts of Belgrade, in which they were assisted by their monitors on the Danube and the Save. The war in Serbia did not really begin, however, until August 12, when the Austrian Army crossed the Save and the Drina and captured Shabatz and Lesnica. War had meantime been declared by Serbia against Germany on August 6. On August 17 the Austrians continued their advance against the Serbians, the Croats in the Austrian Army, who are of the same race as the Serbians, but are Roman Catholics while the Serbians are "Orthodox" Greeks, specially distinguishing themselves in the fighting. The Austrians were repulsed, however, in a sanguinary battle in the valley of Iddar on August 16 to 19, and had to retire to Shabatz and Lesnica. The fighting in these engagements was stated to have been much fiercer and more sanguinary than any in the recent Balkan Wars. On August 26 Shabatz was retaken by the Serbians, but meanwhile an attack made by them on Wyszegrad and Rudo, in Bosnia, had been repelled with great loss on August 20 and 21. On September 8 the Austrians were defeated in an attempt to cross the Drina near Sacha, and on the 14th the Serbians captured Wyszegrad; but notwithstanding the desperate efforts made both by them and the Austrians to penetrate into the enemy's country neither had for some time any success. Another sanguinary battle, which lasted three days, was fought on the road to Valjevo on September 15 to 18, but with no decisive result. The first effective attack was made by the Austrians down the Morava; it began on November 9 and ended in the occupation of Valjevo, the former headquarters of the Serbian Army, on November 15, and the capture after much violent fighting of Belgrade on December 2. On December 3, however, fresh troops were brought up by the Serbians,[21] which inflicted a heavy defeat on the Austrians, after six days' fighting over a front of more than sixty miles; on December 8 Valjevo was retaken, the Austrian retreat became a rout, and the Serbians re-entered Belgrade, after another battle in which the Austrians were stated to have lost 60,000 killed and wounded.
On September 19 Serbia declared that she would not conclude peace alone and would not act separately from the Triple Entente.