And hither His Holiness Joachim III has been escorted by the enemies of his creed and of his people; while Turkish soldiers showed this last honour to the head of a Church whose members have long been subjects of the Porte, Greek armies have marched victorious over the plains of Thessaly and are occupying Turkish towns and provinces. Yet it was the courteous sons of Othman who solemnly, reverently escorted Joachim III to the grave.
But before he died His Holiness Joachim III had watched the victorious march of the Hellenes towards Constantinople; those few thronged weeks of warfare brightened the last days of the great Patriarch, though his kind heart must have bled for the many sacrifices Bellona demanded of the Allies, and of the enemies of his faith. Very different from the last campaign of 1898 was this victorious progress of the Hellenes. Short and sharp it was; war was declared on Turkey on October 17th, on the following day the Greek fleet had put to sea and the army of the Hellenes, led by the Crown Prince, had invaded Turkey and occupied Elassona. Three days later the Greek fleet seized Lemnos, an island in the Ægean Sea. Fighting their way fiercely against formidable resistance, the Hellenes on land gained ground towards Janina, captured Veria and Thasos, and after a check at Florina, marched towards Saloniki. The Greek left column captured Prevesa as the Servians took Gostivar on November 3rd, the right column entered Saloniki five days later. From here the Greeks proceeded with the conquest of other islands in the Ægean, till all but a few are in their possession, and the Greek fleet blocks the southern exit of the Dardanelles. All this had happened before His Holiness Joachim III was called away; pity that peace had not been restored before Osmanli troops escorted him from the Phanar, down the Golden Horn, to his last resting-place of Balukli.
There is a quaint legend attached to the Monastery of Balukli. It is said that while the troops of Mohammed the Conqueror were making their last assault on the walls of Constantinople, the monks of Balukli were engaged in frying fish. The City fell and the monks fled before the fish were quite fried, so these jumped out of the frying-pan back into the water. The legend goes on to aver that when Christian troops retake Constantinople those fish will leave their native element and return to the frying-pan.
Life must hold endless possibilities for those who can believe such legends as this one.
CHAPTER XVI
Peoples of the Balkans—The migration of nations—The Illyrians—The Thracians and Scythians—Hippocrates and Galenus—The habits of the Scythians—The origin of the Hellenes—The arrival of the Macedonians—Philip of Macedonia and Alexander the Great—The power of Rome—The Goths and Theodosius—The advent of Slavs and Mongolians—The Hungarians, Petshenegs, and Vlachs—Balkan people in the fourteenth century—The Armenians: their early history—Tiridales, King of the Armenians—Turkish conquest of Persia—Armenia and the Greek Orthodox Church—The Kurds and Armenians—The Georgians—Attempt to arouse Armenia—Nihilism in Armenia—Massacre of Armenians—Abdul Hamid and the Armenian question—Disastrous Armenian rising—Future of the Armenians—The Albanians and their language—Other names for the Albanians—Albanian characteristics—Albania demands autonomy—The future of Albania—The Vlachs: their language and habits—King Milutin’s effort to settle them.
IN no other quarter of the globe are you likely to meet such a medley of human races as in the Balkan Peninsula, the south-east corner of Asia perhaps excepted. Certainly nowhere else in Europe has there been such constant shifting of a population, such risings and wanings of divers factors in history, such a coming and going of migrant mortals.
Before the gods of ancient Hellas entered on their genial despotism, before man had become conscious of his own importance, and therefore recorded his doings and sayings, great forces were labouring in the vast swamps and forests of Central Europe and put forth one after another races of human beings who, emerging from darkness, sought the light and wandered towards the midday sun.
This subconscious movement led swarm on swarm of migrants across the great rivers of Europe, over the mountain-passes, into the genial southern plains, and accounted for the settlement of one race after another in the peninsulas of Europe that stand out into the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea.
More than any other, the Balkan Peninsula was sought by these wanderers. The aboriginal race in this part of Europe were the Illyrians, ’tis said; but little is known of them and they have left few traces—a word or two of their speech in the mixed language of the present-day Albanians. More definite records remain of later races, before whom the Illyrians were forced to make way. These also came from the north and belonged to the dolichocephalic Aryans, who peopled Italy and the Balkan Peninsula, worked out their destiny, and were subject to the same treatment they had meted out to those whom they had found in possession and displaced. Of the peoples who stand recorded in ancient history the Thracians and Scythians were the most prominent. The former are said to have occupied the districts south of the lower Danube, the latter lived on that river’s northern bank. Herodotus suggests that the Thracians were a people of some importance, occupying a large tract of country, and describes them as a tall, strong race, blue-eyed and fair-haired, in appearance like the ancient Teutons. They were sufficiently interesting to cause historians of old to give details of their doings, to mention several of their more important tribes, such as the Triballi, Dardani, Agathyrsen, and those who were found in Asia, Phrygians, Lydians, Moesians, and above all the Trojans. The Dacians were another tribe, and became more prominent as they entered into authenticated history under their King Decebalus, who defeated the Emperor Domitian and forced Imperial Rome to pay tribute to him.