The events that followed are as tragical as any that I can recall in history. Bulgaria had within a few weeks raised herself to a position which promised her headship of a Balkan Confederation. She might have been the Prussia of a new Empire. Within a few days her blunders, her intolerance, and her bad faith had humbled her to the dust. As soon as she attacked Greece and Serbia—to attack such a combination was absurd—Roumania moved down upon her northern frontier, and the Turk moved up from the south. Neither Roumanian nor Turk were opposed. The whole Bulgarian strength was kept for her late Allies: and yet the Bulgarian forces were decisively routed by both Serbians and Greeks.
Of the dark incidents of that fratricidal war no history will ever tell the truth. No war correspondents nor military attachés accompanied the forces. From the accusations and counter-accusations of the combatants, from the eloquent absence of prisoners, from the ghastly gaps in the ranks of the armies when they returned from the field, it is clear that the war was carried on as a rule without mercy and without chivalry. There was no very plentiful supply of ammunition on either side. That fact enabled the combatants to approach one another more closely and to inflict more savage slaughter. During the course of the war with Turkey the Balkan Allies lost 75,000 slain. During the war between themselves, though it lasted only a few days, it is said that this number was exceeded.
Roumania, whose army though invading Bulgaria engaged in no battle, finally dictated terms of peace. The Peace of Bucharest supplanted the Peace of London. Bulgaria, beaten to the ground, had to give up all that Roumania demanded, and practically all that Greece and Serbia demanded. It was a characteristic incident of Balkan diplomacy that the unhappy Bulgarians, having the idea of conciliating Roumania, conveyed the territory to that state with expressions of joy and gratitude, to which expressions the wily Roumanians gave exactly their true value.
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ADRIANOPLE
View looking across the Great Bridge
Turkey, meanwhile, had taken full advantage of the opportunity given to her by Bulgaria. Beaten decisively she had had to agree to give up all her European possessions with the exception of those beyond a line drawn from Enos on the Black Sea to Midia on the Aegean. She saw now Bulgaria powerless and calmly marched back, and seized again practically all Thrace, including Adrianople, over which had been fought such great battles, and Kirk Kilisse. The Bulgarians protested, appealed to Europe, to Roumania in vain, then accepted the situation and professed a warm friendship for Turkey. There seemed to be a movement for a joint Turkish-Bulgarian attack upon Greece, which would have put the last touch upon this tragic comedy of the Balkans. But the Powers vetoed this enterprise if ever it were contemplated, and the Balkans for a while, except for a little massacring in Macedonia and Albania, enjoyed an unquiet peace. But the forces of hate and revenge waited latent.
The city which figured most prominently in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and the intervening diplomacy was Adrianople, the city founded by the Emperor Adrian. It has seen more bloodshed probably than any other city of the world. It was before Adrianople that the Roman Emperor Valerius and his army were destroyed by the Goths, and the fate of the Roman Empire sealed (a.d. 378). It was Adrianople that was first captured by the Turkish invaders of the Balkans to serve as their capital until they could at a later date capture Constantinople. Many sieges and battles it saw until 1912, when the Bulgarians and Serbians gathered around its marshy plains, and after several months of siege finally carried it by assault. Finally it was re-captured by a mere cavalry patrol of the Turks.
Adrianople has its beauties seen from afar. The great mosque with four slender minarets shines out from the midst of gardens and picturesque villas over the wide plain which marks the confluence of the Maritza and the Tchundra Rivers. But on nearer examination Adrianople, like all other Turkish towns, is dirty, unkempt, squalid. Most Turkish towns in the Balkans—Mustapha Pasha on the Maritza was an exception, looking dirty and unattractive from any point of view—have a certain enchantment when they first catch the eye of the traveller. It is the custom of the richer Turks to build their villas on the high ground around a town if there is any, and to surround them with gardens. These embowered houses and the slender fingers pointing skyward of the minarets, give a first impression of ample space, of delicacy in architecture. Closer knowledge discloses the town as a herd of hovels, irregularly set in a sea of mud (in dry weather a dirty heap of dust), with the hilly outskirts alone tolerable.