How Greece won its independence has been already told. Another of the group, the diminutive mountain state of Montenegro, much the smallest of them all, has the honor of being the only section of that region of Europe that maintained its independence during the long centuries of Turkish domination. Its mountainous character enabled its hardy inhabitants to hold their own against the Turks in a series of deadly struggles. In 1876–78 its ruler, Prince Nicholas, joined in the war of Servia and Russia against Turkey, the result being that 1,900 square miles was changed from a principality into a kingdom, Prince Nicholas gaining the title of King Nicholas. A second acquisition of territory succeeded the Balkan War of 1913, the adjoining Turkish province of Novibazar being divided between it and Servia.
TURKEY IN EUROPE
With this summary of the story of the Balkans we shall proceed to give in more detail its recent history, comprising the wars of 1876–78 and of 1912–13. As for the relations between Turkey and the Balkan peninsula, it is well known how the Asiatic conquerors known as Turks, having subdued Asia Minor, invaded Europe in 1355, overran most of the Balkan country, and attacked and took Constantinople in 1453. Servia, Bosnia, Albania, and Greece were added to the Ottoman Empire, which subdued half of Hungary and received its first check on land before the walls of Vienna in 1529, and on the ocean at the battle of Lepanto in 1571. Vienna was again besieged by the Turks in 1683, and was then saved from capture by Sobieski of Poland and Charles of Lorraine.
This was the end of Turkish advance in Europe. Since that date it has been gradually yielding to European assault, Russia beginning its persistent attacks upon Turkey about the middle of the eighteenth century. At that time Turkey occupied a considerable section of Southern Russia, but by the end of the century much of this had been regained. In 1812 Russia won that part of Moldavia and Bessarabia which lies beyond the Pruth, in 1828 it gained the principal mouth of the Danube, and in 1829 it crossed the Balkans and took Adrianople. The independence of Greece was acknowledged the same year.
The next important event in the history of Turkey in Europe was the Crimean War, the story of which has been told in an earlier chapter. The chief results of it were a weakening of Russian influence in Turkey, the abolition of the Russian protectorate over Moldavia and Wallachia (united in 1861 as the principality of Roumania), and the cession to Turkey of part of Bessarabia.
Turkey also came out of the Crimean War weakened and shorn of territory. But the Turkish idea of government remained unchanged, and in twenty years’ time Russia was fairly goaded into another war. In 1875 Bosnia rebelled in consequence of the insufferable oppression of the Turkish tax-collectors. The brave Bosnians maintained themselves so sturdily in their mountain fastnesses that the Turks almost despaired of subduing them, and the Christian subjects of the Sultan in all quarters became so stirred up that a general revolt was threatened.
THE BULGARIAN HORRORS
The Turks undertook to prevent this in their usual fashion. Irregular troops were sent into Christian Bulgaria with orders to kill all they met. It was an order to the Mohammedan taste. The defenseless villages of Bulgaria were entered and their inhabitants slaughtered in cold blood, till thousands of men, women, and children had been slain.
When tidings of these atrocities reached Europe the nations were filled with horror. The Sultan made smooth excuses, and diplomacy sought to settle the affair, but it became evident that a massacre so terrible as this could not be condoned so easily. Disraeli, then prime minister of Great Britain, sought to minimize these reports so as to avert a great war in which England might be plunged. But Gladstone, at that time in retirement, arose, and by his pamphlet on the “Bulgarian Horrors” aroused a fierce public sentiment in England. His denunciation rang out like a trumpet-call. “Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner—by carrying off themselves,” he wrote. “Their Zaptiehs and their Mudirs, their Bimbashis and their Yuzbachis, shall, I hope, clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned.”
He followed up this pamphlet by a series of speeches, delivered to great meetings and to the House of Commons, with which for four years he sought, as he expressed it, “night and day to counterwork the purpose of Lord Beaconsfield.” He succeeded; England was prevented by his eloquence from actively resisting Russia; and he excited the fury of the war party to such an extent that at one time it was not safe for him to appear in the streets of London.