The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913: Third EditionSchurman, Jacob Gould
History
The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913: Third Edition
Schurman, Jacob Gould
Balkan Peninsula -- History -- War of 1912-1913
The "Coburg Prince" is of course Ferdinand, King of Bulgaria. That
he acted under Austro-Hungarian influences in attacking his Balkan
Allies on that fateful Sunday, June 29, 1913, is no longer
susceptible of doubt. But whatever other inferences may be drawn
from that conclusion it certainly makes the course of Bulgaria in
launching the second Balkan War, though its moral character remains
unchanged, look less hopeless and desperate than it otherwise
appeared. Had she not Austria-Hungary behind her? And had not
Austria-Hungary at that very time informed her Italian ally that she
intended making war against Servia?
But, whatever the explanation, the thunderbolt forged in 1913 was
not launched till July 28, 1914, when Austria-Hungary formally
declared war on Servia. The occasion was the assassination, a month
earlier, of the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his
wife, the Duchess of Hohenburg, in the streets of Sarajevo. The
occasion, however, was not the cause of the war. The cause was that
which moved the Dual Monarchy to announce a war on Servia in the
summer of 1913, namely, dissatisfaction with the territorial
aggrandizement of Servia as a result of the first Balkan War and
alarm at the Pan-Serb agitation and propaganda which followed the
Servian victories over Turkey. These motives had subsequently been
much intensified by the triumph of Servia over Bulgaria in the
second Balkan War. The relations of Austria-Hungary to Servia had
been acutely strained since October, 1908, when the former annexed
the Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which under the
terms of the treaty of Berlin she had been administering since 1878.
The inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina are Serb, and Serb also
are the inhabitants of Dalmatia on the west and Croatia on the
north, which the Dual Monarchy had already brought under its
sceptre. The new annexation therefore seemed a fatal and a final
blow to the national aspirations of the Serb race and it was
bitterly resented by those who had already been gathered together
and "redeemed" in the Kingdom of Servia. A second disastrous
consequence of the annexation was that it left Servia hopelessly
land-locked. The Serb population of Dalmatia and Herzegovina looked
out on the Adriatic along a considerable section of its eastern
coast, but Servia's long-cherished hope of becoming a maritime state
by the annexation of the Serb provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina
was now definitively at an end. She protested, she appealed, she
threatened; but with Germany behind the Dual Monarchy and Russia
still weak from the effects of the war with Japan, she was quickly
compelled to submit to superior force.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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