Now the two great forces that had been driving back the Turks during the centuries were the Austrians and the Russians. And though these two great Christian powers fought against the same enemy, there gradually arose between them a bitter jealousy. Each was determined that the Turk should be driven out of Europe, but each realized that their two paths after the retreating Turk must soon converge in the Balkan peninsula. Neither cared anything for the Christian peoples who had been and were being oppressed by the Turks; that they were freed from this oppression was merely incidental, though it was the pretext for much of the warfare during this long period. But each of these two great powers coveted the Balkan peninsula. To Austria Saloniki would be an excellent seaport opening out on the Mediterranean, for the Adriatic was dominated by Italy. Russia, on her part, had her eyes on the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, which would offer her an opening into the Mediterranean, to which she had no access at all. Added to that, the people of the Balkans were Slavs, blood kindred of the Russians, and could speedily be made into loyal subjects of the czar. Such was the situation which gradually evolved; which became more and more acute as the Turks retreated into the Balkan peninsula proper, across the Danube. And the first of the two grim powers to lead the pursuit down into the peninsula was Russia in 1877, when she hurled her armies over the Danube to "liberate" the Bulgars. From then on the Balkan problem demanded the most serious attention of European diplomats. [Illustration: Balkan States Before the First Balkan War.] But the Balkan peoples that emerged, as the Turkish flood receded, were very different from those that had been engulfed four centuries previously. The Greeks had accepted the conquest, they bent rather than broke. Therefore the Turks had granted them special privileges. Their church and its clergy were spared and even given full spiritual authority over the other Christian peoples. But the Slavs fought stubbornly, not giving way until all their leaders were slain, and what culture they possessed was thoroughly wiped out. The Bulgars suffered especially, because they dwelt in the less mountainous regions of the peninsula. The Serbians could, occasionally, take refuge in the mountains of Montenegro, where their traditions and national spirit smoldered through the darker periods.