Grey's apprehensions and struggle for peace.
BERCHTOLD
AND
ROME:
Alarm
of
San
Giuliano
and
Flotow
Berlin's
advice
to
Vienna-Italy's
right
to
compensation-
Berchtold's failure to notify Rome.
The attitude of Bucarest-King Charles's warnings and
offer of mediation………………………………………………………….. 202
202
CHAPTER IX. THE ULTIMATUM TO SERBIA
The Austro-Hungarian Note to Serbia — Giesl's instructions —
Jagow
and
"Central
European
time"
— The impression in
Europe — The German Government's reception of the Note —
The Serbian answer — William Il's comments — " Ultimatum "
and "Invasion" — An Austrian legal opinion — Grey's efforts at
mediation — Sazonov's overtures to Vienna — Berchtold deceives
Francis Joseph — Austria-Hungary declares war — A last attempt
in Rome — The Tsar's appeal — Conrad and Moltke ……………………. 244
CHAPTER X. CONCLUSION
286
SERBO-CR OAT ORTH
OGRAPHY.
c =ts in the English
" lots "
nj =gn in the Italian
" degno "
c=ch
„
"church"
s = sh in the English
"show"
c =t
„
" tune "
vj =
zvi
„
" view "
gj =j
,,
" June "
z = j in the French
" jour "
j =y
„
" yet "
dz = j in the English
"
jungle "
lj = gl in the Italian
" meglio "
[All other letters as in
Engl ish.]
ABBREVIATIONS.
D.D. = Die Deutschen Dokumente (German post-war collection of diplomatic
documents, 4 vols., Berlin 1920).
D.A. = Diplomatische Aktenstücke (Austrian post-war ditto, 3 vols. Vitnan
1919).
SARAJEV
O
CHAPTER I
THE AUSTRO-SERBIAN CONFLICT
THE murder of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his
wife at Sarajevo was merely the spark that fired the
powder magazine of Europe. But the Southern Slav
Question, of which it was a symptom, was one of the most
burning of pre-war problems, and may take rank with
Franco-German,
Anglo-German,
and
Austro-Russian
rivalry as a fundamental cause of the Great War. Though
overlooked by Western opinion till very recently, it was
far from being a new problem. Indeed, its origin and
explanation are to be sought a s far back as the Turkish
conquest of Serbia and Hungary, which arrested the
political development and the
culture of the Southern
Slavs, and was followed by the long struggle of Habs-
burg Imperialism to eject the infidel invaders from its
dominions, to win back South-East ern Europe for Christen-
dom, and at the same time to establish German Habsburg
hegemony over the Balkan Peninsula.
In the nineteenth century the rivalry of Austria and
Russia came to play an almost dominant part in the
foreign relations of the Southern Slavs. But it must be
remembered that in the preceding century and a half
Austria had had an easy lead, and mig
ht, but for wasted
opportunities, have solved the problem in her own favour
before Russia beca m e a re
a lly serious rival.
The creation of the " Military Frontiers " in the late
si
xte
e nth century
—
territory organised on a special
military tenure along the old river frontier against Turkey
—
gave rise to a race of hereditary fighters of Serb and
C
roat race, trained in a tradition of dynastic loyalty,
16
pinning their faith to Vienna as the predestined liberator
of their kinsmen under Turkish yoke, and, indeed, often
forming the spearhead of the Austrian fighting machine.
Then, again, at the close of the seventeenth century (1690)
we find the Serbian Patriarch, with many thousands of
Serbian families, withdrawing into Habsburg territory,
and forming at Karlovci and Novi Sad, on the middle
Danube north of Belgrade, what were for over a century
the only real centres of Serbian culture. The Serbian
element in Syrmia and South Hungary was still further
strengthened in the early eighteenth century as part of the
scheme of colonisation which followed the final ejection
of the Turks.
The victories of Prince Eugene represent the high-water
mark of Austrian prestige in the Balkans, and from 1718
to 1739 the northern portion of the modern Serbia
(including the Sumadija, afterwards the real kernel of
national resistance to the Turks) was in Austrian posses-
sion. But the disastrous war of 1737-9 ended in its
restoration to Turkey, and fifty years later the war of
1787-92, undertaken jointly with Russia, and crowned
for a time with Laudon's conquest of Belgrade, again
ended in failure and an unexpected rally of Turkish
power. On each of these two occasions Austria had been
valiantly supported by the native Serbs, who found
themselves exposed to Turkish vengeance when their
protectors
withdrew.
Henceforward
they
relied
more
upon their own strength than upon foreign aid. Yet,
none the less, Kara George, the first hero of Serbian inde-
pendence, began with an appeal to Vienna — though
Francis was too absorbed in the European struggle against
Napoleon to give much heed to an obscure handful of
illiterate Balkan peasants.
From Austria the Serbs turned to Russia, with whom,
remote as she was, they were bound by the two powerful
ties of Slav kinship and Orthodox religion. Throughout
the nineteenth century the movements of Panslav
17
solidarity gained in strength, on the one hand serving to
stimulate Russian opinion in favour of the oppressed
Balkan Slavs, and on the other hand providing a basis for
Imperialistic aims, and only too often exploited by those
whose real objective was Constantinople and the Straits.
Meanwhile the growth of national feeling in Europe
transforms the relations between Austria and the Southern
Slavs, a majority of whom are actually living on Habs-
burg territory even before the occupation of Bosnia.
Serbia starts from very modest beginnings as a vassal
peasant state, but with each new generation tends more
and
more to become a centre of national culture, and also
a point of attraction for her kinsmen under alien rule.
And thus it is not really surprising to find Serbs from the
Banat, and also from Bosnia and Dalmatia and Monte-
negro, playing quite a notable part in the political and
intellectual life of the new principality, while, on the
other hand, Serbs from the principality intervened very
actively in the racial war of 1848 on behalf of the Croats
and Serbs of Croatia and the Banat against Hungary.
One of the main factors in Jugoslav history has been
the rival influence of Byzantium and Rome, of Orthodoxy
and Catholicism, in the formation of the national charac-
ter. In each case political influence has been super-
imposed, thanks on the one hand to the alliance of
Habsburg and ultramontanism, and on the other hand to
the privileged position of Hellenism in the Eastern
Church under Turkish rule. The religious issue which
thus arose has long since died — for certain ecclesiastical
jealousies of to-day cannot properly be described as a
religious issue — but it has perpetuated a very profound
difference in outlook and mentality that is only too fertile
in misunderstanding. For a whole century past it is
possible to observe a swing of the pendulum between two
poles — close and cordial co-operation between Orthodoxy
and Catholicism, as exemplified by the attitude of the
famous Ban Jelacic and the Patriarch Rajacic in 1848,
18
or still more by the figure of the great Catholic Bishop
Strossmayer, the protagonist of unity and concord among
all branches of the Jugoslavs; and, again, fierce mutual
recrimination on a basis of clerical and anti-clerical
feeling, skillfully fanned by Magyar national and Habsburg
ultramontane interests.
While, then, Serbian independence grew, the Illyrian
idea, first kindled by Napoleon's brief experiment in
state-building, took root in Croatia, and was restated
after the revolution of 1848 in its more modern Jugoslav
form. And amid political disunion and stagnation the
reforms of Vuk Karadzic and other brilliant scholars laid
well and soundly the foundations of that absolute linguis-
tic unity between Serb and Croat which was the natural
forerunner to political unity some generations later.
In 1848 Jelacic, though a devoted supporter of the
House of Habsburg against Magyar national expansion,
had corresponded with Peter II, the poet-prince of
Montenegro,
and
ardently
promoted
Serbo-Croat
co-
operation;
but,
thanks
to
imperial
ingratitude,
his
career ended in disillusionment and eclipse. In the
'sixties the idea of political unity awakened an echo in the
ambitious mind of Prince Michael of Serbia, who even in
1859 nad already discussed with emissaries of Kossuth and
Alexander Cuza plans for a Danubian Confederation. In
1866 he concluded an alliance with Prince Nicholas of
Montenegro by which the latter undertook to abdicate if
Michael should succeed in uniting all the Southern Slav
lands, and in 1867 he reached an agreement with the
Bulgarian
revolutionary
committee
at
Bucarest,
pro-
claiming the Serbs and Bulgars to be kindred peoples,
called by Providence to live together under one direction
and one flag, and adopting for future use the alternate
names of Serbo-Bulgars and Bulgaro-Serbs. There was
to be a single Prince, a single legislature, cabinet, and
coinage, and an independent Patriarchate for the two.
A little later the revolutionary delegates favoured the
19
idea of calling the new state " the Southern Slav
Empire." This was followed by an alliance with Greece,
and negotiations were also being carried on with Rou-
mania when the assassination of Michael removed the
soul of the whole movement. His calculation had followed
very daring lines; for he believed that the whole
peninsula would rise at his signal, that Serbia was stronger
and Turkey weaker than was generally supposed, that
Russia by her diplomatic action would prevent the inter-
vention of any of the Powers, and that it would be
possible to checkmate Austria by encouraging Hungary,
with whom Michael had many personal ties. At his death
the whole design collapsed, Serb and Bulgár fell rapidly
apart, and the skilful and deliberate tactics of the Porte
in creating a separate Bulgarian Exarchate in 1870,
widened the breach, and ranged the Balkan Slavs more
and more in two rival camps.
Meanwhile the Jugoslav idea met with a no less serious
set-back in Habsburg territory. Prussia's victory forced
Austria to come to terms with the Magyars, and the
bargain was sealed by the Ausgleich, or Dual System, at
the expense of the lesser nationalities. Within certain
limits Croatia's autonomy was respected, but, so far
from Zagreb being consulted, the terms of the new settle-
ment were, in effect, dictated from Budapest, and only
submitted pro forma to a carefully " packed " Croatian
Diet, after the bargain between Budapest and Vienna
had already made of them an accomplished fact.
During
the
'seventies
Austro-Hungarian
policy
was
increasingly successful in checking intercourse between
the Jugoslavs of the Monarchy and those outside its
bounds.
Meanwhile
the
newly
constituted
" Party
of
Right," resting upon a narrow Catholic clerical basis,
aimed at the reunion of Dalmatia with Croatia-Slavonia
in the so-called Triune Kingdom, within whose bounds it
attected to deny the very existence of Serbia. This Pan-
Croat ideal was favoured in Vienna as a convenient rival
20
to Pan-Serbism, with its centre in Belgrade; but its
natural effect was to drive the Serbs of Slavonia and
South Hungary into the arms of Budapest.
It was not, however, till the great Eastern crisis
of
1875-8
that
Austria-Hungary
became
irrevocably
involved in a real conflict of principle with Serbia. The
insurrection of the two purely. Jugoslav provinces of
Bosnia-Herzegovina
against
Turkish
misrule
was
naturally greeted with enthusiasm by their kinsmen in
the free principalities of Serbia and Montenegro, who
became involved in war with Turkey in their defence.
Beaten in 1876, and forced to accept an armistice, they
resumed hostilities once more after the intervention of
/> Russia, and spent their blood and treasure freely for the
cause of union, to which the insurgent leaders stood
equally pledged. But, though Serbia and Montenegro
received
certain
extensions
of
territory,
they
were
thwarted in their main aim, and had to look on in impo-
tent fury, while the diplomatists of Europe, assembled at
the Congress of Berlin in 1878, gave to Austria-Hungary
a mandate for the occupation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
It is important to bear in mind that Russia at an
early stage in the Eastern crisis lost faith in the Serbs,
and transferred her patronage to the Bulgarians, thus
arousing in the minds of the latter, by the stillborn
settlement
of
San
Stefano,
exaggerated
hopes
and
ambitions which have warped the whole subsequent
development of the Balkans. In order to retain the
friendship of Austria-Hungary, and, at a later stage, in
order to secure her neutrality during the Russo-Turkish
conflict, Tsar Alexander II — first at his meeting with
Francis Joseph at Reichstadt in July 1876, and then by
a military convention at Budapest in January 1877 —
definitely
sanctioned
an
Austro-Hungarian
occupation
of Bosnia.
As the tide of Panslav feeling rose in the war, and,
above all, when the Russian armies crossed the Balkans
21
and dictated the Peace of San Stefano at the very gates
of
Constantinople,
the
Tsar's
Government
repented
their concessions, and in April. 1878, sent General
Ignatiev to Vienna with a secret offer of Bosnia to Austria-
Hungary in return for an endorsement of the remainder
of the San Stefano settlement. But Andrássy, with the
two previous pledges in his pocket, and with Britain
threatening Russia with war, was not in the least
disposed to yield; and at the Congress of Berlin Russia
had to give way to a combination of Austria-Hungary and
Britain, with Bismarck posing as " honest broker," but
really affording Andrássy a support which was to smooth
the path for the future Dual Alliance.
Russia, then, not only threw over the Serbs and
endorsed the occupation, but secretly undertook to raise
Sarajevo Page 2