The War that Ended Peace

by Margaret MacMillan

  In the autumn of 1911, that collapse appeared imminent. Serbia and Bulgaria had been talking on and off since 1904 about some form of partnership, but the Bulgarians, led by Tsar Ferdinand, had always preferred to keep a free hand. Now the talks took on a new urgency. It helped too that a new government in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia, was pro-Russian and less inclined to worry about offending Austria-Hungary. Great Britain and France, which were warned by Russia that something was in the air, were not averse to a warmer relationship between the two Balkan powers. Its Triple Entente partners shared Russia’s hopes of finding a cheap, local solution to containing German and Austrian-Hungarian expansion into the Ottoman Empire.13 In Sofia and Belgrade, Anatol Neklyudov and Hartwig, the Russian ambassadors, worked hard to bring the Bulgarians and the Serbians together. Neklyudov at least foresaw the potential for trouble; ‘The union of Bulgaria and Serbia contains one dangerous element – the temptation to use it for offensive purposes.’14

  Hartwig had no such concerns. From the moment he had arrived in Belgrade in 1909 he had become a fervent supporter of the Serbian cause. He rapidly became an indispensable part of the political scene; everyone consulted him from the king down and each morning his study was filled with prominent members of Serbian society. He and Pašić were particularly close and with many a nod and a wink, Hartwig let the Serbian leader know that he need not take the warnings from Russia to tread carefully too seriously. When Sazonov sent a message to urge the Serbian government to be moderate in its foreign policy, Hartwig solemnly read it out. ‘Have you finished, mon cher ami?’ asked Pašić. ‘All right! C’est bien. Nous pouvons maintenant causer sérieusement!’ [We can now talk seriously.]15 Sazonov worried about Hartwig but did not have the strength to recall him, possibly because Hartwig’s wife had good connections at court and among Panslavist circles in Russia.

  At the end of September 1911 the Bulgarians let the Russians know that they were prepared to negotiate treaties first with Serbia and then with Montenegro and Greece. A leading member of Bulgarian government told Neklyudov that Bulgaria and Serbia needed to stand together not just to protect the Christians in the Ottoman Empire but to remain independent of the Central Powers.16 Sazonov, who was recuperating from a serious illness in Davos, was delighted when Neklyudov brought him the news. ‘Well,’ Sazonov exclaimed, ‘but this is perfect! If only it could come off! Bulgaria closely allied to Serbia in the political and economic sphere; five hundred thousand bayonets to guard the Balkans – but this would bar the road for ever to German penetration, Austrian invasion!’17 It took another several months to hammer out the details of the agreement. In a warning of the troubles to come between the new allies, the main difficulty was the division of the Macedonian lands, right down to tiny villages, where Bulgarian and Serbian claims overlapped.18 The treaty which was finally signed in March 1912 contained secret clauses directed against the Ottoman Empire and made Russia the arbiter in any future disputes over the division of Macedonia. Bulgaria also promised to back Serbia if it got into a war with Austria-Hungary.

  By this point foreign diplomats were picking up rumours about the new relationship and stories were starting to appear in the press. Sazonov blandly assured Russia’s entente partners that the treaty was purely defensive and that Russia would use its influence to ensure that it remained so. Germany and Austria-Hungary initially showed little concern.19 That spring of 1912, however, as details of the secret clauses leaked, the great powers started to suspect that more was at stake than a defensive arrangement. ‘It is evident’, wrote Nicolson, by now Permanent Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, to a British diplomat in St Petersburg, ‘that the distribution of the spoils in Macedonia has been decided upon.’ Sazonov was perhaps being a bit too adventurous, Nicolson complained, but it would not do to say so since Britain needed to keep on the best possible terms with Russia.20

  International concern grew as it became clear that Bulgaria and Greece, long divided by their competing ambitions in Macedonia, were now also drawing closer. The new Greek Prime Minister, Eleutherios Venizelos, was committed to freeing his home island of Crete from Ottoman rule, and was prepared to sacrifice Greek interests in Macedonia, at least for the time being, in order to gain allies. In May a treaty between Bulgaria and Greece – again, of course, described as defensive only – brought a league of Balkan states against the Ottoman Empire a step closer. The Bulgarians and Montenegrins found occasion to talk the following month, ironically in the great Habsburg palace, the Hofburg, while both kings, Ferdinand and Nicholas, were paying visits to Franz Joseph. The agreement reached later in the summer dispensed with the pretence of defence and simply took a war against the Ottoman Empire for granted. At the end of September Serbia and Montenegro signed an alliance. The Balkan League was now complete, with Bulgaria at its centre.

  The Ottoman Empire itself appeared to be in its last throes. In Constantinople, the Young Turks were turned out of office at the start of the summer by right-wing army officers who then proved unable to reestablish order. The revolt in Albania continued to gain strength and the cycle of unrest and violence in Macedonia went on. In August a bomb exploded at a market killing several innocent bystanders. The Ottoman police panicked and fired on the crowds that gathered. Over a hundred people, most of them Bulgars, were killed. In Bulgaria, the public demanded that its government intervene to liberate Macedonia. The Ottomans mobilised their forces on the southern border of Macedonia and the members of the Balkan League did the same a few days later. Russia was by now trying, ineffectually, to restrain its protégés. The other great powers had also awakened from their complacency and after a round of hasty discussions it was agreed that Russia and Austria-Hungary should act on behalf of what remained of the Concert of Europe to caution the Balkan states and the Ottoman Empire against war. The powers would not, they stated firmly, accept any territorial changes in the Balkans as a result of war. A French diplomat at St Petersburg was more realistic: ‘For the first time in the history of the Eastern question the small states have acquired a position of such independence of the Great Powers that they feel able to act completely without them and even to take them in tow.’21

  On 8 October, the day the warning from the Concert reached the Balkan capitals, Nicholas of Montenegro, always a gambler, declared war on the Ottoman Empire. Although he had worked assiduously to stir up trouble in the Ottoman territories along his borders, he declared to the British ambassador in Cetinje that he had been left no choice: ‘Above all continued massacres of Christian brothers on the frontier had struck him to the heart.’22 (Rumours later suggested that his main motive had been to make a financial killing in Paris by using his advance knowledge of the timing of the outbreak of hostilities.)23 On 18 October, after some unconvincing attempts to portray themselves as the innocent parties, the other members of the Balkan League joined in. Trotsky was in Belgrade as the ill-equipped Serbian peasant soldiers marched off to war, cheering as they went:

  Along with this shout there enters into one’s heart a peculiar spontaneous feeling of tragedy, impossible to convey at a distance: a feeling, too, of helplessness in the face of the historical fate which is so closely approaching the peoples shut up in the Balkan triangle, and of anguish for all those hordes of men who are being led to destruction …24

  Across the Balkans there was intense excitement with huge crowds demonstrating and singing patriotic songs. Old rivalries were briefly forgotten as newspapers talked about ‘The Balkans for Balkan peoples’. Outside the Bulgarian embassy in Belgrade, Serbians shouted ‘Long Live King Ferdinand!’25

  The combined Balkan forces outnumbered the Ottomans by more than two to one and the Ottoman armies were demoralised and unprepared. Obliged to fight on several different fronts at once, they suffered a series of rapid defeats. (The French attributed the success of the Balkan armies to their use of artillery from the French firm of Creusot while the Ottomans were using guns made by the German firm of Krupp.)26 By the end of October the Ottomans had l
ost almost all their remaining territory in Europe. Intoxicated by dreams of wearing the crown of old Byzantium and having a victory Mass sung in the great church of Santa Sophia, Ferdinand urged his Bulgarian troops on to attack Constantinople but they were held at a ridge north-east of the city. The Bulgarians had outrun their supply lines and the soldiers were short of ammunition, proper clothing and food, and an increasing number were falling ill. Additionally, the tensions in the Balkan League, never far below the surface, were becoming apparent. To the dismay of Bulgaria, Greece had seized the Macedonian port of Salonika (today Thessaloniki) while the Serbians and Montenegrins rushed to occupy the Sanjak of Novi Bazar, that piece of land south of Bosnia which separated them, and as much of Albania as they could. None of its allies liked the fact that Bulgaria had come up with by far the greatest share of Ottoman territory. On 3 December, under pressure from the great powers who were both shocked and worried by the dramatic changes in the Balkans, the members of the Balkan League and the Ottoman Empire agreed to sign an armistice and to start peace talks in London later that month.

  What made the Balkans so dangerous was that a highly volatile situation on the ground mingled with great power interests and ambitions. Britain and France, who had the least at stake in the Balkans, did not want to see the equilibrium in Europe, so recently threatened by the second Moroccan crisis, challenged again. On the other hand, neither power wanted to see the Ottoman Empire disappear with a resulting scramble for its territory at the eastern end of the Mediterranean or in the largely Arab lands throughout the Middle East. If the Ottoman sultan – who was also caliph, the chief religious leader for the world’s Sunni Muslims – was deposed, that might well stir up unrest among the large, mostly Sunni, Muslim population in British India who had hitherto been loyal supporters of the British Raj or among the millions of Muslims in France’s North African colonies.27 The French also worried about what would happen to the large sums of money they had lent to the Ottoman Empire (France was its biggest foreign lender). And both powers feared the consequences of a confrontation between Russia and Austria-Hungary in the Balkans. Poincaré, now President, made it clear to the Russians as early as August 1912 that France had no interest in getting dragged into a conflict between Russia and Austria-Hungary over the Balkans. The message from Paris was mixed, though: Poincaré also promised that France would fulfil its alliance obligations to Russia if Germany got involved on the side of Austria-Hungary.28 In December 1912, when relations between Russia and Austria-Hungary were deteriorating rapidly, France apparently indicated that it would support Russia if war broke out.29 And whether Poincaré actually believed it himself or was indulging in wishful thinking, he assured the Russians that Britain had given a verbal promise to send an expeditionary force to support France if it were attacked by Germany.30

  Grey insisted as he always did that Britain had a free hand in deciding what to do in any crisis but in fact he offered Russia considerable support. While he offered to help bring about a peace settlement, he also reassured the Russians that Britain was sympathetic to its need to keep the Straits in friendly hands.31 As the threat of a general war appeared to increase, Grey pointed out to the French yet again that Britain was under no obligation to support France if Germany then chose to support Austria-Hungary by attacking Russia’s ally in the west. Nevertheless, as the First Balkan War raged on, there were discussions in London about how to get a British expeditionary force to France and Grey told the German ambassador that it was a ‘vital necessity’ for Britain to prevent France being crushed by Germany and that Britain would have no choice but to come to France’s assistance.32 If Britain and France felt that their options were increasingly limited, that was much truer of the two neighbouring powers which took the closest interest in the Balkans – Russia and Austria-Hungary.

  Although Russia had little directly at stake in the Balkans in economic terms – Russian trade with and investment in the Balkans was tiny compared with other powers such as France – Russian attitudes to troubles there were shaped both by powerful ambitions and by fears.33 If the Ottoman Empire collapsed, as looked increasingly likely, the issue of control of the Straits would at once become critical. Russia’s economic prosperity and its future development were both tied up with its foreign trade. Most of its key export of grain went out through the Straits and the modern machinery Russia needed for its factories and mines came in the same way. Russians were reminded of how vulnerable geography made that trade when the Straits were temporarily closed in 1911 and again in 1912 because of the Italian war on the Ottomans. As grain piled up in Russia’s Black Sea ports, its price fell, panicky merchants called on the government to do something, and, as the value of Russia’s exports fell dramatically, interest rates went up.34 The speed of the Bulgarian advance in the war that broke out in the autumn of 1912 caused real alarm in St Petersburg. At one point the government seriously considered sending a force to protect Constantinople, perhaps even to seize a strip of land along the shores of the Bosphorus, until it realised that Russia did not have the necessary shipping or proper amphibious forces.35

  Russia had other reasons for fearing trouble in the Ottoman Empire. Up to this point the very backwardness of its southern neighbour had been convenient. The Anatolian plateau, which was undeveloped with only the beginnings of a railway system, had provided a convenient land barrier between the other continental powers and the Russian Empire in Central Asia and left Russia a relatively free hand to extend its rule still further, in particular into Persia. (Although this repeatedly produced friction with the British, Grey and his colleagues were prepared to put up with a lot to maintain the Russian friendship.) Since 1900, however, growing German penetration of the Ottoman lands and the much-publicised German project for a railway network stretching from Berlin to Baghdad had presented a new and unwelcome challenge to Russia’s imperial ambitions.36

  Finally, when it came to the Balkans themselves, Russia’s leaders were affected by a determination not to be outmanoeuvred or humiliated again by Austria-Hungary as Russia had been over Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. From St Petersburg every move made by Austria-Hungary, its wooing of Montenegro and Bulgaria by offering loans, for example, or the activities of Catholic priests from the Austrian church throughout the Balkans, raised suspicions. Russian views on the Balkans were also shaped by Panslavism and the desire to protect fellow South Slavs, many of whom like the Russians themselves were Orthodox Christians. A set of emotions and attitudes rather than a coherent political movement or ideology, Panslavism generated much heated rhetoric in Russia and elsewhere in central Europe before the Great War. For Russian Panslavists it was about their ‘historic mission’, ‘our Slavic brothers’, or turning the great mosque of Hagia Sophia back into the church of Santa Sophia. There was much talk too of winning back ‘the keys and gates to the Russian house’ – the Straits between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea – so that Russian commerce and naval power could flow out into the world. (The Russians did not always seem to take into account that the Mediterranean was a bigger version of the Black Sea with its key exits at Suez and Gibraltar controlled by another power, in this case Britain.) If such rhetoric did not directly guide Russian policies in the Balkans, it served to limit Russia’s options. Sazonov found himself under pressure to support the Balkan nations and not to work with Austria-Hungary even though Russia might have been wise to try to rebuild the old understanding to keep the status quo in the Balkans.37 To be sure, Panslavism found in him a willing victim.

  It was unfortunate for Russia, for the stability of the Balkans, and in the longer run for the peace of Europe that the man now in charge of its foreign policy was so easily swayed by emotion and prejudice. Russia’s historic mission, Sazonov believed, was to liberate the South Slavs from Ottoman oppression. Although this great duty had almost been completed by the start of the twentieth century, Russia still needed to be on guard against threats to the Balkan nations, whether from a resurgent Ottoman Empire or Austria-Hungary and
its German ally. He was deeply suspicious of Ferdinand of Bulgaria, whom he saw as a German cuckoo in the Balkan nest, and feared the Young Turks who, he believed, were under the leadership of Jewish Freemasons.38 It was unfortunate too that Sazonov had little of the intelligence, experience, or strength of character of his predecessor. His main qualifications for the post seem to have been that he was not Izvolsky, who was widely discredited after the Bosnian crisis, and that he was the brother-in-law of Prime Minister Stolypin.

  Like so many of the top officials in Russia, the new Foreign Minister came from an old noble family. Unlike some of his colleagues, he was upright and honest and even his enemies agreed that he was a thorough gentleman and a loyal servant of both the tsar and Russia. Sazonov was also profoundly religious and, in the opinion of Baron Taube, who worked with him in the Foreign Ministry, would have done well in the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church. He was not, in Taube’s view, cut out to be Foreign Minister: ‘Sickly by nature, overly sensitive and a little sentimental, nervous and even neurotic, Sazonov was the type of womanly Slav par excellence, easy and generous but soft and vague, constantly changing because of his impressions and intuitions, resisting all sustained efforts at thinking, incapable of following through his reasoning to the logical end.’39