Bulgaria e-book - iMedia

that one is the lion. Bulgaria blundered on into a position which left
her exhausted army to face at once Greece, Servia, Montenegro, and
Roumania.
That it was not necessary for her to get into that position I can say
with some confidence. A more judicious handling of her relations
with Servia would have kept the friendship of that kindred nation,
and Montenegro would have followed Servia. The united Slav
peoples of the Balkans would then have been strong enough to
withstand any attempt to enforce unfair conditions by Roumania or
Greece. But Bulgaria made no attempt to conciliate Servia. Between
the two peoples there had existed before the war a very close treaty
of alliance. This treaty had arranged for the division of the spoil
of the war on a basis which had not foreseen that the European
Powers would create an independent Albania; and Servia had not
imagined that Turkey would be so weak, and that the booty in Thrace
would have been so considerable. Bulgaria thus had more than was
expected in one quarter, whilst Servia was bitterly disappointed in
another direction. Friends, under the circumstances, would have
struck another bargain. Bulgaria insisted upon the strict letter of the
old bargain.
Servia was thus forced into the arms of Greece; reluctantly, I think.
If she could have made a fair arrangement with Bulgaria she would
have preferred that. But it seemed to be destined that Bulgaria should
add another to the long list of her frustrated hopes.
The early part of 1914 saw the Balkans in the throes of a war
which eclipsed in bitterness and bloodshed the campaign of 1913.
Greece and Servia fought against Bulgaria, and Roumania marched
down from the north towards the Bulgarian capital, her army
unopposed because there was no means of opposing it. Stopping
short of entering Sofia, Roumania took up the position of the chief
Power in the Balkans and insisted upon dictating terms of peace.
Those terms Bulgaria, perforce, accepted after her army had been
defeated with terrible slaughter by the Servian and Grecian forces.
She was forced to give up territory in all directions: to Roumania on
the north; to Servia on the west; to Greece on the south. To crown
her misfortunes, the Turks moved up against the prostrate country,
recaptured, without an effort, Adrianople, which had been won with
such terrible cost of Bulgarian blood, and also Kirk Kilisse. In the
final result Bulgaria was left with but little net gain as the price of
her enormous sacrifices of blood and of treasure. To the north she
actually lost some of her old territory. From the Turk she secured a
fragment of Thrace, and a part of Macedonia which gave her access
to the Aegean Sea, but no decent port there, and no possibility of
carrying out her grandiose scheme of canalising the River Maritza
and making a Bulgarian Adrianople a port for trade. Further, she
had the mortification of seeing all three of her rivals in the Balkans
aggrandised, and Roumania left with the hegemony of the Peninsula.
Only a few months before, Mr. Noel Buxton had written the “Io
triumphe” of the Bulgarian cause:
The blight that had lain on the Balkan lands was healed, the fog
dispelled. Even the prestige of military despotism was gone like a
pricked bubble. The tyranny that rested on delusion and not on power
was vanished like an empty nightmare that fades when the sleeper
wakes. The establishment of Europe’s freedom was fulfilled; the final
step taken. A great and notable nation had obtained recognition through
the war. Its persistence, its purpose, its deep reserve, now stood revealed,
added to the world’s stores of national character.
For centuries the Bulgarian refused to compromise with the Turk.
Other nations sought to lighten the weight of the yoke by taking service
with the tyrant or bowing the head. The maxim, “The sword never
strikes when the head is bowed,” undermined the soul of other nations,
never of this. Influence and wealth went to others; all seemed lost by the
policy of defiance. Bulgarians would not balance advantages. A kind of
faith made them ready to pay even death for ultimate gain. The spirit
wins at last: and the indomitable spirit of the Bulgars has come by its just
reward.
Three months after that the Turk was back in Thrace, and the
national life of Bulgaria had touched its lowest point since the war of
Liberation, with only her justified hope in the future as a consolation.