On the night of June 29, 1913, without any declaration of war, the Bulgarian army suddenly attacked the Serbians and Greeks all along the line, over 250 miles in length. Apparently General Savoff, the Bulgarian commander, had taken the initiative upon himself, for all that night and the next day the Government in Sofia kept sending telegrams ordering the operations to cease.
All through July the fighting continued, and the battles were far more bloody than those that had been fought with the Turks in the first war. In the south the Bulgarians were decidedly beaten, but this was because they had counted on holding the Greeks back with only 70,000 men.
The main fighting was on the Bregalnitza River, between the Serbians and the Bulgarians. Here the Bulgarians also suffered a reverse. And the Serbians were suffering losses that they could less afford than the Bulgarians. Whether the Bulgarians might eventually have won out, as their lines were contracted and the Greeks were drawn away from their base at Saloniki, was a military question that was not to be decided. For at this juncture Rumania took unexpected action. She suddenly on July 10 began an invasion of Bulgaria from the north, and by the end of the month her cavalry screens were within twenty miles of the Bulgarian capital. The Turks, too, had recrossed the frontier and were once more in possession of Adrianople, which the small Bulgarian garrison surrendered without resistance. Literally the armies of all her neighbors were invading Bulgaria. Further resistance was useless. On July 31, after just one month of fighting, an armistice was signed, and representatives from all the belligerents met in Bucharest to negotiate terms of peace. On August 10 the Treaty of Bucharest was finally signed.
As a result of the Second Balkan War Bulgaria was left in a much worse position than she was in after the first war. First of all she had to give a slice of her Danubian territory to Rumania, as her price for entering the war. Then she had to return part of Thrace, including Adrianople, to the Turks. Serbia retained southeastern Macedonia, and Greece kept Saloniki and its hinterland for fifty miles inward, including Kavala, the natural economic outlet for Bulgaria on the Ægean.
PART III—DIRECT CAUSES OF THE WAR
CHAPTER XX
ASSASSINATION OF FRANZ FERDINAND—AUSTRIA'S ULTIMATUM
It was the boast of the greater European powers, during the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, and after, that the "conflagration in the Balkans had been localized"—i.e., that none of the western nations would be involved in the complications growing out of the trouble in the Balkans. The conflagration in the mountainous peninsula had been "localized," it was true; but the smouldering fire that remained after the Balkan Wars was to flare forth, during the summer of 1914, to spread over Europe from the Shetland Islands to Crete in one grand flame, and to drop sparks on the remaining four continents. That smouldering fire was the doctrine known as Greater Serbianism, sometimes wrongly spoken of as Pan-Serbianism.
As during the nineteenth century one after another the Balkan States gained independence from Turkish sovereignty and the germ of what is called Nationalism was born in them, each looked about to see in what direction its boundaries might be extended. The appetite of Nationalism, with these small states as with the greater countries, demanded that under the flag of a given nation must be gathered all the peoples of that nation; if some of them dwell in foreign lands those lands must be conquered; if foreigners live within the borders of the country those foreigners must be "ironed out"—the crushing machinery of despotic government must be brought into use to force them to adopt the language, literature, traditions, and religion of the nation which considered them alien. And the appetite of Nationalism demanded one thing more—that the political boundaries of a nation conform with the "natural boundaries" as they seemed to be delimited by mountains, rivers, and coasts.
The kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro had shown symptoms of Nationalism long before the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913; when they emerged from those wars with their territories almost doubled the idea took even greater hold on them. As Turkish sovereignty and influence became less feared, Austrian dominance replaced them.
Austria did nothing to allay this fear; she stood as a Teutonic bulwark between a growing Slavic menace (in Serbia and Montenegro) on the south and the already formidable Slavic menace (Russia) on the east. In her provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were transformed from protectorates to integral parts of the Austrian Empire in 1908, there dwelt thousands of peasants who were of Serbian nationality; in more concise terms they were of the same racial stock as the Serbians. After Serbian prestige rose as a result of the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 these Serbian subjects of Austria desired more than ever to be a part of the Slav kingdom; this desire was shared by the leading factions in Serbia itself; the doctrine of "Greater Serbia" demanded that the aims of the desire be materialized. Besides, the "natural boundaries" of Serbia seemed to take in the greater part, if not all, of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for they stretched along the eastern shores of the Adriatic and shut Serbia and Montenegro off from that sea.
Propaganda began to spread throughout Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, reminding the Serbs in all three places that they must work to bring themselves under one government, and that government their own; they were urged to keep up their efforts to standardize their religion, their speech, their traditions; they were called upon, by this same propaganda, to substitute Austria for Turkey as the object of national Serbian hate.
But Austria, too, had the disease of Nationalism, and she had been engaged since 1908 in "ironing out" the Serbs within her borders. Thus great friction was engendered, and when, on June 28, 1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the crown prince and his morganatic wife visited the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, they and the officials of the city and province knew that the lives of the pair were in danger from Serbian intrigue.
The archduke had gone to Bosnia on his first visit to take charge of military maneuvers there, and before he left the Austrian capital the Serbian minister had expressed doubt as to the wisdom of the visit, telling the court that the Serbian population in Bosnia might make unfavorable demonstrations. The fears of the Serbian minister proved to be well founded; Sarajevo displayed many Serbian flags on the day of his arrival. The archduke's party, in automobiles, proceeded to the Town Hall after leaving the railway station, passing through crowded streets. The city officials were gathered at the Town Hall to give him an official welcome. A bomb, hurled from a roof, fell into the archduke's car; he caught it and threw it to the pavement, where it exploded, doing no damage to either him or his wife, but injuring two adjutants in the car following. One Gabrinovics, a Serbian from Trebinje, was arrested as the assailant.
The archduke proceeded to the Town Hall, and after berating the city officials listened to the speeches of welcome. As he and his wife were departing a Serbian student, named Prinzip, who was later arrested, rushed out from the crowd and fired point-blank at the couple with a revolver. Both were hit a number of times and died some hours later from their wounds.
Great excitement immediately prevailed in Sofia and Vienna, and in Berlin and St. Petersburg to a lesser degree. What retribution would Austria demand? The Austrian press openly avowed that the plot on the archduke's life had been hatched in official circles in Serbia, and the Austrian Government made no attempt to suppress these statements. One hour after the tragedy had taken place it had assumed an official and international complexion.
A punitive war against Serbia was immediately urged in Vienna. On June 29, 1914, anti-Serbian riots broke out in Bosnia, Sarajevo was put under martial law, and the bodies of the assassinated couple began the mournful journey to Vienna. On July 2, 1914, Prinzip confessed that he had apprised the Pan-Serbian Union of his attempt to kill the archduke, and on the same day the first intimation came that the matter