The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913 | Page 9

the Black
Sea to the Adriatic and comprised the greater part of Macedonia,
Greece, Albania, Servia, and Dalmatia; leaving only to the Byzantine
Empire--whose civilization he introduced and sedulously promoted
among the Bulgarians--the cities of Constantinople, Saloniki, and
Adrianople with the territory immediately surrounding them. But this
first Bulgarian Empire was shortlived, though the western part
remained independent under Samuel, who reigned, with Ochrida as his
capital, from 976 to 1014. Four years later the Byzantine Emperor,
Basil II, annihilated the power of Samuel, and for a hundred and fifty
years the Bulgarian people remained subject to the rule of
Constantinople. In 1186 under the leadership of the brothers Asen they
regained their independence. And the reign of Czar Asen II (1218-1240)
was the most prosperous period of all Bulgarian history. He restored
the Empire of Simeon, his boast being that he had left to the Byzantines
nothing but Constantinople and the cities round it, and he encouraged
commerce, cultivated arts and letters, founded and endowed churches
and monasteries, and embellished his capital, Trnovo, with beautiful
and magnificent buildings. After Asen came a period of decline
culminating in a humiliating defeat by the Servians in 1330. The
quarrels of the Christian races of the Balkans facilitated the advance of
the Moslem invader, who overwhelmed the Serbs and their allies on the
memorable field of Kossovo in 1389, and four years later captured and
burned the Bulgarian capital, Trnovo, Czar Shishman himself perishing
obscurely in the common destruction. For five centuries Bulgaria
remained under Moslem despotism, we ourselves being the witnesses

of her emancipation in the last thirty-five years.
The fate of the Serbs differed only in degree from that of the Bulgarians.
Converted to Christianity in the middle of the ninth century, the major
portion of the race remained till the twelfth century under either
Bulgarian or Byzantine sovereignty. But Stephen Nemanyo bought
under his rule Herzegovina, Montenegro and part of modern Servia and
old Servia, and on his abdication in 1195 in favor of his son launched a
royal dynasty which reigned over the Serb people for two centuries. Of
that line the most distinguished member was Stephen Dushan, who
reigned from 1331 to 1355. He wrested the whole of the Balkan
Peninsula from the Byzantine Emperor, and took Belgrade, Bosnia, and
Herzegovina from the King of Hungary. He encouraged literature, gave
to his country a highly advanced code of laws, and protected the church
whose head--the Archbishop of Ipek--he raised to the dignity of
patriarch. On Easter Day 1346 he had himself crowned at Uskub as
"Emperor of the Greeks and Serbs." A few years later he embarked on
an enterprise by which, had he been successful, he might have changed
the course of European history. It was nothing less than the capture of
Constantinople and the union of Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks into an
empire which might defend Christendom against the rising power of
Islam. Dushan was within forty miles of his goal with an army of
80,000 men when he died suddenly in camp on the 20th of December,
1355. Thirty-four years later Dushan's countrymen were annihilated by
the Turks at Kossovo! All the Slavonic peoples of the Balkan Peninsula
save the brave mountaineers of Montenegro came under Moslem
subjection. And under Moslem subjection they remained till the
nineteenth century.
TURKISH OPPRESSION OF SLAVS
It is impossible to give any adequate description of the horrors of
Turkish rule in these Christian countries of the Balkans. Their people,
disqualified from holding even the smallest office, were absolutely
helpless under the oppression of their foreign masters, who ground
them down under an intolerable load of taxation and plunder. The
culminating cruelty was the tribute of Christian children from ten to
twelve years of age who were sent to Constantinople to recruit the
corps of janissaries. It is not surprising that for the protection of wives
and children and the safeguarding of interests the nobles of Bosnia and

the Pomaks of Southeastern Bulgaria embraced the creed of their
conquerors; the wonder is that the people as a whole remained true to
their Christian faith even at the cost of daily martyrdom from
generation to generation. Their fate too grew worse as the Turkish
power declined after the unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1683. For at
first Ottoman troops ravaged Bulgaria as they marched through the land
on their way to Austria; and later disbanded soldiers in defiance of
Turkish authority plundered the country and committed nameless
atrocities. Servia was to some extent protected by her remote location,
but that very circumstance bred insubordination in the janissaries, who
refused to obey the local Turkish governors and gave themselves up to
looting, brigandage, and massacre. The national spirt of the subject
races was completely crushed. The Servians and Bulgarians for three or
four