The Great War (All 8 Volumes). Various Authors
the world. For here the great conflagration began.
A map of the Balkan Peninsula is almost, on the face of it, a full explanation of the causes of the war. The military campaigns, studied in connection with their physical environment, explain all the diplomatic intrigues of the past fifty years, for they are the intrigues themselves translated into action.
Geographically speaking, the Balkan nations are those situated in the big peninsula of southern Europe which lies below the Danube River and the northern border of Montenegro. Some authorities, however, include Rumania, and others even bring in Austria's Slavic provinces, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The most noticeable feature of this vast war-ridden region is its mountains. Those same Carpathian Mountains, which form the natural boundary between the land of the Magyars and the Russian plains, take a sudden turn westward at the Rumanian frontier, then sweep around in a great semicircle, forming a shape resembling a scythe, the handle of which reaches up into Poland, the blade curling around within the Balkan Peninsula. Behind the handle, and above the upper part of the blade, stretch the broad plains of Hungary, through which flows the great Danube, the largest river in Europe next to the Russian Volga—a river which flowed with blood during the Great War. Just in the middle of the back of the blade this great river bursts through the mountain chain, swirling through the famous Iron Gate into the great basin within the curved blade. On the south of its farther course to the Black Sea lie the plains of northern Bulgaria.
The curving chain of mountains below the Iron Gate is the Balkan Range. But excepting for the plains of Thrace, lying south of the Balkans, over toward the Black Sea and above Constantinople, the rest of the peninsula is almost entirely one confused tangle of craggy mountains, interspersed throughout with small, fertile valleys and plateaus. This roughness of surface becomes especially aggravated as one passes westward, and over toward the Adriatic coast, from Greece up into the Austrian province of Dalmatia, the country is almost inaccessible to ordinary travelers.
What is the political value of this beleaguered domain? The broad, significant fact is that any road from western Europe to the Orient must pass through the Balkan Peninsula, and that these mountains almost block that road. From north to south there is just one highway, so narrow that it is really a defile.
This road stretches from the seat of the war at Belgrade on the Danube down a narrow valley, the Morava, thence through the highlands of Macedonia into the Vardar Valley to Saloniki, on the Ægean Sea. At Nish, above Macedonia, another road branches off into Bulgaria across the plains of Thrace and into Constantinople. This was the road by which the Crusaders swarmed down to conquer the Holy Land. This was the road by which, hundreds of years later, the Moslems swarmed up into the plains of Hungary and overran the south of Europe, until they were finally checked outside the gates of Vienna. Nothing is more significant of the terror that these marching hosts inspired than the fact that, with the exception of a few larger towns, the villages hid themselves away from this highway in the hills.
Bear clearly in mind that in the existence of this narrow way to the Orient lies the key not only to the causes of the war, but to the military campaigns that we shall follow in this region. For it is the Teutons who would in the Great War, like the Crusaders of old, pass down this highway and again conquer the East, though in this case their object is trade, and not the Holy Sepulcher.
To secure the pathway through this strategic country it also is necessary to have control of the territory on all sides, and this is quite as true in a political as in a military sense. To secure their pathway up into Europe the Turks once conquered all the peoples in the Balkans, except those inhabiting the mountains over on the Adriatic: the Montenegrins and a small city called Ragusa, just above Montenegro in Dalmatia. It is not at all peculiar that just here, in almost the same locality, the Teutons should meet with the first and strongest resistance.
A study of the territory in which the first fighting of the war occurred will explain the foregoing calculations. It will be observed that Austrian territory runs down past the eastward turn in the Danube, along the frontier of Montenegro, until it narrows gradually into a tip at Cattaro, just below Cettinje, the Montenegrin capital. This land is composed of the three provinces of Bosnia, Herzegovina and Dalmatia. All this territory is inhabited by the same race that peoples Serbia and Montenegro—the Serbs. In fact, the Slavic population reaches up all along the coast to Trieste, and even a little beyond. For this reason it is in this direction that we shall see the Serbians and the Montenegrins invade Austrian territory, after their initial success in repulsing the Austrian invasion.
The objectives of the brief campaign soon to be considered were Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, and Ragusa, the famous little seaport on the Adriatic. Ragusa is of especial interest on account of its remarkable history. In the Middle Ages it was the most important seaport in that part of the world. Its ships sailed over all the Mediterranean and from them is derived the word "argosy," signifying a ship laden with wealth. Again and again the Turks attempted to conquer this little state, which was at that time a republic, but always the Ragusans beat off the enemy. For the country about is so rocky, so rough, that the city was easily defended, especially in that time when nearly all fighting was hand to hand.
The first and foremost word in the Great War—the key word—is Sarajevo. Here is the scene of the assassination of the Crown Prince of Austria, which was at least the final cause of the war. As we enter it we find a population of about forty thousand, half of which are Mohammedans. It is a large, straggling town, situated in a narrowing valley overtopped by steep hills on either side, which close in a narrow gorge in the east and broaden into a plain on the west. It was to the eastward, however, that we shall find the heavy fighting along the Austro-Serbian frontier.
The armies along the Danube will soon command our attention. As they follow the river toward Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, it is no longer the "Blue Danube" of the famous German song. Here, in fact, it is a broad, mud-colored river, dotted with a number of low islands along its center. Belgrade, where the first shots of the war were fired, is located on rather high ground, backed by a semicircle of low hills in its rear. But opposite all is flat and, in places, marshy. Modern guns could, of course, keep up an effective fire across the river at this point, as in fact they did before the actual invasion of Serbia began, but the conditions for a crossing are not favorable. It was from the west, from the Bosnian side, that the actual attack was made.
Just below Belgrade the river Save, shallower and narrower, empties into the Danube, forming the frontier westward, past Shabatz, to Ratcha, where the Drina, flowing down from the Macedonian highlands northward, joins it, forming the western frontier between Bosnia and Serbia.
The Drina, where much fighting occurs, is no ordinary waterway, no mere mountain stream, though it lies in a mountainous country. Before reaching its junction with the Save it is fed by many important tributaries. Ever swift, often torrential, it has washed out a bed of imposing width, and by a constant cutting out of new courses has created a series of deltas. It was one of the largest of these islands, that of Kuriachista, between Losnitza and Leschnitza, that the Austrians chose as a base for their first invasion. From this point up and around to Shabatz lies the bloody field of the Austro-Serbian battles.
A description of this section, in brief at least, is necessary to an understanding of the three Austrian invasions made here, and all three of which failed disastrously. North and west of Shabatz lies the great plain of Matchva, bounded on its east and north by the Save and by the Drina on the west. It is a rich, fertile land, but much broken up by woodland. To the southeast a rolling valley is divided by the River Dobrava, while due south the Tzer Mountains rise like a camel's back out of the plain and stretch right across from the Drina to the Dobrava. The southern slopes of Tzer are less abrupt than those on the north and descend gradually into the Leschnitza Valley, out of which rise the lesser heights of the Iverak Mountains. Both these ranges are largely covered by prune orchards, intersected with some sparse timber.
This is a region of natural fortifications. Descending southward again, the foothills of Iverak are lost in a chain of summits, which flank the right bank of the Jadar River, that tributary of the Drina River from which the first big battle takes its name.
From the left bank of the Jadar, from its junction with the Drina to Jarebitze, a great rolling level stretches south