The World War and What was Behind It Part 4

A strange thing happened to the Volgars or Bulgars. They completely gave up their Asiatic language and adopted a new one, which became in time the purest of the Slavic tongues. They intermarried with the Slavs around them and adopted Slavic names. They founded a flourishing nation which lay between the kingdom of Serbia and the Greek Empire of Constantinople.

North of the Bulgars lay the country of the Roumani (ro?o ma'ni). These people claimed to be descended from the Roman Emperor's colonists, as was previously told, but the reason their language is so much like the Italian is that a large number of people from the north of Italy moved into the country nearly a thousand years after the first Roman colonists settled there. From 900 to 1300 A.D., south-eastern Europe was inhabited by Serbians, Bulgarians, Roumanians, and Greeks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Typical Bulgarian Family]

A fifth people perhaps ought to be counted here, the Albanians.

(See map) This tribe is descended from the Illyrians, who inhabited the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea even before the time of the Roman Empire. Their language, like the Greek, is a branch of the Indo-European family which is neither Latin, Celtic, Germanic, nor Slavic. They are distant cousins of the Italians and are also slightly related to the Greeks. They are a wild, fierce, uncivilized people, and have never known the meaning of law and order. Robbery and warfare are common. Each village is always fighting with the people of the neighboring towns. The Albanians, or Skipetars (skip'e?tars) as they call themselves, were Christians until they were conquered by the Turks about 1460. Since that time, the great majority of them have been staunch believers in the Mohammedan religion.

Questions for Review

1. Where did the great Indo-European family of languages have its beginning?

2. Why is it that the Celtic languages are dying out?

3. What killed the Celtic languages in Spain and France?

4. What are the three parts of Europe where Germanic languages are spoken?

5. In what parts of Europe are languages spoken which are descended from the Latin?

6. Explain the presence in Austria-Hungary of eleven different peoples?

7. Are the Bulgarians really a Slavic people?

CHAPTER VI

"The Terrible Turk"

The Greek Empire at Constantinople.--The invading Mohammedans.--The Ottoman Turks.--The fall of Constantinople.--The enslaving of the Bulgars, Serbs, Greeks, Albanians, and Roumanians.--One little part of Serbia unconquered.--The further conquests of the Turks.--The attack on Vienna.--John Sobieski to the rescue.--The waning of the Turkish empire.--The Spanish Jews.--The jumble of languages and peoples in southeastern Europe.

In the last chapter, we referred briefly to the Greek empire at Constantinople. This city was originally called Byzantium, and was a flourishing Greek commercial center six hundred years before Christ.

Eleven hundred years after this, a Roman emperor named Constantine decided that he liked Byzantium better than Rome. Accordingly, he moved the capital of the empire to the Greek city, and renamed it Constantinopolis (the word polis means "city" in Greek). Before long, we find the Roman empire divided into two parts, the capital of one at Rome, of the other at Constantinople. This eastern government was continued by the Greeks nearly one thousand years after the government of the western empire had been seized by the invading Germanic tribes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Turkish Sultan before Constantinople]

For years, this Greek empire at Constantinople had been obliged to fight hard against the Mohammedans who came swarming across the fertile plains of Mesopotamia (me?s'o po ta' mi? a) and Asia Minor. (Mesopotamia is the district lying between the Tigris (ti'gri?s) and Euphrates (ufra'tez) Rivers. Its name in Greek means "between the rivers.") The fiercest of the Mohammedan tribes, the warlike Ottoman Turks, were the last to arrive. For several years, they thundered at the gates of Constantinople, while the Greek Empire grew feebler and feebler.

At last in 1453, their great cannon made a breach in the walls, and the Turks poured through. The Greek Empire was a thing of the past, and all of southeastern Europe lay at the mercy of the invading Moslems (another name for "Mohammedans"). The Turks did not drive out the Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbians, and Albanians, but settled down among them as the ruling, military cla.s.s. They strove to force these peoples to give up Christianity and turn Mohammedans, but were successful only in the case of the Skipetars of Albania. The Albanians, Serbians, Bulgarians, Greeks, and Roumanians remained where they had been, but were oppressed by the newcomers.

For more than two hundred years after the capture of Constantinople, the Turks pushed their conquests farther and farther into Europe. The entire coast of the Black Sea fell into their hands. All of Greece, all of Bulgaria, and all of Roumania became part of their empire. Of the kingdom of Serbia, one small province remained unconquered. Up in the mountains near the coast of the Adriatic gathered the people of one county of the Serbian kingdom. As the Turks attacked them, they retreated higher and higher up the mountain sides and rolled huge stones down upon the invaders. Finally, the Turk became disgusted, and concluded that "the game was not worth the candle." Thus the little nation of Montenegro was formed, composed of Serbians who never submitted to the Ottoman rule. (The inhabitants of this small country call it Tzernagorah (tze~r na go'ra); the Italians call it Montenegro. Both of these names mean "Dark Mountain.")

Not satisfied with these conquests, the Turks pushed on, gaining control of the greater part of the kingdom of Hungary. About 1682, they were pounding at the forts around Vienna. The heroic king of Poland, John Sobieski (so bi? e?s'ki?), came to the rescue of the Austrian emperor with an army of Poles and Germans and completely defeated the Turks. He saved Vienna, and ended any further advance of the Turkish rule into Europe. (The map on page 82 shows the high water mark of the Turkish conquests.)

It must be remembered that the original inhabitants of the conquered lands were still living where they always had lived. The Turks were very few in number compared with the millions of people who inhabited their empire and paid them tribute. Many wars were caused by this conquest, but it was two hundred and thirty years before the Christian peoples won back their territory.

[Map: Southeastern Europe 1690 A.D.]

By the year 1685, the Hungarians had begun to win back part of their kingdom. By 1698, almost all of Hungary and Transylvania was free from Turkish rule. It will be recalled that a certain Count of Hapsburg had become Emperor of Germany, and when we say Germany, we include Austria, which had become the home of the Hapsburgs. It was shortly after this that the Hapsburg family came to be lords of Hungary also, through the marriage of one of their emperors with the only daughter of the king of that country. (See page 69.)

In this way, when the province of Bukowina and the territory known as the Banat, just north of the Danube and west of what is now Roumania, were reconquered from the Turks, it was the joint kingdom to which they were attached. (Bukowina has never been a part of Hungary. It is still a crown land, or county subject to the emperor of Austria personally.)

During the 15th century, the southeastern part of Europe came to be inhabited by a still different people. Not long after Ferdinand and Isabella, the king and queen of Spain, had conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada (see Chapter II) that used to stretch across the southern half of Spain, the Spaniards decided to drive out of their country all "unbelievers," that is, all who were not Christians of the Catholic faith. (This happened in 1492, the same year that they sent Columbus to America.) The Moors retreated into Africa, which was their former home, but the millions of Spanish Jews had no homeland to which to return. In the midst of their distress, the Sultan of Turkey, knowing them to be prosperous and well-behaved citizens, invited them to enter his land. They did so by hundreds of thousands.

The descendants of these people are to be found today throughout the Balkan peninsula, though mainly in the large cities. They are so numerous in Constantinople that four newspapers are published there in the Spanish language, but printed in Hebrew characters. The city of Salonika, a prosperous seaport of 140,000 people, which used to belong to Turkey but now is part of Greece, has over 50,000 of these Jews.

They readily learn other tongues, and many of them can talk in four or five languages besides their native Spanish, which they still use in the family circle.

Constantinople (called Stamboul by the Turks) is a polyglot city, that is, a place of many languages. Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Jews, Italians are all found mingled together.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Scene in Salonicka]

The main source of trouble in the Balkan peninsula is that the races and nationalities are so jumbled together that it is almost impossible to say which land should belong to which nation. Take the case of Macedonia (the district just northwest of the Aegean Sea). It is inhabited largely by Bulgarians, and yet there are so many Greeks and Serbs mixed in with the former that at the close of the last Balkan war in 1913, Greece and Serbia both claimed it as belonging to them because of the "prevailing nationality of its inhabitants!" In other words, the Serbians claimed that the inhabitants of Macedonia were largely Serbs, the Greeks were positive that its people were largely Greeks, while Bulgaria is very resentful today because the land was not given to her, on the ground that almost all its inhabitants are Bulgarians!

Religious and racial hatreds have had a great deal to do with making the Balkan peninsula a hotbed of political trouble. Right in the center of Bulgaria, for example, speaking the same language, dressing exactly alike, doing business with each other on an equal footing, are to be found the native Bulgarian and the descendant of the Turkish conquerors; yet one goes to the Greek Orthodox Church to worship and the other to the Mohammedan Mosque. With memories of hundreds of years of wrong and oppression behind them, Bulgarians and Turks hate and despise each other with a fierce intensity. Let us now leave the Balkan states, with their seething pot of racial and religious hatred, and turn to other causes of European wars.

Questions for Review

1. What became of the Greeks when the Turks captured Constantinople?

2. Why could one county of Serbia resist the Turks?

3. How long after the fall of Constantinople were the Turks threatening Vienna?

4. Explain how Constantinople has people of so many different nationalities.

5. Why have the Turk and Bulgarian never been friendly?

CHAPTER VII

The Rise of Modern Nations

How the peasants looked upon war.--War the opportunity of the fighting men.--The decreasing power of barons.--The growth of royal power.--How four little kingdoms became Spain.--Other kingdoms of Europe.--The rise of Russia.--The Holy Roman Empire.--The electors.--The rise of Brandenburg.--The elector of Brandenburg becomes King of Prussia.--Frederick the Great.--The seizure of Silesia and the consequent wars.

You have already been shown how in the early days of the feudal system, the lords, with their squires, knights, and fighting men made up a cla.s.s of the population whose only trade was war, and how the poor peasants were compelled to raise crops and live stock enough to feed both themselves and the fighting men. These peasants had no love for war, as war resulted only in their losing their possessions in case their country was invaded by the enemy. The fighting men, on the other hand, had nothing to do unless war was going on, and as those who were not killed returned from a war with rich plunder in case they were victorious, they were always looking for a chance to start trouble with some neighboring country.

In those days, kings cared little what their n.o.bles did, so long as the n.o.bles furnished them with fighting men in times of war. As a result, one county in a certain kingdom would often be at war with a neighboring county. The fighting man either was killed in battle or he came out of it with increased glory and plunder, but the peasants and the common people had nothing to gain by war and everything to lose.

As we have seen, force ruled the world, and the common people had no voice in their government. The workers were looked down upon by the members of the fighting cla.s.s, who never did a stroke of work themselves and considered honest toil as degrading. In fact, as one writer has said, the only respectable trade in Europe in those days was what we today would call highway robbery.

France and England in the 15th Century

Gradually in most of the European countries the king was able to put down the power of his n.o.bles and make himself master over the whole nation. In this way a strong central power grew up in France. After the death of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, in 1477, no n.o.ble dared to question the leadership of the king of France. The same thing was true in England after the battle of Bosworth in 1485, which resulted in the death of King Richard III and the setting of the Tudor family on the throne.

Spain and Other Kingdoms

Spain had been divided into four little kingdoms: Leon, Castile, Aragon, and Granada, the latter ruled by the Moors. The nation marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabella of Castile and Leon joined the three Christian kingdoms into one, and after 1492, when the Moors were defeated and Granada annexed to the realm of Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain became one kingdom. About this time, also, there had grown up a strong kingdom of Hungary, a kingdom of Portugal, a kingdom of Poland, and one of Denmark. Norway was ruled by the Danes, but Sweden was a separate kingdom. In Russia, Czar Ivan the Terrible (1533-84) had built up a strong power which was still further strengthened by Czar Peter the Great (1690-1725).

The Holy Roman Empire