Читать книгу The World War and What was Behind It; Or, The Story of the Map of Europe - Louis Paul Bénézet - Страница 23

Table of Contents

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.

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 (mĕs′ō pō tā′ mĭ ā) and Asia Minor. (Mesopotamia is the district lying between the Tigris (tī′grĭs) and Euphrates (ūfrā′tēz) 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 class. 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 (tzẽr nä gō′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 (sō bĭ ĕs′kĭ), 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.

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.