Europe: A History (177 page)

The Crimean War (1853–6) took place when Britain and France decided to assist the Porte in efforts to defend the Danube principalities and to resist Russian claims of protection over the Ottomans’ Christian subjects. Austria immediately occupied the principalities, and the Western powers, aided by Sardinia, sent a punitive expedition to the Crimea. Despite nasty trench warfare, cholera, and appalling losses, the Allied siege of Sebastopol ñnally succeeded. The Peace of Paris (1856) neutralized the Black Sea, imposed a joint European protectorate over the Ottoman Christians, and guaranteed the integrity of both the Ottoman Empire and the principalities.
[ABKHAZIA]

None the less, the Russians were back in the Balkans within twenty years. On this occasion, the opening was provided by simultaneous revolts in three Ottoman provinces—in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. Military intervention by Serbia and Montenegro, diplomatic meddling by Austria, and the murder of 136 Turkish officials in Bulgaria elicited a ferocious Ottoman response. In May 1876 over 20,000 peasants were slaughtered in the notorious Bulgarian Horrors. In London, Gladstone raged: ‘Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, namely by carrying off themselves.’ In Constantinople, two successive sultans were overthrown. In St Petersburg, the Tsar felt duty-bound to protect the Balkan Christians. Two international conferences were convened to impose conditions on the new Sultan, Abdul Hamid II the Damned (r. 1876–1909), who baffled them all by promises of a parliamentary constitution. In April 1877 Russian armies invaded Ottoman territory on the Danube and in Armenia. Their advance was long delayed by stout Turkish resistance on the Balkan passes; but by January 1878 the Cossacks were threatening the walls of Constantinople. By the Treaty of San Stefano (1878) the Porte was obliged to accept the Tsar’s stiff terms, including the creation of an independent ‘Greater Bulgaria’ of alarming proportions (see Appendix III, p. 1245).

The Congress of Berlin, 13 June-13 July 1878, was convened to satisfy British and Austrian demands for the revision of the San Stefano Treaty and the curtailment of Russian ambitions. It was a grand diplomatic occasion, the last when all the European Powers could meet to settle their differences on equal terms. With Bismarck in the chair as the self-styled ‘honest broker’, it marked united Germany’s supreme status in Europe; and it drew the sting of the war fever, which filled the London music halls:

We don’t want to fight, but by jingo if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.
We’ve fought the Bear before, and while Britons will be true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople!
⁷¹

In many respects, however, the Congress exemplified the most cynical aspects of the European power game. None of the Balkan peoples was effectively represented.
None was treated with consideration: Bosnia and Herzegovina were handed over to Austrian occupation; Bulgaria was split in two, and excluded from the Aegean; Serbia, Montenegro, and Romania, patronizingly confirmed in their independence, were all refused the pieces of territory which they thought most important. The Powers, in contrast, simply helped themselves: Russia, denied the Straits, took Bessarabia from her Romanian ally; Britain took Cyprus from her Ottoman client; Austria took the Sanjak of Novi Bazar; Disraeli left Berlin claiming ‘Peace with Honour’. Not surprisingly, the Balkan nations were soon seeking their own, often violent solutions. The Powers abandoned the Concert, and sought security in bilateral treaties and alliances. The brakes were removed from the pursuit of national interest at all levels.

Land forces still provided the key to Continental politics. So long as this held true, it was possible to discern that Germany and Russia would be bound to play the preponderant roles in any generalized conflict. Of the five European Powers, three had serious military defects. Britain possessed a mighty navy but no conscript army. France was suffering a catastrophic fall in the birth rate that seriously threatened the supply of conscripts. The Austro-Hungarian army was technically and psychologically dependent on Germany.

The formation of two opposing diplomatic and military blocs took place over three decades. At first, Britain and France were kept apart by colonial rivalry, Britain and Russia by mutual suspicions over central Asia, Russia and France by tsarist-republican animosities. So for a time Bismarck was free to construct a system that would protect Germany from French revenge. In 1879 he forged the Dual Alliance with Austria, in 1881–7 the
Dreikaiserbund
of Germany, Austria, and Russia, from 1882 the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria, and Italy, in 1884–7 and 1887–90 the two ‘reinsurance treaties’ with Russia. Yet the logic of Europe’s two most intense political passions—France’s loathing for Germany and Russia’s longing for the Straits—was sure to assert itself. France was bound to seek escape from the web which Bismarck had so brilliantly woven; and Russia was bound to chafe at the check on her Balkan ambitions. Hence, in the years after Bismarck’s dismissal, Russia’s relations with Germany cooled: and the Tsar looked for new partners. In 1893, with French banks already investing heavily in Russian concerns, the Franco-Russian Alliance was signed between Paris and St Petersburg. At a stroke, France escaped from isolation, regained her confidence, and threatened Germany from both sides. In 1904, France settled her differences with Britain, and entered the
Entente Cordiale
. In 1907, after the Anglo-Russian agreement over Persia, the way was finally opened for the Triple Entente of France, Britain, and Russia.

At the time, it may have seemed that Europe’s diplomatic kaleidoscope had thrown up just another temporary constellation. Both the Triple Alliance and the Triple
Entente
were essentially defensive in nature; and there were still several loose ends. Both Britain and Germany, for example, were still hoping to reach an accommodation, despite their differences. In fact, with the West and East combining against the Centre, the Powers had manoeuvred themselves into a strategic configuration whose stresses were to be played out for the rest of the twentieth
century. Almost without noticing, Europe had divided itself into two massive armed camps; and there was no ‘honest broker’ left. (See Appendix III, p. 1312)

Developments in military technology remained sluggish through much of the century, though important organizational and logistical changes took place. Railways revolutionized the existing methods of transport, mobilization, and supply. The work of the General Staffs was redesigned on the Prussian model in order to deal with the permanent flow of conscripts. But apart from their rifled percussion muskets, the armies of the Crimea were much like those of Austerlitz. The effect of rifled barrels was felt only gradually, first in the Prussian Dreyse needle gun of 1866, then in the superior French
chassepot
rifle and the Krupp breech-loading cannon of 1870. In naval design, steam-driven and armour-plated warships came into vogue. Yet the thorough exploitation of modern machines and modern chemicals had to await the advent in the 1880s of high explosives, the machine-gun, and long-range artillery,
[NOBEL]

Despite the absence of major engagements after 1871, it is not true to say that military theorists failed to consider the impact of the new weapons. One writer, the Polish railway magnate Jan Bloch, argued in
La Guerre future
(1898) that offensive war had ceased to be a viable proposition. The reaction of most generals was to demand the supply of more troops.
⁷²
As the numbers multiplied, and battlefield prognosis promised stalemate, the realization dawned that mobilization procedures might provide the key to victory. General mobilization was judged more threatening than mere declarations of war. Yet there were few signs of urgency. In the heyday of imperialism, Europe’s armies were much more likely to be facing spear-carrying tribesmen than each other.

None the less, a growing awareness of the potential for large-scale conflict gave rise to the science of geopolitics. The tentacles of imperial power circled a globe that was now criss-crossed by world-wide communications. It was only to be expected that military and political strategists should begin to think in global terms. In his seminal lecture ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’ (1904), Halford Mackinder (1861–1947), Oxford’s first Professor of Geography, remarked that there was no more virgin territory into which the empires could expand. So competition over existing resources was bound to intensify. The progress of that competition would be constrained both by the distribution of population and by the configuration of the continents. In a sensational map entitled ‘The Natural Seats of Power’, he marked out Eurasian Russia as the location of the world’s supreme natural fortress. This ‘heartland’ was ringed by an ‘inner crescent’ of semi-continental powers from Britain to China, and by an oceanic ‘outer crescent’ linking the Americas with Africa, Australasia, and Japan. In the first instance, his aim was to warn the Western powers against a possible conjunction of Russia with Germany. At a later stage, when advocating the creation of a belt of strong new states to keep Russia and Germany apart, he coined the famous formula:

Who rules eastern Europe, commands the Heartland;
Who rules the Heartland, commands the World-island;
Who rules the World-Island, commands the World.
⁷³

Mackinder’s ideas were destined to be taken very seriously in Germany, as they were, in the subsequent era of air power, in the USA.

In the first dozen years of the twentieth century, the long European peace still held. But fears began to be expressed about its fragility. Franco-German rivalry, recurrent Balkan crises, antagonistic diplomatic blocks, imperialist frictions, and the naval arms race all combined to raise the temperature of international relations. One alarm sounded in Bosnia in 1908, another at Agadir in 1911. Whilst all the Powers professed a desire for continued peace, all were preparing for war.
[EULENBERG]

The Bosnian crisis indicated where Europe’s most likely flash-point lay. Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia in 1908 without a shred of legal justification, having occupied and administered the country for the previous thirty years by international mandate. But Kaiser Wilhelm declared that he would fight at Austria’s side ‘like a knight in shining armour’; and the Powers felt unable to intervene. Austria’s
démarche
robbed Belgrade of its hopes of a Greater Serbia, and served notice on Russia about further meddling. It was also a factor in the revolt of the ‘Young Turks’ who in 1908–9 took over the Ottoman government, throwing themselves into a programme of nationalism and modernization. Above all, it convinced the Balkan states that their differences could only be settled among themselves and by force.