[Fall of Plevna, Dec. 10.]

The three defeats at Plevna cast a sinister light upon the Russian military administration and the quality of its chiefs. The soldiers had fought heroically; divisional generals like Skobeleff had done all that man could do in such positions; the faults were those of the headquarters and the officers by whom the Imperial Family were surrounded. After the third catastrophe, public opinion called for the removal of the authors of these disasters and the employment of abler men. Todleben, the defender of Sebastopol, who for some unknown reason had been left without a command, was now summoned to Bulgaria, and virtually placed at the head of the army before Plevna. He saw that the stronghold of Osman could only be reduced by a regular siege, and prepared to draw his lines right round it. For a time Osman kept open his communications with the south-west, and heavy trains of ammunition and supplies made their way into Plevna from this direction; but the investment was at length completed, and the army of Plevna cut off from the world. In the meantime new regiments were steadily pouring into Bulgaria from the interior of Russia. East of the Jantra, after many alternations of fortune, the Turks were finally driven back behind the river Lom. The last efforts of Suleiman failed to wrest the Shipka Pa.s.s from its defenders. From the narrow line which the invaders had with such difficulty held during three anxious months their forces, acc.u.mulating day by day, spread out south and west up to the slopes of the Balkans, ready to burst over the mountain-barrier and sweep the enemy back to the walls of Constantinople when once Plevna should have fallen and the army which besieged it should be added to the invader's strength. At length, in the second week of December, Osman's supply of food was exhausted. Victor in three battles, he refused to surrender without one more struggle. On the 10th of December, after distributing among his men what there remained of provisions, he made a desperate effort to break out towards the west. His columns dashed in vain against the besieger's lines; behind him his enemies pressed forward into the positions which he had abandoned; a ring of fire like that of Sedan surrounded the Turkish army; and after thousands had fallen in a hopeless conflict, the general and the troops who for five months had held in check the collected forces of the Russian Empire surrendered to their conqueror.

[Crossing of the Balkans, Dec. 25-Jan. 8.]

[Capitulation of Shipka, Jan. 9.]

[Russians enter Adrianople, Jan. 20, 1878.]

If in the first stages of the war there was little that did credit to Russia's military capacity, the energy that marked its close made amends for what had gone before. Winter was descending in extreme severity: the Balkans were a ma.s.s of snow and ice; but no obstacle could now bar the invader's march. Gourko, in command of an army that had gathered to the south-west of Plevna, made his way through the mountains above Etropol in the last days of December, and, driving the Turks from Sophia, pressed on towards Philippopolis and Adrianople. Farther east two columns crossed the Balkans by bye-paths right and left of the Shipka Pa.s.s, and then, converging on Shipka itself, fell upon the rear of the Turkish army which still blocked the southern outlet. Simultaneously a third corps marched down the pa.s.s from the north and a.s.sailed the Turks in front. After a fierce struggle the entire Turkish army, thirty-five thousand strong, laid down its arms. There now remained only one considerable force between the invaders and Constantinople. This body, which was commanded by Suleiman, held the road which runs along the valley of the Maritza, at a point somewhat to the east of Philippopolis. Against it Gourko advanced from the west, while the victors of Shipka, descending due south through Kesanlik, barred the line of retreat towards Adrianople. The last encounter of the war took place on the 17th of January. Suleiman's army, routed and demoralised, succeeded in making its escape to the aegean coast. Pursuit was unnecessary, for the war was now practically over. On the 20th of January the Russians made their entry into Adrianople; in the next few days their advanced guard touched the Sea of Marmora at Rodosto.

[Armistice, Jan. 31.]

Immediately after the fall of Plevna the Porte had applied to the European Powers for their mediation. Disasters in Asia had already warned it not to delay submission too long; for in the middle of October Mukhtar Pasha had been driven from his positions, and a month later Kars had been taken by storm. The Russians had subsequently penetrated into Armenia and had captured the outworks of Erzeroum. Each day that now pa.s.sed brought the Ottoman Empire nearer to destruction. Servia again declared war; the Montenegrins made themselves masters of the coast-towns and of border-territory north and south; Greece seemed likely to enter into the struggle. Baffled in his attempt to gain the common mediation of the Powers, the Sultan appealed to the Queen of England personally for her good offices in bringing the conflict to a close. In reply to a telegram from London, the Czar declared himself willing to treat for peace as soon as direct communications should be addressed to his representatives by the Porte. On the 14th of January commissioners were sent to the headquarters of the Grand Duke Nicholas at Kesanlik to treat for an armistice and for preliminaries of peace. The Russians, now in the full tide of victory, were in no hurry to agree with their adversary. Nicholas bade the Turkish envoys accompany him to Adrianople, and it was not until the 31st of January that the armistice was granted and the preliminaries of peace signed.

[England.]

[Vote of Credit, Jan. 28-Feb. 8.]

[Fleet pa.s.ses the Dardanelles, Feb. 6.]

While the Turkish envoys were on their journey to the Russian headquarters, the session of Parliament opened at London. The Ministry had declared at the outbreak of the war that Great Britain would remain neutral unless its own interests should be imperilled, and it had defined these interests with due clearness both in its communications with the Russian Amba.s.sador and in its statements in Parliament. It was laid down that Her Majesty's Government could not permit the blockade of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, or the extension of military operations to Egypt; that it could not witness with indifference the pa.s.sing of Constantinople into other hands than those of its present possessors; and that it would entertain serious objections to any material alterations in the rules made under European sanction for the navigation of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. [552] In reply to Lord Derby's note which formulated these conditions of neutrality Prince Gortschakoff had repeated the Czar's a.s.surance that the acquisition of Constantinople was excluded from his views, and had promised to undertake no military operation in Egypt; he had, however, let it be understood that, as an incident of warfare, the reduction of Constantinople might be necessary like that of any other capital. In the Queen's speech at the opening of Parliament, Ministers stated that the conditions on which the neutrality of England was founded had not hitherto been infringed by either belligerent, but that, should hostilities be prolonged, some unexpected occurrence might render it necessary to adopt measures of precaution, measures which could not be adequately prepared without an appeal to the liberality of Parliament. From language subsequently used by Lord Beaconsfield's colleagues, it would appear that the Cabinet had some apprehension that the Russian army, escaping from the Czar's control, might seize and attempt permanently to hold Constantinople. On the 23rd of January orders were sent to Admiral Hornby, commander of the fleet at Besika Bay, to pa.s.s the Dardanelles, and proceed to Constantinople. Lord Derby, who saw no necessity for measures of a warlike character until the result of the negotiations at Adrianople should become known, now resigned office; but on the reversal of the order to Admiral Hornby he rejoined the Cabinet. On the 28th of January, after the bases of peace had been communicated by Count Schouvaloff to the British Government but before they had been actually signed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer moved for a vote of 6,000,000 for increasing the armaments of the country. This vote was at first vigorously opposed on the ground that none of the stated conditions of England's neutrality had been infringed, and that in the conditions of peace between Russia and Turkey there was nothing that justified a departure from the policy which England had hitherto pursued. In the course of the debates, however, a telegram arrived from Mr. Layard, Elliot's successor at Constantinople, stating that notwithstanding the armistice the Russians were pushing on towards the capital; that the Turks had been compelled to evacuate Silivria on the Sea of Marmora; that the Russian general was about to occupy Tchataldja, an outpost of the last line of defence not thirty miles from Constantinople; and that the Porte was in great alarm, and unable to understand the Russian proceedings. The utmost excitement was caused at Westminster by this telegram. The fleet was at once ordered to Constantinople. Mr. Forster, who had led the opposition to the vote of credit, sought to withdraw his amendment; and although on the following day, with the arrival of the articles of the armistice, it appeared that the Russians were simply moving up to the accepted line of demarcation, and that the Porte could hardly have been ignorant of this when Layard's telegram was despatched, the alarm raised in London did not subside, and the vote of credit was carried by a majority of above two hundred. [553]

[Imminence of war with England.]

When a victorious army is, without the intervention of some external Power, checked in its work of conquest by the negotiation of an armistice, it is invariably made a condition that positions shall be handed over to it which it does not at the moment occupy, but which it might reasonably expect to have conquered within a certain date, had hostilities not been suspended.

The armistice granted to Austria by Napoleon after the battle of Marengo involved the evacuation of the whole of Upper Italy; the armistice which Bismarck offered to the French Government of Defence at the beginning of the siege of Paris would have involved the surrender of Strasburg and of Toul. In demanding that the line of demarcation should be carried almost up to the walls of Constantinople the Russians were asking for no more than would certainly have been within their hands had hostilities been prolonged for a few weeks, or even days. Deeply as the conditions of the armistice agitated the English people, it was not in these conditions, but in the conditions of the peace which was to follow, that the true cause of contention between England and Russia, if cause there was, had to be found.

Nevertheless, the approach of the Russians to Gallipoli and the lines of Tchataldja, followed, as it was, by the despatch of the British fleet to Constantinople, brought Russia and Great Britain within a hair's breadth of war. It was in vain that Lord Derby described the fleet as sent only for the protection of the lives and property of British subjects. Gortschakoff, who was superior in amenities of this kind, replied that the Russian Government had exactly the same end in view, with the distinction that its protection would be extended to all Christians. Should the British fleet appear at the Bosphorus, Russian troops would, in the fulfilment of a common duty of humanity, enter Constantinople. Yielding to this threat, Lord Beaconsfield bade the fleet halt at a convenient point in the Sea of Marmora. On both sides preparations were made for immediate action. The guns on our ships stood charged for battle; the Russians strewed the shallows with torpedoes. Had a Russian soldier appeared on the heights of Gallipoli, had an Englishman landed on the Asiatic sh.o.r.e of the Bosphorus, war would at once have broken out. But after some weeks of extreme danger the perils of mere contiguity pa.s.sed away, and the decision between peace and war was transferred from the accidents of tent and quarter deck to the deliberations of statesmen a.s.sembled in Congress.

[Treaty of San Stefano, Mar. 3.]

The bases of Peace which were made the condition of the armistice granted at Adrianople formed with little alteration the substance of the Treaty signed by Russia and Turkey at San Stefano, a village on the Sea of Marmora, on the 3rd of March. By this Treaty the Porte recognised the independence of Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania, and made considerable cessions of territory to the two former States. Bulgaria was const.i.tuted an autonomous tributary Princ.i.p.ality, with a Christian Government and a national militia. Its frontier, which was made so extensive as to include the greater part of European Turkey, was defined as beginning near Midia on the Black Sea, not sixty miles from the Bosphorus; pa.s.sing thence westwards just to the north of Adrianople; descending to the aegean Sea, and following the coast as far as the Thracian Chersonese; then pa.s.sing inland westwards, so as barely to exclude Salonika; running on to the border of Albania within fifty miles of the Adriatic, and from this point following the Albanian border up to the new Servian frontier. The Prince of Bulgaria was to be freely elected by the population, and confirmed by the Porte with the a.s.sent of the Powers; a system of administration was to be drawn up by an a.s.sembly of Bulgarian notables; and the introduction of the new system into Bulgaria with the superintendence of its working was to be entrusted for two years to a Russian Commissioner. Until the native militia was organised, Russian troops, not exceeding fifty thousand in number, were to occupy the country; this occupation, however, was to be limited to a term approximating to two years. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the proposals laid before the Porte at the first sitting of the Conference of 1876 were to be immediately introduced, subject to such modifications as might be agreed upon between Turkey, Russia, and Austria. The Porte undertook to apply scrupulously in Crete the Organic Law which had been drawn up in 1868, taking into account the previously expressed wishes of the native population. An a.n.a.logous law, adapted to local requirements, was, after being communicated to the Czar, to be introduced into Epirus, Thessaly, and the other parts of Turkey in Europe for which a special const.i.tution was not provided by the Treaty. Commissions, in which the native population was to be largely represented, were in each province to be entrusted with the task of elaborating the details of the new organisation. In Armenia the Sultan undertook to carry into effect without further delay the improvements and reforms demanded by local requirements, and to guarantee the security of the Armenians from Kurds and Circa.s.sians. As an indemnity for the losses and expenses of the war the Porte admitted itself to be indebted to Russia in the sum of fourteen hundred million roubles; but in accordance with the wishes of the Sultan, and in consideration of the financial embarra.s.sments of Turkey, the Czar consented to accept in subst.i.tution for the greater part of this sum the cession of the Dobrudscha in Europe, and of the districts of Ardahan, Kars, Batoum, and Bayazid in Asia. As to the balance of three hundred million roubles left due to Russia, the mode of payment or guarantee was to be settled by an understanding between the two Governments. The Dobrudscha was to be given by the Czar to Roumania in exchange for Bessarabia, which this State was to transfer to Russia. The complete evacuation of Turkey in Europe was to take place within three months, that of Turkey in Asia within six months, from the conclusion of peace. [554]

[Congress proposed.]

[Opposite purposes of Russia and England.]

It had from the first been admitted by the Russian Government that questions affecting the interests of Europe at large could not be settled by a Treaty between Russia and Turkey alone, but must form the subject of European agreement. Early in February the Emperor of Austria had proposed that a European Conference should a.s.semble at his own capital. It was subsequently agreed that Berlin, instead of Vienna, should be the place of meeting, and instead of a Conference a Congress should be held, that is, an international a.s.sembly of the most solemn form, in which each of the Powers is represented not merely by an amba.s.sador or an envoy, but by its leading Ministers. But the question at once arose whether there existed in the mind of the Russian Government a distinction between parts of the Treaty of San Stefano bearing on the interests of Europe generally and parts which affected no States but Russia and Turkey; and whether, in this case, Russia was willing that Europe should be the judge of the distinction, or, on the contrary, claimed for itself the right of withholding portions of the Treaty from the cognisance of the European Court. In accepting the principle of a Congress, Lord Derby on behalf of Great Britain made it a condition that every article of the Treaty without exception should be laid before the Congress, not necessarily as requiring the concurrence of the Powers, but in order that the Powers themselves might in each case decide whether their concurrence was necessary or not. To this demand Prince Gortschakoff offered the most strenuous resistance, claiming for Russia the liberty of accepting, or not accepting, the discussion of any question that might be raised. It would clearly have been in the power of the Russian Government, had this condition been granted, to exclude from the consideration of Europe precisely those matters which in the opinion of other States were most essentially of European import. Phrases of conciliation were suggested; but no ingenuity of language could shade over the difference of purpose which separated the rival Powers. Every day the chances of the meeting of the Congress seemed to be diminishing, the approach of war between Russia and Great Britain more unmistakable. Lord Beaconsfield called out the Reserves and summoned troops from India; even the project of seizing a port in Asia Minor in case the Sultan should fall under Russian influence was discussed in the Cabinet. Unable to reconcile himself to these vigorous measures, Lord Derby, who had long been at variance with the Premier, now finally withdrew from the Cabinet (March 28). He was succeeded in his office by the Marquis of Salisbury, whose comparison of his relative and predecessor to t.i.tus Oates revived the interest of the diplomatic world in a now forgotten period of English history.

[Circular of April 1.]

The new Foreign Secretary had not been many days in office when a Circular, despatched to all the Foreign Courts, summed up the objections of Great Britain to the Treaty of San Stefano. It was pointed out that a strong Slavic State would be created under the control of Russia, possessing important harbours upon the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea and the Archipelago, and giving to Russia a preponderating influence over political and commercial relations on both those seas; that a large Greek population would be merged in a dominant Slavic majority; that by the extension of Bulgaria to the Archipelago the Albanian and Greek provinces left to the Sultan would be severed from Constantinople; that the annexation of Bessarabia and of Batoum would make the will of the Russian Government dominant over all the vicinity of the Black Sea; that the acquisition of the strongholds of Armenia would place the population of that province under the immediate influence of the Power that held these strongholds, while through the cession of Bayazid the European trade from Trebizond to Persia would become liable to be arrested by the prohibitory barriers of the Russian commercial system. Finally, by the stipulation for an indemnity which it was beyond the power of Turkey to discharge, and by the reference of the mode of payment or guarantee to a later settlement, Russia had placed it in its power either to extort yet larger cessions of territory, or to force Turkey into engagements subordinating its policy in all things to that of St. Petersburg.

[Count Schouvaloff.]

[Secret agreement, May 30th.]

[Convention with Turkey, June 4.]

[Cyprus.]

It was the object of Lord Salisbury to show that the effects of the Treaty of San Stefano, taken in a ma.s.s, threatened the peace and the interests of Europe, and therefore, whatever might be advanced for or against individual stipulations of the Treaty, that the Treaty as a whole, and not clauses selected by one Power, must be submitted to the Congress if the examination was not to prove illusory. This was a just line of argument. Nevertheless it was natural to suppose that some parts of the Treaty must be more distasteful than others to Great Britain; and Count Schouvaloff, who was sincerely desirous of peace, applied himself to the task of discovering with what concessions Lord Beaconsfield's Cabinet would be satisfied. He found that if Russia would consent to modifications of the Treaty in Congress excluding Bulgaria from the Aegean Sea, reducing its area on the south and west, dividing it into two provinces, and restoring the Balkans to the Sultan as a military frontier, giving back Bayazid to the Turks, and granting to other Powers besides Russia a voice in the organisation of Epirus, Thessaly, and the other Christian provinces of the Porte, England might be induced to accept without essential change the other provisions of San Stefano. On the 7th of May Count Schouvaloff quitted London for St.

Petersburg, in order to lay before the Czar the results of his communications with the Cabinet, and to acquaint him with the state of public opinion in England. On his journey hung the issues of peace or war.

Backed by the counsels of the German Emperor, Schouvaloff succeeded in his mission. The Czar determined not to risk the great results already secured by insisting on the points contested, and Schouvaloff returned to London authorised to conclude a pact with the British Government on the general basis which had been laid down. On the 30th of May a secret agreement, in which the above were the princ.i.p.al points, was signed, and the meeting of the Congress for the examination of the entire Treaty of San Stefano was now a.s.sured. But it was not without the deepest anxiety and regret that Lord Beaconsfield consented to the annexation of Batoum and the Armenian fortresses. He obtained indeed an a.s.surance in the secret agreement with Schouvaloff that the Russian frontier should be no more extended on the side of Turkey in Asia; but his policy did not stop short here. By a Convention made with the Sultan on the 4th of June, Great Britain engaged, in the event of any further aggression by Russia upon the Asiatic territories of the Sultan, to defend these territories by force of arms.

The Sultan in return promised to introduce the necessary reforms, to be agreed upon by the two Powers, for the protection of the Christian and other subjects of the Porte in these territories, and further a.s.signed the Island of Cyprus to be occupied and administered by England. It was stipulated by a humorous after-clause that if Russia should restore to Turkey its Armenian conquests, Cyprus would be evacuated by England, and the Convention itself should be at an end. [555]

[Congress of Berlin, June 13-July 13.]

[Treaty of Berlin, July 13.]

The Congress of Berlin, at which the Premier himself and Lord Salisbury represented Great Britain, opened on the 13th of June. Though the compromise between England and Russia had been settled in general terms, the arrangement of details opened such a series of difficulties that the Congress seemed more than once on the point of breaking up. It was mainly due to the perseverance and wisdom of Prince Bismarck, who transferred the discussion of the most crucial points from the Congress to private meetings of his guests, and who himself acted as conciliator when Gortschakoff folded up his maps or Lord Beaconsfield ordered a special train, that the work was at length achieved. The Treaty of Berlin, signed on the 13th of July, confined Bulgaria, as an autonomous Princ.i.p.ality, to the country north of the Balkans, and diminished the authority which, pending the establishment of its definitive system of government, would by the Treaty of San Stefano have belonged to a Russian commissioner. The portion of Bulgaria south of the Balkans, but extending no farther west than the valley of the Maritza, and no farther south than Mount Rhodope, was formed into a Province of East Roumelia, to remain subject to the direct political and military authority of the Sultan, under conditions of administrative autonomy. The Sultan was declared to possess the right of erecting fortifications both on the coast and on the land-frontier of this province, and of maintaining troops there. Alike in Bulgaria and in Eastern Roumelia the period of occupation by Russian troops was limited to nine months.

Bosnia and Herzegovina were handed over to Austria, to be occupied and administered by that Power. The cessions of territory made to Servia and Montenegro in the Treaty of San Stefano were modified with the object of interposing a broader strip between these two States; Bayazid was omitted from the ceded districts in Asia, and the Czar declared it his intention to erect Batoum into a free port, essentially commercial. At the instance of France the provisions relating to the Greek Provinces of Turkey were superseded by a vote in favour of the cession of part of these Provinces to the h.e.l.lenic Kingdom. The Sultan was recommended to cede Thessaly and part of Epirus to Greece, the Powers reserving to themselves the right of offering their mediation to facilitate the negotiations. In other respects the provisions of the Treaty of San Stefano were confirmed without substantial change.

[Comparison of the two Treaties.]

Lord Beaconsfield returned to London, bringing, as he said, peace with honour. It was claimed, in the despatch to our Amba.s.sadors which accompanied the publication of the Treaty of Berlin, that in this Treaty the cardinal objections raised by the British Government to the Treaty of San Stefano had found an entire remedy. "Bulgaria," wrote Lord Salisbury, "is now confined to the river-barrier of the Danube, and consequently has not only ceased to possess any harbour on the Archipelago, but is removed by more than a hundred miles from the neighbourhood of that sea. On the Euxine the important port of Bourgas has been restored to the Government of Turkey; and Bulgaria retains less than half the sea-board originally a.s.signed to it, and possesses no other port except the roadstead of Varna, which can hardly be used for any but commercial purposes. The replacement under Turkish rule of Bourgas and the southern half of the sea-board on the Euxine, and the strictly commercial character a.s.signed to Batoum, have largely obviated the menace to the liberty of the Black Sea. The political outposts of Russian power have been pushed back to the region beyond the Balkans; the Sultan's dominions have been provided with a defensible frontier." It was in short the contention of the English Government that while Russia, in the pretended emanc.i.p.ation of a great part of European Turkey by the Treaty of San Stefano, had but acquired a new dependency, England, by insisting on the division of Bulgaria, had baffled this plan and restored to Turkey an effective military dominion over all the country south of the Balkans. That Lord Beaconsfield did well in severing Macedonia from the Slavic State of Bulgaria there is little reason to doubt; that, having so severed it, he did ill in leaving it without a European guarantee for good government, every successive year made more plain; the wisdom of his treatment of Bulgaria itself must, in the light of subsequent events, remain matter for controversy. It may fairly be said that in dealing with Bulgaria English statesmen were, on the whole, dealing with the unknown.

Nevertheless, had guidance been accepted from the history of the other Balkan States, a.n.a.logies were not altogether wanting or altogether remote.

During the present century three Christian States had been formed out of what had been Ottoman territory: Servia, Greece, and Roumania. Not one of these had become a Russian Province, or had failed to develop and maintain a distinct national existence. In Servia an attempt had been made to retain for the Porte the right of keeping troops in garrison. This attempt had proved a mistake. So long as the right was exercised it had simply been a source of danger and disquiet, and it had finally been abandoned by the Porte itself. In the case of Greece, Russia, with a view to its own interests, had originally proposed that the country should be divided into four autonomous provinces tributary to the Sultan: against this the Greeks had protested, and Canning had successfully supported their protest. Even the appointment of an ex-Minister of St. Petersburg, Capodistrias, as first President of Greece in 1827 had failed to bring the liberated country under Russian influence; and in the course of the half-century which had since elapsed it had become one of the commonplaces of politics, accepted by every school in every country of Western Europe, that the Powers had committed a great error in 1833 in not extending to far larger dimensions the Greek Kingdom which they then established. In the case of Roumania, the British Government had, out of fear of Russia, insisted in 1856 that the provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia should remain separate: the result was that the inhabitants in defiance of England effected their union, and that after a few years had pa.s.sed there was not a single politician in England who regarded their union otherwise than with satisfaction. If history taught anything in the solution of the Eastern question, it taught that the effort to reserve for the Sultan a military existence in countries which had pa.s.sed from under his general control was futile, and that the best barrier against Russian influence was to be found not in the division but in the strengthening and consolidation of the States rescued from Ottoman dominions.

It was of course open to English statesmen in 1878 to believe that all that had hitherto pa.s.sed in the Balkan Peninsula had no bearing upon the problems of the hour, and that, whatever might have been the case with Greece, Servia, and Roumania, Bulgaria stood on a completely different footing, and called for the application of principles not based on the experience of the past but on the divinations of superior minds. Should the history of succeeding years bear out this view, should the Balkans become a true military frontier for Turkey, should Northern Bulgaria sink to the condition of a Russian dependency, and Eastern Roumelia, in severance from its enslaved kin, abandon itself to a thriving ease behind the garrisons of the reforming Ottoman, Lord Beaconsfield will have deserved the fame of a statesman whose intuitions, undimmed by the mists of experience, penetrated the secret of the future, and shaped, because they discerned, the destiny of nations. It will be the task of later historians to measure the exact period after the Congress of Berlin at which the process indicated by Lord Beaconsfield came into visible operation; it is the misfortune of those whose view is limited by a single decade to have to record that in every particular, with the single exception of the severance of Macedonia from the Slavonic Princ.i.p.ality, Lord Beaconsfield's ideas, purposes and antic.i.p.ations, in so far as they related to Eastern Europe, have hitherto been contradicted by events. What happened in Greece, Servia, and Roumania has happened in Bulgaria. Experience, thrown to the winds by English Ministers in 1878, has justified those who listened to its voice. There exists no such thing as a Turkish fortress on the Balkans; Bourgas no more belongs to the Sultan than Athens or Belgrade; no Turkish soldier has been able to set foot within the territory whose very name, Eastern Roumelia, was to stamp it as Turkish dominion. National independence, a living force in Greece, in Servia, in Roumania, has proved its power in Bulgaria too.

The efforts of Russia to establish its influence over a people liberated by its arms have been repelled with unexpected firmness. Like the divided members of Roumania, the divided members of Bulgaria have effected their union. In this union, in the growing material and moral force of the Bulgarian State, Western Europe sees a power wholly favourable to its own hopes for the future of the East, wholly adverse to the extension of Russian rule: and it has been reserved for Lord Beaconsfield's colleague at the Congress of Berlin, regardless of the fact that Bulgaria north of the Balkans, not the southern Province, created that vigorous military and political organisation which was the precursor of national union, to explain that in dividing Bulgaria into two portions the English Ministers of 1878 intended to promote its ultimate unity, and that in subjecting the southern half to the Sultan's rule they laid the foundation for its ultimate independence.

[1] Chapters I. to XI. of this Edition.

[2] Chapters XII. to XVIII. of this Edition.

[3] Page 362 of this Edition.

[4] Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn der Revolutionskriege, p. 90, Vivenot, Quellen zur Geschichte der Kaiserpolitik Oesterreichs, i. 185, 208.

[5] Von Sybel, Geschichte der Revolutionszeit, i. 289.

[6] Vivenot, Quellen, i. 372. Buchez et Roux, xiii. 340, xiv. 24.

[7] Hausser, Deutsche Geschichte, i. 88. Vivenot, Herzog Albrecht, i. 78.

[8] Springer, Geschichte Oesterreichs, i. 46.

[9] Pertz, Leben Stein, ii. 402. Paget, Travels in Hungary, i. 131.

[10] Ranke, Ursprung und Beginn, p. 256. Vivenot, Quellen, i. 133, 165. The acquisition of Bavaria was declared by the Austrian Cabinet to be the _summum bonum_ of the monarchy.

[11] Biedermann, Deutschland im Achtzehnten Jahrhundert, iv. 1144.