rkish flood ebbed, the Balkan peoples gradually emerged, one after
another springing up into independent nationalities.

Now the two great forces that had been driving back the Turks during
the centuries were the Austrians and the Russians. And though these
two great Christian powers fought against the same enemy, there
gradually arose between them a bitter jealousy. Each was determined
that the Turk should be driven out of Europe, but each realized that
their two paths after the retreating Turk must soon converge in the
Balkan peninsula. Neither cared anything for the Christian peoples
who had been and were being oppressed by the Turks; that they were
freed from this oppression was merely incidental, though it was the
pretext for much of the warfare during this long period. But each of
these two great powers coveted the Balkan peninsula. To Austria
Saloniki would be an excellent seaport opening out on the
Mediterranean, for the Adriatic was dominated by Italy. Russia, on
her part, had her eyes on the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, which
would offer her an opening into the Mediterranean, to which she had
no access at all. Added to that, the people of the Balkans were
Slavs, blood kindred of the Russians, and could speedily be made
into loyal subjects of the czar. Such was the situation which
gradually evolved; which became more and more acute as the Turks
retreated into the Balkan peninsula proper, across the Danube. And
the first of the two grim powers to lead the pursuit down into the
peninsula was Russia in 1877, when she hurled her armies over the
Danube to "liberate" the Bulgars. From then on the Balkan problem
demanded the most serious attention of European diplomats.

[Illustration: Balkan States Before the First Balkan War.]

But the Balkan peoples that emerged, as the Turkish flood receded,
were very different from those that had been engulfed four centuries
previously. The Greeks had accepted the conquest, they bent rather
than broke. Therefore the Turks had granted them special privileges.
Their church and its clergy were spared and even given full
spiritual authority over the other Christian peoples. But the Slavs
fought stubbornly, not giving way until all their leaders were
slain, and what culture they possessed was thoroughly wiped out. The
Bulgars suffered especially, because they dwelt in the less
mountainous regions of the peninsula. The Serbians could,
occasionally, take refuge in the mountains of