eir whole army on to
Serbia, with the result that in October the Serbs had to appeal to the
Tsar for help and an armistice was arranged, which lasted till February
1877. During the winter a conference was held in Constantinople to devise
means for alleviating the lot of the Christians in Turkey, and a peace was
arranged between Turkey and Serbia whereby the _status quo ante_ was
restored. But after the conference the heart of Turkey was again hardened
and the stipulations in favour of the Christians were not carried out.

In 1877 Russia declared war on Turkey (cf. chap. 10), and in the autumn of
the same year Serbia joined in. This time the armies of Prince Milan were
more successful, and conquered and occupied the whole of southern Serbia
including the towns and districts of Nish, Pirot, Vranja, and Leskovac,
Montenegro, which had not been included in the peace of the previous
winter, but had been fighting desperately and continuously against the
Turks ever since it had begun actively to help the Serb rebels of
Hercegovina in 1875, had a series of successes, as a result of which it
obtained possession of the important localities of Nik['s]i['c],
Podgorica, Budua, Antivari, and Dulcigno, the last three on the shore of
the Adriatic. By the Treaty of San Stefano the future interests of both
Serbia and Montenegro were jeopardised by the creation of a Great
Bulgaria, but that would not have mattered if in return they had been
given control of the purely Serb provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina,
which ethnically they can claim just as legitimately as Bulgaria claims
most of Macedonia. The Treaty of San Stefano was, however, soon replaced
by that of Berlin. By its terms both Serbia and Montenegro achieved
complete independence and the former ceased to be a tributary state of
Turkey. The Serbs were given the districts of southern Serbia which they
had occupied, and which are all ethnically Serb except Pirot, the
population of which is a sort of cross between Serb and Bulgar. The Serbs
also undertook to build a railway through their country to the Turkish and
Bulgarian frontiers. Montenegro was nearly doubled in size, receiving the
districts of Nik['s]i['c], Podgorica, and others; certain places in the
interior the Turks and Albanians absolutely refused to surrender, and to
compensate for these Montenegro was given a strip of coast with the
townlets of Antivari and Dulcigno. The memory of Gladstone, who specially
espoused Monten