Chapter CXIX: Appendix: B

NOTES TO FOUR MAPS OF THE BALKAN PENINSULA. (TWELFTH TO THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.)

There exists to-day upon the map of Europe no section whose historical geography has a greater present interest than the Danubian, Balkan and Levantine states. It is these and the Austro-Hungarian lands immediately adjoining which have formed one of the great fulcrums for those national movements which constitute the prime feature of the historical geography of the present age.

Upon the present map of Europe in this quarter we discover a number of separate and diminutive national entities, the _Roumanian, Bulgarian, Servian_ and Montenegrin, the _Greek_ and _Albanian_, all struggling desperately to establish themselves on the debris of the crumbling Turkish Empire.

What the issue will be of these numerous and mutually conflicting struggles for separate national existence it is out of our province to forecast.

It is only intended in this map series to throw all possible light on their true character from the lessons and analogies of the past. At first sight the period treated in the four Levantine maps (from the last of the twelfth to the middle of the fifteenth century) must appear the most intricate and the most obscure in the entire history of this region. The most intricate it certainly is, and possibly the most obscure, though the obscurity arises largely from neglect. Its importance, however, arises from the fact that it is the only past period of Levantine history which presents a clear analogy to the present, not alone in its purely transitionary character, but also from the several national movements which during this time were diligently at work.

During the Roman and the earlier Byzantine periods, which from their continuity may be taken as one, any special tendency was of course stifled under the preponderant rule of a single great empire.

The same was equally true at a later time, when all of these regions passed under the rule of the _Turk_. These four maps treat of that most interesting period intervening between the crumbling of the Byzantine power and the Turkish conquest. That in our own day the crumbling in turn of the Turkish power has repeated, in its general features, the same historical situation, is the point upon which the interest must inevitably centre.

What the outcome will be in modern times forms the most interesting of political studies. Whether the native races of the Danube, the Balkans and the southern peninsula are to work out their full national development, either federately or independently, or whether they are destined to pass again, as is threatened, under the domination of another and greater empire, is one of the most important of the questions which agitates the mind of the modern European statesman. That the latter outcome is now the less likely is due to the great unfolding of separate national spirit which marks so strongly the age in which we live. The reason why the previous age treated in this map series ended in nothing better than foreign and Mohammedan conquest may perhaps be sought in the imperfect development of this same national spirit.

THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE.

The first map (Asia Minor and the Balkans near the close of the twelfth century) is intended to show the geographical situation as it existed immediately prior to the dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantine Empire of this period is in itself an important study. It must be regarded more as the offspring than the direct continuation of the great East-Roman Empire of Arcadius and Justinian; for with the centuries which had intervened the great changes in polity, internal geography, external neighbors and lastly the continual geographical contraction, present us with an entirely new series of relations. It is this geographical contraction which concerns us most vitally, for with it the frontiers of the empire conform more and more closely to the ethnic limits of the _Greek_ nation. The later Byzantine Empire was, therefore, essentially a Greek Empire, and as such it appeals most vividly to the national consciousness of the Greek of our own time. The restoration of this empire, with the little kingdom of free Greece as the nucleus, is the vision which inspires the more aggressive and venturesome school of modern Greek politicians. In the twelfth century the bulk of Asia Minor had been wrested from the Byzantine Empire by the _Turks_, but it was the Crusaders, not the _Turks_, who overthrew the first empire. In one view this fact is fortunate, otherwise there would have been no transition period whose study would be productive of such fruitful results.

Owing to the artful policy of the Comnenian emperors, the Byzantine Empire actually profited by the early crusades and was enabled through them to recover a considerable part of Asia Minor from the Turks. This apparent success, however, was only the prelude to final disaster.

Isolated from western Christendom by the schism, the _Greeks_ were an object of suspicion and hatred to the Latin Crusaders and it only required a slight abatement of the original crusading spirit for their warlike ardor to be diverted from Jerusalem to Constantinople. Cyprus was torn away from the Greek Empire and created a separate kingdom under Latin rule, in 1191. Finally, the so-called Fourth Crusade, controlled by Venetian intrigue, ended in the complete dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire (1204).

{vii}

This nefarious enterprise forms a dark spot in history: it also ushers in the greatest period of geographical intricacy in Levantine annals, the geography which immediately resulted from it is not directly shown in this Levantine map series, but can be seen on the general map of Europe at the opening of the thirteenth century. Briefly stated, it represented the establishment of a fragmentary and disjointed Latin Empire in the place of the former Greek Empire of Constantinople. Known as the Latin Empire of Romania, this new creation included the Empire of Constantinople proper and its feudal dependencies, the kingdom of Thessalonica, the duchy of Athens, and the principality of Achaia.

Three orphan Greek states survived the fall of the parent power: in Europe, the despotat of Epirus, and in Asia, the empires of Nicæa and Trebizond.

The Latin states of the East are scarcely worthy the historian's notice. They have no place whatever in the natural development, either political or geographical, of the Levantine states. They were not only forced by foreign lances upon an unwilling population, but were clumsy feudalisms, established among a people to whom the feudal idea was unintelligible and barbarous. Like their prototypes, the Crusading states of Syria, they resembled artificial encroachments upon the sea, standing for a time, but with the ordinary course of nature the ocean reclaims its own.

Even the weak little Greek states were strong in comparison and immediately began to recover ground at their expense. The kingdom of Thessalonica was overthrown by the despot of Epirus in 1222; the Latin Empire of Constantinople itself fell before the Greek Emperor of Nicæa in 1261; while the last of the barons of the principality of Achaia submitted to the Byzantine despots of the Morea in 1430.

The duchy of Athens alone of all these Latin states survived long enough to fall at last before the _Turkish_ conquest. The Levantine possessions won by Venice at this and later times were destined, partly from their insular or maritime location, and partly from the greater vitality of trade relations, to enjoy a somewhat longer life.

To the Nicæan emperors of the house of Paleologus belongs the achievement of having restored the Byzantine Empire in the event of 1261. The expression Restored Byzantine Empire has been employed, since it has the sanction of usage, though a complete restoration never occurred. The geography of the Restored Empire as shown on the second map (1265 A. D.) fails to include the greater part of what we may term the cradle of the Greek race. The only subsequent extension was over the balance of the Morea. In every other quarter the frontiers of the Restored Empire soon began to recede until it included only the city of Constantinople and an ever decreasing portion of Thrace. With the commencement of the fourteenth century the _Turks_, having thrown off the Mongol-Tartar dominion, began under the house of Osmanlis their final career of conquest. This, of course, was the beginning of the end. Their first foothold in Europe was gained in 1353, but over a century was destined to elapse before the completion of their sovereignty in all the lands south of the Danube. There remains, therefore, a considerable period during which whatever separate national tendencies existed had full opportunity to work.

THE FIRST AND SECOND BULGARIAN KINGDOMS.

It was this age which saw not only the highest point in the national greatness of Bulgaria and Servia, but also witnessed the evolution of the Wallachian principalities in the lands north of the Danube.

The separate states of Bulgaria and Servia, born in the seventh century of the great southward migration of the _Slavic_ peoples, had in after times risen or fallen according to the strength or weakness of the Byzantine Empire. Bulgaria had hitherto shown the greatest power. At several different periods, notably under Simeon (883-927), and again under Samuel (976-1014), it developed a strength which fairly overawed the Empire itself. These _Slavic_ states had, however, been subjected by the Byzantine Empire in the first half of the eleventh century, and, though Servia enjoyed another period of independence (1040-1148), it was not until the final crumbling of the Byzantine Empire, the premonition of the event of 1204, that their expansion recommences. The Wallachian, or Second Bulgarian kingdom, which came into existence in 1187 in the lands between the Balkans and the Danube, has been the subject of an ethnic discussion which need not detain us. That it was not purely _Slavic_ is well established, for the great and singular revival of the _Vlach_ or _Rouman_ peoples and their movement from the lands south of Haemus to their present seats north of the Danube, which is one of the great features of this age, had already begun. (The country between the Danube and the Balkans, the seat of the Second Bulgarian kingdom, appears as Aspro or White-Wallachia in some Byzantine writings. So also north of the Danube the later Moldavia and Great Wallachia are known respectively as Mavro [Black] and Hungarowallachia. Still the fact of a continuous Roumnn civilization north of the Danube is not established. The theory of a great northward movement of the Vlach peoples is the one now generally accepted and is ably advocated in Roesler's "Romänische Studien.")

At the present day this movement has been so long completed that scarcely the trace of _Vlach_ population remains in the lands south of the Danube. These emigrants appear, as it were, in passing, to have shared with the native Bulgarians in the creation of this Second Bulgarian kingdom. This realm achieved a momentary greatness under its rulers of the house of Asau. The dismemberment of the Byzantine Empire in 1204 enabled them to make great encroachments to the south, and it seemed for a time that to the Bulgarian, not the Greek, would fall the task of overthrowing the Latin Empire of Roumania (see general map of Europe at the opening of the thirteenth century). With the reëstablishment, however, of the Greek Empire of Constantinople, in 1261, the Bulgarian kingdom began to lose much of its importance, and its power was finally broken in 1285 by the Mongols.

SERVIA.

In the following century it was the turn of Servia to enjoy a period of preeminent greatness. The latter kingdom had recovered its independence under the house of Nemanja in 1183.

{viii}

Under the great giant conqueror Stephen Dushan (1321-1355) it enjoyed a period of greater power than has ever before or since fallen to the lot of a single Balkan state. The Restored Byzantine Empire had sustained no permanent loss from the period of Bulgarian greatness: it was by the sudden Servian conquest that it was deprived forever of nearly all its European possessions (see Balkan map III). A Byzantine reaction might have come under other conditions, but already another and greater enemy was at her gates. Dushan died in 1355; and already, in 1353, two years before, the Turk at Gallipoli had made his entrance into Europe. From this time every Christian state of the East grew steadily weaker until Bulgaria, Servia, the Greek Empire, and finally even Hungary, had passed under the Turkish dominion.

THE VLACHS.

Passing on from these Slavic peoples, another national manifestation of the greatest importance belonging to this period, one which, unlike the Greek and Slavic, may be said in one sense to have originated in the period, was that of the _Vlachs_. This _Latin_ population, which ethnologists have attempted to identify with the ancient _Thracians_, was, previous to the twelfth century, scattered in irregular groups throughout the entire Balkan peninsula. During the twelfth century their great northward migration began. A single result of this movement has already been noticed in the rise of the Second Bulgarian kingdom. South of the Danube, however, their influence was transitory. It was north of the river that the evolution of the two principalities, Great Wallachia (Roumania) and Moldavia, and the growth of a _Vlach_ population in the Transylvanian lands of Eastern Hungary, has yielded the ethnic and in great part the political geography of the present day.

The process of this evolution may be understood from a comparative study of the four Balkan maps. Upon the first map the _Cumanians_, a Finno-Tatar people, who in the twelfth century had displaced a kindred race, the Patzinaks or Petschenegs, occupy the whole country between the Danube and the Transylvanian Alps. These were in turn swept forever from the map of Europe by the Mongols (1224). With the receding of this exterminating wave of Asiatic conquest the great wilderness was thrown open to new settlers. The settlements of the _Vlachs_ north of the Danube and east of the Aluta became the principality of Great Wallachia, the nucleus of the modern Roumania. West of the Aluta the district of Little Wallachia was incorporated for a long period, as the banat of Severin, in the Hungarian kingdom.

Finally, the principality of Moldavia came into existence in 1341, in land previously won by the Hungarians from the Mongols, between the Dniester and the Carpathians. Both the principalities of Great Wallachia and Moldavia were in the fourteenth century dependencies of Hungary. The grasp of Hungary was loosened, however, towards the close of the century and after a period of shifting dependence, now on Hungary, now on Turkey, and for a time, in the case of Moldavia, on Poland, we come to the period of permanent Turkish supremacy.

With the presence and influence of the _Vlachs_ south of the Balkans, during this period, we are less interested, since their subsequent disappearance has removed the subject from any direct connection with modern politics. The only quarter where they still linger and where this influence led to the founding of an independent state, was in the country east of the range of Pindus, the Great Wallachia of the Byzantines. Here the principality of Wallachian Thessaly appeared as an offshoot of the Greek despotat of Epirus in 1259 (see map II).

This state retained its independent existence until 1308, when it was divided between the Catalan dukes of Athens and the Byzantine Empire.

ALBANIANS.

The _Skipetars_ (_Albanians_) during this period appear to have been the slowest to grasp out for a separate national existence. The southern section of Albania formed, after the fall of Constantinople, a part of the despotat of Epirus, and whatever independence existed in the northern section was lost in the revival, first of the Byzantine, then, in the ensuing century, of the Servian power. It was not until 1444 that a certain George Castriot, known to the Turks as Iskander-i-beg, or Scanderbeg, created a Christian principality in the mountain fastnesses of Albania. This little realm stretched along the Adriatic from Butrinto almost to Antivari, embracing, further inland, Kroja and the basin of the Drin (see map IV).

It was not until after Scanderbeg's death that Ottoman control was confirmed over this spirited Albanian population.

THE TURKISH CONQUEST.

The reign of Mohammed II. (1451-1481) witnessed the final conquest of the entire country south of the Danube and the Save. The extent of the Turkish Empire at his accession is shown on map IV. The acquisitions of territory during his reign included in Asia Minor the old Greek Empire of Trebizond (1461) and the Turkish dynasty of Karaman; in Europe, Constantinople, whose fall brought the Byzantine Empire to a close in 1453, the duchy of Athens (1456), the despotats of Patras and Misithra (1460), Servia (1458), Bosnia (1463), Albania (1468), Epirus and Acarnania, the continental dominion of the Counts of Cephalonia (1479), and Herzegovina (1481). In the mountainous district immediately south of Herzegovina, the principality of Montenegro, situated in lands which had formed the southern part of the first Servian kingdom, alone preserved its independence, even at the height of the Turkish domination.

The chronicle of Turkish history thereafter records only conquest after conquest. The islands of the Ægean were many of them won during Mohammed's own reign, the acquisition of the remainder ensued shortly after. Venice was hunted step by step out of all her Levantine possessions save the Ionian Islands; the superiority over the _Crim Tartars_, Wallachia, Moldavia and Jedisan followed, finally, the defeat at Mohacs (1526), and the subsequent internal anarchy left nearly all Hungary at the mercy of the Ottoman conqueror.

The geographical homogeneity thus restored by the Turkish conquest was not again disturbed until the present century. The repetition of almost the same conditions in our own time, though with the process reversed, has been referred to in the sketch of Balkan geography of the present day. The extreme importance of the period just described, for the purposes of minute historical analogy, will be apparent at once wherever comparison is attempted.

{ix}

The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries were of course periods of far greater geographical intricacy, but the purpose has been rather to indicate the nature of this intricacy than to describe it in detail. The principal feature, namely, the national movements, wherever they have manifested themselves, have been more carefully dwelt upon. The object has been simply to show that the four separate national movements, the _Greek_, the _Slavic_, the _Rouman_, and the _Albanian_, which may be said to have created the present Levantine problem, were all present, and in the case of the two last may even be said to have had their inception, in the period just traversed.

In the present century the unfolding of national spirit has been so much greater and far-reaching that a different outcome may be looked for. It is sufficient for the present that the incipient existence of these same movements has been shown to have existed in a previous age. The best general text authority in English for the geography of this period is George Finlay's "History of Greece," volumes. III. and IV.; a more exhaustive guide in German is Hopf's "Geschichte Griechenlands." For the purely geographical works see the general bibliography of historical geography.

A. C. Reiley.

{x}