The Balkan Pit


   Napoleon Bonaparte had marched huge armies across the continent of Europe and, just from a light glance, those armies appeared to range wherever they chose. This was not entirely true. Armies were limited to seasonal paths that they could safely travel and were so ancient that nobody is even really sure who first started using them. You might ask why and there are those who even refuse to believe it but, if you map the major battles and marching armies, from one era to another, you find very similar lines begin to take shape. The battles, even naval, tend to all be compressed into small areas that have been fought over, almost continuously, since the dawn of history. There is a very good reason why.
While there is much fanfare made about exceptions to this rule, the reality that military planners deal with is that there is ultimately only one factor that absolutely guarantees a victory on the battlefield and that rule is to have the numbers on your side. Napoleon is often quoted when speaking to this, “god is on the side with the biggest battalions.” The reason why military men take this to heart is because of a vast sea of experience which has taught this hard won lesson, over and over, for all of human history. You want a realistic chance of victory, with only small degrees in the outcome being uncertain, then you need a three to one superiority. You want absolute victory then you need a ten to one margin.
Getting those kinds of numbers assembled in one place and at one time has really been the art of war for most of human history. What most lay people generally fail to grasp is that it’s trickier than it looks. Any group of people need the same basic things in order to survive. When you assemble an army they not only need the same supplies as any city of the same size but, they need even more  because an army is a city that is on the move and has a specialized job. This is what truly restricted the movements of most armies for most of history.
The timing of military movement had to be when your army could pick up supplies on the march. The areas, that your army traveled in, had to actually produce the supplies that you needed and in the quantities required. Hauling supplies back and forth from a supply base was generally slow, dangerous, and it left you with an Achilles heal that the enemy could often exploit. Most of the time it was not worth the effort anyway. For most of human history, the technology to supply a field army, away from it’s base of supplies, simply didn’t exist. Sure you could round up as many pack animals as you could find but, their ability to transport cargo is limited and you now have the added problem of feeding your own transports. They have to carry their food along with everything else.
Then came the railroad and along with it, the era known as the railroad wars. For the first time in history it was possible to transport everything that an army needed, far away from it’s base of supplies, for as long as was required. The trade off to this capability was that your line of march was well known long before the war and it was nearly impossible to change. In most of Europe, and even in large parts of North America, this dependency on rail tracks had been solved by simply building more lines until an area was saturated with them. If you went so far as to be out of range of one set of tracks then you would find yourself already close to another.
Despite the proliferation of railroads, in the more industrialized areas, there were still entire regions that lacked such advancements. The Balkans was one such area and while there were railroads in the region, most of what was there was limited in the volume of goods that they could move and all but the central lines were nominal in their military usefulness. The paths that these main arteries followed were dictated by the rugged terrain which squeezed any movement into some very constricted areas. It also put Romania squarely in the cross hairs and made their hope of remaining neutral, for the entire war, a pipe dream at best.
The crisis in Serbia was ultimately what doomed Romania and her king, Carol the First. The only rail lines that ran from Russia to Serbia were those that followed the lower Danube valley, which was to say, the greater part of Romania. More important was the fact that these lines joined the major north/south artery for the region, in Serbia. This particular railroad ran all the way to Constantinople and that was the ultimate destination of the Russian Army. This rail line was also famous and highly romanticized. It was most commonly referred too in the literature of the time as the Oriental Express.
The sudden change of Serbia’s status, from neutral to belligerent, left Romania caught dead in the middle. King Carol had more than a few reasons to want to avoid this conflict and all of them were not only quite sound but, for Carol at least, very personal because he was born Karl Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, a German prince. While all of the European monarch’s of the time were related in one way or the other, Carol was not only the cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm, but also, close personal friends with the man. Carol had never forgotten his German roots and, as he saw it, his kingdom would not abandon his homeland.
Unfortunately, the King’s subjects did not feel this way. France was wildly popular in Romania at the time and, while the Russians were not particularly liked, they were allied to the French. Up till this point, Carol had half heartedly advocated for joining Germany in war. The Kings Council had staunchly stood their ground and the resulting deadlock had kept the country at peace. Carol seems to have been perfectly happy with this even if he paid much lip service to his homeland. Then the Russian ultimatum arrived and Romania could no longer sit on the sideline.
The Russian’s were playing their diplomatic moves, in the Balkans, both subtle and smart. They had an inside track on the region and were well aware of it. Their ultimatum to Carol was not worded as a threat and, if anything, it sounded like a friendly welcome and invitation. Romania was invited to join the crusade against the Hapsburgs but, if they chose not too, then all they had to do was not impede the moves of the Russian Army. Basically the Russians were saying they would settle for rights of transit.
Of course, the Russians must have been well aware that no European Monarch could afford to grant such a request. They were probably expecting a declaration of war from Bucharest which, might go a long way towards explaining the confusion with the reply they did get. Romania both declared war on Russia and granted the rights of passage. It was King Carol who wasted no time issuing a declaration of war but, he was not the only voice coming out of Romania. The King’s Council sent another telegram, directly to Nicholas, granting his forces full rights of passage. They probably sent the telegram to the wrong person in St Petersburg because the Russian Czar was, at best, only vaguely aware of the circumstances surrounding the current Balkan crisis.
The mixed signals not only delayed the Russian Army from moving but, it had ramifications that went far beyond Romania or even Serbia. King Carol might have been very autocratic but, he was effective none the less. In order to balance the power plays from his own Council, he had sought out foreign allies that were still in the neutral camp. By 1900 there was really only one left of any consequence and that was Italy.
Since Carol had first ascended to throne, he had managed to expand his kingdom in the only direction that he could. It also happened to be the only direction that really mattered. The border with Austria was long but it also sat in the mountains of Transylvania and there were no railroads in that region. There were lots of ethnic Romanian’s living under Hapsburg rule but, this did not concern Carol greatly and, besides, large scale military operations in the Carpathian Mountains was impractical and beyond Romania’s abilities. South of the Danube river was a different matter and this gave Romania access to the sea. Carol fought several small wars with the Bulgarians, who were officially still subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and acquired a good deal of territory that neither Bulgarian Principality soon forgot. A Bulgarian counter attack to retake their lost territory was always a serious threat to Romania.
In order to keep his domestic rivals from using this threat against him, Carol sought a foreign alliance that would keep the Bulgarians in check. Italy, who had strong ties with Germany, seemed the perfect answer. The Italians were more than eager to oblige Carol since they had designs on other weakly controlled territories that belonged to the Ottoman Turks, namely Libya and Albania. Once the larger war began this mutual defensive agreement was made official and well publicized. Neither Carol nor the Italians ever thought anything would come of it since, at best, it was only posturing to aid them in other plans. The Bulgarians had other ideas.
No sooner had it become clear that Romania was going to enter the war, even if no one could figure out which side it would be on, the Bulgarians quickly understood the ramifications for their dual state. It was very simple for them, the Russians were coming and they wanted Constantinople. There was only one way they could get there and it was called Bulgaria. The Bulgarians quickly began their mobilization and this was not missed in Bucharest where another show down was coming to a head. This was between none other than Carol and his own Council.
Unlike the Serbian Coup, the Romanian Military did not seek to remove their king. They did not see a need since they had the backing of both the Council and the general population. The military simply stated that they considered the original Constitution of 1866 to be valid and it was very clear on the status of the Romanian Monarchy. It clearly spelled out that Carol was simply a figurehead with no real power. Carol had ignored the constitution for many years and had even went so far as to proclaim it invalid. Nobody had ever said otherwise but, nobody had officially said it was gone either. In the short period of time between the Russian ultimatum and the Bulgarian mobilization, Romania was being effectively governed by two separate factions that simply tried to pretend the other did not exist. Now they no longer could. The Bulgarians had now forced a decision.
Carol was not stupid. He saw which way the wind was blowing. He could issue edicts all he wanted but, slowly, they were all falling on deaf ears. He tried one last measure to regain control of the situation. Since Carol was the driving force behind the defense pact with Italy, he notified Rome of the Bulgarian situation and formally evoked the treaty. The Italians held good on their promise since they were preparing an invasion of Libya and this appeared to be the perfect pretext. What the Italians did not seem to realize was exactly where their “landing with both feet” policy was putting them.
The defense pact did not have the desired effect that Carol was hoping for either. Before he could even make the Italian reply public, before he could even tell the Council of his move to handle the Bulgarian threat, Carol was informed that Russian troops were moving across Romanian soil. They were not invading but, riding in rail cars and being welcomed as hero’s. The Romanian Army was actively aiding them in this move. This must have been the sign to Carol that he lost the power struggle. He promptly fled Romania and in a few weeks he would be in Vienna where Franz Joseph would welcome him as if he were some kind of conquering hero.
King Carol The First of Romania would soon be no more. Karl Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen would eventually set up shop in the Transylvanian town of Segesvar, the same place where Vlad Tepes had ruled in exile. The town was well inside Austrian territory and Karl’s government in exile had the full support of the Hapsburg Dynasty, much the same situation as that of Vlad Dracula four centuries earlier. Karl would never return to Wallachia or Moldavia and there would eventually be no kingdom there left for him to rule. Eventually, Karl would become King Carol The First of the Independent  Kingdom of Transylvania but, that was much later. For now his actions had altered the entire balance of the war and he had no idea that this was the case.
When the Italians delivered their ultimatum to the Bulgarian principalities they meticulously avoided any mention of the Ottoman Empire. They also did not bother to mention anything about a formal declaration of war since, officially speaking, no one really recognized the independence of either Bulgaria. Despite this, the Bulgarians considered themselves as sovereign states and, as the Italians had hoped, they declared war on Italy. What the Italians had not realized was that only an hour before, Bulgaria had declared war on both Romania and Russia.
The government in Rome was not even sure what the real situation was for a full seventy two hours after the flurry of diplomatic activity that had suddenly committed them to a much wider war. They were more than a little bit confused when the Austrians, the CSA, followed by the British, and finally the Germans severed all diplomatic ties and then demanded that Italy back down. By this time it was not only too late but, Italy was preparing to enter the war on the side that they thought they were about to fight.
The entire collapse of the Balkans did have one major side effect on the career of a certain British General. The fact that Horatio Kitchener was not boarding a ship for home, recalled, and being put out to pasture in a quiet job where he could do little, was a sign of exactly how desperate the situation had just turned for Great Britain. The fact that Kitchener was indirectly responsible for this entire situation was lost in the heat of the moment. Now, Lord Salisbury needed the man and, instead of sending the recall order, Kitchener was suddenly named to the new post of Commander of Forces Middle East.
The new orders, for this new command, were no longer just to defend the Suez. If the Russian fleet got out of the Black Sea and not only joined the French Navy but, now the Italian as well, the Royal Navy would be hard pressed to keep the Mediterranean sea lanes open. It would be likely that Britain would loose control of the Med entirely and, if that were the case, then the Suez would not really matter.
Kitchener was told, in no uncertain terms, to use all means at his disposal to keep the Dardanelles in friendly hands. He was no longer restricted to his means and, a theater of war that had been known for at least some degree of civility between belligerents was about to turn nasty. Salisbury had just taken his attack dog off the leash and the war in this region of the world would soon be a no holds barred brawl of desperation.