In the six centuries that preceded formation of the Kingdom of Greece western and central Europe proved to be friend neither to the Byzantines, nor to the Greeks, nor to any of the Eastern Orthodox of the Balkans. Witness:
- The rape of Byzantium's capital Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 A.D., occasioned by the avarice of the Venetians and led by their Doge, Enrico Dandalo, whose knights "... set out with the laudable objective of freeing the Holy Sepulchre from the Infidel, ...; they turned aside to the easier and more lucrative task of overturning the oldest empire in the world ..."(5)
- Theft of the Byzantine Empire and pillage of Constantinople at the conclusion of the hostilities in 1204 when "... they placed on the throne of all the Caesars Count Baldwin of Flanders as first Latin Emperor of Constantinople."(6) The Eastern Empire was for a time restored to the Greeks later in the thirteenth century.
- Failure of the west to assist Greek Byzantine Constantinople as it fell to the Turks in 1453. "Western Europe, with ancestral memories of jealousy of Byzantine civilization, with its spiritual advisers denouncing the Orthodox as sinful schismatics, and with a haunting sense of guilt that it had failed the city at the end, chose to forget about Byzantium."(7)
- The West's enjoyment of a territorial buffer that held as slaves their Orthodox Christian brothers in the Balkans and protected western and central Europe from further Ottoman incursions.
- A nineteenth century alliance with the Turks that gained the French economic advantage.
- The Crimean War of 1854-1856 between France, England and the Ottoman Empire on one side, and Russia on the other. The Ottoman Empire was saved from almost certain destruction, and the aspiration of the Balkan people for freedom was frustrated.
- Negation by the great European powers of the Treaty of San Stefano which ended the Turko-Russian War of 1878. The Treaty would have delivered the Balkan people, albeit with a Russian bear in their house.
Enmity between the people of the Balkans grew late in the eighteenth century as the Ottomans sought to save their failing empire. The Turks played one ethnic group off against the other and followed policies designed to maintain control over them, and to prevent any from slipping out from under the Yoke.
- The Turks abolished the Bulgarian and Serbian churches in 1765 and 1767, respectively. The Patriarch(8) at the Phanar(9) in Constantinople issued the decrees that made the Christians of the Balkans 'one people' under his religious and civil authority.
- The Greek Bishops in the Balkans, owing allegiance to the Patriarch in Constantinople who appointed them, were more interested in maintaining the Greek Patriarch, the Greek elite at the Phanar, and Greeks as the Princes of Wallachia and Moldavia than in the ambitions of the Bulgarians and Serbians.
- Serbians and Bulgarians neither forgot nor forgave the loss of their ethnic churches to the Greek-speaking clergy.
- Two revolts brought pressure on the Turks to allow Serbia to become autonomous Ottoman principality.
Autonomy was restored to the Serbian Church in 1831.
- The Turks authorized Bulgarian schools in the nineteenth century to counterbalance Greek nationalism, and finally authorized an Exarch,(10) thus restoring the Bulgarian church.
- Greeks, Serbians and Bulgarians populated the ill-defined region called Macedonia, and each claimed it.
Guerilla warfare in Macedonia during the first decade of the twentieth century pitted Greek, Bulgar and Serb, each against the others, as they fought to establish territorial rights. Greek successes in Macedonia provoked Bulgarian pogroms against Greek communities in Bulgaria. The cities of Anchialos, Burgas, Sozopolis, and Varna suffered arson, murder and expulsion of their Greek populations.
Guerrilla warfare was followed by two Balkan Wars; the first to rid the Balkans of the Turk; the second, to the settle division of the spoils, specifically, the disposition of the region known as Macedonia.
Eleni, Evangelia and Dimitraki were there, in the Balkans, in the early years of the twentieth century.
• Acknowledgements, Next Page
