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Authors: Max Hastings
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exclaimed bitterly: ‘Shame! Shame! It would be better to die!’
France’s new relationship with Russia began in 1894, when the two governments signed a military convention; it derived from a belief that neither nation could alone aspire to climb into the ring against Germany, which posed a common threat, and that only such an alliance could offer security against the Kaiser’s expansionist ambitions. Thereafter, the French advanced large loans to St Petersburg, chiefly to fund the building of strategic railways. France had many cultural ties with Russia, symbolised by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the toast of Paris. The close military relationship known as the Dual Entente evolved progressively: in 1901, the Russians agreed with the French that their army would engage the Germans eighteen days after any declaration of war. France’s cash funded a big rearmament programme; Russians even aspired to create a first-class navy by 1930.
The Tsar’s peacetime army was Europe’s largest – 1.42 million men, potentially rising to five million on mobilisation. But could they fight? Many foreigners were sceptical. After attending Russian manoeuvres, the British military attaché wrote: ‘we saw much martial spectacle, but verylittle serious training for modern war’. France’s Gen. Joseph Joffre, invited to inspect Nicholas’s forces in August 1913, agreed. He found some of the Tsar’s advisers, the war minister among them, frankly hostile to their country’s French alliance. The Russian army was burdened with weak leaders and chronic factionalism; one historian has written that it retained ‘some of the characteristics of a dynastic bodyguard’. Its ethos was defined by brutal discipline rather than skill or motivation, though its commanders persuaded themselves that their men would fight better in a Slav cause than they had done against Japan in 1904–05.
Russians were proud of their role in helping to free much of the Balkans from Ottoman rule, and determined not to see this supplanted by Austrian or German hegemony. The semi-official St Petersburg newspaper Novoe Vremya wrote in June 1908 that it was impossible ‘without ceasing to be Russian’ to allow Germanic cultural domination of southern and eastern Europe. In 1913 the British minister in Belgrade, G.H. Barclay, wrote that ‘Serbia is, practically speaking, a Russian province.’ This was an exaggeration, because Serb leaders were intensely self-willed, but St Petersburg made plain that the country was under its protection. Russian security guarantees to Serbia proved as fatal to European peace as was German support for Austria – with the important difference that the former were defensive, the latter aggressive. But at the very least, Russia was irresponsible in failing to insist upon a halt to Serbian subversion in the Hapsburg Empire as the price for its military backing.
The south Slavs lived in four different states – the Hapsburg Empire, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria – under eight different systems of government. Their impassioned nationalism imposed a dreadful blood forfeit: about 16 per cent of the entire population, almost two million men, women and children, perished violently in the six years of struggle that preceded Armistice Day 1918. Serbia fought two Balkan wars, in 1912 and 1913, to increase its size and power by seizing loose fragments of the Ottoman Empire. In 1912 the Russian foreign minister declared that a Serb–Bulgarian triumph over the Turks would be the worst outcome of the First Balkan War, because it would empower the local states to turn their aggressive instincts from Islamism, against Germanism: ‘In this event one … must prepare for a great and decisive general European war.’ Yet the Serbs and Bulgarians indeed triumphed in that conflict; a subsequent Serb–Romanian victory in the Second Balkan War – a squabble over the spoils of the First – made matters worse. Serbia doubled its territory
France’s new relationship with Russia began in 1894, when the two governments signed a military convention; it derived from a belief that neither nation could alone aspire to climb into the ring against Germany, which posed a common threat, and that only such an alliance could offer security against the Kaiser’s expansionist ambitions. Thereafter, the French advanced large loans to St Petersburg, chiefly to fund the building of strategic railways. France had many cultural ties with Russia, symbolised by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, the toast of Paris. The close military relationship known as the Dual Entente evolved progressively: in 1901, the Russians agreed with the French that their army would engage the Germans eighteen days after any declaration of war. France’s cash funded a big rearmament programme; Russians even aspired to create a first-class navy by 1930.
The Tsar’s peacetime army was Europe’s largest – 1.42 million men, potentially rising to five million on mobilisation. But could they fight? Many foreigners were sceptical. After attending Russian manoeuvres, the British military attaché wrote: ‘we saw much martial spectacle, but verylittle serious training for modern war’. France’s Gen. Joseph Joffre, invited to inspect Nicholas’s forces in August 1913, agreed. He found some of the Tsar’s advisers, the war minister among them, frankly hostile to their country’s French alliance. The Russian army was burdened with weak leaders and chronic factionalism; one historian has written that it retained ‘some of the characteristics of a dynastic bodyguard’. Its ethos was defined by brutal discipline rather than skill or motivation, though its commanders persuaded themselves that their men would fight better in a Slav cause than they had done against Japan in 1904–05.
Russians were proud of their role in helping to free much of the Balkans from Ottoman rule, and determined not to see this supplanted by Austrian or German hegemony. The semi-official St Petersburg newspaper Novoe Vremya wrote in June 1908 that it was impossible ‘without ceasing to be Russian’ to allow Germanic cultural domination of southern and eastern Europe. In 1913 the British minister in Belgrade, G.H. Barclay, wrote that ‘Serbia is, practically speaking, a Russian province.’ This was an exaggeration, because Serb leaders were intensely self-willed, but St Petersburg made plain that the country was under its protection. Russian security guarantees to Serbia proved as fatal to European peace as was German support for Austria – with the important difference that the former were defensive, the latter aggressive. But at the very least, Russia was irresponsible in failing to insist upon a halt to Serbian subversion in the Hapsburg Empire as the price for its military backing.
The south Slavs lived in four different states – the Hapsburg Empire, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria – under eight different systems of government. Their impassioned nationalism imposed a dreadful blood forfeit: about 16 per cent of the entire population, almost two million men, women and children, perished violently in the six years of struggle that preceded Armistice Day 1918. Serbia fought two Balkan wars, in 1912 and 1913, to increase its size and power by seizing loose fragments of the Ottoman Empire. In 1912 the Russian foreign minister declared that a Serb–Bulgarian triumph over the Turks would be the worst outcome of the First Balkan War, because it would empower the local states to turn their aggressive instincts from Islamism, against Germanism: ‘In this event one … must prepare for a great and decisive general European war.’ Yet the Serbs and Bulgarians indeed triumphed in that conflict; a subsequent Serb–Romanian victory in the Second Balkan War – a squabble over the spoils of the First – made matters worse. Serbia doubled its territory
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