but did not win their point. On April 23 Scutari fell into the hands of the Montenegrins. It was not till then that Berchtold nerved himself to the declaration that the Habsburg Monarchy would not tolerate such an insult, and made the necessary preparations for armed intervention. Montenegro thereupon submitted to the dictates of the Great Powers. On May 5 the Montenegrin troops evacuated Scutari and on the next day the Serbs left Durazzo. At the end of May peace preliminaries were concluded between the Turks and their opponents. But it was impossible to arrive at an agreement between the victors as to the division of the territory which had fallen to them.
Notwithstanding the fact that it had had its way so far as Albania was concerned, the prestige of the Vienna Government
, in the Balkans had seriously diminished in the course Austria- . . ...
Hungary of the two wars, not only in the eyes of the victorious
- t"i peoples, whose self-confidence had mightily increased,
Rumania. ^ ^ ^ thg eyeg Qf .^ Ba j kan a j ly R uman ia. King
Charles had wanted to join in from the beginning of the first Balkan War, in order to prevent a hegemony of Bulgaria in the Balkans, and had only allowed himself to be persuaded to renew fot the fifth time his alliance with the Powers of the Triple Alliance by an engagement from the Central Powers that they would see to it that Rumania received a corresponding extension of territory in the S.E. (Silistria and the surrounding territory was what they had in view). He now strongly pressed the Court of Vienna for the fulfilment of this engagement. Berchtold did in fact make every effort to decide the Bulgarian Government in favour of suitable concessions to Rumania. But when his efforts broke down, those circles in Bucharest which favoured the Triple Entente (France, Russia, England) managed to make King Charles acquiesce in invoking Russia's mediation in order to acquire the desired increase of territory. But Russia's success at Sofia did not satisfy the Rumanians, and induced them to join hands with Ferdinand of Bulgaria's enemies. This was an ad- vantage for Austria-Hungary, which was, however, set off by the increasing influence of the Entente Powers and their party in Rumania.
Austria-Hungary's leading statesmen met with no better success in their efforts to establish permanently friendly re- stralned lations with Italy. San Giuliano's desire for common Relations action with the Habsburg Monarchy in the Adriatic with Italy. q ues ti on had indeed led recently to a rapprochement between the two Cabinets. In the course of 1913 German statesmen had also succeeded in persuading Italy to further military commitments and to the conclusion of a naval con- vention, the object of which was defined as " the attainment of naval supremacy in the Mediterranean by the defeat of the enemy fleets " in a war against the Western Powers. But the voice of the Italian press and of nationalist circles, who demanded more and more insistently the dissolution of the Triple Alliance and union with the Triple Entente, did not leave the Central Powers any confidence in Italy's loyalty to her engagements. Meanwhile the third Balkan War had broken out. Serbia and Greece, joined by Rumania and Turkey, advanced against Bulgaria. The latter, left in the lurch by Russia and only sup- ported diplomatically by Austria-Hungary, succumbed, and by the Peace of Bucharest (Aug. 10 1913) Bulgaria found her- self compelled to enter into an agreement with her enemies by which she was a serious loser.
The outcome of these three wars meant for the Austro- Hungarian Monarchy a notable loss of prestige in the Balkan Effect of peninsula. Her adversaries in this quarter, Serbia the Balkan and Montenegro, and especially the former, had achieved a considerable extension of their possessions, and henceforth, being no longer separated by the Sanjak of Novibazar, were in a position to join forces against the Habsburg Monarchy when the right moment came. The Bul- garians, however, disappointed in their hopes, ascribed the humiliating defeat which they had suffered in the third Balkan War to the feeble attitude of the Vienna Cabinet, which had indeed taken the first steps in the direction of active participa- tion in the war in favour of Bulgaria, but had then, out of fear of
Russia and under German and Italian pressure, contented itself with a fruitless diplomatic intervention. The fact that Berch- told's efforts to obtain a revision of the Peace of Bucharest in favour of Bulgaria met with no result could not contribute towards strengthening Austria-Hungary's credit at Sofia. On the other hand, the line of action of the Vienna Government, which in its own interest was working incessantly for a compro- mise between Bulgaria and Rumania, but could satisfy neither of these two Powers, led to a clearly perceptible estrangement between the Courts of Vienna and Bucharest, which enabled the Rumanian friends of the Triple Entente to win from the King his acquiescence in paving the way to better relations with the Western Powers and Russia. The only advantage which balanced these heavy losses of power and prestige for Austria-Hungary was the dissolution of the Balkan League, the revival of which was prevented by the inextinguishable hatred between Serbs and Bulgarians, a fact of all the greater im- portance for the Vienna Government as its relations with Serbia became more and more strained and the probability of an armed conflict increased.
The London conference of ambassadors had, on July 20 1913, come to an agreement as to a fundamental law for Albania, and at its final sitting on Aug. n had settled the southern frontier of Albania, long a subject of controversy. Serbia alone declined to give up the Albanian terri- tories which she had already occupied in defiance of the Lon- don decrees, and persisted in her resistance when the Vienna Government pressed for their evacuation. The growing differ- ences between the Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente meant that no united action could be expected from the European Great Powers. Italy and Germany the latter more on grounds of prestige, the former because her interests in this case ran parallel with those of Austria-Hungary associated themselves with the Vienna Government when, on Oct. 15 1913, it again insisted at Belgrade on the execution of the London decrees. Serbia at first again refused; but when Berchtold showed that he was in earnest and on Oct. 19 demanded at Belgrade, under threat of force, the evacuation of the Albanian territory occupied by Serbia, the Serbians submitted to the dictates of the Vienna Government (Oct. 20 1913) in accordance with advice from the Triple Entente. The Serbian press, however, continued to create prejudice against the policy of the Ballplatz, and the Serbian Government used every opportunity of encouraging movements which had as their object the winning over of the Southern Slavs living under the Government of the Habsburg Monarchy to the idea of a Greater Serbia.
In Rumania, too, the agitation against Austria-Hungary made headway every month. The agitation in Bucharest in favour of the Hungarian Rumanians became more and more Doubtful active, and their liberation from the domination of the Attitude of Magyars was indicated as a desirable and possible R umaala - object of Rumanian policy. In order to achieve it a rap- prochement was advocated between Rumania and Russia, and a suitable pretext was found in Nicholas II. 's very cordially expressed congratulations on King Charles's successes in the last Balkan War. It is true that the visit of the Rumanian heir to St. Petersburg (March 27 1914) did not bring about that open passing-over of Rumania into the camp of the Triple Entente which Russia had hoped for. King Charles could not be brought to this point, and the Rumanian Government, too, did not at that moment want to break definitely with the Central Powers. But the speeches accompanying the exchange of toasts at the meeting of Nicholas II. with Charles at Constantza on June 14 1914 left no possible doubt that the friends of the Triple Entente had gained the upper hand at Bucharest. As early as this, Count Ottokar Czernin, the representative of Austria-Hungary at Bucharest, expressed the decided opinion that, in the event of a war between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente, King Charles would not fulfil his pledges. At the same time he uttered a warning against underrating the danger of an encirclement of the Dual Monarchy through the formation of a new Balkan League under the patronage of Russia and France.
