Balkan Wars
Like many a ruler of an Orthodox land before him, Ferdinand had a "dream of a new Byzantium". In 1912, Ferdinand joined the other Balkan states in an assault on the Ottoman Empire to free occupied territories. He saw this war as a new crusade declaring it, "a just, great and sacred struggle of the Cross against the Crescent." Bulgaria contributed the most and also lost the greatest number of soldiers. The great powers insisted on the creation of an independent Albania. Soon after, Bulgaria attacked its recent allies Serbia and Greece and itself was attacked by Romania and the Ottoman Empire and was defeated. Nevertheless, the Treaty of Bucharest in 1913 gave some territorial gains to Bulgaria. A tiny area of land giving access to the Aegean Sea was secured.
Read more about this topic: Ferdinand I Of Bulgaria
Famous quotes containing the word balkan:
“... there was the first Balkan war and the second Balkan war and then there was the first world war. It is extraordinary how having done a thing once you have to do it again, there is the pleasure of coincidence and there is the pleasure of repetition, and so there is the second world war, and in between there was the Abyssinian war and the Spanish civil war.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)