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To be sure, their enemy was no longer made up of raw recruits and there was now the heavy artillery as well as a commander of great ability to face, but the preparations they had made in defensive works, as well as the mountainous nature of their country, more than made up for these advantages possessed by their opponents. It was the Bulgarians who would turn the scale.
But the nation continued pagan, Vladimir was an idolater in grain, and a great field lay open for missionary zeal. No less than four of the peoples of the south sought to make a convert of this powerful prince. The Bulgarians endeavored to win him to the religion of Mohammed, picturing to him in alluring language the charms of their paradise, with its lovely houris. But he must give up wine.
A second form appeared in the doorway and fired at Chester. But the lad had perceived his opponent just in time to leap back and the bullet went wild. Bringing his own revolver forward in deliberate aim, Chester dropped the other with a single shot. "Look!" cried Helen from the window at this moment. Chester did so and saw the remainder of the Bulgarians coming toward the house at a dead run.
The real test, and the great losses, came only with the second war, when the Serbian army threw every fiber of its strength against the Bulgarians in the Battle of the Bregalnitza, one of the most stubborn struggles in military history. The result was a Serbian victory, but it was very far from being a decisive and conclusive victory.
The cataclysm of the world war had dragged mankind from the antipodes to this drowsy little corner of Greece where were again repeated the invasions of remote centuries which had made ancient Thessalonica bow to the conquest of Bulgarians, Byzantians, Saracens, and Turks.
It left Austria a government over twelve different nationalities, each one of which was dissatisfied. It joined Belgium to Holland in a combination displeasing to both. It gave Norway and Finland as subject states to Sweden and Russia respectively. It left the Albanians, Serbians, Roumanians, Bulgarians, and Greeks all subject to the hated Turks.
But, apart from the high opinion I have of the Bulgarian generals, the fact remains that after Adrianople had been attacked in a very half-hearted way, and after the main Bulgarian army had pushed on to the lines of Chatalja, the Bulgarians called in the aid of a Servian division to help them against Adrianople.
One could eat, drink, work in Sofia, and that was all. Coming first to Sofia just as war had been declared, I was struck by the evidence of the exceedingly careful preparation that the Bulgarians had made for the struggle.
"Oh! very willingly, gentlemen," and he drank. "That is enough," they tell him. "Now you are the help, the support, the defender, the hero of the Bulgarians. Your fortune is made, and your glory is assured." Instantly they fettered him, and carried him away to the regiment.
At the head of a band of 2,500 Bulgarians he crossed the frontier and burned the Turkish blockhouse at Oschumava, afterwards occupying a strategic position above the Struma River. The Montenegro army opened the war on October 9th, by attacking a strong Turkish position opposite Podgoritza, Franz Peter, the youngest son of King Nicholas, firing the first shot.
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