Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 18, 2025
Descending at Veles I drove across Central Macedonia by way of Prilip to Monastir, spending the first night, for lack of a better bed, in the carriage, which was guarded by Servian sentries. From Monastir I motored over execrable roads to Lake Presba and Lake Ochrida and thence beyond the city of Ochrida to Struga on the Black Drin, from which I looked out on the mountains of Albania.
They had adventures, but they were not the richly coloured, mediaeval affairs she had anticipated. For the most part until Benham broke loose beyond Ochrida they were adventures in discomfort. In those remote parts of Europe inns die away and cease, and it had never occurred to Amanda that inns could die away anywhere. She had thought that they just became very simple and natural and quaint.
The last fights against the British, French, and Serbians took place near Doiran and Ochrida Lakes. The enemy was everywhere beaten. Macedonia is free! Not a single hostile soldier remains on Macedonian soil.... In the course of ten days the expeditionary army of General Sarrail was beaten and thrown back on neutral territory. On December 12, the whole of Macedonia was freed.
Should they succeed in reaching this point, where the highway to Prilep passed, they would cut off the retreat of the Bulgarians. But there was still another road by which the Bulgarians might have retreated: the highway leading through Resna to the upper part of Lake Ochrida. Had this been open they might have risked the blocking of the Prilep road.
But this first Bulgarian Empire was shortlived, though the western part remained independent under Samuel, who reigned, with Ochrida as his capital, from 976 to 1014. Four years later the Byzantine Emperor, Basil II, annihilated the power of Samuel, and for a hundred and fifty years the Bulgarian people remained subject to the rule of Constantinople.
Through a subterranean passage the waters of this mountain lake pass under the range that separates it from the much larger lake, Ochrida, the source of the bloody Drina. The people of these mountains are Serbs, almost to Saloniki. Uskub, whose ancient Serb name is Skoplya, was the old Serb capital, and there the Serb ruler Doushan was crowned emperor in 1346.
The few guns, limbers, and munitions which these fragments of the Serbian army had brought with them were transported to Brindisi. At about the same time that the Austrians occupied San Giovanni di Medua, a Bulgarian detachment had occupied Dibra, in southern Albania, just above the Greek frontier and not far from Lake Ochrida and Monastir.
They retorted they would accept no arbitration, and cared nothing for agreements. What Serbia had taken, Serbia would keep. The Bulgars should never recover one kilometre. Friday, 27th. At Ochrida after ten years. Town most melancholy. A tablet on the big plane tree commemorates the "liberation" of the town. But there are no signs of joy.
The Bishop of Ochrida was furious when I reported to him the sinking of the Petropalovski, and fiercely declared that the war was in reality an Anglo-Russian one, and that Japan was merely our tool. When riding on relief work among the burnt villages it was easy to learn the great part Russia had taken in building up the Bulgar rising in Macedonia. The same tale was told in almost each.
We decided to push on to Ochrida to learn what was happening. Arrived at Stiuga we found Serb officers in possession. We had left free Albania and were in a conquered land under military rule. They at once started "propaganda," and had the impudence to say that the dialect of Struga was as pure Serb as that of Belgrade. But an officer bent on annexation will say anything.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking