Russia with a peremptory note that unless it
recognised the annexation at once, Germany
would not hold the Monarchy back from attack-
ing Serbia. Izvolski could now claim that the
German ‘ultimatum’ forced Russia to give way.
More important, the crisis marked the end of tol-
erably good Austro-Russian relations. Were their
Balkan differences really so irreconcilable? The
collision of the two empires was due to miscalcu-
lation rather than deliberate intent. In 1909
Russia was the more aggressive of the two states.
The Russian diplomats in the years after 1909
redoubled their efforts to re-establish Russia’s
damaged prestige among the Balkan states. These
moves coincided with the intrigues and national
ambitions of the Balkan states themselves, whose
policies in the end could not be controlled by the
Russians.
In 1911 the Italians made war on the Ottoman
Empire. This started a new period of continuous
Balkan tensions. In 1912 the Habsburgs believed
that the Russians had inspired a Balkan League of
Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and Bulgaria to
attack Turkey. These states had temporarily buried
their own disputes over Macedonia and other ter-
ritorial disputes to grab more lands from Turkey.
Then they, in turn, fell out over the booty in 1913
when Bulgaria attacked Serbia and Greece and was
itself defeated by a new alliance of Balkan states.
Apart from the certainty of Austro-Serb
enmity, there were no other certainties in the
Balkans during the last years before 1914. Neither
Russia nor the Monarchy could be sure at any
point of crisis which of the other Balkan states
would side with whom. The unhappy conse-
quence for the peace of Europe was that Russia
and Austria-Hungary felt equally threatened by
the diplomatic intrigues of the other. Russia, with
promises of French support, was both fearful and
active. The Dual Monarchy could never assume
that the German ally would stand behind it. As
for Italy, its alliance was nominal. Italy was
regarded as a potential enemy. So the Habsburgs
felt unsure of the future.
Austria-Hungary’s bitter opponent, Serbia,
had emerged greatly enlarged from the two
Balkan wars. In 1913, by helping to create inde-
pendent and friendly Albania, Austria-Hungary
succeeded in checking Serbia’s further expansion
to the Adriatic. This was achieved not so much
by the ‘conference of European’ powers as by the
Dual Monarchy’s own threats delivered to Serbia.
Count Leopold Berchtold, Aehrenthal’s successor
at the Foreign Ministry since 1912, learnt from
these experiences that Austria-Hungary would
have to rely on its own firmness. Behind Serbia
stood Russia. But Franz Josef and his ministers
believed that firm diplomacy could still break the
hostile ring of states and Russia’s manifest design
to encircle the Monarchy, provided Germany
loyally backed the Habsburg Empire. Sarajevo
changed all that.
1
MULTINATIONAL RUSSIAN AND HABSBURG EMPIRES 53
