Fighting with your family
World War Wednesday: Bulgaria 1915, You think your family is complicated...
The Great War began when Austria-Hungary declared war on the Kingdom of Serbia on July 28, 1914. Then on the 1st of August the Russian and German Empires joined. Two days later the French Republic enthusiastically joined the war it had been waiting for. This sealed the fate of the Kingdom of Belgium ruled by King Albert I of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.1 However, the German response to the Belgian invasion brought in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland along with the rest of the British Empire reigned over by King George V, also of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Tiny Montenegro joined the day after the UK, driven by a desire to support Serbia and Russia. At this point it was all the others against Austria-Hungary and Germany.
It became worse for the Central European empires when the Empire of Great Japan declared war on the Germanic powers on August 23, 1914.2 French diplomacy had actually managed to encircle Germany, however a cornered beast fights desperately and the Germans outfought and encircled the Russians at the so called “Second” Battle of Tannenberg, nearly destroying the entire Russian 2nd Army.
Germany successfully extended the front when—after British provocations—they convinced the Sublime Ottoman State and Caliphate to declare war on the Entente Powers, choking Russian trade through the Black Sea and threatening the position of Britain in the eastern Mediterranean. There the war sat until May 1915, when the Sacred Egoism of the Kingdom of Italy won out and they declared war on their former allies Austria-Hungary and Germany, adding another front.3
The House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha rose from a minor German duchy to a pan-European power by 1914. This ascent resulted through strategic marriage diplomacy and the shifting geopolitical needs of emerging nations. The rise started in Belgium. Following the Belgian Revolution of 1830, the new kingdom sought a neutral, diplomatically connected monarch and the Coburg family fit the requirements. Respected but from a weak small country they were thrilled to have a member sit on the new throne. However, the new King Leopold I wanted more and the dynasty established a foothold in Britain through the 1840 marriage of Leopold’s nephew Prince Albert to Queen Victoria; when she died their son took the throne in the name of his father’s house and the Coburgs added Britain to their official domains. However, there was a third Coburg realm, far in the East.
After the Russo-Turkish War the Ottomans were forced to recognize a new autonomous Bulgarian principality in 1878, formally still part of the Ottoman Empire. The new Bulgarian Grand National Assembly met the next year to elect a prince and, like Belgium and Greece before it, chose a minor German royal—Germany was fractured for so many centuries it had an over-supply of families that could claim “highness” rank—and they elected Alexander of Battenberg. However, he forgot he owed his position to Russia and when he tried to embrace liberalism the Russian Tsar-backed coup and Alexander’s army overthrew him. So the Grand National Assembly met again in 1887 and this time elected Ferdinand of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry branch. His first cousin once removed, Queen Victoria’s response was “him?”
She did not think he had it in him. So much for family support.
The now “Prince” Ferdinand I wasted no time and was not going to lose this chance. He reconciled with Russia, converted his son from Roman Catholicism to Eastern Orthodoxy—Pope Leo excommunicated Ferdinand for this—and rebuilt the army. He both centralized power in the hands of the prince while also carefully respecting the liberal nature of the Constitution. Skillfully he played this game for twenty years until in 1908 he felt himself strong enough to declare legal independence from the Ottomans and to elevate himself from prince to king, styling himself Tsar Ferdinand I.
Ferdinand was adventurous, the first royal to fly in a plane. He did not, however, appreciate a jest from his second cousin once removed, the German emperor. In 1909, Ferdinand visited Germany, staying at the New Palace in Potsdam near Berlin, and when he was leaning out of a window, Kaiser Wilhelm II came up from behind, snuck up on Ferdinand and slapped his bottom! The joke unlike the one good imperial hand did not land.
Wilhelm laughed, Ferdinand was incensed! He did not think it was funny at all. So he gave the kaiser a serious slapback by hitting him where it hurt: giving a major arms contract to the French instead of Germany. He later had a spat with Franz Ferdinand of Austria at the funeral for King Edward VII of Britain, although this was him be prickly rather than having a good reason to mad. Kaiser Wilhelm, however, should have kept his hands off the royal bottom just as should have stayed out of Belgium. At this point France probably had a good chance to woo Bulgaria if backed by Ferdinand’s British cousins. And yet, after the Second Balkan War, Ferdinand was not too keen on Serbia.
However, by 1915 both sides of the Great War wanted Bulgaria. The Ottomans were defending Constantinople and the government of the British Coburgs wanted their cousin to attack the Ottomans from the west. Ferdinand wanted Macedonia, but Serbia would not agree. The British and the French offered him lesser prizes from the Ottomans; it was an insult if they needed his army so badly. Cousin Wilhelm had a better deal—no hard feelings after all—just join the Central Powers, attack Serbia, and take Macedonia if you want it. And if he was willing to fight the British and Belgian Coburgs…
On October 11, 1915, the Tsardom of Bulgaria, on the orders of His Majesty King Ferdinand I, attacked the Kingdom of Serbia.
Is our situation with the "family" connections of Harvard, Yale, Columbia et al replacing the interconnected dynasties of Europe really much different? The U.S. landmass is double that of the EU, and even including European Russia, the U.S. is still larger. U.S. states as sovereign entities voluntarily surrendered some of their sovereign rights, thus the US and EU are good analogues and with the exception of language, are equally culturally diverse. Europe had its royal and noble families, the U.S. has its ivy league royalty and nobility. And our "royalty" is just as fractious as was Europe's. We would do well to recall the words of Abraham Lincoln and Christ, "A house divided against itself can not stand." Perhaps there are more lessons here than meet the eye?