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    The First World War (4): The Mediterranean Front 1914–1923
    The First World War (4): The Mediterranean Front 1914–1923
    The First World War (4): The Mediterranean Front 1914–1923
    Ebook131 pages1 hour

    The First World War (4): The Mediterranean Front 1914–1923

    By Michael Hickey

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    About this ebook

    The First World War in the Mediterranean represented more than just a peripheral theatre to the war on the western front. This engaging volume includes details of allied attempts to capture Constantinople; bloody campaigning in Northern Italy; the defence of the Suez Canal and the defeat of the Turkish army in Palestine. The Arab revolt, skirmishes in North Africa and the entrapment of a huge allied garrison in Greece - the 'worlds biggest prison camp' as the Germans described it - are also covered. The result was the fall of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires and the birth of nations unknown in 1914.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJun 6, 2014
    ISBN9781472809797
    The First World War (4): The Mediterranean Front 1914–1923
    Author

    Michael Hickey

    Michael Hickey retired from his position as Colonel GS Ministry of Defence in 1981, after serving in Korea, East Africa, Suez and Aden. In 2000 he was awarded the Westminster medal for Military Literature.

    Read more from Michael Hickey

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      Book preview

      The First World War (4) - Michael Hickey

      Background to war

      The road to war

      To understand the complex factors affecting the Mediterranean war it is necessary to look into the histories of the numerous nations involved. Many of the conflicts can be traced back to the middle ages and beyond. The Ottoman empire arose from the fall of the eastern Christian Empire in 1453 and the vigour of militant Islam. Successive sultans’ armies fought their way westward, by 1529 to the gates of Vienna; bringing whole provinces of the Balkans, Arabia, North Africa and much of the Iberian peninsula under Ottoman rule. Vienna, however, saw the first serious reverse; a Turkish army of some 120,000 men under Suleiman the Magnificent was repulsed by the city’s 16,000 defenders and with the raising of that siege the Ottoman military machine began slowly to decline. In 1683 it reached Vienna again, to be defeated with enormous loss by 70,000 Christians. Ottoman sea power in the Mediterranean was broken in 1571 at Lepanto when the Venetian and Spanish battle fleets shattered the Turks in the last great battle fought by oar-propelled ships.

      The Ottoman decline was irreversible. The empire had overrun many Christian states and these territories were in continual turmoil, their struggles for independence aided, when it suited them, by the western powers. The Orthodox Christian Slav population of Serbia gained autonomy in 1817 and 12 years later Russian pressure and the participation of idealistic individuals – notably Lord Byron – enabled Greece to break away from Constantinople. There was growing concern in London over increasing Russian influence in the Balkans, where Pan-Slavism, the awareness of the brotherhood of Slavs, fuelled rebellion against Ottomans and Austrians alike. Russia backed this movement, and was seen throughout the 19th century as a threat to British interests in India. In Vienna there was alarm at the rise of Pan-Slavism on the doorstep, especially as Austria had enough problems of its own among its non-Germanic populations. France favoured the Christian populations of the Levant, supported them in their struggles to escape from the Turks, and sought to colonise sub-Saharan and North Africa. French advisers helped the remarkable Pasha Mehmet Ali to become ruler of Egypt in 1806. In 1823 his French-trained army pushed south into the Sudan to found Khartoum. Mehmet’s son Ibrahim, defying orders from Constantinople (as had his father), moved north and took Damascus in 1832, defeated a Turkish army sent to bring him to book, and headed for Constantinople. Hurried discussions between Austrian and Russian diplomats led to the Treaty of Umkiar Skelessi which appointed Russia as military protector of Turkey, with the right to close the Dardanelles to warships of any other power. But Britain and France regarded the treaty with dismay and resolved to get it abolished or at least revised as soon as possible.

      In 1839 the Turkish sultan Mahmoud II died, having failed to recover Syria from Ibrahim. The great powers hurried to take advantage of the Ottoman decline but disagreed as to how they should act, all having their own selfish objectives. France was keen to install the ageing Mehmet as hereditary ruler of Syria and Egypt but the Foreign Office in London saw a dangerous opening for Russian expansion in the direction of India. Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, produced a formula acceptable to Russia, Prussia and Austria whereby Mehmet was granted the hereditary right to rule over Egypt and (if he agreed immediately) the administration of Syria for life. The French, his patrons, were excluded from the deal and objected vehemently; Mehmet declined the offer but was nonetheless granted government of Egypt. France was re-admitted to the club and a new treaty was drafted to replace that of Umkiar Skelessi: the Treaty of London, signed in 1840, under which the Dardanelles and Bosphorus remained closed to all foreign warships as long as the Ottoman Empire stayed peaceful. Palmerston’s crafty diplomacy had successfully scrapped the older treaty and displaced Russian influence in Turkey, which now enjoyed 12 years of relative peace. The sultan, gaining confidence, supported reforms of the civil service and military systems and declared the equality of all citizens of the empire. But corruption remained endemic and religious fanaticism continued to deny the large Christian population their rights. In 1852 the new French Emperor, Napoleon III, decided to assert himself by insisting that France should have guardianship of the holy places in Palestine, hitherto in the custody of the Orthodox churches. In response Tsar Nicholas, who detested the upstart Napoleon, told the Turks to acknowledge Russian protection of the Orthodox church throughout the empire, including the Balkans.

      Nicholas, (who coined the expression that the Turkish empire was ‘the sick man of Europe’), then suggested an Anglo-Russian partition of the tottering empire. Rebuffed by Palmerston, Nicholas ordered his troops into the provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia. As war loomed, the French and British fleets entered the Dardanelles. Turkey declared war on Russia in October 1853 and immediately lost a disastrous naval encounter with the Russians at Sinope. The Anglo-French fleet entered the Black Sea in January 1854, and the two nations went to war with Russia two months later in support of Turkey in what became known later as the Crimean War. The war ended with a treaty signed at Paris in 1856. The Ottoman decline continued. Wallachia and Moldavia achieved autonomy and became Rumania under a German prince, Charles of Hohenzollern, who reigned wisely as Carol I until 1914.

      Ottoman rule eventually broke down in Syria with civil war following a massacre of Maronite Christians by Druse Muslims, which gave the opportunistic Napoleon III another chance to assert himself. A French army savagely put down the Druse in Lebanon, and a Christian governor was appointed. In Greece, independent since 1833, there was a rebellion against King Otto, a Bavarian, and he was replaced by King George I of the Hellenes, a Dane, who reigned from 1863 to 1913 when he was assassinated in Salonika. George was succeeded by his son Constantine, whose wife Sophia was the sister of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Constantine was educated in Germany and attended the Prussian Military Academy. As a professional soldier he served with distinction in the Balkan Wars but his pro-German sympathies lay uneasily with his professed neutrality on the outbreak of war in

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