On Oct. 8, 1912, the tiny Kingdom of Montenegro declared war on a weakened Ottoman Empire, kicking off what is now known as the First Balkan War. Three other Balkan states in league with the Montenegrins—Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia—rapidly followed suit, waging war on the Turks, the old imperial enemy, while drawing upon a wellspring of national sentiment in each of their homelands. By March 1913, their blood-soaked campaigns had effectively pushed the enfeebled Ottomans out of Europe. Yet by July, Greece and Serbia would clash with Bulgaria in what’s known as the Second Balkan War—a bitter month-long struggle that saw more territory change hands, more villages razed and more bodies dumped into the earth. Some 200,000 soldiers died in less than a year, while countless civilians were slaughtered in pogroms or died of disease and starvation. The conflict, as argued here, in many senses set the tone for the future of war and ethnic strife in the 20th century.

Albanian fighters in the employ of the Ottomans ready for a battle with Serbian forces in a photograph dated from 1912. At the conclusion of the First Balkan War, Albania—controlled by Serb and Greek troops—was designated to be an independent country.

Soldiers remove the dead from the battlefield at Adrianople during the First Balkan War

Turkish woman and child amongst those fleeing the advancing Bulgarian army across the plains of Thrace, 1912.

Bulgarian troops camp outside the city of Adrianpole (now Edirne, Turkey) after capturing it; the end of the grueling five month siege of the strategic Thracian city, on the road to Istanbul, effectively ended the First Balkan War in March 1913. The minarets of the famous Selimiye Mosque can be seen in the distance.

Serbian troops resting in a bivouac after an exhausting day's walk in Alessio, Serbia in 1912.

Turkish commander Fouad Bey made prisoner by the Serbians in Koumanovo at the Belgrade fortress, 1912.

Two Ottoman soldiers flee the scene of the Battle of Lula Burgas, fought between Oct. 28-Nov. 3, 1912, where a Bulgarian advance routed the Turks and triggered fears that the Ottoman capital Istanbul could fall.

In a photo taken in 1912, Ottoman soldiers sport the their "fez" caps, headgear traditional to the whole region, across faiths. A generation later, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey's stern and secular modernizer, would ban the fez from his military.

Brat Makedonac

Sveti rat balkanskih naroda je počeo. On ima da se završi oslobođenjem Balkana.

Što se u prvom svjetskom događalo u Bosni i Hercegovini ? Ima li nekih fotografija sa kratkim infom.