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Title: Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle
Author: Durham M. Edith
Release Date: October 30, 2006 [EBook #19669]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWENTY YEARS OF BALKAN TANGLE ***
TWENTY YEARS OF BALKAN TANGLE
BY
M. EDITH DURHAM.
AUTHOR OF THE BURDEN OF THE BALKANS,
HIGH ALBANIA,
THE STRUGGLE FOR SCUTARI, ETC.
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET,
W.C.1
First published 1920
(All rights reserved)
PREFACE
"And let men beware how they neglect and suffer Matter of Trouble to
be prepared; for no Man can forbid the Sparke nor tell whence it
come." BACON.
MINE is but a tale of small straws; but of small straws carefully
collected. And small straws show whence the wind blows. There are
currents and cross currents which may make a whirlwind.
For this reason the tale of the plots and counterplots through which
I lived in my many years of Balkan travel, seems worth the telling.
Events which were incomprehensible at the time have since been
illumined by later developments, and I myself am surprised to find
how accurately small facts noted in my diaries, fit in with official
revelations.
Every detail, every new point of view, may help the future history
in calmer days than these, to a just understanding of the world
catastrophe. It is with this hope that I record the main facts of
the scenes I witnessed and in which I sometimes played a part.
M. E. DURHAM.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER 1. PICKING UP THE THREADS
CHAPTER 2. MONTENEGRO AND HER RULERS
CHAPTER 3. FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF LAND AND PEOPLE
CHAPTER 4. SERBIA AND THE WAY THERE
CHAPTER 5. WHAT WAS BEHIND IT ALL
CHAPTER 6. THE GREAT SERBIAN IDEA
CHAPTER 7. 1903 AND WHAT HAPPENED
CHAPTER 8. MACEDONIA 1903-1904
CHAPTER 9. ALBANIA
CHAPTER 10. MURDER WILL OUT
CHAPTER 11. 1905
CHAPTER 12. BOSNIA AND THE HERZEGOVINA
CHAPTER 13. BOSNIA IN 1906. THE PLOT THICKENS
CHAPTER 14. 1907
CHAPTER 15. 1908: A FATEFUL YEAR
CHAPTER 16. 1909.
CHAPTER 17. 1910
CHAPTER 18. 1911 AND THE INSURRECTION OF THE CATHOLICS
CHAPTER 19. 1912. THE FIRST DROPS OF THE THUNDERSTORM
CHAPTER 20. 1914.
CHAPTER 21. THE YEARS OF THE WAR
INDEX.
TWENTY YEARS OF BALKAN TANGLE
CHAPTER ONE
PICKING UP THE THREADS
It was in Cetinje in August, 1900, that I first picked up a thread
of the Balkan tangle, little thinking how deeply enmeshed I should
later become, and still less how this tangle would ultimately affect
the whole world. Chance, or the Fates, took me Near Eastward.
Completely exhausted by constant attendance on an invalid relative,
the future stretched before me as endless years of grey monotony,
and escape seemed hopeless. The doctor who insisted upon my having
two months' holiday every year was kinder than he knew. "Take them
in quite a new place," he said. "Get right away no matter where, so
long as the change is complete."
Along with a friend I boarded an Austrian Lloyd steamer at Trieste,
and with high hopes but weakened health, started for the ports of
the Eastern Adriatic.
Threading the maze of mauve islets set in that incomparably blue and
dazzling sea; touching every day at ancient towns where strange
tongues were spoken and yet stranger garments worn, I began to feel
that life after all might be worth living and the fascination of the
Near East took hold of me.
A British Consul, bound to Asia Minor, leaned over the bulwark and
drew a long breath of satisfaction. "We are in the East!" he said.
"Can't you smell it? I feel I am going home. You are in the East so
soon as you cross Adria." He added tentatively: "People don't
understand. When you go back to England they say, 'How glad you must
be to get home!' They made me spend most of my leave on a house-boat
on the Thames, and of all the infernal things. ...
"I laughed. I did not care if I never saw England again. . . .
"You won't ever go back again now, will you?" he asked whimsically,
after learning whence I came. "I must," said I, sadly. "Oh don't,"
said he; "tell them you can't, and just wander about the East." He
transshipped shortly and disappeared, one of many passing travellers
with whom one is for a few moments on common ground. Our voyage
ended at Cattaro and there every one, Baedeker included, said it was
correct to drive up to Cetinje. Then you could drive down next day
and be able to say ever afterwards, "I have travelled in Montenegro."
It was in Cetinje that it was borne in on me that I had found the
"quite new place" which I sought. Thus Fate led me to the Balkans.
Cetinje then was a mere red-roofed village conspicuous on the
mountain-ringed plain. Its cottages were but one storeyed for the
most part, and contained some three thousand inhabitants. One big
building stood up on the left of the road as the traveller entered.
"No. That is not the palace of the Prince," said the driver. "It is
the Austro-Hungarian Legation."
Austria had started the great Legation building competition which
occupied the Great Powers for the next few years. Each Power strove
to erect a mansion in proportion to the amount of "influence" it
sought to obtain in this "sphere." Russia at once followed. Then
came Italy, with France hard on her heels. England, it is
interesting to note, started last; by way of economizing bought an
old house, added, tinkered and finally at great expense rebuilt
nearly the whole of it and got it quite done just before the
outbreak of the Great War, when it was beginning to be doubtful if
Montenegro would ever again require a British Legation. But this is
anticipating.
In 1900 most of the Foreign Ministers Plenipotentiary dwelt in
cottages or parlour-boarded at the Grand Hotel, the focus of
civilization, where they dined together at the Round Table of
Cetinje, presided over by Monsieur Piguet, the Swiss tutor of the
young Princes; a truly tactful man whom I have observed to calm a
heated altercation between two Great Powers by switching off the
conversation from such a delicate question as: "Which Legation has
the finest flag, France or Italy?" to something of international
interest such as: "Which washer-woman in Cetinje gets up shirt
fronts best?" For Ministers Plenipotentiary, when not artificially
inflated with the importance of the land they represent, are quite
like ordinary human beings.
Their number and variety caused me to ask: "But why are so many
Powers represented in such a hole of a place?" And the Italian
architect who was designing the Russian Legation replied, more truly
than he was perhaps aware: "Because Montenegro is the matchbox upon
which the next European war will be lighted!"
Cetinje was then extraordinarily picturesque. The Prince did all he
could to emphasize nationality. National dress was worn by all. So
fine was the Court dress of Montenegro that oddly enough Prince
Nikola was about the only ruling Sovereign in Europe who really
looked like one. The inroads of Cook's tourists had stopped his
former custom of hobnobbing with visitors, and he dodged with
dignity and skill the attempts of American snapshotters to corner
him and say: "How do, Prince!"
A vivid picture remains in my mind of the Royal Family as it filed
out of church on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. The
Prince, heavy-built, imposing, gorgeous; his hair iron grey,
ruddy-faced, hook-nosed, keen-eyed. Danilo, his heir, crimped, oiled
and self-conscious, in no respect a chip of the old block, who had
married the previous year, Jutta, daughter of the Grand Duke of
Mecklenburg Strelitz, who, on her reception into the Orthodox
Church, took the name of Militza. Montenegro was still excited about
the wedding. She looked dazzlingly fair among her dark "in-laws." Old
Princess Milena came, stately and handsome, her hair, still black,
crowning her head with a huge plait. Prince Mirko, the second son,
was still a slim and good looking youth. Petar, the youngest, a mere
child, mounted a little white pony and galloped past in the full
dress of an officer, reining up and saluting with a tiny sword as he
passed his father. The crowd roared applause. It was all more like a
fairy tale than real life. But the black coated Ministers
Plenipotentiary were all quite real.
From Cetinje we went to Podgoritza where for the first time I saw
Albanians. Podgoritza was full of them, all in national dress, for
Montenegro had as yet done little towards suppressing this. Nor in
this first visit did I go further inland.
But I had found "the land where I could have a complete change"; had
learnt, too, of the Great Serbian Idea; had had the meaning of the
Montenegrin cap explained to me; and been told how the reconstruction
of the Great Serb Empire of the Middle Ages was what Montenegro
lived for. Also that the first step in that direction must be the
taking of the Sanjak of Novibazar, which had been formed as a
barrier between the two branches of the Serb race by the Powers at
the Berlin Congress. To me it sounded then fantastic--operatic. I
had yet to learn that the opera bouffe of the Balkans is written in
blood and that those who are dead when the curtain falls, never come
to life again.
So much for Montenegro. We returned after a run to Trebinje,
Serajevo and Mostar, to the Dalmatian coast and Trieste.
First impressions are vivid. There is a certain interest in the fact
that I recorded Spalato in my diary as the first Slav town on our
way south from Trieste and that my letter thence was dated Spljet,
the Slav form of the name.
The one pre-eminently Italian town of Dalmatia is Zara. From Zara
south, the language becomes more and more Slav. But the Slav
speaking peasants that flock to market are by no means the same in
physical type as the South Slavs of the Bosnian Hinterland. It is
obvious that they are of other blood. They are known as Morlachs,
that is Sea Vlachs, and historically are in all probability
descendants of the pre-Slav native population which, together with
the Roman colonists, fled coast ward before the inrush of the Slav
invaders of the seventh century. Latin culture clung along the coast
and was reinforced later by the Venetians. And a Latin dialect was
spoken until recent times, dying out on the island of Veglio at the
end of the nineteenth century. The Slavizing process which has
steadily gone on is due, partly to natural pressure coastward of the
Slav masses of the Hinterland and partly to artificial means.
Austria, who ever since the break-up of the Holy Roman Empire, had
recognized Italy as a possible danger, had mitigated this by drawing
Italy into the Triple Alliance. But she was well aware that fear of
France, not love of Austria, made Italy take this step. Therefore to
reduce the danger of a strong Italia Irredenta on the east of Adria
she encouraged Atavism against Italianism, regarding the ignorant
and incoherent Slavs as less dangerous than the industrious and
scientific Italians. Similarly, England decided that the half-barbarous
Russians were less likely to be commercial rivals than the
industrious and scientific Germans, and sided with Russia.
Future historians will judge the wisdom of these decisions.
During the fourteen years in which I went up and down the coast, the
Slavizing process in Dalmatia visibly progressed, until the
German-Austrians began to realize that they were "warming a viper,"
and to feel nervous. Almost yearly there were more zones in which no
photographs might be taken and more forts were built.
Having picked up the thread of the Balkans the next thing was to
learn a Balkan language, for in 1900 scarcely a soul in Montenegro
spoke aught but Serb. Nor was any dictionary of the language to be
bought at Cetinje. The one bookshop of Montenegro was carefully
supervised by the Prince, who saw to it that the people should read
nothing likely to disturb their ideas, and the literature obtainable
was mainly old national ballads and the poetical works of the Prince
and his father, Grand Voy voda Mirko.
In London in 1900 it was nearly impossible to find a teacher of
Serb, and a New Testament from the Bible Society was the only book
available. Finally a Pole--a political refugee from Russia and a
student of all Slav languages--undertook to teach me. English he
knew none, and but little German and had been but a few weeks in
England.
I asked for his first impressions. His reply was unexpected. What
surprised him most was that the English thought Russia a Great Power
and were even afraid of her. I explained that Russia was a monster
ready to spring on our Indian frontier--that she possessed untold
wealth and countless hordes. He laughed scornfully. In halting
German he said "Russia is nothing--nothing. The wealth is
underground. They have not the sense to get it. Their Army is large,
but it is rotten. All Russia is rotten. If there is a war the
Russian Army will be--will be--" he stammered for a word--"will be
like this!" He snatched up a piece of waste paper, crumpled it and
flung it contemptuously into the waste paper basket.
I never forgot the gesture. Later, when folk foretold Japan's
certain defeat if she tackled the monster, and in 1914 talked
crazily of "the Russian steam-roller" I saw only that crumpled rag
of paper flying into the basket. By that time I had seen too much of
the Slav to trust him in any capacity. But this is anticipating.
CHAPTER TWO
MONTENEGRO AND HER RULERS
In days of old the priest was King,
Obedient to his nod, Man rushed to slay his brother man
As sacrifice to God.
THE events seen by the casual traveller are meaningless if he knows
not what went before. They are mere sentences from the middle of a
book he has not read. Before going further we must therefore tell
briefly of Montenegro's past. It is indeed a key to many of the Near
Eastern problems, for here in little, we see the century-old "pull
devil-pull baker" tug between Austria and Russia, Teuton and Slav,
for dominion.
In 1900, Montenegro, which was about the size of Yorkshire,
consisted of some thirty plemena or tribes. A small core, mainly
Cetinaajes, Nyegushi, Rijeka and Kchevo formed old Montenegro. To
this was added the Brda group, which joined Montenegro voluntarily
in the eighteenth century, in order to fight against the Turks.
These are mainly of Albanian blood and were all Roman Catholics at
the time of their annexation, but have since been converted to the
Orthodox Church and Slavized. It is noteworthy that they are now
strenuously resisting annexation by Serbia. Thirdly, came the
extensive lands, some of them wholly Albanian, annexed to Montenegro
in 1878 under the Treaty of Berlin, much of which, in spite of the
efforts of the Montenegrin Government, is by no means Slavized.
Certain other small districts have also from time to time been
joined to Montenegro at different times, e.g. Grahovo. Each of the
Montenegrin tribes has a distinct tradition of origin from an
individual or family. They tell almost invariably of immigration
into their present site in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Thus
Nyegushi in 1905 told me of descent from two brothers Jerak and
Raiko, who fled from Nyegushi in the Herzegovina fourteen
generations ago. The Royal family, the Petrovitches, traces descent
from Jerak. If we take thirty years as a generation this gives us
1485. The Turks had then begun to overrun Bosnia and the Herzegovina.
Ivan Tsrnoievitch, chief of the tribes of the Zeta, was so hard
pressed by the oncoming Turks that he burnt his capital of Zhablyak
and withdrew to the mountains, where he founded Cetinje in 1484.
Tradition thus corresponds closely with historic fact. The strength
of Turkish influence is shown by the fact that even to-day the
peasant speaks of Ivan as Ivan Beg.
The oft-repeated tale that Montenegro was founded by the refugees
from Kosovo is thus we see mythical, as Kosovo was fought a century
earlier in 1389. Lineally, the Montenegrins are Bosnians,
Herzegovinians and Albanians rather than Serbs of Serbia. Bosnia and
the Herzegovina were independent of the old Kingdom of Serbia, which
explains much of the reluctance of Montenegro to be to-day
incorporated by the Serbs.
Ivan and his refugee tribes successfully resisted the Turkish
attacks on their stronghold and were helped by Venice. But
conversions to Islam became frequent. One of Ivan's own sons turned
Turk and fought against Montenegro. Finally, the last of the
Trsnoievitch line, Ivan II, who had married a Venetian wife, decided
that the leadership of a band of outlaws in the poverty-stricken
mountains was not good enough. He retired to the fleshpots of
Venice, trusting the defence of the district to a civil, hereditary
leader and charging the Vladika [Bishop] with the duty of preventing
ore of his flock going over to Islam, as the Serbs of Bosnia were
now doing in great numbers.
It has been inaccurately represented that Montenegro was singular in
being ruled by her Bishop. In this respect Montenegro in no way
differed from other Christian districts ruled by the Turks who, with
a tolerance at that date rare, recognized everywhere the religion of
the country and entrusted all the affairs of the Christians to their
own ecclesiastics. To the Turks, the Montenegrin tribes and the
Albanian tribes of the mountains--who had also their own Bishops
--were but insubordinate tribes against whom they sent punitive
expeditions when taxes were in arrears and raids became intolerable.
The Montenegrins descended from their natural fortress and plundered
the fat flocks of the plain lands. They existed mainly by brigandage
as their sheep-stealing ballads tell, and the history of raid and
punitive expedition is much like that of our Indian frontier.
Till 1696 the Vladikas were chosen according to the usual methods of
the Orthodox Church. After that date they were, with one exception,
members of the Petrovitch family. This has been vaguely accounted
for by saying that to prevent quarrels the Montenegrins decided to
make the post hereditary in the Petrovitch family. As the Vladika
was celibate, his successor had to be chosen from among members of
his family. Later events, however, throw much light on this alleged
interference with the rules of the Orthodox Church.
In June, 1696, Danilo Petrovitch, of Nyegushi, who, be it noted, was
already in holy orders, was chosen as Vladika. A man of well-known
courage such as the country needed, he accepted office, but was not
consecrated till 1700. Till then the Vladikas of Montenegro had been
consecrated by the Serb Patriarch at Ipek. But in 1680 Arsenius the
Patriarch had decided to accept the protection of Austria and
emigrated to Karlovatz with most of his flock. The turns of
fortune's wheel are odd. The Serbs have more than once owed almost
their existence to Austrian intervention. The Turks permitted the
appointment of another Serb Patriarch, but Serb influence in the
district waned rapidly and the Albanians rapidly resettled the lands
from which their forefathers had been evicted. In 1769 the
Phanariotes suppressed the Serb Patriarchate altogether, for the
Greek was ever greedy of spreading over the whole peninsula, and the
Vladika of Montenegro was thus the only head of a Serb Church in the
Balkans and gained much in importance.
Danilo was a born ruler. He soon absorbed all the temporal power,
and latterly left matters ecclesiastic to his nephew Sava.
The outstanding feature of his rule was his suppression of
Mahommedanism. At this time conversions to Islam were increasing.
Danilo, when on a visit to the plain of Podgoritza, to consecrate a
small church by permission of the Pasha of Scutari, was taken
prisoner by the local Moslems, though he had been promised safe
conduct, and put up to ransom. He was bought off only by the
sacrifice of the church plate of the monastery, and returned home
hot with anger.
To avenge the insult and clear the land of Islam he organized the
wholesale massacre of the Moslems of Montenegro. On Christmas Eve
1703 an armed band, led by the Martinovitches, rushed from house to
house slaughtering all who refused baptism. Next morning the
murderers came to the church, says the song: "Their arms were bloody
to the shoulders." Danilo, flushed with joy, cried: "Dear God we
thank Thee for all things!" A thanksgiving was held and a feast
followed. Danilo thus gained extraordinary popularity. Such is the
fame of his Christmas Eve that it was enthusiastically quoted to me
in the Balkan War of 1912-13 as an example to be followed, and
baptisms were enforced with hideous cruelty. The Balkan Christian of
to-day is no whit less cruel than the Turk and is more fanatical.
Danilo's prestige after this massacre was so great that the tribes
of the Brda formed a defensive alliance with him against the Turks.
And his fame flew further, for Russia, now for the first time,
appeared in Montenegro. Peter the Great sent his Envoy Miloradovitch
to Cetinje in 1711--a date of very great importance, for from it
begins modern Balkan policy and the power of the Petrovitches. Peter
claimed the Montenegrins as of one blood and one faith with Russia
and called on them to fight the Turk and meet him at Constantinople
where they would together "glorify the Slav name; destroy the brood
of the Agas and build up temples to the true faith."
The Montenegrins rushed to the fray with wild enthusiasm and on the
high ground between Rijeka and Podgoritza won the battle called "The
Field of the Sultan's Felling," such was the number of Turks who,
entangled in the thorn bushes, were slaughtered wholesale, as the
Montenegrin driver recounts to this day when he passes the spot.
A great victory--but Russia and Montenegro have not yet met at
Constantinople. The Turks sent a strong punitive force and, not for
the first time, burnt the monastery at Cetinje, wasted the land and
doubtless removed enough gear to pay the haratch [tax] which Danilo
had refused.
1715 is noteworthy as the date of Danilo's visit to Petersburg, when
he was given the first of the many subsidies which the Tsars have
bestowed till recently upon the Petrovitch family.
In a land which is rat-poor, the family which has wealth has power.
The Petrovitches had gained power and they kept it. Fighting almost
till the last, Danilo died full of years and fame, in 1735, and
named his nephew Sava, who had acted for some time as ecclesiastical
head, as his successor.
Sava had no ambition to be aught but a Churchman. He built the
monastery of Stanjevitch and retired to it, leaving his nephew
Vassili to govern.
Vassili, who was already in holy orders, had much of the quality of
Danilo. He organized the defence of the land and defeated more than
one attack upon it. Montenegro was now largely fighting against the
Moslem Serbs of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. In fact the "Turk" with
whom the Balkan Christian waged war was as often as not his
compatriot, turned Moslem.
Vassili and Sava further strengthened their alliance with Russia by
visiting Petersburg, where the Empress Elizabeth promised them a
yearly subsidy of 3,000 roubles and money for schools. Vassili died
in Russia in 1766 and Sava was left to manage alone.
He was quite unfit and his post was usurped by a remarkable imposter
who appeared suddenly in Montenegro and said he was Peter III of
Russia, who had been murdered in 1706. Russia was a name to conjure
with. He thrilled the credulous tribesmen with tales of his escape
and adventures. In the words of an old ballad: "He is known as
Stefan the Little. The nation turns to him as a child to its father.
They have dismissed their headmen, their Serdars, Knezhes and
Voyvodas. All eyes turn to him and hail him as Tsar." Sava returned
to his monastery and the imposter reigned. Even the Patriarch of
Ipek who was on the verge of dismissal, cried for the protection of
Stefan Mali, who set to work to govern with great energy. Venice,
alarmed by his popularity, joined with the Turks and attacked
Montenegro, but was repulsed. Russia, seeing her influence waning
with the departed Sava, sent an Envoy to denounce the impostor. But
"nothing succeeds like success." Stefan Mali had such a hold over
the ignorant tribesmen that Russia, seeing Sava was useless,
recognized Stefan as ruler. He reigned five more years and was
murdered in 1774 by, it was said, an agent of the Pasha of Scutari.
He is believed to have been of humble Bosnia origin and was one of
the few successful impostors of history.
Sava had perforce to return to the world, and owing to his
incapacity the post of Civil Governor of Montenegro now became
important. The office, till now held always by a Vukotitch, had
meant little save the leadership of tribal Soviets or councils. The
Vukotitches exchanged the office with the Radonitches for that of
Serdar, and under the title of Gubernator the first Radonitch rose
to power.
This is a very important period for now for the first time Austria
appears on the scene and the long diplomatic struggle with Russia
for power in Montenegro begins.
In 1779 an appeal to the Emperor of Austria was sent, signed by Ivan
Radonitch, Gubernator; Ivan Petrovitch, Serdar; and lastly by Petar
Petrovitch, Archimandrite and Deputy-Metropolitan. From which we
must conclude that Sava had definitely retired from power. From this
date for several years Ivan Radonitch always signed first. He had
just returned from a fruitless trip to Russia, and was seeking help
from Austria. Sava died in 1783 and was succeeded by Vladika
Plamenatz, a fact which, though well known in Montenegro, is rigidly
excluded from her official history by the Petrovitches, whose
version, the only "authorized" one, is constructed with more regard
to the glory of their dynasty than historic truth.
On Sava's death the Radonitch party at once welcomed the first
Austrian Mission to Montenegro and accommodated it in Sava's
monastery. One of the Envoys has left a vivid picture of Montenegro
in those days.
"The nation has no police, no laws. A kind of equality reigns. The
headmen have only a certain authority for managing ordinary business
and settling blood-feuds. The father of Radonitch was the first to
whom the nation gave the title Gubernator in order to gain the
respect of the Venetians and Turks. The Gubernator summons the
Serdars, Voyvodas and Knezhes. They meet in the open air. The
General Assembly takes place at the village of Cetinje. . . . The
Vladika, or at least a couple of monks, are present. The Serdars
similarly call local meetings of headmen and thus arrange peace
between two families or villages. Their power consists only of
persuasion. In practice murder is usually avenged by murder. The
land has one Metropolitan, the Vladika, in whose eparchy are
included Ipek, Kroja and Dalmatia spiritually, for the consecration
of priests, he being, since the removal of the Patriarch of Ipek,
the next Archbishop. But the foreign priests obey him in no respect
save for consecration. His functions consist in the consecration of
priests and churches. He visits the parishes but not so much for
pastoral duties as for the collection of the so-called Milostina,
the alms which form his payment. The monks too collect on their own
behalf. The people who are very superstitious, fast rigorously and
give willingly to the clergy. Their terror of excommunication makes
them regard their Bishops as the highest and most respected in the
land. Radonitch's father, first Gubernator, tried to obtain the
highest position for himself but failed. His son now tries to, and
would succeed, were he cleverer and had more money, for the
Metropolitan Plamenatz is little respected and could not do much to
prevent him. The Metropolitans have been used to visit Petersburg
from time to time and to receive a subsidy for the Church and gifts
in money and in the form of costly vestments for themselves. From
which gifts, say the people, they receive no benefit. Since 1779 no
Russian money has been received. The feelings of the country have
consequently grown cold. People here obey only so long as they gain
by so doing."
We now come upon the first notice of the development of the Great
Serbian Idea, as a definite political plan in Montenegro. The
Austrian Envoy writes:
"The following which was told me by a Montenegrin monk is worthy of
further consideration. A little while after the Russian war was
ended in 1773 a plan was made by the Metropolitan and some monks to
reconstruct the old Serbian Kingdom and to include in it besides
Bulgaria, Serbia, Upper Albania, Dalmatia and Bosnia, also the Banat
of Karlstadt and Slavonia. The Turks in all the provinces were to be
fallen upon at a given moment by the Schismatics, and it was also
resolved that all foreign officers should be cleared out of all
lands within the Imperial frontiers. The late Orthodox Bishop
Jaksitch of Karlstadt is said to have agreed and carried on a
correspondence with the Metropolitan of Montenegro by means of
priests. . . . Though the carrying out of such a plan is very
difficult, yet the project should not be left out of consideration."
The Petrovitch ambition to form and rule over Great Serbia was thus,
we see, actually elaborated long before Serbia had obtained
independence and before the Karageorgevitches had even been heard
of. This explains much that has since happened.
Further the Envoy replies to the question: Whether or not Montenegro
can be considered independent?--thus:
"From the frontier drawn by the Venetians with the Turks it follows
that Montenegro belongs to the Turks. The nation does not deny that
it has been twice conquered by the Turks, who, each time, destroyed
Cetinje and the Monastery, where some Turks even settled, but were
driven out. In 1768 they were forced to pay tribute by the Vezir of
Bosnia. The Montenegrins on the plains, in fact, pay tribute. The
Katunska and Rijeka nahias alone have paid no tribute since 1768.
These facts show Montenegro belongs to the Porte.
"The Montenegrins on the contrary maintain that they have never
recognized Turkish rule, and never paid tribute save when forced by
overpowering numbers; that they do not recognize the assigning of
their nahias to the Pashas of Spuzh and Scutari; that they have
chosen a Gubernator whose title has not been disputed; that they
rule themselves without Turkish interference. In truth, however, the
apparent independence of the land depends as much on its mountainous
character as on the courage of the inhabitants. The difficulties of
the land make it more trouble than it is worth."
The country is described as completely lawless. Blood feuds rage
between rival families and in seven months a hundred men have been
killed in vengeance. Over this wild group of tribes Russia and
Austria now struggled for influence. In 1782 Ivan Radonitch went for
seven months to Vienna. Montenegro could not (and cannot) possibly
exist without foreign aid. And he sought it.
But the Emperor Joseph II decided that to organize Montenegro as an
Ally "would, in peace, be costly and in war of insufficient use." He
withdrew the Mission but, to retain Montenegro's goodwill, allotted
a small annual subsidy of which 500 ducats were to go to Radonitch,
and but 150 to Vladika Plamenatz.
Russia, however, would not let Montenegro slip from her grasp. In
May, 1788, a Russian Envoy arrived and began countermining Austria.
Austria retorted by sending another Envoy, who reports complete
anarchy and ceaseless inter-tribal fighting:
"Some were with us; some sought to destroy us; some fought the
Turks; some were in alliance with them. They have a Bishop, Governor
and Serdar, but these are mere names. People obey only if they can
gain by so doing. We even heard a common man say to the Bishop's
face: 'Holy Bishop, you lie like a hound! I will cut out your heart
on the point of my knife.' Except that they keep the fasts they have
no religion. They rob, steal, and have many wives. Some sell women
and girls to the Turks and commit other crimes as one hears daily.
All is done with the animal impulse of desire, or hatred, or
selfishness. The inhabitants are used to raid neighbourlands for
cattle, etc., and are even led by their priests on these expeditions
which they think heroic."
This vivid account will be recognized as the truth by all who have
lived in native huts and listened to local tradition. It describes
the life of the Balkan Christian up till recent days. My Montenegrin
guide used to lament the good old times when a second wife could be
taken and no fuss made; and when as many as fifteen men were shot in
a feud; and his great uncle had commanded a pirate ship which plied
between the Adriatic and the Aegean.
There is nothing new under the sun. In 1788, as in the twentieth
century, we find the rival Powers trying to buy partisans. "We never
could satisfy them," says the Austrian Envoy. "When we thought we
had won him with one gift, we found next day he had joined the
opposition party or demanded a new gift as if he had not had one.
Even the Bishop, though he tried by all means to win our favour,
could not hide from us his false intriguing heart."
The struggle was brief. Russia was victorious. Vladika Plamenatz
disappeared suddenly, and the Petrovitches came again to the fore.
Vladika Petar's name headed all official documents, the Gubernator
fell to second rank, and the blood-feud between the Plamenatzes and
the Petrovitches compelled some of the former to seek shelter with
the Turks. Russia has never permitted a pro-Austrian to rule long in
Slav lands. Witness the-fate of the Obrenovitches, in Serbia.
Vladika Petar was a strong man, which is probably why he obtained
Russian support. He drove his unruly team with much success and won
its respect.
Russia and Austria came to one of their many "understandings" and
in 1788 declared war together on the Turk with the expressed
intention of ending the Sultan's rule. Both encouraged the
Montenegrins to harry the Turkish borders. The Austrian Envoy,
however, distrusted the Montenegrins and wrote: "Very much more can
we rely on the faith and courage of the Catholic Albanians of the
Brda, the very numerous Bijelopavlitchi, Piperi, Kuchi,
Vasojevitchi, Klementi, Hoti, etc., who could muster 20,000 very
outrageous fighters whom the Sultan fears more than he does the
Montenegrins." A passage of great interest, for to-day many of these
Albanian tribes, having fallen under Montenegrin rule, have been
completely Slavized and have 'joined the Orthodox Church.
Some of these tribes did support Austria, were left in the lurch by
her when she made peace in 1791, and were punished by the Turks.
Part of the Klementi dared not return home and settled in Hungary,
where their descendants still live.
Montenegro was mentioned in the Treaty of Sistova merely as a
rebellious Turkish province, but Vladika Petar had gained much
power, for the Brda tribes now definitely accepted him as their head
and the Tsutsi and Bijelitch tribes emigrated into Montenegro from
the Herzegovina and were given land.
The Turks forcibly opposed the union of the Brda with Montenegro,
but could not prevent it, and in the fight the Pasha of Scutari was
killed. His head, on a stake, for long adorned the tower at Cetinje.
A hard blow was now struck at Montenegro. The Venetians in 1797
ceded the Bocche di Cattaro to Austria. Till then the frontier had
been vague. The Vladika was spiritual head of the Bocchese and the
Montenegrins considered them as part of themselves. The new frontier
caused much wrath. Russia hurried to support the Vladika. Austria
strove in vain for influence. Her Envoy wrote in 1798, "The
Gubernator sees his authority daily weakening while that of the
Vladika increases." He says the frontier must be fixed "so as to
force this horde of brigands to remain within the frontiers which
they cross only to molest his Majesty's subjects and make them
victims of brigandage. The Metropolitan and the Gubernator have
given no satisfaction to the complaints daily addressed to them."
No. They did not. For they had a strong backing. Up hurried a
special Envoy of the Tsar with rich gifts for the Vladika, who
received him with a salute of guns, and further insulted Austria by
hoisting the Russian flag over the Monastery. "Devil and Baker" had
both pulled. Which won? I leave that to the reader.
Russia was now ruling power in Montenegro. When Napoleon's troops
appeared in the Near East the Montenegrins joined the Russian forces
and attacked the French at Ragusa where their ferocity horrified
even the hardened soldiers of Napoleon. A Ragusan gave me her
grandfather's account of the yelling horde of savage mountaineers
who rushed into battle with the decapitated heads of their foes
dangling from their necks and belts, sparing no one, pillaging and
destroying, and enraging the Russian officers by rushing home so
soon as they had secured booty worth carrying off. In considering
the Near East of to-day it should never be forgotten that but a
century ago much of the population was as wild as the Red Indians of
the same date.
The French held the Bocche di Cattaro some years during which the
Vladika, as Russia's ally, flatly refused to come to terms with
them. And in 1813, so soon as Napoleon's defeat became known Vladika
Petar and Vuko Radonitch, the new Gubernator, summoned the
tribesmen, swooped down on Cattaro, stormed the Trinity fort and
captured Budua. A short-lived triumph. Russia, wishing peace with
Austria and having no further use for Montenegro, ordered the
Vladika to yield his newly conquered lands and they were formally
allotted to Austria by Treaty.
During these years the resurrection of Serbia was taking place. In
this Montenegro was unable to take active part, being more than
enough occupied with her own affairs. But the Vladika himself sang
Karageorge's heroism and tried to send a force to his aid.
Vladika Petar I died in 1830. He left Montenegro larger and stronger
than he found it, for he had worked hard to unite the ever-quarrelling
tribes by establishing laws to suppress blood-feuds. Inability to
cohere is ever the curse of Slav lands. Only a strong autocrat has
as yet welded them. Petar earned the fame he bears in the land.
His body is to this day deeply reverenced by the superstitious
mountaineers. Some years after burial it was found to have been
miraculously preserved from decay and he was thereupon canonized
under the name of St. Petar Cetinski.
When dying he nominated as his successor his nephew Rada, then a lad
not yet in holy orders, and made his chiefs swear to support him.
Such an irregular proceeding as appointing a youth of seventeen to
an Archbishopric could hardly have been carried out, even in the
Balkans, had it not been for the terror of a dead man's curse--a
thing still dreaded in the land. And also for the fact that Rada's
election had the support too of Vuko Radonitch the Gubernator.
Vuko hoped doubtless to obtain the upper hand over such a young
rival. Rada, with no further training, was at once consecrated as
Vladika Petar II by the Bishop of Prizren and this strange
consecration was confirmed later at Petersburg, whither the young
Petrovitch duly went.
Russia has all along consistently furthered her influence and plans
in the Balkans by planting suitable Bishops as political agents.
Russia was now powerful in Montenegro. A Russian officer led the
clans a-raiding into Turkey and returned with so many decapitated
heads to adorn Cetinje, that the Tsar thought fit to protest. The
tug between Austria and Russia continued. Vuko, the Gubernator, and
his party, finding the youthful Archbishop taking the upper hand
with Russian aid, entered into negotiations with Austria. The plot
was, however, detected. Vuko fled to Austria. His brother was
assassinated; the family house at Nyegushi was burnt down and the
family exiled. Russia would tolerate no influence but her own and
had begun in fact the same policy she afterwards developed in
Serbia. From that date--1832--the office of Gubernator was
abolished. Imitation is the sincerest flattery. The Petrovitches
began to model themselves on their patrons, the Tsars, and strove
for absolutism.
Petar II ranks high as author and poet. He further organized the
laws against the blood-feuds which were sapping the strength of the
nation and ingeniously ordered a murderer to be shot by a party made
up of one man from each tribe. As the relatives of the dead man
could not possibly avenge themselves on every tribe in the land the
murder-sequence had perforce to end. To reconcile public opinion to
this form of punishment he permitted the condemned man to run for
his life. If the firing party missed him, he was pardoned. The point
gained was that the murder became the affair of the central
government, not of the local one.
Petar also did much to start education in the land. He died before
he was forty of tuberculosis, in 1851, one of the early victims of
the disease which shortly afterwards began to ravage Montenegro and
has killed many Petrovitches.
He named as his successor his nephew Danilo.
Danilo's accession is a turning point in Montenegrin history. He at
once stated that he did not wish to enter holy orders and would
accept temporal power only. He was, in fact, about to marry a lady
who was an Austrian Slav. For this, the consent of Russia had to be
obtained, for till now it was through the Church that Russia had
ruled in Montenegro. She had ever--with the sole exception of the
usurper Stefan Mali--supported the Vladika against the Gubernator.
This office was, however, now abolished. There had been difficulty
more than once about transmitting the ruling power from uncle to
nephew. Russia decided that she could obtain a yet firmer hold of
the land if she established a directly hereditary dynasty. Danilo
was proclaimed Prince and ecclesiastical affairs alone were to be
administered by the Bishop.
The Sultan who had accepted the rule of the Bishop in Montenegro as
in other Christian districts, protested against the recognition of
an hereditary Prince and at once attacked Montenegro, which was
saved by the diplomatic intervention of both Russia and Austria,
neither of whom wished its destruction. Peace was made and Danilo formally
recognized. He was never popular. He had received his title from
Russia, but his sympathies leaned towards Austria. And he offended
both Russia and his Montenegrins by refusing to take part in the
Crimean war, to the wrath of the tribes who saw in it a fine
opportunity for harrying their foes of the border. Attempts to
enforce law and order provoked hostility among the recently annexed
tribes of the Brda who, though they had voluntarily joined
Montenegro as opposed to the Turks, refused flatly to pay taxes.
Danilo put down this rising with great severity and gained the
hatred of the revolted tribes.
But even with enforced taxation Danilo was short of funds. Russia,
angry at his failure to aid her, stood aside. Danilo begged of
Austria and Austria refused. Montenegro could not and cannot live
without foreign support. The French--now so active again in Balkan
intrigue--came in and tried to detach Danilo from their then enemy
Russia, by offering him a subsidy and certain concessions from the
Sultan if he would accept Turkish suzerainty.
There ensued a quarrel between the Russian agent in Cetinje, B. M.
Medakovitch, and Danilo over this. Medakovitch was Danilo's private
secretary. "I lived in friendship and harmony with Prince Danilo,"
he says, "until he said to me, 'I know you wish the Montenegrins
well and highly value their liberty. But it cannot be as you wish.
We must recognize the Turks in order to obtain more money.' We might
have remained friends but foreign intrigues crept in. ... Enemies
of our faith and name denounced me as the "friend" of Russia. My
faith and blood are dear to me. But I have always kept in view the
good of the nation and followed the course which ever led to the
fortune of Montenegro. ... I would not agree that Montenegro's glory
should be denied in accordance with the wishes of the French Consul
at Scutari, who in especial is trying to destroy the power of
Montenegro." (History repeats itself. The French now, 1920, are
aiming at Montenegro's destruction.) "I opposed Turkish rule . . .
but the headmen sided with Prince Danilo and favoured the wish of
the French Consul. They were ready to accept the Turk as lord. Only
I and Prince George Petrovitch opposed them."
The quarrel was heightened by the fact that Tsar Nikola I, when he
died in 1855, bequeathed 5,000 ducats to Montenegro, but stipulated
they were to be used for charitable purposes under Russian control.
Danilo was enraged by this as he wanted the cash himself.
Medakovitch refused to give it him. "He regards as his friend him
who gives him gold," says a contemporary; "who gives naught is his
arch-enemy." Danilo continued negotiating with France, and
Medakovitch carried the 5,000 ducats out of the country to the
Russian Consul-General at Ragusa.
Danilo formed a crafty plan. He sent two cunning agents to Ragusa to
pretend to the Russian that Montenegro was in a state of unrest, and
that they could overthrow Danilo and re-establish Russian influence
if they could have the 5,000 ducats. To what more laudable end could
they be expended? But the Russian was a yet more wily fox and the
plan failed.
Danilo then hurried to Paris to discuss matters and while he was
absent George Petrovitch led a rising against him, instigated
doubtless by Medakovitch. Danilo hastily returned to Montenegro and
according to a contemporary account a reign of terror followed. He
feared every popular man: "Thus it is that a series of executions
without trial or formal accusation has gone on for months without it
being possible to see when this terrible state of things will end.
Persons who to-day are the Prince's favourites are to-morrow
corpses. His commands, his threats and his gold obtain for him false
oaths and false documents." A fierce blood-feud which lasted in
effect till a few years ago, arose between him and the Gjurashkovitches.
Marko Gjurashkovitch, one of the richest and handsomest of the
headmen, dared, during the Prince's absence in France, to marry the
widow of Pero Petrovitch, whom Danilo had meant to bestow on his
favourite Petar Vukotitch. Danilo therefore bribed heavily Gligor
Milanovitch the arambasha of a brigand band, who accused Marko
Gjurashkovitch and another of a treasonable plot against Danilo's
life. The two were at once arrested and executed in spite of their
protestations of innocence. The Gjurashkovitches fled into Turkish
territory where the two still held official posts under the Turkish
Government till 1912.
Danilo found his scheme for accepting Turkish suzerainty now so
unpopular that he dropped it and the Turks consequently at once
attacked Montenegro. The land was saved by the valour of Danilo's
brother, Grand Voyvoda Mirko, whose exploits are still sung by the
peasants. A great battle was fought at Grahovo. The retreat of the
Turkish army was cut off and the whole was slaughtered or captured.
The prisoners, according to Montenegrin custom, were hideously
mutilated and the British report of them as they passed Corfu on
their return struck horror in Europe. By this victory Montenegro
gained more land, but owed it to the valour of Mirko rather than to
Danilo.
Danilo's best work was the codification and reformation of the
unwritten law of the land. Code Danilo is rude enough, but an
advance upon the laws of Vladika Petar. It was printed in Italian
as well as Serb. Italian, till the beginning of the present century,
was the only foreign tongue that had made any way in Montenegro.
When Danilo had refused the spiritual headship of the land and had
chosen marriage, the superstitious foretold that no good would come
of this and that no heir of his body would succeed him.
The prophecy came true. He was assassinated in the summer of 1860 on
the shore of the Bocche di Cattaro, and left but two daughters. The
assassin, a Montenegrin, was arrested and executed and died without
giving any explanation of his deed. It has been ascribed both to
Austria and Russia--but was far more probably an act of private
vengeance.
Danilo was succeeded by Nikola I the present King of Montenegro, son
of Voyvoda Mirko.
Two main points stand clear from this brief sketch.
(1) That the history of Montenegro, as that of all the Balkan
peoples, is but a part of the gigantic racial struggle of Slav and
Teuton for command of the Near East. The Slav ever pressing
Southward and Westward, the Teuton standing as a bulwark for West
Europe and holding back the advancing hordes. The one non-Slavonic
lace in this group, the Albanian (with the exception of a few
Catholic tribes) consistently struggles also against the Slav peril
and sides with its opponents.
(2) It is also markedly a struggle for the supremacy of the Orthodox
Church. For with the exception of Montenegro's fights against the
armies of the Pasha of Scutari and his Albanians, the enemy of
Montenegro was always the Moslem Serbs of Bosnia and the
Herzegovina, people, that is, who racially and linguistically and by
custom are identical with the Montenegrins.
Montenegro's history continued on precisely the same lines under
Nikola I, until Slavonic and Teutonic rivalry culminated in the
colossal struggle which began in August 1914.
Of all the Petrovitches Nikola is one of the most remarkable. The
last of the mediaeval chieftains of Europe--a survival from a past
age--he is an epitome of the good and bad qualities of his race. In
common with that of other half-wild races the Montenegrin mind is
credulous and child-like and at the same time crafty and cunning.
With a very limited outlook, the Balkan politician is wont to spend
infinite ingenuity in outwitting a rival in order to gain some petty
advantage, and meanwhile to lose sight entirely of the larger
issues. Prince Nikola, better equipped by a western education than
any of his forerunners, rapidly gained a strong hold over his
ignorant subjects and in the great game of Near Eastern politics was
second only to Abdul Hamid at ruse and intrigue.
From the very first he had but one ambition--the reconstruction of
the Great Serbian Empire with the Petrovitches as the reigning
dynasty. He lived for it and he did all possible to foster it in the
minds of his people. He enforced the wearing of the national cap,
invented by Vladika Petar II. Each child was taught that his cap's
red crown was blood that had to be avenged. For each tribe he wrote
a Kolo song to be danced to at festive gatherings, to stimulate
nationalism. And for the whole country he wrote that most popular
national song:
Onward, onward, let me see Prizren,
For it is mine--I shall come to my home!
The throne and the castle of Tsar Dushan at Prizren became a
national obsession.
And to ensure the obedience of the Soviet of headmen he appointed
his redoubtable father Voyvoda Mirko as President and chose the
members himself.
He was but nineteen at the time of his accession and married almost
at once, Milena, daughter of Voyvoda Vukotitch of the fighting tribe
of Kchevo, to whom he had been affianced in childhood, as was then
customary. Their reign began stormily. The Turks thirsting to avenge
Grahovo attacked Montenegro on three sides. Voyvoda Mirko led his
son's forces and the Montenegrins defended themselves desperately,
but were so severely outnumbered that only the intervention of the
Powers saved them. So much was Mirko dreaded that the Turks made it
one of their peace terms that he must leave the country. This term
was, however,' not fulfilled and the sturdy old savage remained in
Montenegro till the day of his death, steadily opposing all western
and modern ideas, especially the making of a carriage road into the
country; and ever composing and singing to the gusle songs of battle
and border fray, which, though devoid of literary merit, give an
invaluable picture of the savagery of the land in the middle of the
nineteenth century.
Old Mirko died of the great cholera epidemic which swept Montenegro,
and Prince Nikola was then free to introduce new visages into the
land.
Balanced perilously between Austria and Russia he managed to keep on
good terms with both, but his sympathies were Russian. To Russia he
turned for help to organize an army. Till then each tribe had fought
according to its own ideas. Montenegro had no artillery and no
equipment save flintlocks and the hand jar, the heavy knife used for
decapitation. In Petersburg he was warmly received by Tsar Alexander
II, who gave him funds both for schools and the army. A small-arms
factory was started at Rijeka and a gun foundry near Cetinje. Weapons
were bought from France and preparations made for the next campaign.
You cannot talk to King Nikola long without learning that war,
successful war, filled all his mind. Conquest and Great Serbia were
the stars of his heaven and of that of his people. Border frays
enough took place and when, in 1875, the Herzegovinians broke into
open revolt the Montenegrins rushed to their aid. Nikola, commanded
by the Powers to keep the peace, declared he could not restrain the
tribesmen. Local tradition which is possibly correct states that his
efforts to do so were not strenuous. In June 1876 Prince Milan of
Serbia declared war on Turkey. Prince Nikola, who had already
refused to acknowledge Milan as leader of the Serb peoples and
regarded him with jealous eyes, thereupon declared war next day.
The Great Serbian Idea was already causing rivalry.
Nikola fought and won his first battle at Vuchidol. Montenegrin arms
were successful everywhere--penetrated far into the Herzegovina;
took Podgoritza, Nikshitch and Antivari. When the victorious
Russians drew up the Treaty of San Stefano at the very gates of
Constantinople Prince Nikola, "the Tsar's only friend," received
liberal treatment, and Serbia, suspected of Austrian leanings, but
scant recognition.
The Treaty of Berlin reversed this. England was especially
anti-Russian and, represented by Lord Beaconsfield and Lord
Salisbury, insisted on entrusting the bulk of Montenegro's conquests
in the Herzegovina to Austrian administration. "The Tsar's only
friend" was regarded with suspicion. Montenegro was unfortunately
compensated mainly with Albanian territory. It was a great
injustice. The Albanians had made just as stubborn a fight for their
nationality as had the Montenegrins, and had never lost local
autonomy. They resisted violently and prevented Montenegro from
occupying either Plava, Gusinje or Tuzi. The Powers tried to make up
by an even worse act of injustice. Mr. Gladstone, having little or
no personal experience of the Orthodox Church, was possessed of an
extraordinary admiration for it, and, filled with the erroneous idea
that every Moslem was a Turk, he was in favour of giving Dulcigno, a
wholly Albanian town, to Montenegro in place of the other three. It
was a peculiarly unjust and cruel decision. Even in the days of the
Serb Kings Dulcigno had kept its autonomy and at one time coined its
own money. All old travellers state the spoken language was
Albanian. The Montenegrins could not take it and had no claim to it.
A naval demonstration of the Powers forced it to surrender, perhaps
one of the biggest acts of bullying of which the Powers have as yet
been guilty.
Albanian Dulcigno was handed over to its hereditary foe. The
strength of its purely Albanian nature is shown by the fact that
whereas in Nikshitch, Podgoritza, and Spuzh the Moslems, Serbs and
Albanians, were stripped of all their property and expelled
wholesale to starve as very many did--the Montenegrins did not dare
interfere with the large and hostile population of Dulcigno and have
in no way succeeded in Slavizing it: The Dulcigniotes still ask for
re-union with Albania.
Montenegro was recognized by the Treaty of Berlin for the first time
as an independent Principality, and Serbia, in 1880, was raised to a
Kingdom. To Prince Nikola and his Montenegrins who had refused to
recognize Prince Milan as leader of the Serb nation this was a most
bitter pill. Rivalry between the two branches of the Serb race was
intensified. Prince Nikola strove by a remarkable series of
marriages to unite himself to any and all of the Powers by means of
his numerous offspring.
Russia being his "only friend" he aspired to marry one of his elder
daughters to the Tsarivitch. But the poor girl who was being
educated for the purpose in Russia, died young.
Two other daughters he however successfully married to the Grand
Duke Nikola Nikolaievitch and the Grand Duke Peter. With Great
Serbia in view, and on bad terms with the Obrenovitches of Serbia,
he married his daughter Zorka in 1883 to Petar Karageorgevitch, the
exiled claimant to the Serbian throne. Having thus married his elder
children to Russian and Serb he then turned to the Triple Alliance
and married Helena to the Crown Prince of Italy, thus securing an
ally, as he hoped, across the Adriatic; and his heir Prince Danilo
to the daughter of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz. For his
daughter Anna he selected Prince Joseph Battenburg. "How do you
think this young man will do as Prince of Macedonia?" he once
cheerfully asked Mr. Bouchier, to Prince Joseph's embarrassment.
Lastly, in order to have claim on Serbia whichever way the political
cat hopped, he married Prince Mirko to Natalie Constantinovitch,
cousin to Alexander Obrenovitch of Serbia. All that Prince Nikola
could do to conquer Europe by "peaceful penetration" he certainly
did.
Two daughters remained: Princesses Xenia and Vera. Popular report
had it that one was destined for Bulgaria and the other for Greece,
and there was much disappointment when the Princes of those lands
made other choice. Nor I fear are either ladies likely now to mount
thrones.
One error of judgment which has largely helped to thwart Prince
Nikola's hopes is the fact that, alarmed lest foreign luxury should
make his sons discontented with their stony fatherland, he would not
send them abroad to be educated. They were taught at home by a tutor
who was an able man enough, but the future ruler of even a tiny
realm needs a wider experience and training. He further made the
fatal mistake of bringing them up as Princes apart from the people,
whereas he himself had played with village children. As a result
they grew up with exaggerated ideas of their own importance, devoid
of discipline and ignorant of all things most needful for a
successful ruler in a poor land. They had all the vices of Princes
and none of their virtues.
It was a tragic error with tragic consequences. Nikola came to the
throne as a mediaeval chieftain in a yet mediaeval land. To succeed
in his ambitions, and he was then amply justified in believing that
he would succeed, it was needful to train up a successor fit to rule
in the twentieth century.
The gates of time were of a sudden flung open. In the space of a
few years something like five centuries poured over the land. Nikola
stood on the rocks with his sons hoping to escape the devastating
torrent. But there was no way of escape. They must swim with the
stream of time--or drown.
Nor does it now seem likely that one of his immediate descendants
will ever rule Great Serbia.
They failed to take the "tide in the affairs of men" and their
golden dream has been swept, into the Never-Never Land. It is bitter
tragedy to end life as a failure.
CHAPTER THREE.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF LAND AND PEOPLE
In 1901 I visited Montenegro and went down the lake to Scutari.
Scutari captured me at once. It had colour, life, art. Its people
were friendly and industrious and did not spend all their time
drinking rakia and swaggering up and down the street as at Cetinje.
There was something very human about them and of all things I wanted
to go into the Albanian mountains. But our Consul there was but just
arrived. He consulted his Austrian colleague and as Austria was then
keeping the mountains as its own preserve, he replied, emphatically,
that the journey was impossible for me.
No particular political crisis was happening, but there were rumours
of a certain Kastrioti in Paris who claimed descent from the great
Skenderbeg and his possible arrival as Prince of Albania roused a
certain excitement in Albanian breasts. Hopes of independence were
already spoken of in hushed whispers.
In Montenegro Great Serbia was the talk, and I was shewn crude
prints of the heroes of old, on many a cottage wall. And some
flashlights on Montenegrin character showed vividly the different
mentality of the Balkans.
The new British Vice-Consul for Scutari came up to Cetinje on
business, for the British Minister had left owing to ill-health. The
Montenegrins did not like the new Vice-Consul and seriously
consulted me as to the possibility of having him exchanged for
another. I was extremely surprised. "But why do you not like him?" I
asked. "Because he does not like us," was the confident reply. "But
he has only been here a week," I urged. "How can he know yet whether
he likes you or not? In any case what does it matter. It is not
necessary to like a Consul."
"But yes!" came the horrified reply.
"How is it not necessary? One must either love or hate!"
One must either love or hate. There is no medium. It was Dushan
Gregovitch that spoke.
Lazar Mioushkovitch flashed the next beam on the national character.
Some tourists arrived and, at the lunch table, talked with Lazar.
One was a clergyman. He told how Canon McColl during the
Turko-Russian War of 1877 had reported having seen severed heads on
poles, and how all England, including Punch, had jeered at him for
thinking such a thing possible in Europe in the nineteenth century.
Mioushkovitch was sadly puzzled. "But how, I ask you, could he fail
to see severed heads in a war? The cutting off of heads in fact--I
see nothing remarkable in that!" Then, seeing the expression of the
reverend gentleman's face, he added quickly: "But when it comes to
teaching the children to stick cigarettes in the mouths--there I
agree with you, it is a bit too strong!" (c'est un peu fort ca!)
There was a sudden silence. The Near East had, in fact, momentarily
undraped itself.
Last came the days when we daily expected to hear that the Queen of
Italy had given birth to a son and heir. A gun was made ready to
fire twenty-one shots. Candles were prepared to light in every
window. The flags waited to be unfurled. We all sat at lunch in the
hotel. The door flew open and a perianik (royal guard) entered. He
spoke a few words to Monsieur Piguet, the Prince's tutor. Piguet
excused himself and left the room.
After some interval he returned, heaved a heavy sigh, and in a voice
of deep depression, said to the Diplomatic table: Eh bien Messieurs
--nous avons une fille! It was appalling. No one in Montenegro, it
would appear, had thought such a catastrophe even possible. To the
Montenegrin the birth of a daughter was a misfortune. "You feed your
son for yourself. You feed your daughter for another man." Faced
with this mediaeval point of view the Diplomatic circle was struck
dumb. Till the British Consul said bravely: "I don't care what the
etiquette is! I won't condole with him." And the tension was
relieved.
No guns were fired, no candles lighted. Cetinje tried to look as
though nothing at all had happened.
One member of the Round Table at this time needs mention. Count
Louis Voynovitch from Ragusa was staying in Cetinje to draw up a new
code of laws. This clever adventurer was looked on with some
jealousy by the Montenegrins and much favoured by the Royal Family
whom he amused with anecdotes and jokes.
It was said he was to be permanently Minister of Justice, but he
left Montenegro rather suddenly over, it was said, a cherchez la
femme affair. He then went to Bulgaria as tutor, I believe, to the
young Princes, and afterwards held a post in Serbia.
And he returned again to Montenegro and represented Montenegro at
the Ambassadors Conference in London during the Balkan War of
1912-13. He was reputed to be deep dipped in every intrigue of the
Balkans and in Jugoslavia we may some day hear of him again.
Nothing else now worth recording occurred in my 1901 holiday. Next
year was a full one.
CHAPTER FOUR.
SERBIA AND THE WAY THERE
"The wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous is bold as
a lion."
Twice had I visited Montenegro and had heard much of Great Serbia.
Of the past as seen by Serb eyes I read in any number of cheap pink
and blue ballad books. As for the present, big Montenegrins in the
most decorative national dress in Europe, swaggered up and down the
main street of Cetinje, consumed unlimited black coffee and rakia
and discussed the glorious days when all Serbs should again be
united under Gospodar Nikita. But that they were taking any active
steps to create this earthly paradise I had then no idea.
My 1902 holiday was due. I decided to go further afield and see
Serbia itself, but to go first to Montenegro where I might obtain
information and introductions. No one in England could tell me
anything and only one recent book on the subject could be found.
This was of no consequence for the real joy of travel begins with
the plunge into the unknown and in 1902 it was still possible to
find this joy in Europe. From Whittaker's Almanac I learnt that all
passports must be visaed at the Serbian Legation and thither I
hastened.
I had never travelled without a passport, for accidents may always
happen and even so near home as Paris identity papers may be useful.
But I had never before sought a special visa.
Light-heartedly, therefore, I rang the Legation bell and cheerfully
offered the youth, who admitted me, the passport with a request for
a visa. He told me to wait; and wait I did until--though not quite
new to the Near East I began to wonder what overwhelming
world-politics were detaining the Serbian Minister. Persons peeped
at me cautiously through the half-open door and darted back when I
looked round. Finally, I was summoned into M. Militchevitch's
presence.
Stiffly he asked why I wanted to go to Serbia. My reply, that having
visited Montenegro I now proposed seeing other Serb lands, did not
please him at all. I made things worse by enlarging on my
Montenegrin experiences for I had no idea then of the fact that
there is nothing one Slav State hates so much as another Slav State,
and truly thought to please him.
He persisted in wanting "definite information." "What do you want to
do there?"
"Travel and sketch and photograph and collect curios."
He suggested sternly that there were other lands in Europe where all
this could be done.
His attitude was incomprehensible to me, who then knew foreign lands
only as places which received tourists with open arms and hotels
gaping for guests. He, on the other hand, found me quite as
incomprehensible for, like many another Balkan man, he could
conceive of no travel without a political object.
And I was quite unaware that the murders upon which Great Serbia was
to be built were even then being plotted.
Point-blank, I asked, "Is travelling in Serbia so very dangerous
then?"
The shot told. "Not at all!" said he hastily.
"Then why may I not go?"
After more argle-bargle he consented to give me the visa on
condition I went straight to the British Consul at Belgrade and did
nothing without his advice. He signed, remarking that he took no
responsibility. I paid and left triumphant, all unaware of the
hornet's nest I was now free to enter.
Of Serb politics I knew at that time little beyond the fact that
King Alexander was unpopular owing to an unfortunate marriage and
the still more unfortunate attempt of Queen Draga to plant a false
heir upon the country by pretending pregnancy; that his father's
career had been melodramatic and that the history of Serbia for the
whole period of her independence had been one long blood-feud
between the rival dynasties of Karageorge and Obrenovitch, neither
of which seemed popular in Montenegro. Off I went to Cetinje and
told various people my plan for seeing Serbia. Rather to my surprise
no one offered me introductions, but having been repeatedly told
that the Montenegrins were the cream of the Serb nation, and would
lead Serbia to glory I believed that the mere mention of Montenegro
and my acquaintance with it would suffice to assure me a welcome.
Near the door of the Monastery of Cetinje is the grave of one of the
Karageorgevitches and the priest who showed it me told that the
families Petrovitch and Karageorgevitch had been on very friendly
terms. Prince Nikola had married his daughter Zorka to Petar
Karageorgevitch, the rival claimant to the Serbian throne, in 1883;
that the young couple had lived in Cetinje and their three children
were born there; but that, after Zorka's death in 1890,
father-in-law and son-in-law had fallen out badly about money
matters and Petar had been seen no more in Montenegro. The fact that
the present Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia was born in Cetinje is
of some interest now, when he is attempting to seize his
grandfather's throne--but more of this later. In 1902 it was still
undreamed of.
Only Count Bollati, then Italian Minister to Montenegro, took any
active interest in my plans. Le bon Dieu, he said, "has created you
expressly to travel in the Balkans." He loathed Cetinje and
explained he had accepted it only as one degree better than Buenos
Ayres because nearer to Rome. "Nothing bites you," he continued;
"everything bites me. Your method of seeing lands is undoubtedly the
best, but I am satisfied with what I see from the windows of the
best hotel." Nor, unfortunately, was Count Bollati in any way unique
in his tastes a fact which may have affected the politics of Europe.
He had held a diplomatic post in Belgrade and was very curious to
know how I should fare. "Sooner you than I!" he laughed, and
meanwhile sketched me a route through the chief towns and told me
his first experience in the land.
It was at a court ball, given by the gay and dashing King Milan. The
salon was awhirl with dancers when-click--something fell to the
ground near the Count's feet. A lady's jewel doubtless. He stooped
and picked up a revolver cartridge. Laughing, he showed it to an
aide-de-camp near him, who saw no joke in the matter and referred it
to King Milan, who turned white and looked gravely anxious. And
Bollati for the first time realized the Balkans. Before I left
Cetinje it was officially announced that the marriage of Prince
Mirko (Prince Nikola's second son) with Mademoiselle Natalie
Constantinovitch had been fixed for July 12 O.S. (1902), and the
faire parts were sent to the Corps Diplomatique.
The bride was cousin to King Alexander Obrenovitch who had no direct
heir. Failing one, she was one of the nearest relations to the
Obrenovitch dynasty. The astute Prince Nikola, having married a
daughter to the Karageorge claimant to the throne, now strove to
make assurance doubly sure by marrying a son to a possible rival
candidate. My diary notes though: "It seems there has been a lot of
bother about it and that it was nearly 'off' as Papa Constantinovitch
required Mirko to put down a considerable amount in florins. And
Mirko could not produce them. I suppose he has now borrowed on his
expectation of the Serbian throne. Which is, I imagine, his only
asset."
I confess that at this time I did not know the Balkans and saw all
these doings humorously, as a comic operetta. But the comic operas
of the Balkans are written in blood and what was then fun to me was
to end in a world tragedy.
My route to Belgrade was by boat to Fiume and thence by rail via
Agram. On the boat I picked up a Croatian lady and her daughter, who
moped miserably in the hot and stuffy cabin till they ventured to
ask my permission to sit with me on deck. "You are English, so the
men will not dare annoy us," they said, "if we are with you." Only
English women, they declared, could travel as I did. The mere idea
of a journey in Serbia terrified them and they assured me it was
quite impossible.
And the cheap hotel in Agram, to which they recommended me, was of
the same opinion. The company there assured me that King Alexander
was drinking himself to death, and were loud in their expression of
contempt for land and people. In those days union between Croatia
and Serbia was possible only if Croatia swallowed Serbia. And not
very long after I was in Agram riots took place in which the Serbs
of the town were attacked and plundered.
As the train lumbered over the plains north of the Save, on the way
to Belgrade, my fellow travellers, too, thought I was bound on a mad
and impossible errand. As is usual in the Near East they all
cross-examined me about my private affairs with boring persistency,
and their verdict was that not even a British passport would see me
through. "You will never see Serbia," they declared. I did though.
For, being wholly innocent of any plots, all the efforts of all the
multitudinous police of Serbia failed to turn me from my plan. "The
wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous is as bold as a
lion."
The train thundered over the iron bridge at night and deposited me
in Belgrade. I had to give up my passport and my troubles began. I
had come to see Serbia, and finally saw the whole of it and have
described it in another book. But for obvious reasons I did not then
recount all that befell me; I did not even understand it all.
Looking back on that tour I can only wonder at the dogged
persistence with which I overcame all the obstacles which the Serb
police put in my way. Short of forbidding me to travel they did all
they could.
In accordance with my promise to M. Militchevitch, "To do nothing
without consulting the British Consul," I went to the consulate,
where I found a nice young man, who had but recently arrived and
seemed to know nothing whatever about the country. He was playing
with a dachsdog and told me cheerfully I could go anywhere I liked
"and none of them will dare touch you." But he warned me that it
would be very expensive as carriages were two pounds a day. I
suggested mildly that the land being a poor one this could not
possibly be the regular charge, but that people sometimes had to pay
extra for the privilege of being British Consul; which apparently he
had never thought of. It proved correct though. Serbia in those days
was the cheapest spot in Europe. Never again in all probability will
the peasant be so well off.
But before starting up country I meant to see Belgrade, and began by
asking at the hotel where the King was to be seen. For a King, in
1902 at any rate, was still an object of interest, and one of the
"show sights" of most European countries. The waiter replied "You
want to see our King? You won't see him. He dares not come out of
the Konak. He is probably drunk." Nor in fact during the time I
spent in Belgrade did he ever come out.
In Belgrade the first thing I learnt was that I was "shadowed" by
the police. To the uninitiated this is most uncanny. The same man
keeps turning up. He does it very badly as a rule. You sit and have
coffee on one side of a street and he sits and drinks beer at the
restaurant opposite. You wander on and think: "What an ass I was to
think he was following me!" and meet him at the next corner. Most
disquieting of all perhaps is to come suddenly out of your bedroom
and almost tumble over him in the corridor. All these and more were
my experiences in the first weeks of my tour. And always I said to
myself in triumph: "They can't do anything to me for I have not done
anything." I could not even buy a railway ticket for a day's outing
without being cross-examined as to my purpose, my father, my uncles
and other relatives. The officials in Vain assured me that there was
nothing to see in the place I wished to visit. I played the card
which had succeeded with Militchevitch and asked if it were
dangerous. I could not enter a village without being at once asked
by the local policeman for my passport. Blankly ignorant of what was
behind these proceedings I steadily pursued my way, smiling at all
questions and supplying at demand long biographies of various
members of my family. No; my father had not been in the diplomatic
service, nor my uncles, nor brothers, nor cousins. No; none of them
were officers.
"I have come to see Serbia," said I, in return to the enquiry of a
police officer. "But what do you see?" he asked, gazing wildly
round. "I see nothing!"
Every official I think in every village, saw my sketch book,
demanded an explanation of why I had selected such things as wells,
gravestones, carts and cottages to draw, and remained mystified. For
the common objects of Serbia were of no interest to them. I merely
looked on all these vagaries as so many peculiar and silly Serbian
customs--wondered what the Serbs would do if a hundred or so
tourists appeared, for then there would not be enough police to go
round--and did not allow myself to be ruffled even when three times
in one day I had to show my passport to individuals who pounced down
on me in the street.
When I arrived at the' least bad hotel in Nish the hotelier said he
did not wish to be mixed up in the affair; gave me the worst room in
the house and told me I had better leave by the first train next
morning. I said I was going to stay and did. And explored Nish
conscious of "guardian angels" at my heels.
But it was here that I realized that there was something sinister in
the background, for so suspicious were the hotel people that when,
for two days I was seriously unwell, not one of them would come in
answer to my bell but an old woman, who flatly refused to bring me
anything and never turned up again. I lived on Brand's beef lozenges
till I was well enough on the evening of the second day to crawl
downstairs and bribe a waiter to fetch me some milk. Once recovered
I went to Pirot by rail in spite of pressing requests that I would
return to Belgrade. I wanted to see the Pirot carpet factories, but
of course no one believed this. They all imagined, as I learnt
later, that I was bound for Bulgaria with evil intentions: messages
from Montenegro for the undoing of Serbia. I was quite unaware at
the time that Prince Ferdinand and Prince Nikola were plotting
together. Arrived at Pirot it was obvious that I was considered
dangerous. I was stopped in the station by police and military
authorities, who had doubtless been warned of my arrival, and told
that I was not to go near the Bulgar frontier, much less cross it.
Only after some argument did they consent to let me stay two days in
the town. Then I was to leave for Belgrade by the early morning
train, and to make sure that I could not escape by any other route,
they confiscated my passport and said it should be returned to me at
the station when I left.
Tension between Serbia and Bulgaria was obviously extreme. By way of
warning, I was told that a Bulgar spy had just been caught and was
in prison. But I had come to see the carpet making and I saw it. The
carpets are very interesting. They are made in no other part of
Serbia and are in truth Bulgarian in origin. Pirot before its
annexation to Serbia in 1878 was an undoubtedly Bulgar district. Old
books of travel call Nish Bulgar. In Pirot a distinctly Bulgar cast
of countenance and build is to be seen. And the neighbouring
peasants play the bagpipe, the typical Bulgar instrument. The type
extends not only into the south of Serbia (of 1902), but in the east
spreads over the Timok. The population along the frontier and around
Zaitchar I found Bulgar and Roumanian, the flat-faced, heavily built
Bulgar with high cheekbones and lank black hair predominating--all
being Serbized, of course. Having seen the carpet making at Pirot, I
obediently appeared at the railway station at the appointed time as
bidden. Suddenly, the whole atmosphere changed. The same officials
who had received me so inimically now wanted me to stay! Having
first worn my quite respectable supply of patience almost
threadbare, the Serbs turned right round and did all they could to
efface first impressions. The whole thing seemed to me childish and
astonishing. But I profited largely by it and went the rest of my
way in comparative comfort.
By this time I had learnt that Serbia was in a state of intense
political tension, and that my ingenuous statement that I had come
straight from Cetinje had gone badly against me.
Stupid officials asked me so many leading questions that they
revealed far more than they had learnt and showed me quite clearly
that a plot to put Prince Mirko on the throne of Serbia at no
distant date, was believed to exist.
That most wily of Royal stud-grooms, Prince Nikola, had so married
his family that he undoubtedly believed that "What he lost on the
roundabouts he would gain on the swings," and that his position as
Head of Great Serbia was assured.
Having heard so much of the Petrovitches as the natural lords of
Great Serbia, this plan did not seem to me so unreasonable. But I
soon found it had very little support in Serbia. Only in the extreme
south--at Ivanjitza, Studenitza and thereabouts did I find
Montenegro at all popular.
Elsewhere it was looked on with jealousy and suspicion. The
Montenegrins, folk said, were incurably lazy and very dirty, and
their immigration into the country was not desired.
Some Montenegrin students came to the Serbian schools, but were
denounced as ungrateful and impossible. A Montenegrin, I was told,
was a lout who would sit all day on the doorstep wearing a revolver
and doing nothing, and would expect high pay or at least good keep
for so doing. In 1898 the Serb Government had actually forbidden the
immigration of Montenegrins.
In brief, it was clear Serbia would not accept a Montenegrin Prince
at any price, and Mirko's chances were nil.
Montenegro was despised. Bulgaria was hated--was the enemy, always
had been and always would be.
But even after I had been accepted by the country strange things
still happened.
At Kraljevo there was almost a fight over me between the Nachelnik
(Mayor) who ordered me to leave next day, and a man to whom I had
been given a letter of introduction. He said I should stay: the
other that I was to go, and they shouted at each other till both
were scarlet.
When mentioning this later to a company of Serbs they asked "What
was the name of the man you had an introduction to?" I gave it. They
exchanged glances. "That family was in trouble formerly about the
murder of Prince Michel" was all that was said. He was in point of
fact a partisan of the Karageorgevitch family. And the Mayor was a
pro-Obrenovitch.
At Kragujevatz I fell right into the Karageorgevitch party. That I
met them in strength in Kragujevatz is now a matter of interest. At
the time I little dreamed that from this straggling big village--it
could hardly be called a town--would emanate bombs that would set
Europe on fire.
The Royal Arsenal is at Kragujevatz, and when I was there in 1902
the place was certainly a centre of disaffection. It was here that I
was told outright that Alexander must either divorce Draga--or go.
What was to follow was uncertain. They wished, if possible, to avoid
a revolution. I was even begged to work a propaganda in favour of
Petar Karageorgevitch in England. Above all to write to The Times,
and my informants said they trusted to my honour not to betray their
names.
Had I pursued the subject I have now little doubt that I might have
learnt much more and even have got in touch with the leaders of the
movement--if indeed I had not already fallen into their hands! But
it was my first contact with a plot of any kind and I instinctively
recoiled from having anything to do with it. It is almost impossible
for those who have led a peaceful life to realize that real human
blood is going to be shed. The thing sounded more like melodrama
than real life. But it was definitely stated that "something was
going to happen" and that I should watch the papers and see at no
distant date.
My new acquaintances were vexed that I should have$ been so harassed
in the early stages of my journey, but oddly enough ascribed it not
to the folly of their own officials, but to the fact that the
British Consul had not given me letters of introduction! "If your
own Consul will not guarantee you, of course it seems suspicious!"
This remark alone is enough to show the abyss that separated Serbia
from West Europe. Politics in the Near East are an obsession--a
nervous disease which may end in acute dementia and homicidal mania.
Having decided to confide in me, folk then began pouring out
disgusting tales about Queen Draga. So disgusting that I soon cut
all tales short so soon as her name occurred. Nor is it now
necessary to rake up old muck-heaps. One point though is of
interest. Among many races all over the world there is a widespread
belief that sexual immorality, whether in the form of adultery or
incest will inevitably entail most serious consequences not only
upon the guilty parties, but upon the community as a whole, and even
menace the existence of a whole people. Thebes, for example,
suffered blight and pestilence owing to the incest of Oedipus. I
found it widely believed in Serbia that before marrying Alexander,
Draga had been his father's mistress and was told emphatically that
the marriage must bring a curse. Serbia could never flourish while
she was on the throne. It is highly probable that though the
subsequent murders were arranged and carried out for a definite
political purpose by an organized gang, they were acquiesced in by
the ignorant mass for the above reason--a genuine belief that there
was a curse on the land that would be removed only by Draga's death.
The country, I was told, was in a terrible state. None of the
officers had been paid for six months. Draga, it was said, took all
the money to buy diamonds. The wretched woman's little collection of
jewellery which was sold at Christie's after her death, proved,
however, the falsity of this tale. But it doubtless accounted partly
for the unbridled ferocity with which the military gang fell upon
her.
That there was not enough money to pay them seemed to me not
surprising, for the land swarmed with officers. I was told that in
proportion to its size there were more officers in Serbia than in
Germany and noted in my diary at the time "the whole land seems
eaten out of house and home with officers who seem to have nothing
on earth to do but play cards. It is a great pity for the country.
As soon as the peasants learn a little I expect they will turn
Socialist." An army is an expensive luxury and "Satan finds some
mischief still for idle hands to do" is a true saying. Serbia has
paid dearly for the lot of swankers, clad in most unnecessarily
expensive uniforms, whom I saw gambling in the cafes from morning
till night.
All these points are noteworthy in the light of the present. One
other may yet strongly influence the future of the Serb race. That
is their religious fanaticism, which then surprised me. It was not
astonishing that the Serbs hated Islam, but that they should
fiercely hate every other Christian Church I did not expect.
It is but one more instance of the fact that it was largely to the
fanaticism of the Orthodox Church that the Balkan people owed their
conquest by the Turks. Evidence enough there is to show that when
their fate was in the balance the Orthodox of the Balkans regarded
the Turk as a lesser evil than the Pope. Even in 1902, though a few
mosques were still permitted to exist, no Catholic Church was
tolerated save that attached to one of the Legations over which, of
course, the Serb Government had no control. Most of the foreign
women I met, who had married Serbs, told me frankly that for the
sake of peace they had had to join the Orthodox Church; "you cannot
live here unless you do."
The American missionaries who have done so much for Bulgaria and
were permitted to work freely under the tolerant Turk, were only
allowed to travel through Serbia on condition they held no services.
I was astonished at the intense bitterness with which the ex-Queen
Natalie's conversion to Rome was spoken of. As the poor woman had
led a wretched life in Serbia and had left it for ever, her religion
could be no concern whatever now of the Serbs. But it seemed to be
considered on all sides as an insult to the nation.
Nor was it, so far as I could see, because the people were devout
believers--the upper classes certainly did not appear to be--but
because the Church was Serbian, and represented a frenzied and
intolerant Nationalism. To such an extent was this carried out that
a Catholic Albanian, of whom I subsequently saw a good deal, had to
add "itch" to the end of his name and conform to the Orthodox Church
outwardly in order to obtain leave to open a shop in Belgrade.
That frenzied Nationalism and not religion is at the base of this
intolerance is further proved by hatred of the Serb for the
Bulgarian Church, which on all points of dogma and doctrine and in
its services is precisely the same as that of the Serbs.
And this same frenzied Nationalism, if persisted in, may yet lead to
Serbia's undoing.
On looking back I see that my tour in Serbia was a turning point in
my Balkan studies. Till then the Balkans had been a happy hunting
ground filled by picturesque and amusing people, in which to collect
tales, sketch and forget home miseries for a time in a quite new
world.
I left Serbia with very mixed feelings. Much of the tour I had
enjoyed. After the police difficulties of the beginning I had met
with great hospitality and much kindness and it is always a pleasure
to penetrate an unknown land, ride through great forests and see the
new view open at the top of the pass. When the Belgrade police
visaed my passport for the last time they bade me a friendly
farewell. But I was severely disillusioned as to Great Serbia.
Instead of brethren pining to be united, I had found a mass of dark
intrigue--darker than I then knew--envy, hatred and all
uncharitableness. No love was lost between Serb and Montenegrin.
Alexander was to divorce his wife or go. "Something" would happen
soon. And I knew that if Prince Mirko really aspired to the throne
of Serbia he would be disappointed--no matter which way the cat
hopped.
The Balkans were in future to be to me a Sphinx--an asker of
ceaseless riddles each of which led to one yet more complicated;
riddles which it took long to solve.
The riddle of my strange reception in Serbia was not explained until
four years afterwards. And the tale fits in rightly here.
It was Militchevitch who told me--he who had signed my passport in
the spring of 1902. I did not see him again till 1907. "I have been
reading your book," he said. "I wondered if you had noticed what
happened. I see you did at once."
"Noticed what!" I asked.
"That from the time you left Pirot you were differently treated." He
laughed. "Now it is all over long ago you may as well know. You have
no idea the excitement you caused. The Serbian Government spent a
small fortune in cypher telegrams about you." And he told this
astonishing tale: Among the banished members of the Karageorgevitch
family was a certain woman who came to England and studied at an
English college. She wore her hair short. When therefore I arrived
at Belgrade, as ignorant as any babe of the dark undercurrent of
politics, the Serbian police at once leapt to the conclusion that I
was the lady in question come on a political errand. My passport
bothered them as they could find no flaw in it. It was arranged to
keep me under supervision and Militchevitch was at once telegraphed
to. What did he know about the so-called Englishwoman whose passport
he had signed? He could only reply "Nothing." Followed an angry
telegram asking what business he had to sign the passports of people
of whom he knew nothing, and that in fact he had let one of the
Karageorgevitch gang get into the country, who was about to be
arrested. Much alarmed, he replied that he was under the impression
I was certainly English, and that it would be rash in the highest
degree to arrest me without further evidence. They then did all they
could to prevent my tour, short of forbidding it. My imperturbable
persistence thwarted them. Telegrams flew backwards and forwards.
London to Belgrade, Belgrade to London. Militchevitch was ordered to
make enquiries about me of the police, who knew nothing at all about
me, which surprised him. He ascertained, however, that persons of my
name actually lived at the address I had given and were locally of
good repute. He implored that my arrest--which was imminent--should
be delayed lest international complications ensued. Why the Serb
authorities did not impart their doubts to the British Consulate in
Belgrade must remain a Balkan mystery. Instead of doing so the Serb
police replied, "We are having her followed everywhere. The names of
all she speaks to are noted. She goes everywhere. She talks to any
one who will talk to her. She draws all kinds of things for what
purpose we cannot ascertain. She speaks Serbian very badly, but it
is evident she does so on purpose and that she understands
everything." My arrest was almost decided on, when some one had a
brilliant idea. A photograph of the suspected Serbian lady was
somehow obtained in England and Militchevitch was then able to swear
that it had no resemblance to the Englishwoman whose passport he had
signed. Serbia was saved--that time! I was then in Pirot. Orders at
once flew over the country that the treatment should be at once
reversed and that the unpleasant impression that had been produced
should be, as far as possible, obliterated.
The episode gives a clear idea of the state of nervous tension that
existed.
The sublime folly of the Serbian police consisted in thinking that
if I were really an agent of Prince Mirko, bringing messages and
intending to take them on to Sofia I should have been such a fool as
to tell every one I met that I had just come from Cetinje. But
perhaps they judged others by themselves. The semi-oriental mind is
born to suspicion and can conceive of no straightforward action. In
truth "DORA" hails from the Near East. Is not her very name of Greek
origin?
To me it was a useful experience for it hardened me to being
"shadowed," and I bore it serenely ever afterwards. So much so in
fact that when in 1915 at Marseilles I was twice cross-examined by
the French Intelligence Officers and three times and very minutely,
by the English ones, I thought it funny, which surprised them. They
would have been still more surprised had I told them that they
reminded me of the police of Belgrade, and asked them why they were
called "Intelligence."
Their efforts were as vain as those of their Serb forerunners and
for the same reason. I had no plots to reveal.
CHAPTER FIVE.
WHAT WAS BEHIND IT ALL
It is a strange Desire to seeke Power and to lose Libertie. . . .
The standing is slippery, and the Regresse is either a Downefall, or
at least an Eclipse. Which is a Melancholy Thing.--BACON.
I went to Serbia as a tourist, but, thanks to the misdirected energy
of the Serb police, was made aware for the first time of the unseen
forces which were at work in the Balkans. What these forces were we
must now consider. Since the end of the seventeenth century Russia
and Austria had competed for expansion into the Balkans. Each had
gone to war nominally, "to free Christians from the Turkish yoke,"
but actually in order to annex these populations themselves. Each,
by promoting risings in Turkish territory and by financing rival
Balkan sovereigns, had silently and ceaselessly worked towards the
same goal.
In the great game Montenegro, as we have seen, hall been Russia's
pawn since the days when Peter the Great sent his Envoy to Vladika
Danilo. Montenegro had become Russia's outpost in the West. Russia
was Montenegro's God--and her paymaster. "The dog barks for him that
feeds him!" says an Albanian proverb. Montenegro barked, and bit
too, at Russia's behest.
Serbia throughout the nineteenth century was rent by the ceaseless
blood-feud between the Karageorgevitches and the Obrenovitches, a
history bloody as that of the Turkish Sultans, the results of which
are not yet over--one that has so largely influenced the fate of yet
unborn generations that we must understand its outlines in order to
follow modern events.
Serbia, at the end of the eighteenth century, was bitterly
oppressed, not so much by the Turkish Government, as by the
Jannisaries, the insolent and all powerful military organization
which had broken loose from restraint and was now a danger to the
Turkish Empire. The Jannisaries actually elected their own chiefs
and were semi-independent. And of all the Jannisaries of the Empire
none were more opposed to the Sultan than those of Belgrade. Their
commanders called themselves Dahis and aimed at complete government
of the province.
It is a singular fact, and one which should be emphasized, that the
Jannisaries were themselves to a very large extent, of Balkan
origin. Their ancestors had been either forcibly converted or had,
as was not infrequent, voluntarily adopted Islam. The Moslem Serb
was a far greater persecutor of the Christian Serb than was the
Turk. We find that the leading Dahis of Belgrade hailed from Focha
in the Herzegovina.
Sultan Selim in, terrified of the growing power of these
Jannisaries, sided with his Christian subjects, sent troops against
them, and forcibly evicted them from Belgrade. A Turkish Pasha,
Hadji Mustafa, was appointed as Governor, whose rule was so just and
beneficent that the land was soon at peace and the grateful Serbs
called him "Srpska Majka"--the Serbian Mother.
But the Jannisaries had retired only as far as Widin which was
commanded by the brigand leader Pasvanoglu, whose savage hordes were
devastating the country-side in defiance of the Government. Together
they attacked the Serbs. Hadji Mustafa, true to his trust, organized
the Serbs to resist. The Serbs were now by no means untrained to
war, for many had served in the Austrian Army during the late
campaigns against the Turks. But the spectacle of a Turkish Pasha
inciting Christian rayah against an army of Moslems aroused the
wrath of the Faithful throughout the Empire. They demanded the
deposition of Hadji Mustafa and the re-admission of the Jannisaries
to Belgrade. The Sultan was unable to resist and the Jannisaries
returned. Thirsting to avenge the humiliation of their forced
retirement they assassinated Hadji Mustafa, seized power, and to
prevent a further Serb rising, fell upon the Serb villages and
murdered numbers of the headmen. By so doing they precipitated what
they wished to prevent.
The Serbs rose in mass and called Karageorge, grandfather of the
present King Peter of Serbia, to be their leader. He refused at
first, saying that his violent temper would cause him to kill
without taking council first. But he was told that the times called
for violence. Born of peasant stock about 1765, his upbringing was
crudely savage; his ferocity was shown from the first.
In 1787 a panic seized the peasants when an Austrian attack upon the
Turks was expected. To save themselves and their flocks from the
approaching Turkish army they fled in crowds, hurrying to cross the
Save and finding safety in Austria. George's father was very
reluctant to go, and on reaching the river would not cross it.
George, in a blind fury, refusing either to stay himself and make
terms with the Turks, or to leave his father behind, snatched the
pistol from his sash and shot the old man down. Then, shouting to a
comrade to give his father a death-blow, for he was still writhing,
George hurried on, leaving behind him a few cattle to pay for the
burial and the funeral feast.
On his return later to Serbia he took to the mountains for some time
as a heyduk or brigand.
Such was the man called on to lead the Serbs. Rough and completely
uneducated, he yet possessed that strange power of influencing men
which constitutes a born leader. His practice as a heyduk and a
natural capacity for strategy enabled him for long to wage
successful guerrilla warfare, which baffled the Turks. The dense
forests and the roadless mountains were natural fortresses of which
he made full use.
Alternating with astonishing outbursts of energy and ferocity, were
periods of sullen silence during which he sat for days without
speaking, gnawing his nails. That there was a strain of insanity in
his genius appears certain--an insanity which has reappeared in his
great-grandson and namesake who, subject to similar fits of loss of
control, used to terrorise the populace by galloping furiously
through village streets, and was finally forced to abdicate his
right to the throne in March 1909, after the brutal murder of his
valet. A case worth the study of students of heredity.
A contemporary of old Karageorge thus describes him:
"His bold forehead bound with a tress of black hair gave him a look
rather Asiatic than European. . . . This man was one of the bold
creations of wild countries and troublous times--beings of impetuous
courage, iron strength, original talent and doubtful morality."
The might of his personality overcame all obstacles. He appealed to
Russia for aid, and a Russian Minister was sent to Serbia along with
money and men. He freed and ruled over a large tract of land. But
his rule was not much milder than that of the Jannisaries, and his
harsh tyranny made him many enemies. When his wrath was once aroused
it was unrestrainable, and he struck down and killed many of his own
followers. Discontent arose and spread.
The Serbs divided into many parties, each with rival leaders.
Russia, who had supported Karageorge, was now herself engaged in a
life and death struggle with Napoleon. The Russian regiment which
had been quartered at Belgrade, left the country. The turn of the
Turks had now come. They attacked the Serbs in force. With no aid
from without to be hoped for, the country was in greater danger than
ever. But even common danger, as history has again and again shown,
does not suffice to cure that fatal Slav weakness--the tendency to
split into rival parties led by jealous chieftains. There was no
union among the Serb forces now, at the very hour when it was most
needed. And for some never explained reason Karageorge failed to
appear.
His Voyvodas struggled with the foe and were beaten back and
suddenly, in October 1813, Karageorge, the chosen leader of the
Serbian people, fled into Austria with a few followers, without even
having struck a blow.
This tragic and most fatal failure was due in all probability, to a
mental collapse to which his unstable and unbalanced nature would be
peculiarly liable.
The Austrians promptly interned both him and his men in fortresses,
but released them at the intercession of Russia, and they retired
into Bessarabia.
Meanwhile, his place was taken by Milosh Obrenovitch, also a
peasant, who led the Serb rising of 1815 with such success that he
was recognized as ruler, under Turkish suzerainty, of a considerable
territory. And as a ruler, moreover, with hereditary rights.
It is said that Russia never forgave the Obrenovitches that they
were appointed by the Sultan and not by herself. Scarcely was Milosh
well established when Karageorge returned from his long absence.
The break-up of the Turkish Empire had begun. The Greeks were in a
ferment. Russia supported them. The Hetairia had been formed and a
plan was afoot for a great simultaneous rising of Greeks and Serbs
and Roumanians. Karageorge was to be one of its leaders.
But Milosh was in power, id did not mean to relinquish it. And he
dreamed already of wide empire. He examined the question with
sangfroid and decided that if the Greek revolution succeeded in its
hopes, an Empire would be reborn in the East which would regard
Serbia as its province and might be more dangerous than the Turk.
Did not the Greeks, in the fourteenth century, call the Turks to
Europe to fight the "Tsar of Macedonia who loves Christ?" Milosh
remained faithful to the Turk, saying "Let us remain in Turkey and
profit by her mistakes." He suppressed all pro-Greek action,
executed twenty pro-Greek conspirators, and exposed their bodies at
the roadside, and--in an evil hour for Serbia--had Karageorge
assassinated and sent his head to the Pasha.
From that day onward the feud between the two houses raged with ever
increasing fury. Until to-day every ruler of Serbia has been either
exiled, murdered, or has had his life attempted.
"Family tradition comes first" says Vladan Georgevitch. "All the
families of Serbia have, from the beginning, been followers of
either the Karageorgevitches or the Obrenovitches." As time went on,
the Obrenovitches became the choice of Austria, while Russia
supported the Karageorges, and the puppets jigged as the Great
Powers pulled the wires.
Milosh's subjects revolted against his intolerable tyranny and
exiled him in 1839. His son Michel succeeded him, a cultivated man
who strove to introduce Austrian educational methods. He was evicted
in 1842, and the Karageorges again swung into power. Alexander,
father of King Petar, was put on the throne, only in his turn to be
chased out in 1858. And old Milosh came back and died in 1860
--fortunately for himself perhaps--for he was the same old Milosh,
and his renewed tyranny was again provoking wrath.
Serbia had now come to a parting of the ways. There was a Prince of
either line, and each had already occupied the throne. Michel
Obrenovitch was re-elected. All agree that he was the most
enlightened Prince that had as yet occupied the throne, but the
blood of old Black George was unavenged, and Michel paid the
penalty. He and his cousin, Madame Constantinovitch, and his
aide-de-camp were all assassinated on June 10, 1868, in the Park
near Belgrade. So set were the murderers on fulfilling their task
that they hacked their victim's body with forty wounds. The
complicity of Alexander Karageorgevitch and his son Petar--now King
--was proved. The plot was engineered by means of Alexander's
lawyer, Radovanovitch. The Shkupstina hastily summoned demanded the
extradition of the two Karageorgevitches of Austria, whither they
had fled, and failing to obtain it outlawed them and all their house
for ever and ever, and declared their property forfeit to the State.
Fifteen accomplices arrested in Serbia were found guilty and
executed with a barbarity which roused European indignation. We can
scarcely doubt what would have been the fate of the two principals
had they fallen into Serb hands. The grotesque fact remains that it
is to Austria that King Petar owes not only his crown, but his life!
It was an odd fate that thirty years afterwards gave me an
introduction to a relative of one of the conspirators, and almost
caused a fight to take place over me at Kraljevo.
The Karageorgevitches having been exiled by the unanimous vote of
the Shkupstina for ever--till next time--Milan, cousin of the
murdered Michel, succeeded him on the throne at the age of fourteen.
And there was a Regency till 1872.
Milan was a handsome dashing fellow with not too much brain--a
typical, boastful, immoral Serb officer.
As a result of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, in which, however, he
displayed little military skill, Serbia was raised from a
principality to a Kingdom.
Russia at this time showed little or no interest in Serbia. She was
devoting all her energy and diplomacy to the creation of a big
Bulgaria, which should ultimately serve her as a land-bridge to the
coveted Constantinople. She had no use then for Serbia, and was no
friend of the Obrenovitches, and in the Treaty of San Stefano dealt
so scurvily by Serbia that Prince Milan opposed the Treaty and said
he would defend Nish against Russian troops if necessary.
At the Berlin Congress, Milan called for and obtained a good deal
more land than Russia had allotted him--territory which was, in
fact, Bulgar and Albanian. He, moreover, made a Convention with
Austria by which the frontiers and dynasty of Serbia were
guaranteed. One of those many "scraps of paper" which fill the
World's Waste Paper Basket.
It was now plain that Milan, if allowed to gain more power, would be
an obstacle to Pan-slavism in the Balkans.
The claims of the disinherited and exiled Petar Karageorgevitch
began to be talked of. Nikola Pashitch, hereafter to be connected
with a long series of crimes, now appears on the scenes. Of
Macedonian origin, he soon became one of Russia's tools, and was
leader of the so-called Radical party, though "pro-Russian" would
be a more descriptive title. It was "radical" only in the sense that
it was bent on rooting up any that opposed it. Things began to move.
In 1883 Prince Nikola married his daughter to Petar Karageorgevitch,
and that same year a revolt in favour of Petar broke out at the
garrison town of Zaitshar. Oddly enough it was at Zaitshar in 1902
that I was most pestered by the officers to declare whom I thought
should ascend the Serbian throne should Alexander die childless. By
that time I was wary and put them off by saying "The Prince of
Wales!"
I have often wondered how many of those suspicious and swaggering
officers were among those who next year flung the yet palpitating
bodies of Alexander and Draga from the Konak windows while the
Russian Minister looked on.
The revolt of 1883 was quickly crushed and Pashitch, along with some
other conspirators, fled into Bulgaria for protection. Others were
arrested in Serbia and executed. The pro-Russian movement was
checked for a time.
Pashitch owed his life to Bulgaria, and not on this occasion only.
His subsequent conduct to that land has not been marked with
gratitude.
CHAPTER SIX.
THE GREAT SERBIAN IDEA
"Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive."--SCOTT.
The Great Serbian Idea--the scheme for the reconstruction of Tsar
Dushan's mediaeval Empire--now began to sprout and germinate. In
truth that Empire had been constructed by Dushan by means of
mercenary armies, partly German, by aid of which he temporarily
subdued Bosnians, Albanians, Bulgars and Greeks. And he paid those
armies by means of the silver mines, worked largely by Italians.
Great Serbia was an incoherent mass of different and hostile races,
and it broke to pieces immediately on his death. But five centuries
of Turkish rule in no way modified the hate which one Balkan race
bore for another. Each, on gaining freedom, had but one idea--to
overthrow and rule the other. Milosh Obrenovitch had already begun
to toy with the Great Serbian Idea when he refused to support the
Greeks in their struggle for freedom. The success of the wars of
1876-77 raised fresh ambitions.
But now there were two possible heads for Great Serbia--Milan
Obrenovitch, who had been raised to kingship, and who owed his
position to Austria; and Nikola Petrovitch, recognized as Prince of
an independent land, and "the only friend" of the Tsar of All the
Russias. The bitter rivalry, not yet extinct, between the two
branches of the Serb race--Serbia and Montenegro--now began.
One thing the Serb people have never forgotten and that is that in
Dushan's reign Bulgaria was Serbia's vassal. The reconstruction
simultaneously of Big Bulgaria and Great Serbia is impossible. And
neither race has as yet admitted that a middle course is the safest.
The Zaitshar affair had shown King Milan pretty clearly that the
blood of the murdered Karageorge still howled for vengeance. His
position was further complicated by the fact that his beautiful
Russian wife, Natalie, was an ardent supporter of the plans of her
Fatherland.
He made a bold bid for popularity. Filled with exaggerated ideas of
his own prowess, and flushed by victories over the Turks, he rushed
to begin reconstructing Great Serbia by attacking Bulgaria, which,
though newly formed, had already shown signs of consolidating and
becoming a stumbling block in Serbia's path to glory. The
declaration of war was immensely popular. Had Milan succeeded, the
fate of the Obrenovitches might have been very different. But he and
his army were so badly beaten that only swift intervention by
Austria saved Serbia from destruction.
Pashitch, it should be noted, remained in Bulgaria during this war,
and in fact owed his life to that country which he has since done so
much to ruin.
The pieces on the Balkan chessboard then stood thus: A Serbia which
was the most bitter enemy of Bulgaria and whose King was
Austrophile.
A violently pro-Russian Montenegro, filled with contempt for the
beaten Serbs, and ruled by a Prince who regarded himself confidently
as the God-appointed restorer of Great Serbia, and who was openly
supporting his new son-in-law, the rival claimant to the Serb
throne.
The throne of Serbia, never too stable, now rocked badly. King Milan
declared that Pan-Slavism was the enemy of Serbia and he was
certainly right. For in those days it would have simply meant
complete domination by Russia--the great predatory power whose maw
has never yet been filled.
He pardoned Pashitch, thinking possibly it was better to come to
terms with him than to have him plotting in an enemy country,
Pashitch returned as head of the Radical party and Serbia became a
hot-bed of foul and unscrupulous intrigue into which we need not dig
now.
Between the partisans of Russia and Austria, Serbia was nearly torn
in half. After incessant quarrels with his Russian wife, Milan in
1888 divorced her--more or less irregularly--and in the following
year threw up the game and abdicated in favour of his only
legitimate child, the ill-fated Alexander who was then but fourteen.
Torn this way and that by his parents' quarrels, brought up in the
notoriously corrupt court of Belgrade and by nature, according to
the accounts of those who knew him, of but poor mental calibre,
Alexander is, perhaps, to be as much pitied as blamed. His nerves,
so Mr. Chedo Miyatovitch told me, never recovered from the shock of
a boating accident when young. He was the last and decadent scion of
the Obrenovitches and was marked down from his accession.
Vladan Georgevitch, who was Prime Minister of Serbia from 1897 till
1900, in his book The End of a Dynasty, throws much light on the
events that led up to the final catastrophe. It is highly
significant that after its publication he was sentenced to six
months' imprisonment, not for libel or false statements, but "on a
charge of having acted injuriously to Serbia by publishing State
secrets." His account is therefore in all probability correct. He
begins by relating Prince Alexander's visit to Montenegro shortly
after the termination of the Regency. Here the astute Prince Nikola
tried to persuade him to marry Princess Xenia. Princess Zorka was
dead; Prince Nikola had quarrelled rather badly with his son-in-law,
Petar Karageorgevitch, and, it would appear, meant to lose no chance
of obtaining a matrimonial alliance with any and every possible
claimant to the Serbian throne. Alexander would not consent to the
match, and stated that his object in visiting Montenegro was to
bring about a political alliance between that country and Serbia in
order to defend Serb schools and churches in Turkish territory and
generally protect Serb interests. This Nikola refused unless the
said lands were definitely partitioned into "spheres of interest"
and Prizren were included in his own. He was already determined to
occupy the throne of Stefan Dushan. The two ministers who
accompanied Alexander supported this claim. "I tell you," says
Alexander, "these two men when with me at Cetinje acted not as
Ministers of mine, but as Ministers of the Prince of Montenegro." He
denounced such a division of the territory and the negotiations
broke off. The visit to Montenegro was a failure.
Some years afterwards in Montenegro I was told triumphantly that the
match would not have been at all suitable for Princess Xenia and
that her father had refused it on the grounds that "no King of
Serbia has yet died except by murder, or in exile." But the death of
Alexander was then already planned--though I of course did not know
it--and Alexander's version of the affair is more probably correct.
In 1897 the nets began to close round the wretched youth. Russia
made up her long quarrel with Bulgaria and enlisted a new foe to the
Obrenovitches--Prince Ferdinand. She had long refused to recognize
this astute and capable Prince who was rapidly raising Bulgaria to
an important position in the Balkans, and now decided to make use of
him. The benefits might be mutual, for without Russian support
Ferdinand could not hope to reconstruct the Big Bulgaria of the
Middle Ages. Russia cynically used either Bulgaria or Serbia as best
suited her purpose at the moment. In August of the same year Russia
further strengthened her position by her alliance with France, who
at once obediently ranged herself against the Obrenovitches.
In the following October, Alexander appointed Vladan Georgevitch
Prime Minister, and bade him form a Government. The merits or
demerits of this Government we need not trouble about. What is of
interest is that it was at once attacked by the French Press. The
Temps accused Vladan of secret understandings with Goluchowsky and
Kallay, before forming it. The Courier de Soir thought that "such a
policy is the result of the Triple Alliance and is an offence to the
balance of Europe." Serbia apparently was to be used as the
determining weight on the European scales. La Souverainte went
farther and said boldly: "The moment has come when Tsar Nicholas
should show the same firmness of character as his father showed to
the Battenburg and Coburg in Bulgaria!" The Nova Vremya declared
"that the new Government clearly meant to bring Serbia into economic
dependence on Austria-Hungary."
And most of the newspapers of Europe announced the fact that the
Tsar had granted an audience to Prince Petar Karageorgevitch and had
conversed with him on the critical state of Serbia. Vladan then
recommended to Alexander the rash plan of inviting General von der
Golte to xmdertake the reform of the Serb Army as he had done that
of Turkey. The plan pleased von der Goltz, but was dropped in
consequence of the violent anti-Serb campaign which it aroused in
the French Press. The Serb Minister in Paris, Garashanin, tried to
buy some of the French papers, but had to report to his Government
that this was impossible so long as Serbia was hostile to Russia.
France was paying the Russian piper--but it was the piper that
called the tune. The Russo-French policy of ringing in the Central
Powers was already aimed at.
The wretched Alexander, not knowing whom to trust, nor where to
turn, then begged his exiled father to return from Austria and take
command of the army. Milan did so and Russia was more than ever
furious.
Warnings were now frequently received that Russia was planning the
deaths of both Milan and Alexander. One such warning was sent by the
Berlin Foreign Office.
In May 1898 Nikola Pashitch, who had been working an
anti-Obrenovitch propaganda in Bulgaria, was again in Serbia, and
led the Radical party in the general elections. The Government,
however, won by a large majority.
His work in Bulgaria seems to have been effective for in June the
Serb Minister to Sofia sent in a very important report to his
Government:
1. That Russia was determined that Milan should leave Serbia.
2. That Prince Ferdinand was willing to support Russia in this way
by any means--even bad ones.
3. That the Princes of Montenegro and Bulgaria were co-operating.
Shortly afterwards Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Nikola of Montenegro, the
Russian Minister and the Bulgarian diplomatic agent to Cetinje all
met at Abbazia. And Ferdinand is reported to have promised Nikola
the support of his army to overthrow the Obrenovitches with a view
to finally uniting Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and the Herzegovina
into one state with Nikola as head. Nikola began to sow the ground
by starting a newspaper which attacked Austrian policy in Bosnia
severely.
This is a most important turning point in Balkan history, and we
shall see many results.
Mr. J. D. Bourchier, whose knowledge of Bulgarian affairs is
unrivalled, has further told me that not only did Montenegro and
Bulgaria work together for a long while, but Bulgaria also supplied
Montenegro with much money--she was, in fact, another of the many
States who have put money into Montenegro--and lost it.
Things soon began to move. Prince Nikola got in touch with the
Radical party in Serbia and they began to prepare the downfall of
the Obrenovitches.
Bulgaria refortified her Serbian frontier. The Narodni Listy of
Prague described Prince Nikola as the only true Serb upon a throne.
King Alexander proposed at this time to visit Queen Victoria, but
was informed by Lord Salisbury that Her Majesty's health had already
obliged her to decline other visits and she was therefore unable to
receive him.
The Serb Government then complained that Queen Victoria had
conferred a high Order on Prince Nikola, who was but a vassal of
Russia, and had given nothing to the King of Serbia. Some papers
even declared she had shown preference to Nikola precisely on
account of his pro-Russian tendencies.
Russia showed her feelings plainly. The Tsar at a reception spoke
sharply to the Serbian Minister and ignored the new Serbian military
attache who had come to be presented.
Tension between Serbia and Montenegro was now acute. Large numbers
of Montenegrins had been emigrating into Serbia attracted by the
better livelihood to be obtained. The Serb Government in October
1898 formally notified Montenegro that this immigration must cease.
No more land was available for Montenegrins.
The Magyar Orsyagu went so far as to say "Montenegrin agents wander
over Serbia with their propaganda and Serbia has therefore forbidden
the further settlement of Montenegrins in Serbia." Pashitch again
came to the fore and was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment for
publishing an offensive letter to the ex-King Milan. And in November
a plot, alleged to be Bulgaro-Montenegrin, against Milan, was
discovered.
Russia was furious that Milan, in spite of these warnings, remained
in Serbia.
And in July 1899 he was fired at and slightly wounded. Milan
insisted on martial law being proclaimed and many arrests were made.
The would-be assassin was a young Bosnian--Knezhevitch. The Times
spoke of the conspiracy as a Russo-Bulgarian one. It is stated to
have been planned in Bucarest by Arsene Karageorgevitch and a
Russian agent.
Pashitch, who since 1888 had been in close connection with the
Karageorges, was accused of complicity and Milan insisted on his
execution. His guilt was by no means proved and he was finally
sentenced to five years' imprisonment, but at once pardoned by
Alexander. In reply he telegraphed, "I hasten in a moment so happy
and so solemn for my family, to lay before your Majesty my sincere
and humble gratitude for the very great mercy which you, Sire, have
shown me from the height of your throne. I declare to you, Sire,
that I will, in future . . . give my whole soul to strengthening
that order in the State which your Majesty introduced in 1897, from
which, thanks to your distinguished father, King Milan, as
commander-in-Chief of the Army, the country has derived so much
benefit." He further promised to put the remainder of his life to
the exclusive service of King Alexander and his country, and ends
with, "Long live the hope of the Serb nation, your Majesty our Lord
and King Alexander!" signed, "The most sincere and devoted servant
of the House of Obrenovitch and the throne of your Majesty, Nikola
Pashitch." This amazing telegram caused consternation in Russia. And
well it might. The annals of crime scarcely contain a more gross
example of perjury.
We now enter upon the last act of the sordid drama. For several
years Alexander had kept a mistress, Madame Draga Maschin, nee
Lungevitza, the widow of a Serbian officer. She was a handsome
woman, considerably older than Alexander, and possessed such a hold
over him that the more credulous of the Serbs--including an
ex-Minister to the Court at St. James's--believed that she had
bewitched him by means of a spell made by a gypsy woman who had
chopped some of Draga's hair fine and made a mixture which she put
into Alexander's food. Only by magic, I have been assured, could
such results have been obtained. Alexander "was crazy about her."
The Serbs are not particular about morals by any means. But this
liaison was a national misfortune Especially to all supporters of
the Obrenovitches. Not only under these circumstances could there be
no legitimate heir to the throne but a matrimonial alliance with one
of the Great Powers was desired by the country. By 1899 the
situation had become acute. The spectacle of Alexander waiting in
the street till Draga chose to admit him was a national scandal.
He was repeatedly approached on the subject, both by his father and
the nation, but Draga held him in a firm grip. Enmeshed as he knew
he was in hostile intrigues, surrounded by spies and traitors, and
himself a fool at best, maybe the luckless youth regarded her indeed
as the one human creature for whom he had any affection or trust. Be
that as it may Alexander, under her influence, promised his father
and Vladan Georgevitch that he would marry if a suitable match could
be arranged. He persuaded them to leave the country to visit a
foreign Court with this object, and so soon as they had gone he
publicly and formally announced his betrothal to Draga, and informed
his father of the fact by letter. Milan, horrified, replied that the
dynasty would not survive the blow, and that even a mere lieutenant
would scorn such a match.
The Russian Minister Mansurov, however, called at once to offer his
congratulations to Alexander, and called also upon Draga. It has
even been suggested that Russia arranged the affair, and that Draga
was her tool. This is, however, improbable. It was more likely the
achievement of an ambitious and most foolish woman. But that Russia
jumped at it as the very best means of compassing Alexander's ruin
cannot be doubted, for no less a person than the Tsar accepted the
post of Kum (Godfather) at the wedding, thus publicly announcing his
approval of the marriage at which he was represented by a proxy,
when it was celebrated at Belgrade shortly afterwards. Alexander
never saw either of his parents again. Milan resigned the command of
the army and retired to Austria and his stormy and variegated career
came to an end in the following year. He was only forty-seven at the
time of his death, but had compressed into those years an amount of
adventure unusual even in the Balkans.
Alexander's marriage, as doubtless foreseen by Russia, soon proved
disastrous. Draga, having achieved her ambition and mounted the
throne, showed none of the ability of Theodora. Clever enough to
captivate the feeble-minded Alexander, she was too stupid to realize
that her only chance lay in gaining the popularity of the people who
were none too well disposed. With incredible folly, before in any
way consolidating her position, she formed a plot worthy only of a
second-rate cinematograph, pretended pregnancy and planned to foist
a "supposititious child" upon the nation. A plan, foredoomed by its
folly to failure, which brought down on her the contempt and
ridicule not only of Serbia, but of all Europe. Such was the history
of Serbia up to the date when I plunged into it and found it on the
verge of a crisis.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1903 AND WHAT HAPPENED
For Leagues within a State are ever pernicious to Monarchic.
Early in 1903 I received an invitation to stay with certain of the
partisans of the Karageorgevitches in Serbia. The "something" that
was to happen had not yet come to pass. My sister wished to travel
with me, and my experiences of last year were not such as to lead me
to take her to Serbia. One takes risks without hesitation when
alone, into which one cannot drag a comrade. We went to Montenegro.
It was hot even at Cetinje. We were resting in one of the back
bedrooms of the hotel on the afternoon of June 11, when there came a
loud knocking at the door and the voice of Ivan, the waiter, crying
"telegramme, telegramme." We jumped up at once, fearing bad news,
and Stvane cried excitedly as I opened the door, "The King and Queen
of Serbia are both dead!" My brain re-acted instantly. The
"something" had happened, the crisis had come. Without pausing a
minute to reflect, I said: "Then Petar Karageorgevitch will be
King!"
"No, no," cried Ivan; "Every one says it will be our Prince Mirko!"
"No," said I decidedly, for I was quite certain, "It will not be
Mirko"; and I asked "How did they die?"
"God knows," said he; "some say they quarrelled and one shot the
other and then committed suicide. And it will be Mirko, Gospodjitza.
There was an article in the paper about it only the other day." He
ran off and fetched a paper. I regret now that I took no note what
paper it was, but it certainly contained an article naming Mirko as
heir to the Serb throne, supposing Alexander to die without issue.
Cetinje was excited as never before. Ordinarily, it lived on one
telegram a day from the Correspondenz Bureau. Now the boys ran to
and fro the telegraph office and bulletins poured in. One of the
earliest stated that the King and Queen had died suddenly, cause of
death unknown, but bullet wounds found in the bodies.
Later came full details. According to Belgrade papers a revolution
had been planning for three months and there were secret committees
all over the country; that the decision to slaughter both King and
Queen had been taken by the Corps of Officers at Belgrade, and the
work entrusted to the 6th Infantry Regiment; that the band of
assassins gained access to the Palace at 11 p.m.; and, as the King
refused to open the door of his bedroom, it was blown in by Colonel
Naumovitch with a dynamite cartridge the explosion of which killed
its user.
What followed was a shambles. The bodies of the victims, still
breathing, but riddled with bullets, were pitched from the window.
Draga, fortunately for herself, expired at once. But the luckless
Alexander lingered till 4 a.m.
According to current report the assassins, drunk with wine and
blood, fell on the bodies and defiled them most filthily, even
cutting portions of Draga's skin, which they dried and preserved as
trophies. An officer later showed a friend of mine a bit which he
kept in his pocket book.
Alexander was a degenerate. His removal may have been desirable. But
not even in Dahomey could it have been accomplished with more
repulsive savagery. And the Russian Minister, whose house was
opposite the Konak, calmly watched the events from his window.
Having wreaked their fury on the bodies, the assassins rushed to
kill also Draga's two brothers, one of whom it was rumoured was to
be declared heir to the throne by Alexander. Some seventeen others
were murdered that night and many wounded. These details we learned
later.
The afternoon of the 11th passed with excitement enough. Evening
came and we went in to dinner. Upon each table, in place of the
usual programme of the evening's performance at the theatre, lay a
black edged sheet of paper informing us that the Serbian travelling
company then playing in Cetinje "in consequence of the death of our
beloved Sovereign King Alexander" had closed the theatre till
further notice. The tourist table was occupied solely by my sister
and myself; the diplomatic one solely by Mr. Shipley, who was
temporarily representing England, and Count Bollati, the Italian
Minister. Dinner passed in complete silence. I was aching to have
the opinion of the exalted persons at the other table on the
startling news, but dared not broach so delicate a subject. The end
came however. The servants withdrew and Count Bollati turned to me
and said suddenly:
"Now, Mademoiselle, you know these countries What do you think of
the situation?"
"Petar Karageorgevitch will be made King."
"People here all say it will be Mirko," said Mr. Shipley.
Count Bollati maintained it would be a republic. I told them the
facts I had learned in Serbia, and said that Petar was practically a
certainty. They were both much interested.
"In any case," said Mr. Shipley, "I should advise you to say nothing
about it here. They are all for Mirko and you may get yourself into
trouble."
"I have never seen them so excited," put in the Count.
"You are too late," said I; "I've told them already, Mirko has not a
chance. He had better know the truth. You will see in a few days."
Both gentlemen expressed horror at the crudity of my methods. As a
matter of fact a good deal of international misunderstanding could
be avoided if the truth were always blurted out at once. The Italian
thought I was stark mad. The Englishman, having a sense of humour,
laughed and said, as I well recollect: "Your mission in life seems
to be to tell home truths to the Balkans. It is very good for them.
But I wonder that they put up with it." Both gentlemen commented on
the grim matter-of-factness of the telegrams. "Business carried on
usual during the alterations," said Bollati. His blood was badly
curdled by the fact that when he was in Belgrade he was well
acquainted with Colonel Mashin, the ill-fated Draga's brother-in-law,
who--according to the telegrams--had finished her off with a hatchet.
"And I have shaken hands with him!" said Bollati, disgustedly. Mr.
Shipley suggested that as I had first hand information I had better
write an article or two for the English papers; which I did at once.
"It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good." I had written my
first Balkan book and hawked it unsuccessfully round the publishers,
who told me that as nobody in England took the faintest interest in
the Balkans, they could not take it, though they kindly added that
as travels went it was not so bad. But the assassination of a King
appealed at once to the great heart of the British people and I sold
that book as an immediate result. This, by the way.
I came down early next morning to post the articles written
overnight, and found a whole crowd of officers and intelligentsia
(for in no land are these necessarily the same) around the hotel
door. Vuko Vuletitch, the hotelier, in his green, red-embroidered
coat, was haranguing them from the doorstep with the latest telegram
in his hand. Loud and lively discussion filled the air.
Vuko waved his hand as I approached. "Here," he said, "is the
Gospodjitza who says Petar Karageorgevitch will be King." I repeated
my belief cheerfully: "Your man is elected!" cried Vuko, holding up
the telegram. The news had arrived. Mirko's hopes were hopelessly
dashed. The accuracy of my information caused a small sensation and
I acquired a great reputation for political knowledge. Vuko never
failed to ask me in future what I made of the situation.
It was the morning of the 12th when this news came in. Officially,
Petar was not elected till the 15th, and then not by a really legal
method. The military gang having chosen him, summoned a Parliament
which had already been legally dissolved and was therefore
non-existent, and caused it to ratify the choice. Whence it has been
maintained by many that King Petar never was legally elected.
The 12th, 13th, and 14th passed quietly, though there was a certain
air of disappointment. More details came in. Murder is bound to be
unlovely. This one was peculiarly so. One fact was prominent. And
that was that although many persons expressed horror of the methods
and condemned the treachery of officers who had sworn fealty, yet
Cetinje as a whole regarded the affair as a blessing. Not only was
the populace pleased, but, with childish ignorance of the Western
point of view (and at that time West Europe was really very fairly
civilized), actually expected Europe to rejoice with them. It was a
cleansing of the Temple; a casting out of abominations.
And so ready was every one with a candidate for the throne that it
was impossible not to suspect that there had been foreknowledge of
the event.
Subsequent enquiry through persons connected with the post office
revealed to me the fact that a most unusual amount of cypher
telegrams had been buzzing between Belgrade and Cetinje immediately
before the bloody climax.
Petar Karageorgevitch, we learnt by telegram, was dwelling in a
"modest apartment" in Geneva, and was quite unable to furnish
journalists with any information. The Paris Havas found Bozhidar
Karageorgevitch more communicative and published an interview in
which he pleasantly stated that the event had caused him no surprise
as he had foreseen it ever since the marriage with Draga.
On the 14th I drove down to Cattaro with my sister to see her off by
steamer. Cattaro, as usual in the summer, lay panting at the water's
edge. No more news; any amount of gossip; the Petrovitches were
tottering, said some; Prince Mirko had lately fought a duel upon
Austrian territory with his brother, Prince Danilo; they would
certainly fight for the throne. The Austrian papers were full of
"digs" at the Petrovitches. I arrived back at Cetinje on the evening
of the 15th to find it beflagged and rows of tallow candles stuck
along my bedroom window for the coming illuminations. A telegram had
announced the election by the Shkupstina of "our son-in-law" and his
accession had already been celebrated by a service at the Monastery
Church and a military parade.
"Bogati!" cried Vuko to me, "you are better informed than all the
diplomatists." He added that there was to be a gala performance at
the theatre. I flew to the Zetski Dom. Not a seat was to be had. "If
you don't mind a crowd," said the ever-obliging Vuko, "you can come
into my box." And he hurried up dinner that we might all be in time.
The diplomatic table complimented me on having "spotted the
winner," and on either table lay a festive programme informing us
that the Serbian theatrical company, which had abruptly shed its
mourning, was giving a gala performance "in honour of the accession
of our beloved King Petar."
The theatre was packed from roof to floor. The performance opened
with a tableau--a portrait of Petar I, bewreathed and beflagged. A
speech was made. There were shouts of "Zhivio!" ("Long life to him!"
an eminently suitable remark under the circumstances). The whole
house cheered. I felt like an accessory after the act. Up in the
Royal Box, the only representatives of the reigning house, sat
Prince Mirko and his wife. I watched his stony countenance. But for
the devil and Holy Russia, we might have been shouting "Zhivio Kralj
Mirko!" I wondered if it hurt badly and felt sorry for him, for I
have been ploughed in an exam, myself.
We were a tight fit in our box. Gazivoda, head of the police at
Podgoritza and brother-in-law to Vuko, was there. He, too, was
assassinated a few years afterwards. And there was a crowd of Vuko's
pretty daughters. The eldest, still a pupil at the Russian Girls'
School (Russia Institut) was shuddering with horror at the crime.
"Poor Queen, poor Queen!" she muttered at intervals, "she was still
alive when they threw her from the window. If I had been there I
would have wept on her grave." She was but fifteen, and it was her
initiation into those Balkan politics in which, as Madame Rizoff,
she was herself later to play a part.
We shouted our last "Zhivio!" The play was over. Petar was King and
the Near East had entered upon a new path which led as yet none knew
whither.
I noted in my diary, "Will the army, now that it has taken the bit
between its teeth, be more than King Petar can manage?" In truth no
greater curse can befall a land than to be ruled by its own army. A
nation that chooses to be dictated to by its military has sunk low
indeed.
Cetinje showed signs of relapsing into dullness. I started on a tour
up country. The country I have described elsewhere, and will deal
now only with the political situation.
There were no roads then over the mountains and travelling was very
severe work. At every halt--for rest in the midday heat, or a cup of
black coffee to stimulate me for another two or three hours on horse
and on foot--the Serbian murders were the one topic. Boshko, my
guide, with the latest news from Podgoritza was in great request and
a proud man. Everywhere the crime was approved. The women raged
against Draga, even saying "She ought to lie under the accursed
stone heap!"--a reminiscence of the fact that stoning to death was
actually inflicted in Montenegro in the old days, upon women for
sexual immorality. Vuk Vrchevitch records a case as late as 1770.
And in quite recent times a husband still, if he thought fit, would
cut off the nose of his wife if he suspected her of infidelity. No
man, it was explained to me cheerfully, was ever likely to make love
to her again after that.
West Europe was, in 1903, quite ignorant of the state of primitive
savagery from which the South Slavs were but beginning to rise.
Distinguished scientists travelled far afield and recorded the head
hunters of New Guinea. But the ballads of Grand Voyvoda Mirko--King
Nikola of Montenegro's father--gloating over slaughter, telling of
the piles of severed heads, of the triumph with which they were
carried home on stakes and set around the village, and the best
reserved as an offering to Nikola himself for the adornment of
Cetinje; and the stripping and mutilating of the dead foe, give us a
vivid picture of life resembling rather that of Dahomey, than Europe
in 1860.
In the breast of every human being there is a wolf. It may sleep for
several generations. But it wakes at last and howls for blood. In
the breast of the South Slav, both Serb and Montenegrin, it has not
yet even thought of slumbering. Montenegro approved the crime.
It was to lead to "something"--indefinite, mysterious. Serdar
Jovo Martinovitch ruled in Kolashin, a strong man then, who rode the
clansmen on a strong curb. He had come up there as governor about
four years ago on account of the constant fighting, not only on the
border, but between the Montenegrin plemena (tribes). The latter he
had put a stop to. Thirty years ago he assured me the clans were in
a state of savagery. His own life was very Balkan; many women
figured in it; and to escape blood-vengeance he had fled--with one
of them--to Bulgaria, where he had served long years in the
Bulgarian Army; and had returned to Montenegro only after the affair
had blown over. Of the Bulgars he spoke in the highest terms.
At Andrijevitza, to which he passed me on, great excitement reigned.
Some great event was expected at no distant date. I was told that it
was now impossible for me to go to Gusinje, but that next year all
would be different. That they were well informed about the Bulgar
rising which was about to take place in Macedonia I cannot, in the
light of what followed, doubt. Prince Danilo's birthday was feted
magnificently with barbaric dances by firelight, national songs and
an ocean of rakija. We drank to the Prince and wished him soon on
the throne of Prizren, a wish which at that time every Montenegrin
expected to see soon realized. The reign of the Turk, I was told,
was all but over. I remarked that this had been said for a hundred
years at least and was told that the end must come some time, and
that I should see it soon.
Meanwhile, the' authorities of Andrijevitza were extremely anxious
to get me to go across the border. Though I was not aware of it at
the time, they meant to use me to cover a spy. That the expedition
was dangerous I knew. The Ipek district had scarcely been penetrated
by a foreigner for fifteen years, and was a forbidden one. The
danger I did not mind. My two months' liberty each year were like
Judas's fabled visit to the iceberg--but they made the endless vista
of grey imprisonment at home the more intolerable. And a bullet
would have been a short way out. I made the expedition and gained
thereby a reputation for courage which in truth I little deserved.
As I was being used for political purposes, though I did not know
it, I was, of course, shown only the Great Serbian view of things.
The plan was carefully laid. My guide, who was disguised, spoke
Albanian and some Turkish.
At Berani, our first stopping place, just over the Turkish border, I
met the first objectors to the murders--the monks at the very
ancient Church of Giurgevi Stupovi and a little company consisting
of a wild-looking priest clad as a peasant and with a heavy revolver
in his sash, and a couple of schoolmasters very heavily depressed.
They, too, had evidently expected "something" to happen soon. I
gathered, in fact, that an attack on the Turk had been planned, and
now with this revolution on their hands the Serbs would be able to
do nothing. In the town, however, I met the nephew of Voyvoda Gavro,
then Montenegro's Minister for Foreign Affairs--a decadent type of
youth on vacation from Constantinople, where he was at college. For
the Montenegrins, though always expressing a hatred of all things
Turkish, have never missed an opportunity of sending their sons for
Education--gratis--to the enemy's capital. His conversation--and he
was most anxious to pose as very "modern"--showed that Constantinople
is not a very nice place for boys to go to school in. He was furious
with me for daring to criticize the Serbian murders. He said no one
but an enemy of the Serb people would do so, and threatened to
denounce me to his uncle. Leaving Berani I plunged into Albanian
territory. This land, fondly called by the Serbs "Stara Srbija," Old
Serbia, was in point of fact Serb only for a short period.
The Serbs, or rather their Slav ancestors, poured into the Balkan
Peninsula in vast hordes in the sixth and seventh centuries and
overwhelmed the original inhabitant, the Albanian. But though they
tried hard, they did not succeed in exterminating him. The original
inhabitant, we may almost say, never is exterminated. The Albanian
was a peculiarly tough customer. He withdrew to the fastnesses of
the mountains, fought with his back to the wall, so to speak, and in
defiance of efforts to Serbize him, retained his language and
remained persistently attached to the Church of Rome. Serbia reached
her highest point of glory under Tsar Stefan Dushan. On his death in
1356, leaving no heir capable of ruling the heterogeneous empire he
had thrown together in the twenty years of his reign, the rival
feudal chieftains of Serbia fought with each other for power and the
empire was soon torn to pieces. Albania split off from the mass
almost at once, and was a separate principality under the Balsha
chiefs. And from that time Albania has never again fallen completely
under Serb power. The Turkish conquest crushed the Serbs and the
Albanians grew in power. We cannot here detail the history, suffice
it to say that in 1679 the Serbs of Kosovo, finding themselves
unable to resist the advance of the Albanians and the power of the
Turks, evacuated that district. Led by Arsenius, the Serb Patriarch,
thousands of families emigrated into Austria, who saved the Serb
people. Since then the Albanians had poured down and resettled in
the land of their ancestors.
From Berani our route lay through Arnaoutluk. We passed through
Rugova; nor did I know till afterwards that this was reputed one of
the most dangerous districts in Turkish territory and that no
European traveller had been that way for some twenty years. There
was a rough wooden mosque by the wayside. We halted. The people were
friendly enough and some one gave us coffee. I little thought 'that
in a few years time the place would be the scene of a hideous
massacre by the Montenegrins modelled on the Moslem-slaying of
Vladika Danilo. We reached Ipek after some sixteen hours of very
severe travel and knocked at the gates of the Patriarchia long after
nightfall--the very place whose Bishop had led the retreating Serb
population into Austria over two centuries before.
My arrival was a thunderbolt, both for the Patriarchia and the
Turkish authorities, who had forbidden the entry of strangers into
the district and closed the main routes to it, but had never
imagined any one would be so crazy as to drop in over the
Montenegrin frontier by way of Rugova.
The whole district was under military occupation. About thirty
thousand Turkish troops were camped in the neighbourhood, and I
learnt that a great deal of fighting had recently taken place.
Briefly, the position was that for the past two and a half centuries
the Albanians had been steadily re-occupying the lands of their
Illyrian ancestors and pressing back the small remaining Serb
population, and since the time of the Treaty of Berlin had been
struggling to wrest autonomy from the Turks and obtain recognition
as a nation. The whole of this district had been included in the
autonomous Albanian state proposed and mapped out by Lord Goschen
and Lord Fitzmaurice in 1880. Ipek, Jakova and Prizren were centres
of the Albanian League. The British Government report of August 1880
gives a very large Albanian majority to the whole district.
"The Albanians are numerically far superior to the Serbians, who are
not numerous in Kosovopolje and the Sanjak of Novibazar. The
Albanian population in the vilayet of Kosovo has lately (1880) been
still further increased by the accession of many thousands of
refugees from districts now, in virtue of the Treaty of Berlin, in
Serbian possession and which prior to the late war were exclusively
inhabited by descendants of the twelve Greg tribes, which at a
remote period emigrated from Upper Albania."
A fundamental doctrine of the Great Serb Idea is a refusal to
recognize that history existed before the creation of the Serb
Empire, or even to admit that Balkan lands had owners before the
arrival of the Serbs. Nothing infuriates a "Great Serbian" more
than to suggest that if he insists on appealing to history another
race has a prior claim to the land, and that in any case the Great
Serbia of Stefan Dushan lasted but twenty years.
In pursuance of this theory that the greater part of the Balkan
Peninsula is the birthright of the Serbs (who only began coming into
these lands at the earliest in the fourth century A.D.) the Serbs
behaved with hideous brutality to the inhabitants of the lands they
annexed in 1878, and swarms of starving and destitute persons were
hunted out, a large proportion of whom perished of want and
exposure.
The hatred between Serb and Albanian was increased a hundredfold,
and the survivors and their descendants struggled continuously to
gain complete control over the lands still theirs and to regain, if
possible, those that they had lost. The adoption of Lord
Fitzmaurice's plan would have spared the Balkans and possibly Europe
much bloodshed and suffering.
When I arrived on the scene in the summer of 1903 the Turks had sent
a large punitive expedition to enforce the payment of cattle tax
and, at the command of Europe, to introduce a new "reform" policy
in Kosovo vilayet.
The Albanians were well aware that the so-called reforms meant
ultimately the furtherance of Russia's pan-Slav schemes; that so
long as even a handful of Serbs lived in a place Russia would claim
it as Serb and enforce the claim to the best of her power; that the
"reforms" meant, In fact, the introduction of Serb and Russian
consulates, the erection of Serb schools and churches under Russian
protection, the planting of Serb colonies and ultimate annexation.
Russia was actively endeavouring to peg out fresh Serb claims. The
Russian Consul at Mitrovitza, M. Shtcherbina, had taken part in a
fight against the Albanians and was mortally wounded, it was
reported, while he was serving a gun.
Russia, in fact, having already made sure of the removal of the
pro-Austrian Obrenovitches and being in close touch with Montenegro
and Bulgaria was planning another coup in the Balkans. Albania was
resisting it. The Turks under pressure from the Powers were striving
to smooth matters down sufficiently to stave off the final crash
that drew ever nearer. They arrested a number of headmen and exacted
some punishment for Shtcherbina's death. Though if a consul chooses
to take part in a local fight he alone is responsible for results.
I had, in fact, arrived at a critical moment. The Turkish
authorities telegraphed all over the country to know what they were
to do about me. My Montenegrin guide showed anxiety also and begged
me on no account to reveal his origin.
From a little hill belonging to the Patriarchia I saw the widespread
Turkish camp on the plain.
The Igumen and the few monks and visitors gave me the Serb point of
view. Because some six centuries ago the Sveti Kralj had been
crowned in the church they regarded the land as rightfully and
inalienably Serb. They looked forward to the arrival of Russian
armies that should exterminate all that was not Serb. Shtcherbina to
them was a Christ-like man who had died to save them, and they
treasured his portrait. Russia, only the year before, had insisted
on planting a Consul at Mitrovitza against the wish of the Turkish
Government. Serb hopes had been raised. And it was possible that his
presence had in fact caused the fight.
They admitted, however, that the Turks were responsible for the
state of Albania, for they prohibited the formation of Albanian
schools and made progress impossible; an independent Albania would
be better.
News of the deaths of Alexander and Draga had reached Ipek, but no
details, for Serbian papers could only be smuggled in with great
difficulty. I gathered that the murders caused some anxiety, for a
great movement against the Turks was planned, and owing to the
upheaval in Serbia, perhaps Serbia would not now take part. As I was
English they believed that the Turks would be obliged to permit me
to travel further if I pleased. But they implored me on no account
if I went further afield, to take the train as all the railways were
shortly to be blown up.
Meanwhile the Turkish authorities could not decide what to do about
me and called me to the Konak about my passport. There I waited
hours. The place was crowded with applicants for permission to
travel. Half-starved wretches begged leave to go to another district
in search of harvest work and were denied. The Turks were in a
nervous terror and doubtless knew a crisis was at hand. As I waited
in the crowd a youth called to me across the room and said in
French: "It is pity you were not here a week or two ago. You could
have gone to Uskub and met all the foreign correspondents. Now they
have all gone. I was dragoman to The Times correspondent. He has
gone too. They think it is all over and it has not yet begun." He
laughed. I was terrified lest any one present should know French.
The boy declared they did not.
Finally, the Pasha refused me permission to go to Jakova as I had
asked. And quite rightly, for fighting was still going on there
between the troops and the Albanians. I was allowed only to visit
the monastery of Detchani, a few hours' ride distant. Detchani is
one of the difficulties in the drawing of a just frontier. Though in
a district that is wholly Albanian, it is one of the monuments of
the ancient Serb Empire and contains the shrine of the Sveti Kralj,
King Stefan Detchanski, who was strangled in 1336 in his castle of
Zvechani, it is said, by order of his son who succeeded him as the
great Tsar Stefan Dushan, and was in his turn murdered in 1356.
St. Stefan Dechansld is accounted peculiarly holy and yet to work
miracles. The Church, a fine one in pink and white marble, was built
by an architect from Cattaro, and shows Venetian influence. A rude
painting of the strangling of Stefan adorns his shrine. I thought of
the sordid details of the death of. Serbia's latest King and the old
world and the new seemed very close. Except in the matter of
armament, things Balkan had changed but little in over five
centuries.
A Turkish officer and some Nizams were quartered at the monastery,
but the few monks and students there seemed oddly enough to have
more faith in a guard of Moslem Albanians who lived near. They were
expecting shortly the arrival of Russian monks from Mount Athos.
Russia was, in fact, planting Russian subjects there for the express
purpose of making an excuse for intervention. The young Turkish
officer was very civil to me and offered to give me a military
escort to enable me to return to Montenegro by another route. My
disguised Montenegrin guide who was pledged to hand me over safe and
sound to Voyvoda Lakitch at Andrijevitza signalled to me in great
anxiety. Each day he remained on Turkish territory he risked
detection and the loss of his life.
I returned therefore to the Patriarchia, recovered my passport from
the Pasha and was given by him a mounted gendarme to ride with me as
far as Berani. This fellow, a cheery Moslem Bosniak, loaded his
rifle and kept a sharp look out. And a second gendarme accompanied
us till we were through the pass. And both vowed that a few months
ago they wouldn't have come with less than thirty men; Albanians
behind every rock and piff paff, a bullet in your living heart
before you knew where you were. They wondered much that I had made
the journey with only one old zaptieh. Still more, that I had been
allowed to come at all.
Berani received me with enthusiasm. Nor had my cheery Turkish
gendarme an idea that my guide was a Montenegrin till he took off
his fez at the frontier. Then the gendarme slapped his thigh, roared
with laughter and treated it as a good joke.
The said guide's relief on being once more in his own territory
showed clearly what the risks had been for him.
Andrijevitza gave us quite an ovation. Countless questions as to the
number and position of the Turkish Army were poured out. My guide
had fulfilled his task. I was reckoned a hero. What hold the Voyvoda
had over the Kaimmakam of Berani I never ascertained. But it was the
Voyvoda's letter to the Kaimmakam that got me over the border. All
that I gathered was that I had been made use of for political
purposes and successfully come through what every one considered a
very dangerous enterprise. The same people who had urged me to go
now addressed me as "one that could look death in the eyes."
Had I met death, what explanation would they have offered to the
questions that must have cropped up over the death of a British
subject?
A number of schoolmasters had gathered in Andrijevitza for their
holidays. Many of them were educated in Belgrade and these were
especially of the opinion that the murder of Alexander and Draga was
a splendid thing for Serbia, and when I said it might bring
misfortune were not at all pleased. Even persons who at first said
the murder was horrible now said since it was done it was well done.
The Voyvoda and the Kapetan told me that every country in Europe had
accepted King Petar except England and that the Serb Minister had
been sent from London. "England," they declared, "has often been our
enemy." They hoped that good, however, would result from my journey.
The whole of my return to Cetinje was a sort of triumphal progress.
Jovo Martinovitch, the Serdar at Kolashin, was delighted to hear of
the Ipek expedition, but admitted frankly that he had not dared
propose it himself. Voyvoda Lakitch, he said, was well informed and
no doubt knew the moment at which it could be safely attempted.
Every place I passed through was of opinion something was about to
happen soon. Next year the route to Gusinje would be open. At
Podgoritza I was received by the Governor Spiro Popovitch and taken
for a drive round the town.
I arrived at Cetinje in time for dinner and appeared in my usual
corner. Mr. Shipley and Count Bollati hailed me at once saying that
they thought I was about due. Where had I been? "Ipek," said I.
The effect on the diplomatic table was even more startling than upon
Montenegro. "But the route is closed!" said every one. I assured
them I had nevertheless been through it, and Mr. Shipley said if he
had had any idea I was going to attempt such a thing he would have
telegraphed all over the place and stopped it. At the same time he
admitted, "I rather thought you were up to something," and gave me a
piece of excellent advice, which I have always followed, which was
"Never consult a British representative if you want to make a risky
journey." Really, he was quite pleased about it and crowed over the
rest of the diplomatic table, that the British could get to places
that nobody else could. I received a note next morning from the
Bulgarian diplomatic agent praying for an interview.
He had not been long in Cetinje, but later became one of the best
known Balkan politicians. For he was Monsieur Rizoff, who, as Bulgar
Minister at Berlin, played a considerable part in the Balkan
politics of the great war.
He was a Macedonian Bulgar born at Resna, a typical Bulgar in build
and cast of countenance, and a shrewd and clever intriguer. His
excitement over my journey was great and he wanted every possible
detail as to what were the Turkish forces and where they were
situated. I told him that I understood a rising was planned. And he
told me quite frankly that all was being prepared and a rising was
to break out in Macedonia so soon as the crops were harvested.
I gathered that Rizoff himself was deeply mixed in the plot, an
idea which was confirmed later on. For among the papers captured on
a Bulgar comitadgi, Doreff, was a letter signed Grasdoff, describing
his attempts to import arms through Montenegro, a plan he found
impossible owing to the opposition of the Albanians in the
territories that must be passed through. He visited Cetinje and
reports: "I have spoken with M. Rizoff. With regard to the passage
of men and munitions through Montenegro . . . even at the risk of
losing his post he is disposed to give his assistance. But owing to
the great difficulty the plan would meet in Albania we must renounce
it. M. Rizoff hopes to be transferred soon to Belgrade. M. Rizoff
having met M. Milakoff (PMilukoff) at Abbazia, has decided to
continue the preparations for the organization until public opinion
is convinced of the inutility of the (Turkish) reforms or until the
term fixed--October 1905." Rizoff, in his talk with me, seemed
hopeful of inducing European intervention.
Desultory fighting between Bulgar bands and Turkish troops had been
going on in Macedonia throughout the year and many Bulgar peasants
had fled from Macedonia into Bulgaria where fresh bands were
prepared. A bad fight had taken place near Uskub, the Slav peasants
of which were then recognized as Bulgars. But the Serbo-Bulgar
struggle for Uskub--which, in truth, was then mainly Albanian--had
begun.
Throughout Turkish territory, Greek, Serb and Bulgar pegged out
their claims by the appointment of Bishops. Once a Bishop was
successfully planted, a school with Serb, Greek or Bulgar masters at
once sprang up and under the protection of one Great Power or
another a fresh propaganda was started.
Every time a Bishop was moved by one side, it meant "Check to your
King!" for the other. English Bishops talked piously of, and even
prayed for "our Christian brethren of the Balkans," happily unaware
that their Christian brethren were solely engaged in planning
massacres or betraying the priests of a rival nationality to the
Turks.
Serbia had just triumphantly cried "Check" to Bulgaria. In 1902 the
Bishop of Uskub had died. The Serbs had had no Bishop in Turkish
territory since the destruction of the Serb Bishopric of Ipek in
1766, which was the work of the Greek Patriarch rather than of the
Turk. They now put in a claim. The Russian Vjedomosti published a
learned article on the Ipek episcopate. The Porte regarded with
dread the increasing power of the Bulgars. So did the Greek
Patriarch at Constantinople. He of 1766 had aimed at the destruction
of Slavdom. He of 1902 thought Serbia far less dangerous than
Bulgaria. Firmilian was duly consecrated in June, 1902--a small
straw showing that Russia had begun to blow Serbwards. She began to
see she could not afford to have a powerful Bulgaria between herself
and Constantinople.
At Cetinje I gathered that my jpurney to Ipek was mysteriously
connected with "something" that was going to happen, and was
interested to find that though the populace still heartily approved
of the murder of Alexander and were filled with anger and dismay at
England's rupture of diplomatic relations, the mighty of the land
had realized that in public at any rate, it was as well to moderate
their transports. King Nikola had been interviewed by several
British and other journalists, had looked down his nose, lamented
the wickedness of the Serbs and assured his interviewers that the
Montenegrins were a far more virtuous people. Montenegro posed as
the good boy of the Serb race, and as the gentlemen in question had
not been present either at the thanksgiving in the church nor the
gala performance at the Zetski Dom, they accepted the statement.
Interviewing is, in fact, as yet the most efficient method by which
journalism can spread erroneous reports.
I returned to London and read shortly afterwards in The Times that
Macedonian troubles had settled down and recollecting that at Ipek I
had learnt they had not yet begun I wrote and told The Times so. But
it was far too well informed to print this statement. Had it not
withdrawn its correspondent? And, as Rizoff had told me, a general
Bulgar rising broke out all through Macedonia in August.
CHAPTER EIGHT
MACEDONIA, 1903-1904
THE Macedonian rising of 1903 was a purely Bulgar movement. As is
invariably the case with such risings, it was ill-planned; and
untrained peasants and irregular forces never in the long run have a
chance against regulars. Its history has been told more than once in
detail. I need only say that, instead of revolting simultaneously,
one village rose after another, and the Turkish forces rode round,
burning and pillaging in the usual fashion of punitive expeditions.
Thousands of refugees fled into Bulgaria--thus emphasizing their
nationality--and within the Bulgarian frontier organized komitadji
bands, which carried on a desultory guerrilla war with the Turkish
forces for some time. But it was soon obvious that, unless strongly
aided by some outside Power, the rising must fail.
The most important point to notice now is that not a single one of
these many revolutionaries fled to Serbia, or claimed that they were
Serbs. They received arms, munitions and other help from Bulgaria,
from Serbia nothing. They were rising to make Big Bulgaria, not
Great Serbia. Serbia now claims these people as Serbs. She did not
then extend one finger to assist them.
Milosh would not help the Greeks to obtain freedom because he did
not want a large Greece. Similarly, Serbia and Greece in 1903 did
nothing at all to aid the Macedonian revolutionaries. Most of us who
have worked in old days to free the people from the Turkish yoke
have now recognized what a farce that tale was. Not one of the
Balkan people ever wanted to "free" their "Christian brethren"
unless there was a chance of annexing them.
The Bulgar rising died down as winter came on and acute misery
reigned in the devastated districts. In December, as one who had
some experience of Balkan life, I was asked to go out on relief work
under the newly formed Macedonian Relief Committee. The invitation
came to me as an immense surprise and with something like despair.
I had had my allotted two months' holiday. I had never before been
asked to take part in any public work, and I wanted to go more than
words could express. Circumstances had forced me to refuse so many
openings. I was now forty, and this might be my last chance.
The Fates were kind, and I started for Salonika at a few days'
notice, travelling almost straight through. Serbia was depressed and
anxious, I gathered from my fellow travellers, as we passed through
it. Bishop Firmilian, whose election to the see of Uskub the Serbs
had with great difficulty obtained in June 1902, had just died. The
train was full of ecclesiastics going to his funeral at Uskub.
Russia had aided his election very considerably. It had coincided
with Russia's support of Petar Karageorgevitch to the throne of
Serbia, and all was part of Russia's new Balkan plans in which
Serbia was to play a leading role.
Petar was not received by Europe. Firmilian was dead. Serbia was
anxious. They buried Firmilian on Christmas Day in the morning,
dreading the while lest they were burying the bishopric too, so far
as Serbia was concerned--and I reached Salonika that night.
The tale of the relief work I have told elsewhere. I will now touch
only on the racial questions.
In Monastir I tried to buy some Serb books, for I was hard at work
studying the language, and had a dictionary and grammar with me.
Serbian propaganda in Monastir was, however, then only in its
infancy, and nothing but very elementary school books were to be
got. The Bulgars had a big school and church. If any one had
suggested that Monastir was Serb or ever likely to be Serb, folk
would have thought him mad--or drunk. The pull was between Greek and
Bulgar, there was no question of the Serbs. There was a large
"Greek" population, both in town and country, but of these a very
large proportion were Vlachs, many were South Albanians, others were
Slavs. Few probably were genuine Greeks. But they belonged to the
Greek branch of the Orthodox Church, and were reckoned Greek in the
census. Those Slavs who called themselves Serbs, and the Serb
schoolmasters who had come for propaganda purposes, all went to the
Greek churches.
As for the hatred between the Greek and Bulgar Churches--it was so
intense that no one from West Europe who has not lived in the land
with it, can possibly realize it. The Greeks under Turkish rule had
been head of the Orthodox Christians. True to Balkan type, they had
dreamed only of the reconstruction of the Big Byzantine Empire, and
had succeeded, by hooks and crooks innumerable, in suppressing and
replacing the independent Serb and Bulgar Churches.
But Russia, when she began to scheme for Pan-Slavism, had no
sympathy with Big Byzantium, and was aware that when you have an
ignorant peasantry to deal with, a National Church is one of the
best means for producing acute Nationalism. Under pressure from
Russia, who was supported by other Powers--some of whom really
believed they were aiding the cause of Christianity--the Sultan in
1870 created by firman the Bulgarian Exarchate. Far from "promoting
Christianity" the result of this was that the Greek Patriarch
excommunicated the Exarch and all his followers, and war was
declared between the two Churches. They had no difference of any
kind or sort as regards doctrine, dogma, or ceremonial. The
difference was, and is, political and racial.
Never have people been more deluded than have been the pious of
England about the Balkan Christians. In Montenegro I had heard all
the stock tales of the Christian groaning under the Turkish yoke,
and had believed them. I learnt in Macedonia the strange truth that,
on the contrary, it was the Christian Churches of the Balkans that
kept the Turk in power. Greek and Serb were both organizing
komitadjis bands and sending them into Macedonia, not to "liberate
Christian brethren"--no. That was the last thing they wanted. But to
aid the Turk in suppressing "Christian brethren."
I condoled with the Bulgar Bishop of Ochrida on the terrible
massacre of his flock by the Turks. He replied calmly that to him it
had been a disappointment. He had expected quite half the population
to have been killed, and then Europe would have been forced to
intervene. Not a quarter had perished, and he expected it would all
have to be done over again. "Next time there will be a great
slaughter. All the foreign consuls and every foreigner will be
killed too. It is their own fault." Big Bulgaria was to be
constructed at any price.
I suggested that, had the Bulgars risen in 1897 when the Greek made
war on the Turk, the whole land could have been freed. He replied
indignantly, "I would rather the land should remain for ever under
the Turk than that the Greeks should ever obtain a kilometre."
Later I met his rival, the Greek Bishop. He, too, loudly lamented
the suffering of the wretched Christian under the Turkish yoke. To
him I suggested that if Greece aided the Bulgar rising the Christian
might now be freed. The mere idea horrified him. Sooner than allow
those swine of Bulgars to obtain any territory he would prefer that
the land should be for ever Turkish.
Such was the Christianity which at that time was being prayed for in
English Churches.
Bulgars came to me at night and begged poison with which to kill
Greeks. Greeks betrayed Bulgar komitadjis to the Turkish
authorities. The Serbs sided with the Greeks. They had not then the
smallest desire "to liberate their Slav brethren in Macedonia." No.
They were doing all they could to prevent the Bulgars liberating
them. Of Serb conduct a vivid picture is given by F. Wilson in a
recently published book on the Serbs she looked after as refugees
during the late war. She gives details taken down from the lips of a
Serbian schoolmaster, who describes how he began Serb propaganda in
Macedonia in 1900. "We got the children. We made them realize they
were Serbs. We taught them their history. . . . Masters and
children, we were like secret conspirators." When the Bulgars
resisted this propaganda he describes how a gang of thirty Serbs
"met in a darkened room and swore for each Serb killed to kill two
Bulgars." Lots were drawn for who should go forth to assassinate.
"We broke a loaf in two and each ate a piece. It was our sacrament.
Our wine was the blood of the Bulgarians."
A small Serb school had recently been opened in Ochrida, and I was
invited there to the Feast of St. Sava. The whole Serb population of
Ochrida assembled. We were photographed together. Counting the Greek
priest, the schoolmaster and his family, who were from Serbia, and
myself, we were a party of some fifty people. Ochrida had a very
mixed population. More than half were Moslems, most of them
Albanians. Of the Christians the Bulgars formed the largest unit,
but there were many Vlachs. These were reckoned as Greeks by the
Greeks, but were already showing signs of claiming their own
nationality. The Serbs were by far the smallest group, so small in
fact as to be then negligible.
The Kaimmakam was an Albanian Moslem, Mehdi Bey, who kept the
balance well under very difficult circumstances, and to-day is one
of the leading Albanian Nationalists. He asserted always that
Ochrida should, of right, belong to Albania. Albanian it was indeed
considered until the rise of the Russo-Bulgar movement. As late as
1860 we find the Lakes of Ochrida and Presba referred to as the
Albanian Lakes by English travellers.
Through the winter of 1903-4 trouble simmered, arrests were made,
murders occurred. I learnt the ethics of murder, which, in
Macedonia, were simply: "When a Moslem kills a Moslem so much the
better. When a Christian kills a Christian it is better not talked
about, because people at home would not understand it; when a
Christian kills a Moslem it is a holy and righteous act. When a
Moslem kills a Christian it is an atrocity and should be telegraphed
to all the papers."
In February 1904 the Russo-Japanese quarrel, which had been for some
time growing hotter, burst into sudden war, and the whole complexion
of Balkan affairs changed.
At the beginning the Bulgar leaders took it for granted that Russia
was invincible, and anticipated speedy and complete victory for her.
They were also supplied with false news, and refused to credit at
first any Russian defeat. 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. Once
upon a time, not so very long ago, a rich, noble and generous
gentleman had visited the village. He was richer than you could
imagine; had paid even a white medjid for a cup of coffee; had
called the headmen and the priest together and had asked them if
they would like a church of their own in the village. And in due
time the church had been built. Followed, a list of silver
candlesticks, vestments, etc., presented by this same nobleman--the
Russian Consul. The Turks had looted the treasures. Could I cause
them to be restored? Sometimes the Consul had had an old church
restored. Sometimes he had given money to establish a school. Always
he stood for the people as something almost omnipotent.
In August M. Rostovsky, the Russian Consul at Monastir, had been
murdered. There was nothing political in the affair. The Russian had
imagined the land was already his, and that he was dealing with
humble mouzhiks. He carried a heavy riding-whip and used it when he
chose. I was told by an eye-witness that on one occasion he so
savagely flogged a little boy who had ventured to hang on behind the
consular carriage that a Turkish gendarme intervened. One day he
lashed an Albanian soldier. The man waited his opportunity and shot
Rostovsky dead on the main road near the Consulate. Russia treated
the murder as a political one, and demanded and obtained apology and
reparation of the Turkish Government. The Consul's remains were
transported to the coast with full honours. All this for a Russian
Consul in Turkey. Truly one man may steal a horse and another not
look over a fence. Russia mobilized when Austria insisted on enquiry
into the murder of an Archduke. So well was Rostovsky's funeral
engineered that the native Slav peasants looked on him as a martyr
to the sacred Slav cause, not as a man who had brought his
punishment on himself.
Russia was not, however, the only Power in Monastir. It seethed with
consuls. And the most prominent was Krai, the Austrian Consul-General,
a very energetic and scheming man who "ran" Austria for all she was
worth, and was a thorn in the side of the British Consul, whom he
endeavoured to thwart at every turn. He persuaded the American
missionaries, who were as innocent as babes about European politics,
though they had passed thirty years in the Balkan Peninsula, that he
and not the Englishman could best forward their interests, and they
foolishly induced the American Government to transfer them and their
schools to Austrian protection. And he pushed himself to the front
always, declaring that he had far more power to aid the relief work
and trying to make the English consult him instead of their own
representative. This annoyed me, and I therefore never visited him
at all. Up country among the revolted villages it was clear that the
luckless people had been induced to rise by the belief that, as in
1877, Russia would come to their rescue! But as time passed, and
Russia herself realized that the Japanese were a tough foe, it
became more and more apparent that no further rising would take
place in the spring. The Balkan Orthodox Lenten fast is so severe
that a rising before Easter was always improbable. This Easter would
see none.. I remembered with curious clearness the words of the Pole
who gave me my first Serbian lessons. "Russia is corrupt right
through. If there is a war--Russia will be like that!" and he threw
a rag of paper into the basket scornfully. His has been a twice true
prophecy. The Bulgarian Bishop of Ochrida still believed firmly in
Russia's invincibility. Furious when I refused to have cartridges,
etc., hidden in my room--which the Turks never searched--he turned
on me and declared that England was not a Christian country and
would be wiped out by Holy Russia, who had already taken half Japan
and would soon take the rest and all India too.
By the middle of March I was quite certain no rising would take
place. The Foreign Office in London still expected one, and notified
all relief workers up country to wind up work and return. The others
did, but I stayed and managed to ride right through Albania.
CHAPTER NINE.
ALBANIA
"Where rougher climes a nobler race displayed."--BYRON.
Study of the Macedonian question had shown me that one of the most
important factors of the Near Eastern question was the Albanian, and
that the fact that he was always left out of consideration was a
constant source of difficulty. The Balkan Committee had recently
been formed, and I therefore decided to explore right through
Albania, then but little known, in order to be able to acquire
first-hand information as to the aspirations and ideas of the
Albanians.
Throughout the relief work in Macedonia we had employed Albanians in
every post of trust--as interpreters, guides, kavasses and clerks.
The depot of the British and Foreign Bible Society at Monastir was
entirely in Albanian hands. The Albanian was invaluable to the Bible
Society, and the Bible Society was invaluable to the Albanians.
Albania was suffering very heavily. Every other of the Sultan
subject races had its own schools--schools that were, moreover,
heavily subsidized from abroad. The Bulgarian schools in particular
were surprisingly well equipped. Each school was an active centre of
Nationalist propaganda. All the schoolmasters were revolutionary
leaders. All were protected by various consulates which insisted on
opening new schools and protested when any were interfered with.
Only when it was too late to stop the schools did the Turks perceive
their danger. First came the school, then the revolution, then
foreign intervention--and another piece of the Turkish' Empire was
carved off. This had happened with Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria. The
Turks resolved it should not happen in the case of Albania.
Albania was faced by two enemies. Not only the Turk dreaded the
uprising of Albania, but Russia had already determined that the
Balkan Peninsula was to be Slav and Orthodox. Greece as Orthodox
might be tolerated. No one else.
The Turkish Government prohibited the printing and teaching of the
Albanian language under most severe penalties. Turkish schools were
established for the Moslem Albanians, and every effort made to bring
up the children to believe they were Turks. In South Albania, where
the Christians belong to the Orthodox Church, the Greeks were
encouraged to found schools and work a Greek propaganda. The Turks
hoped thus to prevent the rise of a strong national Albanian party.
The Greek Patriarch went so far as to threaten with excommunication
any Orthodox Albanian who should use the "accursed language" in
church or school. In North Albania, where the whole of the
Christians are Catholics, the Austrians, who had been charged by
Europe with the duty of protecting the Catholics, established
religious schools in which the teaching was in Albanian, and with
which the Turkish Government was unable to interfere. The Jesuits,
under Austrian protection, established a printing press in Scutari
for the printing in Albanian of religious books. But this movement,
being strictly Catholic, was confined to the North. It was,
moreover, initiated with the intent of winning over the Northern
Christians to Austria, and was directed rather to dividing the
Christians from the Moslems and to weakening rather than
strengthening the sense of Albanian nationality. The results of this
we will trace later.
None of these efforts on the part of Albania's enemies killed the
strong race instinct which has enabled the Albanian to survive the
Roman Empire and the fall of Byzantium, outlive the fleeting
mediaeval Empires of Bulgar and Serb, and finally emerge from the
wreck of the mighty Ottoman Empire, retaining his language, his
Customs and his primitive vigour--a rock over which the tides of
invasion have washed in vain.
When threatened with loss of much Albanian territory by the terms of
the Treaty of Berlin, the Albanians rose in force and demanded the
recognition of their rights. There is a popular ballad in Albanian
cursing Lord Beaconsfield, who went to Berlin in order to ruin
Albania and give her lands to her pitiless enemy the Slav. The
Treaty did nothing for Albania, but it caused the formation of the
Albanian League and a national uprising by means of which the
Albanians retained some of the said lands in spite of the Powers.
This induced Abdul Hamid for a short time to relax the ban upon the
Albanian language. At once national schools were opened, and books
and papers came from Albanian presses. The Sultan, alarmed by the
rapid success of the national movement, again prohibited the
language. Schoolmasters were condemned to long terms of
imprisonment. As much as fifteen years was the sentence that could
be, and was, inflicted upon any one found in possession of an
Albanian paper, and the Greek priests entered enthusiastically into
the persecution. But Albanian was not killed. Leaders of the
movement went to Bucarest, to Sofia, to Brussels, to London, and set
to work. With much difficulty and at great personal risk books and
papers published abroad were smuggled into Albania by Moslem
Albanian officials, many of whom suffered exile and confiscation of
all their property in consequence.
But there was another means by which printed Albanian was brought
into the country. During the short interval when the printing of
Albanian had been permitted, a translation of the Bible was made for
the British and Foreign Bible Society. This Society had the
permission of the Turkish Government to circulate its publications
freely. When the interdict on the language was again imposed a nice
question arose. Had the Society the right to circulate Albanian
Testaments? The Turkish Government had not the least objection to
the Gospels--only they must not be in Albanian. A constant war on
the subject went on. The director of the Bible Depot in Monastir was
an Albanian of high standing both as regards culture and energy.
Grasping the fact that by means of these publications an immense
national propaganda could be worked, he spared no pains, and by
carefully selecting and training Albanian colporteurs, whose
business it was to learn in which districts the officials were
dangerous, where they were sympathetic, and where there were
Nationalists willing themselves to risk receiving and distributing
books, succeeded to a remarkable degree.
The Greeks, of course, opposed the work. A Greek Bishop is, in fact,
declared to have denounced the dissemination of "the New Testament
and other works contrary to the teaching of the Holy and Orthodox
Church." Nevertheless it continued. It was with one of the Society's
colporteurs that I rode through Albania. I was thus enabled
everywhere to meet the Nationalists and to observe how very widely
spread was the movement. The journey was extremely interesting, and
as exciting in many respects as Borrow's Bible in Spain.
Leaving Monastir in a carriage and driving through much of the
devastated Slav area I was greatly struck on descending into the
plain land by Lake Malik to see the marked difference in the type of
man that swung past on the road. I saw again the lean, strong figure
and the easy stride of the Albanian, the man akin to my old friends
of Scutari, a wholly different type from the Bulgar peasants among
whom I had been working, and I felt at home.
Koritza, the home of Nationalism in the South, was my first
halting-place. It was celebrated as being the only southern town in
which there was still an Albanian school in spite of Turk and Greek.
Like the schools of Scutari, it owed its existence to foreign
protection. It was founded by the American Mission. Its plucky
teacher, Miss Kyrias (now Mrs. Dako), conducted it with an ability
and enthusiasm worthy of the highest praise. And in spite of the
fact that attendance at the school meant that parents and children
risked persecution by the Turk and excommunication by the Greek
priest, yet the school was always full. The girls learned to read
and write Albanian and taught their brothers. Many parents told me
very earnestly how they longed for a boys' school too. The
unfortunate master of the Albanian boys' school, permitted during
the short period when the interdiction was removed, was still in
prison serving his term of fifteen years. Could not England, I was
asked, open a school? Now either a child must learn Greek or not
learn to read at all. And the Greek teachers even told children that
it was useless to pray in Albanian, for Christ was a Greek, and did
not understand any other language.
Everywhere it was the same. Deputations came to me begging for
schools. Even Orthodox priests, who were Albanian, ventured to
explain that what they wanted was an independent Church. Roumania,
Serbia, Greece, even Montenegro, each was free to elect its own
clergy and to preach and conduct the service in its own language. At
Leskoviki and Premeti folk were particularly urgent both for schools
and church.
Not only among the Christians, but among the Moslems too, there was
a marked sense of nationality. A very large proportion of the
Moslems of the south were by no means, orthodox Moslems, but were
members of one of the Dervish sects, the Bektashi, and as such
suspect by the powers, at Constantinople. Between the Bektashi and
the Christians there appeared to be no friction. Mosques were not
very plentiful. I was assured by the Kaimmakam of Leskoviki that
many of the Moslem officials were Bekiashifj and attended mosque
only as a form without which they could not hold office. He was much
puzzled about Christianity and asked me to explain why the Greeks
and | Bulgars, who were both Christian, were always killing each
other. "They say to Europe," he said, "that they object to Moslem
rule. But they would certainly massacre each other if we went away.
What good is this Christianity to them?" I told him I could no more
understand it than he did.
The Bulgarian rising had had a strong repercussion in Albania. Our
relief work was everywhere believed to be a British Government
propaganda. Other Powers scattered money for their own purpose in
Turkish territory. Why not Great Britain? It was a natural
conclusion. Moreover the Bulgars themselves believed the help
brought them was from England the Power. And the name Balkan
Committee even was misleading. In the Near East a committee is a
revolutionary committee, and consists of armed komitadjis. Times
innumerable have I assured Balkan people of all races that the
Balkan Committee did not run contraband rifles, but they have never
believed it.
The Albanians everywhere asked me to assure Lord Lansdowne, then
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, that if he would only supply them
with as much money and as many arms as he had given the Bulgarians
they would undertake to make a really successful rising.
As for our Albanian testaments, Moslems as well as Christians bought
them; and the book of Genesis, with the tale of Potiphar's wife,
sold like hot cakes.
At Berat, where there was a Greek Consul and a Turkish Kaimmakam, we
were stopped by the police at the entrance of the town and all our
Albanian books were taken from us. But no objection was made to
those in Turkish and Greek. It was the language and not the contents
of the book that was forbidden. But there were plenty of
Nationalists in the town. It is noteworthy that though our errand
was well known everywhere, and people hastened to tell "the
Englishwoman" Albania's hopes and fears, not once did any one come
to tell me that Albania wanted to be joined to Greece. It was always
"Give us our own schools," "Free us from the Greek priest." At
Elbasan we found a bale of publications awaiting us, sent from
Monastir in anticipation of what would happen at Berat.
Here there was a charming old Albanian Mutasarrif, who did all he
could to make my visit pleasant and begged me to send many English
visitors. He had been Governor of Tripoli (now taken by Italy), and
told me that on returning home to Albania after very many years'
foreign service he was horrified to find his native land worse used
than any other part of the Turkish Empire with which he was
acquainted. He was hot on the school question, and declared his
intention of having Albanian taught. As for our books we might sell
as many as we pleased, the more the better. The little boys of the
Moslem school flocked to buy them, and we sold, too, to several
Albanians who wore the uniform of Turkish officers.
The Albanian periodical, published in London by Faik Bey, was known
here. A definite effort was being made at Elbasan to break with the
Greek Church. An Albanian priest had visited Rome, and there asked
leave to establish at Elbasan a Uniate Church. He was the son of a
rich man, and having obtained the assent of Rome returned with the
intention of building the church himself, and had even bought a
piece of land for it. But leave to erect a church had to be first
obtained from the Turkish Government. This he was hoping to receive
soon. The Turkish Government, aware that this was part of the
Nationalist movement, never granted the permit, though characteristically
it kept the question open for a long while. The mountains of Spata
near Elbasan are inhabited by a mountain folk in many ways
resembling the Maltsors of the north, who preserved a sort of
semi-independence. They were classed by the Christians as
crypto-Christians. I saw neither church nor mosque in the district I
visited. As for religion, each had two names. To a Moslem enquirer
he said he was Suliman; to a Christian that he was Constantino. When
called on to pay tax, as Christians in place of giving military
service, the inhabitants declined on the grounds that they all had
Moslem names and had no church. When on the other hand they were
summoned for military service they protested they were Christians.
And the Turks mostly left them alone. But they were Nationalists,
and when the proposal for a Uniate Church was mooted, declared they
would adhere to Rome. The news of this having spread, upset the
Orthodox Powers to such an extent that a Russian Vice-Consul was
sent hurriedly to the spot. The Spata men, however, who were vague
enough about religious doctrines, were very certain that they did
not want anything Russian, and the Russian who had been instructed
to buy them with gold if necessary had to depart in a hurry.
It was a district scarcely ever visited by strangers, and my visit
gave extraordinary delight.
So through Pekinj, Kavaia, Durazzo Tirana and Croia, the city of
Skenderbeg and the stronghold now of Bektashism, I arrived at last
at Scutari, and was welcomed by Mr. Summa, himself a descendant of
one of the mountain clans, formerly dragoman to the Consulate, and
now acting Vice-Consul. He was delighted about my journey, and told
me he could pass me up into the mountains wherever I pleased. He
explained to me that on my former visit, Mr. Prendergast being new
to the country had consulted the Austrian Consulate as to the
possibility of my travelling in the interior, and that the Austrians
who wished to keep foreigners out of the mountains, though they sent
plenty of their own tourists there, had given him such an alarming
account of the dangers as had caused him to tell me it was
impossible. He arranged at once for me to visit Mirdita.
The Abbot of the Mirdites, Premi Dochl, was a man of remarkable
capacity. Exiled from Albania as a young man for participation in
the Albanian league and inciting resistance to Turkish rule and the
decrees of the Treaty of Berlin, he had passed his years of exile in
Newfoundland and India as a priest, and had learned English and read
much. He was the inventor of an excellent system of spelling
Albanian by which he got rid of all accents and fancy letters and
used ordinary Roman type. He had persuaded the Austrian authorities
to use it in their schools, and was enthusiastic about the books
that he was having prepared. His schemes were wide and included the
translation of many standard English books into Albanian. And he had
opened a small school hard by his church in the mountains.
His talk was wise. He Was perhaps the most far-seeing of the
Albanian Nationalists. We stood on a height and looked over Albania
--range behind range like the stony waves of a great sea, sweeping
towards the horizon intensely and marvellously blue, and fading
finally into the sky in a pale mauve distance. He thrust out his
hands towards it with pride and enthusiasm. It was a mistake, he
said, now to work against Turkey. The Turk was no longer Albania's
worst foe. Albania had suffered woefully from the Turk. But Albania
was not dead. Far from it. There was another, and a far worse foe
--one that grew ever stronger, and that was the Slav: Russia with
her fanatical Church and her savage Serb and Bulgar cohorts ready to
destroy Albania and wipe out Catholic and Moslem alike.
He waved his hand in the direction of Ipek. "Over yonder," he said,
"is the land the Serbs called Old Serbia. But it is a much older
Albania. Now it is peopled with Albanians, many of whom are the
victims, or the children of the victims, of the Berlin Treaty:
Albanians, who had lived for generations on lands that that Treaty
handed over to the Serbs and Montenegrins, who drove them out to
starve. Hundreds perished on the mountains. Look at Dulcigno--a
purely Albanian town, threatened by the warships of the Great
Powers, torn from us by force. How could we resist all Europe? Our
people were treated by the invading Serb and Montenegrin with every
kind of brutality. And the great Gladstone looked on! Now there is
an outcry that the Albanians of Kosovo ill-treat the Slavs. Myself I
regret it. But what can they do? What can you expect? They know very
well that so long as ten Serbs exist in a place Russia will swear it
is a wholly Serb district. And they have sworn to avenge the loss of
Dulcigno.
"The spirit of the nation is awake in both Christian and Moslem.
People ask why should not we, like the Bulgars and Serbs, rule our
own land? But first we must learn, and organize. We must have time.
If another war took place now the Slavs would overwhelm us. We must
work our propaganda and teach Europe that there are other people to
be liberated besides Bulgars and Serbs. The Turk is now our only
bulwark against the Slav invader. I say therefore that we must do
nothing to weaken the Turk till we are strong enough to stand alone
and have European recognition. When the Turkish Empire breaks up, as
break it must, we must not fall either into the hands of Austria nor
of the Slavs."
And to this policy, which time has shown to have been the wise one,
he adhered steadily. He took no part in rising against the Turk, but
he worked hard by means of spread of education and information, to
attain ultimately the freedom of his country. His death during the
Great War is a heavy loss to Albania.
I promised him then that I would do all that lay in my power to
bring a knowledge of Albania to the English, and that I would work
for its freedom. He offered to pass me on to Gusihje, Djakova, or
any other district I wished, and to do all in his power to aid my
travels But I had already far exceeded my usual holiday, and appeals
to me to return to England were urgent.
I had to tear myself away from the wilderness and I was soon once
more steaming up the Lake of Scutari to Rijeka.
CHAPTER TEN.
MURDER WILL OUT
I ARRIVED in Cetinje with a Turkish trooper's saddle and a pair of
saddle-bags that contained some flintlock pistols and some beautiful
ostrich feathers given me by the Mutasarrif of Elbasan and not much
else but rags.
The news that I had come right through Albania excited Cetinje
vastly. Every English tourist who wanted to go to Scutari was warned
by the Montenegrins that it was death to walk outside the town; that
murders took place every day in the bazar; any absurd tale, in
fact, to blacken the Albanians. The Montenegrins were not best
pleased at my exploit, and full of curiosity.
I patched my elbows, clipped the ragged edge of my best skirt, and
was then told by Vuko Vuletitch that the Marshal of the Court was
waiting below to speak with me.
I descended and found the gentleman in full dress. It was a feast
day.
We greeted one another.
"His Royal Highness the Prince wishes to speak with you!" said he
with much flourish. "He requests you will name an hour when it is
convenient for you to come to the Palace."
It was the first time the Prince had noticed me, I was highly
amused, and replied:
"I can come now if His Royal Highness pleases!"
The Marshal of the Court eyed me doubtfully and hesitated. "I can
wash my hands," said I firmly, "and that is all; I have no clothes
but what I have on." My only other things were in the wash, and I
had repaired myself so far as circumstances allowed. The Marshal of
the Court returned with the message that His Royal Highness would
receive me at once "as a soldier."
I trotted obediently off with him. We arrived at the Palace. It was
a full-dress day, and the Montenegrins never let slip an occasion
for peacocking. The situation pleased me immensely. The Marshal
himself was in his very best white cloth coat and silken sash, gold
waistcoat, and all in keeping. Another glittering functionary
received me and between the two I proceeded upstairs. At the top of
the flight is a large full-length looking-glass, and for the first
time for four months I "saw myself as others saw me." Between the
two towering glittering beings was a small, wiry, lean object, with
flesh burnt copper-colour and garments that had never been anything
to boast of, and were now long past their prime. I could have
laughed aloud when I saw the Prince in full-dress with rows of
medals and orders across his wide chest, awaiting me. It is a
popular superstition, fostered by newspapers in the pay of modistes,
that in order to get on it is necessary to spend untold sums on
dress. But in truth if people really want to get something out of
you they do not care what you look like. Nor will any costume in the
world assist you if you have nothing to say.
The Prince conducted me to an inner room, greeted me politely,
begged me to be seated and then launched into a torrent of questions
about my previous years journey to Ipek. He seemed to think that my
life had not been worth a para, and that the Rugova route was
impossible. "Do you know, Mademoiselle, that what you did was
excessively dangerous?"
"Sire," said I, "it was your Montenegrins who made me do it." He
made no reply to this, but lamented that for him such a tour was out
of the question. And of all things he desired to see the Patriarchia
at Ipek and the Church of Dechani and the relics of the Sveti Kralj.
He had been told I had secured photographs of these places. If so,
would I give him copies?
I promised to send him prints from London. He thanked me, and there
was a pause. I wondered if this was what I had been summoned for,
and if I now ought to go. Then Nikita looked at me and suddenly
began: "I think, Mademoiselle, that you are acquainted with my
son-in-law, King Petar of Serbia."
Dear me, thought I, this is delicate ground. "I have not that
honour, Sire," I said. Now how far dare I go? I asked myself. Let us
proceed with caution. "I was in Serbia, Sire," I continued boldly,
"during the lifetime of the--er--late King Alexander." Nikita looked
at me. I looked at Nikita. Then he heaved a portentous sigh, a feat
for which his huge chest specially fitted him.
"A sad affair, was it not, Mademoiselle?" he asked. And he sighed
again.
Now or never, thought I, is the time for kite-flying. I gazed sadly
at Nikita; heaved as large a sigh as I was capable of, and said
deliberately: "Very sad, Sire--but perhaps necessary!"
The shot told. Nikita brought his hand down with a resounding smack
on his blue-knickerbockered thigh and cried aloud with the greatest
excitement: "Mon Dieu, but you are right, Mademoiselle! A thousand
times right! It was necessary, and it is you alone that understand.
Return, I beg you, to England. Explain it to your Foreign Office--to
your politicians--to your diplomatists!" His enthusiasm was
boundless and torrential. All would now be well, he assured me.
Serbia had been saved. If I would go to Belgrade all kinds of
facilities would be afforded me.
I was struck dumb by my own success. A reigning Sovereign had given
himself away with amazing completeness. I had but dangled the fly
and the salmon had gorged it. Such a big fish, too. Nikita, filled
with hopes that the result of this interview would be the resumption
