# Littell's Living Age/Volume 129/Issue 1666/Christian Populations in Turkey

From The London Quarterly Review.
CHRISTIAN POPULATIONS IN TURKEY.
In Herzegovina the harvest of 1874 was a bad one, and the peasantry foresaw a hard winter before them. The tax-collectors, agents of the officials who farm the taxes, require the agriculturists to keep the crops standing until it suits their convenience to come and levy the tithe due to the sultan, estimating the crops as standing damaged there to be worth the highest Constantinople market-prices. But in one district the tax-gatherer did not come till January, 1875, when hunger had compelled the sale and the eating of parts of the crops. The tax-gatherer estimated the tax at an enormous sum; the people resisted his demands; they were robbed, beaten, imprisoned, and their chiefs threatened with arrest when they complained. Some fled to the mountains of the neighbouring independent state of Montenegro, secure to find shelter among people of the same faith and race. They found the leading Montenegrins at the capital, Cettinje, consulting how to act with reference to a Turkish infraction of boundary rights, and were welcomed as fellow-sufferers. During their absence another district of Herzegovina was roused to discontent and resistance by the arbitrary conduct of the police and by the way in which forced labour was imposed by them. The district authorities reported to their superior, and gendarmes were sent to compel submission. Other neighbouring districts were quiet; but the clergy of some Roman Catholic districts, whose ancient privileges had never been confirmed by the present sultan, stirred their flocks to support the dignity of their religion against threatened inroads on the part of the local authorities.
Just then the emperor of Austria visited his province of Dalmatia, which is peopled by Slavs, the near kinsmen of the Herzegovinians, and borders on Herzegovina to the south-west. His visit had a political significance in the eyes of the simple peasantry, who hoped that he had come to see how best to help them against their oppressors. He probably had no such aim, but his visit encouraged them nevertheless.
The gendarmes arrived in rebellious Nevesinje at the end of April; the Christians fled to the mountains, their chiefs to Montenegro. The gendarmes went on to Bilec; but here the peasantry offered only a passive resistance to their entering the villages, and refused to appear before the local authority. The flame broke out here on a Christian woman suffering insult at the hands of a gendarme. A pasha, Vali Selim, had already been despatched by the governor of Bosnia to inquire into the result of the emperor of Austria’s visit to Dalmatia, and was instructed to give the discontented population the alternative of returning submissively to their homes or of emigrating to Montenegro. They refused to deal with any but an envoy direct from the sultan; being not rebellious against his authority, but compelled to defend themselves, their families, and their property, from his Mussulman officials of the same race as themselves.
It was as yet two small districts only that were involved; few were even interested in their affairs. But the refugee chieftains were inconvenient to Montenegro, and safe-conducts were procured by Prince Nicholas for their return. The Turkish frontier-guards attacked them in spite of their passports, and a second application was necessary to get them across the border. On their return home they were left comparatively unmolested, merely having some of their houses burned, one being assaulted in the bazaar, another killed as he left the court in which he had complained of the assault, another being murdered in his field, and an innkeeper who had entertained them paying for his hospitality with his life. The authorities made no sign of any intention to punish these outrages, but still there was no general outbreak. Isolated attacks were made on single Turks, and the matter became grave enough to attract the attention of the Porte. Accordingly the ​mufti of the Slavic Mussulmans was removed, but not punished, and a very obnoxious bishop, with Turkish leanings, was transferred to a better post. The neighbouring villagers armed themselves, but remained quiet, waiting to see what would happen, doing their ordinary work all day, but guarding the roads at night against any surprise on the part of government. This was about midsummer. At last a conference was held between representatives of the sultan and the people, who also insisted upon the presence of an envoy from Montenegro. The demands made by the peasants were for things promised them by the famous decree or hattisherif of 1857: that Christian women and girls should be safe from Turkish insult; that they should have liberty to exercise their religion; that Christians and Mahometans should be equal before the law; that the excesses of the police should be restrained; that the taxes should be justly and seasonably levied. The Mahometans thought these demands exhorbitant, and endeavoured to browbeat the Christians into some abatement of them, but in vain; and when Dervish Pasha, governor of Bosnia, came to add his wisdom to the council, the people demanded further the long-promised freedom from forced labour without payment. The pasha promised to do his utmost to obtain for them their rights if they would lay down their arms, but they said that could only be if they and their Mussulman neighbours were meanwhile separated. The pasha retired to Bosna Serai (or Serayevo), his capital, and the Christians fled with their families and goods to the mountains. The Mussulmans broke into the government store, and armed themselves with breechloaders; the neighbouring districts still holding themselves quietly in readiness. On the first of July some Christians who had been driven from theirrough mountain refuges by illness were killed at Nevesinje by the armed Mussulmans; the Christians revenged themselves, and then seized on a band of frontier-guards escorting provisions. The small engagements were repeated, and in one of them a body of Turkish troops took part. This precipitated a general rising, because the people felt sure that the Porte would now consider them as rebellious against its authority rather than as discontented because its authority did not suffice to guarantee them security of life and property. They applied for help to Montenegro, but were told that it could not be afforded. The truth is that Montenegro cannot venture to help Herzegovina again as she did in 1862-3, unless she is sure that the stronger state of Free Servia will also take the field, and that the rising is more general than has frequently proved to be the case of late years. Discontents and small rebellions are almost perennial, and have never yet been sufficiently carefully prepared to be successful.
The Mussulman inhabitants of the towns began to be alarmed when all the Herzegovina was in tumult, except one little district round Trebinje on the Montenegrin frontier, and set guards to prevent communication along the Austrian frontier. But the insurgents were not united; no leader had yet appeared among them; and an "advanced radical" agent of a Servian republican society who aspired to the leadership met with only scant courtesy from the native chiefs. The Roman Catholic districts, Which had risen in obedience to the Franciscan monks domiciled among them, were persuaded to lay down their arms; the government having been convinced of the power of the clergy, who here, as elsewhere, were anxious rather to maintain their own authority in obedience to Rome than to help forward any movement for the good of their people. Their quiescence divides Herzegovina along the course of the river Narenta into disturbed and pacified districts, the turbulent and larger portion being that towards Montenegro. Towards the end of the month of July it appeared that a Greek-Church official was unwilling to allow his people to join the insurgents, and asked the government for soldiers to help him; but the Mussulmans said that for them and Christians to fight, fall, and possibly be buried together, was an intolerable thing, and so the Christians of that district swelled the numbers of the insurgent army. This was a great blunder on the part of the Turks, as the archimandrite had ​widespread influence, and his adhesion cemented the Christian forces into a union they would have failed to attain without him.
Help in the shape of ammunition and guns has been sent privately from Montenegro, and some four or five hundred men have come thence to volunteer in the Herzegovinian army, which has, at last, apparently found a head in Lazar Sochicha. But Montenegro has complied with the requirements of international law, and has given the Porte no pretext for the execution of its threat to invade the mountain principality, although it must he obvious to all spectators that a successful attack there would be the quickest way for the Porte to control Herzegovina. But Turkey is in no position to pursue vigorously any object which requires money or good organization, and in her times of greatest strength the Montenegrins have ever proved unconquerable foes to her.
America is said to have offered her cannon on credit, and France has negotiated a loan which will suffice to provide the army with the arms yet wanting to them. Garibaldi has promised help to the Herzegovinians in the spring, and as the Turkish troops want long arrears of pay, and the barest necessaries of food and clothing, and are not accustomed to the rigour of a Herzegovinian winter, it is not improbable that in the early months of this year another Christian Slav province of Turkey will have freed itself from the terrible yoke of the Turk, and be either independent or joined to Servia or Montenegro.
It is true that the Porte has once more reiterated the empty promises with which its Christian subjects have been always familiar since, more than four centuries ago, they first were drowned in the flood of Mahometanism, and which have been thrown like dust in the eyes of Europe especially since 1857. But these "reforms" can come to nothing — they will always be like empty words. The idea of erecting Herzegovina into a separate province when the sultan dares not put any but a Mahometan or a base and corrupt socalled Christian into any of the responsible offices of State there is quite nugatory. He dares not, because whatever pressure may be brought to bear upon the central government by financial distress and the public opinion of Europe is unfelt by the Mahometans throughout the empire, who cling with furious determination to every privilege and power conferred on them in former times by a religion which treats all but Mahometans as the enemies of God and man, fit only for slavery and abuse.
At the same time, although theoretically it may be said — and it often has been said — that Turkey is peopled by Christians under the heel of Mahometans, it must be clearly remembered that that is by no means the whole of the truth. The truth is more nearly told by an author who says that all the evils which afflicted France before the Revolution must be doubled, and then aggravated by the bickerings and jealousies of Jews, Mahometans, Roman Catholics, members of the Greek Church, and renegades for lucre or safety, embittered as those bickerings and jealousies must be under such circumstances of intense suffering, all this must be imagined before any idea is reached of the condition of the inhabitants of some of the richest and fairest countries in Europe.
Once, in the fourteenth century, these provinces were the great Servian empire, long united in fact by their common descent and common language, and still more by the common faith and by the precious possession of a Bible in the vulgar tongue which is even now intelligible to all the Slavonian populations in Turkey, Free Servia, and Montenegro, Austria, Russia, and Poland. One of the first printing-presses was set up by a Montenegrin noble, who was made by Charles V. a baron of the Holy Roman Empire for this good work, and who devoted it chiefly to the printing of the Bible and books of devotion. The traveller through those lands can take no more welcome gift in his hand than either the old Slavonic version or that more recently prepared by the American missionaries and distributed by colporteurs of the Bible Society under their superintendence.
The time of union under an emperor was short, for the first who held that name was also the last. The present ​principality of Servia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Dalmatia, Bulgaria, Albania, Epirus, all the countries from the Adriatic to the Black Sea, acknowledged the headship of Dushan (AD. 1333-1356), who codified their laws — like the Slavonian emperor of Rome, Justinian — giving supreme legal authority to a national assembly, providing for incorrupt administration of justice, recognizing the institution of trial by jury, regulating the heredicity of property, and equable taxation, and insisting on the necessity of free trade as indispensable for the material progress of the people. Unhappily ambition and the weakness of the Greek empire tempted Dushan to turn longing eyes on Constantinople and the Empire of the East. The Greek emperor invited the Osmanli Turks to cross the Bosphorus and help him against probable attack. Just at that moment Dushan died, and the governors of the twelve provinces of the Servian empire, though for a time they held together against the Turks under the leadership of Lazar, whom they elected to prevent the spread of dissensions among themselves, were without any sufficient connecting links to hold them together after Lazar was killed, and the Servian power was destroyed, at Kossova in 1389.
The genius of the Servs was such as to favour their separation into such portions as were easily conquered and absorbed by the Turks, who were firmly established on the Danube for some half-century before the fall of Constantinople avenged on the Greek empire its base introduction of savage allies to help it against its neighbours of like faith and related race. The Slavonian system of government had its root in the sadrooga, or village community, which still flourishes as much as anything can flourish under Turkish rule among the Slavonian populations, and has been of priceless value to a people who, without some such tie to bind men together in country districts, to secure a home for the defenceless widow and orphan, and to preserve family order amidst State disorder, could scarcely have continued to hold apart and keep alive the burning memory of former freedom and greatness. It has been round the hearth of the village-family, numbering members often of five and six generations, that the history of the nation and the exploits of the national heroes, common to all the divided provinces and dear to Christian and to renegade Slav Mahometan alike, have been sung to the monotonous gusla and woven into the very being of each Slav from infancy. And it has been by the influence of the patient elders of the family that the hot indignation of the strong members has been restrained from time to time and reserved to take the best moment for hastening the dawn of better days for the nation.
As of one nation it is still necessary to speak of these people. For though we speak commonly of them as Bosnian, or Servian, or what not, they themselves feel that they are brethren, and do not perhaps sufficiently recognize that their quiet, patient, industrious, somewhat self-absorbed nature is not necessarily fitted to hold together under one head. It may be that they may learn that some form of federation suits them best. One thing seems quite certain, — that though Austria or Russia may plan to absorb fresh Slavonian populations, and may therefore offer aid secretly or openly to insurgent provinces to get rid of the Turk, the Slavs themselves have a very definite idea that they are made, not to be governed, but to govern themselves, and would rise against fresh masters with all the more courage and persistence because they had already freed themselves from the more hopeless and long-endured tyranny. They point with pride and look with the longing rivalry of affection to the steady self-respect and patience of Free Servia and Montenegro, and aver freely that what Slavs have done already Slavs will do again. They remember that the heroes of Slavs have been not so much warriors as lawgivers and educators.
Austria has within her borders a considerable Slav population in Croatia, Dalmatia, Istria, Hungary, and Slavonia, and owes much to their support in the troublous times of 1848. At the time of the triumph of Madgiar statesmen and the establishment of dualism in the empire-kingdom, the interests of these Slav populations had to give way to the Madgiar influence, and it is a serious matter for Austria to see a Slav insurrection on her Turkish border just at the moment when matters are going, to say the least, not smoothly in her dual and divisible government. But her Slav populations, though they do not possess all the rights which Englishmen conceive to be necessaries of life, are chiefly Roman Catholics living under a government of the same religion and not without constitutional institutions. Their active sympathies with their kinsfolk in insurrection cannot be either quelled sufficiently to prevent their sheltering the crowds of hungry and naked women, children, and old men who fly across the borders of ​Herzegovina, nor does the Austrian government fail to help the poor Montenegrin government to feed those fugitives who are crowding into the little principality. There, Christian and Mahometan sufferers from the war are alike hospitably received, in numbers which sorely tax the resources of the country, and Austria gives about twopence-halfpenny a head per day towards feeding them. In some villages there are three or four times as many refugees as inhabitants, and, as the country might itself be attacked at any moment, help is much needed to save human life. Large numbers of the refugees are without clothing in the bitter winter weather in the mountains, having come from warm sunny plains, and are compelled to crouch together on the bare rocks without shelter and without clothing or sufficient food. The committees formed in London and in Austria for helping in this strait hope to rouse as much sympathy in England for these sufferers, who have none to help, as for the far less pitiable victims of the floods in wealthy France. It may well be kept in mind, too, that, although Turkey is not able to pay her creditors their dividends in full, it has been the strain to collect taxes to pay the half of the coupons due in January that has produced perhaps greater misery throughout Turkey than ever was known. In Asia Minor, — whatever similar atrocities may have been committed in the European provinces, — where the agricultural and grazier population habitually pays sixty-two per cent. of profits in taxes, where droughts have killed off the flocks, and famine and pestilence halved the population, the taxes for these dividends have been gathered by taking from the people the food distributed by the relief-committees and by compelling them to shear their few remaining miserable sheep in the middle of winter. Those who are free from the grief of having helped, by means of the Turkish loan, to .prop up such a government as this, may also feel free to help the poor and needy driven by it from home and kindred in Herzegovina.
It is not, then, of the Slavs of Austria nor of the Slavs in Russia that there is question now, but of the Slav populations in Turkey who are in overwhelming majority Christian, belonging either to the Roman Catholic or to the Greek Church, the latter preponderating considerably.
And first as to those yet hidden from western Europe under the name of Turkey. They are the Herzegovinians, the Bosnians, the Bulgarians, the Albanians, and some Greeks. Roumania and Wallachia, though nominally under the suzerainty of the Porte, are so entirely distinct from the empire and from its struggling Christian populations that they may be left out of account.
The limits of Bulgaria and Albania, as now variously marked on the maps, by no means represent the confines of the districts inhabited by those populations, it having been the policy of the Turk to confuse national boundaries and destroy national associations and traditions as much as possible.
The Albanians, commonly called Arnaouts in Turkey, were hill-tribes more or less bound up with the Servs in the time of Servian prosperity, and of allied race, who came down from the mountains, after the fall of that power, to people the plains left desolate by fugitive Slavs. They were Roman Catholics, and the Turkish government was willing to grant to them — as to others of that Church — privileges in the exercise of their religion which seemed unimportant because comparatively few in number. Those who remained in the mountains retained their religion; but those who settled in the plains sought favour with the sultan and gained permission to domineer over other Christians by professing Mahometanism. Among the apostate chieftains was the father of Scanderbeg, who gave his son to be educated by the sultan. The son renounced the Mahometan faith and joined the standard of John Hunniades in Hungary and fought the Turks. After a long struggle at the head of Albanian warriors he succeeded in making himself independent; but his adherents were not strong enough to maintain the dignity of their religion or their nationality, and soon after his death no result of his efforts was left but a fame more widely spread than that of any other leader of the Christians in Turkey.
The descendants of so fickle and unprincipled a people, with the accumulated vices of an apostate race, are become a byword in the neighbouring countries. These are the inhabitants of the northern plains of Albania, and are to be numbered among the Christian populations only because they are near kinsfolk to the Roman Catholic tribes who live a very free and independent life in the mountains whither the Turkish authorities dare not follow them, and because there is a tendency among them to revert to the ancient faith sufficiently marked to make it an open question whether they would not ​join and materially help, while they morally embarrassed, any wide-spread rising of Christians in Turkey. Their hatred to the Turk is bitter, while they retain traces of sympathy with Servs even though they do not scruple to oppress them with a lawlessness almost unknown to any other Mussulman official, — if there are shades in that blackness. The southern Albanians have more in common with the Greeks, but are also professedly Mahometan. Both have done as much fighting for as against the Turks, and were, long ago, before their apostasy, the only Christians in the Turkish army in the East. It may be well, à propos of the Albanians, to suggest, in few words, the two sides of the question of the Christians in Turkey in relation to the army. Favourers of Turkey remark upon the privilege enjoyed by Christians of immunity from military service, while the Turks and Mahometan populations have to furnish a certain contingent although they dislike military life. The Mahometans are represented as justly jealous of their Christian fellow-countrymen on this point. But the other side of the question is this; that although military reclamations fall heavily upon the Mussulmans, the privilege of going about armed is one which would be gladly purchased by the Christian population at the same price, while the Mussulmans are free from the heavy tax paid by all Christian males above three months old for exemption from military service, a tax which often serves as an excuse for extortion. The sultan has now announced that Christians will be enrolled in the army, but unless it be in separate regiments this promise cannot be fulfilled, since the daily life and habits and morals of Christians and Mahometans are irreconcilable. Perhaps the most cogent proof that Slavonian Christians and Mahometans can never peaceably share one country, is the fact that the former are without blame and irreproachable in the matter of chastity, while the Mussulman, and especially the Turk, allows and practises unbridled license. Among the former women are intelligent, respected, and free, and among the latter are the degraded instruments of loathsome vice. Such light and such darkness cannot dwell together.
The Bulgarians come more completely than the Albanians under the description of Christians in Turkey. Originally brethren of the Servs, with whom they have in common a language which is harsh and rude in their mouths, and soft in the districts nearer to Italian influences, but which is easily mutually intelligible, and otherwise identical, as far as vocabulary is concerned, their period of prominence came earlier, but they fell at about the same time before the Turkish arms. They were only gradually subjugated, and were able to make good terms for themselves, as indeed most people could, the tyranny of the Turk having everywhere grown more and more grinding as lapse of time made him feel more at home, and privileged in his oppression. At first the Bulgarians preserved their autonomy, both in State and Church, paying tribute to the sultan; but some chieftans apostatized so as to share in the power which they found Mussulmans in neighbouring countries arrogated to themselves; some were driven into exile, some were disposed of, and the great blow to Bulgarian independence was dealt just a century ago, when the sultan imposed upon the people a set of bishops belonging to the corrupt patriarchate of Constantinople, creatures of the Turkish government, who buy their sees and recoup themselves at the expense of their flocks. The story is the same for all the Greek-Church communities under the power of the Porte. The Christians suffer as much from the religious superiours imposed upon them against their will as they do from the civil governors and their subordinates. But the subjection of the Bulgarians had not lasted long enough to deprive them of all courage when the resurrection of Greece, of the Moldo-Wallachian provinces, and of Free Servia, gave them spirit to bestir themselves. Early in this century a movement began among them for better education, and now the whole province possesses a most respectable number of schools for both boys and girls, in which the ancient Cyrillic alphabet, the old Bulgarian language, and the early version of the Bible, are carefully taught in order to help forward free intercourse with the neighbouring Servs. The policy of the Porte has been to harass the people by forced immigrations from wilder portions of the empire; but they have steadily held on their way, cultivating the marvellously fertile plains which fall to their lot, and which would make them wealthy under a good government, and with access to European markets. They grow cotton, silk, and corn, in what would be abundance but for oppressive taxation, and leave the Mussulmans to people the towns. In the towns, however, many shopkeepers are Christians, and the taxes are arranged so as to fall most heavily on the trades ​and industries usually engaged in by them, and not by Mahometans.
Within the last few years the Bulgarians have succeeded in insisting on the fulfilment of a clause in the hattisherif of 1857, which promised the restoration of their ancient ecclesiastical privileges, and this is a great step towards regaining their civil freedom.
The Mahometan population of Bulgaria has diminished, partly because they are subject to military service, partly because the introduction of steam has well-nigh destroyed some of the industries practised in Bulgaria, such as silk-weaving. The result is that the Mahometans are poorer than even the Christians, only they are still in a position to bully and rob their wealthier neighbours with impunity. The taxes are now raised partially from the Mahometan population, and they resent the injury, and revenge themselves on the Christians, murdering them or taking their lands from them without fear of consequences. For all the professions of mixed tribunals, and the reception of the evidence of a Christian in the courts of law, nay even the device of peripatetic commissioners to see that these provisions are carried out, have been tried and found utterly wanting. It is a point of faith with every Mahometan throughout Turkey, that every Christian is his appropriate victim, and the only Christians who obtain justice, or unjust sentences in their favour, are those who are wealthy and unscrupulous enough to buy the judge and not to be afraid of thus exposing their well-being to possible risks. Of such Christians there are many throughout Turkey, as must needs be after centuries of association with Mahometan morals, and of grinding misery. These Christians are those who dare complain and seek the help of consuls against Turkish courts and officials, and it is they, too, who dare accept the empty dignity of place in the mixed courts. The natural result is that the representatives of foreign powers, who are often men of business, with little time and attention to spare for those who do not obtrude themselves on their notice, send to western Europe such pictures of the Turkish Christian as are enough to make any one question whether such people are not better left to be ground out of existence. A more hopeful, and probably a truer idea is commonly given by those who either travel leisurely, or work among the outlying populations away from the corrupted towns. A whisper of hope and interest is passing now through Bulgaria, but it is not known that any preparation for revolt is being seriously made. There is a prevalent feeling among the Christians in Turkey, that the populations nearest Montenegro must decisively lead the way, for they can get help; while those bordering on Free Servia cannot reckon on the active sympathy of that government. These down-trodden folk, whose whole thoughts are concentrated on the hope of successful fighting, are scarcely in a position to appreciate the service done to the race by a power which by assiduous efforts to train its subjects in the self-restraint and industrious gradual progress of a constitutionally-governed country, is preparing them to be the fit centre of a Servian federation, or kingdom, — a place pointed out for her by her geographical situation, her steadfast Christianity, and her political experience, combined, and a place more than generously conceded to her by warlike Montenegro. An understanding, if not an actual treaty, exists between the two governments that Montenegro will be well content to fight for and with Servia, and then yield to her the resultant crown, for they are not rival nations, but two brethren helping the rest of the family, and anxious only to do the best for all, without selfish ambition.
Herzegovina and Bosnia have commonly been spoken of together, and they have, as a matter of fact, been under one Turkish governor. The sultan has now appointed a separate governor for Herzegovina, saying that the differences in the constituents of the populations of the two districts render this desirable, there being a larger proportion of Mussulmans to Christians in Bosnia than in Herzegovina. This is said to make it impossible for the sultan to grant to Bosnians all the reforms possible for Herzegovina. But since Bosnia and Herzegovina have repeatedly demanded those reforms which were promised by the hattisherif of 1857 to all the provinces of the Turkish empire alike, it is not easy to see what difference need now be made between these two provinces, one of which is in open organized revolt, while the other is as yet only waiting its opportunity. One great difference, however, there really is, arising chiefly from the greater number of Roman Catholics in Bosnia, who are inclined to direct their efforts towards the end of being absorbed into the Catholic empire of Austria. Herzegovina looks to the heads of her own race.
Herzegovina differed from other branches of the Slavs at the downfall of the ​Servian empire, inasmuch as it secured to itself, for a long time, rights of popular self-government, its population feeding cattle on the mountains, as far as possible from the towns where the Turks, here as elsewhere, kept each other in countenance. The sultans, from time to time, confirmed their privileges, and even so late as ten years ago, a native chief was violently superseded in his post of authority by a Mussulman governor. Repeated efforts to destroy the bonds between the people of the province and their old and long-acknowledged native leaders, together with the rapacity of Turkish settlers, tax-gatherers, and officials have caused the reiterated insurrections which have earned for these populations a character for turbulence which the western nations have been unable to conceive that a government could for so long be bad enough to justify. The typical stories told in the opening paragraphs of this paper show them to be the convulsions necessarily precedent to freedom.
The Bosnian nobles hold an ignobly prominent position in the miserable story of Turkish acquisition in Europe. The common people of the country stood as staunchly to their faith as the rest of their brethren; but by some unhappy chance there was among them a class of privileged nobles who preferred apostasy to the loss of position and property, and who at once, when the struggle against the Turkish arms became finally hopeless, declared themselves Mussulmans, and thus, by the law of the Koran, secured fresh and novel rights to ride roughshod over the peasantry. But these shameless renegades did not at the same time learn to love their conquerors, and thus Bosnia has, within her borders, native Christians, groaning under Greek bishops and Mussulman officials; native Christians strongly attached to the Roman Church, and yearning after Austrian rule; native nobility thirsting for the day to come when they may find the use of the carefully-kept title-deeds and badges of nobility coming from ancient days; and genuine Osmanli Turks, who wonder, perhaps, that the people whom Allah long ago gave them as slaves and victims should not placidly submit to have their wives and daughters ravished, their goods plundered, and their kinsfolk murdered, by them in obedience to fate. This Bosnian nobility will, in spite of their tyranny, find it easy to rally round them the Slav people when they adopt the Slav cause as against the Turks; but the solution of the popular troubles in Bosnia would not he found were such a revolt to bring them success. A popular leader, even from another province, might attract them to his standard by the claim of kindred, and then many would probably profess themselves adherents of the old creed, and in doing so would have to give up many of the privileges which they now possess, simply in virtue of their Mahometanism, while the ancient bond between the hereditary chiefs and their peasantry would soon be enthusiastically renewed under the Christian banner. Of course their profession of faith would be worthless in most aspects; but it would be something gained for them to be merely called Christians, since that would make intercourse with western Christianity natural and obvious, and our religious societies would know how to push their opportunities among them, as well as among the peasants, who even now, amidst their political excitement, are eager purchasers of the books carried round by colporteurs.
And now the survey brings us to the principality of Servia, which alone has kept the name of Servia in European geography. Other districts, commonly known as parts of Bulgaria and Albania, are known to the Slavs as "Old Servia," but that is not a name recognized by the Sublime Porte. This is the largest Slavonic province engulfed by Turkey, and numbers something like a population of a million and a quarter. It is now, after four hundred years of a more utter subjection than any other Turkish province, and then after sixty years of gallant struggle, the free principality of Servia, governed by its hereditary prince, whose peasant ancestor, only two generations ago, headed an insurrection and won the title of prince and a recognition of his right to reign, by the choice of the nation, from the sultan.
In the fourteenth century Servia had already produced the ruling dynasty, and had given name to the empire. Some reason for this preponderance over the neighbouring tribes may probably make itself clear to those who learn that a very complete and typical example of the village-community system overspread the whole of Servia, covering it with a well-ordered population, among whom no differences of rank existed to tempt the possessors into compromise with the invading Turk. These oppressors came and seized fortresses and towns. The people withdrew into the dense oak forests which clothe the undulating country, holding no converse with the Turks, and visited by ​them only when either plunder was wanted or gangs of labourers to execute unpaid tasks for the oppressor. Generation after generation here died without ever having seen a town, because the most abject humbling of themselves could not save them from insult and injury at the hands of the Turks, and because it was too bitter to them to see the strongholds of their nation in the hands of enemies from whom it seemed hopeless to try to wrest them. The peasant life was simple. The head of the sadrooga apportioned the work among the men and women of the family, and the evenings served for the repetition or chanting of Servian poems, either handed down to keep the memory of empire and of heroes green, or newly composed by some of the many singers of the country, to commemorate more recent deeds of valour against the Turk among some neighbouring tribes. The life was simple, disciplined, and organized in away which gave the people regulated coherence enough to suffer long, and then, when opportunity came, to prove themselves strong. They did not give up their country without a struggle. The fatal battle of Kossova, now looked back upon as the last final field, did not at the time put an end to their hope and resolution. The young Lazarevitch, successor to Lazar who was killed in that battle, made a treaty with the sultan by which he was to hold his crown in fief; but at his death the Turks declared it was impious to allow a Christian ruler to possess lands so fair, and a Turkish garrison was sent to assert the direct authority of the sultan. The Servs allied themselves with Hungary, and Belgrade, the city of seven sieges, was strengthened, and a fortress built at Semendria, a little lower down the Danube. This great mass of grey stone walls, with its twenty-five towers, was built to command the junction of the Morava and the Danube, looking on the Danube in the direction from which the Turkish hosts must always approach it, and there was built through the whole thickness of the wall a red brick cross, which, the more furiously battered, has only shown the brighter in contrast to the gloomy strength of the stone. A fortress strangely typical of Servian, as of all other, persecuted Christianity, it still remains to remind the people by whose aid and by the help of whose arm they have now regained the freedom to worship God in Christ. For there can be no doubt that it has been the sobriety and patience of Christian faith, darkened and distorted though it has been, that has been the backbone of the people, and their eagerness now to learn the way of God more perfectly must not be hidden from our eyes by the stories we hear of political struggle and intrigue, nor of social disorder and impurity in Belgrade, whither people of all countries and opinions have flocked, eager to utilize the newly-risen power for their own ends. The heart of the people is sound and steady, and they are guided by a prince who, though young and inexperienced, has already shown himself patriotic, discreet, and firm, — a true Servian. The Bible Society finds ready sale for its wares, and schools have been multiplied over the country ever since it became fairly safe for children to be away from the immediate protection of warlike households.
The alliance with Hungary would probably have been a permanent one, and the Servians might have had no worse a history than the Slavonian provinces of Austria, had not Hunniades told the Servian leader that he should require them to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome — of which the Servians had an extreme horror — while the sultan promised absolute religious toleration and ecclesiastical self-government should they submit to him. The choice seemed easy, and would have been the right one had they had to deal with any but a treacherous power. They still struggled for civil liberty also, but in 1444 the battle of Varna made the sultan master of all but Belgrade, which was held against him by the Hungarians till 1522. The confidence of the Servians in the liberality of the Turks was misplaced. Mahometanism alone was tolerated; the Christian churches, monuments of the piety and architectural skill of generations of princes and people, were used as stables; the peasants were heavily taxed for the support of the spahis or military colonists of the sultan, and were subjected to continual corvées; every fifth year conscription took their most promising boys to be brought up in the Mussulman faith and fight in the sultan's armies; the land was used almost every year as the route for the Turkish armies in their wars with western Europe, and neither man, woman, nor child, nor houses, nor goods, were safe.
The fall of Belgrade, which marked the triumph of the Turks over the Hungarians, was the signal for even increased extortion and violence on the part of the spahis, committed not by virtue of law, but, as it was in the beginning and is now ​throughout Turkey, because the Turks are utterly lawless and no central authority can ever ensure liberty and justice in the provinces. For a hundred and sixty years thick darkness covered the land; but at the end of the seventeenth century Leopold of Germany attacked the Turks, and the Servians rose to help him, and in 1713 they were ceded, by the treaty of Passarovitz, to Austria, under whom they had peace for twenty years. They lost no moment of this breathing-space, but made roads, restored churches, and did all they could to repair the losses of former times. But the end came, and Austria, too weak to hold the country against the Turks, had to abandon them once more to their old exasperated foes the spahis. In despair thirty-seven thousand families, headed by George Brankovitch, fled to Austrian territory, on a bargain that they were to have a large amount of freedom in self-government both civil and eccesiastical, and were in return to guard the Austrian boundaries. The Servs of Austria complain that this bargain was never kept; but with their grievances we have nothing at present to do. They certainly were never in such dismal case as those who remained on the national soil.
As the century grew older, however, the utter subjection of Servia to the Turks brought some good results. The rights of the spahis were more clearly defined, feudal service was no longer forced from the peasantry, and many fought with willingness, if not with enthusiasm, in the Moslem armies. But the spirit of patriotism was not dead. When a reforming sultan ascended the throne and resolved to introduce European tactics and discipline among his troops, the Janissaries rebelled, and among the most insubordinate were those who had long exercised authority in Servia. They set the civil representative of the Porte — the pacha of Belgrade — at defiance, and the order-loving Servians answered to the appeal of the sultan and drove the rebels from the country. At once all Turkey was in an uproar; the sultan had employed "dogs of Christians" to defeat true believers. The Janissaries were at once reinstated, and rode roughshod over Servian and spahi alike. They cried to the sultan in vain, and the result of this falling out among thieves was that the honest Servians began to come by their rights. Belgrade fell into their hands, they claimed the right to garrison their own fortresses, and other rights, and would have received them in return for a yearly tribute had not the rise of Napoleon's fortunes emboldened his ally the sultan. The leader of this period was Kara or Black George, a peasant of strong character, ruthless determination, and considerable military experience, able in civil matters too, up to the requirements of the people at that stage. He called together the national assembly, or Skouptchina, appointed a senate, and revived the laws of Dushan.
It is needless to follow the varying fortunes of the struggle, which lasted till Kara George and his senate were forced to fly across the border into Austria, and the sultan's troops set themselves to pacify the country by impaling the native leaders, throwing infants into boiling water and into cesspools in derision of baptism, and other similar modes. The sultan then found in Milosch Obrenovitch, a well-known Servian, a mediator between him and the furious people. Terms were arranged, and in 1815 the treaty of Bucharest gave to Servia freedom of worship, of commerce, of self-administration, of self-taxation for the imperial treasury, of garrisoning her towns, and of administering the estates of such spahis as refused to sell the lands on which in future they were forbidden to live. But Milosch was not proof against the temptations of power. He abused his princely dignity, was driven from the country, and Kara George having been invited to return but having been murdered on the way, Milosch's son Michael was raised to the throne. He was young and untrained, and three years served to show that he could not govern the people. He abdicated, and went to Germany and France to study. The Servians chose as his successor Alexander, son of Kara George; but he also failed to satisfy either the sultan or the people, and was compelled to abdicate in 1858. Milosch was then invited to return, and ruled about a year and a half with some vigour, organizing a national militia almost equivalent to an arming of the entire nation.
On his death his son Michael, now older and wiser, succeeded to a difficulty caused by the remonstrances of the sultan, Austria, and England, against the new militia. Then he was involved by an immigration of fugitives from Turkish oppression in Bulgaria and Bosnia; but he stood his ground, and succeeded in winning for his government the love of the kindred populations beyond his borders, and a steadily growing respect from the great powers. In June 1862 a storm burst over his head which brought him in the end perfect ​independence, except so far as concerned the retention of two Turkish garrisons in the country, and an acknowledgment of suzerainty and a tribute to the sultan. This was the treacherous bombardment of the town by the fortress of Belgrade under pretext of a scuffle between a few Turkish soldiers and some youths. The exasperated Servians held themselves in perfect quietness, trusting to Michael's diplomacy and the good feeling of Europe to secure them against the repetition of such an outrage, and their hope was not in vain. Michael continued to develop the resources of the country; churches were rebuilt; schools, primary, and higher, and technical, and colleges and a university were opened; and mines and railways were projected. In 1867 the last Turkish garrison was withdrawn; and now a tribute of £23,000 per annum is the only link between the Porte and the Free Servs of Servia.
In 1868 Prince Michael, who was struggling to keep the balance between a some what strong conservative ministry and the liberal, if not radical, demands of his people, was shot down in his garden, as it was subsequently pretty clearly proved, by an agent of the party who wished to bring Alexander Kara Georgevitch back to the throne. His death left a successor who was a minor, but the ministry vigorously held on in the path of improvement, and were able to give a good account when the present prince Milan ascended the throne in 1871. He has established a firm hold on the affections of the people, and the internal resources of the country are being rapidly developed. A large army well trained and armed is ready to take the field whenever the united wisdom and prudence of the government shall let the eager people fly to the assistance of the provinces still under the Turkish yoke. Servia is as yet restrained by the attitude of the great powers, and in the mean while, whether she is to be called upon for war-like activity or for the aid which a consolidated government may give to populations weary after victorious struggle, she is making due preparation and will not be found wanting at the right time.
To Montenegro alone belongs the proud boast that it has never been under the dominion of the Turks, has never been inhabited by them, has never agreed to pay tribute to them, but has kept up a perennial struggle with them ever since the fall of the Servian empire. It is but a little state, and perhaps it owes its independence scarcely more to the hardy vigour of its sons than to the fact that it consists just of a knot of the Balkans, a place where the native saying is that God, in sowing the earth with rocks, dropped the bag. Its bare rocks and severe climate have always been its strong allies against the Turk, and its inhabitants have never so aggregated wealth around them as to be unwilling to burn homes and crops rather than leave them as prey to the invading Turks when there was nothing left for it but flight to the roughest heights. At first, after the battle of Kossova, the chief of the province of Zeuta owned much of Herzegovina, and fought hand in hand with the Albanians. But Scanderbeg's death left him alone, and Ivo the Black retreated to the mountains which now are the whole of Montenegro. Even the seacoast had to be abandoned, though only a rifle-shot from the southern limit of the mountains is Bocche di Cattaro, the finest harbour in Europe, the natural outlet for Slav commerce, for which Slavs have longed and fought for four centuries, but which still lies, well-nigh unused, before their tantalized eyes.
For a century the fugitives found their mountains a secure retreat, and their bravery and advantageous position made them desirable allies. Venice was not reluctant to give the right hand of fellowship to the highlanders, and many alliances were formed between the nobility of the two states. But such a friendship was not without its drawbacks; for the Venetian brides lured their husbands to the luxury of their own old homes; and finally, in 1516, the prince of Montenegro left the government in the hands of German Petrovitch, bishop (of the Greek Church) of Montenegro. In his family it has ever since been hereditary, descending first from uncle to nephew, and only in this century going in the usual order of descent, since, in 1852, Danilo resolved to abolish the law of celibacy as incumbent on the prince, and married a Viennese lady whose life was one of far-sighted benevolence, and who did more than perhaps any other to aid the cause of education throughout Slavonian lands, and to steady the course of Slav policy.
Throughout these centuries the story of Montenegro has been purely that of hard-won victory against the Turks. No instance of truce or treaty with the Turks has occurred without its following of treacherous betrayal. In 1703 Peter the Great thought it worth while to secure Montenegro as his ally, but he too betrayed the principality to its enemies. ​The Turks came and devastated the country. Venice refused her aid, and paid the penalty of the loss of her provinces from Bosnia to the Isthmus of Corinth, and the struggle ended with a siege of seven years sustained by Montenegro. In the end of last century Russia and Austria began to intrigue against each other for the friendship of the little state, and their rivalry has ever since been a valuable tool in the hands of the rulers of Montenegro. In 1813 Cattaro, which had submitted to Venice, when Ivo retired to the mountains, on the bargain that it was never to be given to any other power, found that Napoleon, as conqueror, had ceded it to Austria. Resenting this, it strove to join the mountaineers, but failed. Prince Daniel had done all he could to help it; and, on seeing that Austria had tightened her grasp on what should have been his seaport, he retired to his little capital of Cetigné, and devoted himself to the improvement of his people. His successor, Peter II., obtained from European powers a frontier treaty, which was the first formal recognition of his country by diplomatists. Under him rapid advance was made in the essentials, though not in the external comforts, of civilization. It will not do to live a less rigorous life till the country is secure from Turkish inroads: but schools were multiplied, roads made, and some barbarous practices in war done away with. The custom of cutting off the heads of dead enemies has not yet been quite given up, because the Turks of the neighbouring lands would misconstrue such humanity as cowardice.
Danilo projected a code of laws, and disregarded all provocations to war with the sultan till an actual invasion compelled him to take up arms; and the victory of Grahovo, in 1858, secured for him a commission of the great powers to fix the boundaries between Montenegro and Turkey. Some fertile districts were awarded to him, but no seaport; and he was not required to acknowledge the suzerainty of the Porte. In 1859 he was murdered, when at Cattaro for his wife's health, and never was prince more deeply mourned. His people flocked down the precipitous zigzag road to Cattaro to demand vengeance when he lay dying; but his message was that they should go quietly home. It was a long time before gay dress or weapons or festive gatherings appeared in the mountains. His successor was the present reigning prince Nicholas, who was only eighteen years of age; but who has vindicated his fitness for the difficult post by great wisdom and prudence, and by a really ingenious tact in playing Russia, France, and the Porte off against each other when they try in turn to use him as a cat's-paw. He now appears to be waiting until some change in the political horizon shall show that it is time for him to help the rebelling provinces, whom as yet he dares only to help privately, and by receiving their refugees. His people, warriors every one of them, with wives and daughters ready and not unaccustomed to give warlike help at need, are eager for the fray, and it is not an undesirable thing that so simple, earnest, brave a people should extend their boundaries. Under Montenegrin skies education is fostered as in all other Servian communities, all forms of religion are free, and the knowledge of the truth is being spread as might be expected in a country the capital of which contains only a hundred houses, which found purchasers for thirty-two copies of the Bible at one visit thither of a colporteur.
Whether Montenegro or Servia take temporarily or finally the foremost place, or whether there be formed a federation of the Slavonic populations of Turkey, there is at least, in the struggles of the crushed but resolute people fighting for freedom from gross outrage and the intolerable maladministration of an imbecile government, and for liberty to worship the God of their fathers in public — there is in this struggle a fit subject for the warmest sympathy of English men and women, a sympathy which will find no lack of outlets for its practical expression.