The Express.
London, England, 1853-01-15 00:00:00

THE WAR IN MONTENEGRO.

TO THE EDITOR OP THE DAILY NEWS.

SlR.—The movement of a Turkish army on the con
fines of Montenegro points to a state of things far
more absorbing than the mere spasmodic energy of
an oriental government seeking to control a lawless
band of semi-savages about whose existence the
world hardly deigns to care. Since the commence-
ment of the present century that tract of territory
has been the basis of operations whose object is co-
extensive with the aggrandisement of European Tur-
key and the possession of the most important sea-
ports in the Adriatic. Impelled by the promises
and guided by the strategy of the Russian court,
the Montenegrins have never ceased to make
violent inroads on their Musselmen neighbours, and
have succeeded of late years in capturing booty and
land to an extent co-equal with the limits and re-
sources of their territory. The Albaniau Turks,
unable to withstand these murderous forays, are
giving ground every day. The islands of St. Nicho-
las, Stavena, Mamkovitz, and that in which the town
of Vranina is situate, figure among the most recent
conquests of this warlike people. The cities they
have assaulted are innumerable. Kolachina,
Boroslavitze, and Klobonk, have been either
surprised by night, or battered by day ;
while Podgoritza, the bulwark of Albania,
was only rescued from the hands of their miners by
an accident which revealed the lines of gunpowder
to the Turks before the match was laid. The lake
into which the black mountain discharges its tor-
rents washes the walls of Skadar. The Montene-
grins deeming the lake the natural complement to
the mountain, render it inaccessible to Turkish ves-
sels, and seek to reduce the city itself to submission.
To such a system of predatory warfare there is only
one reply, that which cannons and sabres alone can
give ; and when the injured Turk steps in, who has
the sole right to use them, he is met by the avowed
originator of the mischief offering to negotiate be-
tween him and his own belligerent agents, on terms
of the strictest impartiality. What an epigram !
The relations between Montenegro and Peters-
burg, and the results to which they are likely to lead,
are of a very absorbing character, and there is hardly
a diplomatist from Downing-street to the Palace of
Stamboul who ought not to feel a life interest in the'
matter. The Montenegrins, in the heart of a hostile
country, have uniformly sought some support for
their irregular independent* in federation with
foreign states, and their alliance has mot with the
usual
fate of being alternately embraced
and discarded, according as the contract-
ing countries were on terms of peace or hostility
with the Porte. Since the fall of Venice,
however, the designs of Russia on European Turkey
have been too incessant to part with the services of
the Montenegrins for a moment, and every device
that a powerful empire can employ to preserve the
oe of an ignorant and impovtrufhed people
has n unscrupulously used to prevent their conies-
ing with any other state. Of late years the Czar
has allured their Princes to Petersburg, under the
pretext of education, and sent them back saturated
with Russian ideas, skilled in all the strategy of
war, and covered with the military titles and decora-
tions of the empire. He enrols their serfs in his
armies, and after due training in the Caucasus,
draughts them back to Montenegro, that they may
exercise their art for the exclusive benefit
of the unfortuuate Mussulinen in Albania
and Ilertzegowine. Nor is the Czar wanting in
kindness of a more substantial character. After
educating their Vladika, ho transmits him an annpal
pension of 4,0001., and never ceases to show his dis-
interested attachment for the little concern of Mon-
tenegro by pouring into its territory waggon loads
of grain from Odessa. In former years their politico-
religions chief was consecrated at Smyrna by the
hands of an Austrian subject; but since the acces-
sion of the Petrovitsch dynasty this mask has been
thrown aside, and the last three Vladikas have re-
ceived the archiepiscopal dignity from the hands of
the Emperor. Under these relations of vassaldom
and ecclesiastical dependence, with a population
looking towards Petersburg with the same
reverence as Ireland regards Rome, and fed,
armed, and trained by the man whom
they regard as God's vicegerent, it is impos-
sible to survey Montenegro in any other light than a
Russian colony of a most formidable character. How-
ever spontaneous the sallies of its myrmidome may
appear in these days of specious refinement, there
cannot be a doubt concerning the character of the
men who arc pulling the strings on their real ends
' and purposes. An inquiry now for their object is
' likely to meet with success, and the effect of its pur-
suit in our interests in the Adriatic may furnish just
I now a profitable hour's employment to the minister
who holds the seals of the 'Foreign-office.

If Russia had the choice of means in advancing!
her designs on Constantinople, she could hardly
devise one more likely to obtain her object than I
the sustention of a powerful tribe on the confines of
Dalmatia, possessed with the most daring spirit of
enterprise, and the most sanguinary ferocity to the
I subjects of the Porte. Sonic 30,000 fighting men,
multiplying with prolific energy, and locked up in
fastnesses which defy the approach of regular artil-
lery, from whence they periodically issue to appro-
priate the property and capture the towns of their
neighbours, are no very contemptible agents in the
subjugation of an enervated people. Out of such stuff
• empires have been formed, and that under far less
favourable circumstances. What was ancient Sparta
but a nest of brigands organised in the bosom of
classic antiquity? What was Rome in her

primeval growth, but the Montenegro as•
Italy, gaining a daily accession of territory
by bloody forays until she absorbed all
the tribes upon her frontier ? But the Montene-
grins, animated by a no less aggressive spirit than
their ancient prototypes, have far tamer enemies to
subdue, and arc directed by one of the fir.: powers
in their own hemisphere. It is necessary to their
military operations, as well as to the increase of
their social comforts, that they should possess them.
selves of some port in the Adriatic, and as Mon-
tenegro is but a gun-shot off the mouth of Kattaro,
we should not be surprised to learn that one of the
objects of the present movement is to seise on that
maritime position, and drive the Germans off the
peninsula. The possession of such n sound, only
second to Lepanto and the Bosphorns, in a stormy
sea like the Adriatic, would give Russia a powerful
means of enlarging the basis of her operations over
European Turkey, and enable her to cripple
our lonian marine, and retard the development of the
commerce of Trieste. An Austrian general has
already moved upon that part of the shore; and
however listless England may be, other nations are
prepared to sound the loudest note of alarm on the
slightest approach of danger.
These aggressions, however, are not to be met
with merely defending the interests that may happen
for the moment to be jeopardised, so much as by
putting an end to the system of forage altogether.
So long as Russia is allowed, through her semi-savage
agents in Montenegro, to make open attacks on the
Turkish cities on the immediate frontier, so long will
the interests of the other great powers in that
peninsula be imperilled, and a means left open of re.
kindling the torch of war in Europe. No sources of
healthy expansion should be withheld from a young
republic of Montenegro, and the Austrians would do
well to abolish or modify the odious system of
quarantine established, rather for political than fiscal
motives, by which they block the communication of
natives with the coasts ; but the Montenegrins ought
to be made to feel, by the combination of the great
powers, that they cannot disturb the existing home-
steads of Turkey with impunity, or attempt to ad-
vance the encroachments of Russia without meeting
with an instantaneous repulse.