Serbia: A Sketch Part 1

Serbia: A Sketch.

by Helen Leah Reed.

I. SERBIA: STARTING

Serbia, younger sister of the Nations, has indeed had a younger sister's portion. In her early years she grew up with little guidance from older and wiser members of the family. She did not have the advice that she needed. Perhaps she would not have followed it, though on occasion she has shown more docility than many of the family.

It took her a long time to find herself; she had troubles in her household, and it was her first endeavor to get the factions to unite and let her be the acknowledged head of the house. She believed it was her ultimate destiny to govern them all--that this was for their good.

When she had made herself mistress of her own house, she tried to stand alone--to be independent of her neighbors. She had no wish to dominate them. She did not try to aggrandize herself at their expense, nor did she take up weapons against them. But she wished them to acknowledge her head of her own household, just as those within her house had done. She even was willing to be called a Princess--providing she governed her household well. But almost hidden from the rest of Europe by her mountains, kept by barriers from easy access to the rest of the world, the other Nations paid little attention to her. She grew up almost unnoticed by the world--proud and strong, simple in her tastes, pious in her own way (for her church was not the church of most of her neighbors), and thoughtful, if ill educated.

She was not bookish in those early days; she was too indifferent, perhaps, to letters. Had she kept a journal, we could now embroider her story with more brilliant threads. Her lack of education was perhaps rather her misfortune than her fault. Those who knew her realized her many fine qualities, yet she made few friends beyond her own borders,--and because she was independent and poor, her richer neighbors were suspicious of her and jealous. This one and that one set upon her.

They were jealous when she first put on regal robes. They were afraid that she wished to enlarge her possessions at their expense, and one of them, who had a.s.sumed complete lordship over Serbia and all her sisters, was constantly threatening her, pretending at times that if she could help him against the foe from Asia who was threatening them both, she should be acknowledged of royal rank. This did not wholly satisfy her.

Her ambitions had grown. She herself was reaching out for the Imperial purple. She felt that if she wore it, she might better defend herself and her relatives beyond the mountains from the Asiatic hordes.

Then came the great test--and from then almost until to-day Kossovo has been a day of mourning!

When the fair, gray-eyed ancestors of the modern Serb came south from their home in Galicia, moving westward from the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea, along the left bank of the Danube, they crossed the river and occupied the northwest corner of the Balkan Peninsula. How long they had lived in Galicia we need not ask, but they bore with them traditions of a catastrophe in India that was probably the cause of their remote fathers' leaving that country.

Pliny and Ptolemy mention the Serbs, and we know that for one hundred years at least previous to 625 A.D. they were at war with the Empire.

The Roman Empire was then slowly disintegrating, and in the Balkans there was no power to protect the Romanized Illyria from the northern invaders who in prehistoric times had driven away the aboriginal inhabitants.

It matters little whether the Emperor Heraclius invited the Serbs to settle down in the northwest Byzantine provinces lately devastated by barbarians, on condition that they would defend the Empire against the Tartar Avars, or whether he merely accepted the fact that they had entered these provinces and must stay there. He made an agreement of peace with the Serbs--and this marks the beginning of their known history. He desired a buffer State, as the neighbors of the Serbs so often have desired in later times. The lands the newcomers then occupied are the Serb lands of to-day--Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Old Serbia, Macedonia, Dalmatia, the Banat, and to an extent Croatia and Western Bulgaria--practically the ideal Pan-Serbia, but in this little sketch, so far as it is possible, by "Serbia" is meant the Kingdom of Serbia, at the north of the Balkan Peninsula.

The Kingdom of Serbia is bounded by Bosnia, Old Serbia, Bulgaria, Roumania, the Banat, and Slavonia. The boundary rivers are the Danube, on the north separating it from Hungary and on the northeast from Roumania; the Drina, on the northwest from Bosnia; the Save, on the northwest from Croatia and Slavonia; the Timok, on the northeast from Bulgaria. Various mountain ranges on the west separate it from Bosnia, on the south and southwest from Turkey, and on the south and southeast from Bulgaria.

Until the tenth century, except Pliny and Ptolemy, the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenites is the only historian to speak of the Serbs, and he but briefly; yet their history in those three centuries after their arrival was an epitome of their history in later years in the Balkan Peninsula. The general movement was the same. First, a constant struggle on the one side to establish a union of the jupanias and on the other side a constant resistance to such centralization. A jupania may be roughly defined as a county within whose limits lived clans more or less related to one another. The ruler was a Jupan, and it was not strange that the more powerful Jupans should tend to absorb their weaker neighbors. The successful man took the t.i.tle of Grand Jupan. Jealousy of the Grand Jupan would lead to a.s.sa.s.sination, dethronement, and decentralization--and then would come a repet.i.tion of the violent and b.l.o.o.d.y story.

Another element of disorder in Serbia was the ancient Slavonic rule that a Jupan might be succeeded, not by his son but by the oldest member of his family. It was hardly to be counted against a strong Jupan that he should try to arrange for his son to succeed him--yet this added to the troubles of the Serbs.

A third and later cause of Serb trouble was the Church. The Greek Emperor and the Greek Church on the one side, and the Roman Catholic Church represented by Venice and Hungary on the other, were continually warring, not only for territory but for influence in the Serb provinces.

Yet in spite of apparent wavering, the Serbs from the time they adopted Christianity have been constant to the Church of their early choice.

Finally, the founding in the seventh century of the Bulgarian kingdom, on the eastern and southeastern frontiers of Serbia, added to the dangers of this tempestuous little nation. After the Frank and Bulgarian Emperors in the first quarter of the ninth century had for some time wrangled over the Serbian tribes, the Bulgarians at last succeeded in placing a garrison in Belgrade. The Bulgarians ruled Rascia for seven years, but it was like ruling an uninhabited land, as the larger part of the Serbians had run away to Croatia.

Almost two hundred years after the agreement with Heraclius the Serbs had a strong Jupan who carried out the principles of concentration. This Visheslav was probably a descendant of that Visheslav who had signed the agreement with the Greek Emperor. His descendants, of whom the greatest was Vlastimir, for three generations contributed to the unity of Serbia by defending it against Bulgar and Frank, who were constantly menacing even when not directly attacking. Towards the end of the ninth century, in 871, under Basil the Macedonian, the Serbs acknowledged again the suzerainty of the Greek Empire and accepted Christianity. This was in the reign of Mertimir, but after his death almost all of the Greek Serb provinces were lost to Tsar Simeon of Bulgaria.

Though Serbia recovered part of her lost provinces, she could not hold them. The political center of the Serbs had moved to Zeta (Montenegro) and the mystic Prince Jovan Vladimir in the latter part of the tenth century, sometimes called King of Zeta, tried in vain to stop the triumphal march of Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria through the Serb provinces.

He himself was taken a prisoner to Samuel's court, where he married the Tsar's daughter, Kossara. He returned to Zeta as reigning Prince under the suzerainty of Bulgaria, but in 1015 he was murdered by Samuel's heir, and he now is venerated as a saint in Serbia. The first Serb novel, "Vladimir and Kossara," published in the thirteenth century, is founded on the life of this Prince.

Zeta was too far from the racial center of Serbia to be a good political center and soon the disintegration of the first Serb kingdom began.

Although Serbia recovered the provinces Bulgaria had taken, she was unable to stand alone, and grudgingly accepted Greek suzerainty until Prince Voislav--cousin of Vladimir of Zeta--started a successful revolt against the Greeks and united under his own rule Zeta, Trebinje, and Zahumle. His son, Michel Voislavich, annexed the Jupania of Rascia. In 1072 he proclaimed himself King and received the crown from Gregory VII. This was an effort to free Serbia from the Greek overlordship, as expressed in the Greek Church. In the next reign Serbia became better known to the world when she welcomed the Crusaders under Raymond of Toulouse, pa.s.sing through on their way to the Holy Land. Then came brighter days for Serbia. Stephen Nemanya, Grand Jupan of Rascia, who lived near Novi Bazar (1122-1199), planned the union of all the jupanias in one kingdom under one king. This he practically accomplished, for though unable to include Bosnia, within ten years of his accession he had almost doubled his territory.

Later, when Stephen's ambition grew, he received Frederick Barbarossa, pa.s.sing through with his Crusaders, and gave him every honor due the Empire when he visited Nish in 1188, and treated him so liberally that Barbarossa--at least this is something more than rumor--was considering a marriage between his son and Stephen's daughter when death put an end to the alliance. In the next reign the Emperor Henry VI planned, with the help of the Serbs, to conquer the Byzantine Empire. But again death took the Emperor before the plans were completed.

Another notable act of Stephen's was his attack on the Greek provinces as an ally of the King of Hungary. Stephen Nemanya a.s.sumed the double-eagle as the insignia of his dignity, but though he founded the first real Kingdom of Serbia, and was called King, he was never crowned.

Toward the close of his distinguished career, in 1196, weary of the world, he withdrew to the Monastery Helinder on Mt. Athos, where years before his youngest son Rastko had retired. Stephen died after three years of monastic life. The historic records of Serbia begin with his reign.

Rastko, known in the Church as Sava and afterwards canonized, was a man of active temperament--a statesman as well as a churchman. He used his wisdom and his learning to benefit his country.

Stephen, son of Nemanya, was the first crowned King of Serbia. He kept off foreign enemies, and Serbia, no longer dreading attacks, began to develop some of her mineral resources. She made a beginning, too, of educating her people. In the next two or three generations of rulers there were quarrels among members of the ruling family. Outside, too, the Magyars began to press upon the little kingdom. But on the whole Serbia was united,--mindful, perhaps, of St. Sava's motto: "Only Union is Serbia's Salvation."

Stephen the Sixth, or "The Great," won victories over the Greek Emperors, the Tartars, and the Bulgarians. He helped the Greek Emperor against the Turks, now becoming formidable, and as part of his reward had the Emperor's daughter given him in marriage. But this led to domestic unhappiness in his later years and some loss of territory. For his wife tried to keep his son Stephen from his inheritance. In turn, Stephen's party set upon the King and choked him to death. Though Stephen Dushan may have had no hand in it, this murder clouds his reputation. Stephen Dushan is a contradictory character--by some regarded as the murderer of his father, by others an idealist to be compared with King Arthur or with Roland. Stephen Dushan (Detchanski), great-grandson of Stephen Nemanya, came to the throne in 1331 and in ten years had gained Albania and Epirus and finally all Macedonia except Salonika. He was practically suzerain of Bulgaria. He freed the Church, which long since had drifted from Rome back to Byzance. Now he made it independent of the Greek Emperor, const.i.tuting the Archbishop of Petch, Archbishop, or rather Patriarch, of Serbia.

Noted both as a soldier and a statesman, Stephen had wider plans than Vlasimir or Nemanya. The Turks were now looming dangerously in the East. The Greek Empire was tottering. With it, the rest of Eastern Europe might fall, including little Serbia--one of the smallest of all the little princ.i.p.alities. But Serbia, if small, was brave, and Dushan hoped to proclaim a Serbo-Greek Empire to head off the Asiatic hordes.

To accomplish this he took certain territory from the Greek Empire and, proclaiming himself Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks, was solemnly crowned at Uksub at Easter, 1346. Nine years later he tried to unite Bulgars and Serbs and Greeks against the Turks. With a large army of about one hundred thousand trained soldiers he was almost at the gates of Constantinople when a sudden illness overtook him and he died.

Under Dushan Serbia had very nearly reached her highest ambition--complete dominion over the Balkan Peninsula. Dushan ruled also a large part of the former Byzantine lands in Europe.

Of farther-reaching good for Serbia than his territorial conquests was the Zakonik or Code of Laws, completed in 1354 under Dushan's direction.

It contained not only the best of the old, but many new, laws resulting from Dushan's knowledge of his country's needs. It ranks high among medieval codes of law. After his death, his empire separated itself into its elements--a number of small states whose rulers were fighting one another while the Turks were subduing Thrace.

With the death of Dushan in 1355 the greatness of Serbia also pa.s.sed away. His son, Urosh, could not hold what his father had gained, and little by little parts of his Empire fell off from the center, until but a small fragment remained. Yet there were still many stout-hearted Serbs--many who wished to do their utmost to throw off the Turks now pressing upon them. When Urosh died childless, the direct Nemanya dynasty came to an end, but in 1371 Lazar Grebelyanovitch of the Nemanya family was elected ruler of the Serbs. Though called Tsar, he would not formally take the t.i.tle. Devoted to his country, he threw all his energy into forming a Christian League against the Turks.

But the wily Oriental circ.u.mvented him by attacking the members of the League one by one. For nearly twenty years after that there were many encounters between Turks and Serbians. At the first attack on Nish, Serbia so humbled herself as to agree to pay tribute in gold and in soldiers for the Sultan's armies on condition the Turks would leave her alone.

Later Lazar did his utmost to save poor Serbia from further disgrace. He united with the Ban of Bosnia, also a descendant of Stephen Nemanya, and together they gained many small victories. After once defeating the invading Turks under Murat I the Serbs had to stand a second time opposed to Murat and a well-trained force of Turkish soldiers. Against the Turks were drawn up the full strength of Serbia, Albania, and Bosnia.

There on the field of Kossovo, the "field of blackbirds," June 15, 1389, was fought one of the decisive battles of history. It was a bitter defeat for Serbia, though as many Turks as Serbs perished on the field.

On the eve of the battle Murat I had been a.s.sa.s.sinated. The brave Lazar with the flower of the Serb nation lay dead--Lazar first made prisoner, then beheaded. Of all Serbian rulers, the memory of Lazar was held the dearest. "A pious and generous prince, a brave but unsuccessful general."

There was no longer any question as to supremacy in the Balkan Peninsula. The independence of Serbia and the liberties of all the smaller states were now the property of the unspeakable Turk.

Lazar, it is said, was warned of his fate by a letter from Heaven even before the battle, but he still went forward to fight for his country.

Bowring's translation of the heroic pesma (Battle of Kossovo) gives an idea of this event. Before the battle Lazar receives the mysterious letter:

"Tzar Lasar! thou tzar of n.o.ble lineage!

Tell me now, what kingdom hast thou chosen?

Wilt thou have heaven's kingdom for thy portion, Or an earthly kingdom? If an earthly, Saddle thy good steed--and gird him tightly; Let thy heroes buckle on their sabres, Smite the Turkish legions like a tempest, And these legions all will fly before thee.

But if thou wilt have heaven's kingdom rather, Speedily erect upon Kossova, Speedily erect a church of marble; Not of marble, but of silk and scarlet; That the army, to its vespers going, May from sin be purged--for death be ready; For thy warriors all are doomed to stumble; Thou, too, prince, wilt perish with thy army!"

When the Tzar Lasar had read the writing, Many were his thoughts and long his musings.

"Lord, my G.o.d! what--which shall be my portion, Which my choice of these two proffer'd kingdoms?

Shall I choose heaven's kingdom? shall I rather Choose an earthly one? for what is earthly Is as fleeting, vain, and unsubstantial; Heavenly things are lasting, firm, eternal."

So the Tzar preferr'd a heavenly kingdom Rather than an earthly. On Kossova Straight he built a church, but not of marble; Not of marble, but of silk and scarlet.

Then he calls the patriarch of Servia, Calls around him all the twelve archbishops, Bids them make the holy supper ready, Purify the warriors from their errors, And for death's last conflict make them ready.

So the warriors were prepared for battle, And the Turkish hosts approach Kossova.

Bogdan leads his valiant heroes forward, With his sons--nine sons--the Jugocichi, Sharp and keen--nine gray and n.o.ble falcons.

Each led on nine thousand Servian warriors; And the aged Jug led twenty thousand.

With the Turks began the b.l.o.o.d.y battle.

Seven pashas were overcome and scatter'd, But the eighth pasha came onward boldly, And the aged Jug Bogdan has fallen.