The Birth Of Yugoslavia Volume I Part 10

A wealthy gentleman of Belgrade, one George Weiffert, who brews admirable beer, is said some years ago to have sworn an oath that if his wished-for ice, that was strangely lacking, should appear by Saint Sava's Day (January 27, New Style) he would adopt this old archbishop as the patron saint of his family. Another Teuton, of Hebraic origin, whom I met at Zajeca, had placed himself and his house under the protection of the Archangel Michael, whose festival is on November 21.

The Roumanians of eastern Serbia seem, all of them, to have a.s.sumed this custom which the Serbs call the "slava," and those inhabitants, say of Pirot, who did not consider themselves Serbs at the time of their annexation would gradually fall into line with their neighbours and select a saint, if only because the annual "slava" celebration is a day of tremendous hospitality, when the peasant is glad to squander his savings in the entertainment even of persons unknown to him. And those who are in the habit of attending "slavas" naturally feel that they must have a "slava" of their own. It may also have happened in Macedonia that a traveller has been told by the very adaptable peasants how Saint Nicholas or Saint Alimpija is their house saint, a commitment which the holy one has but lately had thrust upon him. One would therefore do well to look for some other test, and not to follow those people who roundly a.s.sert that the man who honours the "slava,"

and no other man, is a veritable Serb.

WHAT ARE THE MACEDONIAN SLAVS?

If, for example, one wishes to decide whether a given Macedonian Slav is a Serb or a Bulgar--many thousands have been called and have, quite happily, called themselves both--we must use a more scientific method.

Some investigators, such as Vateff, have made measurements that are not without value; others, such as Djeric and Shishmanoff, have published good monographs on the Serbian and Bulgarian name. We have had some learned dissertations on the language of Macedonia, as to whether the Slav dialects approach more nearly the Serbian or the Bulgarian literary language. But this question remains unanswered, owing to the imperfect manner in which the grammatical and syntaxical peculiarities of the Macedonian dialects have, as yet, been examined.

Some people have argued that as the Bulgarian peculiarity of the postponed article is also found in Macedonia it follows that the province really is Bulgarian. But as the postponed article is found in a wide zone, which extends from the Albanian sh.o.r.es to those of the Black Sea, this argument loses in strength, for how can Roumania be called Bulgarian? Very possibly before the Slavs arrived that zone was inhabited by another people who left this characteristic behind them, though they left no doc.u.ments. It is a logical hypothesis. And Barbulescu, the Professor of Slav Philology in the University of Ja.s.sy, said in 1912 that "the Serbs have just as many reasons for a.s.serting that the Macedonian is a Serbian language as the Bulgars have to deny it." As it was in the Middle Ages, so it is now; the mediaeval language used to oscillate between the two, and it is sometimes impossible to tell whether an old Macedonian Slav doc.u.ment is Bulgarian or Serbian.... When we come to the ethnologists we find they have only written books which deal with certain parts of Macedonia. They have confessed that, generally speaking, it is impossible to say whether a man is a Serb, a Bulgar or a Serbo-Bulgar. These Macedonians were for centuries at such a distance from the other Slavs and were so thoroughly neglected that they lost their national consciousness, an attribute which many thousands of them, in the days of the vast, loose empires of Duan and Simeon, never possessed. Sir Charles Eliot, in his excellent book _Turkey in Europe_ (London, 1900), says that it is not easy to distinguish Serb and Bulgar beyond the boundaries of their respective countries. He divides the Macedonian Slavs into pure Slavs, Slavized Bulgars and pure Slavs influenced by Slavized Bulgars: "all three categories," he says, "have been subjected to a strong and often continuous Greek influence, to say nothing of the Turks and the inconspicuous Vlachs,"

so that in his opinion it is rash to make sharp divisions among a people who have thus acted and reacted on one another. A large proportion of the Macedonians[53] have no knowledge of the race to which their ancestors belonged; and one is brought to the conclusion that it is much wiser not to use for Macedonia the two words, Serb and Bulgar, but to say that these Slavs became either Exarchists (in which case they were commonly called Bulgars) or Patriarchists (who were called Serbs). Basil Kanchov, a Macedonian, who is the most accurate in giving the numbers of the Slav population of the old provinces of Turkey, divides them not into races but religions. It is, of course, a mistake to think that on the inst.i.tution of the Exarchate it merely received the allegiance of those Macedonians whose origin was more or less Bulgarian. Thousands of Slavs who were, or believed themselves to be, of Serbian blood pa.s.sed over to the schism with the sole object of obtaining for their Church a Slav liturgy. There was little reason for them to hesitate, since at that time the names of Serb and Bulgar implied no national differentiation, but were used to designate the brothers of two different provinces. We find then that the Macedonian Slavs, vaguely Serbs and vaguely Bulgars, pa.s.sed pretty indiscriminately, and of course without the least apprehension of the future, into the Exarchist Church, or else remained under the Greek Patriarch. Exarchists and Patriarchists were found in the same family: thus at Tetovo the priest Missa Martinoff was an Exarchist and president of the Bulgarian community, while his brother Momir Martinovic was a Patriarchist, and president of the Serbian community in the same town. Stavro, a well-known watchmaker at Skoplje, was a Patriarchist, whereas a brother of his, also at Skoplje, was an Exarchist priest. Ivko, a farmer at the village of Poboujie and his eight nearest relatives were Exarchists, his other relatives and all the rest of the village were Patriarchists. Many similar examples could be given.

THE RIFT CAUSED BY RELIGION

One may observe by the sequence of events in one of the Macedonian towns, what was the dire effect of this dividing of the Slavs into two religious bodies. Ghevgeli, a town which before the War had about 6000 inhabitants, will provide a fair ill.u.s.tration. In the middle of the nineteenth century the church service was in Greek and there was no school, but the Slavs were indifferent--and learning was regarded as a rather praiseworthy accomplishment for the priest. Now and then some one would travel to where the Serbian or the Bulgarian language could be heard in church and on his return to Ghevgeli be discontented with the Greek. This feeling was fanned by certain agitators from outside; and ultimately a Slav service was introduced, being celebrated in the same church as the Greek service and by the same priest. As he was unable to read a Slav language, the words were written for him with Greek letters. One should mention, by the way, that no Greeks were to be found at Ghevgeli--only Slavs with a few Turks and five or six Jews. A Slav school was also opened about 1860, with a teacher whose salary was paid by the parents; he used Slav church books and taught arithmetic and folk-songs. The Greek bishop started a school, but with no great success, and although it went on until 1913 it was patronized by fewer and fewer children.

The Slav service in the church became after a time Exarchist; as a sequel to which, to the dissatisfaction of many of the people, it was called "Bulgarian." The objectors had been to Serbia and sympathized with that country, and at Ghevgeli they were supported by about half the population. But the Bulgars were then more favourably viewed by the Turkish authorities.... A Bulgarian school was likewise opened a few years before the Serbian, which began in 1882. By this time the Slavs, largely owing to external pressure, were not content to have two separate schools; they were the keenest rivals, and the proprietor of the Serbian school, Risto Naumovic, was killed for no other reason in 1883. His successor, one Becirovic, who is still alive, was threatened that he would be shot within twenty-four hours, but his valiant young son--who was then a pupil at the school--found the komitadji chieftain who had uttered this threat and slew him. So both the schools continued, together with a Turkish, a Greek, a Roumanian and a Catholic school. The Catholic friars were supported by Austria and France; the Roumanian establishment, which was visited by not more than twenty children from the neighbourhood, was maintained by Roumania--the teacher being a native of Bucharest. In fact, there was a good deal of propaganda which between the Serbs and the Bulgars became violent.

What can be said for the Exarchists?... Some years ago the Albanians in the region of Monastir were asking to be inscribed on the books of the American Church, for they thought in that way to obtain the benefits of American citizenship. They made no pretence of having been impressed by other doctrines. A Church was in their eyes a sort of naturalization bureau. And when the Exarchists were rejoicing in their new-found strength and perceiving that this Church of theirs might be a corner-stone of a Great Bulgaria, they were so completely carried away that they bestowed an all-too-scant attention on the methods which they brought to bear. These methods of the enthusiastic Exarchists were altogether deplorable and succeeded in alienating not only the Patriarchist Slavs whom they freely murdered, but even in many cases the very Exarchists, who came to dislike the komitadji bands, whom they were required to shelter and to feed and to a.s.sist with a subscription to their funds. "Still more," says a Bulgarian proverb--"still more than if you have a boat on the sea or a Roumanian wife, are you certain to sleep ill if you have a property in Macedonia." As year after year went by and the komitadji men appeared to be doing very little beyond terrorizing the country, those who supported them began to frown. No guerilla leader presented a balance-sheet, and it was generally known that the famous Boris Sarafoff allowed himself, each year, a few months in Paris. This, he said, was due to him after his arduous time in the Macedonian mountains. More and more displeased were the Exarchist peasants--the Macedonian Slav is a very thrifty soul--and in the Great War one had the spectacle of men who called themselves Bulgars and concealed their sons, lest they be taken into the Bulgarian army. "If it pleases the Bulgars," they said, "let them come and liberate us."

VERSATILITY OF THESE MACEDONIAN SLAVS

If the Exarchist leaders had gone about their business with more prudence--but how could one expect political sagacity among a people which had not only been for centuries under the shadow of the Horses'

Tails, but which at the time when the Turk appeared was no whit his superior in civilization? Very possibly the Balkan Slavs would in those five hundred years have turned in disgust from Vlad the Impaler and other exponents of Byzantine culture, if it had not been for the Turk, who ignored his raia's potential moral progress and did not think of regulating his natural cruelty. If the Exarchist leaders had been born different, then Macedonia might easily have become--as now, one hopes, it will at last become--a Yugoslav bond of union, instead of an apple of discord. "I used to be a Bulgar and now I am a Serb,"[54] said a man with whom I was walking one day in Monastir, "and so long as I have work," he said, "I shall be perfectly contented." How many Macedonians ought to echo his words! At Resan I stayed at the house of an old gentleman called Lapchevic and in Sofia I had previously met his brother, whose name was Lapchev and who was Minister of War. Until 1868 there was at Resan only a Greek school, so that the elder brother's education left him merely a Macedonian Slav, who could have become with equal facility a Serb or a Bulgar; the younger brother had the advantage of a Bulgarian school, but the disadvantage of having his Slav nationality narrowed down into that of Bulgaria. These two brothers should set an example, renounce the name of Serb and Bulgar, and call themselves simply Yugoslav. At Resan the Serbian authorities are certainly trying to smooth away these wretched divisions. No longer, as in 1890, does the little town support half a dozen schoolmasters who are nothing if not Serb or Bulgarian. Now the Serbs of Resan have retained not only the priests who were in office during the Bulgarian occupation, but the male and female Bulgarian teachers. In the winter of 1869 Ljuben Karaveloff started his paper, the _Svoboda_, which was in opposition to those Bulgars who dreamed of their country being freed by Russia and placed under a Russian protectorate. Karaveloff's hopes were centred on an independent revolutionary movement, and the Bulgars, he urged, could best achieve their political, as distinct from their ecclesiastical, freedom by a.s.sociating themselves with the other Balkan peoples and especially with the Serbs. "What is required," he said, "of the Balkan Christians is union and union and union."

HOW FOREIGNERS HAVE STIRRED UP TROUBLE

If you stand, soon after daybreak, looking at the white facade of Sofia's enormous, Russian-built cathedral, you will perceive that whether accidentally or by some architectural _tour de force_, the upper part is a majestic face, the face of some old G.o.d, benevolent and quite implacable. The Bulgars never would deny that Russia liberated them and showered on them every kind of gift. But woe be it to them if in return they did not forward Russia's purposes. Hundreds of young Bulgars were received in Russia and gratuitously educated; the Church books which the Bulgars used, their ecclesiastical vestments and sacred utensils had usually come to them as gifts from Russia; both before and after the political emanc.i.p.ation Russia's literature was most a.s.siduously studied. And a pious care was taken of the places around Plevna that were memorable for a feat of Russian arms; the people down to this day speak about "The Holy Places." All was well until the death of Alexander II. No, all was not well--for the Russians had, in their design to make the Bulgars their devoted Balkan agents, given them by the Treaty of San Stefano a vast territory which in grat.i.tude they were expected to administer for Russia's greater glory. Yes, it may be said, but Russia was using the best available maps, and these indicated that Macedonia was Bulgarian.... Perhaps we have already shown sufficiently that the Macedonian Slavs are devoid of an innate national sense, but that they have Bulgar or Serb sentiments which are, for the most part, imported, thrust upon them or created by the propagandists. Very rapidly the Macedonian Slavs transform themselves into Serbs or Bulgars; according to circ.u.mstances they will or will not be faithful to the nationality which they have chosen. And in their wavering they have thousands of precedents--towards 1400, for example, a Slav chieftain called Bogoja attacked the town of Arta, and in order to gain an easier victory announced, the chroniclers tell us, that he was of Serb, Albanian, Bulgar and Greek descent. One must therefore be a little dubious of maps which ascribe the Macedonian Slavs to any particular nationality. Much more than the rival maps, it was Kiepert's that was used by the Russians and others for determining the Bulgaria of San Stefano. "It is the best map that we know of," said Bismarck, and Kiepert's ethnographical statements were completely adopted by British scientists and diplomats at the time of the Berlin Congress. No doubt a well-equipped foreigner could obtain more exact ethnographical results in Macedonia than equally gifted Serb or Bulgar observers. But not one of the travellers whose observations Kiepert used for his map was acquainted with the Serb or the Bulgar language, nor had any one of them travelled for purposes of research; hence it is not surprising that none of them perceived that the Macedonian Slavs have no sense of nationality and that "Bulgar" is not used there as a national term. In former as well as in recent times the Macedonian Slavs have readily abandoned one name for the other, the temporary predominance of either depending solely on the conquests, political circ.u.mstances and various events, internal and external, which give rise to certain sentiments and instincts among this people, easily transforming them into Serb or Bulgar aspirations. It seems clear that Serbia's existence as an independent State for a good many decades before Bulgaria was freed would render the name of Serb more disagreeable to the Turk; it is therefore not astonishing that in Macedonia under the Turks one discarded the Serb name in favour of the Bulgar. Without dwelling upon the more or less valuable remarks which were made by priests and monks and Turkish geographers and French explorers and German doctors from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries and from which we can at least deduce that the Slav inhabitants of southern Macedonia were not fanatically constant to the Bulgar name, it would appear that in the nineteenth century the earlier deliverance of Serbia and, above all, the foundation of the Exarchate caused the Bulgar name to become the more popular. The Serbs were looked upon by Turkey as a revolutionary element, while the Bulgars aimed at an independent Slav Church within the limits of the Turkish boundaries. It is unnecessary to add that after Bulgaria's deliverance and her annexation of Eastern Roumelia, and especially after the rebellious movements in Macedonia, which had the moral if not the official encouragement of the Princ.i.p.ality, there was less eagerness on the part of the Slavs to let their Turkish masters think that they were Bulgars. But in the period preceding the publication of Kiepert's map the Bulgar name was the more fashionable with Macedonian peasants. And by giving practical effect to this map in the Treaty of San Stefano the Russians did a huge disservice to the Bulgars. In the first place, they aroused in this young people such an exhilaration that the subsequent annulling of the Treaty at the hands of the Great Powers would naturally leave a rankling disappointment. Also the relations between Serbs and Bulgars were not rendered easier by the chief Slav nation coming down so heavily upon the Bulgar side in what necessitated a most delicate and scientific handling. Three Russian ethnographical maps on Macedonia were issued by the Petrograd _Slavyansko Obtcestvo_, which worked for Pan-Slavism and a.s.sisted Slav students. These maps--one of them is described by Kntchev, the chauvinistic Bulgar, as "giving the Bulgars somewhat more territory than they in reality occupy"--were lamentably superficial.

While remaining unnoticed in the rest of Europe they exercised an unfortunate influence on the Balkan educated cla.s.ses, who believed that, according to tradition, the potent "elder brother" would be anxious to decide righteously the disputes between the small Balkan nations. These maps were, no doubt wrongly, looked upon as the plans of Russian policy, and on this account the Bulgars became still more unapproachable for an understanding or for united work; it appeared to the Macedonian _intelligentsia_, whose hope was to see their country set free, that Bulgaria was the land which fortune and the Russians favoured. Except the foundation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in Macedonia and the creation of Bulgaria at San Stefano, perhaps nothing contributed so much to the estrangement of the Balkan nations as these maps; for it was long before one could be persuaded that this Slav society had produced the maps through ignorance and false information, so that, as Professor Cvijic remarks,[55] "the educated cla.s.ses in Serbia were as culpable for the pernicious effects of these maps as were the Russian authors themselves." And Serbs and Bulgars had good reason to complain of the manner in which Russia treated them.

AUSTRIAN, RUSSIAN AND TURKISH MANUVRES

While Bulgaria came from the San Stefano peace dazzled with jewels that she was not to clasp, the Serbs continued walking in the shadows which had, from the time of Michael's death, been gradually falling round them. No practical result was obtained from a letter which the Serbian Government ordered their representative to read to the Greek Patriarch, pointing out that only such parishes should be held as unquestionably Bulgarian which had formerly been subject to the Patriarchate of Trnovo, even as those of the Pec Patriarchate were undoubtedly Serbian, while those of Ochrida were disputable, since that region had belonged in turn to both of them. Small advantage accrued to the Serbs from their fidelity to the Greek Patriarch: in Macedonia they came to be regarded by many Slavs as foes to the new national Church, while the only desire of the Greeks was to use them for their own purposes. "There are no Serbs in this parish," wrote a Bishop when the Patriarch commanded him to permit the Serbian priests now and then to celebrate a Slav service, "there are no Serbs but merely Greeks" (in which official terminology the Serbs were included) "and h.e.l.lenized Vlachs." ... The Serbs about this time were most unfortunate in warfare. Prince Milan tried to secure, without coming to blows, from the Sultan what he expected that his victorious armies would give him, namely, the administration of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

After the failure of the 1874 crops the peasants of Herzegovina and then of Bosnia were driven to desperation by the demands of the tax-gatherers. Miss Irby's eloquent description[56] tells us of the terrible state of these provinces during the years that preceded the outbreak. Taxes of one-eighth were demanded by the Governor, one-third or one-half by the Beg, taxes for exemption from military service, taxes for pigs, cattle and everything "you have or have not." One informant said, "I have seen men driven into pigsties and shut up there in cold and hunger till they paid; hung from the rafters with their heads downwards in the smoke, until they disclosed where their little stores were hidden. I have known them hung from trees and water poured down them in the freezing cold; I have known them chained barefoot and forced to run behind the Beg's carriage...." The provinces revolted and vengeance was wrecked upon them. More than a third of the population fled the country. Sir Arthur Evans[57]

describes the refugees as a "squalid, half-naked swarm of women and children and old men, with faces literally eaten away with hunger and disease.... After seeing every moral mutilation," he goes on to say, "that centuries of tyranny could inflict ... who can go away without a feeling of despair for the present generation of refugee Bosnia?" The people of Montenegro and Serbia were profoundly stirred by the miseries of their brothers. But Milan vacillated, and when finally he took up arms it was without success, and five weeks after the peace signature Russia began the Turkish War, one of whose necessary antecedents was the recognition by Russia that the Austrians were not to be hampered in Bosnia-Herzegovina. (After the Treaty of Berlin had placed the two provinces under Austria's administration it is said that Andra.s.sy, on his return from Berlin, remarked to Francis Joseph that the door of the Balkans was now open to His Majesty. But the Russian delegate, Prince Gortchakoff, had prophesied to Andra.s.sy that Bosnia-Herzegovina would prove the Empire's grave.) One effect produced by this incursion of the Austrian eagles was a serious divergence between the Croats and the Serbs. By historic and by ethnic rights the provinces, so the Serbs argued, should be theirs when once the Turk had ceased to rule. The Croats, laying special emphasis on the religious question, were for justifying Austria's occupation. The Catholic Slav clergy, unlike the Orthodox, ranged themselves with the great Catholic Power; while Croat politicians of the school of Starcevic invoked other historic and ethnic sanctions in their endeavour to found, under the name of "Great Croatia," a State uniting all the Yugoslav lands of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Thus the Serbs and their Croatian brothers were acutely in conflict. Never, said the Serbs, would that "Trialism" come to pa.s.s, for the Magyars would veto the formation of a Yugoslav State within the Empire, having a population roughly equal in numbers to its own. We Yugoslavs have nothing to hope for, said the Serbs, except from ourselves, and, being divided, we are ruining our common interests.... From yet another quarter was a storm-wind blowing on the Serbs. The Russian volunteers and officers had taken back with them highly unfavourable impressions as to the capabilities of the Serbian army, which they accompanied in the luckless campaign of 1876; also, in the opinion of the Pan-Slavists the Serbs had been contaminated by European civilization, whereas the Bulgars seemed, in the words of Professor Miliukoff,[58]

to be the sons of an untouched, virgin soil, free from politics and ready to work, with all possible zeal for the "inner truth" of Pan-Slavism, while begging its protector to concern herself with the "outer truth." The Bulgars were, for these reasons, to have the preference in the allotment of the spoils of the Turkish War; and, owing to the conflicting demands of Russia and Prince Milan, Serbia did not declare war against Turkey until several days after the fall of Plevna, so that she could not hope that the Russians would show any special tenderness towards her national aspirations. It is difficult to see what Serbia could have hoped to gain from the elder brother, if she had been less dilatory; she gained from this intervention no vast grat.i.tude from the younger brother. Men may still be found in Bulgarian frontier villages who were prominent there during the Serbian army's regime. Some of the officers seem to have told the people that they ought no longer to call themselves Bulgars, since they were Serbs; but the propaganda was very mild. Serbian schools were opened here and there, but if no pupils wished to attend them, the schoolmasters had a holiday; and the occupying troops limited themselves to collecting signatures on addresses of loyalty to Prince Milan. No one, probably, thought that the addresses and pet.i.tions were very serious--no one, that is to say, except a Dalmatian publicist called Spiridon Gopcevic, who printed a large number of them in his handsome, ill.u.s.trated book, _Makedonien und Alt-Serbien_ (Vienna, 1889). With regard to Gopcevic as a savant--he says that all the Macedonian Slavs are Serbs--and there are equally uncompromising Bulgarian authors--the celebrated Slavist Jagic says that he is sorry for the good paper which was used for Gopcevic's book. Another of his wonderful discoveries was that the Macedonian Slavs are Croats. And one of his severest judges is a Croat, S. Jurinic. He gives, as if they were most valuable, these fatuous lists of signatures and informs us that some Bulgarian priests and agitators tried to prevent them being collected. A Turkish official did, it is true, show in too Oriental a fashion that he disapproved of these collectors--on July 16, 1878, he quartered one Cvetkovic-Boince on the road between Skoplje and k.u.manovo for having obtained 5000 signatures; and after quartering him, the Turk nailed the four parts of his body, each with a quarter of the pet.i.tion tied to it, on to four posts at a place where four roads met. But many of the more reasonable Bulgars appear to have recognized that these activities of some Serbian officers and others need certainly not embroil the two people; while some other manifestations of joy, such as when they pulled out the beard of the priest of Pirot, and after nightfall, in celebration of this triumph, illuminated the town, those and similar transactions were treated as the folly of exuberant subalterns; and Tako Peyeff of Trn, the spokesman of the little, far-away town and its representative at San Stefano, told me that although he refused to sign pet.i.tions, yet he said that if Prince Milan should visit Trn it was the duty of all men to salute him. Up to this time, then, there was no veritable friction--there was only the cloud gathering over Macedonia; and even when the Berlin Congress of 1879 adjudged certain towns to Serbia, as a recompense for the abandonment of any claims on Bosnia, this was rightly taken by most Bulgars as being far less the fault of Serbia than of Austria and the other Powers. It is strange, in fact, that this difficult pa.s.sage in Serbia's history was marked by greater animus between Serb and Croat than between Serb and Bulgar--and the Serbs were standing in Bulgaria. Milan had not yet made his ill-omened remark that the road to Sarajevo went _via_ Sofia.

THE DEPLORABLE MILAN

One of the direst misfortunes that ever came upon Serbia was Milan, her fickle, headstrong, extravagant ruler. He was, perhaps, no Serb at all; it had been given out, when he came as a child from Roumania, that he was the grandson of the younger brother of Milo, but this statement was not universally accepted--he lived under the suspicion of being an illegitimate son of the Roumanian Prince--and at his first appearance before the Skuptina a certain Ranko Tajsic, a deputy, refused to rise. "I want that man's birth certificate!" he shouted. It is not surprising that Milan did his best to make, from that time onwards, Ranko's life a burden. If the Prince had been a more satisfactory monarch, his origin would have mattered little. Many of his attributes seem to his detractors to be peculiarly Roumanian, although it is true that extravagance is not unknown in Serbia, and this was the foible which his subjects, even when they learned the colossal amount of his debts, were most willing to overlook. It was only after his death that the secret treaty of alliance between himself and his paymasters, the Austro-Hungarian Government, became known; but the people, and especially the educated cla.s.ses, were in opposition to his politics, and the conflict between him and the Radical party degenerated into a revolt that was suppressed by the sword. The leaders of the party fled from Serbia: Paic, who was for so many years to be Prime Minister, settled in Bulgaria where he practised his profession of railway engineer.... As a benignant-looking patriarch Nicholas Paic was for a long time the solitary Serb with whom the well-informed public of the rest of Europe was familiar. And of course upon his countrymen, whose fortunes he directed through years of shadow and sunshine, his hold was tremendous. "May G.o.d bless our dear old brother Nikky," says the peasant as he tastes his morning gla.s.s of rakia. There is no brilliance but a profound knowledge of human nature in this humorous old Balkan gentleman. It is not by brilliant oratory that he sways the Skuptina, for he merely thinks aloud; slowly and haltingly, while he caresses his beautiful white beard, the words come out in a very ba.s.s voice--it is a grave and confidential talk, although a merry gleam occasionally dances in his eyes. With such homeliness does he talk that he pays no strict regard to the complications of Serbian grammar--when he appointed a very able young official of the Ministry of Education to a diplomatic post some hostile critics in the Press a.s.serted that he did so on account of his enormous admiration for a man who had produced eight books on grammar.

As a specimen of Paic's parliamentary methods we may quote from a speech that he made in answer to one by the aforementioned Tajsic, who was an illiterate but most eloquent peasant. For three hours Tajsic had railed against the secret fund, the 30 million dinars that were every year at the disposal of the Foreign Office. At last when Paic gets up and very courteously smiles at the would-be reformer: "Well, well," says he, "as to what our friend has told us--the--how should I say?--well, it is not altogether wrong--in a way, the--what was his name?--when you examine the matter from all sides, there is--I forget the word--in a way, these non-public matters, you know--how should I say?--it is best--how should I say?----" "Are you satisfied with His Excellency's answer?" says Nikolic, the Speaker. And Tajsic puts it to himself that after all he is only a peasant and Paic is an Excellency and he must know better what one should do. This habit of stroking his beard used to be adopted by the Prime Minister when his personal finances were under discussion. Doubtless there were many who scented something scandalous in the fact that he possessed half the shares in the Bor copper mines, which had risen from 500 to 80,000 dinars apiece. He had bought them, as anybody else might have done. "Ah well," he was wont to say in that ultra-deep voice, "you see my wife brought them me." And a large contribution to his wealth was made by a farmer near Kragujevac; he persuaded Paic to buy from him for 1000 piastres--a few pounds--a meadow on which to put his horses, and subsequently on that meadow there was found an excellent spring of mineral water. Once for a change another political leader, whose Christian name was also Nicholas, thought he would pull the beard of Paic, and he did so very vehemently just outside Kolarac, which is a large restaurant in Belgrade. The Prime Minister was being followed by a couple of detectives, but he signed to them that they were not to interfere. "My darling old Nikky," said he, as he beamed at his a.s.sailant and grasped him tightly round the throat, "you and I are party leaders, so please don't let us quarrel. It creates an unfortunate impression, my friend." And it was some weeks before this man recovered, for Paic was then about sixty years of age and still in the flower of his strength. But to return to the disastrous reign of Milan.

NIKITA THE COMEDIAN

The discontented Serbs could now no longer, as in days gone by, look hopefully towards Cetinje. Rumours and something more than rumours were circulating as to Nikita's character. For many years that very shrewd person was going to gull the Western world which, meeting him on the Riviera, was enchanted by his picturesque costume. But if Queen Victoria and Mr. Gladstone had gone to ask the Montenegrins they would have found that he was hated, and not only in the Brda and the parts bordering on Herzegovina but even in old Montenegro. His adherents were chiefly to be found among the Njegui, his own clan, and in the family of his wife. Certain English devotees of Nikita have actually been to Cetinje, have, as they proudly tell us, been embraced by him and have enormously admired his alfresco audiences when he settled all manner of problems to the perfect satisfaction of these tourists. Some of them, with a decoration or so and with memories of dinners and shoots, have written books that are a song of praise; and if Nikita's subjects tell these gentlemen and others, including members of the British Parliament, who have not been to Cetinje--but who know just as much as the travelled ones about Montenegro--if they tell them that Nikita is a ruffian, the answer will probably be that he who says such things must have a grievance, and that those foreigners who have criticized him, Miss Edith Durham, Baron d'Estournelles de Constant and Mr. Nevinson, are altogether mistaken.

I do not propose to make a long and dreary catalogue of his iniquities, but only to mention a few items.... It was in Montenegro a matter of common knowledge that the wheat which Russia sent in large quant.i.ties for his famine-threatened people was not given but was sold to them by Nikita, the proceeds being shared by himself and four or five privileged families, the Petrovic, Vukotic, Martinovic and Jabucani. A member of one of these families became so affluent that he built himself a house, and a gentleman who still survives, Tomo Oraovac by name, wrote on this in the year 1878 a rather humorous poem which he called "The Red House." Oraovac was at the time an official, the intendant of the Montenegrin army at Kotor, and he naturally had to resign his post. The Tzar sent a certain General Ritter to examine the charges and, as one result, a Russian decoration was conferred upon Oraovac; according to etiquette it was transmitted through Nikita, and that personage gave it to a friend of his, a Turk at Podgorica. Nikita is apt to disarm one by the quaintness of his ways. Later on, Oraovac, who was one of Montenegro's earliest schoolmasters, organized the _intelligentsia_ for the purpose of obtaining a Const.i.tution. Nikita was not yet ready to grant such a thing, and his representative who attended one of Oraovac's meetings at Podgorica inflicted upon him two grave wounds. The reformer was then expelled--the powerful intervention of one of Nikita's cousins saved his life--his mother and both his brothers, _more Montenegrino_, were likewise expelled and his house was bestowed upon a certain Krua, who lived in it for forty years. One must add, with respect to the Russian wheat, that Nikita did not sell it for cash--the wars of that period had left the land in such distress that no cash was available. And so the wheat was delivered in exchange for bonds that would some day become payable. When the wars of the seventies were over, an edict was issued, and from end to end of the country, so goes the story, men had to sell their sheep and cattle and horses, their sticks of furniture, their land itself, to meet their obligations.

Meanwhile the Austrian frontiers had been closed. No selling was possible outside the land, and selling within it was only permitted to certain specified persons, agents of the Prince, and at fixed prices.

The profits were enormous; the country was ruined, and from that time date the great emigrations to America, as was pointed out by Mr.

Leiper the Serb-speaking Scot in his admirable contributions to the _Morning Post_.... Nikita loved to bestow things upon himself. A famous hero, Novak Voujoevic, killed seventeen Turks in one day, and when he went, in consequence of an invitation, to Petrograd, the Tzar presented him with a sword on which were the Russian crown and the Montenegrin crown in diamonds. When the old warrior came back to Cetinje, Nikita said that such a weapon could not possibly be worn by a simple man; he therefore abstracted the diamonds and gave it him with false ones in their place. Nikita could not endure criticism, but those persons, including myself, who have charged him with inhuman treatment in the case of Vladimir Tomic, an intelligent young judge, were acting on faulty information. The tale was that Tomic, after being incarcerated, was soused with petrol and so badly burned that he lost his reason. As a matter of fact, this neurasthenic young man--whose imprisonment was due to his having wantonly insulted the whole Royal Family--poured the petrol on himself. Eventually, when Radovic came into office, he was released and, a few years later, he died in his native village.... The Montenegrin records are crowded with the names of those whom Nikita drove into exile for no other reason than that they had gone abroad for an education and would no longer be disposed to regard his methods as quite up to date. With the exception of the few favoured families Nikita was all against anyone acquiring riches; he deliberately put obstacles in the way of plum cultivation, and in such a state of poverty did he keep the Montenegrins that the Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, whose official connection with Montenegro dates back to 1878, addressed to Nikita an open letter with reference to the decreasing population, as to which the statistics had been destroyed. On account of the rigorous taxation a great many of the people were forced to migrate to America, from where they sent almost everything they earned to their unhappy relatives; these were compelled to pay up to 100 per cent. interest on the loans which they had been obliged to negotiate, so that they could not meet the taxes. And there would have been some consolation had those taxes been productive; but by far the larger part of them, as of the loans raised in Vienna (with the Boden Credit and the Lander Bank) and at Constantinople were devoted to the Court and its favourites, for rewards, journeys, decorations--every thing in fact, save the needs of the people. It suited Nikita very well to keep his people in dire poverty and ignorance. Such has been the poverty of the Montenegrins that it was no uncommon sight to see them cultivating so minute a _polje_ that the wheat which it produced would give no more than half a loaf. And meanwhile they were not allowed to exploit the wealth of the forests. Figs, olives, grapes and plums could all have been cultivated with profit, and in the lower regions oranges and lemons and tobacco. But there was the deliberate policy to keep the population from enriching themselves. Occasionally their native wit gained for them a surrept.i.tious triumph. Thus it happened that a poor peasant's son went up into the higher lands to tend the flocks of one who was more prosperous. By some means the boy discovered that the mountain torrent of his new abode dived underneath the rocks and subsequently reappeared and was the stream which ran past his old home. He turned this knowledge to effect by killing a lamb and throwing it into the water. His parents, down below, retrieved the lamb. Various other animals went the same journey, until the farmer ascertained what the boy was doing; and then the day arrived when the poor peasant, watching by the stream, saw the body of his son being carried down towards him.

Very few schools were opened; for example the Vasojevic, who are the most numerous tribe not only of Montenegro but of all the Serbian lands, had to content themselves with one school, built in 1882. In 1869 there was established a seminary with three cla.s.ses, that was afterwards converted into a high-school of four cla.s.ses; but both of these were frequently closed, the true reason being that the Russian subsidies given for the school were spent on the various needs of Nikita's Court. (By the way, at one time when Montenegro had this one high-school and one hospital the three sons of Nikita were in possession of ten palaces.) In 1869 the Russian Empress caused a girls' college to be opened at Cetinje. It was one of the best inst.i.tutions in the whole Peninsula; many Serb and Yugoslav girls, in addition to the Montenegrins, gathered at Cetinje. This college was the centre from which education and modern ideas spread out to the remotest corners of Montenegro; in 1913 it was obliged to close--the Court had long been looking at it with a very jaundiced eye....

Russia, Serbia, Italy, France and even Turkey offered free education to a certain number of young Montenegrins. But only the sons of the favoured families were able to get pa.s.sports to go abroad; there was scarcely anything Nikita feared as much as education.... And if one asks why no patriot could be found to kill this prince one is given two reasons, the first being that his semi-secret treaty with the Austrians provided that they should come into Montenegro if he were killed, and secondly, because of the old-time custom of vicarious punishment. In 1856, for instance, Nikita's father attacked the Pocara Kuci, burned their houses, and is reputed to have slain more than 550 children, women and old men, including the septuagenarian grandfather of Tomo Oraovac, on the ground that these people had set up a kind of republic, independent both of Montenegro and of the Sultan and declined to pay the former any taxes. These measures were taken against them in the summer when most of the men were with their herds in the mountains. Three children survived. The Great Powers protested, consuls were sent and ultimately the Pocara Kuci, who had always helped the Montenegrins against the Turks, consented to pay taxes. It was for these reasons that Nikita was never a.s.sa.s.sinated.

THE GREAT STROSSMAYER

While the Serbs of Serbia and Montenegro no longer placed any trust in their princes, they had good cause to give more and more of their confidence to Strossmayer, who remained for more than half a century at Djakovo and never, on account of Magyar opposition, became a prince of the Church. He saw that the Starcevic policy with respect to Bosnia was a retrograde step, since it was causing the Serbs of that province, who until the occupation had been on good terms with the Catholic minority and the Serbs of Croatia--about 40 per cent. of the population--to stand very much aloof from the Croats. This state of things was naturally very pleasing to the Magyar imperialist Ban, Count Khuen-Hedervary, whereas Strossmayer's Yugoslav idea would have, owing to the intermingling of the two religions, a particularly favourable ground in Bosnia. It may be that Leo XIII.'s conception of drawing back the Slavs to Rome will remain a dream, but his and Strossmayer's policy of an alliance would have been a blessing to the Yugoslavs, and primarily in such provinces as Bosnia and Croatia.

Negotiations were begun in 1882, between Strossmayer and the Serbian Government, with a view to establishing a Concordat. Serbia's Roman Catholic subjects--who, by the way, were not very numerous--would be placed under a patriotic priest depending not on Austria-Hungary but directly on Rome. And thus the fence between them and their Orthodox kindred would be gradually broken down. It would be foolish to a.s.sert that Strossmayer and his fellow-workers were able to make all the Yugoslavs dismiss their religious differences and remember their national affinities. Orthodox and Catholic Slav have for so long been divided that their approach to one another must often be slow and is liable to be interrupted by the manuvres of third parties. The Austrians were pretty successful, just before and during the Great War, in setting the Catholic and Orthodox Bosniak at each other's throat, and this antagonism will endure for a while in remote districts, such as in a certain village of the Sandjak where one found, in the summer of 1919, that the Catholic chief official and his wife were compelled to dismiss their Orthodox maid, since the villagers would not allow her to continue to serve in a Catholic house. But Strossmayer's statesmanship went a long way towards breaking down these barriers. "I have had to set my face against your mission," said von Khevenhuller, the Austro-Hungarian Minister, to Father Tondini when this Italian Barnabite, in whom Strossmayer had every confidence, came to Belgrade. "It is one of our principles, inherited from Schwarzenberg and Metternich," said the Minister, "that we should exercise a sort of control over the Serbian Catholics by having them under the jurisdiction of an Austrian Bishop." When Strossmayer visited Belgrade, for the purpose of conducting confirmations, he was driven at once, amid the booming of cannon, to the royal palace. And if the negotiations were allowed to drag it was obviously not due to any Orthodox fanaticism. Talking of fanaticism, one had instances in Bosnia and in Slavonia, not long ago, of Catholic priests who discarded Strossmayer and endeavoured to get their flock to use a different p.r.o.nunciation from that of the Orthodox. It was because he strove to bring them together that the great bishop was so heartily disliked in Vienna and Pest. It had been decided in 1883 that, unless he made his political submission, he was to be interned at the Trappist monastery of Banjaluka. But if he were no longer in a position to spend the great resources of the bishopric--to say nothing of the removal of his personal influence--the Cause would have suffered enormously. Therefore he listened to the prayers of his friends and submitted. "Be glad," said he to Radic, the Croat patriot--"be glad that you are not a priest." His successful efforts to bring about the moral and intellectual awakening of the Yugoslavs were most unpopular in those two capitals. But on the wide Slavonian lands and far beyond them one would find the st.u.r.dy farmers imitating his new methods--his own estate was so large that he paid 35,000 florins a year in taxes. The tall, thin prelate might be walking with you in his garden, telling you with simple eloquence--and in Latin, for choice--how much he regretted that Doellinger had not submitted, as did his adored Dupanloup, to the dogma of Papal Infallibility, when one of those painted carts would rattle round the corner and in two minutes this father of his people would be deep in a technical discussion with the peasant as to which of the episcopal stallions or bulls he should borrow for the improvement of his stock. When Strossmayer consecrated the cathedral which he had built at Djakovo he exclaimed that in the hour of his departure from this world his last prayer would be for the union of his people. "Almighty everlasting G.o.d," he cried, "have mercy upon my brave people and unite them!" As a very old man, verging on the nineties, with brilliant eyes peering out from under a great forehead and physically so fragile that in walking from one room to another he had to put his arm round my neck, he was still in every direction working to this end. Six months earlier, in June 1903, Khuen-Hedervary had been recalled and, after his twenty years of oppression, the young men of Croatia, Catholic and Orthodox, in harmony with the Slovenes, were forming the Serbo-Croat Coalition.

This was a great step in the direction of the Yugoslavia which Strossmayer did not live to see.

RELIGIOUS DISPUTES BETWEEN SERBS AND ROUMANIANS

Between Serbs and Roumanians of the Banat an ecclesiastical dispute was on the horizon. The Roumanian Orthodox body had suffered a severe loss through the Uniate Church, which captured many of the old Orthodox places of worship. Thus the famous little church of Huniadora, whose frescoes have been so glowingly described by Mr.

Walter Crane, fell into their hands. This occurred in many cases at the wish of a small part of the congregation--and this part might consist of gipsies--whereupon the majority would be obliged to build themselves another church. The Greek Catholic Uniate Church was apt to lose its national Roumanian colouring and admit the Magyar language, which was occasionally resented by the faithful. Thus, as the Bishop of Caransebes (now the Metropolitan of Roumania) told me, there came into a church at Tergul, near Moros-Varshahel, a woman with a basket of eggs. When she perceived that she could not understand the language that was being used she put down her basket and uttered a loud curse, "May thunder and lightning strike this church!" she cried. And after the service had begun in a church near Grosswardein the wife of a clergyman pulled the priest's beard, while other ladies tore off his robes. Nevertheless this Uniate Church continued to exist and it was natural that the Orthodox Roumanians should seek in some way to compensate themselves for their losses. They had, as we have mentioned above,[59] been given hospitality by the Serbian Church and given the use of a monastery for the education of their priests. They now suggested that it would be well if the Serbs handed over to them a number of the Banat monasteries, and when the Serbs declined they started a great lawsuit at Buda-Pest. Professor Iorga, the historian, told me that he thought his countrymen were justified in that these monasteries were originally neither Serbian nor Roumanian, but Roman Catholic, being erected, in pursuance of their propaganda, by the French dynasty which the Hungarians had over them in the fourteenth century. Their nomenclature, said the Professor, is neither Serb nor Roumanian, they had no privileges from Serb or Roumanian princes and he believed that they only pa.s.sed to the Serbs after having been abandoned by the Catholics. A line on p. 145, vol. i., of the _Monumenta Vaticana Hungariae_ (Buda-Pest, 1887):

"Item Stepha.n.u.s Sacerdos de Beesd solvit I fertonem"

appeared to lend colour to this view, for the name Beesd might have been slavized into Besdin and this might be the record of a payment made, between 1332 and 1337, to the Pope. It is only fair to say that the learned Magyar Jesuit who presides over the episcopal library at Gjula Fehervar (Alba Julia in Roumanian) did no more than say that these surmises were possible. He was, as a matter of fact, much more interested in the political situation and in another book, the oldest printed Bible in Roumanian (of 1582 and in Slav characters) which, as he pointed out with half a sigh, was published by one Magyar through the liberality of another. The charming Bishop of Caransebes, as he sat with me one Sunday morning in his rose garden, did not receive Professor Iorga's idea with approbation. The Professor, he thought, was too fond of originality and he himself preferred to claim some of the monasteries on equitable instead of on historical grounds. They were founded after all, he said, for the people of the Banat and of those a majority were now Roumanian. (But in Caras-Severin, the chief stronghold of his countrymen, there are no ancient monasteries with the exception of some ruins. The Roumanians are not ostentatiously religious; they do not take kindly to the building of churches and in their portion of the Banat one usually finds churches of wood, some of these being 150 years old.) But another librarian, this time a German at Verac, poured cold water on Professor Iorga. Only one Roman Catholic religious house, he said, was founded by that French dynasty in the Banat and this was at Egres, near the Maro, where the wife of Louis of Anjou built a church which remained Catholic and is now in ruins. The monastery of Besdin was founded in 1539 and a Serb-Slav psaltery which is kept there has, on p. 270, the following words: "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. So that all people shall know when a beginning was made to build the monastery of Besdin. It was begun in the year 7058 from the creation of the world, that is 1539 from the Birth of Christ ... Joseph Milutinovic, archimandrate, built it, and his monks and the Christians helped him. Written by me: Leontic Bogojevic, administrator and monk." Beesd and Besdin, said the librarian, are from the same root, signifying that which has no bottom, an abyss, and the marshes in the Banat are numerous. The Beesd of the above citation is, said the librarian, a place between the rivers Temes and Berzava; Catholics were there in the fourteenth century, but the founders were Slavs. The burly archimandrate of Besdin, whose const.i.tution had withstood twenty-seven years of marshes and mosquitoes, was extremely scornful of his adversaries'

pretensions. "They wanted to prove that they built it! Not one stone, not a single stone! Then they argued that something was due to them as they had paid a part of the church taxes. We had invited them!" ...

Most of the Serbs acknowledge that their monasteries in the Voivodina, as elsewhere, are not under present conditions as meritorious as in the Middle Ages when the people from twenty or thirty villages would meet there and listen to the blind guslar-player. Sometimes one of their few monks is a man of erudition, such as the well-known Bishop Nicholai Velimirovic or Ruvarac the great historian, who in thirty years freed his monastery from debt and left large sums for charities.

On the other hand we have the archimandrate Radic, who ruled several monasteries in succession; he never drove with less than four horses in his carriage and he drove so recklessly that between eight and sixteen horses were rendered worthless every year. The Radical party desired, after paying fixed salaries to the archimandrates and monks, to give two-thirds of the rest to clerical funds and one-third to schools. But the Austro-Hungarian Government had an understanding with the clerical party and prevented the public from exercising any control over these funds. The twenty-seven monasteries in the Voivodina, Syrmia and Croatia could have supported three Universities, so richly endowed are they with lands; the Roumanians did in fact with some of the revenues of their one monastery of Hodosh maintain the Arad seminary. There is no knowing what other monasteries the Roumanians would have secured if the Great War had not intervened, for the Pest judges knew every morning which of the two litigant countries their own country happened to prefer.

What the Serbs of the Banat had, in the political world, to contend against may be ill.u.s.trated by some incidents of the career of Dr.

Svetozar Miletic, who after having been a deputy for twenty-five years was charged with high treason for having sent volunteers into Serbia at the time of the Serbo-Turkish War; even if this was true it can scarcely be said to have const.i.tuted high treason against Hungary.

The witnesses against him were two forgers, released _ad hoc_ from prison, his own witnesses were hundreds. He was condemned to six years' imprisonment, at the expiration of which he was in such a state that he had to be transferred to an asylum, where he died. The pitiful dodges of the dominating Magyar minority are by this time well enough known; it was their argument that certain villages, say ten miles from a town, had to give their votes in that town, while intervening villages of other nationalities were obliged to present themselves at a booth twenty miles in another direction, because if such methods had not been employed then the more ancient and more reputable Magyar culture would have been entirely swamped by the wicked non-Magyars.

Thus the three million Slovaks in Hungary were represented at Buda-Pest by three deputies.[60] "Hungary," says the delicious Aubrey Herbert, M.P., in the _Oxford Hungarian Review_ (June 1922), "Hungary was situated amongst reactionary neighbours, and any loosening of her hold upon the non-Magyar population threatened her very existence. The path of spectacular liberalism was closed to her...." The ballot was supposed to be secret in the towns, where the Magyars could hope to exercise an appropriate control; but even in the towns they thought it more advisable to take no risks. Some of the dead were permitted to vote; but only if they were faithful Magyar dead. And in Dr.

Miletic's const.i.tuency no arrangements were made to ferry the living--on the large lake of Mutniatsa the boats were hidden and the voters were compelled to swim across.

Although a great many of his subjects charged Prince Milan with preferring his own and the dynasty's interests to those of the State, they should have taken into account that the Berlin Congress had left their country in a more than difficult economic and political situation. Not only were Serbia and Montenegro kept apart, but in the intervening territory, the Sandjak of Novi Bazar, permission was given to Austria-Hungary, of which she soon availed herself, to establish garrisons. Serbia was now almost encircled by the Austrians and there remained only two inconvenient routes for the exportation of her products to other countries: down the Danube, with the very high tariffs imposed by the Berlin Congress, or by the line to Salonica, which was in the hands of Austrian capitalists and ran through Turkish territory. Therefore Serbia's independence, political and economic, existed at Austria's pleasure; and this must be remembered in extenuation of the secret Treaty[61] (June 23, 1881) whereby the Serbs bound themselves for ten years to abstain from any propaganda or other activity against the Habsburgs and to make no political treaties with other Powers without the knowledge and consent of Vienna. Nor were any foreign troops or volunteers to be allowed into Serbian territory. In return for this the Emperor undertook to recognize Prince Milan as King whensoever he might be pleased to a.s.sume that dignity (as he did on March 6, 1882), to protect his dynasty from the Karageorgevic and to favour his acquisition of as much as possible of the valley of the Vardar. The grateful Prince affirmed this Treaty (on October 24, 1881) by a still more emphatic declaration by which he appears to have const.i.tuted himself a va.s.sal of the Emperor. This infuriated the young politicians whose radical ideas, mostly imbibed at Paris and Geneva, were not balanced by the moral and social discipline which is the fruit of an advanced civilization. As a result Serbia was given over to chaos.... When Prince Alexander of Battenberg aquiesced in his Bulgars annexing eastern Roumelia it was said that he was violating the Berlin Treaty, but it is now known[62] that, in spite of the 1879 Treaty, this union had been foreseen and approved by Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary in 1881. Nevertheless Austria, which hoped to embroil and enfeeble the two Slav States, urged Milan to declare war against the Bulgars, and this he did the more willingly as he fancied that it would divert from him the enmity of so many of his subjects; but this war was such an unpopular enterprise that the King did not dare to mobilize fully, and with his available forces indifferently equipped and badly led, the upshot was that the Bulgars were victorious. While Austria had thus been the Serb's evil genius, Russia, by withdrawing all her officers from Bulgaria, again acted in a manner which seemed scarcely to allow her and others, in 1915, to denounce the Bulgars for their ingrat.i.tude. (The Russians, as a subsequent Russian Minister at Sofia relates,[63] so completely mishandled the situation in the early days of Bulgaria's freedom that they had only themselves to blame for the invitation to Ferdinand of Coburg which was made with the express purpose of thwarting Russian aggression.)

THE BURDEN OF THE OBRENOVIC

The fratricidal Serbo-Bulgarian conflict of 1885 has been well commemorated by a monument at Vidin: a soldier of the victorious Bulgarian army is depicted, prostrate in sorrow.... Milan, after an effort to rule with a new liberal const.i.tution, abdicated and delivered his country to a Regency. These statesmen, who were aware of the secret convention with Austria, obstructed the development of the country and had recourse to a _coup d'etat_ in order to prevent a Radical election. Alexander, the ill-fated son of Milan, by another _coup d'etat_ proclaimed himself of age, summoned a Radical Cabinet and restored to the people their political liberties. But the enthusiasm caused by these proceedings was not often to be roused again by Alexander. The midnight _coups d'etat_, which rapidly succeeded one another, were a form of government congenial to this gloomy, silent, friendless youth who blinked at the world through his spectacles and was incapable of seeing anything except the narrowness and the intrigues that were a part of his surroundings. More and more he showed himself a despot; he persecuted and imprisoned hundreds of Radicals, who were the overwhelming majority of the population.

Espionage was rampant, the finances were in a state of chaos and Serbia's prestige was at such an ebb that, what with the disasters of 1885 and the reign of Alexander, the Macedonian Slavs were naturally more inclined to proclaim themselves Bulgars. Alexander annulled the const.i.tution, imposed that of 1888, annulled this one also, superseded all the judges of appeal as well as all the councillors of state, married his mistress (an engineer's widow) and plotted, it was said, to nominate as heir to the throne his brother-in-law, a worthless young lieutenant. Meanwhile this officer and his brother were exasperating the people of Belgrade by commanding the orchestras in cafes to play the national anthem at their entrance, and occasionally, while they drank, firing their revolvers into the air. It was something more than personal exasperation which brought about Alexander's death. Those who partic.i.p.ated in the murder were both partisans and opponents of the dynasty. Likewise the Austro-Hungarian Government was aware of the plan: Count Goluchowski promised the conspirators that Austria would not resort to armed interference, although two army corps were held in readiness to march into Serbia.

Of course it would have suited Austria much better if the king, who seemed to be emanc.i.p.ating himself from the veiled tutelage accepted by his father, had been dethroned and kept by the Ballplatz as a restraint on the political waywardness of any successor. Some of those who entered the palace on the night of June 10, 1903, may have had their intentions changed by the panic which was caused owi