The Birth Of Yugoslavia Volume I Part 2

As yet the Serbian State was rising in prosperity and Dubrovnik made a treaty of commerce with Stephen (1196-1224), who had succeeded his father Nemania. During this reign St. Sava, the king's brother, came back to Serbia and organized the national Church, founding also numerous monasteries and churches, as well as schools. Of the successors of Stephen we may mention Uro, whose widow, a French princess, Helen of Anjou, is venerated in Serbia for her good deeds and has been canonized. King Milutine (1281-1321) made Serbia the most united and the leading State in Eastern Europe; under Duan, who has been called the Serbian Charlemagne, success followed success, and under his sceptre he gathered most of the Serbian people, as well as many Greeks and Albanians. He had the idea--and it was not beyond his strength--to group together all the Serbian provinces.

THE GLORIOUS DUAN

It is facile for people of the twentieth century, and particularly so for non-Slavs, to say that this Serbian Empire of Duan, Lord of the Serbs and Bulgars and Greeks, whom the Venetian Senate addressed as "Graecorum Imperator semper Augustus," resembled the earlier Bulgarian Empire of Simeon, who called himself Emperor of the Bulgars and the Vlachs, Despot of the Greeks, in that we would consider neither of them to be an empire; and that therefore, in celebrating their glories, with pointed reference to their Macedonian glories, the Serbs and the Bulgars are living in a fool's paradise. No doubt a great many persons dwelt in this Macedonia of Simeon and Duan without being aware of the fact, for those who called themselves Bulgars or Serbs appear to have been chiefly the warriors, the n.o.bles and the priests; a large part of the people were--as they are to-day--indifferent to such niceties. But there is latent in the Slav mind a longing for the absolute, which, except it be in some way corrected, inclines towards a moral anarchy, a social nihilism and indifference as to the destinies of the State. Looking merely at the consequence, it does not greatly seem to matter how this att.i.tude is brought about.... One must admit that these two realms occupied in their world most prominent positions--positions to which they would not have attained if Simeon and Duan had not been altogether exceptional men, for on their death there was not anybody great enough to keep the great men of the State together. We have spoken of Simeon's peaceful labours--we might cultivate more than we do the literature of that age if it were less dedicated to religious topics, which anyhow at that time gave little scope for originality--his consummate ability as a soldier and statesman is revealed in the existence of his empire; we find in the Code of Duan, before such a thing flourished in England, the inst.i.tution of trial by jury, while Hermann Wendel[17] has pointed out that the peasants were protected from rapacious landowners much more effectively than in the Germany of that age.... We need not try to establish whether the simple Macedonian desired to be under Simeon or Duan; but even if these two monarchs had, each of them, as far as was then possible, complete control of the country, one would scarcely urge that after all these centuries this is any reason why Macedonia should fall to Bulgaria or to Serbia. We shall have to see whether by subsequent merits or activities either of them has acquired the right to absorb these outlying Slavs who, be it noted, if in our day they are questioned as to their nationality, will often reply--and even to an enthusiastic, armed person from one of the interested States--the worried Macedonian Slavs, of whom a quarter or maybe a third do really not know what they are, will reply that they are members of the Orthodox Church.

Duan perceived that an alliance with Venice would serve his ends; he did not cease trying to persuade the Venetians that such an arrangement was also in their interest. After having sent an army to Croatia, in the hope of liberating that people from the Hungarians, he conquered Albania, and in 1340 asked to be admitted as a citizen of the Most Serene Republic. In 1345 he informed the Senate that it was his intention to be crowned in _imperio Constantinopolitaneo_, and at the same time suggested an alliance _pro acquisitione imperii Constantinopolitani_. But Venice, while reiterating her protestations of friendship, declined his offers; for she could not bring herself to join her fortunes to those of an ally who might become a rival.

EVIL DAYS AND THE PEOPLE'S HERO

On the death of Duan his dominions fell apart, so that the conquering Turk, who now appeared, was only met with isolated resistance. At a battle on the river Maritza in 1371 the Christians were utterly routed and, among other chieftains, King Vukain was slain. His territories had included Prizren in the north, Skoplje, where Duan had been crowned, Ochrida and Prilep. It was Prilep, amid the bare mountains, which pa.s.sed into the hands of Marko, the king's son, Marko Kraljevic, and thereabouts are the remains of his churches and monasteries. But for the Serbs and the Bulgars Marko is a.s.sociated with deeds of valour; he has become the protagonist of a grand cycle of heroic songs, wherein his wondrous exploits are recalled. Although he was, by force of circ.u.mstances, a Turkish va.s.sal, and, fighting under them, he perished in Roumania in 1394, so that historically he may not have played a very helpful part, yet it is to him that numerous victories over the Turk are ascribed. He is said to have been engaged in combat against the three-headed Arab, to have waged solitary and triumphant warfare against battalions of Turks, to have pa.s.sed swiftly on his faithful charger arac from one end of the country to another, to have defended the Cross against the Crescent, to have succoured the poor and the weak, to have conversed with the long-haired fairies, the "samovilas," of the forest lakes, who gave him their protection, and he is said to have a.s.sisted girls to marry by abolishing the Turkish restrictions. They say that he is still alive, and when he reappears, gloriously seated on arac, then will the people be free, at last, and united.[18]

Through the long centuries of Turkish oppression he--who personifies many of the traits in the national character, with Christian and with pagan attributes--he, in these legends, many of which have a high poetic value, was able to keep alive the hope of deliverance. From one end of the Balkans to the other, from Varna to Triest, the popular hero is Marko Kraljevic. He is as much the personage of Bulgarian as of Serbian folk-songs, and this is well, seeing that he was a Serbian prince while many of his adoring subjects were Bulgars--the n.o.ble Albanian chronicler, Musachi, for instance, calls his father Re di Bulgaria. As Marko is dear to them in song the Bulgars have come to think that he was a Bulgar; thereupon the Serbs point out that he was the son of Vukain, that Marko is an admittedly Serbian name, and that Kralj (King) and Kraljevic are t.i.tles so unknown in Bulgaria that when the Sofia newspapers alluded to Louis Philippe, Ferdinand's grandfather, they spoke of him--him of all people--as Tzar Louis Philippe. Thereupon the Bulgars retort that, anyhow, Marko was cruel and perfidious and a braggart and a drunkard and a fighter against Christians, and a fighter remarkable for cowardice. But if we are going to look at the private character of all the world's national heroes, we shall be the losers more than they. Let Marko, who joins the Serb and the Bulgar in song, find them engaged, when he comes back, in drinking together and not in making him the subject of antiquarian and acrimonious debate.

THE "GOOD CHRISTIANS" OF BOSNIA

While Serbia was listening to the Turkish cavalry, the Ban of Bosnia, Tvertko, raised that province to its greatest eminence. Being a collateral heir of the old house of Nemania, and having wide Serbian lands under his rule, he had himself proclaimed king on the tomb of St. Sava in 1377. He called his banat "the kingdom of Serbia," and allied himself to Prince Lazar, the most powerful of the Serbian rulers who were still independent. In Bosnia at this time the Bogomile heresy, after winning the people of Herzegovina, that wild and mournful province, attracted not only the peasants but the bans. Just as Duan and other Balkan princes had made of an autocephalous Church the surest foundation of their States, so did the Bans of Bosnia, beginning with Kulin at the close of the twelfth century, see in the Bogomile movement a national Church that would render their subjects more intractable to outside influences, to religious suggestions emanating from Rome, and to political ambitions that came from Hungary. The people, for their part, flocked to the ranks of the "good Christians," as the sect was called, on account of the Bogomile humility, the democratic organization of a Church that was in such contrast with the formalism of Byzantine ceremonial, and also on account of some pagan superst.i.tions that were mingled with this Christianity and made to these simple, recently converted Christians a most potent appeal. It was in vain that the Popes preached a crusade against the Bogomiles, in vain that the Kings of Hungary descended on their heretical va.s.sals; for the ban, in one way or another, would divert that wrath--sometimes, if no other choice presented itself, he became the temporary instrument of this wrath while standing at the people's back. From all the world, so say contemporary records, there was a constant stream of heretics to Bosnia, where now the Bogomiles were found in the most exalted positions. Ceaselessly the Popes persecuted them, and when at last in Sigismund of Hungary an ardent extirpator visited the land there came about a terrible result, which has made Bosnia so different from other Serbian territories.

KOSSOVO

Tvertko did his utmost to make of Bosnia the kernel of another great Slav State. The death of Lewis of Hungary freed him from his most redoubtable adversary; Dalmatia, Croatia and other lands were joining him--but then in 1389 came Kossovo, the fatal field of blackbirds, where a disloyal coalition of Serbian, Croatian, Albanian and Bulgarian chieftains went down in irretrievable disaster. Milos Obilic, who is now one of Serbia's popular heroes, had been suspected of lukewarmness; he answered his accusers by gaining access to the Sultan's camp and slaying the Sultan. Not only did the Turks put him to death, but they decapitated their prisoner, Prince Lazar, and all the other chiefs.

The Slavs along the Adriatic were now also on the eve of dire misfortune: protracted wars of succession, in consequence of the death in 1382 of Lewis of Hungary, had ravaged that country and Croatia, so that in their enfeebled condition they could give no a.s.sistance to the towns and islands of Dalmatia which for so long had been struggling to elude the grip of Venice. But even so--and with many places handing themselves over voluntarily, in disgust at the almost incredible treason of their elected monarch, Ladislas of Naples, who, after long bargaining, sold his rights to Venice for a hundred thousand ducats, and with many places, in dread of the Turks, placing themselves under the protection of Venice--even so the Venetians had a great deal of trouble in occupying Dalmatia, and a hundred years elapsed before they had the whole of it. As for the two ports, Triest and Rieka (Fiume), they had pa.s.sed through various episcopal or aristocratic hands.

Triest had been in a position to set her face against falling to Venice, of whom she had had, from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, an adequate experience. Both Triest and Rieka were now to pa.s.s into the power of the Habsburgs.

GATHERING DARKNESS

For a few years after Kossovo the Serbs resisted; but their efforts, now at Belgrade, which was made the capital and fortified by Stephen the chivalrous son of Prince Lazar, now at Smederevo on the Danube, were spasmodic. Bands of Turks and also of Magyars were terrorizing the country; and the sagacious old despot George Brankovic was the last to offer opposition to the Turk at Smederevo. Meanwhile in Bosnia, the Bogomiles, driven to despair by persecution, had been calling to the Turk. Constantinople fell in 1453, Serbia laid down her arms in 1459, while in 1463 Muhammed II. appeared before Jajce, Bosnia's capital, where one can still see the skeleton of Stephen Tomaevic, the last king, who was executed by the Sultan's order. And now in this land of heresy, which had become so hostile to the established Churches, hundreds of those who professed the Bogomile faith went over eagerly to Islam; they hoped that in this way they would triumph at the expense of their late persecutors. Those who had worldly possessions were the first to embrace Islam, in order to safeguard them. Those who had neither wealth nor much acc.u.mulated hatred remained Christians. One would expect that people who had adopted a religion under these impulses would be even more uncompromising than the usual convert, and indeed, as a general rule, the ex-Christian begs and aghas displayed until recent times not only a more than Turkish observance of the outward forms of Islam but a tyranny over the wretched raias, their slaves, that was much more than Turkish.

Fortune had turned her back upon the Southern Slavs. In the north the Slovenes were imprisoned in the Holy Roman Empire, while the Croats--save for the time when they were under Tvertko--had a succession of alien rulers, such as the aforementioned Ladislas, whom they naturally disliked.

After Kossovo some of the Serbian n.o.bles had fled to Hungary, to Bosnia and to Montenegro. It was among the almost inaccessible, bleak rocks of Montenegro that a few thousand Serbs managed to retain their liberty. Various Serbian tribes or clans thus found a refuge, and owing to their isolation from each other they preserved their differences. They have, in fact, preserved them, as well as the tribal organization, down to the present day. And then there was Dubrovnik, the stalwart little republic. Now that she stood alone she needed all her ac.u.men. Yet if she paid necessary tribute to the powerful, she would not give up helping the fallen. From this Catholic town in 1390, the following message was sent to the Serbian Prince Vuk Brankovic: "If--and G.o.d forbid that it should be so--Gospodin Vuk should not succeed in saving Serbia, and should be driven thence either by the Magyars or the Turks or anyone else, we will receive the Gospodin Vuk and the Gospodja Mara his wife, together with their children and their treasure, in all good faith in our city; and if Gospodin Vuk desire to build a church of his own faith here for his use, he shall be at liberty to do so."[19]

Darkness lay over the world of the Southern Slav--under the Turk there was no history. Generation followed generation, but the day of Kossovo does not seem to the Serbs as though it were a distant day. Do not we who go about our business in the brilliance of the morning sometimes linger to recall the frightful setting of the sun? And every year the Serbian people sing the Ma.s.s for the repose of them who died at Kossovo.... When, after more than five hundred years, the Serbian soldiers in the Balkan War came back to this historic plain one saw them halting, without being ordered to do so, crossing themselves and presenting arms.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 4: From the word _sloviti_, to speak--meaning those who can speak to and comprehend one another.]

[Footnote 5: Premrou quotes from the account of this amba.s.sador's journey in the year 965, which was published at Petrograd in 1898.]

[Footnote 6: Cf. _Serbia_, by L. F. Waring. London, 1917.]

[Footnote 7: The sources of the ancient history of Croatia have been collected by F. Racki in his _Doc.u.menta historiae Croaticae periodum antiquam ill.u.s.trantia_, Zagreb, 1877. Cf.

also his well-known and excellent essays in _Rad. jugoslav.

Akad._; the _Poviest Hrvata de Vjekoslav Klaic_, Zagreb, 1899-1911, and a short but very good account by F. Siic in _Pregled povijesti hrv. naroda_, Zagreb, 1916. I am indebted for these references to Dr. Yovan Radonic, who is regarded as among the first of Croat historians.]

[Footnote 8: This book, dating from 1395, is in the town library of Reims.]

[Footnote 9: "The Bulgarians, in their historical, ethnographical and political frontiers." Text in four languages. Berlin, 1917.]

[Footnote 10: _La Macedoine_, by Simeon Radeff. Sofia, 1918.]

[Footnote 11: _Obzor Chronografov_, published by Professor Popov in 1863.]

[Footnote 12: _Pester Lloyd_, June 21, 1917.]

[Footnote 13: _Introduction a l'Histoire de l'Asie._ Paris, 1896.]

[Footnote 14: In a monograph on the 600th anniversary of the Church of St. Mary at Celje (Celje, 1910) there is reproduced a contemporary narrative of the funeral of Count Ulrich.

After describing how the widow, the n.o.ble lady Catharine, had with dire wailing gone round the altar and offered sacrifice, being followed by all the congregation, it proceeds: "Da diss geschehen gieng wieder herfur ein geharnischter Mann, der Namb zu sich Schilt, Helmb, Wappen, legte sich auf die Erden, vnd striche gar lauth, ganz erbarmlich vnd gar Claglich mit h.e.l.ler stimbe drei mahl nacheinander Graffen zu Cilli, vnd Nimmehr zerreiss die Panier, Zerbrach die Wappen da war Allererst ein Clagen, da.s.s es nicht einen Menschen, sondern ein harten stain hete Erbarmen Mogen."]

[Footnote 15: Cf. A lecture delivered by Sir Arthur Evans before the Royal Geographical Society, January 10, 1916.]

[Footnote 16: Cf. _La Fine della Serenissima_, by Ricciotti Bratti. Milan, 1919.]

[Footnote 17: _Sudosteuropaische Fragen_, by Hermann Wendel.

Berlin, 1918.]

[Footnote 18: His equipment, as M. Charles Loiseau (in _Le Balkan Slave et la Crise Autrichienne_, Paris, 1898) remarks very truly, "n'est pas ba.n.a.l." One of his historians relates that he was furnished with a sword, a lance, javelins and arrows trimmed with falcons' feathers, sometimes also with a sabre and a small axe. He was garbed in a cloak of wolf's skin, using the same skin for his cap, round which was wound a dark piece of cloth. On his saddle was a scarf of silk. The reins of his horse were gilded, and he carried in his right hand a javelin of iron, gold and silver, weighing 150 lb.

(?), and this he balanced on the left side with a large skin of wine. On his back was a magnificent cloak, and behind him there was a folded tent.]

[Footnote 19: _Monumenta Serbica_, edited by F. Miklosic.]

II

FIGHTING THE DARKNESS

THE VENETIANS IN DALMATIA--METHODS OF THE TURK--THE SLAVS WHO MIGRATED--THE CONSOLATION OF THOSE WHO REMAINED--GOOD LIVING IN HUNGARY--THE PROTESTANT INFLUENCE--DUBROVNIK, REFUGE OF THE ARTS--HOW SHE SMOOTHED HER WAY--HER COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE--HER NORTHERN KINSMEN AND THE MILITARY FRONTIERS--THE OPPRESSIVE OVERLORDS OF THE YUGOSLAVS--THE GREAT MIGRATION UNDER THE PATRIARCH--ACTIVITIES OF THE SOUTHERN SLAVS UNDER THE HABSBURGS--THE POSITION OF THEIR CHURCH--SERBS a.s.sIST THE BULGARIAN RENASCENCE--THE GERMAN COLONISTS IN THE BANAT--THE SOUTHERN SLAV COLONISTS AND THEIR RELIGION--BUNJEVCI, OKCI AND KRAOVANI.

THE VENETIANS IN DALMATIA

One might argue that the Slav of Dalmatia had no grat.i.tude, because when Serbia and Bosnia were utterly under the Turk, when the Slovenes of Carniola, Carinthia and Southern Styria suffered between 1463 and 1528 no less than ten Turkish invasions, when in the middle of that fifteenth century the crescent floated over all Croatia and only the fortified towns of the seacoast and the islands remained in the Christian hands of Venice, whom a fair number of these towns and islands had called in to protect them, surely one might argue that it was not seemly if the local population, Croats and Serbs, detested the Venetians. And on hearing that not long ago an orator in the Italian Parliament exclaimed, "I cani croati!"--a description that was greeted with a whirlwind of applause--you possibly might argue that the Speaker should have reprimanded him because ingrat.i.tude is not a quality a.s.sociated with dogs.

As we gaze at the splendid structures, the palaces, the forts, the magnificent cathedral of ibenik that was begun in 1443, the loggia of Trogir and Hvar, the loggia of Zadar--"a perfect example," we are told, "of a public court of justice of the Venetian period"--the towers on the old town-walls of Korcula, as we gaze at all those elegant and useful and robust and picturesque buildings which bear the sign of the Lion of St. Mark, do not the complaints of the disgruntled population of that period tax our patience?

We may waive the fact that the ibenik cathedral was left unfinished for centuries, being only completed by public subscription under the Austrians; we may overlook the fact that the Lion of St.

Mark was sometimes placed on a building not erected by the Venetians.

This we can see at the Frankopan Castle on Krk, and elsewhere. But it would be unjust if we held Venice up to blame on account of some exuberant citizens. There are many other buildings in Dalmatia which undoubtedly were built by the Venetians: palaces and forts and walls and loggia which are perfect examples of a Venetian court of justice.

Some one may ask why the Venetians built no churches that were half as beautiful as those--say, St. Grisogono at Zadar, the cathedrals of Zadar and Trogir, and so forth--which were constructed under the Croatian kings. Well, the possession of such churches would have been a source of pride to the Dalmatians (and have kept awake the national spirit more than did the forts and loggia), and the Venetians wanted to preserve the people from the sin of pride. There was also a feeling that the Dalmatian forests were a source of pride to the people. So the Venetians removed them. They were able to make use of the wood for their numerous vessels, for the foundations of their palaces, and as an article of export to Egypt and Syria.[20]