Chapter 13

The Emperor of a great many Southern Slavs, the Sultan, had in his time been satisfied if he could squeeze out of the Montenegrins so much tribute as would every year pay for his slippers. He could send an army now and then to devastate Cetinje and destroy the monastery where the people's bishop lived, but in those mountains a large army ran the risk of being ambushed and a very large one would be starved. Besides, now that the European scientists and travellers were beginning to go up to Montenegro and were, among the few sights of Cetinje, always shown the shrivelled head of Kara Mahmud Pasha, who in 1796 had been defeated, it was not advisable, the Sultan thought, that any other Turkish head of prominence should have this fate.... In Macedonia it was very different; the population might have once been warlike, but had so successfully been governed that some German travellers of the sixteenth century, Hans Ternschwamm and Ritter Gerlach, had described them as a "conquered, down-trodden, imprisoned people" who did not dare to lift up their heads, a people who "without intermission must toil for the Turks." And if three hundred years of this life had not completely tamed them, the Sultan had every confidence that the Greek Patriarch would tell the Powers what they knew already, namely, that the Macedonian Christians only had to pay a tenth and sometimes only an eleventh part of certain crops and that in return they were protected by the Spahi from the ills which every humbler man is heir to, and that the Powers, who politically said they must respect the Sultan, must now morally respect him also. But in 1850 the Turkish Government made a change; in place of the old Spahi there was installed a landlord who retained the name of Spahi but who had none of his predecessor's careless benevolence. The property had been hired out to him for life and his one object was to get from it as much as possible. He made demands not only for a tenth but for a fifth and even a third part, and not only of the maize and wheat but of every product of the soil. Cattle, bees, vegetables, fruit--of all of these he had to have his share; the peasant often cut his fruit trees down as he could not afford to pay the various taxes that were put on them. In the old days the Spahi had an arrangement with a whole village, and a system so impersonal was much less onerous than when demands were made from every household individually. The new sort of Spahi was not only an evil product of the time, but as the progress of industry in other countries was supplying the Turkish market with many new commodities, so in order to acquire these articles for himself he exacted more and more tribute from the helpless peasants. Progress in Macedonia was not merely retarded--lands which had been under cultivation were abandoned, and the peasant, having been despoiled of everything, perhaps having borrowed money at 9 or 10 per cent., was no longer able to get his living from the land on which so many generations of his ancestors had laboured. It was no longer possible for him to get the mess of maize and miserable bread, the strips of repulsive-looking flesh that were his luxury, the medicine for his underfed children who were moaning on the naked earth of his cabin, and at the same time to make the necessary contributions to the landlord or the landlord's agent, whom the villagers had to furnish with a riding horse, with gun and ammunition, with furs and with clothing appropriate to his position, with special gifts whenever he or they were marrying, and with all the pretty girls on whom his eye had rested. Therefore the _[vc]if[vc]ija_ would lose the last shadow of freedom, he would become a serf. His sowing and his reaping would now be for another, and as it did not profit him at all to make the land more fruitful, he was content with any prehistoric implement, with little wooden ploughs and with a total absence of manure. And yet this pitiable serf would often be in a position less deplorable than that of one who had a little freedom left and who was called a free man, for the Turk would treat him no worse than the mule whose continual existence he desires. It does not seem surprising if these Christians wanted to be liberated from the Turk and did not greatly mind what uniform their rescuers would wear.

THE CHEERLESS STATE OF SERBIA

Meanwhile the Serbs of Hungary were saying that the state of things in Serbia was desperate. It seemed so to a number of young men who found the coldness of Prince Alexander and his anxiety to please the Austrians both very much out of harmony with the new Liberal ideas of Western Europe. They would have been horrified to see the plight of Macedonia, which after the Crimean War became, if possible, still worse, for during it the Porte took up the first loan; others followed, and in a surprisingly short time the Turk stood face to face with bankruptcy, so that in his dealings with the peasant he became still more extortionate. To be sure the Liberal young men who were publishing the _Omladinac_ and all those Southern Slavs who listened to the voices which in Italy and Germany were craving union and freedom, all of them saw in their dreams the freedom of the Southern Slav, but Serbia and Montenegro were the only portions of his patrimony which had any kind of independence and the Serbia of Alexander was in a distressing state. The Prince had managed to stay neutral during the Crimean War, in spite of the solicitations very vehemently put by Austria and Russia and the Porte; this neutral attitude secured for Serbia at the peace the benefit of having all her rights henceforward guaranteed collectively by the Great Powers. Yet Alexander was so anxious not to rouse the animosity of Austria that he declined to summon the national assembly, the Skup[vs]tina, in which the people's rising aspirations could be heard. And, although the family community, the "zadruga," was giving way to a more modern way of life--much to the misgiving of those persons who believed that strength lay rather in the union of thirty or forty people, under the authority of the head of the house, than in a more dispersed society which would encourage individual initiative--yet Serbia was still a semi-Turkish and a quite despotic country, with all the civil service largely filled by Serbs from Hungary and many of the higher offices in the possession of the relatives of the Princess, for Alexander's wife, a lady from the neighbourhood of Valjevo, was as celebrated for her cleverness as for her beauty. It is regrettable that she did not prefer to take in hand the women's legal status, which is still too much like that of minors. When the princely pair had been expelled in 1858 and Milo[vs], to his infinite delight, called back from Bucharest, his place of exile, there was yet a great deal for the Omladina enthusiasts to do. Milo[vs] at the age of seventy-eight was senile; he would sit for hours outside his old, white Turkish house at [vC]a[vc]ak, while the passers-by knelt down to kiss his hand; in church he would become oblivious to his surroundings and would garrulously talk in a loud voice to friends around him.

THE SLAV VOICE IN MACEDONIA

Assuredly the Omladina Society had some knowledge of affairs in Macedonia, for Dimitri Miladinoff, the elder of the two brothers, had been at Karlovci, where he was offered the professorship of Greek at the Serbian school. Miladinoff had been born at Struga in Macedonia and educated at Jannina, where he noticed that a number of the names of forests, rivers, villages and ruins sounded odd in Greek--they seemed to have much more resemblance to the language spoken by the Slavs who lived beyond his home, the Bulgars. This awoke a flame in him. At Ochrida, where he was presently appointed as a teacher in the school, he gave his lessons in the customary Greek, nor did he undervalue the advantages the Macedonian Slavs could draw, particularly at the stage they were in, from the study of Greek literature and from the contemplation of the patriotic virtues of old Greece. But at the same time he began to give his pupils a Bulgarian translation of what they were learning; and one day in 1845 while he was in the middle of a lesson, taught in that strange manner, on Thucydides, the Russian archæologist Grigorovi['c] appeared and in amazement cried, "But we are brothers!" It was to him a marvel that these people's mother-tongue was Slav. Miladinoff had a project to retain the Greek at college and to introduce Bulgarian in the elementary schools, but when in 1848 he spoke of this at Ochrida the notables had grown so hellenized that they considered an allusion to their Slav origin as most offensive. Far from giving up his plan, Miladinoff began a pilgrimage through Macedonia, pretending that his object was to gather funds for the construction at Constantinople of a Bulgar church. Everywhere he taught as he had done at Ochrida, and the elucidation, for example, of Demosthenes enabled him to plant his patriotic seeds. It was in the course of his travels that he (and afterwards his younger brother Constantine) collected the folk-songs that were published by the generosity of Strossmayer. He stayed for a time at Sarajevo and at Karlovci, where he was filled with emulation by the progress which the Serbs had made. On his return in 1857 to Macedonia the people of the town of Kuku[vs]--near the future boundaries of Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece--invited him to be headmaster at their school. He was overjoyed that this town had the courage to have the Bulgarian language taught, and we have his reply. The Phanariote Greeks, he says, "will hurl their anathema against us! The Bulgarian script is contrary to God! It will not be the first time that they have proclaimed this! But those days are past! Already the rays of dawn...." This letter is written in Greek. "Oh, how I am ashamed," he says, "to express my sentiments in the Greek language!" But the literary form of Bulgarian is, as yet, undeveloped. One year after his arrival at Kuku[vs] the population removed the Greek books from their cathedral and listened to the singing of the Mass in Slav by a Bulgarian monk from Mt. Athos. When he began to recite the Credo in the ordinary Bulgarian tongue, the congregation fell on their knees and burst into tears.

THE MACEDONIAN SLAVS ARE UNDIVIDED

Another Macedonian traveller was the highly distinguished Frenchman, Ami Boué. His great book _La Turquie d'Europe_, in four volumes of more than 500 pages each, appeared in Paris in 1840, and is a veritable encyclopædia with which no other publication of the same kind can be compared, either for the largeness of his scheme, the versatility of his interests or the profound knowledge of his subject. Well, he found that many Slavs of Macedonia, whom he calls Bulgars, had their hopes centred in Milo[vs], who was then the reigning Serbian Prince. The difference in their eyes between the two people was that the Serbs had gained their independence. It was not as great an independence as the Macedonians fancied, for in addition to the vexatious remains of Turkish suzerainty there was the Greek ecclesiastical rule. During the reigns of Kara George and Milo[vs] the Greeks insisted on having their language used for the liturgy in all the Serbian towns, especially in Belgrade; after that period Greek and Slav were used for half the service each, and this practice was continued until 1858. Nevertheless for the unhappy Macedonians Serbia was a land of radiant liberty. And whether it was going to be a Serb or Bulgar who would rescue them--_qu'importe_? Ami Boué noted, as have many others, that the Macedonian Slav in his physical characteristics, in his language, in his outlook, in his native habits and in the expression of his sentiments is intermediate between the Serbs and Bulgars. And he says that as between the Serbs and Bulgars he does not recognize a greater difference than there is between the Istrians, the Dalmatians and the Croats, which is to say that there is none.

This point of view was quite familiar to the readers of the _Omladinac_. Svetozar Markovi['c], a leader of both Radicals and Socialists in Serbia, was for a federated Balkan republic. Ljuben Karaveloff wrote articles in Serbian, whose object was to show that, in the liberation of the Southern Slavs, Serbia must take the lead. Rakovski, the most active of Bulgarian Radicals, maintained that, in default of union between the Southern Slavs, a selfish interference of the Great Powers in the Balkans and unceasing wars among the natives would be unavoidable. The ideas of Bogdanov regarding the Bulgarian and Serbian languages were current. "It is not a tower of Babel," says he, "but a temple of God. When we are united there will be no curse yelled in a hundred voices but a harmonious prayer." And in another passage he declares that "there is less difference, for example, between Serbian and Bulgarian than between certain Italian dialects."

DAWN OF ITALIAN UNITY

While they were speaking Italy had acted. It is more true to say that some Italians had acted. The defence of Venice and the five days at Milan are glorious episodes, but those volunteers who flocked to Garibaldi, notably from Piedmont, and of whose exploits we can never hear enough--in what proportion were they to the inhabitants of the Peninsula? The people as a whole exhibited indifference, which causes Garibaldi to complain most bitterly. And if it had not been for the genius of Cavour and his collaborators, for the diplomatic support of England, the alliance with Prussia and, above all, for the French army, the redemption of the country would have been delayed. No doubt the Church had an enormous influence upon the people, no doubt in the surviving mediæval States--the duchies and republics--whose government belonged to the privileged classes, there was little to awaken popular interest; no doubt great masses of the people were untouched by education and the spread of new ideas--if freedom is a new idea; no doubt the peasants in various parts of the country were in as deplorable a plight as the peasants of to-day, which has had as one effect the inexpansive manner, as Italian officers have testified, with which the redeemed peasants of the Trentino and elsewhere often welcomed their redeemers. And the Italian peasants of 1859 may be pardoned for imagining that this world never would be made so good as to include their own salvation. One can find sufficient excuses for what occurred in Italy. Will not the Italians excuse, rather than praise, the very, very small number of Yugoslavs who have stood out against Yugoslavia? When Italy had been united did no Italians choose rather to go into exile?

HOW CAVOUR WOULD HAVE TREATED THE SLAVS

Some Italians were so intoxicated with the success of Garibaldi's troops and the French army that they began to see dangerous visions. Once again, on December 28, 1860, they were warned by the great founder of their country. "Let us avoid," wrote Cavour,[45] "every expression which could permit one to suppose that the King's government aspires not merely to the possession of Venice, but also to that of Triest, with Istria and Dalmatia. I know well that in the towns of the littoral the population is fundamentally Italian by race and sentiments, but that the rest of the country belongs exclusively to the Slavs.... Every word which touches this question, however lightly it be uttered, would become a dangerous weapon in the hands of our enemies. They would know very well how to use them in order to raise up England against us, for that Power would also not look with favour on the Adriatic Sea becoming, as in the days of Venice, an Italian Sea." Cavour's opinion as to the towns was presumably based on such researches as were made in 1842 by Kandler. The city of Triest contained in that year 53,000 persons "who speak Italian" and 21,000 "who speak Slav"; but as Italian, an international language, was used by the numerous German, Armenian, Greek, Turkish and Levantine colonies, and was spoken in public by all the Slavs, the 53,000 would lose a considerable proportion who were not fundamentally Italian by race or sentiments. It may safely be stated, on the other hand, that none of the Italians and an infinitely small number of the exotic population would speak Slav, so that one may say that Triest contained 21,000 Slovenes. One need not attach overmuch importance to the fact that the town in 1866, among other manifestations of loyalty occasioned by the defeat of the Italian navy near Vis (Lissa), created the Austrian Admiral Tegetthoff an honorary citizen. Even if the 53,000 had all been Italians, Triest might have thought it expedient to act in this way.... Cavour may have accepted in very good faith the similar figures for the little ports of western Istria; in them there was no such miscellaneous population, but a large number of those who spoke Italian did so because it was only at this period that the Bishop, Dr. George Dobrila, the great regenerator of the Istrian Yugoslavs, began to rouse his countrymen and to induce them not to discard their own language. "Wachen sie die Slaven" ("Awaken the Slavs"), said Francis Joseph before the war against Italy in 1866 when he was anxious for the southern provinces; and although the Emperor used various means to put the Slavs to sleep again, it may be noted that in 1861 Cavour would learn that in the Diet there were two Slavs against twenty-eight Italians, in the Parliament no single Slav; whereas if he had lived another fifty years he would have seen the same country returning nineteen Slav deputies to the Diet against twenty-five Italians, and three to the Parliament at Vienna against three Italians....

ITALIAN _v._ SLAV: TOMMASEO'S ADVICE

As for Dalmatia, where also the Italian-speaking population was not fundamentally Italian by race or sentiments, we may turn to the renowned Nicolo Tommaseo, whose authority the Italians do not dispute. "We must not abolish the Italian language," he said--and this was in the year 1861--"for it would be a dream of fools to wish or hope to be able to abolish it immediately in public life without causing offence and confusion and injury even for those who speak Illyrian; this would be a tyranny the more abominable as it would be powerless ... because the Illyrian tongue, as is the case more or less with all the Slav languages, spoken by nations which up to the present have not entirely participated in the abstractions of science and in the refinements of European art, is not as yet equipped with all that reserve of terms and locutions which is demanded in a highly developed social life, _although that language possess in itself all the elements_." This capacity which he recognized in the Slav languages and which came subsequently to the surface in Russian and Czech literature, would, he said, in two generations cause the Slav to be employed as the official language of Dalmatia. He stipulated for two generations "because, in the first place, it is necessary that this language should be learned regularly in the schools from the lowest to the highest class, without for that reason ever banishing Italian; and secondly, it is requisite that men should become skilful in the use of this language and should render it adequate for the needs of social life."

AUSTRIA LEANS ON GERMANS AND ITALIANISTS

For a moment after her Italian misfortunes Austria assumed a kindly mien towards her Slavs. In the manifesto of July 15, 1859, which made public the treaty of peace, the Emperor promised "immediate modifications in the laws and in the administration." Bach, the German reactionary, was succeeded by Goluchowski, and in April 1861 Ivan Mazurani['c] became the Croat Chancellor at Vienna, with educational, legal and religious affairs included in the sphere of his office. The incorporation with Dalmatia was not granted then, but was promised. A letter was, however, sent to Mamula, the governor of Dalmatia, ordering him to create a majority hostile to the Emperor's letter of December 5, 1860, in which he had invited the two provinces to send their delegate to a conference at which the union would be discussed. The shrill protests of the German party were successful; for the next few years the Slavs were being pushed into their pit and then helped half-way out again. Schmerling, the German, would evolve an electoral system by which the Parliament must always have a German majority; Francis Deak, the Hungarian, would make excellent proposals that too often suffered shipwreck through no fault of his, he would manage to pass liberal legislation which remained in after years upon the statute book and was exhibited by Magyars to appreciative foreigners. The general tendency of those years after the Italian disaster was unfavourable to the Slav. In southern Hungary the Serbian duchy was dissolved, despite their protests, after an existence of eleven years. But as Francis Joseph was no longer able to bestow caresses on the recreant Italians he transferred his love to the Dalmatian autonomists, who now began to call themselves the Italian party. It is probable that he smiled on these 2½ per cent. of the province, not only because of his family traditions, his leaning towards Italian art and the hope against hope that he would once more some day rule in Italy, where he had his numerous well-wishers among the clergy and the rural population--it is possible that he was gracious to the autonomist Dalmatian party because they were a brake upon the national sentiments. Until 1866 the whole administration was conducted in the language of the 2½ per cent. In that year the Ministers of Justice and of the Interior decided to ask officials who thenceforward entered the Dalmatian service to have some sort of knowledge of the Illyrian language. In 1869 these Ministers permitted the Dalmatian communities to correspond in their own language with the tribunals and the administrative authorities; while in 1887 the administrative authorities and the tribunals were ordered to reply in Serbo-Croat to the local bodies who used that language. The autonomist party may not appeal to us and apparently it did not appeal to Nicolo Tommaseo. From wherever he is he must be looking on with interest at a controversy between two Italian writers who both published books on Dalmatia in 1915 and who bear witness--Mr. Cippico to the truth that Tommaseo was an autonomist and Mr. Prezzolini to the truth that he was not. "The theory of Tommaseo," says Mr. Cippico, "desires an autonomous Dalmatia between the mountains and the sea." "Go to!" says Mr. Prezzolini. "Have the kindness to read what the man writes. Here is a passage: 'Whatever one may say about it, it will not be Croatia, a poor country, lacking in civilization, _but the opulent Slav provinces subject to Turkey_ and morally less in subjection than Croatia, which, when they and Dalmatia are united, will make her wealthy and the mother of civilization and wealth. Destiny therefore lays it down that Dalmatia in the days to come shall be the friend and not the subject of Italy.' Tommaseo showed in 1848 what he thought of such a subjection. 'In 1848,' he writes, 'I could have raised the whole of Dalmatia with the help of an Italian colonel who with his men had offered to dislodge the German governor of Zadar, but I refused; I refused, because I foresaw.' And just as he was opposed to the union with Italy, so likewise was he opposed to autonomy. You spoke of mountains and the sea. Permit me to direct your attention to some lines of his:

'Nè più tre il monte e il mar, povero lembo Di terra e poche iznude isole sparte, O Patria mia, sarai; ma la rinata Serbia (guerniera mano e mite spirto) E quanti campi, all' italo sorriso Nati, impaluda l'ottoman letargo, Teco una vita ed un voler faranno....'