Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：Durham, M. E. (Mary Edith)

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Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle试读：

It was in Cetinje in August, 1900, that I first picked up a thread of the Balkan tangle, little thinking how deeply enmeshed I should later become, and still less how this tangle would ultimately affect the whole world. Chance, or the Fates, took me Near Eastward. Completely exhausted by constant attendance on an invalid relative, the future stretched before me as endless years of grey monotony, and escape seemed hopeless. The doctor who insisted upon my having two months' holiday every year was kinder than he knew. "Take them in quite a new place," he said. "Get right away no matter where, so long as the change is complete."

Along with a friend I boarded an Austrian Lloyd steamer at Trieste, and with high hopes but weakened health, started for the ports of the Eastern Adriatic.

Threading the maze of mauve islets set in that incomparably blue and dazzling sea; touching every day at ancient towns where strange tongues were spoken and yet stranger garments worn, I began to feel that life after all might be worth living and the fascination of the Near East took hold of me.

A British Consul, bound to Asia Minor, leaned over the bulwark and drew a long breath of satisfaction. "We are in the East!" he said. "Can't you smell it? I feel I am going home. You are in the East so soon as you cross Adria." He added tentatively: "People don't understand. When you go back to England they say, 'How glad you must be to get home!' They made me spend most of my leave on a house-boat on the Thames, and of all the infernal things. …

"I laughed. I did not care if I never saw England again. . . .

"You won't ever go back again now, will you?" he asked whimsically, after learning whence I came. "I must," said I, sadly. "Oh don't," said he; "tell them you can't, and just wander about the East." He transshipped shortly and disappeared, one of many passing travellers with whom one is for a few moments on common ground. Our voyage ended at Cattaro and there every one, Baedeker included, said it was correct to drive up to Cetinje. Then you could drive down next day and be able to say ever afterwards, "I have travelled in Montenegro."

It was in Cetinje that it was borne in on me that I had found the "quite new place" which I sought. Thus Fate led me to the Balkans.

Cetinje then was a mere red-roofed village conspicuous on the mountain-ringed plain. Its cottages were but one storeyed for the most part, and contained some three thousand inhabitants. One big building stood up on the left of the road as the traveller entered.

"No. That is not the palace of the Prince," said the driver. "It is the Austro-Hungarian Legation."

Austria had started the great Legation building competition which occupied the Great Powers for the next few years. Each Power strove to erect a mansion in proportion to the amount of "influence" it sought to obtain in this "sphere." Russia at once followed. Then came Italy, with France hard on her heels. England, it is interesting to note, started last; by way of economizing bought an old house, added, tinkered and finally at great expense rebuilt nearly the whole of it and got it quite done just before the outbreak of the Great War, when it was beginning to be doubtful if Montenegro would ever again require a British Legation. But this is anticipating.

In 1900 most of the Foreign Ministers Plenipotentiary dwelt in cottages or parlour-boarded at the Grand Hotel, the focus of civilization, where they dined together at the Round Table of Cetinje, presided over by Monsieur Piguet, the Swiss tutor of the young Princes; a truly tactful man whom I have observed to calm a heated altercation between two Great Powers by switching off the conversation from such a delicate question as: "Which Legation has the finest flag, France or Italy?" to something of international interest such as: "Which washer-woman in Cetinje gets up shirt fronts best?" For Ministers Plenipotentiary, when not artificially inflated with the importance of the land they represent, are quite like ordinary human beings.

Their number and variety caused me to ask: "But why are so many Powers represented in such a hole of a place?" And the Italian architect who was designing the Russian Legation replied, more truly than he was perhaps aware: "Because Montenegro is the matchbox upon which the next European war will be lighted!"

Cetinje was then extraordinarily picturesque. The Prince did all he could to emphasize nationality. National dress was worn by all. So fine was the Court dress of Montenegro that oddly enough Prince Nikola was about the only ruling Sovereign in Europe who really looked like one. The inroads of Cook's tourists had stopped his former custom of hobnobbing with visitors, and he dodged with dignity and skill the attempts of American snapshotters to corner him and say: "How do, Prince!"

A vivid picture remains in my mind of the Royal Family as it filed out of church on the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin. The Prince, heavy-built, imposing, gorgeous; his hair iron grey, ruddy-faced, hook-nosed, keen-eyed. Danilo, his heir, crimped, oiled and self-conscious, in no respect a chip of the old block, who had married the previous year, Jutta, daughter of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz, who, on her reception into the Orthodox Church, took the name of Militza. Montenegro was still excited about the wedding. She looked dazzlingly fair among her dark "in-laws." Old Princess Milena came, stately and handsome, her hair, still black, crowning her head with a huge plait. Prince Mirko, the second son, was still a slim and good looking youth. Petar, the youngest, a mere child, mounted a little white pony and galloped past in the full dress of an officer, reining up and saluting with a tiny sword as he passed his father. The crowd roared applause. It was all more like a fairy tale than real life. But the black coated Ministers Plenipotentiary were all quite real.

From Cetinje we went to Podgoritza where for the first time I sawAlbanians. Podgoritza was full of them, all in national dress, forMontenegro had as yet done little towards suppressing this. Nor inthis first visit did I go further inland.

But I had found "the land where I could have a complete change"; had learnt, too, of the Great Serbian Idea; had had the meaning of the Montenegrin cap explained to me; and been told how the reconstruction of the Great Serb Empire of the Middle Ages was what Montenegro lived for. Also that the first step in that direction must be the taking of the Sanjak of Novibazar, which had been formed as a barrier between the two branches of the Serb race by the Powers at the Berlin Congress. To me it sounded then fantastic—operatic. I had yet to learn that the opera bouffe of the Balkans is written in blood and that those who are dead when the curtain falls, never come to life again.

So much for Montenegro. We returned after a run to Trebinje,Serajevo and Mostar, to the Dalmatian coast and Trieste.

First impressions are vivid. There is a certain interest in the fact that I recorded Spalato in my diary as the first Slav town on our way south from Trieste and that my letter thence was dated Spljet, the Slav form of the name.

The one pre-eminently Italian town of Dalmatia is Zara. From Zara south, the language becomes more and more Slav. But the Slav speaking peasants that flock to market are by no means the same in physical type as the South Slavs of the Bosnian Hinterland. It is obvious that they are of other blood. They are known as Morlachs, that is Sea Vlachs, and historically are in all probability descendants of the pre-Slav native population which, together with the Roman colonists, fled coast ward before the inrush of the Slav invaders of the seventh century. Latin culture clung along the coast and was reinforced later by the Venetians. And a Latin dialect was spoken until recent times, dying out on the island of Veglio at the end of the nineteenth century. The Slavizing process which has steadily gone on is due, partly to natural pressure coastward of the Slav masses of the Hinterland and partly to artificial means.

Austria, who ever since the break-up of the Holy Roman Empire, had recognized Italy as a possible danger, had mitigated this by drawing Italy into the Triple Alliance. But she was well aware that fear of France, not love of Austria, made Italy take this step. Therefore to reduce the danger of a strong Italia Irredenta on the east of Adria she encouraged Atavism against Italianism, regarding the ignorant and incoherent Slavs as less dangerous than the industrious and scientific Italians. Similarly, England decided that the half-barbarous Russians were less likely to be commercial rivals than the industrious and scientific Germans, and sided with Russia.

Future historians will judge the wisdom of these decisions.

During the fourteen years in which I went up and down the coast, the Slavizing process in Dalmatia visibly progressed, until the German-Austrians began to realize that they were "warming a viper," and to feel nervous. Almost yearly there were more zones in which no photographs might be taken and more forts were built.

Having picked up the thread of the Balkans the next thing was to learn a Balkan language, for in 1900 scarcely a soul in Montenegro spoke aught but Serb. Nor was any dictionary of the language to be bought at Cetinje. The one bookshop of Montenegro was carefully supervised by the Prince, who saw to it that the people should read nothing likely to disturb their ideas, and the literature obtainable was mainly old national ballads and the poetical works of the Prince and his father, Grand Voy voda Mirko.

In London in 1900 it was nearly impossible to find a teacher of Serb, and a New Testament from the Bible Society was the only book available. Finally a Pole—a political refugee from Russia and a student of all Slav languages—undertook to teach me. English he knew none, and but little German and had been but a few weeks in England.

I asked for his first impressions. His reply was unexpected. What surprised him most was that the English thought Russia a Great Power and were even afraid of her. I explained that Russia was a monster ready to spring on our Indian frontier—that she possessed untold wealth and countless hordes. He laughed scornfully. In halting German he said "Russia is nothing—nothing. The wealth is underground. They have not the sense to get it. Their Army is large, but it is rotten. All Russia is rotten. If there is a war the Russian Army will be—will be—" he stammered for a word—"will be like this!" He snatched up a piece of waste paper, crumpled it and flung it contemptuously into the waste paper basket.

I never forgot the gesture. Later, when folk foretold Japan's certain defeat if she tackled the monster, and in 1914 talked crazily of "the Russian steam-roller" I saw only that crumpled rag of paper flying into the basket. By that time I had seen too much of the Slav to trust him in any capacity. But this is anticipating.CHAPTER TWOMONTENEGRO AND HER RULERS

In days of old the priest was King, Obedient to his nod, Man rushed to slay his brother man As sacrifice to God.

THE events seen by the casual traveller are meaningless if he knows not what went before. They are mere sentences from the middle of a book he has not read. Before going further we must therefore tell briefly of Montenegro's past. It is indeed a key to many of the Near Eastern problems, for here in little, we see the century-old "pull devil-pull baker" tug between Austria and Russia, Teuton and Slav, for dominion.

In 1900, Montenegro, which was about the size of Yorkshire, consisted of some thirty plemena or tribes. A small core, mainly Cetinaajes, Nyegushi, Rijeka and Kchevo formed old Montenegro. To this was added the Brda group, which joined Montenegro voluntarily in the eighteenth century, in order to fight against the Turks. These are mainly of Albanian blood and were all Roman Catholics at the time of their annexation, but have since been converted to the Orthodox Church and Slavized. It is noteworthy that they are now strenuously resisting annexation by Serbia. Thirdly, came the extensive lands, some of them wholly Albanian, annexed to Montenegro in 1878 under the Treaty of Berlin, much of which, in spite of the efforts of the Montenegrin Government, is by no means Slavized.

Certain other small districts have also from time to time been joined to Montenegro at different times, e.g. Grahovo. Each of the Montenegrin tribes has a distinct tradition of origin from an individual or family. They tell almost invariably of immigration into their present site in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. Thus Nyegushi in 1905 told me of descent from two brothers Jerak and Raiko, who fled from Nyegushi in the Herzegovina fourteen generations ago. The Royal family, the Petrovitches, traces descent from Jerak. If we take thirty years as a generation this gives us 1485. The Turks had then begun to overrun Bosnia and the Herzegovina.

Ivan Tsrnoievitch, chief of the tribes of the Zeta, was so hard pressed by the oncoming Turks that he burnt his capital of Zhablyak and withdrew to the mountains, where he founded Cetinje in 1484. Tradition thus corresponds closely with historic fact. The strength of Turkish influence is shown by the fact that even to-day the peasant speaks of Ivan as Ivan Beg.

The oft-repeated tale that Montenegro was founded by the refugees from Kosovo is thus we see mythical, as Kosovo was fought a century earlier in 1389. Lineally, the Montenegrins are Bosnians, Herzegovinians and Albanians rather than Serbs of Serbia. Bosnia and the Herzegovina were independent of the old Kingdom of Serbia, which explains much of the reluctance of Montenegro to be to-day incorporated by the Serbs.

Ivan and his refugee tribes successfully resisted the Turkish attacks on their stronghold and were helped by Venice. But conversions to Islam became frequent. One of Ivan's own sons turned Turk and fought against Montenegro. Finally, the last of the Trsnoievitch line, Ivan II, who had married a Venetian wife, decided that the leadership of a band of outlaws in the poverty-stricken mountains was not good enough. He retired to the fleshpots of Venice, trusting the defence of the district to a civil, hereditary leader and charging the Vladika [Bishop] with the duty of preventing ore of his flock going over to Islam, as the Serbs of Bosnia were now doing in great numbers.

It has been inaccurately represented that Montenegro was singular in being ruled by her Bishop. In this respect Montenegro in no way differed from other Christian districts ruled by the Turks who, with a tolerance at that date rare, recognized everywhere the religion of the country and entrusted all the affairs of the Christians to their own ecclesiastics. To the Turks, the Montenegrin tribes and the Albanian tribes of the mountains—who had also their own Bishops —were but insubordinate tribes against whom they sent punitive expeditions when taxes were in arrears and raids became intolerable. The Montenegrins descended from their natural fortress and plundered the fat flocks of the plain lands. They existed mainly by brigandage as their sheep-stealing ballads tell, and the history of raid and punitive expedition is much like that of our Indian frontier.

Till 1696 the Vladikas were chosen according to the usual methods of the Orthodox Church. After that date they were, with one exception, members of the Petrovitch family. This has been vaguely accounted for by saying that to prevent quarrels the Montenegrins decided to make the post hereditary in the Petrovitch family. As the Vladika was celibate, his successor had to be chosen from among members of his family. Later events, however, throw much light on this alleged interference with the rules of the Orthodox Church.

In June, 1696, Danilo Petrovitch, of Nyegushi, who, be it noted, was already in holy orders, was chosen as Vladika. A man of well-known courage such as the country needed, he accepted office, but was not consecrated till 1700. Till then the Vladikas of Montenegro had been consecrated by the Serb Patriarch at Ipek. But in 1680 Arsenius the Patriarch had decided to accept the protection of Austria and emigrated to Karlovatz with most of his flock. The turns of fortune's wheel are odd. The Serbs have more than once owed almost their existence to Austrian intervention. The Turks permitted the appointment of another Serb Patriarch, but Serb influence in the district waned rapidly and the Albanians rapidly resettled the lands from which their forefathers had been evicted. In 1769 the Phanariotes suppressed the Serb Patriarchate altogether, for the Greek was ever greedy of spreading over the whole peninsula, and the Vladika of Montenegro was thus the only head of a Serb Church in the Balkans and gained much in importance.

Danilo was a born ruler. He soon absorbed all the temporal power, and latterly left matters ecclesiastic to his nephew Sava.

The outstanding feature of his rule was his suppression of Mahommedanism. At this time conversions to Islam were increasing. Danilo, when on a visit to the plain of Podgoritza, to consecrate a small church by permission of the Pasha of Scutari, was taken prisoner by the local Moslems, though he had been promised safe conduct, and put up to ransom. He was bought off only by the sacrifice of the church plate of the monastery, and returned home hot with anger.

To avenge the insult and clear the land of Islam he organized the wholesale massacre of the Moslems of Montenegro. On Christmas Eve 1703 an armed band, led by the Martinovitches, rushed from house to house slaughtering all who refused baptism. Next morning the murderers came to the church, says the song: "Their arms were bloody to the shoulders." Danilo, flushed with joy, cried: "Dear God we thank Thee for all things!" A thanksgiving was held and a feast followed. Danilo thus gained extraordinary popularity. Such is the fame of his Christmas Eve that it was enthusiastically quoted to me in the Balkan War of 1912-13 as an example to be followed, and baptisms were enforced with hideous cruelty. The Balkan Christian of to-day is no whit less cruel than the Turk and is more fanatical.

Danilo's prestige after this massacre was so great that the tribes of the Brda formed a defensive alliance with him against the Turks. And his fame flew further, for Russia, now for the first time, appeared in Montenegro. Peter the Great sent his Envoy Miloradovitch to Cetinje in 1711—a date of very great importance, for from it begins modern Balkan policy and the power of the Petrovitches. Peter claimed the Montenegrins as of one blood and one faith with Russia and called on them to fight the Turk and meet him at Constantinople where they would together "glorify the Slav name; destroy the brood of the Agas and build up temples to the true faith."

The Montenegrins rushed to the fray with wild enthusiasm and on the high ground between Rijeka and Podgoritza won the battle called "The Field of the Sultan's Felling," such was the number of Turks who, entangled in the thorn bushes, were slaughtered wholesale, as the Montenegrin driver recounts to this day when he passes the spot.

A great victory—but Russia and Montenegro have not yet met at Constantinople. The Turks sent a strong punitive force and, not for the first time, burnt the monastery at Cetinje, wasted the land and doubtless removed enough gear to pay the haratch [tax] which Danilo had refused.

1715 is noteworthy as the date of Danilo's visit to Petersburg, when he was given the first of the many subsidies which the Tsars have bestowed till recently upon the Petrovitch family.

In a land which is rat-poor, the family which has wealth has power. The Petrovitches had gained power and they kept it. Fighting almost till the last, Danilo died full of years and fame, in 1735, and named his nephew Sava, who had acted for some time as ecclesiastical head, as his successor.

Sava had no ambition to be aught but a Churchman. He built the monastery of Stanjevitch and retired to it, leaving his nephew Vassili to govern.

Vassili, who was already in holy orders, had much of the quality of Danilo. He organized the defence of the land and defeated more than one attack upon it. Montenegro was now largely fighting against the Moslem Serbs of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. In fact the "Turk" with whom the Balkan Christian waged war was as often as not his

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