Chapter IX: Ragusa and Epidaurus (3)

By a strange irony of fate the blow fell hardest on the cities, where the Bogomilian faction lay.[115] How terrible was their calamity the example of Jaycze, the chief city of the realm, and Clissa, the last refuge of Bosnian royalty, abundantly display. The burghers of Jaycze, relying on the Sultan’s pledge to respect their municipal freedom, their ancient privileges and their property, had gone forth to welcome him within their gates. But no sooner was the city in his possession than the treacherous Osmanlì, not content with arresting the chief nobility of the realm and the king’s brother and daughter whom he found within the walls, seized on the children of the leading citizens for distribution among his Pashàs and Agas, and enrolment in his new body-guard. The fate of Clissa (or Kliuć) was still more overwhelming. The Turkish Beglerbeg divided the townspeople into three parts. One of them he adjudicated to his troops as booty; another portion, the youths and children, he set apart for enrolment in the Janissary guard; and the remainder, but not, we may be assured, either the young or the beautiful, he left to pay tribute for their desolated homes.

That it was nothing but the sheerest intolerance that drove the Bogomiles to welcome Turkish rule in Bosnia is conclusively shown by the different attitude adopted by their co-religionists of Herzegovina. This can be accounted for by no ties of personal loyalty to the reigning Duke. Stephen’s whole career might well have inspired the most vehement repugnance among subjects more tolerant to human weakness than is the wont of Puritans. Stephen Cosaccia was by all accounts a selfish voluptuary, careless of religion, described as fickle as the wind, and reckless as he was ambitious. He had seized his son’s wife, a beautiful Florentine, and when his son and the outraged Duchess saved themselves from perpetual insult by taking shelter within the hospitable walls of Ragusa, had brought disasters on the land by his insolent pretensions. The Ragusans, indignant at his demand for the extradition of the fugitives, his claims on part of their territory, his raising the salt-tax, did not content themselves with impeaching their rebellious senator of high treason, but invaded Herzegovina, took his treasure castle of Blagai and ducal city of Mostar, and hardly needed the double intervention of Pope and Sultan to reduce him to an humiliating peace and the payment of a war indemnity. Stephen Cosaccia changed his creed with as much facility as he changed his consort. In the beginning of his reign, when Bosnian kings leaned to Bogomilism, it had suited his policy to bid for Papal favour and raise his County into a Duchy by playing the part of a faithful son of the Church. But when the King of Bosnia had made his peace with Rome, when all hopes that he may have cherished of placing the Bosnian crown upon his own head were finally dashed, when further a Papal legate had presided at that diet of Coinica by which his dependence on the Bosnian kingdom was formally cemented, Stephen Cosaccia began to think that, after all, more might be gained by fishing in the troubled waters of Puritan disaffection. He veered round once more and henceforth poses as the protector of the oppressed Bogomiles of Bosnia. When the persecutions of Stephen Tomašević drove 40,000 of these sectaries from the kingdom, they found a refuge in the duchy; and, neither for the first nor the last time in history, a tyrant and a libertine became the acknowledged patron of Puritans and levellers.

Thus, when Mahomet turned his arms against Herzegovina, the Bogomiles showed their gratitude to their ducal benefactor, by rising _en masse_ in his defence. They occupied the mountain passes, and while the craven Stephen shut himself up in his capital Mostar, and drowned his anxieties in his usual dissipation, his brave Puritan adherents kept the Turks at bay on the frontier. One pass, however, had remained unoccupied. The Turks burst through it and beleagured the ducal city. The Bogomiles, however, still fought bravely, and made such successful sallies and flank attacks upon the enemy that the Turk saw himself obliged to raise the siege. The rest of the country, however, was overrun, many castles of the Count of Popovo and Trebinje[116] taken, and this great magnate of the duchy slain. The Duke saw himself forced to raise his tribute and send his son Stephen as a hostage to the Sultan. Two years later, in 1466, Stephen Cosaccia died, and his duchy was shared by his two sons, Ladislav, who inherited the ducal title, and Vlatko. But Herzegovina had only gained a respite from complete subjugation.[117] Twenty years after the overthrow of the Bosnian kingdom, in 1483, the Beglerbeg of Bosnia fell upon the Duchy of St. Sava, the two Christian princes were dispossessed, and the whole country incorporated in the Sandjakate of Bosnia. A renegade member of the ducal house, that Stephen whom the first duke had sent as a hostage to Mahomet, rose under the name of Ahmed Pashà to be grand vizier, and is known in Turkish annals as Herzekoglu.[118]

Amidst the universal ruin, the wife of the last lawful king of Bosnia, Stephen Thomas, is singled out by the grandeur of her misfortunes, and I have been tempted to collect a few details which may shed some halo of romance round the unhappy Catharine. After the murder of her husband by his bastard son Stephen and her brother Radivoj, Queen Catharine had lingered near his tomb in the Church of St. John at Sutisca, the burial-place of Bosnian kings, sheltered in the adjoining convent which her own and her husband’s piety had reared,[119] and doubtful whether most to fear her husband’s murderer or the terrible Sultan, who was advancing, avowedly, to avenge her. In the sacristery of the Convent of Sutisca, the Franciscan monks still treasure an antique picture, in which Christ appears in person to the kneeling king Stephen Thomas; and legend says that it was in the monastery of his rearing that this vision befell the husband of Queen Catharine. Here, amidst all these sad and solemn memories, the widowed queen was engaged in embroidering some sacred vestments, when the news of the rapid advance of Mahomet, perhaps the sudden betrayal of the royal stronghold of Bobovac itself, only five miles distant, startled her from her pious task. In the sacristery of Sutisca, with the picture of King Thomas, the Franciscan monks showed long afterwards[120] ‘a stole and a part of a chasuble embroidered in gold threads by a needle in a wonderful way, and delectable to the sight, which is said by immemorial tradition to have been the handiwork of Queen Catharine, the wife of King Thomas, who sleeps at Rome, and which she left unfinished when she fled.’

She, a woman of delicate health, the widowed Queen of Bosnia, the daughter of the Duke of St. Sava, on her mother’s side[121] tracing her lineage from the imperial race of the Comneni, fled away on foot through the passes of the Dinaric Alps, down the valley of the Narenta, across the inhospitable limestone desert that stretches, now as then, between her father’s stronghold of Mostar and the sea, to Stagno, the old seaport of Bosnia. There she found a small boat, which carried her across the gulf to the hospitable haven of Ragusa. At Ragusa she seems to have resided several years; but in 1475[122] she set forth on her pilgrimage once more, and passed the closing years of her life in the shelter of a Roman convent, distinguished by her charitable works, her meekness, and the patience with which she bore her misfortunes,[123] but haunted even there by the craven conduct of her son Sigismund, who had renegaded to the creed of Mahomet. In 1477 Queen Catharine died, and was buried in the Church of the Virgin of Ara Cœli, in which by her orders a monument was reared to her memory.[124] There, beside the feudal escutcheons of her husband’s kingdom and her father’s principality, on a foreign soil, and in a Roman sanctuary, reposes, as is fitting, the effigy of the exiled Queen of Bosnia, the last monument of the feudal kingdom, and of a dynasty essentially alien to the people over whom it ruled.

After her death two of her family appeared before Pope Sextus IV., and presented to him her will, in which she bequeathed her kingdom of Bosnia to the Holy Roman Church; adding, however, the condition that if her son should return from the Turks, ‘and the vomit of Mahomet,’ he should be restored to his father’s throne. As a token, her representatives handed over the Sword of the Realm, and the Royal Spurs, ‘which the Pontiff benignantly received, and ordered them to be placed, with the will, in the Apostolic archives.’[125]

Meanwhile Mathias Corvinus was taking more effectual measures to recover at least a part of Bosnia for Christendom and Hungary. Within three months after the execution of Stephen Tomašević he had taken the field, and in a short time recovered twenty-seven cities with almost the same rapidity as that of Mahomet’s conquest. The whole of lower Bosnia, including what is now Turkish Croatia, the valley of the Verbas, the Bosnian Possávina, the old Bosnian Banats of Ussora and Podrinia, were for a while recovered.[126] In Jaycze the spirit of the citizens had not been utterly crushed out even by the rigour of Mahomet and the Janissary tribute. Wifeless and childless for the most part, her burghers had not lost the hopes of vengeance and recovered liberty: they called on the Magyars to deliver them, and after a seventy days’ siege the Turkish garrison yielded to the combined efforts of the besieging army and the citizens within. The great stronghold of the realm now received a Hungarian governor, and was forthwith made the capital of the new Banat of Jaycze, or as Mathias called it, to preserve the _jus_ of the Hungarian Crown, the titulary kingdom of Bosnia.[127]

The ancient city of Jaycze, which now for many years becomes the Ilion of Turk and Hungarian, and the bulwark of the Christian world, derives its name, it is said, from its resemblance in form to an egg, the Bosniac word for which is _Jaica_,[128] and it has thus been compared with the Neapolitan fortress Castello del Ovo, reared by the Normans. Its high walls are still to be seen, rising on a rocky height at the confluence of the Pliva and Verbas; and during the days of the Bosnian kingdom it was recognised as the capital of the realm, sharing with Bobovac the honour of being the favourite residence of the Bosnian kings. Nor did Jaycze owe this royal preference solely to an almost impregnable position. As a pleasance the site is equally alluring, being environed by some of the most romantic mountain and forest scenery in the country, and overlooking not only the one Bosnian lake, but a waterfall which may compare with those of Norway. Here rose the Minorite convent of St. Catharine, enriched by many indulgences, obtained from Rome by the namesake of the saint, the Queen whose melancholy fortunes we have just been tracing; and here, after the fall of Constantinople, the body of St. Luke (the greatest glory of Bosnia’s latter days!) had found shelter till the invasion of Mahomet, when pious hands succeeded in transporting it to Venice. There it was deposited by the Doge Cristoforo Moro in the Church of St. Job: to the no small scandal of the neighbouring city of Padua, which possessed a rival trunk of the Evangelist.

The history of Bosnia now centres around the fortifications of Jaycze. The city was again and again besieged by Mahomet and Bajazet; but the citizens, amongst whom we learn were a large number of Bogomiles,[129] showed that, when under the inspiration of a sovereign like Mathias, they knew how to fight, and, while the town held out, Hungarian armies inflicted disastrous defeats on the Turks under its walls. In 1520 two generals of Sultan Solyman II., the Bey of Semendria and the Pashà of Turkish Bosnia, inflicted the severest blow on the Banat of Jaycze that it had yet experienced. The great stronghold of Zvornik, the key of the Podrinia, fell into the hands of the Turks, owing to the carelessness of the governor, who had failed to provision it; and two other important fortresses yielded to the panic, one Sokol, the other the rock citadel of Tešanj,[130] the key of the province of Ussora. Jaycze, however, at that time had for governor a stout old soldier, Peter Keglević, who had received wounds at Terentzin, and the successful defence of this city under his guidance is the last and perhaps the most romantic episode in the annals of Christian Bosnia.

The Turks, finding all their efforts to take the city by open assault futile, had planned a night surprise, and, to disarm the suspicions of the governor, had retired out of sight of the city, as if to raise the siege. But Keglević, who perhaps obtained his information from renegades in the Pashà’s army, was made aware by means of his spies that the Turks were constructing a large number of ladders. The governor accordingly doubled the watch on the walls, lining them, where they were too low, with foot soldiers; and was shortly made aware, by the same secret sources of information, that the retreating Turks had doubled round, and, making their way by stealth among the mountains and under cover of the forest, were encamped in a retired gorge not far from the town, intending to assault the walls by a sudden escalade in the hours before dawn. Peter showed himself quite equal to the occasion, and told off immediately a picked body of a hundred men to take their stand in the rear of the Turkish ambush, with orders to fall on the infidels at a signal given from a gun-shot.

Nor were Keglević’s resources exhausted by this stratagem. It happened to be the eve of a feast-day, when the women and maidens of the town would in times of security go forth, as they still do through the length and breadth of Bosnia, to dance and sing on the forest lawns. Old Peter called the girls and merry wives of Jaycze around him, and bade them at earliest dawn to go forth, as if no foe were nigh, into the King’s Mead,[131] as the meadowland about the town was known long afterwards, and sing and play their shrillest—disarming their fears by telling them that he would be at hand to help them.

Meanwhile the Turks, astir before sunrise for their planned attack, were shouldering their ladders for the escalade—when the distant sounds of the festal songs, and the Sclavonic dance-music, the plaintive note of the Ghuzla, and the shrill piping of the Svirala, broke the silence of the still morning air; and peering down between the forest trunks they espied by the first faint light of dawn the maidens of Jaycze tripping the light fantastic toe right merrily on the green slopes opposite. This was enough! Down fall the ladders from their backs, and forwards scurry the warriors, forgetful of everything but the sirens across the valley. Old Keglević saw his opportunity, and sallying forth from the city, attacked them with a picked body of men, while the ambushed horsemen, true to the signal, swept down upon their rear. The Turks, in utter confusion, distracted by the double onslaught, surprised, perhaps scarcely armed, offered no resistance, and were cut down almost to a man.

The Pashà, furious at this disaster, attacked Jaycze shortly afterwards with an army of 20,000 men, a long train of siege material, and eight cannon of large calibre;[132] but Keglević held out, and Frangepani advancing with an army of 16,000 men, defeated the Pashà and compelled him to raise the siege. Seven years, however, after his splendid defence of Jaycze, the brave old governor resigned his command, and his successor, a careless and unwarlike man, lost the fortress almost immediately. On the surrender of Jaycze in 1527 the remaining towns of the Banat opened their gates to the Turks, and the whole of Bosnia to the Save passed irrecoverably into the hands of the Sultan.

That the change was much regretted even by the Catholic population of the country may be doubted. The history of the Hungarian Banat of Jaycze is indeed less stained with religious persecutions than that of the earlier kingdom, but much of that feudal tyranny which had contributed in no unimportant manner to the conquest of Mahomet was still at work to alienate the wretched Bosnian peasants. We have the convincing testimony of an eyewitness, and a Doctor of the Roman Catholic University of Bologna, that the rule of the Moslem was at this time looked upon as less oppressive than that of the petty Christian Bans and Barons. ‘The Bosniacs,’ says Montalbano, ‘are not so badly treated by the Turks, but that those subject to Christian rule are not worse oppressed by their own lords. And I myself have often seen no small multitude of country people, having burnt their own houses in their despair, flee with their wives and children and cattle and all that they possessed, to the country under Turkish rule, for as much as the Turk extorteth little, save the tithe. And therefore has it happened oftentimes that our armies in the last Hungarian wars, when they have crossed the Ottoman border, find not the Christian countrymen who, as they supposed, would be their friends and helpers; or if so be they found them, they were hid in nooks, or intent upon their flight; for no sufficient prohibition against outrages and robberies is possible with the army. They think themselves well off if haply their property and the honour of their women be left them uninjured; whereas with the Turks, by reason of their great obedience, these securities can be readily obtained.’[133]

Several desultory attempts have since been made on the part of the Hapsburgs to recover it: by the Markgrave Ludwig of Baden, in 1688; by Prince Eugene, in 1697, who pushed on as far as Bosna Serai itself, but gained nothing by his hasty dash; and again in 1736 by the imperial troops under the Prince of Saxe-Hildburghausen, which ended in the utter rout of the Austrian army, amounting, it is said, to 80,000 men, and such complete discomfiture, that Ali Pashà could boast that ‘not a hoof of them was left behind.’[134] In 1790 Marshal Laudon took a few places in Bosnia, but the French Revolution put a stop to these operations, and all the towns captured in Bosnia were restored by the peace of Sistov.[135] These later efforts may show that though the Emperor-King had resigned his claim over Bosnia by the peace of Passarovitz in 1718, Austria, in the last century at all events, had not resigned all hopes of recovering the old fief of the Hungarian Crown.

There are very few materials[136] at hand for the history of Bosnia after the Turkish conquest, and we have little but theories to explain the extraordinary process of renegation which immediately set in, and which has given us a Sclavonic race of Mahometans. From the earliest days of the conquest the Turks inaugurated the policy of allowing all those natives who would accept the religion of Islâm to retain their lands and belongings, and we hear at once of a son of the King of Bosnia and another of the Duke of St. Sava turning Mahometan. It is certain that though the Catholic faction among the nobility was still powerful, a large number of even the highest rank in Bosnia were infected with the Bogomilian heresy; and it is probable that many rightful heirs of ancient houses had been dispossessed for heretical opinions by the dominant Romish caste, and were willing to recover their honours by at least nominally abjuring their religion. By most, perhaps, the renegation was intended to be only temporary; they ‘bowed in the house of Rimmon’ merely to retain their honours. Not a few of these renegade families have preserved even to the present day many of their old Christian and perhaps heretical observances; and it is whispered that there are still members of the old Bosnian aristocracy only waiting for a favourable opportunity to abjure Islâm. With the bulk of the people the desire of lording it over their former Romish oppressors would often outweigh every religious consideration. It has been hinted already that the Puritans of Bosnia might find little repugnant to them in the service of the mosques, and we may perhaps suspect that the Manichæism which looked on Christ as one Æon, might accept Mahomet as another. Certain it is that a large part of the population of Bosnia went over to Mahometanism, and those who would deny that the majority of the converts belonged to the persecuted sect of the Bogomiles, must account for the curious diminution since the Turkish conquest of the heretics who immediately before it formed, as far as we can judge, the majority, certainly the most influential portion, of the population.

Strange as seems the comparative disappearance of the Bogomilian religion since the Turkish conquest, throughout a large part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the more minutely we enquire into Bosnian history the less insoluble does the problem appear. On the whole, the disappearance of the Bosnian Protestants was not so much due to voluntary renegation, though that played its part, as to a cause which I have already hinted at. In the days of the Bosnian kingdom the strength of these sectaries lay in the towns; and it was on the towns that the hand of the Turk fell heaviest. The citizens of Jaycze, and Jaycze was then a peculiar stronghold of the Bogomiles, like those of Kliuć, and like those of the other fenced cities throughout the land, saw their children snatched from them, to be forcibly converted to Islâm, and to return as Janissaries and Mahometans to claim their heritage. Nay, more, we have the direct evidence of an eyewitness and contemporary that the Janissaries were largely recruited from the children of the Bogomiles.[137] At the end of the fifteenth and in the sixteenth century there were still Bogomiles in Bosnia; but how many of them were wifeless and childless! We have historic proofs that the Bogomiles who existed in Jaycze in 1478 had lost their heirs; their children were already Moslemized;—how many, we may ask, outlived that generation? and how few could have survived the consequences of the second captivity of Jaycze in 1527! In Herzegovina, where at the moment of Turkish conquest the Bogomiles were proportionally more numerous, and where their attitude, in contradistinction to their Turcophile manifestations in Bosnia, had been one of open defiance to the conqueror, their calamity must have been even more overwhelming; and if the Turks bore so hardly on their Jayczan benefactors, what mercy could have been meted to the Bogomilian defenders of Mostar?[138]

Whatever were the favouring causes of this wide-spread renegation, its effect has been to afford us the unique phenomenon of Mahometan feudalism and the extraordinary spectacle of a race of Sclavonic Mahometans. This must be borne in mind at the present moment, for nothing is more liable to confuse the questions at issue than to look on the Mussulman inhabitants of Bosnia and the Herzegovina as _Turks_. Conventionally, perhaps, one is often obliged to do so, and I must plead guilty in this respect in the course of this work. But it should always be remembered that, with the exception of a handful of officials and a certain proportion of the soldiery, the Mahometan inhabitants of Bosnia and the Herzegovina are of the same race as their Christian neighbours, speak the same Serbian dialect, and can trace back their title-deeds as far. It is a favourite delusion to suppose that the case of Bosnia finds a parallel in that of Serbia; that here, too, an independent Christian principality could be formed with the same ease, and that the independence of Bosnia has but to be proclaimed for the Mussulman to take the hint and quit the soil, as he has already quitted the soil of Serbia.

But, as I have said, the cases of the two provinces are altogether different; in Serbia the Mahometans were an infinitesimal minority of Osmanlì foreigners, encamped; in Bosnia, on the contrary, they are native Sclaves, rooted to the soil, and forming over a third of the population. Under whatever government Bosnia passes, it is safe to say that the Mahometans will still form a powerful minority, all the more important from having possession of the towns.

Nor must we omit another characteristic which marks off the Christian Bosniacs from their Serbian neighbours. As Bosnia of old was the debateable ground between the Roman Catholics and the Bogomiles, so, to-day, she is distracted between the adherents of the Eastern and Western Churches, who hate each other more cordially than the infidel. It might have been thought that the disappearance of Bogomilism would have resigned the country to the Catholics and Mahometans, for the orthodox Greek element is conspicuous by its absence in the general current of mediæval Bosnian history. But it was there nevertheless, and in the eastern parts of the country was even then the dominant creed. The conquest of Rascia by Tvartko I. brought a Greek province under the Bosnian sceptre, and though the Bosnian hold on Rascia was slight, the Greek Metropolitan appears at the Conventus of Coinica among the great magnates of the realm. Since the Turkish conquest the Sandjakate of Rascia or Novipazar has been incorporated in the Vilajet of Bosnia, and by this means alone a large Greek-Church element has been added to the present province. Nor, if we consider the history of Bosnia since the Turkish conquest, is it difficult to trace the process by which even in Bosnia proper and the Herzegovina, the Eastern Church has risen to a dominant position. The Roman Catholics of Bosnia have at different times during the last three centuries migrated in large numbers into Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia, where they found shelter among their co-religionists, and it appears that the Greek population to the South and East, who had less temptation to cross the borders of Latin Christendom, have largely colonized the country thus vacated.[139] The Roman Catholic population who remained, their ecclesiastical organization broken up by these migrations, must in many cases have been absorbed in the congregation of the intrusive Serbs, and indeed, as has been already pointed out, the Roman Church in Illyria was to a great extent only Roman in its higher organization.

The extraordinary phenomenon that presents itself in the history of Bosnia under Turkish rule, is that till within the last few years it has been simply the history of the feudal Kingdom, under altered names and conditions. A Mahometan caste has tyrannised in place of a Popish—a Turkish Vizier has feebly represented the Suzerainty of the Osmanlì Grand Signior, just as of old we find Hungarian Bans or Kings representing the Overlordship of a Magyar King. The survival of the feudal nobility has been perfect. The great Bosnian lords, now calling themselves Begs or Capetans, resided still in the feudal castles reared by their Christian ancestors; they kept their old escutcheons, their Sclavonic family names, their rolls and patents of nobility inherited from Christian Kings; they led forth their retainers as of old under their baronial banners, and continued to indulge in the chivalrous pastime of hawking. The common people, on the other hand, have clung to their old Sclavonic institutions, their sworn brotherhoods, their village communities, their house-fathers; and have paid, and pay still, the same feudal dues to their Mahometan lords as they did to their Christian ancestors.

But though in political affairs, language, and customs, so much of the Præ-Turkish element has survived—though there are still to be found many secret observances of Christian rites among Mahometans in high places,—it would be a grievous error to suppose that the influence of Islâm is superficial in Bosnia, or that their religious convictions are not deep-rooted. On the contrary, the Sclavonic Mahometans of Bosnia, occupying an isolated corner of the Sultan’s dominions, have not been so liable to those external influences which at Stamboul itself have considerably modified the code of true believers. The Bosniac Mussulmans have had their religious antagonism perpetually roused by wars with the unbelievers who compass them round about; they, more than the Levantine Moslems, have borne the brunt of the long struggle with Christendom.

Add to this what the reader will have already perceived, that in Bosnia fanaticism is an inheritance from Christian times; that the renegaded Bogomiles have inherited the hatred they bear to the Christian rayah both of the Eastern and Romish Churches, from the days when these rival sectaries persecuted them without mercy.

Thus it is that Bosnia is the head-quarters of Mahometan fanaticism, and that when, at the beginning of this century, Sultan Mahmoud II. endeavoured to introduce his centralising innovations and reforms into Bosnia, which also promised the Christians a certain amount of religious liberty, he found himself opposed here not only by the feudal caste, who rallied round the Janissaries, but by a race of Mahometans whose religion had assumed a national character of a more fanatical hue than was fashionable in the capital. The wars between the Giaour Sultan, as the Bosniac Mussulmans contemptuously called the head of their faith, and his refractory vassals, have been described by Ranke,[140] and need not be dwelt on here. It was not till 1851 that Omer Pashà finally succeeded in breaking the resistance of Mahometan feudalism in Bosnia, and re-subjugated the country for the Sultan. Since that date the privileges of the native nobility have been greatly curtailed, and Sclavonic Mussulman and Sclavonic Christian alike have bowed before a new Osmanlì bureaucracy.

That the state of the country has not improved since that date may perhaps be gathered from the following pages. That at the moment of Omer Pashà’s conquest some good was done by breaking the strength of Bosnian feudalism, and setting a limit on the exactions of the native Mahometan landholders, is undeniable. The most turbulent of the native aristocracy were proscribed; the most galling of their feudal privileges were taken from them, and the Christians who had helped the Osmanlì in this second Turkish conquest of Bosnia received at the moment some partial compensation at the expense of their former lords. But when the Osmanlì ceased to garrison the country and prolonged his occupation in a bureaucratic form, it lay in the very nature of things that he should conciliate as far as possible those whose opposition was most formidable to him, his co-religionists, namely, the Bosniac Mahometans. Thus it is that since the period immediately succeeding Omer Pashà’s conquest the state of the Christian population has suffered a relapse, while in the Herzegovina, more especially, as I have shown elsewhere, the tyranny of the old feudal caste has recrudesced, and the _misera contribuens plebs_ of those countries has to bear a double burden of extortion, from the landowner who represents the old régime and the Turkish officials and middle-men who represent the new; so that now the Christian rayah sees himself forced to serve two masters where he served one before. The present Government of Bosnia consists of a small body of foreign Osmanlì officials, speaking, in many cases, a language which is unintelligible to the native Sclaves; ill educated, totally unable to check the malpractices of their agents even when they themselves have honest intentions. Though often, let it be said to their credit, less bigoted themselves, they are altogether unable to place a restraint on the fanaticism which is the sad characteristic of the native Mussulman, and are well aware that, were they to attempt to introduce those reforms which look so well on paper, the native Mussulmans would hound them out of the country.

The more we examine the character of the Osmanlì government in Bosnia, the more unstable, artificial and mischievous does it appear. The centralization introduced by the ‘New Turks’ has struck at the roots of many of the most promising elements which Bosnia had inherited from the past, and the substitution of the authority of Osmanlì _préfets_, in the place of the old municipal councils of the towns, may be cited as a single example of the mischievous tendency of these innovations. The chief argument of those who wish to see the rule of the Osmanlìs upheld in Bosnia is that they act as a police to keep the peace between the warring elements of the native population. It would not be difficult to cite isolated instances where the Osmanlì has acted this part, and some will be found in the following pages; but it will be found, as a rule, that the Turkish rulers in Bosnia never put themselves out to control the Mahometan element of Bosnia, except when under the surveillance of European Consuls, or in their dealings with Franciscan monks, who are virtually Austrian officials. On the whole, it would be more true to say that the Osmanlì has prolonged his rule in Bosnia by playing on the jealousies of castes and creeds.

The Osmanlì government in Bosnia is, and has been, a government of _finesse_. It has no elements of stability about it, and nothing has been more prominently brought out by the present insurrection than its utter impotence. The foreign bureaucracy in Bosnia has seen itself haughtily thrust aside by the native Mahometans. Its manœuvres have utterly failed to conciliate the one class whose affections they were designed to seduce, and at the present moment there is one point on which the Mahometans and Christians of Bosnia are both agreed, and that is in abhorrence of the rule of the Osmanlì. Nor should it be overlooked that two of the greatest evils that at present afflict Bosnia are intimately bound up with the continuance of Turkish rule. One is the use of the Osmanlì language in official documents and in the law-courts; the other is the direct contact into which Bosnia is brought with the corruption of Stamboul. It is impossible that the rayah should secure justice in the law-courts, or at the hands of the government officials and middle-men, when his case or the contract into which he enters with the tax-farmers must be drawn up in a language utterly unintelligible to him, and by the hands of those who are interested in perverting the instrument of the law to injustice and extortion. It is impossible that the material resources of Bosnia, magnificent as they are, should be developed to the good of her civilization, while the enterprise of Europe has first to satisfy what is insatiable—the avarice of the Divan. The Bosniacs themselves are still blessed with many of the virtues of a primitive people, and left to themselves might secure honesty and justice in their public officers. At present the Bosnian _employés_ must first learn their Osmanlì language, and imbibe the secrets of Osmanlì government, at the source and seminary of Turkish demoralization; and the alien bureaucracy which results, acts in Bosnia as a propaganda of corruption.

Why not then sever a connection as malign as it is artificial? Why not divorce Stamboul from Bosnia, and erect an independent State under an European guarantee? The democratic genius of the people would suggest a Republic as the best form of government, but the divided state of the country would preclude such a government to begin with, and a Principality after the model of free Serbia might combine Parliamentary government with the coherence of a monarchy.

When it is recognised by what an extremely precarious tenure the Porte holds Bosnia at present, and it is remembered that the chief aim of the native Mahometans, as of the native Christians, is Provincial Independence, even Englishmen may be inclined to accept the conclusion that the present connection between Bosnia and the hated government of the Osmanlì must be severed; the more so as the geographical configuration and position of Bosnia—a peninsula connected only with the rest of Turkey by a narrow neck—make it almost impossible to hold out against a serious invasion, and put it always at the mercy of foreign agitators.

Such a revolution may seem an Utopian dream; but when the purely artificial character of the present government of Bosnia is realized, it would be an impertinence to the confederate statesmanship of Europe to suppose that it was unable to effect it. For the moment, however, the ultimate form of Bosnian government is a question of secondary importance to the paramount necessity of re-establishing order in that unhappy land. At the moment that I write this, nearly 3,000 Bosnian and Herzegovinian villages and scattered hamlets are blackened ruins, and over 200,000 Christian refugees are starving among the inhospitable ravines of the Dalmatian Alps. In the interests of humanity, as well as of European peace, in discharge of responsibilities which no adroitness of European statesmanship can disavow, an armed occupation of Bosnia by civilized forces has become indispensable. When the Christian population of Bosnia have been rescued from the grave that yawns before them, when the robber bands of fanaticism have been disarmed, and the remnant of the refugees enabled to return to what were once their homes; then it will be time for the governments of civilized Europe to turn their energies to securing the necessary reforms, and to re-establishing the administration of the country on a sounder basis.

Discordant as are the political materials in Bosnia, fanatic as are the Christians as well as the Mahometans, I feel convinced that there exist elements of union in that unhappy country which might be moulded together by wise hands. The wrongs of the Christians in Bosnia have been intolerable, and I have shown my abhorrence of the present tyranny with sufficient emphasis in the course of this book; but I may take this opportunity of deprecating any sympathy with those who propose to deal with the Mussulman population of Bosnia in a spirit of Christian fanaticism. The whole history of Bosnia from the beginning has been one long commentary on the evils of established religions. Whatever terms the Great Powers may wish to impose on Bosnia and the Turks, let England at all events exert her influence against any setting up of an ecclesiastical tyranny. In the interests of all the warring creeds which distract the country, let the secular character of the future government be beyond suspicion. Let an European guarantee secure to the Mahometan minority of Bosnia the free exercise of their religion and complete equality before the law, and half the battle of conciliation will have been won. But let it once be supposed that Greek popes under the tutelage of Russia, or Franciscan monks under the patronage of the Apostolic Monarchy which still sets at nought, in Tyrol, the first principles of religious liberty, are to be allowed to lord it over the true believers; once encourage the hopes of Christian bigotry and the fears of Islâm, and the miserable struggle will prolong itself to the bitter end.

So far indeed from the sway of Christian denominationalism being in any sense possible in Bosnia, it must be frankly admitted, distasteful as the admission may be to some, that if an autonomous or partially autonomous state be established, a preponderating share in the government, saving European control, must for many years remain in the hands of the Mahometan part of the population. True that much of the present oppression is due to them; but they are the only class in Bosnia at present capable of holding the reins of government; they are more upright, and certainly not more fanatically bigoted, than the Christian Bosniacs. The weight of hereditary bondage cannot be shaken off in a day, and the majority of the Christian population are still too ignorant and cringing to govern their hereditary lords. True, that the Bosniac Mahometans are a minority; but it must be remembered that the Christians are divided into two sects, the Greek and the Latin, each of which regards its rival with greater animosity than the Moslem; nor can there be any reasonable doubt that, in the event of the establishment of a representative Assembly, or Bosnian ‘_Sbor_’, the Mahometans would secure the alliance of the Roman Catholic contingent, and would by this means obtain a working majority.

European surveillance is in any case an absolute necessity for securing the introduction of reforms, but there are no other conditions more favourable to its successful working than those above indicated. To reinforce the government of the Osmanlì would of all solutions be the most deplorable. It would be to give a new lease of life to all that is worst in the present state of Bosnia. It would be a gage of future anarchy and a perpetuation of corruption. I have far too much confidence in the shrewdness of the Oriental mind to suppose for a moment that the desired reforms would not be temporarily introduced under the eyes of Europe. But the instant that supervision was removed, the instant that the forces necessary for the enforcements of the reforms were withdrawn, the Osmanlì government in Bosnia would relapse into what it is at present,—a foreign bureaucracy, which, powerless to support the Sultan’s authority against the Conservative opposition of native Mussulmans, is reduced to pander to it. The old game of playing with the antagonisms of castes and creeds would be revived, the reforms would disappear one by one, and the smouldering elements of Christian discontent would once more burst forth in a conflagration, which might eventually light up the ends of Europe.

The great difficulty that statesmen have to contend with at the present moment is how to obtain certain elementary securities for the honour and property of an oppressed class of ignorant peasants, in the teeth of a haughty and oppressive ruling caste. To reverse the positions of serf and lord would be impossible. To bolster up a Christian government in the country, and after depriving the dominant caste of what it considers its hereditary dues, and stripping it of part of its possessions, to place it forcibly beneath the yoke of those whom it despises as slaves and abominates as idolaters, would need more supervision than Europe would be willing to accord; nor is it likely that anything short of perpetual armed occupation would succeed in enforcing such reforms, or in preventing the prolongation of an exterminating civil war.

It is then of primary necessity to conciliate the Mahometan caste of landlords and retainers, still hungering for abolished feudal privileges, and the Mahometan bourgeoisie of the towns, who in days of bureaucratic centralization sigh for their municipal privileges suppressed by the Osmanlì. And such a means of reconciling the Mahometan population of Bosnia to the new order of things can be found,—by sacrificing the Osmanlì. Turn out the sowers of Bosnian discord. Do not prevent the Mahometan gentry from taking that position in the country to which by their territorial possessions, according to English ideas, they are entitled. Let a native magistracy succeed the satellites of a foreign bureaucracy; revive the civic institutions of the towns, and the native Begs and Agas, as well as the descendants of the old municipal _Starescina_, will be only too glad to come to terms with the Great Powers.

The dominant caste in this way compensated, European supervision, of whatever kind, would work with at least a possibility of success in introducing the necessary reforms; nor, the period of probation concluded, and European control removed, is there any need for taking the pessimist view that the government of Bosnia would lapse into the ‘autonomy of a cock-pit.’ In the very nature of things the present difficulties have brought the worst and most fanatical elements of Bosnia to the surface, and in face of the ferocious deeds of Bosnian Ahmed Agas and their feudal train of murderous Bashi Bazouks, the more sensible and kindly side of Bosnian Mahometanism is liable to be overlooked. I have already observed that it is wrong for Christians to build too great expectations on the fact that many of the Mahometan nobles of Bosnia still preserve some of their old Christian practices, and on occasion take Franciscan monks as their ghostly advisers. Still the fact remains, to show that from some points of view they are not irreconcilable, and that the gulf between Christianity and Islâm is not so wide among the more educated classes as it is no doubt among the town-rabble. The most influential Christian in the whole country, Bishop Strossmayer, whose liberalism commands European esteem, stands on a most friendly footing with many of the leading Mahometan families in Bosnia, and when he visits his Bosnian diocese has the satisfaction of seeing true-believers flock to hear his sermons.[141] The brutal contempt of the Mahometan lord for the rayah is by no means universal, and even in Herzegovina, he at times so far conforms to the kindly democratic usage of the race as to address his Christian serf as _brat_ or brother.[142] A few years ago the native aristocracy of Bosnia showed by its secret negotiations with the Serbian government that at a pinch it was not altogether averse to making common cause with the Giaour. In the rural districts of Bosnia and the Herzegovina religious animosity has never been so embittered as in the towns. I have myself seen the tombs of the departed Christians and the departed Moslems of a Herzegovinian village gathered together in the same God’s acre, and separated only by a scarcely perceptible path. In many parts the Mahometan peasants have suffered almost as much oppression as their Christian neighbours, and during the present insurrection there have been instances in which they have made common cause with the Christian rayah.

If this religious antagonism can once be overcome, there seem to be many hopeful elements left us even in Bosnia. The temperament of the Southern Sclaves is preëminently kindly and easy-going, and nothing but the interested wiles of the Osmanlì, to whom Bosnian union meant his own expulsion, could have checked the development of a spirit of toleration. We have in Bosnia a common language and a common national character born of the blood; and that national character, whatever may be said to the contrary, is not prone to revolution. It is slow, it is stubborn, it is not easily roused, and it possesses a fund of common sense which has led a keen French observer to compare the Serbian genius with the English.[143] The Bosniacs are of a temperament admirably fitted for parliamentary government, and what is more, owing to their still preserving the relics of the free institutions of the primitive Sclaves, they are familiar with its machinery. In their family-communities, in their village councils, the first principles of representative government are practised every day. Orderly government once established by the commanding influence which powerful neighbours could exercise for pacification if they chose, the development of the natural resources of the country would follow as a matter of course. I have elsewhere alluded to the fact that, besides supplying the Romans and the Ragusans in the Middle Ages with incalculable wealth of gold and silver, the Bosnian mountains are known to contain some of the richest veins of quicksilver in Europe; that iron and other ores are abundant, and that the valley of the principal river is one vast coal-bed. All these sources of wealth and prosperity, and consequent civilization, are at present, as I show elsewhere, inaccessible, owing simply to the corruption of Stamboul.

Besides such decentralizing reforms in the provincial constitution as connect themselves with the discontinuance of the direct government of the Osmanlì, it may be well to cite some of the more obvious measures necessary to secure the order and well being of Bosnia. The present insurrection, as I have been at some pains to point out, was in its origin mainly agrarian, and no reform can be satisfactory which does not secure the tiller of the soil a certain portion of it for himself. The intolerance of all classes of the Bosnian population is the natural offspring of the gross ignorance in which they are steeped, and it must be confessed that the want of education is largely due to the clerical character of the schools where they exist and to the malign teachings of _odium theologicum_. ‘The result of the present system,’ says a recent observer, ‘is evident and it is fatal. The Greek children under the Higumen, the Catholics under the Franciscan priest, the Mussulmans under the Ulema, go to school to learn to hate each other, and in fact this is the only lesson which as men they take care to remember.’[144] That a certain part of the revenues of the province should be set apart for education of a purely secular kind is a crying necessity, and the establishment of high schools at Serajevo, Travnik, Banjaluka, Mostar, and other large towns under the auspices of the University of Agram, but equally secular in their character, might be suggested as a good way of remedying the want of higher culture. For the moral, as well as the material, elevation of the rayahs of the Greek Church it is of the highest importance that they should be liberated from the corrupt rule of the Fanariote hierarchy, and it might be well to revive the national Sclavonic patriarchate, not at Ipek but at Serajevo. To foster the development of the great resources of the country, greater facilities for obtaining concessions of mines should be accorded to foreign capitalists; the completion of the Bosnian railway, and its junction with Roumelian and Serbian lines, should be secured; and measures should be taken to overcome the selfish financial policy of Austria, which shuts off Bosnia and Herzegovina from the only two seaports, the narrow enclaves of Klek and Sutorina, which still remain to them.

A few vigorous strokes like these levelled by the united strength of Europe at the ignorance, bigotry, and industrial depression of this unhappy land, could not long be without their result. It is a mistake to suppose that Islâm really opposes itself to culture; and were the means of obtaining a liberal education, free from the taint of Christian bigotry, placed within the reach of the Mahometan Begs and burghers, there is no reason to suppose that they would refuse their sons the benefit of it.

On the whole, however, it is safe to assume that the influx of Western civilization into Bosnia would tend to strengthen the Christian element. The fatalistic temper of the Mahometan dominant caste cripples their commercial energies. As the natural resources of the country were developed, wealth would fall more and more into the hands of the Christians, and the balance of political power would infallibly incline in their favour. In the course of a generation they might assume the reins of government, which, as I have pointed out, in spite of their numerical superiority, they are at present incapable of holding. The way would thus be paved for a closer union with the Christian border-provinces of kindred blood, Serbia and Montenegro, and Bosnia might ultimately form a province of a great South-Sclavonic confederation, extending from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, which should act as a constitutional bulwark against the encroaching despotism of the North.

To suppose that the freedom of the Sclaves of the South, of the Bosniacs, the Serbs of Old Serbia, and Bulgarians, will, when accomplished—and sooner or later there is no doubt that it must be accomplished—add to the strength of Russia, because in language they are somewhat similar, is as if anyone should have opposed the liberation and unity of Italy on the score that it would be aggrandizing France. If the French ever had designs on Rome they are infinitely less likely to arrive at them now than when an Austrian Archduke governed in Lombardy, and Bomba ruled at Naples. Granted that the Russians have designs on Constantinople, are they more likely to gain it from a decrepit Power which can scarcely hold its own provinces, or from a new Power or Powers endued with all the vigour of young nationality? To leave a country like Bosnia, isolated from the rest of Turkey, surrounded by free States, to perpetuate agitation within its borders, is only to weaken what remains of Turkey, and to play into the hands of Russia. Cousinship is not always a gage of amity; and the day, perhaps, is not far distant when the Sclavonic races of the Balkan Peninsula will look upon Russia as their most insidious foe.

BOSNIA AND THE HERZEGÓVINA.