Chapter VI: The Panic in Serajevo (1)

Outbreak of the Insurrection in Bosnia—Roadside Precautions
against Brigands—Panorama of Serajevsko Polje—Roman Bas-Relief
of Cupid—Roman Remains in Bosnia—_Banja_ and _Balnea_—‘The
Damascus of the North’: first Sight of Serajevo—Her History and
Municipal Government—Fall of the Janissaries—Dangerous Spirit
of the Mahometan Population of Serajevo—Outbreak of Moslem
Fanaticism here on building of the new Serbian Cathedral—We
enter the City through smouldering Ruins—Hospitable Reception
at English Consulate—Great Fire in Serajevo—Consternation of
the Pashà—Panic among the Christians—Missionaries of Culture:
two English Ladies—Causes of the Insurrection in Bosnia: the
Tax-farmers: Rayahs tortured by Turks—‘Smoking’—The Outbreak
in Lower Bosnia—Paralysis of the Government, and Mahometan
Counter-Revolution—Conjuration of Leading Fanatics in the Great
Mosque—We are accused before the Pashà by forty Turks—Consular
Protection—The Fanariote Metropolitan and Bishops of
Bosnia—Their boundless Rapacity, and Oppression of the Rayah—A
Bosnian Bath—Mosques and Cloth-hall of Serajevo—Types of the
Population—Spanish Jews, and Pravoslave Merchants—Bosnian Ideas
of Beauty!—Opposition of Christians to Culture—Extraordinary
Proceedings of the Board of Health—The Zaptiehs—Continuance of
the Panic—Portentous Atmospheric Phenomenon—The Beginning of
the End.

While we were engaged in quaffing the sparkling draughts of nature under the kiosque, up came a young Hungarian, and asked us whether we had heard the news. On our confessing ignorance, he informed us that a revolution had broken out in Bosnia—or rather several dozens of them; that a rising of rayahs had taken place near Banjaluka, and along the Save; and that this had been followed by a counter-rising in the Mahometan towns and villages—and that especially the district about Dervent, through which we had passed, was plunged in civil war. Vague rumours of other outbreaks at Tašlidzje, Priepolje, and near Novipazar, had just come in; and, from the localities of the risings, both in north and south, this much was certain, that if the insurgents were successful, the only highways connecting Bosnia with the rest of Turkey and the Save provinces of Austria were cut off; while, from the sudden departure of the Pashà of Bosnia for the Herzegovina, it seemed not unlikely that communication with Dalmatia was equally threatened. But for details we had to wait till we reached the capital, though we found the Hungarian’s account trustworthy so far as it went.

_Aug. 21._—From the same informant I learnt that in a copse near here were some monuments, locally known as the ‘Roman Stones,’ to the investigation of which I devoted the morning grey before we started for Serajevo. The stones proved to be of the same character as those already described at Podove—of the usual tea-caddy shape—uninscribed, and even more devoid of ornament than those we had seen before. There were several of them scattered among the brushwood on a slight rise of the ground.

In the first part of our journey to Serajevo there was little remarkable. As we ascended the pass between the Kobilaglava and Bulalovic ranges, we noticed the forest cut away for a hundred yards or so on either side of the high road; this was done for the safety of travellers, these mountains having formerly been a nest of robbers. The same precaution used to be taken in England in the good old days. In the Statute of Winchester, Edward I. devotes a whole clause to enjoining the ‘abatement’ of the cover by the side of the highways: ‘It is commanded that highways leading from one market town to another shall be enlarged wheresoever bushes, woods, or dykes be, so that there be neither dyke, tree, nor bush whereby a man may lurk to do hurt, within two hundred foot of the one side, and two hundred foot of the other side of the way; so that this statute shall not extend unto oaks nor unto great trees, so that it shall be clear underneath. And if by default of the lord that will not abate the dykes, underwood, or bushes, any robberies be done therein, the lord shall be answerable for the felony; and if murder be done, the lord shall make a fine at the king’s pleasure.’[231] The traveller in Bosnia is still in the Middle Ages!

Having gained the summit of the mountain saddle, we began to descend towards the Serajevsko Polje—the Plain of Serajevo—a level expanse shut in on every side by mountains, and looking like the former bed of a large lake. The Alpine amphitheatre was exquisite. One peak, loftier than the rest, had been girdled by a silvery sea of mist, above which loomed its limestone upper nakedness, draped in a Coan veil of aërial azure—the island of a mirage, or one of those barren-beautiful _Scoglie_ that start ever and anon from the slumbering bosom of the Adriatic! The heat was suffocating, and a sultry haze seemed to flood the whole surface of the plain and lower mountain-flanks, volatilizing every object in an atmosphere half dusty, half lurid; and, with the faint, languid tints of the surrounding heights, recalling to memory pictures of Eastern scenery—but nothing within our own experience.

Near the spot where this fine panorama first opened out we came to a small roadside Han, called Blazui, where we obtained welcome refreshments in the shape of coffee and boiled eggs; a little bread we had luckily brought with us. While waiting for these delicacies, we passed our time in closely examining some old stone blocks which formed the basement of the wooden buildings about, in hopes of finding perchance a Roman inscription or some other relic of antiquity. Our desires were presently gratified almost beyond expectation by the discovery of a Roman monument walled into an old stone cistern, which acted as sub-structure for a hen-roost. It was a bas-relief of Cupid, standing, apparently, on a foliated capital, cross-legged, and leaning on a torch, which he is thus extinguishing. It has suffered, as can be seen in the rough sketch opposite, from the iconoclasm of ages, Christian and Mahometan; yet a tutored eye could still trace the elegant outlines. A severe critic might condemn the art; but, though falling short of Hellenic purity, it was such as these benighted midlands of Illyria have not seen the like of since the days when this was sculptured. But the delicacy of the conception allows us to overlook the execution. The monument is sepulchral, of a kind not uncommon among the Romans, but chiefly raised to the memory of those who passed away in the youth and vigour of their days.[232] The thoughts are turned from the unknown and the ghastly to the memory of the beautiful and the known. _Vixit_—he has lived. The torch of festal trippings has become the staff for his repose: the light of love is put out: the great darkness is upon him: _nox est perpetua una dormienda_. It may foreshadow annihilation, but, at least, it calls up no bony phantoms of corruption. This mutilated, one-winged genius is indeed the emanation of ages of refinement, set forth by the most exquisite symbolism of ancient art. Here, truly, amidst dull and barbarous lands, was roadside refection, spiritually, not less refreshing than were the fragrant cups of mocha to those parched by a well-nigh Arabian sun!

It does not seem that any Roman remains had been discovered in this immediate neighbourhood before,[233] though the appearance of some of the other blocks of masonry made it probable that this was not the only classic monument concealed in the foundations of the Mahometan Han and its out-buildings. One would, indeed, expect to find Roman remains in this vicinity, not holy from the fact that in the neighbouring mountains about Foinica, and again to the east about Vareš, are traces of Roman gold-mines, and that a Roman road has been traced tending from Salona towards these centres of mineral wealth; but for another and still more cogent reason. This is the presence of hot-springs, which we passed to the right of us only a little way further on the road, at a place called Illidzje. The Romans, with their usual instincts, tracked out these natural baths among the Illyrian wilds; and Roman remains in Bosnia, when not connected with mining enterprise, seem especially to centre round such spas. At Novipazar,[234] in the province of Rascia, the sulphur springs still bubble up into an octagonal marble basin near eight yards in diameter, described as of Roman workmanship, and are still sheltered from the elements by an octagonal chamber, supporting a cupola, which also dates from the days of the Cæsars. At Banjaluka[235] on the Verbas the hot-springs are still housed in a similar edifice; and the curious may survey modern Mahometans taking their enjoyment in one of these very baths which have supplied the prototype of the early Christian baptistery. The name of Banjaluka[236] itself preserves a Roman element, _Banja_ being no other than the Latin _balnea_. The Sclavonic settlers borrowed the word from the earlier Roman population of these lands—thus witnessing to the purely Roman associations of such spas; and so completely has the word passed into their language that _Banja_ at the present day is applied by the Southern Sclaves to all hot-springs and baths. But though not necessarily, therefore, proof positive of a Roman connection, this derivative, when applied to local names, may perhaps afford presumptive evidence that the virtues of such spots were not unknown to the Romans. It is at least worth noticing that the thermal springs at Illidzje, not far from the place where we found the bas-relief of Cupid, are still known to the Bosniacs as ‘Banja.’

We now descended into the plain, passing the sources of the Bosna, not far distant, on our left. The river from which this whole country derives its name takes its origin from a number of small streams which, gushing forth from the limestone slope of Mt. Igman, unite almost immediately to form a full-volumed river of crystal purity, some fifty yards in breadth—an Illyrian Timavus. We crossed this new-born river by a wooden bridge of a form, if possible, more Roman than ordinary, and nearing the capital descried several country houses of Turkish dignitaries, embosomed in their shady gardens. Once or twice we met arabàs of state containing Mahometan ladies, screened from the vulgar gaze by a brilliant scarlet canopy supported by four posts; but feminine curiosity prompted them to lift up the corners of the drapery that they might observe the Giaour; and we should have seen more of their faces had they not been veiled as well as curtained!

But a turn in the road reveals to us the Damascus of the North—for such is the majestic title by which the Bosniac Turks, who consider it, after Stamboul, the finest city in Turkey-in-Europe, delight to style Serajevo. Seen, indeed, from above, in an atmosphere which the Bosniac historian has not inaptly compared to that of Misr and Sham,[237] it might well call up the pearl and emerald settings of Oriental imagery.[238] The city is a vast garden, from amidst whose foliage swell the domes and cupolas of mosques and baths; loftier still, rises the new Serbian Cathedral; and lancing upwards, as to tourney with the sky, near a hundred minarets. The airy height to the East, sceptred with these slender spires of Islâm and turret-crowned with the Turkish fortress (raised originally by the first Vizier of Bosnia on the site of the older ‘Grad’ of Bosnian princes), commands the rest of the city, and marks the domination of the infidel. Around it clusters the upper-town, populated exclusively by the ruling caste; but the bulk of the city occupies a narrow flat amidst the hills, cut in twain by the little river Miljaška, and united by three stone and four wooden bridges. Around this arena, tier above tier—at first wooded hills, then rugged limestone precipices—rises a splendid amphitheatre of mountains culminating in the peak of Trebović, which frowns over 3,000 feet above the city—herself near 1,800 above sea-level.

The first beginnings of Serajevo, or Bosna as it was formerly called, are said to have been due to the mining enterprise of the Ragusans in the neighbouring mountains;[239] but though in 1236 (after the destruction of Mileševo by the Patarenes) it was made the seat of the Roman Catholic bishops, it appears to have been little more than a stronghold till the year 1463, when it finally fell into the possession of the Turks. It was in the year succeeding this event that the present town was founded by the two Bosnian magnates, Sokolović, and Zlatarović, who claim the doubtful honour of having been the first of the native nobility to renegade to Islâm; and the Serai on the hill was shortly after erected, and the upper town walled, by Khosrev Pashà, first Vizier of Bosnia. It was from this Serai or fortress that the town began to be called Bosna Serai, and finally, by the Sclaves, Serajevo. That it early attained to some majesty is shown by the fact that it was given by Grand Signiors as a dowry to widowed Sultanas; and early in the sixteenth century our English traveller, Blunt, though he describes it as ‘but meanely built and not great,’ yet reckons here ‘about four-score Mescheetoes and twenty thousand houses.’[240] When Prince Eugene, during his twenty days’ dash into Bosnia in 1697, penetrated to the capital, he found the upper town so strong that, despairing of reducing it by a siege with the small means at his disposal, he contented himself with burning the lower town, and rode back to the Save. His chroniclers estimate the population of Serajevo at 30,000, and set down the houses and mosques then destroyed by the Imperialists as six thousand and a hundred and fifty respectively.[241] In the middle of the next century the monks who supplied the author of ‘Illyricum Sacrum’ with an account of ‘the present state of Bosnia,’ speak of the Serai as being, though a decayed city, the ‘seat of Turkish commerce and the most renowned staple of the realm.’

Serajevo early became the head-quarters of the Bosnian Janissaries. That in the seventeenth century it was hardly an eligible place for a Giaour to find himself in, may be gathered from our English traveller’s relation. Blunt is setting out for ‘Saraih,’ as he calls the city, ‘with the Bashaw of Bosnah, his troopes going for the warre of Poland,’ and his account gives a very pretty picture of the military turbulence that must then have reigned within the walls. The soldiers, it appears, were ‘spirited many with drinke, discontent, and insolency: which made them fitter companie for the Divell then for a Christian; my selfe after many launces, and knives threatned upon me, was invaded by a drunken Janizary, whose iron Mace entangled in his other furniture gave mee time to flee among the Rocks, whereby I escaped untoucht.’

But the Janissaries who ruled the roast at the Serai were something more than a turbulent rabble of bravoes. They were Sclaves, descendants, most, of the ruling families of the older Bosnian kingdom. They spoke the native tongue. They were imbued with provincial patriotism. They were in close alliance with the haughty provincial aristocracy, who perpetuated feudalism under a Mahometan guise. These Sclavonic Janissaries refused to take to the celibacy and barrack-life of their order. They took wives. They became landed proprietors. They even settled down to mercantile pursuits. Thus, with their participation and patronage, Bosna Serai, the chosen seat of the Bosnian nobility, the Camp of her Prætorians, acquired rights and immunities which made her a Free City.

Nothing in this curious history is more interesting to observe than the way in which the primitive institutions of Sclavonic family life assert themselves in this municipal constitution. The Civic Communism—I use the word in its uncorrupted sense—grows out of the domestic. Just as the Bosnian family communities elected, and still elect, their elders, so now the families who owned the surrounding lands were represented by a hereditary _Starešina_; and the artisans and merchants bound themselves into _Bratsva_ or brotherhoods, each guild electing its _Starost_ or alderman. Thus arose a civic government, based on the possession of real property and prosperity in trade.[242]

Enjoying such a municipal constitution, actively protected by the Janissaries at Stamboul, the Serai rose to an almost sovereign position in Bosnia. So jealous was its senate of its privileges, and so irresistible its authority, that it actually established a municipal law by which the Vizier of Bosnia was forbidden to tarry more than a day at a time within the city walls. For a single night he was entertained at the public expense; next morning he was escorted without the gates. Even in the exercise of his shadowy authority at Travnik, the Sultan’s lieutenant stood in perpetual fear of the patriarchs of the real capital; for if he presumed to offend these haughty elders, they had but to lodge a complaint against him with the Odjak of the Janissaries at Stamboul, and the Vizier was forthwith recalled. The Porte, indeed, endeavoured to assert its sovereignty within the city by appointing two officers to decide disputes between Moslems and Rayahs, but the citizens retained the right of dismissing these at their pleasure.

Thus Serajevo was the mouthpiece of the old Sclavonic national feeling of Bosnia, as it survived in a Mahometan guise—the acknowledged protectress of provincial interests against the hated Osmanlì. Bosnia had changed her creed, but she clung to her independence; and when, at the beginning of the present century, Sultan Mahmoud II. thought to stamp out provincial liberties in Bosnia as elsewhere, it was the Serai that took the lead in opposition. When the Janissaries were extinguished at Stamboul, their tall ovoid turbans, the gold and imperial green, still flaunted themselves unchallenged in the streets of Serajevo. The citadel on the height was their last refuge. It was, however, successfully stormed by the Vizier, and Serajevo was given over to the tender mercies of the Sultan’s officer. A terrible vengeance was wreaked, and more than a hundred of the leading citizens were proscribed and executed. The Vizier took up his residence triumphantly in the fortress, but the reign of the Osmanlì lasted only a few months. In July 1828 the citizens of Serajevo, aided by those of Visoko, rose desperately against the oppressor. A street fight followed, which lasted three days. The Vizier, who upheld his authority with a garrison near 2,000 strong, made an obstinate resistance, but the imperial troops were gradually beaten back from house to house, from mosque to mosque, till, fairly overmastered, the Sultan’s lieutenant was glad to escape with his life and the shattered remnant of his troops. A few years later Serajevo again fell into the hands of the destroyer of the Janissaries. But in the Bosnian rebellion of 1850 the citizens once more flew to arms. For a while they made themselves masters of the Vizier’s fortress on the height, but finally succumbed to Ali Pashà; and the municipal independence of Serajevo shared the ruin of feudalism throughout Bosnia. The true capital of Bosnia has since been the seat of the Turkish Governor of the Vilajet.

But though Serajevo herself has degenerated into the _chef-lieu_ of a ‘circle’—though an alien bureaucracy has succeeded the patriarchal sway of her own landowners and merchants—though Giaour-Sultans and ‘New Turks’ from Stamboul—those muck-rakes of mendicant statecraft who filch their political tinsel from the gutters of the boulevards!—have replaced her native Agas and elders by an Osmanlì ‘_Préfet_,’ with the same apish levity with which these same gentry toss aside the jewelled amber of their forefathers for a Parisian cigarette!—nevertheless, despite of all these tinkering experiments in centralization of which they have been made the _corpus vile_, the citizens of this old stronghold of provincial liberties have only clung with warmer attachment to the ‘true green’ of Bosnian Toryism. Only what they can no longer practise in politics they parade in religion, and Serajevo remains more than ever the focus of the Mahometan fanaticism of Bosnia. This was the danger of the present moment, and gave but too valid grounds for the wide-spread apprehension among the Bosnian rayahs that the outbreak of the revolt might provoke the bigots of the capital to a general massacre of the Christian minority there; and that the Damascus of the North might, as she had already threatened a year or two ago on a less provocation, reproduce the bloody scenes which have made her Syrian namesake a word of terror to the Christians of Turkey.

This is what happened here only three years ago, as we heard the story from those who played a distinguished part in averting the impending catastrophe; nor can anything give a better idea of the dangerous spirit abroad among the Moslem population of Serajevo.

The new orthodox cathedral, which now forms the most prominent object in the city, was begun a few years ago by the Serb or Greek Church here, on a scale which seemed to make it a direct challenge to the Mahometan part of the population. The presence of the consular body in the town made it possible for the Christians to take advantage of the right of church-building accorded by Firmans of the Grand Signior, and accordingly the work proceeded without any interference. But the Christians were not content with the permission to build a church in the most conspicuous position in one of the main streets of the city, but must needs rear a pretentious pile which should throw into the shade the biggest of the two hundred and odd mosques with which Mahometan piety has adorned the Serai. No expense was spared, and the total outlay reached, so we were credibly informed, the (for this country) enormous sum of £13,000, exclusive of the costly icons and other church-furniture presented by the Emperor of Russia. A swaggering edifice—all of stone—built in the usual bastard Byzantine taste of the Fanariote hierarchy, and of which the worst that can be said is that it is worthy of its patrons—began to raise itself above the neighbouring house-tops, and at last contemptuously looked down on the dome of the Imperial Mosque itself—the Dzàmia of Sultan Mahommed! It was perhaps hardly to be expected that the ignorant Moslem fanatics should view with equanimity this last manifestation of Christian humility.

What, however, seems especially to have stuck in their throats, was the design of hanging bells in the cathedral tower. It is strange the animosity which such an apparently harmless sound as that of a church bell has always excited in the bosoms of those hostile to the Christian faith. Those of us who have Norse blood running in their veins may remember that their heathen ancestors showed just the same vehement repugnance to the tintinnabulation of too officious missionaries. Perhaps in a Mahometan country it may be feared by the faithful that the infidel clangour might drown the prayers of the muezzin on neighbouring minarets; perhaps the renegade population of Bosnia have inherited something of the prejudice that led their Bogomilian forefathers to regard Church bells as ‘Devil’s trumpets’! But this, at least, is certain, that in Bosnia there are few Christian churches where any other summons to the congregation is allowed than that of a wooden clapper; and that to hang bells in a centre of Moslem fanaticism like Serajevo was a deliberate and wanton provocation.

The plain English of the matter is that the Christians of Serajevo, relying on consular protection, saw in the erection of this new church a fine opportunity for wiping off the scores of ancient insults against the Mahometans. It was quite natural that they should do so. But it was also natural that the Moslems should refuse to pocket the insult. The ringleaders of fanaticism in the city took up the gauntlet thus thrown down, and some time before the day of the opening ceremony it oozed out that a Mahometan conspiracy was afoot by which short work would be made of the unbelievers and their conventicle together. The indefinite multiplication of evil passions caused by ecclesiastical wrong-headedness had brought matters to such a pass, that Easter Day—the date of the opening ceremony—might have proved a second St. Bartholomew’s for the Christian minority of Serajevo.

Happily, at this crisis, the consular body stepped in. Mr. Holmes, our representative—who took a prominent and worthy part in averting the bloodshed—and the other Consuls, informed the Pashà of the imminence of the danger, and unfolded to him the existence of a Mahometan conspiracy. The Pashà sent some of the ringleaders out of the country, made the leading Moslems responsible for the preservation of order, and finally persuaded the Christians to forego the bell-ringing. As it was, the opening ceremony took place under the protection of Turkish arms. The city was placed in a state of siege. For three days previously all the wine-shops in the town had been closed by order of the authorities. The troops were held in barracks under arms. At intervals along the streets trumpeters were stationed to give the earliest alarm; and, in fine, such precautions were taken as prevented any actual disturbance of the peace.

It was not without some vague misgivings that we now found ourselves entering the streets of this metropolis of fanaticism. But the sight which presently broke on us, on turning a corner into the main street, was such as might well convince us that the worst forebodings of the Bosnian Christians had come true. We had emerged on the scene of a great fire which had destroyed one entire side of the street, so that we were obliged to pick our way among black and smouldering _débris_, through which a party of Turks were engaged in clearing a path. They, however, seemed peaceable enough, and we were further relieved by seeing the cupola of the Serbian cathedral rising unscathed on the other side of the way.

We presently met a consular Cavass, who politely conducted us to the English Consulate, situate on the other side of the little river Miljaška, which we crossed by a stone bridge. Our Consul was away, having migrated to Mostar in order to be nearer the centre of the disturbances in the Herzegovina; but we were hospitably taken in by his amiable daughters, and Mr. Freeman, his _chargé d’affaires_; and found ourselves, after our long course of roughing, once more among the comforts of an English home, and surrounded by the quiet of an English garden. Here, in this rich soil, under this Eastern sky, we saw for the first time in Bosnia our familiar flowers—roses, verbenas, and petunias, and others equally delicious—scenting the air, and making us realise what a paradise this land might become in civilized hands. The fruit-trees—the stock of which Mr. Holmes, who has great horticultural taste, had imported from Malta—were weighed down with an exuberant crop of plums, peaches, greengages, and apples, each of which would have secured a prize at a show; and this though from the shallowness of the soil these trees only flourish for a time. Contrast with these the miserable plums, pears, and apples obtainable in the native markets of Serajevo! The Bosniacs show themselves absolutely incapable of pomiculture; they plant their fruit-trees almost as close together as cabbages, and expect them to thrive. Our Consul produced magnificent peaches by simply planting the miserable Bosnian substitute properly.

We found that affairs here had taken a very serious turn. On Saturday last Dervish Pashà, the Vali or Governor-General of Bosnia, had left to take the command in Herzegovina, where the revolt was making head. On Sunday—this country being now left without any competent head—the revolt broke out in Bosnia. The news, as may be imagined, produced great excitement here, and threw the Christian minority into a state verging on consternation. The old rumours of an approaching massacre once more gained credence. But the panic became universal last night, when flames were observed rising from the immediate neighbourhood of the new cathedral, and in the centre of the Christian quarter, amongst houses inhabited by the leading Christian merchants. The Governor, Hussein Pashà, by repute a weak and incapable man, hearing the guns and cannon—which are here the usual fire-signals—and seeing the conflagration, at once jumped to the conclusion that the anticipated outbreak was beginning; and instead of sending the troops—who in Serajevo supply the place of a fire-brigade—to put out the fire, kept them in barracks waiting for the light to reveal the supposed disturbers of the peace. Thus the fire—which in its origin was, as we learnt from the most authentic source, purely accidental, and so far from being the work of a Moslem fanatic, had actually originated in the house of a well-known Mahometan, a renegade detested by the Christians—was allowed to spread, and fifteen houses in the most flourishing quarter of Serajevo were reduced to ashes before the Pashà could be undeceived, or proper measures be taken to bring the flames under. The danger to the whole city was imminent, the houses being mostly of wood and plaster; and, indeed, Serajevo had been previously burnt down on four several occasions. Perhaps the motives which induced the Mahometans to lend active help to the Christians in conquering the flames were not altogether disinterested.

Meanwhile, from the unfortunate quarter in which the conflagration had arisen, and from the electric state of the political atmosphere, it lay in the very nature of things that the origin of the disaster should be misrepresented, and that the majority of the Christian population took it for granted that it was the work of Moslem spite. Thus a purely accidental circumstance had added fuel to the general uneasiness, and to-day a panic prevailed among the Christians of Serajevo.

From the English Consulate, where we are now lodged, we hastened to pay our respects to two English ladies whose acquaintance we had already had the good fortune to make on the Save, and who are prosecuting a work in Bosnia of which their own country may well be proud, and for which a more civilised Bosnia may hereafter be grateful. Some years ago Miss Irby first travelled through many of the wildest parts of Turkey in Europe in company with Miss Muir Mackenzie, and the book composed by these two ladies on the Sclavonic Provinces of Turkey is well known to all Englishmen who take an interest in those neglected lands and their down-trodden Sclavonic cousins. But Miss Irby, with the practical spirit of her race, was not content with acquainting the world with the lamentable condition of the Serbian people under the Turkish yoke, but set herself to work to remedy these evils. It was the backward state of education among the rayah women of even the better classes which struck her as one of the peculiar obstacles in the way of national progress, and it was this which she resolved to overcome. In 1865 Miss Irby settled in Serajevo, and since that date she and a fellow-labourer, Miss Johnston, have devoted their lives to a propaganda of culture among the Bosnian Christian women. Nothing in their efforts has been more conspicuous than their good sense. As the best way to promote the spread of a liberal education among the women, these ladies have formed a school in which to bring up native school-mistresses. There has been no attempt at Protestant proselytism; the pupils, whether of the Greek or Romish Church, being left to the spiritual charge of their own pastors.

We found these ladies engaged in packing up their effects preparatory to removing from the country for the present with their most promising pupils. They had only arrived the previous Thursday by the tedious post from Brood; but the state of affairs seemed so threatening, that there was nothing for it but to take the children elsewhere and wait for quieter times. They experienced some difficulty in obtaining permission from the Pashà to take the embryo school-mistresses with them, as the Pashà considered that their departure would increase the panic among the Christians of Serajevo, by whom they are widely known and respected. It could not, however, well have been greater. Already, several of the leading Serb merchants had presented themselves at the English school-house, and begged to be allowed shelter if the expected butchery commenced. The Austrian Consul had just taken away his wife, and a general exodus of Christians from the city was going on. Miss Irby[243] and Miss Johnston finally obtained the required permission, and, as we were afterwards happy to learn, have succeeded in planting their school at Prague till this tyranny be overpast. It is difficult indeed for the liberal arts to flourish at the best of times in a Turkish province! The other day, on the opening of a rayah school at Banjaluka, the authorities issued peremptory orders prohibiting the teaching of history or geography! So rigid has become the censorship of the press, that Miss Irby, though provided, like ourselves, with an autograph Bujuruldu from the Governor-General of Bosnia, was not allowed to bring her little store of books into the country, and was forced to leave them at Brood. The state of literature in Serajevo itself may be gathered from the following fact: in a city of between fifty and sixty thousand inhabitants there is not a single book-shop!

_Aug. 22._—To-day we made the acquaintance of the German Consul, Count Von Bothmar, who expressed considerable surprise at our arriving here unmolested. From him and the other members of the consular body, who were very ready to supply us with full details as to the stirring events that are taking place around us, we learnt many interesting facts relative to the causes and course of the insurrection in Bosnia. These accounts, and others from trustworthy sources, reveal such frantic oppression and gross misgovernment as must be hardly credible to Englishmen. We have heard all that can be said on the Turkish side, but the main facts remain unshaken.

The truth is that outside Serajevo and a few of the larger towns where there are Consuls or resident ‘Europeans,’ neither the honour, property, nor the lives of Christians are safe. Gross outrages against the person—murder itself—can be committed in the rural districts with impunity. The authorities are blind; and it is quite a common thing for the gendarmes to let the perpetrator of the grossest outrage, if a Mussulman, escape before their eyes. There is a proverb among the Bosnian Serbs, ‘No justice for the Christian.’ Miss Irby, who has made many enquiries on these subjects, estimates that in the Medjliss, the only court where Christian evidence is even legally admitted, ‘the evidence of twenty Christians would be outweighed by two Mussulmans.’[244] But why, it may be asked, do not the Christians appeal to the Consuls for protection? In the first place, in a mountainous country like Bosnia, with little means of communication, to do so would in most cases be a physical impossibility. In the second place, as Count Bothmar assured us, if such complaint is made to a Consul, so surely is the complaining rayah more cruelly oppressed than before; henceforth he is a marked man, nor is consular authority so omnipresent as to save him and his family from ruin. ‘God alone knows,’ he exclaimed, ‘what the rayahs suffer in the country districts!’ Remembering the revolting scenes, of which I had been a witness, at the Christian gathering near Comušina, I could believe this.

But the most galling oppression, and the main cause of the present revolt, is to be found in the system and manner of taxation. The centralised government set up in Bosnia since 1851 is so much machinery for wringing the uttermost farthing out of the unhappy Bosniac rayah. The desperate efforts of Turkish financiers on the eve of national bankruptcy have at last made the burden of taxation more than even the long-suffering Bosniac can bear. It was the last straw.

The principal tax—besides the house and land tax, the cattle tax,[245] and that paid by the ‘Christian’ in lieu of military service which is wrung from the poorest rayah for every male of his family down to the baby in arms[246]—is the eighth,[247] or, as it is facetiously called by the tax-collector, the tenth, which is levied on all produce of the earth. With regard to the exaction of this tax, every conceivable iniquity is practised. To begin with, its collection is farmed out to middle-men, and these, ex-officio pitiless, are usually by origin the scum of the Levant. The Osmanlì or the Sclavonic Mahometan possesses a natural dignity and self-respect which disinclines him for such dirty work. The men who come forward and offer the highest price for the license of extortion are more often Christians—Fanariote Greeks—adventurers from Stamboul, members of a race perhaps the vilest of mankind. No considerations of honour, or religion, or humanity, restrain these wretches. Having acquired the right to farm the taxes of a given district, the Turkish officials and gendarmerie are bound to support them in wringing the uttermost farthing out of the _misera contribuens plebs_, and it is natural that this help should be most readily forthcoming when needed to break the resistance of the rayah.

These men time their visitation well. They appear in the villages before the harvest is gathered and assess the value of the crops according to the present prices, which, of course, are far higher just before the harvest than after it. But the rayahs would be well contented if their exactions stopped here. They possess, however, a terrible lever for putting the screw on the miserable tiller. The harvest may not be gathered till the tax, which is pitilessly levied in cash, has been extorted. If the full amount—and they often double or treble the legal sum—is not forthcoming, the tax-gatherer simply has to say ‘then your harvest shall rot on the ground till you pay it!’ And the rayah must see the produce of his toil lost, or pay a ruinous imposition which more than swamps his profits.

But supposing, as often happens, the Spahi, or tithe-farmer, who is shrewd enough to know that _ex nihilo nihil fit_, sees no means of wringing the required amount from the village till after the harvest has been disposed of. In that case he imposes on the Knez or village elder, who represents the commune in the transaction, an assessment drawn up in the Turkish tongue,[248] and as intelligible to the rural Bosniac as so much Chinese. The money from the grapes or corn or tobacco assessed having been realised, the Spahi presents himself again to the village, and demands, perhaps, double what had been agreed on. The astonished Knez takes out the written agreement, a copy of which had been supplied to him, and appeals to it against the extortioner. But if he carries the matter before a Turkish court, the first Effendi who sets eyes on it will tell him that every iota of the Spahi’s claims is borne out by that precious document!

Or if he still remains obstinate, there are other paraphernalia of torture worthy of the vaults of the Inquisition. A village will occasionally band together to defend themselves from these extortioners. Thereupon the tithe-farmer applies to the civil power, protesting that if he does not get the full amount from the village, he will be unable in his turn to pay the Government. The Zaptiehs, the factotums of the Turkish officials, are immediately quartered on the villagers, and live on them, insult their wives, and ill-treat their children. With the aid of these gentry all kinds of personal tortures are applied to the recalcitrant. In the heat of summer men are stripped naked, and tied to a tree smeared over with honey or other sweet-stuff, and left to the tender mercies of the insect world. For winter extortion it is found convenient to bind people to stakes and leave them barefooted to be frost-bitten; or at other times they are thrust into a pigsty and cold water poured on them. A favourite plan is to drive a party of rayahs up a tree or into a chamber, and then smoke them with green wood. Instances are recorded of Bosniac peasants being buried up to their heads in earth, and left to repent at leisure.[249]

I will quote a single instance of these practices, communicated by the Princess Julia of Servia to the author of ‘Servia and the Servians.’ ‘A poor woman, frantic with agony, burst into the palace of the Princess at Belgrade. She had been assessed by the Turkish authorities of a village in Bosnia of a sum which she had no means of paying.... _She was smoked._ This failed of extracting the gold. She begged for a remission, and stated her inability to pay. In answer she was tossed into the river Drina, and after her were thrown her two infant children—one of four years old, the other of two. Before her eyes, notwithstanding her frantic efforts to save them, her children perished. Half drowned and insensible, she was dragged to land by a Serbian peasant. She made her way to Belgrade, believing, from the character of the Princess for humanity, that she would aid her. Of course to do so was out of the question.’[250]

Gustav Thoemmel, who was attached to the Austrian Consulate here, relates how the application of such tortures drove many Bosnian rayahs to desperation in 1865. No less than five hundred families took refuge across the borders from these inquisitors in the spring of that year. They were, however, turned back and forced to return to their homes in Bosnia in a most deplorable state. ‘Complaint,’ says Thoemmel, ‘about outrages of this kind are scarcely ever brought forward, since the rayah seldom obtains evidence or even hearing, and his complaining only brings down on him increased persecution. So it happens that the higher officials often remain in entire ignorance of the barbarities perpetrated by their underlings.’

It must not be supposed that the higher authorities here are altogether blind as to the evils attendant on the tithe-farming. It will hardly be believed that the present Governor-General, and his predecessor Osman Pashà, have been doing their best to remove this abuse, but were thwarted by the authorities at Stamboul, who have in recent years taken away much of the independent power of the provincial Vali, the better to suck everything into that sink of corruption. Our Consul has for years directed his energies with the same object, and acting on his representations, Lord Stratford de Redcliffe used all his influence to support the appeal of Osman Pashà. But neither our most influential ambassador nor the Turkish Governor-General of Bosnia could induce the Porte to remove the abuse. The pretext by which these representations were always eluded was that the tithe was a religious institution. The present Vali,[251] a man of more subtle genius, had, however, succeeded in drawing a distinction between this and the religious tithe, and was confident that he would be shortly permitted to abolish it, and substitute for it a land tax not farmed by middle-men. But it was already too late. The present revolts, both in Bosnia and the Herzegovina, are mainly due to the extortion of the ‘dime.’

It was on Sunday, August 15—the same day on which the great Christian pilgrimage took place on the mountain above Comušina—that the peasants of that part of Bosnia, who had been goaded to madness during the last few weeks by the exactions of the tax-gatherer (with whom this year the government, itself unable to meet its creditors, had driven a harder bargain than usual), first took up arms. From the rapidity with which the revolt spread through Lower Bosnia there seems to have been a preconcerted movement—indeed, it was previously known at Belgrade with sufficient accuracy what lines the outbreak would follow. The first movement took place near Banjaluka, where the rayah villagers rose on their extortioners and slew eight tax-gatherers. This was immediately followed by other risings extending along the Possávina to the neighbourhood of Brood and Dervent. Several of the watch-towers along this frontier were surprised, and their Turkish garrison massacred. Meanwhile, the Christian women and children are fleeing beyond the Austrian border for protection; the banks of the Save at the present moment are a piteous sight, and the forest border and willow river-hedge are crowded with these harmless fugitives, holding out their hands and entreating to be ferried over to the Slavonian shore. The news of the outbreak quite bewildered the authorities at Serajevo. The Vali, the only man capable of coping with the difficulties of the situation, had just left for the Herzegovina. Bosnia was bereft of troops, for the Seraskier at Stamboul, disregarding the earnest warnings of the Vali, had persisted in withdrawing the regulars stationed in the province till hardly any were left, and of these every available man, except those absolutely necessary for garrison duty, had now been dispatched to the Herzegovina.

Meantime, the Mahometan population of Lower Bosnia has taken the law into its own hands, and the authorities have been forced to look on and see the Mahometan volunteers, the Bashi-Bazouks—not long ago suppressed for conduct too outrageous for even the worst of governments to tolerate—spring once more into existence. Such were the ferocious warriors whose acquaintance we had made at Travnik. To-day they are streaming into Serajevo: we met a party of them defiling through the street, and the leader of the gang, as he passed, glared savagely at the Giaour. They are, from what we hear, mere organised brigands headed by irresponsible partizans, and at present are committing the wildest atrocities—cutting down women, children, and old men who come in their way, and burning the crops and homesteads of the rayah. That the defence of Bosnia should have fallen into the hands of such men is one of the most terrible features of the situation, and nothing can better show the abjectness of her present governors than that they have now consented to accept the services of these bandits—and that even the Turkish authorities are now calling them out as well as the Redìf. There seems, however, to be little authority of any sort left to the government at the seat of the insurrection in Bosnia, for the native Mahometan population, seeing itself left defenceless by its Osmanlì officials, has rudely thrust them aside, and the defensive measures are now being carried out by self-constituted committees of public safety, which have sprung up at Banjaluka, Dervent, and other towns. The artificial bureaucracy of 1851 has collapsed under the shock, and the long-restrained savagery of the old dominant caste has burst forth like a caged lion for the defence of Islâm. The marauding bands now desolating Bosnia are for the most part headed by Begs or Agas, scions of the old Bosnian nobility: the Bashi-Bazouks are simply feudal retainers following their lords. Thus, in Bosnia, the Christian outbreak has been opposed by a counter-revolution of Moslem fanaticism in close alliance with the still vital relics of Bosnian feudalism.

News of a sanguinary fight near Banjaluka, between five hundred insurgents and the Turks, has just come in. It lasted eleven hours, ‘with uncertain results’—which means favourably to the Christians. The number of the revolters at one spot, and the duration of the conflict, alike witness the seriousness of the rising. The telegraph to Brood has just been cut, but a battalion has been dispatched to keep open the communication at this important point. We further hear that the streets of Agram and Belgrade are placarded with inflammatory proclamations, calling on the Southern Sclaves to rise in defence of their brothers. Like manifestoes have appeared at Bucharest. The German Consul looks on this South-Sclavonic agitation as one of the most serious features of the present situation. As far as Serajevo is concerned, he already telegraphed three days ago to Berlin and Constantinople that there was no longer security here against any contingency.

Meanwhile, the events in the city seem to be shaping their course on the model of 1872. To-day a conjuration of about three hundred of the leading Turks took place in the great Mosque. They appeared there with arms in their hands, and swore that there was a plot against their lives! It has now oozed out that they have banded themselves together to fall with their following on the Christians of Serajevo, should the revolt break out any nearer here—as things go, a not unlikely contingency. The Christians are more alarmed than ever, and appeal to consular protection. Their apprehensions are further excited by the fact that a notorious brigand—a certain Dervish Aga—has appeared at the head of the Mahometan volunteers of this neighbourhood.

Now, it appears that even our humble selves have become the objects of fanatical suspicion. We have been already honoured by having consular reports sent to the representative of Austria regarding our motions and conduct during our tour—which reports were the subject of an official interview between that gentleman and our Consul, who endeavoured to explain it to him—with what success is doubtful—that it was not the practice of the English Government to send political agitators on secret missions to nationalities! It is now the turn of the Mahometans to suspect our intentions, and a few harmless sketches of Serajevan costumes, and a little innocent curiosity as to the wares on some of the Serajevan shop-boards, have excited such indignation in the bosoms of true believers that a deputation of forty Turks waited on the Pashà to complain of us, and entering, as it would appear, into a kind of competition which could display the most Oriental inventiveness of calumny—it has resulted in our being accused first of taking notes of the fortress, and ultimately of violating a mosque! Of course we had scrupulously avoided even approaching the portals of such a sacred edifice; and as to the fortress, we had not even visited the quarter of the town in which it stands. Mr. Freeman convinced the Pashà that these accusations were false; but it was thought better after this that we should be accompanied in our peregrinations by consular guards or cavasses, English or German.

_Aug. 23rd._—This morning the German Consul, with whom we lunched, informed us that he had just obtained an interview with the Pashà to represent to him the threatening state of affairs, and especially this new Mahometan conspiracy, and to ask what measures he intended to take to protect the Christians in the event of a disturbance. The Pashà explicitly declared that he was ready to use his troops and cannon against the first disturbers of the peace, to whatever party they belonged. The Consul is tolerably satisfied with this, and believes that the troops are sufficiently Osmanlì and obedient to official commands to be trusted not to fraternize with the native Mahometan fanatics.

We had been asked to meet the representatives of Austria and Russia, and received quite an ovation at the Consulate. The conversation turned on the Greek hierarchy of this country, and the worst that we had heard of these wolves in sheep’s clothing was more than corroborated. Perhaps the most terrible feature of the tyranny under which the Bosnian rayah groans, is that those, who should protect, betray him, and that those, to whom he looks for spiritual comfort, wring from him the last scrap of worldly belongings which has escaped the rapacity of the infidel. Amongst all the populations of modern Turkey there is only one so vile as to fawn upon the tyrants. The modern Greeks of Constantinople—the Fanariotes, let us call them—not to pollute a hallowed name—have inherited all the corruption of a corrupt empire, and added to their hereditary store. It is from these, as we have seen, that the odious class of middle-men, who farm the taxes, is chiefly recruited. It is also from these that the dignitaries of the Greek Church throughout Turkey are chosen.

The Turks have not hesitated to utilize the sleek knavery ready to their beck. It has long been a part of Turkish policy to rivet the fetters of their Sclavonic subjects by filling the high ecclesiastical offices of the Greek Church with Fanariote bishops. The office of the old Serbian metropolitans who resided at Ipek was suppressed, and Bosnia has since been divided into four eparchies[252] under the immediate control of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Eparchs needing, like the head of the Greek Church himself, an exequatur from the infidel before they can enter on their functions. The Greek Patriarch takes good care that these eparchies shall be filled by none but Fanariotes, and thus it happens that the Pravoslaves or orthodox Christians of Bosnia, who form the majority of the population,[253] are subjected to ecclesiastics, aliens in blood, in language, in sympathies, who oppress them hand in hand with the Turkish officials, and set them, often, an even worse example of moral depravity.