The Autobiography of a Journalist Volume II Part 5

Utovu was followed by a lull in military operations; but in the latter part of November, as the insurgents had beleaguered all the forts in the upper Herzegovina and the town of Niksich in the debated territory between Montenegro and Herzegovina, Shefket gathered a force of 3000 regulars, with artillery and bas.h.i.+-bazouks to escort a train of supplies to them. He was met by Lazar Soeica, the chief of that part of the mountain country, and disastrously defeated at Muratovizza, leaving behind him 760 dead, and carrying away about 900 wounded, most of whom died of their wounds, as I learned from one of the European surgeons in the Turkish service who deserted a little later, dismayed by the constant menaces of death to all Christian employees in the camp, uttered by the troops, suffering, angry, and continually worsted in the little fights. Shefket saved himself and his artillery by sending the latter to the rear as soon as the battle was at its height, and then, having posted a strong rear guard,--the insurgents having neglected to close the road behind them,--retreating with all possible speed, leaving the rear guard to be killed or taken, which it was to a man. The insurgents lost fifty-seven killed and ninety-six seriously wounded, but the result was to throw the whole upper Herzegovina into their hands, and they captured and destroyed all the small blockhouses and forts not armed with artillery. The interest now centred on the high mountain district about Niksich, where I determined to go to watch the operations. The winter was well commenced, but only in the higher districts was the snow on the ground. I returned, therefore, to Cettinje, where I was now received as a tried friend.

At the time of which I am now writing there were practically no roads in Montenegro but bridle-paths, over large stretches of which it was unsafe to ride, even the Montenegrins dismounting, whether going up or down. That pa.s.sage between Cettinje and Rieka, on the Lake of Scutari, was one of the worst I have ever found in the princ.i.p.ality. The lower part, nearing Rieka, was simply a Cyclopean stairway, with rocky steps so high that the horses had to _jump_ down from one to another. My cavalcade consisted of a Montenegrin soldier for guide, a Montenegrin student, and the horse-boy, necessary to lead the horses when, as was the case for a large part of the way, we could not ride them; and halfway down to Rieka we were overtaken by a deaf-mute porter, sent as a kind afterthought by the Prince, with a samovar and a provision of tea, sugar, etc., in view of the dearth of comforts beyond. I carried an order for shelter and such fare as was obtainable at Rieka, in the little house of the Prince at that village, and we pa.s.sed a comfortable night, but found the succeeding day the opening of one of the spells of rainy weather of which only one who has lived in the princ.i.p.ality much can know the inconvenience. To wait in the half-furnished house with no resources was worse than going out in the rain, although I had no protection other than a cape of my own manufacture, a circle of the thinnest india-rubber cloth, with a hole cut in the middle for my head, and covering my arms to the wrists.

Hoping for the rain to stop, we waited till nine A.M., when a break in the clouds flattered us into starting for Danilograd, to be caught in another downpour an hour later. The way was down a long slope, part mud and part broken rock, over which in either case we found the traveling easier on foot than on horseback, so that we did most of the way on foot while daylight lasted, the unfortunate porter between the cavalry and the infantry struggling, slipping, and moaning in his inarticulate way in great physical distress. We had continually to stop and wait for the horses to overtake us until the long descent was accomplished, by which time the twilight had come, and we found ourselves in the valley of the Suchitza, a wide waste of clay soil saturated with rain, and two hours' ride in ordinary condition of the roads from any shelter. The steady rain in which we had traveled for eight hours then became a violent thunder-storm; all the brooks and ditches by the way were over their banks, and our horses could hardly flounder under their loads through the heavy going; while we, in the darkness, could not see the road, even where it could he followed, save when the lightning flashes showed it, and so, not being able to walk, rode perforce. My horse refused a ditch a foot wide, and when we came to one I had to get off and drag by the bridle, while the horse-boy pushed from behind, till he yielded to the persuasion and ventured over. The two hours' ride became four, and the way got heavier as we went on, woodland alternating with flooded plain, in the former of which only the experience of the guide could keep the road; while in the latter we could follow it only by the telegraph wires cutting against the sky. We finally saw a light and came to a cabin, where we deposited the poor mute, with all the impedimenta, to follow by daylight; but for us there was no place to sleep, and we gave the reins to the horses, and let them flounder their way into Danilograd, where we arrived at 10 P.M., drenched to the skin and hungry.

There was a light still burning in the house of the village doctor, on whom we had an order from the Prince, and who found us a sleeping-place in the loft of a neighbor, where we got a supper of trout and maize bread, and a bundle of straw to lie on in our wet clothes. The doctor was a German, and, though he was an official, the instinct of hospitality which rules the Montenegrin did not exist in him, so he offered us the house of his neighbor. The day broke fine for our journey to the convent of Ostrog, the only bit of good weather we had until our return to Cettinje, ten days later.

Ostrog is one of the three sanctuaries of Montenegro, the others being Moratcha, on the old Servian frontier, and Piperski Celia, above the fortress of Spuz, where the valley of the Zeta then entered into the Turkish dominions. The convent is on a site of singular beauty and salubrity, on a fertile plateau several hundred feet above the valley of the Zeta, at the foot of a precipice, in the face of which is a cave enlarged into a chapel, where lies the body of St. Basil, a Herzegovinian bishop of the early days of the Turkish conquest, who did his Christian duty by the scattered Orthodox Christians in Herzegovina and Montenegro, visiting stealthily and at the constant risk of his life the little groups of the faithful over a territory vast for the supervision of one man. He died in this refuge, and was buried at the foot of the cliff; but on an attempt being made to remove the body some years later, it was found to be uncorrupted, upon which he was canonized, and the body was placed in a fine coffin and removed to the little chapel, which has a single window also rock-cut and is only to be approached by a narrow stairway of the same structure. Outside, at the foot of the cliff, is the convent, in which reside two or three priests and as many _kalogheri_, const.i.tuting the community, for the convents of the Orthodox church are not communities of idle devotees, but of men who are mostly engaged in the culture of the land belonging to the convent, when not engaged in the performance of the rites of the church. The hegumenos I found to be more a man of war than one of ritual, and really the commander of an outpost of observation on the frontier towards Niksich. He delighted more in arms than in the ma.s.s, and I made a firm friend of him by the gift of a small Colt's revolver. I was permitted to see the body of St. Basil in the chapel, which was filled with a fragrance like that of cedar wood, which I navely attributed to the wood of the coffin, when the attendant protested with indignation that what I smelled was the odor of sanct.i.ty. I was incompetent to distinguish it. St. Basil is held in great reverence for his miracles, and immense numbers of pilgrims come to his annual festa with their sick from all the country round, even Mussulman families from Albania paying their devotions in the hope and faith of cures, and it is said that many miracles take place every year.

In this hermitage Mirko, the father of the Prince, in company with thirty-two of his voivodes, was once besieged by a large body of Turks, but repelled all attacks for nineteen days, with the loss of only two men, killed by shots which pa.s.sed through the window. One of the garrison descended by a rope to bury one of the dead, and, this accomplished, made his way by night through the Turkish army and carried the news of the siege to Danilo, then the reigning prince, who raised an army and dispersed the Turkish forces. During the siege, two parties of Mussulmans, mistaking each other for relief parties of Christians, attacked each other with great slaughter, an event which was considered to be the effect of the intervention of St. Basil.

The hegumenos strongly opposed my attempt to penetrate to Niksich, a.s.suring me that the plain was so infested by bands of Turks that it was to the last degree unsafe to travel on the road, the truth being that the city was beleaguered by Montenegrin bands, a fact which he desired to conceal. This, I was convinced, was the real reason of his opposition; but, to strengthen his argument, the rain, which had lifted for the one day of the journey from Danilograd, changed into snow in the mountains, and made the attempt impossible. We waited several days at the convent, and, as the rain and snow were insistent, and Niksich too difficult of access, I decided to turn the other way and go to Scutari by land. Returning to Danilograd, I learned that this was practically impossible, the road beyond Podgoritza being not only dangerous for persons, but impracticable for beasts, as the country was under water. No Montenegrin would venture into the Turkish territory with the certainty of incurring decapitation,--if not in my company, at any rate on his return without me; so, on consultation with the sirdar in command at Danilograd, I sent back to Cettinje the horses we had come with, and hired those of a rayah of Podgoritza who had come to market at Danilograd, intending to go to Podgoritza, where we should hire other horses to Plamnitza, on the lake sh.o.r.e, whence we could proceed by water to Scutari. I telegraphed the Prince to send his steam launch to meet me at Plamnitza; and, as my interpreter, the Montenegrin student, determined to run the risks of decapitation and go with me, I imposed on him a European costume, took away his revolver as a safeguard against dangerous excitement, put him under severe charge not to show that he understood the Serb language, and started in a pouring rain.

The road to Spuz was unique. Now that Montenegro has entered into possession of the region, there is a carriage road, but the ancient one was a pavement of the days of Dushan which now ran along the top of a ridge like a hog-back in the middle of the road, on each side of which the track had been worn down by travel until the original road was as high as the backs of our horses above the actual track each side of it. At the gate of Spuz we were stopped and our pa.s.sports were demanded. Mine had been visaed at Ragusa for Mostar, and Gosdanovich had the Russian pa.s.sport, which is freely accorded to all Montenegrins. The sentinel could read neither, and sent them to the konak with a demand for instructions. Meanwhile the guard turned out to laugh at us sitting on our market horses in the pouring rain, our saddles being only blankets fastened on the pack saddles, on which we were perched high, the rain pouring off from every extremity of our costumes. The messenger brought word to send us to the police office, and there we went.

A binbas.h.i.+, grave, polite, and curious, invited us to be seated and ordered coffee. He could speak only Turkish, and I tried English, French, and Italian in vain, when a bright Albanian lieutenant standing by made a remark in Romaic, and for the needs of the case I caught on. He knew much less Romaic than I, but I could make him understand that I was the correspondent of an English journal going to Scutari, etc., etc. Gosdanovich played his part well, and was as stolid as an ox, though the conversation, which he understood, between the Mussulman Serbs present was not at all cheering. "Bah!" said one of the secretaries who sat writing on the mat beside the bimbas.h.i.+, "I can kill twenty such men as that with a stick, and should like to do it--such rubbish as they are--I should like to send them all to the devil." "So should I," replied the other. Then one of them suggested that, though I was evidently a stranger, he felt sure he had seen Gosdanovich in Cettinje. "Impossible!" replied the other; "no Montenegrin would dare to come here now." Finally came the doctor, an Italian, and we had an excursion into general politics, after which another coffee and cigarette, and then, with the visa of the bimbas.h.i.+, we were permitted to move on to Podgoritza.

We had no further adventure on the road, and early in the afternoon arrived at Podgoritza, an ancient Servian city, much dilapidated and very picturesque, taking lodgings at an inn kept by a Christian, a rather creditable establishment but absolutely empty of guests. We waited half an hour for the food and fire I ordered (for we were wet and fasting), when my guide returned and said that there were no lodgings there, but that the chief of police would provide us, and that we were to accompany him to the police office. There we were allowed to dry ourselves over a huge brazier full of glowing coals, while the zapties cleaned out the adjoining room, a closet about ten by fourteen feet, in which the dust of years lay acc.u.mulated and to all appearance undisturbed. This was simply a cell in the police prison, and there we ate what the _miralai_ saw fit to order for us. Our pa.s.sports were again examined and discussed, and we were reexamined as to our whence and whither and wherefore by the aid of two or three Catholic Albanians of the vicinity, who did what they could to find out if we had any secret business, professing to be themselves the victims of the oppression of the Turks, and sympathizing with us. They did not draw me, however, and I professed no anxiety as to my treatment.

The miralai finally gave over his search for hostile motive in our visit, and we discussed the programme for the morrow. I found that there was a healthy fear of the Prince of Montenegro, for, when I told him that the Prince's little steamer would be waiting for me at Plamnitza the next day at noon, the whole circle broke out in wonder if it could be true that the Prince took so much interest in us, for if so, they must be prudent. We had the interesting advantage in that Gosdanovich understood all that they said as they talked Serb to each other, for they were a mixed company, and mostly of that race, and they supposed that he was a Russian and I an Englishman, and that both of us were ignorant of their language. If, they finally agreed, the Prince of Montenegro would send his steamer for me, I must be a person of greater distinction than they thought me, and they must be careful.

So the miralai called the chief of the zapties, and in our presence gave him his charge, viz., to escort us to Plamnitza, leaving by early light, and, if the steamer did not come for us, to bring us back to the prison he took us from, and to kill us on the spot if we attempted to escape. And so to sleep, as far as the crowing of many c.o.c.ks outside and the activity of mult.i.tudinous fleas within would permit; and to make sure of us, we were locked in--fairly at last in a Turkish prison.

The morning broke with the rain pouring in torrents. I had tried to buy a pair of shoes before going to sleep, but they brought me a pair for a boy of twelve and a.s.sured me that there were no others in the town, and those I had come with were in tatters which were hardly to be kept on my feet. The mud was indescribable,--the entire country flooded, and all the bridges across a river we must pa.s.s carried away, except one over a narrow gorge where the rocks approached so closely that a couple of logs reached from side to side, and over these the horses must be led. To say that I was at ease on this trip would be exaggeration, the more as the zaptie-bimbas.h.i.+ talked freely to his subordinate about us, and vented his rage at being obliged to make such a journey for two beastly infidels, to whom the only grateful service he could render was decapitation. However, we reached the lake, to find the steamer waiting, tied to the top of one of the largest oaks a half mile from the actual sh.o.r.e, for the country was so inundated that we floated over entire villages as we boated out to it. I delighted the heart of the bimbas.h.i.+ by a baksheesh of half a napoleon, which so astonished him that he hardly knew how to express himself, after all his bitter words and unkind intentions. I was later convinced that if the Turkish authorities had known who I was,--their old enemy in Crete,--we should not have come out alive from Podgoritza. In fact, when Danish Effendi at Ragusa heard that I had been put in prison in Albania he exclaimed, "If I had been there it is not only a night in prison he would have had, but a file of soldiers at daylight."

Our steamer had come, however, not to carry me to Scutari, but, and perhaps fortunately, to take me back to Rieka, whence I had to go to Cettinje to get a refit, for I was ragged, bootless as my errand to Scutari, and draggled with mud from head to foot; notwithstanding which, as soon as the Prince had learned of my arrival, though in the midst of a diplomatic dinner, he sent for me to come to the palace, and made me sit down with the company as I was and tell my story. I had to wait a few days for the voyage to Scutari, profiting by the occasion of the return of some engineers and the French consul at that place. We found the town flooded, a fisherman by the side of one of the streets showing us a fine string of fish which he had caught in the roadside ditch. Decay, neglect, and utter demoralization were written large on the general aspect of the capital of one of the most important of the provinces of the Turkish Empire in Europe, i.e.

important to Turkey. The magnificent country around Scutari for miles on miles square--most fertile ground, producing, beside wheat, the finest tobacco known for cigarettes generally sold as of Cavalla (and how many nervous hours I have soothed with it during these campaigns), and enormous crops of maize--lies a large part of the time every year under water, as I had found it, for the sole reason that the Drin, which ought to empty into the sea below the Boyana (the outlet of the Lake of Scutari, the Moratcha, etc.), has built a bar by its floods and abandoned its proper course, emptying into the lake a flood which the Boyana is incapable of managing.

The fortress was a relic of Dushan, little mended by the Turk, and had been three times struck by lightning, the magazine each time exploding (once while I was in Montenegro), only because the Turkish government, in putting up the lightning-rod and finding the supply of rod short, had pieced it out with telegraph wire. The body of the rod had fulfilled its destiny in attracting the lightning, while the telegraph wire, not being able to carry the load brought to it, had discharged it into the magazine. And, when I saw it, the wire was still inviting another disaster. I found in Eshref Pasha a most interesting and amiable personage, out of his place completely in the management of a turbulent and really hostile Christian population, with whom his very best qualities were a disqualification. Eshref was a poet, a dreamer, and, I was told, the second man of letters in the empire. He laughingly asked me if I had been at Podgoritza, and I as good-humoredly replied that I had not come to complain of my treatment there, but to pay my compliments to a fellow man of letters. His broad, good-natured face lighted up with pleasure, and, dropping politics and fighting, we talked poetry and letters. Secretaries and messengers were coming and going with papers to be signed, or orders to be given, and we could talk only by interludes. I remarked that he must have little time for letters in all this complication of cares, and he replied that "poetry was his refuge in the night when he was unable to sleep; he had no other time." I tried to get a sample of his verse, and he recited me one, of which I could judge only by the sound, which was very musical; but to my urging for a copy for publication in England he objected that translators were not good for the reputation of a poet, which we all know. I a.s.sured him of the entire competence of literary London to render him the completest justice, and he finally yielded in the spirit to my solicitations, but put them to the rout in the letter; for, though he promised the script for the next morning, it never came. It is curious that Eshref fell through his good faith, for when, a few months later, the Porte issued an irade asking for indication of the reforms needed in the provinces, he replied by calling the population to formulate their wants, which they did, asking for the reopening of the Drin so as to facilitate the draining of the Lake of Scutari, the making of roads and a railway from Scutari to Antivari on the seacoast. The Porte, unaccustomed to be taken at its word, recalled the poet, who shared the fate of his great predecessor Ovid.

CHAPTER XXIX

WAR CORRESPONDENCE AT RAGUSA

The splendid victory of Muratovizza led to the recall of our old enemy Shefket Pasha, who was sent to Bulgaria and replaced in the Herzegovina by a more competent and humane man, an old friend of Cretan days, Raouf Pasha, one of the most competent and liberal Circa.s.sian officers in the service of the Sultan. Of the operations which followed I have no direct cognizance, and I am not writing the history of the war, except as it mingles with my own experiences.

The lull that followed the change of command left me time to study Montenegro and its people, and I made many friends. The battle at Muratovizza had developed a quarrel between Socica, who commanded there with a most distinguished ability, and old Peko Pavlovich, who had refused his cooperation in the battle, to the great diminution of the consequences of the victory. Peko had now come to follow the suggestions of the Russian consulate at Ragusa, from which his fortunate rival would accept no indications. The Russian Slavonic committees had begun to work, and their contributions and influence, more than the direct action of their government, gradually brought the whole movement under Russian influence. I noticed here again what had happened in Crete, that the Russian agents, profiting by the irresponsibility which must always be the accompaniment of a despotic government so extensive as that of Russia, acted without orders and on their own inspiration, sometimes with disastrous results. The personal rivalry between Derche and his Russian colleague in the beginnings of the Cretan troubles had, I have no doubt, a much greater influence on the event of all the negotiations than any desire of the Russian government to provoke an insurrection, and so here the feuds that arose between the agents of the Slavonic committees and the consulate at Ragusa no doubt refracted the intentions of the authorities at St.

Petersburg more than was suspected.

There is no doubt that Jonine, on his own responsibility and in opposition to the wishes of the Czar, did what he could to stimulate the movement in Herzegovina, and that this was the tendency of all the Russian agents in the Balkans. Of this I had many opportunities of a.s.suring myself, and, as I sympathized in that feeling, I had no difficulty in finding it where it existed. Those agents systematically provoked hostility to Turkey, which was natural and consistent with the good of the people, for the Turkish abuses are incurable and always merit rebellion, but also against Austria, which was unjust and aggravated the trouble of the rayahs needlessly. The Slavonic committees in Russia, too, went far beyond the desire of the government, and there were continual rivalries between them and the consular agents, the latter feeling obliged to outbid the committees to keep their influence. They had, generally, the mania of activity and zeal, and commonly went beyond their orders, trusting that if the luck followed them they would be approved, and if it deserted them they would find protection in the surroundings of the throne, as they generally did, activity in the Slavonic cause covering many sins against discipline. During the lull after the defeat of Servia (to antic.i.p.ate a little the course of my narrative), I made the acquaintance of the Russian General Tcherniaieff at an English watering-place. We became great friends, for personally I have always liked the Russians, and he told me with no little glee how he had outwitted the Czar, who, learning that he intended to go to Herzegovina to fight, called him and made him swear that he would not go to "fight with those brigands, the Herzegovinians." He swore, and then went, evading the surveillance of the police and with a false pa.s.sport, to Belgrade, where he gave himself to inciting the Servians to war, and, when Servia declared war the following spring, he commanded the army. So he never came to Herzegovina or to Montenegro, and he was personally hostile to the Prince, as I found most Russian officers to be. But he a.s.sured me that the Czar was bitterly opposed to the movement, and that if it had been suspected that he was going to the Balkans he would have been arrested. The prudence of the Czar is always in danger of being nullified by the imprudence of his agents.

The pressure of the Turkish government on Montenegro became severe, and the Prince, in the failure of Servia to respond to the Montenegrin proposals to fight it out, was unwilling to take the responsibility of a war. But the Sultan inclined to war so strongly that Raouf Pasha, who advised him that his army was not prepared for it, was recalled, partly on account of that advice, and partly because he declared that the insurrection was to a great extent justified by the bad government of Bosnia, and was replaced by Achmet Mukhtar, later the Ghazi, who came breathing flames and extermination. The bands of Montenegrins were ordered to leave the frontier of the princ.i.p.ality, and came down to the vicinity of Ragusa; and as the interest at Cettinje diminished I followed the war. The winter set in with great and unremembered rigor, the refugees suffered the greatest misery, and many of the Turkish troops in the high mountain country died of exposure. I saw deserters at Ragusa who declared that there would be very general desertion were it not that the troops were a.s.sured, and believed, that, if they deserted, the Austrian authorities would certainly send them back to their regiments.

Before this the "Times" had come to the conclusion that the movement had come to stay awhile, and I was informed that I should be henceforward placed in the position of its special correspondent. As I had thoroughly mastered the field and enjoyed the confidence and friends.h.i.+p of the Prince, I had, as long as the war lasted, no rival on the English press. The suffering amongst the families of the Herzegovinians, exiled almost _en ma.s.se_ into Dalmatia and Montenegro, was very great; but the influence of the letters which appeared in the "Times" produced a wide and happy charitable movement, and I received at Ragusa supplies of money and clothing, which made the wretched Christians bless England continually. I had a sharp attack of bronchitis from the absolute impossibility of finding quarters where I could do my work in a tolerable comfort; for the usual mildness of the climate of Dalmatia leaves every house unprovided for the cold, which that winter was unprecedentedly severe. I used to sit at my writing-table wrapped in all the blankets I could keep on me.

Fireplaces seemed to be unknown.

On the Greek Christmas (January 6) I met at the house of Colonel Monteverde, the agent of the Russian committees, a number of the insurgent chiefs who had come in for a consultation, the forces of the insurrection having separated into two general commands in consequence of the quarrel between Peko and Socica. Socica remained in supreme command in the mountainous Piva district, now buried under the snow, and Peko took the direction in the lower country, and established himself at the old camp at Grebci, driving Ljubibratich and his Herzegovinians out of the field. Peko had then a force of about 1500 men, and Mukhtar did not attempt an attack, but, having made a military promenade through the lower Herzegovina, went back to Mostar and into comfortable winter quarters. Peko took position astride the road from Ragusa to Trebinje, and held the latter place effectually blockaded. A provision train was about to leave Ragusa, and a force of five battalions of Turkish regulars, with 400 irregulars and six guns, was sent from Trebinje as escort. A force of two companies was posted on two hills commanding the road about midway, and, though Peko had decided to wait for the train, he, being a natural strategist, saw that this force must be disposed of to give him a clear field. He accordingly attacked the main body and drove it back to Trebinje with a loss of 250 men (counted by the noses brought in). He then put a cordon around the posts on the hills, lest the men should escape in the night, and, having prepared for an a.s.sault the next morning, sent us word to join him. He promised to send us horses for the journey at daylight, and we went to the rendezvous breakfastless, not to lose time, but he forgot us, and, after waiting for the horses till past 8 A.M., we set out on foot.

The snow lay a few inches deep, but the sun had come out strong, and it was melted in patches, so that we stepped alternately in mud and in snow, slipping and picking our way in the best haste we might until 2 P.M., when we arrived at Vukovich, a tiny village where Peko had his headquarters for the moment, the entire population having taken refuge across the frontier. Here the Russians had established an ambulance, and we found the wounded coming in, and some young Russian medical students dressing the wounds. We could hear the firing, and the echoes of it rolling around the hills, and even the shouting of the chiefs in the, to us, inarticulate insults to the enemy and encouragement to their own men. One of the surgeons took his rifle and offered himself as guide to the battlefield.

Vukovich is in a deep hollow, and, as we rose on the ridge that separated it from the higher land on which the fight was going on, a rifle ball sung over my head and went on into the village. Others followed, some plunging into the earth near us, and some striking the rocks. We were just in the range of the insurgents, who were fighting up hill on the farther side of the hill, round the summit of which was the circle of breastworks held by the doomed Turkish force, and the bullets of the a.s.sailants ranged over to us. It was my first experience under a prolonged fire, though not of being fired at, and I must admit that it put me in a terrible funk. I put the largest Montenegrin of the group which accompanied us between myself and the firing party. I had not eaten a crumb since the day before, or taken even a cup of coffee, and my legs were in cramp from the hard walking for six hours in mud and snow, and I was ready to drop from fatigue and hunger. One of the chiefs who came by on his way to the ambulance, where the ghastly procession of wounded was now coming in, seeing me pale and exhausted, offered me his flask of slievovits (plum brandy), of which I drank a half-tumbler raw. The effect was marvelous, and enabled me clearly to understand the meaning of the familiar term "Dutch courage," so that I watched from afar the fight to the end without a return of funk.

The Turks were entrenched within a double line of stone wall, concentric, and the insurgents were fighting upwards, and when we came on the scene the fighting was still at the lower wall. Presently there was a more rapid firing, then a moment's lull, and then the firing broke out again from the upper breastwork. The insurgents had charged and carried the lower line and reversed it, and the poor Turks surviving were driven into the inner circle of about a hundred feet in diameter, out of which not one could hope to come alive. The rest of the garrison of Trebinje were so cowed by the result of the fighting the day before that they dared not come out to the relief of their comrades.

And so the night fell on us, and the bands returned to their camp, leaving a cordon to pen in the few remaining Turks. We had many wounded, and a few killed, amongst whom was Maxime Bacevich, voivode of Baniani, and a cousin of the Prince of Montenegro, one of the bravest of the brave, whose death was moaned over by all as we gathered together that night in the large hut that served as headquarters. It was a stone cabin of one room, at one end the stall for the cattle, and in the centre a fireplace, the smoke from which went out by a hole in the roof. Three sides of the room were surrounded by a stone platform, wide enough for the tallest man to lie with his feet to the fire; but there was no furniture, not even a bundle of straw. This was the bed of fifty men, lying side by side on the bare stone, my pillow being my felt hat, and my bedding my overcoat. The fire was hot, and the smell indescribable,--fifty pairs of dirty feet, and the bodies of fifty men, most of whom had not washed for a month, with the cattle stall at the end,--that was our lodging; but, tired as I was, I slept. At daylight the scouts came in to tell us that in the night the little body of Turks had escaped, probably through a sleeping cordon, and scattered up and down along the road between Ragusa and Trebinje, the most of them having been caught and killed as they ran. There was no mercy in this war, and a man who was left behind was a dead man. One of the fugitives had nearly reached Trebinje when he was met in the way by a Herzegovinian, of whom he begged for quarter in the usual Turkish form, "aman"

(mercy), to which the Herzegovinian replied "taman" (enough), and cut him down.

A week or more elapsed before Mukhtar Pasha, hurrying from Mostar, could concentrate troops enough to clear the road and provision Trebinje, and then he succeeded only by the most infantile blunders on the part of the Christian forces. From that time until the spring there was a succession of isolated conflicts with no connection, the Turks attempting to provision the little fortresses in the mountains, and the insurgents to damage the Turks as much as opportunity permitted. The powers were by this time thoroughly aroused, and the Austrian intervention followed. Baron Rodich, the governor of Dalmatia, called a conference of the insurgent chiefs at Sutorina to arrange a pacification. I went to see Rodich, a shrewd, precise functionary, liberal, as far as one could well be in his position, and I saw at once that, while he was determined to obey his orders, and urge a pacification because it was in accordance with his orders, he had no faith in success, and had a great sympathy with the insurgents.

He was peremptory, and had a soldier-like aversion to special correspondents; but he was very just, and might have done much had the situation admitted any other result than the fighting it out.

The Turks would make no concession and admit no reverse, and the insurgents, having been victorious in three out of four combats, and having brought the Turkish forces into the most desperate demoralization (as I was able to learn by the Turkish deserters who came daily into Ragusa), were not in the least disposed to relinquish the hold on the position they had won. In the rude shelter obtainable within the Austrian territory there were thousands of women, children, and wounded men, supported by the charity of Europe, now largely excited, leaving the active insurgents free for their operations.

At Ragusa I watched the course of events with informants in every part of the field of action, having become by this time regarded as the unflinching friend of the insurrection, to whom all good Slavs were under obligation of service. I then made the acquaintance and acquired the friends.h.i.+p of that admirable diplomat whose subsequent career and mine have repeatedly crossed each other, Sir Edward Monson, then diplomatic agent at Ragusa, and of a brave and good soldier, the Austrian commander, General Ivanovich, of whom and of whose excellent family I have the most delightful recollections, and whose society during all the time I remained in Ragusa was my sole social refuge from the wretched life of a special correspondent in half-civilized regions. It was a poetic and attractive household, and the light of it, the beauty of Madame Ivanovich and her two daughters, and the serenity which fell on me when I entered it, remain in my memory as the sunny oasis in the life of that period. Then, too, I made the acquaintance of an eminent scholar who was to be for many years after the stanchest of friends and allies, Professor Freeman, the great historian, but greater humanitarian, whose too early death I still feel to be my great personal loss. He had two companions, of whom one was Lord Morley, who had come to Ragusa to see what there was in the affair of the Herzegovina; and to their impressions was no doubt due much of the weight given to the "Times" reports subsequently.

Between fruitless negotiations, attempts to delude the insurgents by insincere promises, and the greatest efforts on the part of my _soi-disant_ friend, Danish Effendi, to win over the body of correspondents by this time collected at Ragusa (he told me in so many words that he had informed the Turkish government that my pen was worth 40,000 francs to it), the rest of the winter pa.s.sed away quietly. It was evident that war would be declared in the spring between the princ.i.p.alities and Turkey, and I went home thoroughly worn out and ill. I went by the way of Venice, and had my first sight of the city coming in at early morning from Trieste by steamer.

Accustomed as I had been to the color of Turner as the aspect of the Grand Ca.n.a.l, it seemed to me that what I saw from the steamer was the ghost of Venice, pallid, wan, faded to tints which were only the suggestion of Turner's, but still lovely in their fading, and the impression was more pathetic than it would have been with all the glow of the great Englishman's palette. My wife met me at the steamer, and we went home by short stages, for I was too weak to bear a long railway journey.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE WAR OF 1876

I returned to Montenegro in the following June, after the diplomacy of Europe had vainly and discordantly discussed mediation all the winter.

An armistice had suspended hostilities, but the Turks continued the concentration of troops on the frontiers of the princ.i.p.ality, north and south, and refused the conditions of the Prince for a peaceful solution. Everything waited for the acceptance by Servia of the programme for the war which was to be declared by the princ.i.p.alities against Turkey. The official declaration of war took place on the 2d of July, and on the 3d the Prince set out with flying banners for the conquest of the Herzegovina. My orders being to remain in touch with the telegraph, I had to resign the pleasure of the campaign, and I pa.s.sed the time in studying up accessories. The Prince started directly for Mostar, accompanied by the Austrian military attache, Colonel Thoemel, one of the most intensely anti-Montenegrin Austrian officials I ever met. If the Austrian government had intended to inflict on the Prince the most humiliating censor in its service, and make the relations between the governments as bad as possible, they could not have chosen an agent more effective than Thoemel. In his hatred of Montenegro and enjoyment of the _fort.i.ter in re_, he entirely threw off the _suaviter in modo_. He enjoyed intensely every petty humiliation he could inflict on the Prince, who, with the greatest tact, never noticed his rudeness. The maintenance of good relations with Austria tasked the Prince's diplomacy to the utmost. As I saw nothing of the campaign, I will dispose of it by saying that, when the Prince had nearly reached Mostar, the colonel informed him officially that if he took Mostar he would be driven out of it by the Austrian army, and, after a slight skirmish on the hills commanding the city, the Prince took the road towards Trebinje. Meanwhile the operations on the southern frontier, under the direction of the amiable and competent Bozo Petrovich, remained for my observation.

One of the chiefs of clans who were waiting at Cettinje for the plan of the southern campaign was Marko Millianoff, hereditary chief of the Kutchi, an independent Slav tribe on the borders of Albania, generally allied in the frontier operations with the Montenegrins. The Turks desired particularly to subdue this people in the outset of the campaign, as their territory commanded the upper road from Podgoritza to Danilograd, and hostilities commenced with an attack on them. While waiting I made the acquaintance of Marko, whom I found to be one of the most interesting characters I met in Montenegro. His courage and resource in stratagem were proverbial in the princ.i.p.ality. I had a capital Ross field-gla.s.s, and amused him one day by showing its powers. He had never seen a telescope before, and his delight over it was childlike. "Why," he exclaimed in rapture, "this is worth a thousand men." "Then take it," I said, "and I hope it will prove worth a thousand men." His force of 2500 men was then blockading the little fortress of Medun, a remotely detached item of the defensive system of Podgoritza, and on the next day he set out for his post.

I saw him some months later, and he told me that when the great sortie from Podgoritza to relieve Medun came in view of the blockading force, though at a distance of several miles, his men declared that they could not fight that immense army, which filled the valley with its numbers and had the appearance of a force many times greater than their own. Marko looked at it through the gla.s.s and found it to be mainly a provision train, for Medun was on the verge of starvation, the garrison having "shaken out the last grain of rice from their bags," to use the expression of the moment. When Marko's men found the actual number of fighting men in the Turkish sortie, they decided to fight it out. They didn't mind ten to one, they said, but much more than that had appeared to confront them. The Turks, commanded by Mahmoud Pasha, a good Hungarian general, were about 20,000 men,--as I afterwards learned from various sources, including the English consulate at Scutari,--comprising 7000 Zebeks, barbarians from the country back of Smyrna, accustomed to the yataghan, and supposed to be qualified opponents of the Montenegrins in the employment of the cold steel. Marko fought retreating from the morning until about 2 P.M., when the Turks stopped to eat, having driven the Montenegrin force back and toward Medun about three miles. When the Turks had eaten and began to smoke, Millianoff gave the word to charge; and though the Turks had built thirteen breastworks to fall back on as they advanced, they yielded to the vigorous a.s.sault of the first line, and the Montenegrins swept through the whole series with a rush, not permitting the Turks to form again or gather behind one, and drove those who escaped under the walls of Podgoritza, leaving 4700 dead on the way, for no prisoners were taken. Millianoff said, when I saw him again, "Your gla.s.s saved us the battle," which was virtually the preservation of the independence of the tribe, and possibly the decision of the campaign on that side. The fortress was obliged, a little later, to surrender, and in the subsequent siege of Niksich the artillery taken at Medun served a very good purpose, being heavier than anything the Montenegrins had.

I had secured for correspondent with the Prince the services of his Swiss secretary, an excellent fellow by the name of Duby; and, as all the interest of the war for the moment lay in the campaign of the Prince against Mostar and its consequences, I arranged to have my news at Ragusa by telegraph, and there I went for the time being. On the 28th of July I received at 11 P.M. the news of the battle of Vucidol, in which the army of Mukhtar Pasha was routed and nearly destroyed, Mukhtar himself barely escaping by the speed of his horse, entering the gate of Bilek only a hundred yards in advance of his foremost pursuer, his wounded horse falling in the gateway. Of his two brigadiers, one, Selim Pasha, a most competent and prudent general, was killed, and the other, Osman Pasha, the Circa.s.sian, taken prisoner. He lost all his artillery, and thirteen out of twenty-five battalions of regulars, two hundred prisoners being taken; but while these were _en route_ to Cettinje they became alarmed and showed a disposition to be refractory, and were put to death at once by the escort. The ways of warfare in those parts were, in spite of all the orders of the Prince, utterly uncivilized, the Montenegrin wounded being always put to death if they fell into the hands of the enemy, and no quarter being given in battle by the Montenegrins, though Turks who surrendered in a siege were kept as prisoners during the war. I had seen Mukhtar at Ragusa during the conference at the time of the armistice, and he bore out in his personal appearance the description which Osman Pasha gave of him,--dreamy, fanatical, ascetic, who gave his confidence to no one, and who said, when Selim proposed a council of war before Vucidol, "If my fez knew what was in my head I would burn it," and refused to listen to the cautionary measures Selim advised preliminary to the attack. The ascetic and the fanatic was written in his face. Returning to Cettinje, I found Osman there a prisoner on parole, and at my intercession he was permitted to accompany me to Ragusa, where I returned after a few days, life in Montenegro being intolerably dull except during the fighting.

The next movement on the part of the Turks, which was expected to be one by Dervish Pasha, from the base of Podgoritza towards Cettinje, called me into the field again. We took position along the heights of Koumani, on the verge of the great table-land which intervenes between Rieka and Danilograd, and from which we could see the Turkish camps spread out on the plain below us; and if the Turks had but known where we were, they might have thrown their sh.e.l.ls from the blockhouses in the plain into our camp. There was no attack for the moment, and the scouts of the Montenegrins used to amuse themselves by arousing the Turkish camps in the night or by stealing the horses and mules from the guards set over them. A band of seven stole, during this suspension of operations, forty horses and brought them into the camp, and one, more cunning and light-footed than the rest, stole the pasha's favorite horse from the tent where he was guarded by two soldiers sleeping at the entrance, and brought him to the Prince at Koumani. He had to take the precaution of wrapping the creature's hoofs in rags before bringing him out of the tent. When the object was to stir the Turks out of their rest, a half-dozen men would crawl up to the stone wall which they invariably threw up around the camp, and lay their rifles on it, for there was never a sentry set, and fire rapidly into the tents as many shots as they could before rousing the camp, and then scatter and run. The whole battalion would turn out and continue firing in every direction over the country for half an hour, while the artillery, as soon as the guns could be manned, followed the example, and almost every night we were roused from our sleep by the booming of the guns.

The early collapse of the Servian defense led, after some negotiations, to a truce, and diplomacy took up the matter, and in September I went home again. The "Times" correspondence had given the Montenegrin question serious importance in England, and during the winter I had several opportunities to discuss it with men of influence, amongst whom were Gladstone and the Marquis of Bath, who invited me to pa.s.s some days at Longleat to inform him more completely on it. During my last stay in Montenegro I had been informed by Miss Irby--one of the women who distinguish their English race by their angelic charity and works for humanity, and who, being engaged in benevolent work in Bosnia, became one of my firm allies--that reports had been put in circulation in London against my probity and the trustworthiness of my correspondence, imputing to me indeed a conduct which would have excluded me from honorable society. This was the work of the pro-Turkish party, enraged by the sympathy evoked by my correspondence on behalf of the Montenegrins, and Sir Henry Elliott had made himself the mouthpiece of it. Mr. Gladstone, having become warmly interested in the little mountain princ.i.p.ality by my correspondence, had taken its case up in a strong review article, and had persuaded Tennyson to devote a sonnet to it. He was, as he himself informed me, warned by Sir Henry Elliott not to trust to my letters or to employ them as authority for his work, for Sir Henry said that I was considered in the Levant, where I was well known, to be an infamous and untrustworthy character. Mr. Gladstone, therefore, though he used my facts, referred them to the authority of a second-hand version. Fortunately for me and my work, Professor Freeman had heard the reports in question, and knowing me personally, and taking the pa.s.sionate interest he did in the war against the Turks, applied himself to the investigation of the tales, and satisfied himself and Gladstone that they were simple libels, without a shadow of foundation, and even had never been heard of until they were promulgated in London. They were the coinage of political pa.s.sion.

Gladstone sent me word through Freeman that he wished me to call on him to receive personally his apologies for having believed and been influenced by them, and I went to see him as he requested for that purpose. He told me at the same time that though he did not usually read the "Times," he had taken it to read my letters. He asked me many questions about the princ.i.p.ality, showing his great interest, as well as his political ac.u.men, and amongst the questions was one which, at the time, gave me great thought, and still retains its significance.

It was, "Have the Montenegrins any inst.i.tutions on which a national future can be built?" He was desirous of knowing if Montenegro could be made the nucleus of a great south Slavonic organization. I was unable to give him any a.s.surance of the existence of anything beyond the primitive and patriarchal state which fitted its present position, in which a personal government by a wise prince is sufficient to reach all the needs of the population. And to-day I am of the opinion that a greatly enlarged Montenegro would run the danger of becoming a little Russia, in which the best ruler would be lost in the intricacies of the intrigues and personal ambitions that facilitate corruption and injustice, and where the worst ruler might easily become a curse to all his neighbors. Gladstone's good-will had its issue later in the enforced rest.i.tution to Montenegro of the district of Antivari and Dulcigno, which the Montenegrin army had taken, but evacuated, pending the disposition of the congress which after S. Stefano regulated the treaty of peace.

Lord Bath, beside the political question, was interested in the religious situation of the princ.i.p.ality, which has maintained its national existence and character through its form of ecclesiastical organization, that of the Orthodox faith. He had sent me on two occasions considerable sums of money for the wounded and the families of the killed in the war, and always took a vivid interest in its fortunes. He repeated to me a conversation he had had at Longleat with Beaconsfield, in which he had asked the minister what interest England had in Montenegro that induced the government to give it aid and countenance, as it did after a certain stage in the war. Beaconsfield had replied that "England had no interest whatever in Montenegro, but that the letters in the 'Times' had created such an enthusiasm for the princ.i.p.ality that the government had been obliged to take it into account." The Prince was fully informed on this score, and he and all his people recognized the debt they owed the "Times," and, as an exception to all my political experience, they have shown themselves a grateful people, and Prince as well as people have always shown their grat.i.tude in all ways that I could permit. The Greeks almost unanimously became hostile to me when I became the advocate of a Slavonic emanc.i.p.ation, and of the h.e.l.lenic friends I made while in Crete, Tricoupi alone of men of rank remained my personal friend after the Montenegrin campaigns.

Amongst the Russian fellow campaigners there were several with whom I contracted friends.h.i.+ps which endure, chief among them being Wa.s.siltchikoff, the head of the Red Cross staff, who was also dispenser of the bountiful contributions of the Russian committees for the wounded and the families of the killed. I must confess a strong liking for the Russian individual, and I have hardly known a Russian whom I did not take to, in spite of a looseness in matters of veracity in which they are so unlike the Anglo-Saxon in general. I think that the time is coming when the evolution of the Russian character will make the race the dominant one in Europe; and that, when the vices inherent in a people governed despotically have been outgrown, they will develop a magnificent civilization, which, in poetry, in music, and in art, even, may distance the West of to-day. But in the crude and maleficent despotic form of government which now obtains, they are likely to menace for a long time the well-being of the world.

The struggle between the German and the Slav, however long it may be postponed, is inevitable, and the defeat of the German secures the Russian domination of Europe. Napoleon's alternative, "Cossack or Republican," is substantially prophetic, though the terms are more probably "Despotic or Const.i.tutional." I have no animosity toward Russia, but any advance of her influence in the Balkans seems to me to be a battle gained by her in this conflict. Established at Constantinople, her next stage would be Trieste; and the ultimate Russification of all the little Slavonic nationalities of the Balkans, of which she is now the champion, becomes inevitable. The only safeguard against this is the maintenance of Austria as the suzerain power in the peninsula.

But, for the personal Russian, as I have said, I have always had a thorough liking, and all through the Montenegrin campaigns I held those who were there as warm friends. The official Russians were not, however, popular in Montenegro, the people possessing an unusual degree of independence, and the Russians attaching more importance to their aid and cooperation than the circ.u.mstances made it politic to show; and Jonine, who became minister-resident at Cettinje, was, perhaps, the most unpopular foreigner there, while Monson, who became English agent there, was, both with prince and public, the most popular. The entry into the alliance with Russia made little difference in the sentiments of the people, and even the Prince resisted, in an extraordinary and even impolitic degree, the Russian suggestions in the conduct of the war.