THE MONTENEGRINS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 142, 2 November 1912, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE MONTENEGRINS

THE HEROES OF TSERXAGOKA. MR. GLADSTONE'S SKETCH OF MOxN'TEXEGRLV HISTORY. (By "Historicus," in Lyttelton Times). "A band of heroes such as the world has rarely seen stand on the rocks of Montenegro, and are ready now, as they have ever been during the four hundred years of their exile from their fertile plains, to sweep down from their fastnesses and meet the Turks at any odds for the re-establishment of justice and peace in the countries of the Balkans." The words occur in the impassioned peroration of a speech delivered by Mr. Gladstone on May 7, 1577, to which twenty-two years later in his greatest tribute to "the greatest member of the greatest deliberative assembly that the world has seen," Mr. Balfour referred as a feat of Parliamentary courage, Parliamentary skill, Parliamentary endurance and Parliamentary eloquence which, he believed, would always remain unequalled. The spectacle of a brave people maintaining their precarious freedom in the face of overwhelming odds, or of an oppressed people striving to vindicate their claims to freedom, was one that never failed to touch Mr. Gladstone' 3 heart and kindle his burning eloquence. And no people ever touched his heart more deeply than "the little outpost of freedom and Christendom" on Tsernagora, the Black Mountain, called by the Venetions Monte Negro, which, to quote the moving words of Freeman, "in a ceaseless warfare of four hundred years, neglected, sometimes betrayed, by the Christian Powers of Europe, has still held its own against the whole might of Turkish power." At the moment when he made his speech, Gladstone was probably the bestinformed man in England on the minutiae of Montenegrin history. For in the May issue of the Nineteenth Century, to which he had been invited to supply a commentary to the text of Tennyson's greatest sonnet, he had published one ol the most effective sketches of the history of the heroic little nation which has ever been written. Among other sources that he drew upon were a recent work, published in 1870, on "Contemporary Montenegro" by a French officer of the Legion or Honor and a captain in the Servian army, and a still more modern book by Spiridiou Goptchevitch, the brother-in-law of that Prince Danilo whom the present King Nicholas succeeded in the year 1860.

The story that he had to tell, Homeric alike in its simplicity, its directness and its remoteness from everyday experience, was one to stir the imagination and quicken the pulse of the veriest dullard. For 'the greatness of human action and of human character do not principally depend on the dimensions of the stage where they are exhibited," and the tale of the Slavonic people, on whom broke the full force of the Ottoman invasion, is full of great actions and great men. In the days when the Serbian Empire went down under the strain the little principality of Zeta, called after the stream which flows from the mountains to the Lake of Scutari, and extending from Herzegovina on the north to Scutari itself, stood firm under the Balchid family. Towards the close of the fifteenth century Scutari was wrested from it and Herzegovina bowed beneath the Moslem yoke. Venice could or would give no assistance. Human help there was none left to look to. But at least they could trust in God and their own courage, and in the year 1484 Ivan Tchernoievitch, the ruler of the day, led his people "from the sunny tracts in which they had basked for some 700 years, and sought on the rocks and amidst precipices, surety for the twi gifts, by far the most precious to mankind, their faith, their freedom." Death, slavery or the Koran were the alternatives before them, but "they were not to die, for they had a work to do, and to the Koran or to slavery they preferred a life of cold, want, hardship and perpetual peril." Ivan fixed on Cettinje as his metropolis, and built a monastery there, and this dauntless remnant of men, worsted by their enemies and flying for their lives, "'•'voted unanimously their fundamental law, that, in time of war against the Turk, no son of Tscrnagora could quit the field without the order of his chief; that a runaway should be for ever disgraced and banished from his people; that he should be dressed in woman's clothes and presented with a distaff; and that the women, striking him with their distaffs, should hunt the coward away from the sanctuary of freedom." Yet there were, as was inevitable, men being what they are, those among them who sighted, like the Hebrews of old, for the fleshpots of Egypt. There were renegades and there were traitors, and Ivan's son, George, who succeeded him, retired in 1510 to Venice. Before he left he handed over his authority to the Metropolitan, and for the next 330 years the little community maintained their sanctuary inviolate under the warlike rule of their Vladikas, or bishops. From 151 Cto ICB7 fourteen of these Vladikas bore rule, and their people lived, sword in hand, keeping back the Turks and withstanding the still more dangerous treachery of those renegades among them who had conformed to

the Ottoman faith. But in 1087, when Danilo, the first Vladika of the Nicguish family, represented now by King Nicholas, became ruler, so desperate had things become that on Christmas Eve, 1702, the renegades were, like Agag, hewn in pieces! Mr. Gladstone cites a fragment of an old Serbian folkslied, which, breathing the very spirit of Deborah's immortal song, preserves the memory of that night of horror:—"That hallowed eve draws onwards. The brothers Martinovitch kindle their consecrated torches. They pray fervently to the new-born God. Each drains a cup of wine; and seizing the sacred torches, they rush forth into the darkness. Wherever there was a Moslem, there came the five avengers. They that could not be baptised were hewn down every one. They that embraced the cross were taken as brothers before the Vladika. Gathered in Cettinje the people hailed with songs of joy the reddening dawn of the Christmas morning; all Tsernagora was now free."

But war with the Turk was unceasing. Turkish tax-gatherers tried to enforce a head tax, and often had their own heads broken. The mountaineers made fierce raids and forays on the neighboring lowlands, and returned like Highland caterans, loaded with spoils. And so from year to year, and from century to century, the eagles kept their eyrie. Their numbers gradually increased. In 1600 they stood at about 30,000, all told; in 1800, at 55,000; in 1835. at 100,000; in 1865, at 196,000; there are only 225,000 of them to-day, the population of a fairsized town; But whether they were relatively few, or relatively many, they never faltered in their struggle for freedom. The odds against them were often out of all proportion; the issue of their constant tights was almost invariably the same. In 1712, 50,000 Turks crossed the Zeta between Spurz and Podrowitza, where a salient angle of Turkish territory gave entrance to their country. To meet them Danilo could muster a bare 12,000 men. The Turks came to enforce their demand for tribute. The Montenegrins swore "that all they would give would be the bullet-rain of their mus-

kets." So effective was the gift that with a loss of 318 men they slew "at the lowest estimate" 20,000 of their invaders. In the next year 120.000 men were brought againsc them, their monastery and their villages were burnt, thousands of their women and children carried into slavery, and the men forced to seek refuge on the tops of the high hills. But when the Turks withdrew, they came down again, and, nothing daunted, set themselves to repair their losses. In 1722 1000 Montenegrins defeated 20,000 Turks and took their pasha, Hussein, prisoner. In 1732 they drove Osman and 30,000 men in headlong flight, and took their camp and baggage. It is not overstating the case to say that when Danilo died three years later he had seen "half a century of toil and glory." The story is always the same. In 1876 at Medun 20,000 Turks were defeated and 4700 slain by 5000 mountaineers. In October of the same year 6000 of them drove the successful Muktar Pasha and 18,000 men back to Kloluk, with a loss of 1500. Throughout that war the Montenegrins had only 25,000 men, 8000 of whom were allies or Turkish insurgents (like those Mirdite Albanians who make such confusion to the daily cables now) to depend on. The Turks sent against Tsernagora 130,000. What wonder that with such a record to look back to King Nicholas is in the forefront of the great struggle of to-day. But though the Montenegrins relied mainly upon themselves, they were not always isolated from the Great Powers. "From 1710 onwards," writes Mr. Gladstone, "at intervals the sovereigns of Russia and Austria have used the Montenegrins for their own convenience when at war with Turkey, and during the war of the French Revolution the English did the like, and by their co-operation and that of the inhabitants effected the conquest of Bocche di Cattaro. To England they owe no gratitude; to Austria, on the whole, less than none, for to satisfy her the district she did not win was handed over to her on our concurrence. She lhas rigidly excluded the little State from access to the sea." This wrong has bsen partiully redressed in later years, and she now has Antiv-iri and Dulcigno. "And has at times even prevented it from receiving any supplies of arms. Russia, however, froru the time of Peter the Great, though using U'tm for her ~vn purposes, has not always forgotten their interests, and has commonly aided the Vladikas with a small annual subvention. Nor should it be forgotten that Louis Napoleon, seemingly under a generous impulse, took an interest in their fortunes, and made a further addition to the revenues of the Prince, which raised them in all to such an amount as would equip a well-to-do English country gentleman, provided that he did not bet, or aspire to a deer-forest, or purchase Sevres or even Chelsea porcelain." I should like to tell of the printingpress which Ivan carried with him into his mountain fastness, but space does not permit. Nor can Ido more than touch on the work of the great law-giving Vladika, Peter, who came to the throne in 1772. and is still revered as the national patron saint; or of Radatomovo, his nephew and successor, the giant of 6ft Bin, who was educated at St. Petersburg, and could put a bullet through a lemon tossed into the air, and who put down brigandage and the vendetta with a stern and ruthless hand; or of Danilo, first of the modern secular princes, who "consummated the great work of internal order," and published a statute book in 1855; or of Mirko, father of the present King, who in 1858 at Grahovo swept down from the hills upon the Turkish forces, and carried the artillery by his irresistible charges; or of the women, who are not only chaste and patriotic, but as brave as their brothers and husbands, and have performed exploits as gallant as any recorded in history. But I have written enough to show that the stirring words of the old nameless bard were no idle boast: "O my Serbian brothers, and all ye in whose breast beats the heart of liberty, be glad; for never will ancient freedom perish, so long as we still hold our little Tsernagora," and that Tennyson was guilty of no exaggeration when he wrote: —

0 smallest among people! 0 smallest among peoples; rough rock'

throne Of Freedom! Warriors beating back

the swarm Of Turkish Islam for five hundred

years, Great Tsernogora! never since thine

own Black ridges drew the cloud and broke

the storm Has breathed a race of mightier momr taineers.