Part 8 (1/2)
Some great event was expected at no distant date. I was told that it was now impossible for me to go to Gusinje, but that next year all would be different. That they were well informed about the Bulgar rising which was about to take place in Macedonia I cannot, in the light of what followed, doubt. Prince Danilo's birthday was feted magnificently with barbaric dances by firelight, national songs and an ocean of rakija. We drank to the Prince and wished him soon on the throne of Prizren, a wish which at that time every Montenegrin expected to see soon realized. The reign of the Turk, I was told, was all but over. I remarked that this had been said for a hundred years at least and was told that the end must come some time, and that I should see it soon.
Meanwhile, the' authorities of Andrijevitza were extremely anxious to get me to go across the border. Though I was not aware of it at the time, they meant to use me to cover a spy. That the expedition was dangerous I knew. The Ipek district had scarcely been penetrated by a foreigner for fifteen years, and was a forbidden one. The danger I did not mind. My two months' liberty each year were like Judas's fabled visit to the iceberg--but they made the endless vista of grey imprisonment at home the more intolerable. And a bullet would have been a short way out. I made the expedition and gained thereby a reputation for courage which in truth I little deserved.
As I was being used for political purposes, though I did not know it, I was, of course, shown only the Great Serbian view of things.
The plan was carefully laid. My guide, who was disguised, spoke Albanian and some Turkish.
At Berani, our first stopping place, just over the Turkish border, I met the first objectors to the murders--the monks at the very ancient Church of Giurgevi Stupovi and a little company consisting of a wild-looking priest clad as a peasant and with a heavy revolver in his sash, and a couple of schoolmasters very heavily depressed.
They, too, had evidently expected ”something” to happen soon. I gathered, in fact, that an attack on the Turk had been planned, and now with this revolution on their hands the Serbs would be able to do nothing. In the town, however, I met the nephew of Voyvoda Gavro, then Montenegro's Minister for Foreign Affairs--a decadent type of youth on vacation from Constantinople, where he was at college. For the Montenegrins, though always expressing a hatred of all things Turkish, have never missed an opportunity of sending their sons for Education--gratis--to the enemy's capital. His conversation--and he was most anxious to pose as very ”modern”--showed that Constantinople is not a very nice place for boys to go to school in. He was furious with me for daring to criticize the Serbian murders. He said no one but an enemy of the Serb people would do so, and threatened to denounce me to his uncle. Leaving Berani I plunged into Albanian territory. This land, fondly called by the Serbs ”Stara Srbija,” Old Serbia, was in point of fact Serb only for a short period.
The Serbs, or rather their Slav ancestors, poured into the Balkan Peninsula in vast hordes in the sixth and seventh centuries and overwhelmed the original inhabitant, the Albanian. But though they tried hard, they did not succeed in exterminating him. The original inhabitant, we may almost say, never is exterminated. The Albanian was a peculiarly tough customer. He withdrew to the fastnesses of the mountains, fought with his back to the wall, so to speak, and in defiance of efforts to Serbize him, retained his language and remained persistently attached to the Church of Rome. Serbia reached her highest point of glory under Tsar Stefan Dushan. On his death in 1356, leaving no heir capable of ruling the heterogeneous empire he had thrown together in the twenty years of his reign, the rival feudal chieftains of Serbia fought with each other for power and the empire was soon torn to pieces. Albania split off from the ma.s.s almost at once, and was a separate princ.i.p.ality under the Balsha chiefs. And from that time Albania has never again fallen completely under Serb power. The Turkish conquest crushed the Serbs and the Albanians grew in power. We cannot here detail the history, suffice it to say that in 1679 the Serbs of Kosovo, finding themselves unable to resist the advance of the Albanians and the power of the Turks, evacuated that district. Led by a.r.s.enius, the Serb Patriarch, thousands of families emigrated into Austria, who saved the Serb people. Since then the Albanians had poured down and resettled in the land of their ancestors.
From Berani our route lay through Arnaoutluk. We pa.s.sed through Rugova; nor did I know till afterwards that this was reputed one of the most dangerous districts in Turkish territory and that no European traveller had been that way for some twenty years. There was a rough wooden mosque by the wayside. We halted. The people were friendly enough and some one gave us coffee. I little thought 'that in a few years time the place would be the scene of a hideous ma.s.sacre by the Montenegrins modelled on the Moslem-slaying of Vladika Danilo. We reached Ipek after some sixteen hours of very severe travel and knocked at the gates of the Patriarchia long after nightfall--the very place whose Bishop had led the retreating Serb population into Austria over two centuries before.
My arrival was a thunderbolt, both for the Patriarchia and the Turkish authorities, who had forbidden the entry of strangers into the district and closed the main routes to it, but had never imagined any one would be so crazy as to drop in over the Montenegrin frontier by way of Rugova.
The whole district was under military occupation. About thirty thousand Turkish troops were camped in the neighbourhood, and I learnt that a great deal of fighting had recently taken place.
Briefly, the position was that for the past two and a half centuries the Albanians had been steadily re-occupying the lands of their Illyrian ancestors and pressing back the small remaining Serb population, and since the time of the Treaty of Berlin had been struggling to wrest autonomy from the Turks and obtain recognition as a nation. The whole of this district had been included in the autonomous Albanian state proposed and mapped out by Lord Goschen and Lord Fitzmaurice in 1880. Ipek, Jakova and Prizren were centres of the Albanian League. The British Government report of August 1880 gives a very large Albanian majority to the whole district.
”The Albanians are numerically far superior to the Serbians, who are not numerous in Kosovopolje and the Sanjak of Novibazar. The Albanian population in the vilayet of Kosovo has lately (1880) been still further increased by the accession of many thousands of refugees from districts now, in virtue of the Treaty of Berlin, in Serbian possession and which prior to the late war were exclusively inhabited by descendants of the twelve Greg tribes, which at a remote period emigrated from Upper Albania.”
A fundamental doctrine of the Great Serb Idea is a refusal to recognize that history existed before the creation of the Serb Empire, or even to admit that Balkan lands had owners before the arrival of the Serbs. Nothing infuriates a ”Great Serbian” more than to suggest that if he insists on appealing to history another race has a prior claim to the land, and that in any case the Great Serbia of Stefan Dushan lasted but twenty years.
In pursuance of this theory that the greater part of the Balkan Peninsula is the birthright of the Serbs (who only began coming into these lands at the earliest in the fourth century A.D.) the Serbs behaved with hideous brutality to the inhabitants of the lands they annexed in 1878, and swarms of starving and dest.i.tute persons were hunted out, a large proportion of whom perished of want and exposure.
The hatred between Serb and Albanian was increased a hundredfold, and the survivors and their descendants struggled continuously to gain complete control over the lands still theirs and to regain, if possible, those that they had lost. The adoption of Lord Fitzmaurice's plan would have spared the Balkans and possibly Europe much bloodshed and suffering.
When I arrived on the scene in the summer of 1903 the Turks had sent a large punitive expedition to enforce the payment of cattle tax and, at the command of Europe, to introduce a new ”reform” policy in Kosovo vilayet.
The Albanians were well aware that the so-called reforms meant ultimately the furtherance of Russia's pan-Slav schemes; that so long as even a handful of Serbs lived in a place Russia would claim it as Serb and enforce the claim to the best of her power; that the ”reforms” meant, In fact, the introduction of Serb and Russian consulates, the erection of Serb schools and churches under Russian protection, the planting of Serb colonies and ultimate annexation.
Russia was actively endeavouring to peg out fresh Serb claims. The Russian Consul at Mitrovitza, M. Shtcherbina, had taken part in a fight against the Albanians and was mortally wounded, it was reported, while he was serving a gun.
Russia, in fact, having already made sure of the removal of the pro-Austrian Obrenovitches and being in close touch with Montenegro and Bulgaria was planning another coup in the Balkans. Albania was resisting it. The Turks under pressure from the Powers were striving to smooth matters down sufficiently to stave off the final crash that drew ever nearer. They arrested a number of headmen and exacted some punishment for Shtcherbina's death. Though if a consul chooses to take part in a local fight he alone is responsible for results.
I had, in fact, arrived at a critical moment. The Turkish authorities telegraphed all over the country to know what they were to do about me. My Montenegrin guide showed anxiety also and begged me on no account to reveal his origin.
From a little hill belonging to the Patriarchia I saw the widespread Turkish camp on the plain.
The Igumen and the few monks and visitors gave me the Serb point of view. Because some six centuries ago the Sveti Kralj had been crowned in the church they regarded the land as rightfully and inalienably Serb. They looked forward to the arrival of Russian armies that should exterminate all that was not Serb. Shtcherbina to them was a Christ-like man who had died to save them, and they treasured his portrait. Russia, only the year before, had insisted on planting a Consul at Mitrovitza against the wish of the Turkish Government. Serb hopes had been raised. And it was possible that his presence had in fact caused the fight.
They admitted, however, that the Turks were responsible for the state of Albania, for they prohibited the formation of Albanian schools and made progress impossible; an independent Albania would be better.
News of the deaths of Alexander and Draga had reached Ipek, but no details, for Serbian papers could only be smuggled in with great difficulty. I gathered that the murders caused some anxiety, for a great movement against the Turks was planned, and owing to the upheaval in Serbia, perhaps Serbia would not now take part. As I was English they believed that the Turks would be obliged to permit me to travel further if I pleased. But they implored me on no account if I went further afield, to take the train as all the railways were shortly to be blown up.
Meanwhile the Turkish authorities could not decide what to do about me and called me to the Konak about my pa.s.sport. There I waited hours. The place was crowded with applicants for permission to travel. Half-starved wretches begged leave to go to another district in search of harvest work and were denied. The Turks were in a nervous terror and doubtless knew a crisis was at hand. As I waited in the crowd a youth called to me across the room and said in French: ”It is pity you were not here a week or two ago. You could have gone to Uskub and met all the foreign correspondents. Now they have all gone. I was dragoman to The Times correspondent. He has gone too. They think it is all over and it has not yet begun.” He laughed. I was terrified lest any one present should know French.
The boy declared they did not.
Finally, the Pasha refused me permission to go to Jakova as I had asked. And quite rightly, for fighting was still going on there between the troops and the Albanians. I was allowed only to visit the monastery of Detchani, a few hours' ride distant. Detchani is one of the difficulties in the drawing of a just frontier. Though in a district that is wholly Albanian, it is one of the monuments of the ancient Serb Empire and contains the shrine of the Sveti Kralj, King Stefan Detchanski, who was strangled in 1336 in his castle of Zvechani, it is said, by order of his son who succeeded him as the great Tsar Stefan Dushan, and was in his turn murdered in 1356.
St. Stefan Dechansld is accounted peculiarly holy and yet to work miracles. The Church, a fine one in pink and white marble, was built by an architect from Cattaro, and shows Venetian influence. A rude painting of the strangling of Stefan adorns his shrine. I thought of the sordid details of the death of. Serbia's latest King and the old world and the new seemed very close. Except in the matter of armament, things Balkan had changed but little in over five centuries.