Serbia, younger sister of the Nations, has indeed had a younger sister's
portion. In her early years she grew up with little guidance from older
and wiser members of the family. She did not have the advice that she
needed. Perhaps she would not have followed it, though on occasion she
has shown more docility than many of the family.
It took her a long time to find herself; she had troubles in her
household, and it was her first endeavor to get the factions to unite
and let her be the acknowledged head of the house. She believed it was
her ultimate destiny to govern them all--that this was for their good.
When she had made herself mistress of her own house, she tried to stand
alone--to be independent of her neighbors. She had no wish to dominate
them. She did not try to aggrandize herself at their expense, nor did
she take up weapons against them. But she wished them to acknowledge her
head of her own household, just as those within her house had done. She
even was willing to be called a Princess--providing she governed her
household well. But almost hidden from the rest of Europe by her
mountains, kept by barriers from easy access to the rest of the world,
the other Nations paid little attention to her. She grew up almost
unnoticed by the world--proud and strong, simple in her tastes, pious in
her own way (for her church was not the church of most of her
neighbors), and thoughtful, if ill educated.
She was not bookish in those early days; she was too indifferent,
perhaps, to letters. Had she kept a journal, we could now embroider her
story with more brilliant threads. Her lack of education was perhaps
rather her misfortune than her fault. Those who knew her realized her
many fine qualities, yet she made few friends beyond her own
borders,--and because she was independent and poor, her richer neighbors
were suspicious of her and jealous. This one and that one set upon her.
They were jealous when she first put on regal robes. They were afraid
that she wished to enlarge her possessions at their expense, and one of
them, who had assumed complete lordship over Serbia and all her sisters,
was constantly threatening her, pretending at times that if she could
help him against the foe from Asia who was threatening them both, she
should be acknowledged of royal rank. This did not wholly satisfy her.
Her ambitions had grown. She herself was reaching out for the Imperial
purple. She felt that if she wore it, she might better defend herself
and her relatives beyond the mountains from the Asiatic hordes.
Then came the great test--and from then almost until to-day Kossovo has
been a day of mourning!
When the fair, gray-eyed ancestors of the modern Serb came south from
their home in Galicia, moving westward from the shores of the Black Sea,
along the left bank of the Danube, they crossed the river and occupied
the northwest corner of the Balkan Peninsula. How long they had lived in
Galicia we need not ask, but they bore with them traditions of a
catastrophe in India that was probably the cause of their remote
fathers' leaving that country.
Pliny and Ptolemy mention the Serbs, and we know that for one hundred
years at least previous to 625 A.D. they were at war with the Empire.
The Roman Empire was then slowly disintegrating, and in the Balkans
there was no power to protect the Romanized Illyria from the northern
invaders who in prehistoric times had driven away the aboriginal
inhabitants.
It matters little whether the Emperor Heraclius invited the Serbs to
settle down in the northwest Byzantine provinces lately devastated by
barbarians, on condition that they would defend the Empire against the
Tartar Avars, or whether he merely accepted the fact that they had
entered these provinces and must stay there. He made an agreement of
peace with the Serbs--and this marks the beginning of their known
history. He desired a buffer State, as the neighbors of the Serbs so
often have desired in later times. The lands the newcomers then occupied
are the Serb lands of to-day--Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina,
Old Serbia, Macedonia, Dalmatia, the Banat, and to an extent Croatia and
Western Bulgaria--practically the ideal Pan-Serbia, but in this little
sketch, so far as it is possible, by "Serbia" is meant the Kingdom of
Serbia, at the north of the Balkan Peninsula.
The Kingdom of Serbia is bounded by Bosnia, Old Serbia, Bulgaria,
Roumania, the Banat, and Slavonia. The boundary rivers are the Danube,
on the north separating it from Hungary and on the northeast from
Roumania; the Drina, on the northwest from Bosnia; the Save, on the
northwest from Croatia and Slavonia; the Timok, on the northeast from
Bulgaria. Various mountain ranges on the west separate it from Bosnia,
on the south and southwest from Turkey, and on the south and southeast
from Bulgaria.
Until the tenth century, except Pliny and Ptolemy, the Emperor
Constantine Porphyrogenites is the only historian to speak of the Serbs,
and he but briefly; yet their history in those three centuries after
their arrival was an epitome of their history in later years in the
Balkan Peninsula. The general movement was the same. First, a constant
struggle on the one side to establish a union of the jupanias and on the
other side a constant resistance to such centralization. A jupania may
be roughly defined as a county within whose limits lived clans more or
less related to one another. The ruler was a Jupan, and it was not
strange that the more powerful Jupans should tend to absorb their weaker
neighbors. The successful man took the title of Grand Jupan. Jealousy of
the Grand Jupan would lead to assassination, dethronement, and
decentralization--and then would come a repetition of the violent and
bloody story.
Another element of disorder in Serbia was the ancient Slavonic rule that
a Jupan might be succeeded, not by his son but by the oldest member of
his family. It was hardly to be counted against a strong Jupan that he
should try to arrange for his son to succeed him--yet this added to the
troubles of the Serbs.
A third and later cause of Serb trouble was the Church. The Greek
Emperor and the Greek Church on the one side, and the Roman Catholic
Church represented by Venice and Hungary on the other, were continually
warring, not only for territory but for influence in the Serb provinces.
Yet in spite of apparent wavering, the Serbs from the time they adopted
Christianity have been constant to the Church of their early choice.
Finally, the founding in the seventh century of the Bulgarian kingdom,
on the eastern and southeastern frontiers of Serbia, added to the
dangers of this tempestuous little nation. After the Frank and Bulgarian
Emperors in the first quarter of the ninth century had for some time
wrangled over the Serbian tribes, the Bulgarians at last succeeded in
placing a garrison in Belgrade. The Bulgarians ruled Rascia for seven
years, but it was like ruling an uninhabited land, as the larger part of
the Serbians had run away to Croatia.
Almost two hundred years after the agreement with Heraclius the Serbs
had a strong Jupan who carried out the principles of concentration. This
Visheslav was probably a descendant of that Visheslav who had signed
the agreement with the Greek Emperor. His descendants, of whom the
greatest was Vlastimir, for three generations contributed to the unity
of Serbia by defending it against Bulgar and Frank, who were constantly
menacing even when not directly attacking. Towards the end of the ninth
century, in 871, under Basil the Macedonian, the Serbs acknowledged
again the suzerainty of the Greek Empire and accepted Christianity. This
was in the reign of Mertimir, but after his death almost all of the
Greek Serb provinces were lost to Tsar Simeon of Bulgaria.
Though Serbia recovered part of her lost provinces, she could not hold
them. The political center of the Serbs had moved to Zeta (Montenegro)
and the mystic Prince Jovan Vladimir in the latter part of the tenth
century, sometimes called King of Zeta, tried in vain to stop the
triumphal march of Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria through the Serb provinces.
He himself was taken a prisoner to Samuel's court, where he married the
Tsar's daughter, Kossara. He returned to Zeta as reigning Prince under
the suzerainty of Bulgaria, but in 1015 he was murdered by Samuel's
heir, and he now is venerated as a saint in Serbia. The first Serb
novel, "Vladimir and Kossara," published in the thirteenth century, is
founded on the life of this Prince.
Zeta was too far from the racial center of Serbia to be a good political
center and soon the disintegration of the first Serb kingdom began.
Although Serbia recovered the provinces Bulgaria had taken, she was
unable to stand alone, and grudgingly accepted Greek suzerainty until
Prince Voislav--cousin of Vladimir of Zeta--started a successful revolt
against the Greeks and united under his own rule Zeta, Trebinje, and
Zahumle. His son, Michel Voislavich, annexed the Jupania of Rascia. In
1072 he proclaimed himself King and received the crown from Gregory
VII. This was an effort to free Serbia from the Greek overlordship, as
expressed in the Greek Church. In the next reign Serbia became better
known to the world when she welcomed the Crusaders under Raymond of
Toulouse, passing through on their way to the Holy Land. Then came
brighter days for Serbia. Stephen Nemanya, Grand Jupan of Rascia, who
lived near Novi Bazar (1122-1199), planned the union of all the jupanias
in one kingdom under one king. This he practically accomplished, for
though unable to include Bosnia, within ten years of his accession he
had almost doubled his territory.
Later, when Stephen's ambition grew, he received Frederick Barbarossa,
passing through with his Crusaders, and gave him every honor due the
Empire when he visited Nish in 1188, and treated him so liberally that
Barbarossa--at least this is something more than rumor--was considering
a marriage between his son and Stephen's daughter when death put an end
to the alliance. In the next reign the Emperor Henry VI planned, with
the help of the Serbs, to conquer the Byzantine Empire. But again death
took the Emperor before the plans were completed.
Another notable act of Stephen's was his attack on the Greek provinces
as an ally of the King of Hungary. Stephen Nemanya assumed the
double-eagle as the insignia of his dignity, but though he founded the
first real Kingdom of Serbia, and was called King, he was never crowned.
Toward the close of his distinguished career, in 1196, weary of the
world, he withdrew to the Monastery Helinder on Mt. Athos, where years
before his youngest son Rastko had retired. Stephen died after three
years of monastic life. The historic records of Serbia begin with his
reign.
Rastko, known in the Church as Sava and afterwards canonized, was a man
of active temperament--a statesman as well as a churchman. He used his
wisdom and his learning to benefit his country.
Stephen, son of Nemanya, was the first crowned King of Serbia. He kept
off foreign enemies, and Serbia, no longer dreading attacks, began to
develop some of her mineral resources. She made a beginning, too, of
educating her people. In the next two or three generations of rulers
there were quarrels among members of the ruling family. Outside, too,
the Magyars began to press upon the little kingdom. But on the whole
Serbia was united,--mindful, perhaps, of St. Sava's motto: "Only Union
is Serbia's Salvation."
Stephen the Sixth, or "The Great," won victories over the Greek
Emperors, the Tartars, and the Bulgarians. He helped the Greek Emperor
against the Turks, now becoming formidable, and as part of his reward
had the Emperor's daughter given him in marriage. But this led to
domestic unhappiness in his later years and some loss of territory. For
his wife tried to keep his son Stephen from his inheritance. In turn,
Stephen's party set upon the King and choked him to death. Though
Stephen Dushan may have had no hand in it, this murder clouds his
reputation. Stephen Dushan is a contradictory character--by some
regarded as the murderer of his father, by others an idealist to be
compared with King Arthur or with Roland. Stephen Dushan (Detchanski),
great-grandson of Stephen Nemanya, came to the throne in 1331 and in ten
years had gained Albania and Epirus and finally all Macedonia except
Salonika. He was practically suzerain of Bulgaria. He freed the Church,
which long since had drifted from Rome back to Byzance. Now he made it
independent of the Greek Emperor, constituting the Archbishop of Petch,
Archbishop, or rather Patriarch, of Serbia.
Noted both as a soldier and a statesman, Stephen had wider plans than
Vlasimir or Nemanya. The Turks were now looming dangerously in the
East. The Greek Empire was tottering. With it, the rest of Eastern
Europe might fall, including little Serbia--one of the smallest of all
the little principalities. But Serbia, if small, was brave, and Dushan
hoped to proclaim a Serbo-Greek Empire to head off the Asiatic hordes.
To accomplish this he took certain territory from the Greek Empire and,
proclaiming himself Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks, was solemnly
crowned at Uksub at Easter, 1346. Nine years later he tried to unite
Bulgars and Serbs and Greeks against the Turks. With a large army of
about one hundred thousand trained soldiers he was almost at the gates
of Constantinople when a sudden illness overtook him and he died.
Under Dushan Serbia had very nearly reached her highest
ambition--complete dominion over the Balkan Peninsula. Dushan ruled also
a large part of the former Byzantine lands in Europe.
Of farther-reaching good for Serbia than his territorial conquests was
the Zakonik or Code of Laws, completed in 1354 under Dushan's direction.
It contained not only the best of the old, but many new, laws resulting
from Dushan's knowledge of his country's needs. It ranks high among
medieval codes of law. After his death, his empire separated itself into
its elements--a number of small states whose rulers were fighting one
another while the Turks were subduing Thrace.
With the death of Dushan in 1355 the greatness of Serbia also passed
away. His son, Urosh, could not hold what his father had gained, and
little by little parts of his Empire fell off from the center, until but
a small fragment remained. Yet there were still many stout-hearted
Serbs--many who wished to do their utmost to throw off the Turks now
pressing upon them. When Urosh died childless, the direct Nemanya
dynasty came to an end, but in 1371 Lazar Grebelyanovitch of the
Nemanya family was elected ruler of the Serbs. Though called Tsar, he
would not formally take the title. Devoted to his country, he threw all
his energy into forming a Christian League against the Turks.
But the wily Oriental circumvented him by attacking the members of the
League one by one. For nearly twenty years after that there were many
encounters between Turks and Serbians. At the first attack on Nish,
Serbia so humbled herself as to agree to pay tribute in gold and in
soldiers for the Sultan's armies on condition the Turks would leave her
alone.
Later Lazar did his utmost to save poor Serbia from further disgrace. He
united with the Ban of Bosnia, also a descendant of Stephen Nemanya, and
together they gained many small victories. After once defeating the
invading Turks under Murat I the Serbs had to stand a second time
opposed to Murat and a well-trained force of Turkish soldiers. Against
the Turks were drawn up the full strength of Serbia, Albania, and
Bosnia.
There on the field of Kossovo, the "field of blackbirds," June 15, 1389,
was fought one of the decisive battles of history. It was a bitter
defeat for Serbia, though as many Turks as Serbs perished on the field.
On the eve of the battle Murat I had been assassinated. The brave Lazar
with the flower of the Serb nation lay dead--Lazar first made prisoner,
then beheaded. Of all Serbian rulers, the memory of Lazar was held the
dearest. "A pious and generous prince, a brave but unsuccessful
general."
There was no longer any question as to supremacy in the Balkan
Peninsula. The independence of Serbia and the liberties of all the
smaller states were now the property of the unspeakable Turk.
Lazar, it is said, was warned of his fate by a letter from Heaven even
before the battle, but he still went forward to fight for his country.
Bowring's translation of the heroic pesma (Battle of Kossovo) gives an
idea of this event. Before the battle Lazar receives the mysterious
letter:
"Tzar Lasar! thou tzar of noble lineage!
Tell me now, what kingdom hast thou chosen?
Wilt thou have heaven's kingdom for thy portion,
Or an earthly kingdom? If an earthly,
Saddle thy good steed--and gird him tightly;
Let thy heroes buckle on their sabres,
Smite the Turkish legions like a tempest,
And these legions all will fly before thee.
But if thou wilt have heaven's kingdom rather,
Speedily erect upon Kossova,
Speedily erect a church of marble;
Not of marble, but of silk and scarlet;
That the army, to its vespers going,
May from sin be purged--for death be ready;
For thy warriors all are doomed to stumble;
Thou, too, prince, wilt perish with thy army!"
When the Tzar Lasar had read the writing,
Many were his thoughts and long his musings.
"Lord, my God! what--which shall be my portion,
Which my choice of these two proffer'd kingdoms?
Shall I choose heaven's kingdom? shall I rather
Choose an earthly one? for what is earthly
Is as fleeting, vain, and unsubstantial;
Heavenly things are lasting, firm, eternal."
So the Tzar preferr'd a heavenly kingdom
Rather than an earthly. On Kossova
Straight he built a church, but not of marble;
Not of marble, but of silk and scarlet.
Then he calls the patriarch of Servia,
Calls around him all the twelve archbishops,
Bids them make the holy supper ready,
Purify the warriors from their errors,
And for death's last conflict make them ready.
So the warriors were prepared for battle,
And the Turkish hosts approach Kossova.
Bogdan leads his valiant heroes forward,
With his sons--nine sons--the Jugocichi,
Sharp and keen--nine gray and noble falcons.
Each led on nine thousand Servian warriors;
And the aged Jug led twenty thousand.
With the Turks began the bloody battle.
Seven pashas were overcome and scatter'd,
But the eighth pasha came onward boldly,
And the aged Jug Bogdan has fallen.
....*....*....*....*
Then Lasar, the noble lord of Servia,
Seeks Kossova with his mighty army;
Seven and seventy thousand Servian warriors.
How the infidels retire before him,
Dare not look upon his awful visage!
Now indeed begins the glorious battle.
He had triumph'd then, had triumph'd proudly,
But that Vuk--the curse of God be on him!
He betrays his father at Kossova.
So the Turks the Servian monarch vanquish'd,
So Lasar fell--the Tzar of Servia--
With Lasar fell all the Servian army.
But they have been honor'd, and are holy,
In the keeping of the God of heaven.
All that the Nemanyas, all that the Serbian people had done toward
national unity was destroyed at Kossovo. Throughout Serb lands, the
anniversary of Kossovo is still kept as a memorial day for all Serbian
heroes, both for those who fell then and those who have since fallen in
defense of their country.
For seventy years after Kossovo, Serbia, though nominally ruled by
despots, was really subsidiary to the Sultan. George Brankovitch, one of
the despots, worked for an alliance between Serbia and Hungary to
overthrow the Turks. The Turks were defeated at Kunovista, and lands
previously taken were restored to him. This brave man died at the age of
ninety of wounds received in a duel with a Hungarian nobleman. But in
spite of the efforts of Brankovitch, the days of Serbia were numbered.
In 1459 she became a Pashilik under the direct government of the
Porte--and this was her condition for nearly three hundred and fifty
years.
If in her darkest hour some strong nation had sympathized with Serbia,
her future might have been different. The nations of Europe were now
having a revival of life--a renaissance--but they had no thought of
Serbia, their young sister. She was hidden among her mountains and she
made no outcry. She had tried to do what she could for herself. She had
had her moments of power and happiness. Now came a long, long night.
[Illustration: CHURCH AT RAVINITZA--WHERE LAZAR WAS BURIED]
In the darker days many Serbs fled to the mountains, sometimes to carry
on their occupation of farmer so far as they could, unmolested by the
Turk; sometimes to become Haiduks--the Robin Hoods of the mountains and
forests--to steal from the Moslem when it was possible, to give to the
poor Serb; always to keep up an unceasing guerrilla warfare.
Serbians were sold as slaves by the ten thousands to Constantinople and
to Egypt. Whenever they could, they fled their country to Venice, to
Dalmatia, to Hungary. Those who stayed in Serbia were not meek and so
far as they could they resisted their oppressor. The Church was the
mainstay of the nation; indeed, even to-day, the Serbian Church is a
national rather than a religious organization. Before the end of Serb
power came, southern Hungary had begun to receive many Serbian
immigrants; by the middle of the sixteenth century they were numerous
along the borders of Croatia and Slavonia. Although to a large extent
farm laborers, they were soldiers as well, and fought in many battles
for Austria. In the latter part of the fifteenth and the early part of
the sixteenth century, the Serbs in the Hungarian army formed the famous
"Black Legion" and won great fame. In the latter part of the seventeenth
century thirty-seven thousand Serbians went in a body to South Hungary,
and fifty years later one hundred thousand, migrating to Russia, formed
a colony by themselves. In 1690 the Emperor Leopold had granted a fair
amount of liberty, civil as well as religious, to the large organized
body of Serbs who had settled in South Hungary. Their privileges were
from time to time confirmed, especially when the Emperor needed help
from the Serbs against some one of his numerous enemies. At other times
the Serbs in Hungary had no flowery path. Austria was always playing
fast and loose with them, and at last, toward the end of the eighteenth
century, though Austria was treating them well, they saw they had little
cause to hope that she would free them from the Turkish yoke. The
ancient ill will of Hungary against Serbia persisted, and sometimes laws
passed in her favor by Austria were in the end suppressed or nullified
by Hungarian efforts.