THE CAPITAL OF CRIME
Plans of Procedure—Meeting of the Regicides—The First Move—The
Murder of the King and Queen—The Assassination of Others—The Royal
Burial—The Murder of the Brothers Novakovics in 1907.
Swiftly and silently had been fomented the plot of wholesale slaughter,
of which the Queen was marked as the first and chief victim. If the
King could be induced to sign a form of abdication he was to be given
a chance for his life; his refusal meant death. The murderers—and of
these there were almost a hundred who cut and slashed at the lifeless
bodies of their sovereign—would then descend upon the house of the
Queen’s relatives and kill all in cold blood. This was to be followed
by the assassination of the King’s adherents, including General Zinzar
Markowitz, the Prime Minister; General Pawlowitch, the Minister of War;
M. Todorowitch, Minister of the Interior; and many officers of the army
who had refused to join, or who had expressed themselves as being
opposed to the plot to kill the royal couple.
The red glow of the setting sun had scarcely faded from the sky behind
the walls and turrets of the old fortress on Wednesday evening, June
10, 1903, when the regicides gathered at the “Crown Café” to discuss
and perfect their plans for the invasion of the palace that night.
They sat about smoking and laughing and drinking until many were in a
state of intoxication. The scene was one common in Belgrade. You will
see just such a company of officers grouped about the tables along
the street in front of any restaurant in the Servian capital of a
summer evening. Perhaps, if you will notice, some of these men wear
upon the breast, amid an array of other medals, a small, white Maltese
cross. You may be sure that the proud possessors of these crosses were
implicated in the terrible plot of that June evening—mayhap, some whom
you will see are the very ones who, frenzied by the sting of liquor,
broke open the door to the royal bedchamber and fired mercilessly upon
the helpless occupants. The white crosses are decorations pinned on the
breasts of those who helped to do away with Alexander and Draga by King
Peter himself, in apparent grateful recognition of their services.
[Illustration: A SIDEWALK CAFÉ, BELGRADE.]
During this preliminary meeting of the regicides at the café it
was announced that everything had been arranged satisfactorily:
the co-operation of the servants and soldiers, within the palace
and without, was assured by none other than Colonel Maschine, the
brother-in-law of the Queen, who personally had made arrangements to
thus afford the least possible difficulty in entering the _konak_; the
doors of the palace would even be left unlocked; a regiment of soldiers
had been commissioned to cover the rear of the conspirators and repel
any attack.
By midnight all details had been completed, and the truculent corps
of more or less intoxicated officers moved stealthily toward the
palace gates. After overwhelming a suspiciously weak and pitiful
resistance on the part of the guards they tramped across the garden and
lawn, burst through the unlocked doors of the _konak_ and scrambled
pell-mell up the broad stairs in search of the royal apartments. An
officer encountered in the hallway was killed instantly, and a private
who offered some slight resistance suffered a like fate. General
Petrowitch, loaded revolver in hand, was the next victim, although he
endeavoured to conceal the exact whereabouts of the royal couple by
leading the crowd to another part of the palace.
Needless to say, the King and Queen were awakened by the shots on
the stairs and the loud curses of the frantic criminals. How they
endeavoured to conceal themselves in their helplessness must have been
pathetic indeed. Hurrying from their bed, and still clothed in night
attire, they secreted themselves in an adjoining closet which was
used as a wardrobe-room by Queen Draga. Here they crouched together,
trembling in prayer, while their conspirators raged through room after
room, demolishing _bric-à-brac_, overturning tables and chairs, tearing
pictures from the walls and looting the palace from top to bottom.
Through a window in this closet the luckless King and Queen saw, by
the dim, flickering light of the street lamps, a great crowd collect
outside the palace gates. They were unable to comprehend why this crowd
stood motionless and silent—why they did not rise up, like the devoted
and loyal subjects they were supposed to be, and offer assistance.
At seven minutes past two a stick of dynamite was applied to the door
of the bedchamber, the explosion of which burst the barrier to atoms
and stopped a clock which stood upon a mantel in the room. One report
has it that the Queen, thinking the officers had departed, owing to a
sudden lull in the noise in the bedchamber, foolishly raised the window
in the closet and cried to the crowd outside in the street, “You will
save your King and Queen.”
This action is said to have disclosed to the men the hiding-place of
their victims. At all events the latter were discovered cowering in a
corner of the closet, praying and pleading for mercy. The Queen was
fired upon and killed instantly, and the King, in trying to shield
her, fell a victim to the volley of shots hardly a moment later. Not
to shrink from fulfilling an oath previously taken by many of the
officers, that each would bury the point of his sword in the corpse of
the Queen, they mutilated and hacked the bodies beyond recognition.
It was found later that the body of Queen Draga bore no less than
fifty-seven sword wounds.
And then, as a fitting sequel to their ghastly proceedings, the
regicides tossed the bodies from the window of the closet where the
King and Queen had stood but a few moments before and looked out upon
the crowd. They fell with a thud into the garden below, where they
remained until ten o’clock the following day, all the while being
viewed apathetically by the passing and repassing throng of people. At
that late hour, Russia, whose embassy was directly across the street
from the _konak_, to cover as much as possible the part she had played
in the tragedy, in the person of her minister demanded that the bodies
be removed.
Leaving the palace and the carnage they had wrought there, the
regicides, led by Colonel Maschine, sought the home of the Queen’s
family and succeeded in killing her two brothers, Nikola and Nikodim.
The Minister of War suffered the same fate in his home and the Minister
of the Interior was severely wounded.[3]
[3] A certain author claims that the Prime Minister was also killed,
but I have the best of authority for contesting that point. He was
thrown into prison and has only lately been released. At his home
Alexander and Draga indulged in the most of their courtship.
[Illustration: KING PETER KARAGEORGEVITCH OF SERVIA.]
About this time Colonel Nikolics, the commandant of the Danube Division
of the army, who, with a regiment of infantry, was in quarters outside
the city, heard of what was going on in Belgrade. In a heroic attempt
to bring his troops to the palace gates, with the hope of saving his
sovereigns, he was met at the edge of the town by a revolutionary
regiment under the command of Colonel Gagowitch. Both officers were
killed in the hand-to-hand encounter which followed.
The bloody labour of this night was at last terminated by the murder of
many officers of the army, who had been branded by the revolutionaries
with the hot iron of revenge for being in league with the King.
The morning of June eleventh dawned gray and dismal. The very heavens
seemed mortified at the awful butchery of the night before. Rain
descended in torrents, while crowds of indifferent Servians paced
to and fro in front of the palace. The city was in the hands of the
revolutionaries.
There is no need to go into political details of the aftermath: suffice
it to say that Peter Karageorgevitch was elected King by the Parliament
and notified to leave Geneva for Belgrade at once. The family
feud of a hundred years had been brought to an awful termination,
since Alexander, having no heir, was the last descendant of Milosh
Obrenovitch.
Under cover of the blackness of the night of Friday, June twelfth, two
roughly hewn coffins were carried into the _konak_, and in them were
placed the mutilated remains of Alexander and Draga. No care whatever
was even taken to clothe the bodies properly. While the people of
Belgrade still slept and dreamed of the events of to-morrow the hearse
was driven, slowly, out through the rear gate of the palace grounds,
over the cobbled streets, up to the weather-beaten door of the little
chapel of the Obrenovitch family, which stands in the old cemetery of
St. Mark, back of the city. Graves had been prepared hurriedly under
the board floor of the chapel and, after chanted benedictions had been
uttered by two priests—the only mourners—the bodies of the chief
victims of the bloodiest national tragedy of modern times were lowered
reverently to their final resting-place.
Story has it that the rambler roses, which cover thickly the fence in
front of the palace grounds, had bloomed white until the summer of
1903, but that the spilled blood of the royal couple had changed their
hue to red. Of course this is a consoling little piece of fiction,
circulated by the friends of the Obrenovitch dynasty; but one thing is
agreed upon by all, that the roses never bloomed in such profusion or
with such gorgeous colouring as they did that year.
[Illustration: THE BALL-ROOM OF THE NEW PALACE, BELGRADE.]
While strolling by the palace grounds to-day you would scarcely believe
that only a few years ago the _konak_ of Alexander and Draga stood upon
the very spot where now a bandstand, festooned with electric bulbs,
shelters the musicians as they play for the royal family, while the
street in front hums with the chatter of gay promenaders. You will see
the same red rambler roses, forming a brilliant screen to the beautiful
garden in the background. Perhaps you can, through the eye of your
imagination, see the very spot upon which fell the distorted remains of
royalty on that memorable tenth of June.
* * * * *
Notwithstanding the fact that the untimely death of the last
Obrenovitch put an end to the family contentions, a number of dastardly
crimes are perpetrated each year in Belgrade by the constituents of the
two rival houses. The latest Servian outrage to be hawked before the
world was the murder in prison of the brothers Novakovics on September
28, 1907, because of their too zealous efforts to bring to the bar of
Justice the real murderers of King Alexander.
Captain Novakovics, a short time after the murder of the late King
and Queen, was the instigator of a wide-spread scheme to bring the
regicides to trial. This scheme was betrayed, Novakovics was tried by
court martial and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, during which
period two unsuccessful attempts to poison him were made. Upon his
release, although his health was permanently shaken, he started a daily
paper called “Za Otadjbinu,” in the columns of which he attacked the
present ruling dynasty and, in more or less open language, accused
King Peter, unflinchingly, of being the prime mover of the plot to
do away with Alexander. His printing presses were seized and he was
arrested the second time, the absurd charge having been brought against
him that he had stolen three screws from his own machine which, a few
hours before, had been sold at auction by the police. Twenty-five days
of incarceration in an under-ground dungeon with many of the worst
criminals in the land failed to break his spirit, and he—with his
brother, who had also been arrested and sent to prison—was transferred
to a cell which overlooked the street. Again bribes and threats failed
to insure his future silence.
Finally, the two brothers, unable longer to withstand the assaults made
upon them by the prison-keepers, decided to call public attention to
their case. Having secured, during a moment of relaxation on the part
of the guards, rifles from a near-by room, they barricaded the door to
their cell quickly and commenced firing toward the ceiling. The police,
failing in courage to burst open the door, resorted to a heinous
method of overpowering the prisoners, which was invented on the moment
by a reinstated detective agent. A solution of saltpetre was inserted
through the window of the cell. Gradually the rifle-firing ceased, the
door was broken open and, although the prisoners lay senseless upon the
floor, the enraged jailers riddled their bodies with bullets.
People, who had gathered outside attracted by the shots of the
prisoners, cried, “Asphyxiates were forbidden at The Hague!” “Down
with the police!” “Enough of regicide rule!” But the prison was soon
surrounded with cavalry troops and the crowd dispersed.
Captain Novakovics was a scion of one of the best Servian families, and
had been married but four months before his assassination. His body was
not only forbidden to be placed in the family vault, but his relatives
were not even allowed to attend his funeral.