This system of tutelage may have had its irksome moments; the Turkish
rule in Serbia was such that any people with blood in their veins
were bound to rebel. Sooner or later a race like the Serbs, who lived
always with the songs of their old heroes and who gloried in their
heiduks, were sure to dash themselves against this alien master. Kara
George had seen that the Serbs in the Banat were prosperous, while in
Serbia they were obliged to stand and watch the janissaries come back
to the pashalik of Belgrade, though the Turks had sworn this should
not be. Then the match was set to the fire--in January 1804 the Da-Hi,
the chiefs of the janissaries, after having slain Mustapha Pasha, the
enlightened Turkish Governor, who was known affectionately as "the
mother of the Serbs," cut off the heads of a number of Serbian
leaders; seventy-two of them on pikes were made into an awful avenue
of trees. But even as the snowstorms beat against these Serbian heads,
so Kara George and his companions from [vS]umadija, the heart of
Serbia, flung themselves against the janissaries and vanquished them.
This was what the Serbs had started out to do, and so for the moment
Constantinople had been content to look on. However, when the Sultan
was told that his unruly vassals had seized the whole of [vS]umadija
and the departments of Valjevo and Pojarevac, he sent against them the
Pasha of Bosnia, who demanded that they should lay down their arms.
But now the Serbs had seen what some day they might struggle to--the
liberation of their country. They had climbed a few steps up the stony
path, they would not let themselves be lured back to the plain. Let
Austria or some other one of the Great Powers guarantee their rights.
The Pasha would not hear of it, and so these few undaunted men
resolved to fight the Turkish Empire. An army came at once to stamp
them out, and at Ivancovac they scattered it. From now they would
fight on alone.[37] Their leader was the sort of man they wanted, a
brave heiduk who was never weary, who had taken up one day a large
rock and had flung it down a precipice, and who would do the same,
they fancied, to a follower of his, if he saw fit.... The Serbs were
left to fight alone, but the Great Powers took an interest in their
future. We find in a report from the French Ambassador in Petrograd to
his Minister of Foreign Affairs (No. 261 in the "Excerpts from the
Paris Archives relating to the history of the first Serbian
Insurrection," collected [Belgrade, 1904] by Dr. Michael
Gavrilovi['c], now the Minister in London) that the treaty of alliance
stipulated for Russia to have Moldavia, Bessarabia, Vallachia and
Bulgaria; France to have Albania, part of Bosnia, Morea and Candia;
Austria to have Croatia and part of Bosnia; while Serbia was to be
independent and given to a prince of the House of Austria or to any
other foreign prince who married a Russian Grand Duchess. According to
another scheme which the Ambassador forwarded, Austria was to have
Serbia in complete possession as an Austrian province, and Croatia to
belong to Austria or France, as Napoleon might decide.... Serbia had
to fight alone, and unluckily her ranks were anything but closed. The
lack of education brought about some childish jealousies, such as that
of Mladen Milanovi['c], who was ordered by Kara George to go to the
relief of the Heiduk Veliko at Negotin, where 18,000 Turks were
besieging him. "He may help himself!" quoth Mladen. "_His_ praise is
sung to him at his table by ten singers, _mine_ is not. Let him hold
out by himself, the _hero_." Veliko sent word to say that at the New
Year (when Kara George and his chieftains were wont to meet in
consultation) he would inquire as to how the country was being
governed. But before then he was dead--shot by the Turks, who
recognized him while he was going the rounds; and after five days his
troops, in despair, made their escape across a morass and scattered.