There was no use in looking to the Montenegrin mountains, for that
rallying-point of all the Serbs was in the midst of very delicate
business. One year before the rising of Kara George, in 1803, the
Montenegrin warriors had profited from the fact that they were
fighting nobody and they had made a few reforms in their own country.
The Bishop, Peter I., convoked an assembly at which the tribal chiefs
approved of a Code and of the imposition of a tax, for State
requirements. It was also decided to have a court of justice, the
members of which should be elected by the people. Thus it will be seen
that the patriarchal system still prevailed, and though the Bishop was
regarded by the outside world--by the Turk whom with varying fortunes
he was perpetually fighting, and by the Russian Tzar, whom he had
visited at intervals from the time when Peter the Great called on the
Montenegrins in 1711 to work with him in rescuing, if it was God's
will, those Orthodox Christians who were oppressed by the yoke of the
heathen--though the Bishop was regarded both by friend and foe as the
sovereign of Montenegro, yet it was only round him that the tribal
chiefs gathered as being the guardian of their religion, while the
people, represented by their tribal chiefs, remained the real
sovereign. If Kara George had risen one year earlier they would have
flown immediately to help him--as, indeed, they did help him at a
later period--they would have postponed, without a moment's
hesitation, the establishing of Code and tax and court of justice. But
in 1804 they found themselves in a most awkward situation. Since the
death of the Tzar Paul the Russians had appeared to be indifferent to
Montenegro, and for three years the annual subsidy of a thousand
sequins had not been paid. This omission was made use of by the French
Consul at Dubrovnik, who with the aid of a Dubrovnik priest, one
Dolci, set himself to wean the Montenegrins from their Russian
friendship. Fonton, Russia's Consul at Dubrovnik, demanded the
sequestration and the scrutiny of Dolci's papers; the demand was
rejected, and when force was tried Dolci leaped at the examiner's
throat. It was proved that he was in the pay of France and the
Montenegrins were obliged to disavow him. This exasperated the Bishop,
who threatened to cut off Dolci's ears, but relented and only gave him
a hundred blows with a stick and ordered him to be imprisoned in a
monastery. The second half of Dolci's punishment was thought by many
at the time to be unwise, as he might talk. And they were gladdened
when they heard, soon afterwards, of his decease, though whether they
were right in praising their bishop for this consummation we do not
know. At all events, the hapless Dolci had not lived in vain, for
Russia now resumed her good relations with the mountaineers, and she
inaugurated them by paying the three thousand sequins.
The Treaty of Pressburg in 1805 allotted Dalmatia to Napoleon. A few
months afterwards his armies landed on the coast. Although the high
command and certain regiments were French, a large part of the force
consisted of Italians, Germans, Spaniards and Dutchmen. The scheme
Napoleon entertained was to secure for himself the gates of the
Balkans and Albania, incidentally to take the Ionian Islands in the
rear, with the great purpose of securing the roads to Constantinople;
thence to India.