Now Peter thought the moment had arrived for Jella[vc]i['c] to found
at last an independent Yugoslav dominion. On December 20, 1848, he
wrote to him: "An inscrutable destiny has placed you, O illustrious
Ban, at the head of the Southern Slavs. You have preserved their
throne, their destiny for the Habsburgs.... A grand mission is yours;
from it may arise a new formation of Europe. Its accomplishment would
absolve the Slavs from the shame of having been the miserable slaves
or the paid creatures of others. As for me, I am free, at the head, it
is true, of a handful of men, despite the double malediction of
tyranny and espionage." [Here he is referring to his neighbours,
Austria and Turkey.] "But what does that matter when I look round me
at millions of brothers who are in alien bondage? Occupy Dalmatia
immediately and let us join each other. That which one does not
conquer with _heroic right_ is worth nothing. I am ready to come to
your help with my Montenegrins." To these overtures Jella[vc]i['c]
gave an evasive reply. It may be that he did not deem the moment
opportune, it may be that, as some have said, he came under the
atavistic influence of the military traditions of the Croats, whose
long years of fighting for the Habsburgs had made them as devoted to
that House as the Dalmatians had been for so long to Venice. The
Habsburgs had exploited them, but the Croats felt that they were bound
by all the blood which they had shed and by the military glory they
had won in Austria's service. Had not Tomasi['c] and Milutinovi['c]
been the Generals--both Croats--who were sent to change Napoleon's
Dalmatia into a province of the Habsburgs? And the list is endless.
Jella[vc]i['c] was very probably deceived by Francis Joseph, who kept
dangling before his eyes a vision of a "Greater Croatia." But, by an
irony of history, this hope of union of the Southern Slavs was for the
time flung very much into the background by the action of the Tzar,
who rescued Austria when in 1849 she was again at variance with the
Magyars. Kossuth had been furious at the Constitution promulgated in
the spring of that year, which not only made obsolete most of
Hungary's privileges, but introduced the principle of equality among
the various nationalities. The Hungarians had been too much accustomed
to the classing of races as first-class people and second-class
people. When they had been reduced--the Russian methods being
drastic--and when their thirteen Generals had been executed at Arad,
Francis Joseph thanked the Croats "for their ceaseless energy and for
their numerous sacrifices in the interests of the State." But
Jella[vc]i['c] did not move, and the Prince-Bishop wrote to Count
Pozza, a friend of his at Dubrovnik. "I had hoped for an instant, my
dear Count," he wrote, "but I am now convinced that Yugoslavism is,
for the time being, merely an idle word. The Yugoslavs are unconscious
of their own strength and sell themselves unconditionally to the
strongest. It is a subject of profound grief for those who love them
and for sensitive souls." Peter II. did not long survive. He may have
wondered sometimes why the Croats did not call for him instead of
Jella[vc]i['c], since his methods of administration had been so
successful in the principality. He may have meditated sometimes on the
Russians, wondering how one nation could be both so highly meritorious
and so bloodthirsty. He died, aged thirty-nine, a disappointed man.
(His _Turtle-Dove_ expired some time before.) And he was buried, as he
wished, upon a lonely peak of Lov[vc]en, that vast mountain over Kotor
which, until the deed of his great-nephew's son, his namesake, was
impregnable. Peter II. had always been a man apart--it was his opinion
that his Church was being choked with formalism and with ceremonial,
and though he was a Bishop he went to church infrequently. The poet in
him was much more attracted to the Bogomile sect, which taught that
God had two sons, of whom the elder was Satan and the younger Christ;
and when the world was created, the elder, seeing how lovely it was,
separated himself from his Father in order to rule the world; and
afterwards God sent the younger son to punish him.... Peter had far
greater merits as a poet than as a ruler. In fact, Pushkin is perhaps
the only Slav poet who surpasses him, and his philosophy is more
original than that of Tolstoi. There came to Montenegro one
Ivanovi['c], a Russian missionary, whom Peter appointed to be
President of the Senate. Peter used to live chiefly in Venice, Rome or
Naples, only coming to Montenegro as a guest, and it was during his
residence in Naples that Ivanovi['c] introduced a number of reforms.
According to the general opinion, Peter was the greatest Yugoslav that
ever lived; as a ruler he was neither good nor bad.