The discontented Serbs could now no longer, as in days gone by, look
hopefully towards Cetinje. Rumours and something more than rumours
were circulating as to Nikita's character. For many years that very
shrewd person was going to gull the Western world which, meeting him
on the Riviera, was enchanted by his picturesque costume. But if Queen
Victoria and Mr. Gladstone had gone to ask the Montenegrins they would
have found that he was hated, and not only in the Brda and the parts
bordering on Herzegovina but even in old Montenegro. His adherents
were chiefly to be found among the Njegu[vs]i, his own clan, and in
the family of his wife. Certain English devotees of Nikita have
actually been to Cetinje, have, as they proudly tell us, been embraced
by him and have enormously admired his alfresco audiences when he
settled all manner of problems to the perfect satisfaction of these
tourists. Some of them, with a decoration or so and with memories of
dinners and shoots, have written books that are a song of praise; and
if Nikita's subjects tell these gentlemen and others, including
members of the British Parliament, who have not been to Cetinje--but
who know just as much as the travelled ones about Montenegro--if they
tell them that Nikita is a ruffian, the answer will probably be that
he who says such things must have a grievance, and that those
foreigners who have criticized him, Miss Edith Durham, Baron
d'Estournelles de Constant and Mr. Nevinson, are altogether mistaken.
I do not propose to make a long and dreary catalogue of his
iniquities, but only to mention a few items.... It was in Montenegro a
matter of common knowledge that the wheat which Russia sent in large
quantities for his famine-threatened people was not given but was sold
to them by Nikita, the proceeds being shared by himself and four or
five privileged families, the Petrovi['c], Vukoti['c], Martinovi['c]
and Jabu[vc]ani. A member of one of these families became so affluent
that he built himself a house, and a gentleman who still survives,
Tomo Oraovac by name, wrote on this in the year 1878 a rather humorous
poem which he called "The Red House." Oraovac was at the time an
official, the intendant of the Montenegrin army at Kotor, and he
naturally had to resign his post. The Tzar sent a certain General
Ritter to examine the charges and, as one result, a Russian decoration
was conferred upon Oraovac; according to etiquette it was transmitted
through Nikita, and that personage gave it to a friend of his, a Turk
at Podgorica. Nikita is apt to disarm one by the quaintness of his
ways. Later on, Oraovac, who was one of Montenegro's earliest
schoolmasters, organized the _intelligentsia_ for the purpose of
obtaining a Constitution. Nikita was not yet ready to grant such a
thing, and his representative who attended one of Oraovac's meetings
at Podgorica inflicted upon him two grave wounds. The reformer was
then expelled--the powerful intervention of one of Nikita's cousins
saved his life--his mother and both his brothers, _more Montenegrino_,
were likewise expelled and his house was bestowed upon a certain
Kru[vs]a, who lived in it for forty years. One must add, with respect
to the Russian wheat, that Nikita did not sell it for cash--the wars
of that period had left the land in such distress that no cash was
available. And so the wheat was delivered in exchange for bonds that
would some day become payable. When the wars of the seventies were
over, an edict was issued, and from end to end of the country, so goes
the story, men had to sell their sheep and cattle and horses, their
sticks of furniture, their land itself, to meet their obligations.
Meanwhile the Austrian frontiers had been closed. No selling was
possible outside the land, and selling within it was only permitted to
certain specified persons, agents of the Prince, and at fixed prices.
The profits were enormous; the country was ruined, and from that time
date the great emigrations to America, as was pointed out by Mr.
Leiper the Serb-speaking Scot in his admirable contributions to the
_Morning Post_.... Nikita loved to bestow things upon himself. A
famous hero, Novak Voujo[vs]evi['c], killed seventeen Turks in one
day, and when he went, in consequence of an invitation, to Petrograd,
the Tzar presented him with a sword on which were the Russian crown
and the Montenegrin crown in diamonds. When the old warrior came back
to Cetinje, Nikita said that such a weapon could not possibly be worn
by a simple man; he therefore abstracted the diamonds and gave it him
with false ones in their place. Nikita could not endure criticism, but
those persons, including myself, who have charged him with inhuman
treatment in the case of Vladimir Tomi['c], an intelligent young
judge, were acting on faulty information. The tale was that Tomi['c],
after being incarcerated, was soused with petrol and so badly burned
that he lost his reason. As a matter of fact, this neurasthenic young
man--whose imprisonment was due to his having wantonly insulted the
whole Royal Family--poured the petrol on himself. Eventually, when
Radovi['c] came into office, he was released and, a few years later,
he died in his native village.... The Montenegrin records are crowded
with the names of those whom Nikita drove into exile for no other
reason than that they had gone abroad for an education and would no
longer be disposed to regard his methods as quite up to date. With the
exception of the few favoured families Nikita was all against anyone
acquiring riches; he deliberately put obstacles in the way of plum
cultivation, and in such a state of poverty did he keep the
Montenegrins that the Baron d'Estournelles de Constant, whose official
connection with Montenegro dates back to 1878, addressed to Nikita an
open letter with reference to the decreasing population, as to which
the statistics had been destroyed. On account of the rigorous taxation
a great many of the people were forced to migrate to America, from
where they sent almost everything they earned to their unhappy
relatives; these were compelled to pay up to 100 per cent. interest on
the loans which they had been obliged to negotiate, so that they could
not meet the taxes. And there would have been some consolation had
those taxes been productive; but by far the larger part of them, as of
the loans raised in Vienna (with the Boden Credit and the Laender Bank)
and at Constantinople were devoted to the Court and its favourites,
for rewards, journeys, decorations--every thing in fact, save the
needs of the people. It suited Nikita very well to keep his people in
dire poverty and ignorance. Such has been the poverty of the
Montenegrins that it was no uncommon sight to see them cultivating so
minute a _polje_ that the wheat which it produced would give no more
than half a loaf. And meanwhile they were not allowed to exploit the
wealth of the forests. Figs, olives, grapes and plums could all have
been cultivated with profit, and in the lower regions oranges and
lemons and tobacco. But there was the deliberate policy to keep the
population from enriching themselves. Occasionally their native wit
gained for them a surreptitious triumph. Thus it happened that a poor
peasant's son went up into the higher lands to tend the flocks of one
who was more prosperous. By some means the boy discovered that the
mountain torrent of his new abode dived underneath the rocks and
subsequently reappeared and was the stream which ran past his old
home. He turned this knowledge to effect by killing a lamb and
throwing it into the water. His parents, down below, retrieved the
lamb. Various other animals went the same journey, until the farmer
ascertained what the boy was doing; and then the day arrived when the
poor peasant, watching by the stream, saw the body of his son being
carried down towards him.
Very few schools were opened; for example the Vasojevi['c], who are
the most numerous tribe not only of Montenegro but of all the Serbian
lands, had to content themselves with one school, built in 1882. In
1869 there was established a seminary with three classes, that was
afterwards converted into a high-school of four classes; but both of
these were frequently closed, the true reason being that the Russian
subsidies given for the school were spent on the various needs of
Nikita's Court. (By the way, at one time when Montenegro had this one
high-school and one hospital the three sons of Nikita were in
possession of ten palaces.) In 1869 the Russian Empress caused a
girls' college to be opened at Cetinje. It was one of the best
institutions in the whole Peninsula; many Serb and Yugoslav girls, in
addition to the Montenegrins, gathered at Cetinje. This college was
the centre from which education and modern ideas spread out to the
remotest corners of Montenegro; in 1913 it was obliged to close--the
Court had long been looking at it with a very jaundiced eye....
Russia, Serbia, Italy, France and even Turkey offered free education
to a certain number of young Montenegrins. But only the sons of the
favoured families were able to get passports to go abroad; there was
scarcely anything Nikita feared as much as education.... And if one
asks why no patriot could be found to kill this prince one is given
two reasons, the first being that his semi-secret treaty with the
Austrians provided that they should come into Montenegro if he were
killed, and secondly, because of the old-time custom of vicarious
punishment. In 1856, for instance, Nikita's father attacked the
Po[vc]ara Ku[vc]i, burned their houses, and is reputed to have slain
more than 550 children, women and old men, including the
septuagenarian grandfather of Tomo Oraovac, on the ground that these
people had set up a kind of republic, independent both of Montenegro
and of the Sultan and declined to pay the former any taxes. These
measures were taken against them in the summer when most of the men
were with their herds in the mountains. Three children survived. The
Great Powers protested, consuls were sent and ultimately the Po[vc]ara
Ku[vc]i, who had always helped the Montenegrins against the Turks,
consented to pay taxes. It was for these reasons that Nikita was never
assassinated.