The association of the Montenegrin Royal Family and the Habsburgs,
which was to culminate in the barefaced treachery of Lov[vc]en, may be
said to have begun in the year 1906, when the two heirs, Francis
Ferdinand and Danilo, met at Dubrovnik. A statement was issued, after
a few days, which declared that Russia was far away and that
Montenegro required the support of a Power whose help would be
effective. If it had not been for the disasters of the Russo-Japanese
War, Nikita would have found it much more difficult to direct his
country in this manner. The Black Mountain had always thought of
Russia as all-powerful; her defeat, when they could bring themselves
to realize it, was to them as if the foundations of the world were
rocking; in their dazed condition they agreed that it was well to have
recourse to Austria. (When the Russian Minister at Cetinje protested,
some explanation was given.) The financial details of the Dubrovnik
agreement are unknown, but from what one does know of Danilo it is
fairly safe if we assume that the whole benefit did not accrue to the
Montenegrin Government. Danilo may in other respects have been an
incapable young man--the advice of his unmarried sister, Xenia, was
always preferred to his; in fact, her father had such confidence in
this masterful woman with the pallid face and large, black eyes--the
"femme fatale," as her enemies have called her--that he never gave an
audience but she was present, either openly or behind a screen.
Danilo's incapacity, however, seems to have stopped short, as we shall
see, at the procuring of cash.
In that same year, 1906, Montenegro's first Skup[vs]tina assembled.
Many people wondered why the autocrat bestowed a Constitution and a
Skup[vs]tina upon his subjects. They for their part--at least the
great majority whose knowledge of the world was gained by looking at
it from their mountain fastnesses--could never for a moment doubt but
that the Montenegrins were the grandest and the noblest of the Serbs.
Hour after hour of peace they spent, disdaining to do any work more
arduous than smoking cigarettes and drinking rakia, and talking,
talking ... they would relate to one another what their ancestors had
done by way of cutting Turkish noses, and unweariedly they would
announce how their own blood was undiluted and heroic. If Greater
Serbia was to be created it was surely they who--but Nikita, their
keen-witted ruler, was not so certain. The Karageorgevi[vc] were no
longer being treated by Europe as outlaws; by his constitutional
methods King Peter had not only effected vast and needed improvements
in his country, but was gradually winning for himself and it, if not a
general esteem, at all events the first approach to that condition
which for so long had been lacking. And Nikita was uneasy. He must
also have a Constitution in his country and a Skup[vs]tina. Very well
he knew that with the inexperience of his people, with their furious
local rivalries and with his power of veto, he would not be greatly
hampered by this Skup[vs]tina. It would be a semblance of modernity.
Nikita had no intention of allowing himself to be put in the shade by
the Prime Minister. Whether it was Tomanovi['c], a kindly man of
straw, or General Martinovi['c], an upright soldier, or anybody
else--their function was to execute the royal orders. The differences
which separate one political party from another in a Balkan State, and
separate them very often into frantically hostile camps, are wont to
be minute as to their principles, for it is largely a question as to
whether you are a devotee of this or of that statesman. Two of the
three parties which existed in Montenegro down to the Great War were
both grouped round the Crown Prince Danilo, and apparently the sole
difference between them was that no member of the Miu[vs]kevi['c]
Cabinet had been in prison. To a western European it would be
surprising that the kindred Radovi['c] party should also be on terms
of close friendship with Danilo, seeing that it consisted of Nikita's
dissatisfied relatives (one of these was Radovi['c]'s powerful
father-in-law) who disliked the new statute which limited the Royal
Family to Nikita and his children. Danilo protected this party for
personal reasons. As for the third political party, that of General
Martinovi['c], its principal plank was its opposition to the other two
parties. Mita Martinovi['c] himself was not much of a politician; he
was a sturdy friend of Russia. Of his rivals, Lazar Miu[vs]kevi['c], a
bearded, rather stout, medium-sized man, has a pious opinion of his
own abilities, and is, or was, very proud of his friendship with
Danilo. He need not be taken seriously, for he has no knowledge of
administration, no political courage and no popular support. [During
the Great War he was for a time the Premier, and after the War, when
the other five ex-Premiers ranged themselves against Nikita, he stayed
in Switzerland, where he tried for many months to make up his mind.]
Andrija Radovi['c], a middle-aged man, whose tall, athletic form is
crowned with the head of a grave poet, was erstwhile a favourite of
Nikita's. Being related to the Royal Family, Nikita called him his
fourth son, and when, after the fatuous bomb conspiracy (of which more
anon), Radovi['c] was lured back from Paris and sentenced to four
years' imprisonment, it was not because he was in any way guilty, but
on the ground that he knew what was going to happen and should have
handed on the information. The real reason was that any party which
was even to a mild extent in favour of reforms did not meet with the
approval of the Gospodar. In his opinion it was necessary to reduce
Radovi['c] to obedience; and Nikita used to try, without success, to
force the innocent prisoner to beg for pardon. Since he declined to do
so, he remained incarcerated with a large cannon-ball chained to his
left leg. While he was in prison he corresponded with Danilo, and on
being liberated was received by Nikita--they wept in each other's
arms.
Nikita fancied he was just the man to govern a progressive modern
State. When he had the famous old warrior Pero publicly flogged by a
criminal for having refused to degrade himself by flogging that same
criminal, Nikita might plead that he was acting in the interests of
discipline. When he confined his critics in the old Turkish fortress
on the small, malarial island of Grimojuri, with the water oozing into
the cells, he might plead that this was precisely the same curriculum
as fell to the lot, at San Juan de Ulloa, of those who incurred the
displeasure of Porfirio Diaz, the Mexican President--and Diaz had been
almost worshipped (till his fall) by many Europeans. When Nikita drove
one afternoon with friends of his to Nik[vs]i['c] and approvingly
looked on while they destroyed the building and the whole machinery of
Montenegro's weekly newspaper, which had departed from the paths of
adulation--well, I see that his apologist, a certain Mr. A.
Devine,[66] says that "in 1908 political passions resulted in the
extinction of the organ of the political Opposition, _Narodna Misao_
("The National Idea")."
In 1908 there fell the blow of Bosnia-Herzegovina's annexation to the
Empire, thus placing definitely under foreign sway the central portion
and ethnically among the purest of that Serbian people which was
already divided into seven different administrations or States. Russia
was still enfeebled by the Japanese War, and although she and Great
Britain protested against the annexation, Count Aerenthal was able to
gather this booty. It would, however, be an exaggeration to say that
Russia--apart from the ultra-patriotic Press--was violently excited.
As M. Nekludoff, the able diplomat, explains,[67] his country was
annoyed not so much at the Bosnian annexation as because there was for
it no _quid pro quo_, no free passage through the Dardanelles. Poor
Serbia was advised by the Great Powers to accept the _fait accompli_.
She constrained herself to do so, but both she and certain folk in
Austria were under no illusions as to the inevitable--a month after
the annexation a Viennese newspaper announced that a conflict with
Serbia and Montenegro could not be avoided. "The longer we postpone
it," said the paper, "so much the more will it cost us."
One gets very weary of hearing the phrase "Divide et impera," which
always occurs at least several times in the course of an exposition of
Austrian policy. But we are bound to say that this principle governed
her behaviour when she stage-managed in 1908 the Zagreb high-treason
trial,[68] which was to drive a wedge between Serbs and Croats, in
1909 the Friedjung case, as also the Cetinje bomb affair which was to,
and did in fact, alienate Nikita from his son-in-law, the Serbian
King.