WAR CORRESPONDENCE AT RAGUSA
The splendid victory of Muratovizza led to the recall of our old
enemy Shefket Pasha, who was sent to Bulgaria and replaced in the
Herzegovina by a more competent and humane man, an old friend of
Cretan days, Raouf Pasha, one of the most competent and liberal
Circassian officers in the service of the Sultan. Of the operations
which followed I have no direct cognizance, and I am not writing the
history of the war, except as it mingles with my own experiences.
The lull that followed the change of command left me time to study
Montenegro and its people, and I made many friends. The battle at
Muratovizza had developed a quarrel between Socica, who commanded
there with a most distinguished ability, and old Peko Pavlovich, who
had refused his coöperation in the battle, to the great diminution
of the consequences of the victory. Peko had now come to follow
the suggestions of the Russian consulate at Ragusa, from which his
fortunate rival would accept no indications. The Russian Slavonic
committees had begun to work, and their contributions and influence,
more than the direct action of their government, gradually brought the
whole movement under Russian influence. I noticed here again what
had happened in Crete, that the Russian agents, profiting by the
irresponsibility which must always be the accompaniment of a despotic
government so extensive as that of Russia, acted without orders and on
their own inspiration, sometimes with disastrous results. The personal
rivalry between Derché and his Russian colleague in the beginnings of
the Cretan troubles had, I have no doubt, a much greater influence
on the event of all the negotiations than any desire of the Russian
government to provoke an insurrection, and so here the feuds that
arose between the agents of the Slavonic committees and the consulate
at Ragusa no doubt refracted the intentions of the authorities at St.
Petersburg more than was suspected.
There is no doubt that Jonine, on his own responsibility and in
opposition to the wishes of the Czar, did what he could to stimulate
the movement in Herzegovina, and that this was the tendency of all the
Russian agents in the Balkans. Of this I had many opportunities of
assuring myself, and, as I sympathized in that feeling, I had no
difficulty in finding it where it existed. Those agents systematically
provoked hostility to Turkey, which was natural and consistent with
the good of the people, for the Turkish abuses are incurable and
always merit rebellion, but also against Austria, which was unjust
and aggravated the trouble of the rayahs needlessly. The Slavonic
committees in Russia, too, went far beyond the desire of the
government, and there were continual rivalries between them and the
consular agents, the latter feeling obliged to outbid the committees
to keep their influence. They had, generally, the mania of activity
and zeal, and commonly went beyond their orders, trusting that if the
luck followed them they would be approved, and if it deserted them
they would find protection in the surroundings of the throne, as they
generally did, activity in the Slavonic cause covering many sins
against discipline. During the lull after the defeat of Servia
(to anticipate a little the course of my narrative), I made the
acquaintance of the Russian General Tcherniaieff at an English
watering-place. We became great friends, for personally I have always
liked the Russians, and he told me with no little glee how he
had outwitted the Czar, who, learning that he intended to go to
Herzegovina to fight, called him and made him swear that he would not
go to "fight with those brigands, the Herzegovinians." He swore, and
then went, evading the surveillance of the police and with a false
passport, to Belgrade, where he gave himself to inciting the Servians
to war, and, when Servia declared war the following spring, he
commanded the army. So he never came to Herzegovina or to Montenegro,
and he was personally hostile to the Prince, as I found most Russian
officers to be. But he assured me that the Czar was bitterly opposed
to the movement, and that if it had been suspected that he was going
to the Balkans he would have been arrested. The prudence of the Czar
is always in danger of being nullified by the imprudence of his
agents.
The pressure of the Turkish government on Montenegro became severe,
and the Prince, in the failure of Servia to respond to the Montenegrin
proposals to fight it out, was unwilling to take the responsibility of
a war. But the Sultan inclined to war so strongly that Raouf Pasha,
who advised him that his army was not prepared for it, was recalled,
partly on account of that advice, and partly because he declared that
the insurrection was to a great extent justified by the bad government
of Bosnia, and was replaced by Achmet Mukhtar, later the Ghazi, who
came breathing flames and extermination. The bands of Montenegrins
were ordered to leave the frontier of the principality, and came down
to the vicinity of Ragusa; and as the interest at Cettinje diminished
I followed the war. The winter set in with great and unremembered
rigor, the refugees suffered the greatest misery, and many of the
Turkish troops in the high mountain country died of exposure. I saw
deserters at Ragusa who declared that there would be very general
desertion were it not that the troops were assured, and believed,
that, if they deserted, the Austrian authorities would certainly send
them back to their regiments.
Before this the "Times" had come to the conclusion that the movement
had come to stay awhile, and I was informed that I should be
henceforward placed in the position of its special correspondent. As
I had thoroughly mastered the field and enjoyed the confidence and
friendship of the Prince, I had, as long as the war lasted, no rival
on the English press. The suffering amongst the families of the
Herzegovinians, exiled almost _en masse_ into Dalmatia and Montenegro,
was very great; but the influence of the letters which appeared in the
"Times" produced a wide and happy charitable movement, and I received
at Ragusa supplies of money and clothing, which made the wretched
Christians bless England continually. I had a sharp attack of
bronchitis from the absolute impossibility of finding quarters where I
could do my work in a tolerable comfort; for the usual mildness of the
climate of Dalmatia leaves every house unprovided for the cold,
which that winter was unprecedentedly severe. I used to sit at
my writing-table wrapped in all the blankets I could keep on me.
Fireplaces seemed to be unknown.
On the Greek Christmas (January 6) I met at the house of Colonel
Monteverde, the agent of the Russian committees, a number of the
insurgent chiefs who had come in for a consultation, the forces of the
insurrection having separated into two general commands in consequence
of the quarrel between Peko and Socica. Socica remained in supreme
command in the mountainous Piva district, now buried under the snow,
and Peko took the direction in the lower country, and established
himself at the old camp at Grebci, driving Ljubibratich and his
Herzegovinians out of the field. Peko had then a force of about
1500 men, and Mukhtar did not attempt an attack, but, having made a
military promenade through the lower Herzegovina, went back to Mostar
and into comfortable winter quarters. Peko took position astride the
road from Ragusa to Trebinje, and held the latter place effectually
blockaded. A provision train was about to leave Ragusa, and a force of
five battalions of Turkish regulars, with 400 irregulars and six guns,
was sent from Trebinje as escort. A force of two companies was posted
on two hills commanding the road about midway, and, though Peko had
decided to wait for the train, he, being a natural strategist, saw
that this force must be disposed of to give him a clear field. He
accordingly attacked the main body and drove it back to Trebinje with
a loss of 250 men (counted by the noses brought in). He then put a
cordon around the posts on the hills, lest the men should escape in
the night, and, having prepared for an assault the next morning, sent
us word to join him. He promised to send us horses for the journey at
daylight, and we went to the rendezvous breakfastless, not to lose
time, but he forgot us, and, after waiting for the horses till past 8
A.M., we set out on foot.
The snow lay a few inches deep, but the sun had come out strong, and
it was melted in patches, so that we stepped alternately in mud and in
snow, slipping and picking our way in the best haste we might until 2
P.M., when we arrived at Vukovich, a tiny village where Peko had his
headquarters for the moment, the entire population having taken refuge
across the frontier. Here the Russians had established an ambulance,
and we found the wounded coming in, and some young Russian medical
students dressing the wounds. We could hear the firing, and the echoes
of it rolling around the hills, and even the shouting of the chiefs
in the, to us, inarticulate insults to the enemy and encouragement to
their own men. One of the surgeons took his rifle and offered himself
as guide to the battlefield.
Vukovich is in a deep hollow, and, as we rose on the ridge that
separated it from the higher land on which the fight was going on,
a rifle ball sung over my head and went on into the village. Others
followed, some plunging into the earth near us, and some striking the
rocks. We were just in the range of the insurgents, who were fighting
up hill on the farther side of the hill, round the summit of which was
the circle of breastworks held by the doomed Turkish force, and
the bullets of the assailants ranged over to us. It was my first
experience under a prolonged fire, though not of being fired at, and
I must admit that it put me in a terrible funk. I put the largest
Montenegrin of the group which accompanied us between myself and the
firing party. I had not eaten a crumb since the day before, or taken
even a cup of coffee, and my legs were in cramp from the hard walking
for six hours in mud and snow, and I was ready to drop from fatigue
and hunger. One of the chiefs who came by on his way to the ambulance,
where the ghastly procession of wounded was now coming in, seeing me
pale and exhausted, offered me his flask of slievovits (plum brandy),
of which I drank a half-tumbler raw. The effect was marvelous, and
enabled me clearly to understand the meaning of the familiar term
"Dutch courage," so that I watched from afar the fight to the end
without a return of funk.
The Turks were entrenched within a double line of stone wall,
concentric, and the insurgents were fighting upwards, and when we came
on the scene the fighting was still at the lower wall. Presently there
was a more rapid firing, then a moment's lull, and then the firing
broke out again from the upper breastwork. The insurgents had charged
and carried the lower line and reversed it, and the poor Turks
surviving were driven into the inner circle of about a hundred feet in
diameter, out of which not one could hope to come alive. The rest of
the garrison of Trebinje were so cowed by the result of the fighting
the day before that they dared not come out to the relief of their
comrades.
And so the night fell on us, and the bands returned to their camp,
leaving a cordon to pen in the few remaining Turks. We had many
wounded, and a few killed, amongst whom was Maxime Bacevich, voivode
of Baniani, and a cousin of the Prince of Montenegro, one of the
bravest of the brave, whose death was moaned over by all as we
gathered together that night in the large hut that served as
headquarters. It was a stone cabin of one room, at one end the stall
for the cattle, and in the centre a fireplace, the smoke from
which went out by a hole in the roof. Three sides of the room were
surrounded by a stone platform, wide enough for the tallest man to
lie with his feet to the fire; but there was no furniture, not even a
bundle of straw. This was the bed of fifty men, lying side by side
on the bare stone, my pillow being my felt hat, and my bedding my
overcoat. The fire was hot, and the smell indescribable,--fifty pairs
of dirty feet, and the bodies of fifty men, most of whom had not
washed for a month, with the cattle stall at the end,--that was our
lodging; but, tired as I was, I slept. At daylight the scouts came in
to tell us that in the night the little body of Turks had escaped,
probably through a sleeping cordon, and scattered up and down along
the road between Ragusa and Trebinje, the most of them having been
caught and killed as they ran. There was no mercy in this war, and
a man who was left behind was a dead man. One of the fugitives had
nearly reached Trebinje when he was met in the way by a Herzegovinian,
of whom he begged for quarter in the usual Turkish form, "aman"
(mercy), to which the Herzegovinian replied "taman" (enough), and cut
him down.
A week or more elapsed before Mukhtar Pasha, hurrying from Mostar,
could concentrate troops enough to clear the road and provision
Trebinje, and then he succeeded only by the most infantile blunders
on the part of the Christian forces. From that time until the spring
there was a succession of isolated conflicts with no connection, the
Turks attempting to provision the little fortresses in the mountains,
and the insurgents to damage the Turks as much as opportunity
permitted. The powers were by this time thoroughly aroused, and
the Austrian intervention followed. Baron Rodich, the governor of
Dalmatia, called a conference of the insurgent chiefs at Sutorina
to arrange a pacification. I went to see Rodich, a shrewd, precise
functionary, liberal, as far as one could well be in his position, and
I saw at once that, while he was determined to obey his orders, and
urge a pacification because it was in accordance with his orders, he
had no faith in success, and had a great sympathy with the insurgents.
He was peremptory, and had a soldier-like aversion to special
correspondents; but he was very just, and might have done much had
the situation admitted any other result than the fighting it out.
The Turks would make no concession and admit no reverse, and the
insurgents, having been victorious in three out of four combats,
and having brought the Turkish forces into the most desperate
demoralization (as I was able to learn by the Turkish deserters who
came daily into Ragusa), were not in the least disposed to relinquish
the hold on the position they had won. In the rude shelter obtainable
within the Austrian territory there were thousands of women, children,
and wounded men, supported by the charity of Europe, now largely
excited, leaving the active insurgents free for their operations.
At Ragusa I watched the course of events with informants in every part
of the field of action, having become by this time regarded as the
unflinching friend of the insurrection, to whom all good Slavs were
under obligation of service. I then made the acquaintance and acquired
the friendship of that admirable diplomat whose subsequent career
and mine have repeatedly crossed each other, Sir Edward Monson, then
diplomatic agent at Ragusa, and of a brave and good soldier, the
Austrian commander, General Ivanovich, of whom and of whose excellent
family I have the most delightful recollections, and whose society
during all the time I remained in Ragusa was my sole social refuge
from the wretched life of a special correspondent in half-civilized
regions. It was a poetic and attractive household, and the light of
it, the beauty of Madame Ivanovich and her two daughters, and the
serenity which fell on me when I entered it, remain in my memory as
the sunny oasis in the life of that period. Then, too, I made the
acquaintance of an eminent scholar who was to be for many years after
the stanchest of friends and allies, Professor Freeman, the great
historian, but greater humanitarian, whose too early death I still
feel to be my great personal loss. He had two companions, of whom one
was Lord Morley, who had come to Ragusa to see what there was in the
affair of the Herzegovina; and to their impressions was no doubt due
much of the weight given to the "Times" reports subsequently.
Between fruitless negotiations, attempts to delude the insurgents
by insincere promises, and the greatest efforts on the part of
my _soi-disant_ friend, Danish Effendi, to win over the body of
correspondents by this time collected at Ragusa (he told me in so many
words that he had informed the Turkish government that my pen was
worth 40,000 francs to it), the rest of the winter passed away
quietly. It was evident that war would be declared in the spring
between the principalities and Turkey, and I went home thoroughly worn
out and ill. I went by the way of Venice, and had my first sight
of the city coming in at early morning from Trieste by steamer.
Accustomed as I had been to the color of Turner as the aspect of the
Grand Canal, it seemed to me that what I saw from the steamer was
the ghost of Venice, pallid, wan, faded to tints which were only the
suggestion of Turner's, but still lovely in their fading, and the
impression was more pathetic than it would have been with all the glow
of the great Englishman's palette. My wife met me at the steamer,
and we went home by short stages, for I was too weak to bear a long
railway journey.