THE OLD MILITARY FRONTIER, SISCIA, AND THE SAVE.
The Military Frontier, its Origin and Extinction—Effects
of Turkish Conquest on South-Sclavonic Society—Family
Communities—Among the House-fathers—Granitza Homesteads—The
_Stupa_—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—Contrast between Croats
of Granitza and Slovenes—The Advantages and Defects of Family
Communities—Larger Family Community near Brood—A little
Parliament House—Croatian Brigands—A Serb Lady—Turkish Effendi
and Pilgrim—Siszek—Roman Siscia; her Commercial Importance—Her
Martyr—Remains of ancient Siscia—Destiny of Siszek—Croatian
Dances and Songs—Down the Save—New Amsterdam—South-Sclavonic
Types—Arrive at Brood—Russian Spies!—A Sunset between two
Worlds—Marched Off—Bearding an Official—A Scaffold Speech—In
Durance vile—Liberated!
It was the necessities of the Hungarian Kingdom and the Empire, when
they had to bear the brunt of still encroaching Islâm, that some three
hundred years ago created the Military Frontier—the Granitza, as it is
known to its Slavonic denizens. The Hungarian and Imperial statesmen of
the sixteenth century had just the same immense problem set before them
as the Romans of the earlier empire—how to defend a long line of frontier
from the perpetual incursions of barbarians—and they solved it much in
the same way as the Western Cæsars of yore. The Roman Emperors, under
parallel circumstances, parcelled out the march-lands of that awkward
angle between the Rhine and the Danube among rude Allemannic tribes, to
be held of the Emperor on condition of military service in their defence.
So now the Hapsburgh Cæsars divided out the provinces bordering on the
Turks among primitive Sclavonic house-communities, each of which held its
allotment in common of the King of Hungary on condition that it provided,
in proportion to the number of men in the family, one or more soldiers
for watch and ward against the Infidel. The frontier was divided into
territorial divisions known by the military appellation, Regiments. Every
soldier when not on active service might change his sword for a spade,
and sank into a peasant like the rest; and the officer, or ‘_Ober_,’ left
the camp to preside as judge in the law courts. It was a peasant militia.
To this day the Grenzer uniform is but an adaptation of old Croat
costume; the military waggons are the simple village carts; the soldier
transforms himself into a boor, the boor into a soldier, at a moment’s
notice. Thus it was an organisation economical, self-supporting—and who
would not fight bravely when his neighbouring homestead was at stake?—but
military over-pride was tempered by the peaceful instincts of husbandry.
Thus the Turk was successfully fended off, and a long watch-service
sentinelled along the whole frontier. The watch-towers at intervals, with
their wooden clappers, may be still seen in places, as well as the now
unused beacons whose telegraphic chain could once rouse to arms the whole
population from the Adriatic to the easternmost Carpathians in a few
hours.
Thus the Military Frontier was originally the outwork of Christendom, the
political sea-wall of her provinces painfully reclaimed. But the force
of that flood had long been spent—Islâm had ceased to be militant. What
had once been a military became merely a sanitary cordon, or was turned
to account to protect the absurd tariffs of slow Swabian finance. Nay,
it had even ceased in part to mark the boundary line between Frank and
Osmanlì. Free Serbia had risen beyond it. It was superannuated—a mere
survival. The Military Frontier, as it existed a few years ago, might be
compared to an old Roman dyke that once marked the limits of the chafing
North Sea, but now runs inland across the flats of Ouse—a monument of a
vanquished ocean perverted to hedgerows, given over to the plough. And,
indeed, about three years ago it at last struck the Austro-Hungarian
Government that this unproductive rampart might be resigned to
cultivation; for human culture in the Granitza was at a very low ebb,
and the artificial clogs to social development produced industrial
depression. Accordingly the military organisation was assimilated to
that of the rest of the Empire, and by the _Theilungsgesetze_, which
facilitates the transfer of land and the break-up of families, the old
communal system has received its death-blow.
The Military Frontier has ceased to exist, but the old order of things
has not yet passed away; and we were the more anxious to catch if but
a glimpse of that antique society, so long artificially preserved from
change by the military needs of the monarchy, before it dies away from
the memory of man. For to cross the Military Frontier is to survey a
phase of society so primitive that it was already antiquated when the
forefathers of the English sate among the heaths and fens and forests of
the Elbelands. It is to go back, not indeed into Feudal times—for to call
this frontier organisation Feudal shows an ignorance of what Feudalism
really means—but to wander beyond the twilight of history, and take a
lantern as it were into the night of time.
If the Turkish invasion can be likened to the encroachment of an ocean,
it resembled it in nothing more than its denuding action. Throughout
the whole of Eastern Europe there set in a great levelling of baronial
peak-lands. The South-Sclavonic nobility fell at Kóssovo or Mohatch and
a hundred other fields, or skulked away into foreign lands; and, indeed,
this Feudal overgrowth was always more or less of an exotic among Serbs
and Croats. The Turkish conquest was a fiery trial, in truth, and yet
it had the effect of purging the sterling democratic ore of society
from all this hæmatitic dross. The semi-feudal organisation which had
sprung up in these lands—partly owing to the imperfect devices of an
acephalous society to gain the unity of action required in war, partly to
infiltrations of Western ideas viâ Hungary or the Empire—was now levelled
away by the Turks, where it was not, as in Bosnia, assimilated. Society
reverted to that almost patriarchal form which the Sclavonic settlers had
carried with them into the Illyrian triangle when they settled here in
the days of Heraclius. _Vlastela_ and magnates now make way once more for
simple house-fathers, distinctions of rank are merged in the old equality
and fraternity that reign within the paling of the house-community. We
have seen an Imperial ukase work much the same result among the Sclaves
of Russia as was wrought by the Turkish scimitar for their brethren of
the south.
Then, too, not only were the higher ranks of society cleared away, but
influences were at work to make even the communistic village government
go back a step in archaism. Vast tracts of land were depopulated and were
parcelled out amongst new settlers, chiefly immigrant families from
beyond the Turkish frontier. But the single farms of those backwoodsmen
could not grow into villages all at once, and so it would happen that the
mark—as we may call the allotment—reverted to a very primitive stage,
being held in common, not so much by a village-community, as by a single
household. Thus the Starescina, or alderman of the community, was often
literally the elective elder of the household.
But it was evident that if the new military organisation was to be
self-supporting, each family must contain several adult male members—for
how else could men be spared from the tillage necessary for the support
of the household? And how else could contributions in kind be afforded
to the military chest—the _cassa domestica_—for the keep of soldier
house-brothers?
Therefore it was that the Government thought well to strengthen the
Sclavonic family tie, always strong, by legal fetters which forcibly
bound the household together and artificially checked the development
of individual proprietorship. It was forbidden, as far as possible, to
alienate the property of a house-community, or to subdivide it among
its members; and so literally was this enforced that, near Siszek for
example, we heard of families still existing containing over three
hundred members all living within the same palisaded yard, and forming a
village of themselves; nor is it by any means rare to find villages in
the Granitza consisting of a couple of households.
_Aug. 7._—It was to survey this primitive régime that we now sallied
forth from Karlovac, and, crossing the bridge over the Kulpa, found
ourselves, as was manifested still by a conspicuous sign-board, in what
was once the Sluin Regiment of the Military Frontier—a suburban street
of Karlovac, in fact, belonging to the ex-military district. It must,
however, be remembered that side by side with this military communism
exists a civil population: clergy, teachers, artizans, tradesmen,
innkeepers, and so forth, who enjoy exceptional liberties; so there was
not much to notice of special interest in military Karlovac, except
a spacious government school for Granitza children. A pretty country
walk brought us to the little village of Radovac, where we lighted
on a native, an intelligent young fellow, who acted as a guide, and
interpreter of primitive institutions.
We looked into several of the cottages, each in its yard, with due
complement of outbuildings, garden and orchard for common use. The
households here are not so large as in other parts of the frontier,
and it is evident that in former times the inhabitants must have found
some means of evading the law, and dividing their property. The old
order of things still exists; each cottage has its house-father and
house-mother, and everything is held in common. But the effects of
the _Theilungsgesetze_ are beginning to be felt, and the right of any
family to claim an equal division of the property among its members is
being taken advantage of. We were shown one house where the family had
just quarrelled and split up. In this case the old house-father and
house-mother still retained their military exemption; but the heads of
the new family offshoots were liable to service, and were not recognised
as house-fathers and house-mothers by the eye of the law; though some
of them still arrogate the time-honoured titles. In other parts of the
Frontier the overgrown households are availing themselves of the new
permissive law to escape from the imprisonment of the common paling. We
heard of instances of partition near Siszek, and further east, near Brood
in Slavonia. Thus the old communal life is dying a natural death.
[Illustration: A Granitza Homestead.]
But let us examine one of these homesteads where the house-fathers and
house-mothers still preside—and the description of the one we saw first
will serve for all. In order to find our way to the dwelling-house
we had to enter by a yard, enclosed by a rough wooden fence, called
the ‘_plot_.’ Within this, to the right, was the ‘_Kucica_’ or
common cottage, and then followed in order the pig-sty, the barn,
the hay-loft and cart-shed, the round conical-peaked hay-stack, and
another store-house. This homestead square reminded one of old English,
Norse,[160] and Franconian farms; and we found the dwelling-houses
trisected into a sleeping-room, a kitchen, and a store-room, like the
homesteads of Scandinavian backwoods. The centre room of the three is
the kitchen, in one corner of which is a flat stone hearth, a small
paved square for cooking on, such as is universal in Illyria. In the
other corner there was a stove of a kind which also occurs throughout
all these lands; it was of baked clay, square below, and bell-shaped
above, bayed all over with circular pigeon-holes, which in Bosnia, where
still ruder forms of this stove occur, are actually pots embedded into
the clay; though whether this practice arose from a scientific desire to
gain a greater heating surface, or whether for the celebration of certain
culinary mysteries, or whether for ornament, or, what is more probable,
by reason of some exigencies of structure—we were never able to determine.
Before the kitchen was a kind of fore-hall, as in a Northern cottage;
but, in this warm climate, open to the air, and forming a verandah, which
in the larger houses runs along the upper storey, where the family live.
We peeped into the dormitory, which was the largest room of the three,
and saw beds ranged round the room, and a picture of a saint suspended
from the wall. The house itself was of wood, and showed in parts the
rich time-stains of an Alpine chalet. Yet in places one might notice
the Sclavonic tendency towards whitewash and mud plaster. The roof was
double; first a shingling of short wooden planks, and above that a
substantial thatch.
[Illustration: Stupa]
As to the inmates, they were engaged in the yard in a very curious
occupation. Just outside the store-house was the most greedy-looking
machine we ever set eyes on—all teeth and jaw, without even the decency
of a stomach. It turned out to be a stamping-mill for beating flax, which
we had already noticed on our way, going through preliminary processes
of water-retting and grassing. At first sight the masticator looked like
a monstrous variety of the trap which children use for ‘bat and ball;’
it was all of wood, except a metal pivot or axis, on which the upper jaw
worked, and its motive power was supplied by two Croats, a man and a
woman, who took their stand on the upper jaw, and, placing one foot on
each side of the pivot, imparted a see-sawing motion to it, by throwing
their weight simultaneously first on one foot and then on the other, from
which treading the mill gains the Croatian name _Stupa_ or tread-mill.
Meanwhile another woman took a wisp of the ready retted and dried flax,
and fed the wooden crocodile with it; and when it had been sufficiently
chewed, and the useless stem or boom separated from the useful bark or
harl, she handed the wisp on to another woman, who combed out the fibres
in a heckle, made by the simple process of sticking iron nails through a
paw of wood fixed into the fence, and being now both clawed and chewed,
the flax was laid in a heap, and the preparation was concluded. The mill
seems a very primitive form of the Scotch foot-brake, but it is at
least better than the hand-mill of our forefathers, for the principle of
co-operation of labour is invoked, and the flax therefore prepared more
expeditiously.
One would think that the fact that the rude Croats of the Granitza have
arrived at a stage of manufacture even so comparatively advanced as this,
may be due to an advantageous influence of the Communistic system. For
if self-interest is in the long run the best spur to industry, yet it
sometimes keeps it back, owing to a want of readiness to combine with
others. But here we find the common interest of the house-community in
the results of labour, teaching the great economic lesson of combination,
though it certainly discourages extraordinary energy in individuals. Thus
the land is tilled in common, the harvest gathered in in common, and,
_ceteris paribus_, it is far more probable that agricultural machinery
could be introduced in one of the large Granitza families, containing
some three hundred members, than in a village of the same population
tenanted by the small, selfish peasant-farmers of France or Germany.
Besides this readiness to combine, another favourable aspect of
this Communistic society was especially striking to one fresh from
among the somewhat churlish, close-fisted Nether-Saxons. This was a
certain geniality, an open-handed readiness of good cheer, whether of
homely apples or homelier wine. Nothing here of that jealous attitude
towards strangers so characteristic of your peasant-farmer or petty
‘_Eigenthümer_.’ You have only to muster up unabashed intrusiveness
enough, and you may spy out the land and all the ins and outs of a
Granitza dwelling-house without let or hindrance. You may rove at your
sweet will through yard and garden, take stock of horned and feathered,
seat yourself on the three-legged stool before the culinary hearth—and
pray do not let false delicacy or closed doors deter you from unclewing
the inmost mysteries of the bed-chamber! The inmates are only too proud
to see a visitor. A comfortable sense of co-partnership grows upon you.
You find yourself arguing some _post-liminal_ right of adoption as
you cross the threshold, and end by asking yourself whether after all
there can be any gulf ’twixt _meum_ and _tuum_ when every potsherd and
goosequill is common property?
‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!’ Let this, then, be the motto of the
stranger who visits the Granitza homesteads. Obviously new rules of
social decorum must be invented for the occasion, and our code was
simple—‘Make yourself at home.’ The idea that we could be intruding
became really too preposterous; and as for the truly insular notion that
a house could be a castle, we laughed it to scorn! We were Communists
for the nonce. The _Genius loci_ inspired us. We penetrated without the
introduction of a guide into yards and houses; or if we came to larger
farms, where the ground-floor of the house is apportioned to cows and
the dwelling-rooms of the scansorial part of the family are above, only
approachable by external ladders, we hesitated not to effect entrance by
escalade, and the inmates were as little taken aback, and received us
with as hearty a good-day as if they had been expecting us for weeks.
We could not help thinking of the contrast they presented to the people
of the same Sclavonic race, and almost the same language, beyond the
mountains that fringed the north-western horizon; to the Wends, namely,
and Slovenes, of Carinthia and Carniola. For when Goldsmith tells how
The rude Carinthian boor
Against the houseless stranger shuts his door,
he is only stating what we knew by actual experience to be still true. It
is not so soon forgotten—that chilly night, when, for want of a single
hospitable roof in a whole village to shelter midnight travellers, we
were fain to stall ourselves in the creepiest of church porches—and had
we not sundry other reminiscences of slammed doors and long parleyings to
boot in the moonlight of the Julians? There was always something morose
in the temperament of those Slovenes; something too much in harmony
with the prevailing black of the Upper-Carinthian costume, with the sad
weirdness of their music—what a dirge it was that accompanied our way
to that ghostliest of shelters! The Granitza folk, on the contrary, are
light in heart as in garment; sociable, hospitable; finding their poetic
portraiture rather among those Acadians of whom it is written that
Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows,
But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of their owners.
Is it that these Croats of the Marches still retain the old Sclavonic
communism, which the Wends and Slovenes have lost?
It is most delightful, too, to come upon a place where ‘charity’ in its
mischievous, oriental form, is kept from the door. Here every community
is of its very essence a kind of benefit club; the common homestead is
the only asylum for the old, infirmary for the sick; in times of war it
was not the least important advantage of the Military Frontier, that each
house-community formed a hospital for disabled soldier house-brothers.
The communal system prevents moreover the rise of an actual proletariate;
the flunkeyism of service is absent where all are alike fellow-helps
and fellow-masters; and no doubt if a brother be disproportionately
lazy, moral suasion of an unmistakable kind is brought to bear on him
by the rest of the community. Here we have a kind of industrial police
organisation.
Endued with all this brotherly co-operation, these social advantages and
virtues, Granitza life cannot be said to be without its brighter aspects;
but alas that it should have shadow as well as sunshine! After all we
must own that those earnest staid Slovenes, likened by the German to his
Mecklenburgers and Nether-Saxons, possess, with all their moroseness, a
more solid civilization. It was admitted to us here—who, indeed, could
not see it?—that education was far behind-hand, and the children unkempt
and neglected; indeed, the mortality among Granitza infants is said to
be outrageous. Why, indeed, should they be better cared for? Why in the
name of Fortune should the celibate portion of the community be mulcted
for the sake of philoprogenitive brothers? Agriculture here is at a
standstill, and the fields undunged.
This wretched wind-wry shanty before us, how little does it answer to the
richness of the soil! The inmates, like those around, are poor in the
midst of plenty. Dame Nature certainly would fain be bounteous; you have
only to look at the luxuriant wild flowers that crowd along the garden
skirts to see that; they are at least quite as good as the niggard garden
patches, themselves half-wild, of sunflower, marigold, and zinnia,—just
see! how scornfully yon aspiring tufts of saffron meadow-sweet climb
above the paling, or peep between the rickety bars as if to make fun of
those cockered garden favourites within! The apples and plums in the
orchard to the side are, as such, puny and poor of flavour; but the
hedgerow which fences it round is loaded with sloes very nearly as fat
as damsons; and as to the rose hips, you might take them for filberts,
scarlet-mantled. Further beyond you catch a glimpse of the contours of
Mt. Capella masted with oak-woods, now mere pannage for swine, but fit to
timber a hundred fleets.
The truth is, that the incentives to labour and economy are weakened
by the sense of personal interest in their results being subdivided.
Even the social virtues engendered by this living in common are apt to
run off into mere reckless dissipation. One may think their fruit poor,
and their wine abominable; but their maxim is none the less, ‘Eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die.’ True, a man has a legal right to lay by
his share of the profits; but who does? To do so would be to fly in the
face of public opinion, and this Granitza way of life is favourable to
the growth and influence of public opinion of a kind. At Radovac there
is a well-known yearly market, and the peasants, as we heard from an
innkeeper’s son, drink away their whole earnings on this greatest of
money-making occasions in the four inns which compose the moiety of this
little village. In short, the house-communities have been weighed in the
balance and found wanting. One may regret the Military Frontier from an
antiquarian point of view. Some pleasant features of this unique society
may be lost; but on the whole no one can quarrel with the government for
passing that permissive bill which entails its speedy self-immolation.
There is no need to give special descriptions of the other villages that
we saw in this part, as Radovac has been made the peg on which to hang
wider generalisations. The village of Trn may be noticed, as there we
came upon peasants belonging to the Greek Church, called ‘Vlachs,’ like
the Sluin folk, but not like them a peculiar people, and indeed differing
in nothing from their Roman Catholic neighbours, except that Greek icons
were hung in their rooms in place of Romish saints. But in the villages
about Karlovac the house-communities are generally small, division has
already been at work, and I will therefore ask the reader to accompany us
_per saltum_ to a more easterly part of the Granitza which we explored a
few days later, namely to the neighbourhood of Brood in Slavonia.
Making our way through a country as smiling as that which we had left
behind, through common-fields of the family communities, a-bloom with
sky-blue flax, and enclosed by old-world hedges overgrown with clustering
wild vines, or through the common meadowland—the old English _ing_—we
came to the village of Bukovje, and were introduced to the largest family
community of the place by the kind Roman Catholic vicar.
[Illustration: Homestead of Family Community, near Brood, Slavonia.]
Some idea of the arrangement of the homestead will be given by the
accompanying diagram. We made our way into the premises by the yard-gate
and found ourselves in a spacious farmyard fenced in by a stout palisade.
To the left was the common dwelling-house, and around the skirts of
the enclosure ranged in order the common barn, cow-house, stables,
maize-garner, goat-shed, and pig-stye; the common stillery for making
_slivovitz_ or plum-brandy, which here has succeeded sour wine as the
favourite drink of the peasantry; the common well, with its bucket
attached to a monster fishing-rod; the common oven; and last, not least,
the common goose-house. In one corner was a small patch of maize, and
beyond the bottom of the yard was the common orchard with its usual crop
of poor plums, pears, and apples.
We were received in the yard by a member of the family, voted unanimously
to be the house-father, who cordially invited us in, and having satisfied
our curiosity as to the various outbuildings, bade us enter the common
dwelling-houses, of which there were two; one a long wooden erection
with the usual verandah, used as a summer abode, and divided into
compartments for each _sub_-family; the other, a palatial residence
compared with the Radovac hovels, brick-built and whitewashed, and
with its porch and double tiers of massive arches which open on long
corridors as in some old monasteries (for there is something conventual
too about these closes), and entered withal by an imposing flight of
steps, was not without its dignity. The family consisted of some three
dozen individuals, mostly absent at the time on field-work, insomuch
that the garrison consisted of our house-father and two house-sisters
all told. Thus it was scarcely more than a tenth as big as those monster
families we heard of near Siszek with their three hundred members; but
it afforded a good example of the house arrangements, nevertheless; for
in these larger family communities, such as we saw higher up the Save,
you may see several dwelling-houses ranged in a row within the common
‘_plot_,’ so that really only a little multiplication is needed to gain
an idea of the family community on its grandest scale from a view of this
Bukovje homestead. There is, however, this difference, that in the larger
families the common hall and kitchen are often separate buildings.
The house consisted of two floors. Ascending the porch-steps at the
house-father’s bidding, we found ourselves in a ground-floor with the
fore-hall and usual tripartite division of the ruder Granitza cottages,
consisting of a common hall or refectory, a kitchen and another room,
used in this case, I believe, as a bedroom for the house-father. These
three rooms opened on to the front corridor; and ascending some stairs,
at the end of this airy arcade we found ourselves on the second storey,
divided exclusively into bedrooms, of which there were thirteen, one for
each sub-family. Above this again was a loft running under the whole
length of the roof, and set apart for stores.
[Illustration: Plan of Common Dwelling.]
In the middle of the kitchen, whose besooted rafters were supported by a
massive beam as swarthy as themselves, was the large common hearth, the
wonted square of flat stones, the logs on which were kept in place by two
quaint fire-dogs; while by their embers a large green jar of earthenware
was simmering with a savoury mess of chopped bean-pods, eyed from time
to time lovingly by the house-sister, she who had welcomed us on entering
with a bountiful apronful of apples. By the side walls were three other
lesser hearths, communicating with the honeycombed stoves in the other
rooms, so that one fire fed both a hearth and a stove. On these hearths
reposed cylindrical pots with curious lids, and above the fire great
iron caldrons, capable of providing for many mouths, were hung from the
wooden arms of primitive jacks, such as I remember having seen in Finnish
cottages.
The common hall contained little but a long table and two long benches,
recalling, except for its honeycombed stove, the furniture of an Oxford
College hall. It is here that the whole family take their meals; and in
the winter time, when the stoveless summer dwellings are uninhabitable,
it is here that the men take shelter from the blast to make or mend their
rude implements of husbandry, and the women ply their homely looms. They
told us further that this was the room in which the family met to choose
their house-father or house-mother, and to transact all common business;
and, since dinner is the natural time for all the family to be assembled
together, it is after dinner that these matters of household economy are
mooted, and the house-father, who represents the family in dealings with
the authorities, and the house-mother, who shares with her consort[161]
his patriarchal sway over the rest of the house-community, are elected.
It is here, too, that the domestic government is thrown out if it does
not continue to give satisfaction to its constituents. In short, this
is their little Parliament-House, and these the earliest germs of
Constitutional Government.
But we must leave Slavonia for the present, and transport ourselves
back in some aërial fashion to Karlovac, from which town we are about
to make our way to Siszek by the last strip of railway we were to see
for many a long day. It may be that it was lucky that such a means of
transit was still at our disposal, since, if we had been obliged to foot
it, we must have run the gauntlet of a band of robbers then infesting
the country near Petrinia. As a rule our Croatian friends were never
tired of assuring us that it was beyond the frontier that these gentry
flourished; and the hilly country that rose to the south-west—the Kraina,
as the promontory of Turkish territory is known, which acts as a thorn
in the side of Austria—was pointed out as a regular asylum for wild
characters, and in fact was long the only part of the frontier where the
watch-service was still needed. At the present moment, however, even the
Croats were fain to admit that Bosnia was free from robbers, while their
own country was insecure; and, indeed, I am afraid that this was not
such an exceptional state of things as they would have had us believe,
for when we arrived two days later in the Slavonian lands of the lower
Save we found the whole country under martial law, owing to the murderous
infestations of brigands in the Syrmian highlands; and though several had
been hanged, the reign of terror was such that the military government
was still continued. Indeed, just after the Austro-Prussian war, the
state of Croatia had become so deplorable by reason of the increasing
brigandage, that ‘Standrecht’ had to be proclaimed there, and no less
than forty robbers were hung. For some time a gibbet with its ghastly
appendages was to be seen from the train on nearing Agram.
On the whole, then, it was more comfortable to indulge in such
reflections as we shot through the mighty oak-forest in a
railway-carriage bound for Siszek, than to sneak through these mysterious
shadows on foot with the feelings of one of our great-grandfathers,
when doomed to traverse Hampstead Heath on a dark night. These Croatian
highwaymen, however, immediately under notice, had hitherto conducted
the business of the road on the most gentlemanly principles; and though
a kind of ‘commercial’ with whom we travelled seemed a bit scared, even
he could report no thrilling tales of bloodshed. There were sixteen of
these Hajduks,[162] as the Croats called them, who had taken to outlawry
to avoid the military conscription, which has just superseded the
older organisation of the Granitza. Soldiers have been in pursuit, but
fruitlessly, since not only are the hills about covered with unfathomable
forest and hollowed—so we were told—with caverns, but the peasants, like
those of Greece and Southern Italy, are in league with the brigands,
supplying them with food, and refusing to reveal their hiding-places.
The gendarmes, indeed, express hopes of seizing their quarry when the
leaves have fallen and the snow is on the ground. Meantime they are at
large. Nor let us judge too harshly of their profession, for in this old
world East of Europe the Hajduk is often a gentleman in his way. ’Tis
Robin Hood and his merry men who still live on, roughly redressing their
wrongs in a vicarious fashion against that society which refuses them
legal requital, but capable none the less of much tenderness to women and
children, and discriminating their friends from the class that oppresses
them. Across the Turkish frontier the cause of national freedom,
hopelessly lost centuries ago on the battlefield, has been championed
from generation to generation by the Hajduks of the forest mountain,
in achievements not unsung by Sclavonic bards; and, likely enough,
these Croatian brothers are striving too for ancient liberties, as they
understand them.
It was late at night by the time we arrived at Siszek, so we were glad
enough to avail ourselves of a car bound for the ‘White Ship’ inn
on the Kulpa Quay, in company with a Serbian lady and her child—she
disdaining not either for herself or boy the national costume of Free
Serbia. And verily she had her reward. For what could be more appropriate
than the rich silver embroidery flowered on the purple-velvet field of
her mantle—efflorescent with the poetic yearning of the race for that
gorgeous Orient, a yearning as lively as the abhorrence from its yoke—an
echo from the Serbian lyre—a protest against your cold foggy West—but
subdued withal by a Roman-matronly coiffure wondrously becoming to the
tranquil grace of Serbian motherhood?
Arrived at our inn, we found ourselves plunged at once into Turkish
society, for many Bosnian corn-merchants from Bihac, Serajevo, and
other towns, betake themselves in the way of trade to Siszek. Among the
group of Turks who, in various awkward and frog-like postures, were
endeavouring to accommodate themselves to chairs, was an Effendi, a
title which implies not only a certain grade of Turkish gentility, but
an education for Bosnia most polite, namely, the ability to read and
write; and, what is by no means ordinary among the Mussulman Sclaves of
Bosnia, an acquaintance with Osmanlì. Thus it was with a conscious sense
of superiority that our Effendi, learning our intentions in Bosnia,
expressed a desire to see the pass which the Vali Pashà had been good
enough to supply us with. He seemed extremely surprised to see that it
was in the Vali’s own handwriting; but having convinced himself of the
fact, he first read it aloud with pleasing gusto in the original Turkish,
and then translated it into Bosniac for the benefit of the Sclavonic
Mahometans and our Croatian landlord, with many assurances that with such
an ‘open sesamé’ we should have no difficulty in unlocking the innermost
fastnesses of Bosnia or even the Herzegovina, where the revolt had now
broken out.
There was also a venerable Turk of singularly dignified mien, with
patriarchal beard and capacious turban, who sat in mild contemplation,
lulled by the measured purring of his narghilé, lost to all mundane
concerns, sagely superior to the curiosity which our pass and travelling
gear were exciting in less exalted bosoms, and benignantly indifferent
even to the indignity of a chair. Our host told us that he was a Hadji,
or pilgrim, then on his way from Buda, where he resided as a merchant, to
Mecca.
_Aug. 8._—Next morning we sallied forth to explore what might remain
of ancient Siscia. For we are now on classic ground. Siszek is but the
corruption of a name great in all ages of imperial Rome, and greatest
in the twilight of her empire. There was a time when Siscia was one of
the sovereign cities of the world. She was a bulwark against barbarians,
an emporium of commerce, a seat of emperors, a mother of martyrs, a
gathering point for Roman-Christian Saga. And her older name, Segestica,
takes us back to times prior to the Roman conquest itself, when she
formed part of that Celtic empire of race, dim, commercial, reaching from
Gades to the swamps of Nether Rhine; from glacial Ierné to the mouths of
Ister. Segestica! we have no record of her dealings with the Adriatic
votaries of Belenus,[163] nor what Taurisk gold passed current in her
streets; and yet her peasant citizens of to-day plough up an abundance
of bronze-age sickles as if to bear witness of her old Celtic industry
and her very name calls up golden harvests of antiquity ready garnered
into her warehouses from rich Pannonian plains, with a side suggestion
perchance of her
Seges clypeata virorum,
that twice withstood the arms of Rome successfully, till Augustus reduced
her, and made of her a stationary camp for his cohorts.
She is now Siscia, a convenient _point d’appui_ for Dacian campaigns; the
winter quarters for Tiberius in his Pannonian war; by Septimius Severus
made the seat of military government for his world, and so benefited
by him that she took the name of Septimia Siscia. Probably under
Vespasian,[164] a Roman colony had been already planted here, and Siscia
became a Republic with municipal liberties modelled on those of the
parent city. An inscription still recalls her Duumviri, who, in Rome’s
provincial mirrors, reflected the two Consuls. Later on, Siscia becomes
the chief city of Upper Pannonia; then, when Savia was made a province,
the residence of its Corrector. She was the seat of an imperial treasury,
and it was here that the ‘most splendid Provost of the Ironworkers’
received the revenue from Noric mines. Here, too, was established the
Premier Mint of the Roman Empire; and Siscia shares with Rome herself
the distinguished honour of first imprinting her name in full on the
imperial currency. What numismatist does not know and covet that coin of
Gallienus? or that choice piece of the Emperor who sprang from her Savian
rival Sirmium (though from this legend one would think he was really of
Siscia), with the proud inscription, ‘Siscia Probi Aug.’—the Siscia of
Probus? On it is to be seen the personification of the queenly city,
holding in her hands the laurel-wreath of empire, while at her feet her
two subject rivers pour bounteously from their tributary urns.
But this medallic fertility, which has scattered the coins of Siscia
over the fields of remotest Britain, was only the natural result of her
commercial eminence. She was the staple of trade between the Adriatic and
the Danubian basin—old Celtic trade-routes probably surviving the Roman
conquest. ‘Siscia,’ says Strabo, ‘lies at the confluence of many rivers,
all navigable. It is at the foot of the Alps, whose streams bear to it
much merchandise, Italian and other. These are borne in waggons from
Aquileja over Ocra, the lowest part of the Alps, to Nauportus, and thence
by the Corcoras into the Save,’—and so to Siscia. The wine and oil wafted
from more southern climes into the havens of that Venice of Roman Adria;
the carpets and woollens of Patavium that rumbled into her markets by the
Æmilian Way; the furs and amber that the barbarian dealers bore her from
the cold shores of the Baltic, and Fennic forests; perhaps, too, her own
costly wine stored up in wooden barrels—all these, we may believe, and
more, were piled on the Aquilejan waggons and dragged up the Alpine steep
by oxen, thence to be floated down the Save to the Siscian wharves. In
the markets of Siscia the Aquilejese merchants might lay in their stock
of grain, or hides, or keen Noric steel, and take their pick of cattle,
or tattooed Illyrian slaves. From the whole of Eastern Europe wares might
flow together here; for not only was Siscia at the confluence of the
Save and Kulpa, but she was at the junction of great roads, which, with
their branches, connected her with the Upper and Lower Danube, with the
interior of Dalmatia as well as her coast-land, and with Nauportus and
Italy, overland.
Not long ago an interesting relic was found in Croatia, which perhaps
speaks more clearly than anything else of the majesty to which Siscia
ultimately attained. It is a cedarn chest, once gilt, on which are
carved, by a late Roman hand, what are meant to be personifications of
the five premier cities of the Roman world. In the centre—
Prima urbes inter, Divum domus, Aurea Roma,[165]
Rome, with her usual attributes of helmet, spear, and shield, is
enthroned as a goddess. To her right two more female figures,
distinguished by scrolls as Constantinople and Carthage, hold wreaths in
their hands and look towards Rome. On her left, two other goddess-cities
do the same; one is Nicomedia, the other Siscia. The carving is probably
fourth-century work; and certainly, exalted as is the position claimed
on it for Siscia, it is almost borne out by her coinage of the same
period, for the activity of her mint shows that her commercial splendour
was still at its zenith down to at least the days of Theodosius the
Great; while the coins of her rival Sirmium wax fewer and fewer, and
finally cease altogether. For Sirmium may have been of greater value as
a military station,[166] and perhaps a pleasanter residence for emperors
and bishops, and therefore of greater administrative importance, and of
more frequent mention by historians; but that she was a greater city than
Siscia—as is so confidently assumed by some writers—may reasonably be
doubted, and the very bustle of Siscian markets may have deterred princes
from fixing here their court.
The comparatively high state of Siscian civilisation is also attested
by her coins—those superb medallions of gold and silver—those gems of
the fourth-century monetary art that stand out among the poorer products
of mints Gallic and Britannic. But what distinguishes the Siscian coins
as much as their workmanship is their peculiarly Christian character.
It is here that the first purely Christian type—that, namely, which
alludes to the vision of Constantine, first makes its appearance—indeed,
during the fourth century the sacred monogram may almost be regarded as
a Siscian mint-mark. And we know from other sources that Christianity
had early struck root here; for not only is its existence attested by two
sepulchral inscriptions of Roman date discovered here, but its vitality
is celebrated by a relation of Jerome and a hymn of Prudentius,[167]
recording the martyrdom of a Siscian citizen and bishop, Quirinus:—
Insignem meriti virum
Quirinum placitum Deo,
Urbis mœnia Sisciæ
Concessum sibi martyrem
Complexu patrio fovent.
It was during the persecution of Diocletian and ‘Duke’ Galerius, as
Prudentius styles him, that Quirinus, bishop of Siscia, refused to burn
incense on the heathen altar at the bidding of the Governor Maximus, on
the plea—countenanced, indeed, by inspired writers, but which a little
philology would have spared him—‘that all the gods of the Gentiles
were demons.’ ‘If you will allow,’ said Maximus, ‘that the gods which
the Roman Empire serves are powerful, you shall be made priest to the
great god Jove, otherwise you shall be sent to Amantius, præfect of
First Pannonia, and receive from him condign sentence of death.’ The
stout-hearted bishop, refusing these terms, is sent to Sabaria, where he
is tried and condemned in the theatre, and with a millstone round his
neck is thrown from the bridge above into the river; when, lo! despite
the weight of rock, the water miraculously supports him:—
Dejectum placidissimo
Amnis vertice suscipit;
Nec mergi patitur sibi,
Miris vasta natatibus
Saxi pondera sustinens,
till, having exhorted the faithful and confounded the heathen from his
watery pulpit, his spirit ascends and the laws of gravity resume their
sway.
In the dark period which followed the barbarian invasions, something of
her old secular glory was still reflected in the Siscian Church. After
the destruction of Sirmium by the Huns in 441, Siscia transferred her
ecclesiastical allegiance to Salona. Her decline was more lingering
than that of her rival, for her prosperity had rested on a more solid
foundation. Her bishops survive the settlement of the Sclaves hereabouts
in the time of Heraclius. In the ninth century we find her the residence
of a Sclavonic prince; but she suffered from the Frankish invasion, and
in the tenth century was finally razed by the Magyars. Now at last the
Siscian episcopate dies out, to live again with renewed splendour at
Agram.
The old walls of Siscia are traced in a pear-shaped form on the left
bank of the Kulpa between it and the Save. But just outside our inn,
on the right bank of the river, we came upon several fragments of old
Siscia, some sculptures and inscriptions walled into the foundations
of modern houses. In the tympanum of a door are three sculptures, one
of which may be meant for Apollo, though only the head and half the
body survive, and another for Andromeda; these two of base art; but the
third, a griffin, of somewhat better work. Here and there were stumps
of columns, and Roman tiles might be seen still in use. On the hill
above, still on the right side of the Kulpa, the wooden cottages almost
always rested on foundations composed of Roman blocks, amongst which many
inscriptions may lie hid, though we discovered none that had not already
been conscientiously described by Agram antiquaries. It was strange,
however, to observe how the irony of fate had converted to modern utility
the pomp of ancient funerals and the furniture of the ‘immortal gods’! A
Roman altar, with its face and what inscription there may have been (for
we could not get it raised), buried in the dust, had been turned into a
seat for Croat wives; a Roman sarcophagus in one of the cottage yards had
been converted into a horse-trough, and another had been emended so as to
form a serviceable sofa.
On the summit of the heights which here overlook the river is the site
of a Roman cemetery, and the owner of the vineyards where most of the
remains had been discovered kindly showed us over his domain. Many fine
sarcophagi—the best of which are to be seen in the Agram museum—had been
dug up here, containing the usual amount of coins, lamps, urns, and
ashes, amongst which the skull-bones were most distinguishable. In one
place we were shown a Roman conduit, square in shape, and the outside
glazed as if by a conflagration. Near the old cemetery might be seen
Roman walls, and some cottage foundations consisting entirely of Roman
tiles.
The most interesting Roman fragments were, however, on the left side
of the Kulpa, where the town walls are traceable, in a garden by the
railway-station. There we found an altar with an inscription[168]
showing that it was dedicated to Ceres, with a vase and patera engraved
on one side, and on the other a jar full of spikes of corn. Close by
lay mutilations of what once had been Corinthian capitals, with rich
acanthus-leaves decayed by many winters; fragments of a marble frieze
with wavy vine-sprays loaded with bunches of grapes fit for the Land of
Promise; besides, other marble bits on which were sculptured beakers
and telescopic flowers unknown to botanists, and spiral knot-work which
seemed almost Byzantine. It was pleasant to believe that they all formed
part of a temple of the corn-goddess, though I doubt whether all the
fragments could be attributed either to the same building or the same
age; and perhaps Father Liber or Isis, whose altars have also been
discovered here, may lay as good claim to some of these vinous and floral
devices as Mother Ceres.
But whatever view be taken, these remains are interesting as an
illustration of the old position of Siscia as centre of a corn and
vine-growing district; nor indeed are they inappropriate even to her
present state. The present town of Siszek derives what trade she
possesses mainly from the transport of cereals. Hither the maize and
wheat from the rich alluvial plains of the Banat and the Possávina, as
well as from the interior of Bosnia, are conveyed by the Save and its
tributaries; for Siszek is the point where the land-carriage to the north
and west commences, and she really stands to Trieste and Fiume, with
respect to the traffic between the Danubian basin and the Adriatic, in
much the same relation as her Roman ancestress stood to Aquileja. Siszek
has two really busy seasons in the year—in the spring when the maize crop
is gathered, and again the corn harvest in August and September; and at
these times her population, normally reckoned at 3,800, rises to twice,
or even, it is said, to three times that number. The town, however, like
many other sites of Roman cities, is not so healthy as it was in former
times, and a curious plague of emerods is epidemic here. This decrease
of salubrity is attributed by the Siszekers themselves to the great
destruction of forests that has taken place in the neighbourhood; with
what reasons, let doctors decide.
However, modern science and drainage may probably be trusted to remedy
the present unhealthy state of the Siscian atmosphere; and it requires
no extraordinary gift of prophecy to be able to foresee for Siszek a
glorious future, and to predict that, before many years are passed,
she will have done much to regain the splendour of Roman Siscia, whose
functions, as we have seen, she still to a certain extent performs. For
she has been dowered with a situation destined by nature for a great
emporium of commerce, nor are signs wanting that the fulfilment of her
destiny is at hand. Already Siszek is fixed as the point at which the
railway that is to connect Western Europe directly with Stamboul, and
eventually perhaps the furthest Orient, is to meet the lines leading to
Vienna and Trieste, and another line is projected, connecting Siszek
directly with the Adriatic.
Siszek used to be divided by the Kulpa into the civil and military towns,
the latter under ‘regimental’ government; but since the new legislation
the whole has been placed under the municipal authorities. In neither
half is there anything worth seeing except the Roman remains.
On the bank of the Kulpa, however, just at the confluence with the Save,
about a mile from Siszek, rises the old castle of Caprag, built in a
triangular form, with a round conical-roofed tower at each corner. This
castle brings home to us the old days when the Empire was engaged in
a life and death struggle with the Turk. It was built in the sixteenth
century, with the Emperor Ferdinand’s permission, by the bishop and
canons of Agram, and in 1592-3 it was gallantly defended against the
Pashà of Bosnia by two canons of the cathedral chapter; till, after
withstanding two sieges successfully, it yielded to a third attempt, and
for a year belonged to the Infidel.[169]
As we were exploring the former military quarter of Siszek, whose
habitations, tenanted by the ordinary peasants of the Granitza, are for
the most part mere huts, as compared with the more stylish houses of
the civil town, our ears were saluted by sounds of unearthly revelry
proceeding from a neighbouring wine-shop. Entering it, we found ourselves
in the midst of a Croat merrymaking: an orchestra of four men strumming
on tamburas and tamburitzas as for dear life, and accompanied by such a
whisking, and whirling, and stamping as never was! The dance they were
engaged in when we went in was known to them as the Kardatz, to the
Germans as ‘Kroatisch’—though the Croats say that it was taught them
by the Magyars. Properly it was danced by the women alone, but there
were often enough male interlopers. It is so pretty that it deserves
to be known beyond the limits of Croatia; so I will give the general
arrangement of the dance, as far as I could catch it.
Six Croat maidens—any number divisible by six and two would do as
well—sorted themselves into two groups of three, which for awhile seemed
to ignore each other’s existence, the sisters of each triad alternately
dancing to one another, and then joining hands, like three Graces as
they were, and circling round; till of a sudden the rival orbits seemed
to feel each other’s influence, a quick _rapprochement_ took place,
and all six, interlacing their arms, tripped round in a fairy ring,
faces outwards, till a starry disruption once more surprised us, and
in a twinkling the revolving orb was split up into a new triad of twin
constellations spinning round on their separate axes, till it made
one giddy to look at them—ribbons, kerchiefs, and cometic plaits—and,
sooth to say, the nebulous envelopes of the statuesque!—flying off
centrifugally.
The dance was in parts surprisingly graceful; and the dancers, though
mostly homely, were certainly prettier than the average North-German
_Bauerin_. Their hair was inclined to light shades which one hardly
expected to see in so southern a clime, and their eyes were generally
blue. There was one maiden, however, more comely than the rest, with
dark almond eyes and raven hair, of a strange type, that one meets with
now and again in South-Sclavonic regions; a waif from the lands of the
morning, an Oriental beauty shrouded in no winding-sheet and entombed in
no harem, but set off by the light white muslin of Croatia.
Then there were other dances in which the men performed, which were
distinguished by stamping, and every now and then interrupted by a comic
‘spoken.’ We heard some songs, too; such as one would imagine might break
from a flock of sheep if they were to burst into spontaneous melody—a
wearisome succession of baa-baas, varied at intervals by an attempt
to see how long they could keep on at one note! The poverty of the
instruments seemed to narrow the range of the human voice.
Next morning betimes we bade farewell to Siszek, and took a passage on
the Save steamer for Brood, from which place we were to begin our foot
journey through Bosnia. During the early part of the voyage there was
little to see. Mud banks lined with willows, now and then villages of
dark timber, where, within the palings of the large house-communities,
were clustered together several dwelling-houses of tea-caddy shape and
somewhat pagoda-like appearance, due to their having eaves projecting
over the ground-floor as well as the upper storey. The Save, as we
enter it, takes a muddier hue than the Kulpa, which at Siszek possessed
something of the emerald purity of a limestone stream. Opposite the
confluence of the Save and Unna was Jassenovac, taken and held for awhile
by the Pashà of Bosnia in 1536, after the battle of Mohacz; it is a small
town of about 1,100 inhabitants, and, being built on piles, is sometimes
called New Amsterdam. It might also recall the Swiss lake-dwellings,
to restorations of which many Granitza villages bear a certain family
likeness; but I doubt if the boats that float off Jassenovac are not
even more primitive than those of the old lake-dwellers, for they are
simply great oak-trunks hollowed out in a Crusoe-like fashion. Further on
we passed floating mills, paddle-boats of Noah’s Ark-like construction
anchored in the current, or left behind us large flat barges which looked
like giant cockchafers turned over on their backs.
We are now on the watery boundary-line between Christendom and Islâm, and
the contrast between the two shores is one of the most striking that can
be imagined, recalling that between the Bulgarian and Wallachian banks
of the Lower Danube. On one side Croat men, white tunicked and white
breeked, with blue vests, and fringes of homely lace to their trowsers;
bare-legged women, with the shortest of apron-skirts, washing their linen
in the shallows, coifed in the rosy Rubatz. Now and then a town, white
houses and bulbous church-spires, and citizens in the mourning hues
of Western civilisation. On the other bank minarets and narrow wooden
streets, gorgeous Turkish officials, brilliant maidens and mummied dames,
cheerful fezzes and red Bosnian turbans; and it is to be remarked that
the men on the Turkish bank, owing to their wearing such comparatively
shadeless head-gear, are distinctly more sunburnt than the Slavonians
of the Austrian side in their broad, black, felt wideawakes. The one
side was cold and dull, if comparatively clean; the other dirty but
magnificent.
Various types illustrative of the South Sclavonic world are to be seen
on deck: a Syrmian woman of an Oriental cast of feature already spoken
of, with dark hair and eyes, and a purple skirt; the grave hadji whose
acquaintance we had made at Siszek, who vouchsafes me a majestic nod
of recognition; a Dalmatiner—one of those Italianised Sclaves who man
the Austrian navy—with blue sailor-blouse and bright red sash, sounds
the shallows, when the steamer slackens speed, with a long pole. A
Slavonian of that dissipated type which becomes more frequent as we
approach Syrmia, the mother-country of the famed plum-brandy—the Syrmian
slivovitz—with low eyebrows, a ferocious moustache and an eminently
Sclavonic nose, is caught by our artist napping, and pocketed as
below.[170] Beyond Gradisca we came to the prettiest part of the river
scenery, where the watery mirror reflects the undulations of wooded
hills; thence on and on through this magnificent oak forest—some of the
finest timber in all Europe—the home of wolves and bears and sovereign
eagles, and a few days later to be the refuge of the panic-stricken
Christian refugees of Bosnia.
As we neared our destination the question arose whether we should sleep
in the Austrian or Turkish town of Brood; but we decided, from a previous
slight acquaintance with a Bosnian town, that we were more likely to
secure sleep on the Austrian side, where, accordingly, we landed and
put up at the comfortable ‘Red House,’ and presently went out to take
stock of the place. Slavonian Brood is a large wooden village, more
abominably paved, or rather cobbled, than any town I remember. What
especially struck us was the chimneys, which are of every kind of shape
and material, stone and wooden, capped with canopies arched and peaked;
and suggesting in turn huts, towers, haystacks, tunnels, toadstools, and
umbrellas!
Now, whether it was the fact that we took out our sketch-books to
immortalise, so far as in us lay, these sooty orifices, or whether in the
way in which we eyed them there was something of the insidious invader,
certain it is that our motions did not escape the observation of an
active and intelligent gendarme, who ‘knew directly,’ as he afterwards
expressed it to a Croat who gave us the relation with great glee, ‘that
we were Russian spies.’ Acting on which supposition with commendable
alacrity, he came up and demanded our pass. Now there is a natural
tendency amongst Englishmen to resent such a demand as an antiquated
absurdity; but our official was so honeyed in manner, so profuse of
‘_bittes_’ and protestations of ‘_Pflicht_,’ that we could not find it
in our hearts to refuse to satisfy the poor fellow’s curiosity. Whereupon
our friend looked at the paper and twisted it first to one side and then
to another; and as he did not understand one word of it, shook his head
very wisely and handed it to his mate, who, not understanding any more,
shook his head more sagely still, and handed it us back, professing—sly
dog!—that they were satisfied.
Those chimneys were ‘the beginnings of evils!’
We, however, had not recognised the first drops of the thunderstorm,
and, proceeding tranquilly on our way, strolled down past an old church
and monastery to the high bank overlooking the Save. It was a beautiful
picture!—a glorious sunset, crimson, golden, opalescent, mirrored on the
silvery expanse of quiet waters, broken only by a small green island
where stately oak-trees huddled together in mid-flood like the giants of
an older world;—far beyond the sky-line, mingling with the mysterious
blue of distant mountains; on the Slavonian bank, pale rows of poplars
and conical haystacks, in relief against the dark fringe of primeval
forest; on the further side, a verandahed guardhouse and the tip of a
minaret—a fore-glimpse of another world—and hark! as the sun goes down,
the solemn tones of the muezzin are faintly borne by the evening breeze
to the shores of that Christendom which once rang with _Allah akbar_!
But we roused ourselves from the reveries which such a scene could not
fail to awaken, for the darkness was gathering, and a voice within bade
us seek the good cheer of our inn; when we were arrested by the sounds of
music and the sight of a booth near the market-place, and, finding that
a peep-show was going on, paid our kreutzers and went in. A moonlight
view of the Tuileries is hardly what one would go to Brood to see, and we
were beginning to think the show a trifle dull, when the serenity of the
sightseers was broken in upon by the abrupt entry of two police-officers,
and from their evident designs on some person or persons unknown we were
congratulating ourselves on the prospect of a more lively spectacle.
These expectations were indeed justified by the two officials pouncing
upon L⸺ and myself, and ordering us to accompany them immediately to the
Commissär of Police.
‘Tell the Commissär of Police that if he wants to see us he had better
come himself,’ said I, who acted as our spokesman.
‘Very sorry, sir,’ said the official addressed, ‘but our orders were to
bring you.’
‘Tell him,’ I said, ‘that we are Englishmen, and are not accustomed to be
treated in this way!’
Here a Slavonian gentleman intervened. He said that there must be some
misunderstanding; that it was a most unfortunate occurrence; but, in
fact, these men had orders to arrest us if we did not follow them at once.
Evidently, to avoid a row, there was nothing for it but to take his
advice; so we were marched along the streets of Brood with a gendarme on
each side of us, to all intents and purposes under arrest; till at last,
in no very accommodating humour, we arrived at the official’s house, a
long way off in the suburbs. Here we were stumped through a court, and
then ushered into a dirty little room, where we found his highness seated
at table in his shirt-sleeves, chewing a Coriolanan meal of maize. He did
not get up from his chair to receive us, or even offer us a seat; but
glancing at us in a way which made us wish to knock him down and conclude
the business offhand, asked us in a surly and (we fancied) a slightly
husky voice who we were. ‘We are Englishmen,’ replied I, in German. ‘Give
me your pass!’ shouted the Commissär in a still rougher tone; ‘what do
you mean by entering the town without reporting yourselves to ME?’
To which I replied that he ought to know as well as we did that
travellers could pass from one town in the monarchy to another without
being subjected to such annoying regulations; but that, so far as Brood
was concerned, we had as a matter of fact already shown our passes to two
gendarmes. What was more, we need scarcely inform him that at the present
time Englishmen could pass into Austria, just as Austrians into England,
without a passport being demanded. ‘And I think, sir,’ I added, ‘as you
wished to see us, it would have been more civil if you had called in
person at our hotel.’
A Polizei-Commissär, bearded in his den by tramps and vagabonds like
us—it was too much for his petty Majesty! Any strictures on the
ceremonial of his state reception which I may have held in reserve, were
cut short by his roaring out, in a still more insufferable tone, ‘I tell
you I will see your pass!’
‘Sir,’ I replied, ‘just to prove to you that we _are_ Englishmen, and
out of pure courtesy, we are willing to show you our pass; but we must
nevertheless protest that you have no right whatever to demand it!’
‘No right!’ screamed the P.-C., almost choking with rage, and bouncing
from his chair with a spoon in one hand, and a maize-stalk in the other.
‘_I_ no RIGHT! We’ll soon see about that. Take them off!’ he cried to
his satellites; ‘take them off, I say, to the lock-up. Remove him!’—as I
attempted to insert the thin end of a protest, and hurled a few consuls,
ambassadors, thrones and dominions, at the official’s head; while the
gendarmes, seeing that it was a disgraceful business, hesitated to carry
out their chief’s commands—‘Do you hear me? I tell you they shall pass
the night in gaol. They shall show me their pass to-morrow. Quick!’ And
we left him muttering ‘No right!’
Meanwhile rumours of the successful capture and impending doom of two
outrageous disturbers of the peace had spread throughout the length
and breadth of Brood, and all Brood was rapidly assembling to see the
majesty of the law vindicated on our persons; so that when we were led
forth again by the police, we were followed through the streets by a kind
of funeral _cortége_. Presently we turned down another larger court,
and, ascending some steps, found ourselves on a raised platform outside
the door of our intended prison, from which I seized the opportunity
of addressing a kind of scaffold speech to the assembled soldiers and
people, which at least had the effect of delaying our incarceration.
I endeavoured to urge on them the seriousness of what was about to take
place. Two Englishmen, travelling under the protection of a passport
which they were willing to produce, were about to be cast into a
dungeon on the mere fiat of a petty magistrate. That for ourselves,
gross as was the indignity, we regretted it principally for the sake
of the Polizei-Commissär. That it would be but merciful to allow him
a short space for repentance; and here I sketched out vaguely some of
the tremendous consequences which such conduct might bring down on his
head. That they, too, the gendarmes, would do well to think twice before
lending a hand in such a business. That Brood itself might rue the day;
nor did I neglect this opportunity to call up an apparition of a British
fleet on the Save. Finally, I enquired who was the highest authority in
Brood, and hearing that it was the Stadthauptmann, or Mayor, despatched a
gendarme to beg that functionary’s immediate attendance.
We flatter ourselves that this harangue was not without its effect on
our audience, who mostly understood German; but the minions of the law
must obey, and the police ushered us into a wretched cell some seven
feet by ten, quite dark, with a daïs of bare boards to sleep on. We
were allowed neither light, nor straw, nor water; and when we asked for
food—for we were very hungry, having tasted nothing since noon, and it
being now dusk—that was also refused, till we offered a bribe to the
officer, who then saw the matter in quite a different light. He then left
the dungeon, the iron bolt grated in the lock, and we prepared to shift
for the night as best we might. Outside we heard a voice of weeping,
proceeding apparently from a woman and a child, as if touched at our
sad fate—though L⸺ preferred to believe that the sobs were due to the
prospective annihilation of the Commissär. Had our sympathisers listened,
they would have heard a sound of chuckling within, which might have been
a considerable relief to their feelings.
Yet, we had not dined.
But our threats had begun to work on the official mind of Brood, and, as
it afterwards turned out, they were seconded by no less an advocate than
the leader of the National party in the Croatian Diet, Dr. Makanec, who,
fired with that enthusiasm for the cause of freedom which shortly after
led him to secede with his party from a bureaucratic assembly, made such
representations to the Mayor on the outrageous conduct of the Commissär,
and its probable consequences, as moved his worship to immediate action.
Thus it was, that we had not been in durance vile half-an-hour when
hurried footsteps were heard in the court. The door of our cell was
thrown open, and the Stadthauptmann was before us, bowing and scraping,
and entreating us with the most profuse apologies to step out. He
protested that it was an unfortunate misunderstanding, and as he had not
offended us we were the more ready to grant him pardon, and permitted
ourselves to be escorted in triumph by his whole _posse comitatus_ down
the street, his worship affecting the most polite interest in our tour.
Thus we returned victoriously to our inn, where we were met by our host,
who had been expecting us for dinner for some time, with the expressive
question ‘Eingesperrt?’ (‘Locked up?’) ‘Eingesperrt!’ said I. ‘So was my
waiter a day or two ago,’ continued our host. ‘What for?’ we demanded.
‘Ah! that I cannot tell you.’ ‘The fellow ought to be shot!’ chimed in
the aggrieved waiter. It appeared that the Commissär was a petty tyrant
in the place, and our successful stand against his insolence created
everywhere in Brood the liveliest sensations of delight. But why should
the Brooders have left it to stray Englishmen to beard their despot?
and which is the viler, the people who knock under to such arbitrary
treatment, or the government which delegates to its officials the license
to abuse the personal liberties of its subjects? This is not the first
time that, for an equally paltry charge, I have seen the inside of an
Austro-Hungarian prison. The free life of the great cities of the empire
deceives those foreigners whose observations have been confined to the
_Prater_; what ought to be realised is, that while London in a sense
extends all over England, Pest and Vienna are bounded by their suburbs.
The truth is, that the Metternichian régime has not died out entirely
in the country districts. But when, as I believe was the case in this
instance, the traditions of the ‘Police-State’ are followed out by
Magyar—or at least _Magyarizing_—officials, there is less excuse for such
conduct, and the Hungarians should be warned that, by setting up an alien
and oppressive bureaucracy in their Sclavonic Provinces they are not
likely to retain the high opinion which their noble stand against similar
tyranny has won for them among Englishmen.
[Illustration: Head of Sclavonian.]