14
_The Serbs under Foreign Supremacy_, 650–1168
The manner of the arrival of the Slavs in the Balkan peninsula, of that
of the Bulgars, and of the formation of the Bulgarian nationality has
already been described (cf. p. 26). The installation of the Slavs in
the lands between the Danube, the Aegean, and the Adriatic was
completed by about A.D. 650. In the second half of the seventh century
the Bulgars settled themselves in the eastern half of the peninsula and
became absorbed by the Slavs there, and from that time the nationality
of the Slavs in the western half began to be more clearly defined.
These latter, split up into a number of tribes, gradually grouped
themselves into three main divisions: Serbs (or Serbians), Croats (or
Croatians), and Slovenes. The Serbs, much the most numerous of the
three, occupied roughly the modern kingdom of Serbia (including Old
Serbia and northern Macedonia), Montenegro, and most of Bosnia,
Hercegovina, and Dalmatia; the Croats occupied the more western parts
of these last three territories and Croatia; the Slovenes occupied the
modern Carniola and southern Carinthia. Needless to say, none of these
geographical designations existed in those days except Dalmatia, on the
coast of which the Latin influence and nomenclature maintained itself.
The Slovenes, whose language is closely akin to but not identical with
Serbian (or Croatian), even to-day only number one and a half million,
and do not enter into this narrative, as they have never played any
political rôle in the Balkan peninsula.
The Serbs and the Croats were, as regards race and language, originally
one people, the two names having merely geographical signification. In
course of time, for various reasons connected with religion and
politics, the distinction was emphasized, and from a historical point
of view the Serbo-Croatian race has always been divided into two. It is
only within the last few years that a movement has taken place, the
object of which is to reunite Serbs and Croats into one nation and
eventually into one state. The movement originated in Serbia, the Serbs
maintaining that they and the Croats are one people because they speak
the same language, and that racial and linguistic unity outweighs
religious divergence. A very large number of Croats agree with the
Serbs in this and support their views, but a minority for long
obstinately insisted that there was a racial as well as a religious
difference, and that fusion was impossible. The former based their
argument on facts, the latter theirs on prejudice, which is notoriously
difficult to overcome. Latterly the movement in favour of fusion grew
very much stronger among the Croats, and together with that in Serbia
resulted in the Pan-Serb agitation which, gave the pretext for the
opening of hostilities in July 1914.
The designation Southern Slav (or Jugo-Slav, _jug_, pronounced yug, =
_south_ in Serbian) covers Serbs and Croats, and also includes
Slovenes; it is only used with reference to the Bulgarians from the
point of view of philology (the group of South Slavonic languages
including Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian and Slovene; the East Slavonic,
Russian; and the West Slavonic, Polish and Bohemian).
In the history of the Serbs and Croats, or of the Serbo-Croatian race,
several factors of a general nature have first to be considered, which
have influenced its whole development. Of these, the physical nature of
the country in which they settled, between the Danube and Save and the
Adriatic, is one of the most important. It is almost everywhere
mountainous, and though the mountains themselves never attain as much
as 10,000 feet in height, yet they cover the whole country with an
intricate network and have always formed an obstacle to easy
communication between the various parts of it. The result of this has
been twofold. In the first place it has, generally speaking, been a
protection against foreign penetration and conquest, and in so far was
beneficial. Bulgaria, further east, is, on the whole, less mountainous,
in spite of the Balkan range which stretches the whole length of it;
for this reason, and also on account of its geographical position, any
invaders coming from the north or north-east, especially if aiming at
Constantinople or Salonika, were bound to sweep over it. The great
immemorial highway from the north-west to the Balkan peninsula crosses
the Danube at Belgrade and follows the valley of the Morava to Nish;
thence it branches off eastwards, going through Sofia and again
crossing all Bulgaria to reach Constantinople, while the route to
Salonika follows the Morava southwards from Nish and crosses the
watershed into the valley of the Vardar, which flows into the Aegean.
But even this road, following the course of the rivers Morava and
Vardar, only went through the fringe of Serb territory, and left
untouched the vast mountain region between the Morava and the Adriatic,
which is really the home of the Serb race.
In the second place, while it has undoubtedly been a protection to the
Serb race, it has also been a source of weakness. It has prevented a
welding together of the people into one whole, has facilitated the rise
of numerous political units at various times, and generally favoured
the dissipation of the national strength, and militated against
national organization and cohesion. In the course of history this
process has been emphasized rather than diminished, and to-day the Serb
race is split up into six political divisions, while Bulgaria, except
for those Bulgars claimed as ‘unredeemed’ beyond the frontier, presents
a united whole. It is only within the last thirty years, with the
gradual improvement of communications (obstructed to an incredible
extent by the Austro-Hungarian government) and the spread of education,
that the Serbs in the different countries which they inhabit have
become fully conscious of their essential identity and racial unity.
No less important than the physical aspect of their country on the
development of the Serbs has been the fact that right through the
middle of it from south to north there had been drawn a line of
division more than two centuries before their arrival. Artificial
boundaries are proverbially ephemeral, but this one has lasted
throughout the centuries, and it has been baneful to the Serbs. This
dividing line, drawn first by the Emperor Diocletian, has been
described on p. 14; at the division of the Roman Empire into East and
West it was again followed, and it formed the boundary between the
dioceses of Italy and Dacia; the line is roughly the same as the
present political boundary between Montenegro and Hercegovina, between
the kingdom of Serbia and Bosnia; it stretched from the Adriatic to the
river Save right across the Serb territory. The Serbo-Croatian race
unwittingly occupied a country that was cut in two by the line that
divides East from West, and separates Constantinople and the Eastern
Church from Rome and the Western. This curious accident has had
consequences fatal to the unity of the race, since it has played into
the hands of ambitious and unscrupulous neighbours. As to the extent of
the country occupied by the Serbs at the beginning of their history it
is difficult to be accurate.
The boundary between the Serbs in the west of the peninsula and the
Bulgars in the east has always been a matter of dispute. The present
political frontier between Serbia and Bulgaria, starting in the north
from the mouth of the river Timok on the southern bank of the Danube
and going southwards slightly east of Pirot, is ethnographically
approximately correct till it reaches the newly acquired and
much-disputed territories in Macedonia, and represents fairly
accurately the line that has divided the two nationalities ever since
they were first differentiated in the seventh century. In the confused
state of Balkan politics in the Middle Ages the political influence of
Bulgaria often extended west of this line and included Nish and the
Morava valley, while at other times that of Serbia extended east of it.
The dialects spoken in these frontier districts represent a
transitional stage between the two languages; each of the two peoples
naturally considers them more akin to its own, and resents the fact
that any of them should be included in the territory of the other.
Further south, in Macedonia, conditions are similar. Before the Turkish
conquest Macedonia had been sometimes under Bulgarian rule, as in the
times of Simeon, Samuel, and John Asen II, sometimes under Serbian,
especially during the height of Serbian power in the fourteenth
century, while intermittently it had been a province of the Greek
Empire, which always claimed it as its own. On historical grounds,
therefore, each of the three nations can claim possession of Macedonia.
From an ethnographic point of view the Slav population of Macedonia
(there were always and are still many non-Slav elements) was originally
the same as that in the other parts of the peninsula, and probably more
akin to the Serbs, who are pure Slavs, than to the Slavs of Bulgaria,
who coalesced with their Asiatic conquerors. In course of time,
however, Bulgarian influences, owing to the several periods when the
Bulgars ruled the country, began to make headway. The Albanians also
(an Indo-European or Aryan race, but not of the Greek, Latin, or Slav
families), who, as a result of all the invasions of the Balkan
peninsula, had been driven southwards into the inaccessible mountainous
country now known as Albania, began to spread northwards and eastwards
again during the Turkish dominion, pushing back the Serbs from the
territory where they had long been settled. During the Turkish dominion
neither Serb nor Bulgar had any influence in Macedonia, and the
Macedonian Slavs, who had first of all been pure Slavs, like the Serbs,
then been several times under Bulgar, and finally, under Serb
influence, were left to themselves, and the process of differentiation
between Serb and Bulgar in Macedonia, by which in time the Macedonian
Slavs would have become either Serbs or Bulgars, ceased. The further
development of the Macedonian question is treated elsewhere (cf. chap.
13).
The Serbs, who had no permanent or well-defined frontier in the east,
where their neighbours were the Bulgars, or in the south, where they
were the Greeks and Albanians, were protected on the north by the river
Save and on the west by the Adriatic. They were split up into a number
of tribes, each of which was headed by a chief called in Serbian
_župan_ and in Greek _archōn_. Whenever any one of these managed,
either by skill or by good fortune, to extend his power over a few of
the neighbouring districts he was termed _veliki_ (=great) _župan_.
From the beginning of their history, which is roughly put at A.D. 650,
until A.D. 1196, the Serbs were under foreign domination. Their
suzerains were nominally always the Greek emperors, who had ‘granted’
them the land they had taken, and whenever the emperor happened to be
energetic and powerful, as were Basil I (the Macedonian, 867-86), John
Tzimisces (969-76), Basil II (976-1025), and Manuel Comnenus (1143-80),
the Greek supremacy was very real. At those times again when Bulgaria
was very powerful, under Simeon (893-927), Samuel (977-1014), and John
Asen II (1218-41), many of the more easterly and southerly Serbs came
under Bulgarian rule, though it is instructive to notice that the Serbs
themselves do not recognize the West Bulgarian or Macedonian kingdom of
Samuel to have been a Bulgarian state. The Bulgars, however, at no time
brought all the Serb lands under their sway.
Intermittently, whenever the power of Byzantium or of Bulgaria waned,
some Serb princeling would try to form a political state on a more
ambitious scale, but the fabric always collapsed at his death, and the
Serbs reverted to their favourite occupation of quarrelling amongst
themselves. Such wore the attempts of Časlav, who had been made captive
by Simeon of Bulgaria, escaped after his death, and ruled over a large
part of central Serbia till 960, and later of Bodin, whose father,
Michael, was even recognized as king by Pope Gregory VII; Bodin formed
a state near the coast, in the Zeta river district (now Montenegro),
and ruled there from 1081 to 1101. But as a rule the whole of the
country peopled by the Serbs was split into a number of tiny
principalities always at war with one another. Generally speaking, this
country gradually became divided into two main geographical divisions:
(1) the _Pomorje_, or country _by the sea_, which included most of the
modern Montenegro and the southern halves of Hercegovina and Dalmatia,
and (2) the _Zagorje_, or country _behind the hills_, which included
most of the modern Bosnia, the western half of the modern kingdom of
Serbia, and the northern portions of Montenegro and Hercegovina,
covering all the country between the _Pomorje_ and the Save; to the
north of the _Pomorje_ and _Zagorje_ lay Croatia. Besides their
neighbours in the east and south, those in the north and west played an
important part in Serbian history even in those early days.
Towards the end of the eighth century, after the decline of the power
of the Avars, Charlemagne extended his conquests eastwards (he made a
great impression on the minds of the Slavs, whose word for king, _kral_
or _korol_, is derived directly from his name), and his son Louis
conquered the Serbs settled in the country between the rivers Save and
Drave. This is commemorated in the name of the mass of hill which lies
between the Danube and the Save, in eastern Slavonia, and is to this
day known as _Fruška Gora_, or French Hill. The Serbs and Bulgars
fought against the Franks, and while the Bulgars held their own, the
Serbs were beaten, and those who did not like the rule of the
new-comers had to migrate southwards across the Save; at the same time
the Serbs between the rivers Morava and Timok (eastern Serbia) were
subjected by the Bulgars. With the arrival of the Magyars, in the ninth
century, a wall was raised between the Serbs and central and western
Europe on land. Croatia and Slavonia (between the Save and the Drave)
were gradually drawn into the orbit of the Hungarian state, and in
1102, on the death of its own ruler, Croatia was absorbed by Hungary
and has formed part of that country ever since. Hungary, aiming at an
outlet on the Adriatic, at the same time subjected most of Dalmatia and
parts of Bosnia. In the west Venice had been steadily growing in power
throughout the tenth century, and by the end of it had secured control
of all the islands off Dalmatia and of a considerable part of the
coast. All the cities on the mainland acknowledged the supremacy of
Venice and she was mistress of the Adriatic.
In the interior of the Serb territory, during the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, three political centres came into prominence and shaped
themselves into larger territorial units. These were: (1) Raska, which
had been Caslav’s centre and is considered the birth-place of the
Serbian state (this district, with the town of Ras as its centre,
included the south-western part of the modern kingdom of Serbia and
what was the Turkish _sandjak_ or province of Novi-Pazar); (2) Zeta, on
the coast (the modern Montenegro); and (3) Bosnia, so called after the
river Bosna, which runs through it. Bosnia, which roughly corresponded
to the modern province of that name, became independent in the second
half of the tenth century, and was never after that incorporated in the
Serbian state. At times it fell under Hungarian influence; in the
twelfth century, during the reign of Manuel Comnenus, who was
victorious over the Magyars, Bosnia, like all other Serb territories,
had to acknowledge the supremacy of Constantinople.
It has already been indicated that the Serbs and Croats occupied
territory which, while the Church was still one, was divided between
two dioceses, Italy and Dacia, and when the Church itself was divided,
in the eleventh century, was torn apart between the two beliefs. The
dividing line between the jurisdictions of Rome and Constantinople ran
from north to south through Bosnia, but naturally there has always been
a certain vagueness about the extent of their respective jurisdictions.
In later years the terms Croat and Roman Catholic on the one hand, and
Serb and Orthodox on the other, became interchangeable. Hercegovina and
eastern Bosnia have always been predominantly Orthodox, Dalmatia and
western Bosnia predominantly Roman Catholic. The loyalty of the
Croatians to Austria-Hungary has been largely owing to the influence of
Roman Catholicism.
During the first centuries of Serbian history Christianity made slow
progress in the western half of the Balkan peninsula. The Dalmatian
coast was always under the influence of Rome, but the interior was long
pagan. It is doubtful whether the brothers Cyril and Methodius (cf.
chap. 5) actually passed through Serb territory, but in the tenth
century their teachings and writings were certainly current there. At
the time of the division of the Churches all the Serb lands except the
Dalmatian coast, Croatia, and western Bosnia, were faithful to
Constantinople, and the Greek hierarchy obtained complete control of
the ecclesiastical administration. The elaborate organisation and
opulent character of the Eastern Church was, however, especially in the
hands of the Greeks, not congenial to the Serbs, and during the
eleventh and twelfth centuries the Bogomil heresy (cf. chap, 6), a much
more primitive and democratic form of Christianity, already familiar in
the East as the Manichaean heresy, took hold of the Serbs’ imagination
and made as rapid and disquieting progress in their country as it had
already done in the neighbouring Bulgaria; inasmuch as the Greek
hierarchy considered this teaching to be socialistic, subversive, and
highly dangerous to the ecclesiastical supremacy of Constantinople, all
of which indeed it was, adherence to it became amongst the Serbs a
direct expression of patriotism.
15
_The Rise and Fall of the Serbian Empire and the Extinction of Serbian
Independence_, 1168–1496
From 1168 the power of the Serbs, or rather of the central Serb state
of Raska, and the extent of its territory gradually but steadily
increased. This was outwardly expressed in the firm establishment on
the throne of the national Nemanja dynasty, which can claim the credit
of having by its energy, skill, and good fortune fashioned the most
imposing and formidable state the Serb race has ever known. This
dynasty ruled the country uninterruptedly, but not without many
quarrels, feuds, and rivalries amongst its various members, from 1168
until 1371, when it became extinct.
There were several external factors which at this time favoured the
rise of the Serbian state. Byzantium and the Greek Empire, to which the
Emperor Manuel Comnenus had by 1168 restored some measure of its former
greatness and splendour, regaining temporary control, after a long war
with Hungary, even over Dalmatia, Croatia, and Bosnia, after this date
began definitively to decline, and after the troublous times of the
fourth crusade (1204), when for sixty years a Latin empire was
established on the Bosphorus, never again recovered as a Christian
state the position in the Balkan peninsula which it had so long
enjoyed. Bulgaria, too, after the meteoric glory of its second empire
under the Asen dynasty (1186-1258), quite went to pieces, the eastern
and northern parts falling under Tartar, the southern under Greek
influence, while the western districts fell to Serbia. In the north, on
the other hand, Hungary was becoming a dangerous and ambitious
neighbour. During the thirteenth century, it is true, the attention of
the Magyars was diverted by the irruption into and devastation of their
country by their unwelcome kinsmen from Asia, the Tartars, who wrought
great havoc and even penetrated as far as the Adriatic coast.
Nevertheless Hungary was always a menace to Serbia; Croatia, Slavonia,
and the interior of Dalmatia, all purely Serb territories, belonged to
the Hungarian crown, and Bosnia was under the supremacy of the Magyars,
though nominally independent.
The objects of the Magyars were twofold—to attain the hegemony of the
Balkan peninsula by conquering all the still independent Serb
territories, and to bring the peninsula within the pale of Rome. They
were not successful in either of these objects, partly because their
wars with the Serbian rulers always failed to reach a decision, partly
because their plans conflicted with those of the powerful Venetian
republic. The relations between Venice and Serbia were always most
cordial, as their ambitions did not clash; those of Venice were not
continental, while those of Serbia were never maritime. The
semi-independent Slavonic city-republic of Ragusa (called Dubrovnik in
Serbian) played a very important part throughout this period. It was
under Venetian supremacy, but was self-governing and had a large fleet
of its own. It was the great place of exchange between Serbia and
western Europe, and was really the meeting-place of East and West. Its
relations with Serbia were by no means always peaceful; it was a
Naboth’s vineyard for the rulers and people of the inland kingdom, and
it was never incorporated within their dominions. Ragusa and the other
cities of the Dalmatian coast were the home during the Middle Ages of a
flourishing school of Serbian literature, which was inspired by that of
Italy. The influence of Italian civilization and of the Italian Church
was naturally strong in the Serb province, much of which was under
Venetian rule; the reason for this was that communication by sea with
Italy was easier and safer than that by land with Serbia. The long,
formidable ranges of limestone mountains which divide the Serbian
interior from the Adriatic in almost unbroken and parallel lines have
always been a barrier to the extension of Serb power to the coast, and
an obstacle to free commercial intercourse. Nevertheless Ragusa was a
great trade centre, and one of the factors which most contributed to
the economic strength of the Serbian Empire.
The first of the Nemanja dynasty was Stephen, whose title was still
only _Veliki Župan_; he extended Serb territory southwards at the
expense of the Greeks, especially after the death of Manuel Comnenus in
1180. He also persecuted the Bogomils, who took refuge in large numbers
in the adjacent Serb state of Bosnia. Like many other Serbian rulers,
he abdicated in later life in favour of his younger son, Stephen,
called Nemanjié (= Nemanya’s son), and himself became a monk (1196),
travelling for this purpose to Mount Athos, the great monastic centre
and home of theological learning of the Eastern Church. There he saw
his youngest son, who some years previously had also journeyed thither
and entered a monastery, taking the name of Sava.
It was the custom for every Serbian ruler to found a sort of memorial
church, for the welfare of his own soul, before his death, and to
decorate and endow it lavishly. Stephen and his son together
superintended the erection in this sense of the church and monastery of
Hilandar on Mount Athos, which became a famous centre of Serbian church
life. Stephen died shortly after the completion of the building in
1199, and was buried in it, but in 1207 he was reinterred in the
monastery of Studenica, in Serbia, also founded by him.
The reign of Stephen Nernanjić (1196-1223) opened with a quarrel
between him and his elder brother, who not unnaturally felt he ought to
have succeeded his father; the Bulgarians profited by this and seized a
large part of eastern Serbia, including Belgrade, Nish, Prizren, and
Skoplje. This, together with the fall of Constantinople and the
establishment of the Latin Empire in 1204, alarmed the Serbs and
brought about a reconciliation between the brothers, and in 1207 Sava
returned to Serbia to organise the Church on national lines. In 1219 he
journeyed to Nicaea and extracted from the Emperor Theodore Lascaris,
who had fallen on evil days, the concession for the establishment of an
autonomous national Serbian Church, independent of the Patriarch of
Constantinople. Sava himself was at the head of the new institution. In
1220 he solemnly crowned his brother King _(Kralj)_ of Serbia, the
natural consequence of his activities in the previous year. For this
reason Stephen Nemanjić is called ‘The First-Crowned’. He was succeeded
in 1223 by his son Stephen Radoslav, and he in turn was deposed by his
brother Stephen Vladislav in 1233. Both these were crowned by Sava, and
Vladislav married the daughter of Tsar John Asen II, under whom
Bulgaria was then at the height of her power. Sava journeyed to
Palestine, and on his return paid a visit to the Bulgarian court at
Tirnovo, where he died in 1236. His body was brought to Serbia and
buried in the monastery of Mileševo, built by Vladislav. This extremely
able churchman and politician, who did a great deal for the peaceful
development of his country, was canonized and is regarded as the patron
saint of Serbia.
The reign of Vladislav’s son and successor, Stephen Uroš I (1242-76),
was characterized by economic development and the strengthening of the
internal administration. In external affairs he made no conquests, but
defeated a combination of the Bulgarians with Ragusa against him, and
after the war the Bulgarian ruler married his daughter. In his wars
against Hungary he was unsuccessful, and the Magyars remained in
possession of a large part of northern Serbia. In 1276 he was deposed
by his son, Stephen Dragutin, who in his turn, after an unsuccessful
war against the Greeks, again masters of Constantinople since 1261, was
deposed and succeeded by his brother, Stephen Uroš II, named Milutin,
in 1282. This king ruled from 1282 till 1321, and during his reign the
country made very great material progress; its mineral wealth
especially, which included gold and silver mines, began to be
exploited. He extended the boundaries of his kingdom in the north,
making the Danube and the Save the frontier. The usual revolt against
paternal authority was made by his son Stephen, but was unsuccessful,
and the rebel was banished to Constantinople.
It was the custom of the Serbian kings to give appanages to their sons,
and the inevitable consequence of this system was the series of
provincial rebellions which occurred in almost every reign. When the
revolt succeeded, the father (or brother) was granted in his turn a
small appanage. In this case it was the son who was exiled, but he was
recalled in 1319 and a reconciliation took place. Milutin died in 1321
and was succeeded by his son, Stephen Uroš III, who reigned till 1331.
He is known as Stephen Dečanski, after the memorial church which he
built at Dečani in western Serbia. His reign was signalized by a great
defeat of the combined Bulgarians and Greeks at Kustendil in Macedonia
in 1330. The following year his son, Stephen Dušan, rebelled against
him and deposed him. Stephen Dušan, who reigned from 1331 till 1355,
was Serbia’s greatest ruler, and under him the country reached its
utmost limits. Provincial and family revolts and petty local disputes
with such places as Ragusa became a thing of the past, and he undertook
conquest on a grand scale. Between 1331 and 1344 he subjected all
Macedonia, Albania, Thessaly, and Epirus. He was careful to keep on
good terms with Ragusa and with Hungary, then under Charles Robert. He
married the sister of the Bulgarian ruler, and during his reign
Bulgaria was completely under Serbian supremacy. The anarchy and civil
war which had become perennial at Constantinople, and the weakening of
the Greek Empire in face of the growing power of the Turks, no doubt to
some extent explain the facility and rapidity of his conquests;
nevertheless his power was very formidable, and his success inspired
considerable alarm in western Europe. This was increased when, in 1345,
he proclaimed his country an empire. He first called together a special
Church council, at which the Serbian Church, an archbishopric, whose
centre was then at Peć (in Montenegro, Ipek in Turkish), was proclaimed
a Patriarchate, with Archbishop Joannice as Patriarch; then this
prelate, together with the Bulgarian Patriarch, Simeon, and Nicholas,
Archbishop of Okhrida, crowned Stephen Tsar of the Serbs, Bulgars, and
Greeks. Upon this the Patriarch of Constantinople gave himself the vain
satisfaction of anathematizing the whole of Serbia, as a punishment for
this insubordination.
In 1353 the Pope, Innocent VI, persuaded King Louis of Hungary to
undertake a crusade against Serbia in the name of Catholicism, but
Stephen defeated him and re-established his frontier along the Save and
Danube. Later he conquered the southern half of Dalmatia, and extended
his empire as far north as the river Cetina. In 1354 Stephen Dušan
himself approached the Pope, offering to acknowledge his spiritual
supremacy, if he would support him against the Hungarians and the
Turks. The Pope sent him an embassy, but eventually Stephen could not
agree to the papal conditions, and concluded an alliance, of greater
practical utility, with the Venetians. In 1355, however, he suddenly
died, at the age of forty-six, and thus the further development and
aggrandisement of his country was prematurely arrested.
Stephen Dušan made a great impression on his contemporaries, both by
his imposing personal appearance and by his undoubted wisdom and
ability. He was especially a great legislator, and his remarkable code
of laws, compiled in 1349 and enlarged in 1354, is, outside his own
country, his greatest title to fame. During Stephen Dušan’s reign the
political centre of Serbia, which had for many years gradually tended
to shift southwards towards Macedonia, was at Skoplje (Üsküb in
Turkish), which he made his capital. Stephen Dušan’s empire extended
from the Adriatic in the west to the river Maritsa in the east, from
the Save and Danube in the north to the Aegean; it included all the
modern kingdoms of Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and most of Greece,
Dalmatia as far north as the river Cetina, as well as the fertile
Morava valley, with Nish and Belgrade—the whole eastern part of Serbia,
which had for long been under either Bulgar or Magyar control. It did
not include the cities of Salonika or Ragusa, nor any considerable part
of the modern kingdom of Bulgaria, nor Bosnia, Croatia, North Dalmatia,
nor Slavonia (between the Save and Drave), ethnologically all purely
Serb lands. From the point of view of nationality, therefore, its
boundaries were far from ideal.
Stephen Dušan was succeeded by his son, known as Tsar Uroš, but he was
as weak as his father had been strong. Almost as soon as he succeeded
to the throne, disorders, rebellions, and dissensions broke out and the
empire rapidly fell to pieces. With Serbia, as with Bulgaria, the
empire entirely hinged on the personality of one man, and when he was
gone chaos returned. Such an event for Serbia at this juncture was
fatal, as a far more formidable foe than the ruler’s rebellious
relations was advancing against it. The Turkish conquests were
proceeding apace; they had taken Gallipoli in 1354 and Demotika and
Adrianople in 1361. The Serbs, who had already had an unsuccessful
brush with the advance guard of the new invaders near Demotika in 1351,
met them again on the Maritsa river in 1371, and were completely
defeated. Several of the upstart princes who had been pulling Stephen
Dušan’s empire to pieces perished, and Tsar Uroš only survived the
battle of the Maritsa two months; he was unmarried, and with him died
the Nemanja dynasty and the Serbian Empire.
After this disaster the unity of the Serbian state was completely
destroyed, and it has never since been restored in the same measure.
That part of the country to the south of Skoplje fell completely under
Turkish control; it was here that the famous national hero, Marko
Kraljević (or King’s son), renowned for his prowess, ruled as a vassal
prince and mercenary soldier of the Turks; his father was one of the
rebel princes who fell at the battle of the river Maritsa in 1371.
North of Skoplje, Serbia, with Kruševac as a new political centre,
continued to lead an independent but precarious existence, much reduced
in size and glory, under a native ruler, Prince Lazar; all the
conquests of Stephen Dušan were lost, and the important coastal
province of Zeta, which later developed into Montenegro, had broken
away and proclaimed its autonomy directly after the death of Tsar Uroš.
In 1375 a formal reconciliation was effected with the Patriarch of
Constantinople; the ban placed on the Serbian Church in 1352 was
removed and the independence of the Serbian Patriarchate of Peć (Ipek)
recognised. Meanwhile neither Greeks, Bulgars, nor Serbs were allowed
any peace by the Turks.
In 1389 was fought the great battle of Kosovo Polje, or the Field of
Blackbirds, a large plain in Old Serbia, at the southern end of which
is Skoplje. At this battle Serbian armies from all the Serb lands,
including Bosnia, joined together in defence of their country for the
last time. The issue of the battle was for some time in doubt, but was
decided by the treachery and flight at the critical moment of one of
the Serb leaders, Vuk Branković, son-in-law of Prince Lazar, with a
large number of troops. Another dramatic incident was the murder of
Sultan Murad in his tent by another Serbian leader, Miloš Obilić, who,
accused of treachery by his own countrymen, vowed he would prove his
good faith, went over to the Turks and, pretending to be a traitor,
gained admission to the Sultan’s presence and proved his patriotism by
killing him. The momentary dismay was put an end to by the energetic
conduct of Bayezid, son of Murad, who rallied the Turkish troops and
ultimately inflicted total defeat on the Serbians. From the effects of
this battle Serbia never recovered; Prince Lazar was captured and
executed; his wife, Princess Milica, had to give her daughter to
Bayezid in marriage, whose son thus ultimately claimed possession of
Serbia by right of inheritance. Princess Milica and her son Stephen
continued to live at Kruševac, but Serbia was already a tributary of
Turkey. In the north, Hungary profited by the course of events and
occupied Belgrade and all northern Serbia, but in 1396 the Turks
defeated the Magyars severely at the battle of Nikopolis, on the
Danube, making the Serbs under Stephen fight on the Turkish side.
Stephen also had to help Sultan Bajazet against the Tartars, and fought
at the battle of Angora, in 1402, when Tamerlane captured Bayezid.
After Stephen returned to Serbia he made an alliance with Hungary,
which gave him back Belgrade and northern Serbia; it was at this time
(1403) that Belgrade first became the capital, the political centre
having in the course of fifty years moved from the Vardar to the
Danube. The disorders which followed the defeat of Bayezid gave some
respite to the Serbs, but Sultan Murad II (1421-51) again took up arms
against him, and invaded Serbia as far as Kruševac.
At the death of Stephen (Lazarević), in 1427, he was succeeded as
_Despot_ by his nephew, George Branković; but the Sultan, claiming
Serbia as his own, immediately declared war on him. The Serbian ruler
had to abandon Belgrade to the Magyars, and Nish and Kruševac to the
Turks. He then built and fortified the town of Smederevo (or Semendria)
lower down on the Danube, in 1428, and made this his capital. He gave
his daughter in marriage to the Sultan, but in spite of this war soon
broke out again, and in 1441 the Turks were masters of nearly the whole
of Serbia. Later George Branković made another alliance with Hungary,
and in 1444, with the help of John Hunyadi, defeated the Turks and
liberated the whole of Serbia as far as the Adriatic, though he
remained a tributary of the Sultan. The same year, however, the Magyars
broke the treaty of peace just concluded with the Turks, and marched
against them under their Polish king, Ladislas; this ended in the
disastrous battle of Varna, on the Black Sea, where the king lost his
life. In 1451 Sultan Murad II died and was succeeded by the Sultan
Mohammed. In 1453 this sultan captured Constantinople (Adrianople had
until then been the Turkish capital); in 1456 his armies were besieging
Belgrade, but were defeated by John Hunyadi, who, unfortunately for the
Serbs, died of the plague shortly afterwards. George Branković died the
same year, and at his death general disorder spread over the country.
The Turks profited by this, overran the whole of Serbia, and in 1459
captured Smederevo, the last Serbian stronghold.
Meanwhile Bosnia had been for nearly a hundred years enjoying a false
security as an independent Serb kingdom. Its rulers had hitherto been
known by the title of _Ban_, and were all vassals of the King of
Hungary; but in 1377 Ban Tvrtko profited by the embarrassments of his
suzerain in Poland and proclaimed himself king, the neighbouring
kingdom of Serbia having, after 1371, ceased to exist, and was duly
crowned in Saint Sava’s monastery of Mileševo. The internal history of
the kingdom was even more turbulent than had been that of Serbia. To
the endemic troubles of succession and alternating alliances and wars
with foreign powers were added those of confession. Bosnia was always a
no man’s land as regards religion; it was where the Eastern and Western
Churches met, and consequently the rivalry between them there was
always, as it is now, intense and bitter. The Bogomil heresy, too,
early took root in Bosnia and became extremely popular; it was the
obvious refuge for those who did not care to become involved in the
strife of the Churches. One of the kings of Bosnia, Stephen Thomas, who
reigned from 1444 till 1461, was himself a Bogomil, and when at the
insistence of the Pope and of the King of Hungary, whose friendship he
was anxious to retain, he renounced his heresy, became ostensibly a
Roman Catholic, and began to persecute the Bogomils, he brought about a
revolution. The rebels fled to the south of Bosnia, to the lands of one
Stephen, who sheltered them, proclaimed his independence of Bosnia, and
on the strength of the fact that Saint Sava’s monastery of Mileševo was
in his territory, announced himself Herzog, or Duke (in Serbian Herceg,
though the real Serb equivalent is _Vojvoda_) of Saint Sava, ever since
when (1448) that territory has been called Hercegovina. In spite of
many promises, neither the Pope nor the King of Hungary did anything to
help Bosnia when the Turks began to invade the country after their
final subjection of Serbia in 1459. In 1463 they invaded Bosnia and
pursued, captured, and slew the last king; their conquest of the
country was complete and rapid. A great exodus of the Serb population
took place to the south, west, and north; but large numbers, especially
of the landowning class, embraced the faith of their conquerors in
order to retain possession of their property. In 1482 a similar fate
befell Hercegovina. Albania had already been conquered after stubborn
resistance in 1478. There remained only the mountainous coastal
province of Zeta, which had been an independent principality ever since
1371. Just as inland Serbia had perished between the Turkish hammer and
the Hungarian anvil, so maritime Serbia was crushed between Turkey and
Venice, only its insignificance and inaccessibility giving it a longer
lease of independent life. Ivan Crnojević, one of the last independent
rulers of Zeta, who had to fly to Italy in 1480, abandoning his
capital, Žabljak, to the Turks, returned in 1481, when the death of
Sultan Mohammed temporarily raised the hopes of the mountaineers, and
founded Cetinje and made it his capital. His son George, who succeeded
him and ruled from 1490 till 1496, is famous as having set up the first
Serbian printing-press there. Its activities were naturally not
encouraged by the Turkish conquest, but it was of great importance to
the national Serbian Church, for which books were printed with it.
In 1496, Venice having wisely made peace with the Sultan some years
previously, this last independent scrap of Serb territory was finally
incorporated in the Turkish dominions. At the end of the fifteenth
century the Turks were masters of all the Serb lands except Croatia,
Slavonia, and parts of Dalmatia, which belonged to Hungary, and the
Dalmatian coast and islands, which were Venetian. The Turkish conquest
of Serbia, which began in 1371 at the battle of the Maritsa, and was
rendered inevitable by the battle of Kosovo Polje, in 1389, thus took a
hundred and twenty-five years to complete.
16
_The Turkish Dominion_, 1496–1796
The lot of the Serbs under Turkish rule was different from that of
their neighbours the Bulgars; and though it was certainly not enviable,
it was undoubtedly better. The Turks for various reasons never
succeeded in subduing Serbia and the various Serb lands as completely
as they had subdued, or rather annihilated, Bulgaria. The Serbs were
spread over a far larger extent of territory than were the Bulgars,
they were further removed from the Turkish centre, and the wooded and
mountainous nature of their country facilitated even more than in the
case of Bulgaria the formation of bands of brigands and rebels and
militated against its systematic policing by the Turks. The number of
centres of national life, Serbia proper, Bosnia, Hercogovina, and
Montenegro, to take them in the chronological order of their conquest
by the Turks, had been notoriously a source of weakness to the Serbian
state, as is still the case to-day, but at the same time made it more
difficult for the Turks to stamp out the national consciousness. What
still further contributed to this difficulty was the fact that many
Serbs escaped the oppression of Turkish rule by emigrating to the
neighbouring provinces, where they found people of their own race and
language, even though of a different faith. The tide of emigration
flowed in two directions, westwards into Dalmatia and northwards into
Slavonia and Hungary. It had begun already after the final subjection
of Serbia proper and Bosnia by the Turks in 1459 and 1463, but after
the fall of Belgrade, which was the outpost of Hungary against the
Turks, in 1521, and the battle of Mohacs, in 1526, when the Turks
completely defeated the Magyars, it assumed great proportions. As the
Turks pushed their conquests further north, the Serbs migrated before
them; later on, as the Turks receded, large Serb colonies sprang up all
over southern Hungary, in the Banat (the country north of the Danube
and east of the Theiss), in Syrmia (or Srem, in Serbian, the extreme
eastern part of Slavonia, between the Save and the Danube), in Bačka
(the country between the Theiss and Danube), and in Baranya (between
the Danube and the Drave). All this part of southern Hungary and
Croatia was formed by the Austrians into a military borderland against
Turkey, and the Croats and immigrant Serbs were organized as military
colonists with special privileges, on the analogy of the Cossacks in
southern Russia and Poland. In Dalmatia the Serbs played a similar rôle
in the service of Venice, which, like Austria-Hungary, was frequently
at war with the Turks. During the sixteenth century Ragusa enjoyed its
greatest prosperity; it paid tribute to the Sultan, was under his
protection, and never rebelled. It had a quasi monopoly of the trade of
the entire Balkan peninsula. It was a sanctuary both for Roman Catholic
Croats and for Orthodox Serbs, and sometimes acted as intermediary on
behalf of its co-religionists with the Turkish authorities, with whom
it wielded great influence. Intellectually also it was a sort of Serb
oasis, and the only place during the Middle Ages where Serbian
literature was able to flourish.
Montenegro during the sixteenth century formed part of the Turkish
province of Scutari. Here, as well as in Serbia proper, northern
Macedonia (known after the removal northwards of the political centre,
in the fourteenth century, as Old Serbia), Bosnia, and Hercegovina, the
Turkish rule was firmest, but not harshest, during the first half of
the sixteenth century, when the power of the Ottoman Empire was at its
height. Soon after the fall of Smederevo, in 1459, the Patriarchate of
Peć (Ipek) was abolished, the Serbian Church lost its independence, was
merged in the Greco-Bulgar Archbishopric of Okhrida (in southern
Macedonia), and fell completely under the control of the Greeks. In
1557, however, through the influence of a Grand Vizier of Serb
nationality, the Patriarchate of Peć was revived. The revival of this
centre of national life was momentous; through its agency the Serbian
monasteries were restored, ecclesiastical books printed, and priests
educated, and more fortunate than the Bulgarian national Church, which
remained under Greek management, it was able to focus the national
enthusiasms and aspirations and keep alive with hope the flame of
nationality amongst those Serbs who had not emigrated.
Already, in the second half of the sixteenth century, people began to
think that Turkey’s days in Europe were numbered, and they were
encouraged in this illusion by the battle of Lepanto (1571). But the
seventeenth century saw a revival of Turkish power; Krete was added to
their empire, and in 1683 they very nearly captured Vienna. In the war
which followed their repulse, and in which the victorious Austrians
penetrated as far south as Skoplje, the Serbs took part against the
Turks; but when later the Austrians were obliged to retire, the Serbs,
who had risen against the Turks at the bidding of their Patriarch Arsen
III, had to suffer terrible reprisals at their hands, with the result
that another wholesale emigration, with the Patriarch at its head, took
place into the Austro-Hungarian military borderland. This time it was
the very heart of Serbia which was abandoned, namely, Old Serbia and
northern Macedonia, including Peć and Prizren. The vacant Patriarchate
was for a time filled by a Greek, and the Albanians, many of whom were
Mohammedans and therefore Turcophil, spread northwards and eastwards
into lands that had been Serb since the seventh century. From the end
of the seventeenth century, however, the Turkish power began
unmistakably to wane. The Treaty of Carlowitz (1699) left the Turks
still in possession of Syrmia (between the Danube and Save) and the
Banat (north of the Danube), but during the reign of the Emperor
Charles VI their retreat was accelerated. In 1717 Prince Eugen of Savoy
captured Belgrade, then, as now, a bulwark of the Balkan peninsula
against invasion from the north, and by the Treaty of Passarowitz
(Požarevac, on the Danube), in 1718, Turkey not only retreated
definitively south of the Danube and the Save, but left a large part of
northern Serbia in Austrian hands. By the same treaty Venice secured
possession of the whole of Dalmatia, where it had already gained
territory by the Treaty of Curlowitz in 1699.
But the Serbs soon found out that alien populations fare little better
under Christian rule, when they are not of the same confession as their
rulers, than under Mohammedan. The Orthodox Serbs in Dalmatia suffered
thenceforward from relentless persecution at the hands of the Roman
Catholics. In Austria-Hungary too, and in that part of Serbia occupied
by the Austrians after 1718, the Serbs discovered that the Austrians,
when they had beaten the Turks largely by the help of Serbian levies,
were very different from the Austrians who had encouraged the Serbs to
settle in their country and form military colonies on their frontiers
to protect them from Turkish invasion. The privileges promised them
when their help had been necessary were disregarded as soon as their
services could be dispensed with. Austrian rule soon became more
oppressive than Turkish, and to the Serbs’ other woes was now added
religious persecution. The result of all this was that a
counter-emigration set in and the Serbs actually began to return to
their old homes in Turkey. Another war between Austria-Hungary and
Turkey broke out in 1737, in which the Austrians were unsuccessful.
Prince Eugen no longer led them, and though the Serbs were again
persuaded by their Patriarch, Arsen IV, to rise against the Turks, they
only did so half-heartedly. By the Treaty of Belgrade, in 1739, Austria
had to withdraw north of the Save and Danube, evacuating all northern
Serbia in favour of the Turks. From this time onwards the lot of the
Serbs, both in Austria-Hungary and in Turkey, went rapidly from bad to
worse. The Turks, as the power of their empire declined, and in return
for the numerous Serb revolts, had recourse to measures of severe
repression; amongst others was that of the final abolition of the
Patriarchate of Peé in 1766, whereupon the control of the Serbian
Church in Turkey passed entirely into the hands of the Greek
Patriarchate of Constantinople.
The Austrian Government similarly, perceiving now for the first time
the elements of danger which the resuscitation of the Serbian
nationality would contain for the rule of the Hapsburgs, embarked on a
systematic persecution of the Orthodox Serbs in southern Hungary and
Slavonia. During the reign of Maria Theresa (1740-80), whose policy was
to conciliate the Magyars, the military frontier zone was abolished, a
series of repressive measures was passed against those Serbs who
refused to become Roman Catholics, and the Serbian nationality was
refused official recognition. The consequence of this persecution was a
series of revolts which were all quelled with due severity, and finally
the emigration of a hundred thousand Serbs to southern Russia, where
they founded New Serbia in 1752-3.
During the reigns of Joseph II (1780-90) and Leopold II (1790-2) their
treatment at the hands of the Magyars somewhat improved. From the
beginning of the eighteenth century Montenegro began to assume greater
importance in the extremely gradual revival of the national spirit of
the Serbs. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it had formed
part of the Turkish dominions, though, thanks to the inaccessible
nature of its mountain fastnesses, Turkish authority was never very
forcibly asserted. It was ruled by a prince-bishop, and its religious
independence thus connoted a certain secular freedom of thought if not
of action. In the seventeenth century warlike encounters between the
Turks and the Montenegrins increased in frequency, and the latter tried
to enlist the help of Venice on their side but with indifferent
success. The fighting in Montenegro was often rather civil in
character, being caused by the ill-feeling which existed between the
numerous Montenegrins who had become Mohammedans and those who remained
faithful to their national Church. In the course of the eighteenth
century the rôle which fell to Montenegro became more important. In all
the other Serb countries the families which naturally took a leading
part in affairs were either extinct or in exile, as in Serbia, or had
become Mohammedan, and therefore to all intents and purposes Turkish,
as in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Ragusa, since the great earthquake in
1667, had greatly declined in power and was no longer of international
importance. In Montenegro, on the other hand, there had survived both a
greater independence of spirit (Montenegro was, after all, the ancient
Zeta, and had always been a centre of national life) and a number of at
any rate eugenic if not exactly aristocratic Serb families; these
families naturally looked on themselves and on their bishop as destined
to play an important part in the resistance to and the eventual
overthrow of the Turkish dominion. The prince-bishop had to be
consecrated by the Patriarch of Peć, and in 1700 Patriarch Arsen III
consecrated one Daniel, of the house (which has been ever since then
and is now still the reigning dynasty of Montenegro) of
Petrović-Njegoš, to this office, after he had been elected to it by the
council of notables at Cetinje. Montenegro, isolated from the Serbs in
the north, and precluded from participating with them in the wars
between Austria and Turkey by the intervening block of Bosnia, which
though Serb by nationality was solidly Mohammedan and therefore
pro-Turkish, carried on its feuds with the Turks independently of the
other Serbs. But when Peter the Great initiated his anti-Turkish
policy, and, in combination with the expansion of Russia to the south
and west, began to champion the cause of the Balkan Christians, he
developed intercourse with Montenegro and laid the foundation of that
friendship between the vast Russian Empire and the tiny Serb
principality on the Adriatic which has been a quaint and persistent
feature of eastern European politics ever since. This intimacy did not
prevent the Turks giving Montenegro many hard blows whenever they had
the time or energy to do so, and did not ensure any special protective
clauses in favour of the mountain state whenever the various treaties
between Russia and Turkey were concluded. Its effect was rather
psychological and financial. From the time when the _Vladika_ (=
Bishop) Daniel first visited Peter the Great, in 1714, the rulers of
Montenegro often made pilgrimages to the Russian capital, and were
always sure of finding sympathy as well as pecuniary if not armed
support. Bishops in the Orthodox Church are compulsorily celibate, and
the succession in Montenegro always descended from uncle to nephew.
When Peter I Petrović-Njegoš succeeded, in 1782, the Patriarchate of
Peć was no more, so he had to get permission from the Austrian Emperor
Joseph II to be consecrated by the Metropolitan of Karlovci
(Carlowitz), who was then head of the Serbian national Church.
About the same time (1787) an alliance was made between Russia and
Austria-Hungary to make war together on Turkey and divide the spoils
between them. Although a great rising against Turkey was organised at
the same time (1788) in the district of Šumadija, in Serbia, by a
number of Serb patriots, of whom Kara-George was one and a certain
Captain Koča, after whom the whole war is called Kočina Krajina
(=Koča’s country), another, yet the Austrians were on the whole
unsuccessful, and on the death of Joseph II, in 1790, a peace was
concluded between Austria and Turkey at Svishtov, in Bulgaria, by which
Turkey retained the whole of Bosnia and Serbia, and the Save and Danube
remained the frontier between the two countries. Meanwhile the Serbs of
Montenegro had joined in the fray and had fared better, inflicting some
unpleasant defeats on the Turks under their bishop, Peter I. These
culminated in two battles in 1796 (the Montenegrins, not being
mentioned in the treaty of peace, had continued fighting), in which the
Turks were driven back to Scutari. With this triumph, which the Emperor
Paul of Russia signalized by decorating the Prince-Bishop Peter, the
independence of the modern state of Montenegro, the first Serb people
to recover its liberty, was _de facto_ established.
17
_The Liberation of Serbia under Kara-George_ (1804–13) _and Miloš
Obrenović_ (1815–30): 1796–1830
The liberation of Serbia from the Turkish dominion and its
establishment as an independent state were matters of much slower and
more arduous accomplishment than were the same processes in the other
Balkan countries. One reason for this was that Serbia by its peculiar
geographical position was cut off from outside help. It was easy for
the western powers to help Greece with their fleets, and for Russia to
help Rumania and, later, Bulgaria directly with its army, because
communication between them was easy. But Serbia on the one hand was
separated from the sea, first by Dalmatia, which was always in foreign
possession, and then by Bosnia, Hercegovina, and the _sandjak_ (or
province) of Novi-Pazar, all of which territories, though ethnically
Serb, were strongholds of Turkish influence owing to their large
Mohammedan population. The energies of Montenegro, also cut off from
the sea by Dalmatia and Turkey, were absorbed in self-defence, though
it gave Serbia all the support which its size permitted. Communication,
on the other hand, between Russia and Serbia was too difficult to
permit of military help being rapidly and effectively brought to bear
upon the Turks from that quarter. Bessarabia, Wallachia, and Moldavia
were then still under Turkish control, and either they had to be
traversed or the Danube had to be navigated from its mouth upwards
through Turkish territory. The only country which could have helped
Serbia was Austria, but as it was against their best interests to do
so, the Austrians naturally did all they could not to advance, but to
retard the Serbian cause. As a result of all this Serbia, in her long
struggle against the Turks, had to rely principally on its own
resources, though Russian diplomacy several times saved the renascent
country from disaster.
Another reason for the slowness of the emancipation and development of
modern Serbia has been the proneness of its people to internal
dissension. There was no national dynasty on whom the leadership of the
country would naturally devolve after the first successful revolution
against Turkish rule, there was not even any aristocracy left, and no
foreign ruler was ever asked for by the Serbs or was ever imposed on
them by the other nations as in the case of Greece, Rumania, and
Bulgaria. On the other hand the rising against Turkey was a rising of
the whole people, and it was almost inevitable that as soon as some
measure of independence was gained the unity the Serbs had shown when
fighting against their oppressors should dissolve and be replaced by
bitter rivalries and disputes amongst the various local leaders who had
become prominent during the rebellion.
These rivalries early in the nineteenth century resolved themselves
into a blood-feud between two families, the Karagjorgjević and the
Obrenović, a quarrel that filled Serbian history and militated against
the progress of the Serb people throughout the nineteenth century.
The same reasons which restricted the growth of the political
independence of Serbia have also impeded, or rather made impossible,
its economic development and material prosperity. Until recent years
Austria-Hungary and Turkey between them held Serbia territorially in
such a position that whenever Serbia either demurred at its neighbours’
tariffs or wished to retaliate by means of its own, the screw was
immediately applied and economic strangulation threatened. Rumania and
Bulgaria economically could never be of help to Serbia, because the
products and the requirements of all three are identical, and Rumania
and Bulgaria cannot be expected to facilitate the sale of their
neighbours’ live stock and cereals, when their first business is to
sell their own, while the cost of transit of imports from western
Europe through those countries is prohibitive.
After the unsuccessful rebellion of 1788, already mentioned, Serbia
remained in a state of pseudo-quiescence for some years. Meanwhile the
authority of the Sultan in Serbia was growing ever weaker and the real
power was wielded by local Turkish officials, who exploited the
country, looked on it as their own property, and enjoyed
semi-independence. Their exactions and cruelties were worse than had
been those of the Turks in the old days, and it was against them and
their troops, not against those of the Sultan, that the first battles
in the Serbian war of independence were fought. It was during the year
1803 that the Serbian leaders first made definite plans for the rising
which eventually took place in the following year. The ringleader was
George Petrović, known as Black George, or Kara-George, and amongst his
confederates was Miloš Obrenović. The centre of the conspiracy was at
Topola, in the district of Šumadija in central Serbia (between the
Morava and the Drina rivers), the native place of Kara-George. The
first two years of fighting between the Serbians and, first, the
provincial janissaries, and, later, the Sultan’s forces, fully rewarded
the bravery and energy of the insurgents. By the beginning of 1807 they
had virtually freed all northern Serbia by their own unaided efforts
and captured the towns of Požarevac, Smederevo, Belgrade, and Šabac.
The year 1804 is also notable as the date of the formal opening of
diplomatic relations directly between Serbia and Russia. At this time
the Emperor Alexander I was too preoccupied with Napoleon to be able to
threaten the Sultan (Austerlitz took place in November 1805), but he
gave the Serbs financial assistance and commended their cause to the
especial care of his ambassador at Constantinople.
In 1807 war again broke out between Russia and Turkey, but after the
Peace of Tilsit (June 1807) fighting ceased also between the Turks and
the Russians and the Serbs, not before the Russians had won several
successes against the Turks on the Lower Danube. It was during the two
following years of peace that dissensions first broke out amongst the
Serbian leaders; fighting the Turks was the sole condition of existence
which prevented them fighting each other. In 1809-10 Russia and the
Serbs again fought the Turks, at first without success, but later with
better fortune. In 1811 Kara-George was elected _Gospodar_, or
sovereign, by a popular assembly, but Serbia still remained a Turkish
province. At the end of that year the Russians completely defeated the
Turks at Rustchuk in Bulgaria, and, if all had gone well, Serbia might
there and then have achieved complete independence.
But Napoleon was already preparing his invasion and Russia had to
conclude peace with Turkey in a hurry, which necessarily implied that
the Sultan obtained unduly favourable terms. In the Treaty of Bucarest
between the two countries signed in May 1812, the Serbs were indeed
mentioned, and promised vague internal autonomy and a general amnesty,
but all the fortified towns they had captured were to be returned to
the Turks, and the few Russian troops who had been helping the Serbs in
Serbia had to withdraw. Negotiations between the Turks and the Serbs
for the regulation of their position were continued throughout 1812,
but finally the Turks refused all their claims and conditions and,
seeing the European powers preoccupied with their own affairs, invaded
the country from Bosnia in the west, and also from the east and south,
in August 1813. The Serbs, left entirely to their own resources,
succumbed before the superior forces of the Turks, and by the beginning
of October the latter were again masters of the whole country and in
possession of Belgrade. Meanwhile Kara-George, broken in health and
unable to cope with the difficulties of the situation, which demanded
successful strategy both against the overwhelming forces of the Turks
in the field and against the intrigues of his enemies at home, somewhat
ignominiously fled across the river to Semlin in Hungary, and was duly
incarcerated by the Austrian authorities.
The news of Napoleon’s defeat at Leipsic (October 1813) arrived just
after that of the re-occupation of Belgrade by the Turks, damped
_feu-de-joie_ which they were firing at Constantinople, and made them
rather more conciliatory and lenient to the Serbian rebels. But this
attitude did not last long, and the Serbs soon had reason to make fresh
efforts to regain their short-lived liberty. The Congress of Vienna met
in the autumn of 1814, and during its whole course Serbian emissaries
gave the Russian envoys no peace. But with the return of Napoleon to
France in the spring of 1815 and the break-up of the Congress, all that
Russia could do was, through its ambassador at Constantinople, to
threaten invasion unless the Turks left the Serbs alone. Nevertheless,
conditions in Serbia became so intolerable that another rebellion soon
took shape, this time under Miloš Obrenović. This leader was no less
patriotic than his rival, Kara-George, but he was far more able and a
consummate diplomat. Kara-George had possessed indomitable courage,
energy, and will-power, but he could not temporize, and his arbitrary
methods of enforcing discipline and his ungovernable temper had made
him many enemies. While the credit for the first Serbian revolt
(1804-13) undoubtedly belongs chiefly to him, the second revolt owed
its more lasting success to the skill of Miloš Obrenović. The fighting
started at Takovo, the home of the Obrenović family, in April 1815, and
after many astonishing successes against the Turks, including the
capture of the towns of Rudnik, Čačak, Požarevac, and Kraljevo, was all
over by July of the same year. The Turks were ready with large armies
in the west in Bosnia, and also south of the Morava river, to continue
the campaign and crush the rebellion, but the news of the final defeat
of Napoleon, and the knowledge that Russia would soon have time again
to devote attention to the Balkans, withheld their appetites for
revenge, and negotiations with the successful rebels were initiated.
During the whole of this period, from 1813 onwards, Miloš Obrenović, as
head of a district, was an official of the Sultan in Serbia, and it was
one of his principles never to break irreparably with the Turks, who
were still suzerains of the country. At the same time, owing to his
skill and initiative he was recognized as the only real leader of the
movement for independence. From the cessation of the rebellion in 1815
onwards he himself personally conducted negotiations in the name of his
people with the various pashas who were deputed to deal with him. While
these negotiations went on and the armistice was in force, he was
confronted, or rather harassed from behind, by a series of revolts
against his growing authority on the part of his jealous compatriots.
In June 1817 Kara-George, who had been in Russia after being released
by the Austrians in 1814, returned surreptitiously to Serbia,
encouraged by the brighter aspect which affairs in his country seemed
to be assuming. But the return of his most dangerous rival was as
unwelcome to Miloš as it was to the Turkish authorities at Belgrade,
and, measures having been concerted between them, Kara-George was
murdered on July 26,1817, and the first act in the blood-feud between
the two families thus committed. In November of the same year a
_skupština_, or national assembly, was held at Belgrade, and Miloš
Obrenović, whose position was already thoroughly assured, was elected
hereditary prince (_knez_) of the country.
Meanwhile events of considerable importance for the future of the Serb
race had been happening elsewhere. Dalmatia, the whole of which had
been in the possession of Venice since the Treaty of Carlowitz in 1699,
passed into the hands of Austria by the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797,
when the Venetian republic was extinguished by Napoleon. The Bocche di
Cuttaro, a harbour both strategically and commercially of immense
value, which had in the old days belonged to the Serb principality of
Zeta or Montenegro, and is its only natural outlet on the Adriatic,
likewise became Venetian in 1699 and Austrian in 1797, one year after
the successful rebellion of the Montenegrins against the Turks.
By the Treaty of Pressburg between France and Austria Dalmatia became
French in 1805. But the Montenegrins, supported by the Russians,
resisted the new owners and occupied the Bocche; at the Peace of Tilsit
in 1807, however, this important place was assigned to France by
Russia, and Montenegro had to submit to its loss. In 1806 the French
occupied Ragusa, and in 1808 abolished the independence of the ancient
Serb city-republic. In 1812 the Montenegrins, helped by the Russians
and British, again expelled the French and reoccupied Cattaro; but
Austria was by now fully alive to the meaning this harbour would have
once it was in the possession of Montenegro, and after the Congress of
Vienna in 1815 took definitive possession of it as well as of all the
rest of Dalmatia, thus effecting the complete exclusion of the Serb
race for all political and commercial purposes from the Adriatic, its
most natural and obvious means of communication with western Europe.
Though Miloš had been elected prince by his own people, it was long
before he was recognized as such by the Porte. His efforts for the
regularization of his position entailed endless negotiations in
Constantinople; these were enlivened by frequent anti-Obrenović revolts
in Serbia, all of which Miloš successfully quelled. The revolution in
Greece in 1821 threw the Serbian question from the international point
of view into the shade, but the Emperor Nicholas I, who succeeded his
brother Alexander I on the Russian throne in 1825, soon showed that he
took a lively and active interest in Balkan affairs. Pan-Slavism had
scarcely become fashionable in those days, and it was still rather as
the protector of its co-religionists under the Crescent that Russia
intervened. In 1826 Russian and Turkish delegates met at Akerman in
Bessarabia, and in September of that year signed a convention by which
the Russian protectorate over the Serbs was recognized, the Serbs were
granted internal autonomy, the right to trade and erect churches,
schools, and printing-presses, and the Turks were forbidden to live in
Serbia except in eight garrison towns; the garrisons were to be
Turkish, and tribute was still to be paid to the Sultan as suzerain.
These concessions, announced by Prince Miloš to his people at a special
_skupština_ held at Kragujevac in 1827, evoked great enthusiasm, but
the urgency of the Greek question again delayed their fulfilment. After
the battle of Navarino on October 20, 1827, in which the British,
French, and Russian fleets defeated the Turkish, the Turks became
obstinate and refused to carry out the stipulations of the Convention
of Akerman in favour of Serbia. Thereupon Russia declared war on Turkey
in April 1828, and the Russian armies crossed the Danube and the
Balkans and marched on Constantinople.
Peace was concluded at Adrianople in 1829, and Turkey agreed to carry
out immediately all the stipulations of the Treaty of Bucarest (1812)
and the Convention of Akerman (1826). The details took some time to
settle, but in November 1830 the _hatti-sherif_ of the Sultan,
acknowledging Miloš as hereditary prince of Serbia, was publicly read
in Belgrade. All the concessions already promised were duly granted,
and Serbia became virtually independent, but still tributary to the
Sultan. Its territory included most of the northern part of the modern
kingdom of Serbia, between the rivers Drina, Save, Danube, and Timok,
but not the districts of Nish, Vranja, and Pirot. Turkey still retained
Bosnia and Hercegovina, Macedonia, the _sandjak_ of Novi-Pazar, which
separated Serbia from Montenegro, and Old Serbia (northern Macedonia).
18
_The Throes of Regeneration: Independent Serbia,_ 1830–1903