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388 mufti of the Slavic Mussulmans was removed, but not punished, and a very obnoxious bishop, with Turkish leanings, was transferred to a better post. The neighbouring villagers armed themselves, but remained quiet, waiting to see what would happen, doing their ordinary work all day, but guarding the roads at night against any surprise on the part of government. This was about midsummer. At last a conference was held between representatives of the sultan and the people, who also insisted upon the presence of an envoy from Montenegro. The demands made by the peasants were for things promised them by the famous decree or hattisherif of 1857: that Christian women and girls should be safe from Turkish insult; that they should have liberty to exercise their religion; that Christians and Mahometans should be equal before the law; that the excesses of the police should be restrained; that the taxes should be justly and seasonably levied. The Mahometans thought these demands exhorbitant, and endeavoured to browbeat the Christians into some abatement of them, but in vain; and when Dervish Pasha, governor of Bosnia, came to add his wisdom to the council, the people demanded further the long-promised freedom from forced labour without payment. The pasha promised to do his utmost to obtain for them their rights if they would lay down their arms, but they said that could only be if they and their Mussulman neighbours were meanwhile separated. The pasha retired to Bosna Serai (or Serayevo), his capital, and the Christians fled with their families and goods to the mountains. The Mussulmans broke into the government store, and armed themselves with breechloaders; the neighbouring districts still holding themselves quietly in readiness. On the first of July some Christians who had been driven from theirrough mountain refuges by illness were killed at Nevesinje by the armed Mussulmans; the Christians revenged themselves, and then seized on a band of frontier-guards escorting provisions. The small engagements were repeated, and in one of them a body of Turkish troops took part. This precipitated a general rising, because the people felt sure that the Porte would now consider them as rebellious against its authority rather than as discontented because its authority did not suffice to guarantee them security of life and property. They applied for help to Montenegro, but were told that it could not be afforded. The truth is that Montenegro cannot venture to help Herzegovina again as she did in 1862-3, unless she is sure that the stronger state of Free Servia will also take the field, and that the rising is more general than has frequently proved to be the case of late years. Discontents and small rebellions are almost perennial, and have never yet been sufficiently carefully prepared to be successful.

The Mussulman inhabitants of the towns began to be alarmed when all the Herzegovina was in tumult, except one little district round Trebinje on the Montenegrin frontier, and set guards to prevent communication along the Austrian frontier. But the insurgents were not united; no leader had yet appeared among them; and an "advanced radical" agent of a Servian republican society who aspired to the leadership met with only scant courtesy from the native chiefs. The Roman Catholic districts, Which had risen in obedience to the Franciscan monks domiciled among them, were persuaded to lay down their arms; the government having been convinced of the power of the clergy, who here, as elsewhere, were anxious rather to maintain their own authority in obedience to Rome than to help forward any movement for the good of their people. Their quiescence divides Herzegovina along the course of the river Narenta into disturbed and pacified districts, the turbulent and larger portion being that towards Montenegro. Towards the end of the month of July it appeared that a Greek-Church official was unwilling to allow his people to join the insurgents, and asked the government for soldiers to help him; but the Mussulmans said that for them and Christians to fight, fall, and possibly be buried together, was an intolerable thing, and so the Christians of that district swelled the numbers of the insurgent army. This was a great blunder on the part of the Turks, as the archimandrite had 