Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/402

394 Servian empire, inasmuch as it secured to itself, for a long time, rights of popular self-government, its population feeding cattle on the mountains, as far as possible from the towns where the Turks, here as elsewhere, kept each other in countenance. The sultans, from time to time, confirmed their privileges, and even so late as ten years ago, a native chief was violently superseded in his post of authority by a Mussulman governor. Repeated efforts to destroy the bonds between the people of the province and their old and long-acknowledged native leaders, together with the rapacity of Turkish settlers, tax-gatherers, and officials have caused the reiterated insurrections which have earned for these populations a character for turbulence which the western nations have been unable to conceive that a government could for so long be bad enough to justify. The typical stories told in the opening paragraphs of this paper show them to be the convulsions necessarily precedent to freedom.

The Bosnian nobles hold an ignobly prominent position in the miserable story of Turkish acquisition in Europe. The common people of the country stood as staunchly to their faith as the rest of their brethren; but by some unhappy chance there was among them a class of privileged nobles who preferred apostasy to the loss of position and property, and who at once, when the struggle against the Turkish arms became finally hopeless, declared themselves Mussulmans, and thus, by the law of the Koran, secured fresh and novel rights to ride roughshod over the peasantry. But these shameless renegades did not at the same time learn to love their conquerors, and thus Bosnia has, within her borders, native Christians, groaning under Greek bishops and Mussulman officials; native Christians strongly attached to the Roman Church, and yearning after Austrian rule; native nobility thirsting for the day to come when they may find the use of the carefully-kept title-deeds and badges of nobility coming from ancient days; and genuine Osmanli Turks, who wonder, perhaps, that the people whom Allah long ago gave them as slaves and victims should not placidly submit to have their wives and daughters ravished, their goods plundered, and their kinsfolk murdered, by them in obedience to fate. This Bosnian nobility will, in spite of their tyranny, find it easy to rally round them the Slav people when they adopt the Slav cause as against the Turks; but the solution of the popular troubles in Bosnia would not he found were such a revolt to bring them success. A popular leader, even from another province, might attract them to his standard by the claim of kindred, and then many would probably profess themselves adherents of the old creed, and in doing so would have to give up many of the privileges which they now possess, simply in virtue of their Mahometanism, while the ancient bond between the hereditary chiefs and their peasantry would soon be enthusiastically renewed under the Christian banner. Of course their profession of faith would be worthless in most aspects; but it would be something gained for them to be merely called Christians, since that would make intercourse with western Christianity natural and obvious, and our religious societies would know how to push their opportunities among them, as well as among the peasants, who even now, amidst their political excitement, are eager purchasers of the books carried round by colporteurs.

And now the survey brings us to the principality of Servia, which alone has kept the name of Servia in European geography. Other districts, commonly known as parts of Bulgaria and Albania, are known to the Slavs as "Old Servia," but that is not a name recognized by the Sublime Porte. This is the largest Slavonic province engulfed by Turkey, and numbers something like a population of a million and a quarter. It is now, after four hundred years of a more utter subjection than any other Turkish province, and then after sixty years of gallant struggle, the free principality of Servia, governed by its hereditary prince, whose peasant ancestor, only two generations ago, headed an insurrection and won the title of prince and a recognition of his right to reign, by the choice of the nation, from the sultan.

In the fourteenth century Servia had already produced the ruling dynasty, and had given name to the empire. Some reason for this preponderance over the neighbouring tribes may probably make itself clear to those who learn that a very complete and typical example of the village-community system overspread the whole of Servia, covering it with a well-ordered population, among whom no differences of rank existed to tempt the possessors into compromise with the invading Turk. These oppressors came and seized fortresses and towns. The people withdrew into the dense oak forests which clothe the undulating country, holding no converse with the Turks, and visited by