Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/619

 they ever liable to the defection of such as had not the redundant manhood required in order to bear the strain of their hard and ever-threatened existence; but the renegades on the banks of the Rieka, whom they had generously taken back, maintained disloyally relations with the Porte, and were ever ready to bring its war-galleys by the river into the interior of the country. At last the measure of patience was exhausted. Danilo, the first vladika of the Nicgush dynasty, had been invited, under an oath of safe-conduct from the pasha of Scutari, to descend into the plain of Zeta, among the homes of his ancestors, for the purpose of consecrating a church. While engaged on this work, he was seized, imprisoned, and cruelly tortured. At last he was released on a ransom of 3,000 ducats, a sum which the hillsmen were only enabled to make up by borrowing in Herzegovina. It was felt that the time had arrived for a decisive issue; and we come now to a deed of blood which shows that for those human beings with whom the Turk forced himself into contact, and who refused to betray their faith, there were no alternatives but two: if not savages they must be slaves, if not slaves they must come near to being savages.

It was determined to slay by night every one of the renegades, except such as were willing to return to the faith of their fathers. The year was 1702, and the night chosen was that which divided Christmas eve from Christmas-day. The scale was not large, but the operation was terrible; and the narrative, contained in an old Volkslied, shows that it was done under that high religious exaltation which recalls the fiery gloom of the "Agamemnon," and the sanguinary episodes of the Old Testament.

The hallowed eve draws onwards. The brothers Martinovitch kindle their consecrated torches. They pray fervently to the new-born God. Each drains a cup of wine; and seizing the sacred torches, they rush forth into the darkness. Wherever there was a Turk, there came the five avengers. They that would not be baptized were hewn down every one. They that embraced the Cross were taken as brothers before the vladika. Gathered in Cettinjé, the people hailed with songs of joy the reddening dawn of the Christmas morning; all Tsernagora now was free!

The war had been a standing rather than an intermittent war, and each party to it was alternately aggressor and defender. The Turk sought to establish his supremacy by exacting the payment of the haradsch, the poll or military-service tax, paid in kind, which sometimes, in the more open parts, as we may suppose, of the territory, he succeeded in obtaining. Once the collector complained that the measure used was too small. The tax-payer smashed his skull with it, and said: "That is Tsernagora measure." But the Montenegrins were aggressive as well as the Turks. Of the fair plains they had been compelled to deliver to the barbarian, they still held themselves the rightful owners; and in carrying on against him a predatory warfare they did no more than take back, as they deemed, a portion of their own. This predatory warfare, which had a far better justification than any of the Highland or Border raids that we have learned to judge so leniently, has been effectually checked by the efforts of the admirable vladikas and princes of the last hundred years; for, as long as it subsisted, the people could not discharge effectually the taint of savagery. It even tended to generate habits of rapine. But the claim to the lands is another matter; there is no lapse of title by user here; the bloody suit has been prosecuted many times in the course of each of twelve generations of men. That claim to the lands they have never given up, and never will.

From 1710 onwards, at intervals, the sovereigns of Russia and Austria have used the Montenegrins for their own convenience when at war with Turkey, and during the war of the French Revolution the English did the like, and, by their co-operation and that of the inhabitants, effected the conquest of the Bocche di Cattaro. To England they owe no gratitude; to Austria, on the whole, less than none, for, to satisfy her, the district she did not win was handed over to her with our concurrence. She has rigidly excluded the little state from access to the sea, and has at times even prevented it from receiving any supplies of arms. Russia, however, from the time of Peter the Great, though using them for her own purposes, has not always forgotten their interests, and has commonly aided the vladikas with a small annual subvention, raised, through the liberality of the czar now reigning, to some 3,000l. a year; the salary of one of our railway commissioners. Nor should it be forgotten that Louis 