Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/623

 Peter the First succeeded his nephew Radatomovo, aged seventeen years. He was thereupon invested with the ecclesiastical habit and the sovereignty, and in 1833, when aged only twenty, he received at St. Petersburg episcopal consecration. Sir Gardner Wilkinson informs us that he was nearly six feet eight inches in height, and thoroughly well proportioned. His skill with the rifle was such that, when one of his attendants tossed a lemon into the air, he would readily put a bullet through it. At nineteen the cloud of Turkish war broke upon him from Scutari; for he had refused to accept a berat from the Porte, which would have sealed him as a vassal. The pasha's advanced guard of several thousand men was defeated by a body of eight hundred Montenegrins, at the head of whom the pope Radoviti fell bravely fighting; and no more was heard of the invasion. But this vladika, following up St. Peter's work, set his face sternly against all such lawless habits as remained in the country. In his modes of repression there are curious traits of manners. The man-slayer was shot, but the thief was ignominiously hanged. In the matter of shooting there was a great difficulty; for the terrible usage of the vendetta — which had by no means been extirpated from the Ionian Islands twenty years ago — bound the kin or descendants of a man to avenge his death on the person who slew him. The expedient adopted was to shoot by a large platoon, so that the killer could not be identified. I read that, before brigandage and the vendetta could be thoroughly put down, some hundreds of lives were taken; more, probably, than were ever lost in the bloodiest battle with the Turk. Internal reform, which partook of a martial character, was the great task of this reign. But not exclusively. Under him was performed one of the feats incredible except in Montenegro. Ten men in 1835 seized by a coup de main the old castle of Zabliak, once the capital of Zeta, held it for four days against three thousand Turks, and then surrendered it only by order of the vladika, who was anxious to avoid a war. Nearly all his battles were victories.

This giant had received at St. Petersburg a high education, and was a cultivated man. A friend of mine has seen and admired him at Venice. He goes by the title of "the hero, statesman, poet vladika;" and his verse has given him a high place in Slav literature. He is thus described: —

{smaller|One while he was to be seen as a captain, sword in hand, giving an example of every military virtue at the head of his troops ; another, as a priest and preacher, carrying the cross alone, and subduing his wild compatriots into gentleness; again, as an inexorable judge, ordering the execution of culprits in his presence, or as a prince incorruptible, and refusing all the favors by which it was sought to fetter his independence.}}

Down to his time, there had been a civil governor who acted under the metropolitan as sovereign; but the holder of the office was deposed for intriguing with Austria, and, when the vladika died at thirty-nine, no successor had been appointed. This perhaps tended to accelerate the change, which was effected on the death of Peter the Poet in 1851. But a share in it was due to that subtle influence, the love of woman, which has so many times operated at great crises upon human affairs. The young Danilo, the nephew of the deceased vladika, designated for the succession, was attached to a beautiful girl in Trieste, and the hope of union with her could only be maintained in the event of his avoiding episcopal consecration, which entailed the obligation of celibacy. The senate almost unanimously supported him in his determination; and thus was effected a change which perhaps was required by the spirit of the times. The old system, among other points, entailed a great difficulty with respect to regulating the succession, which, among a people less simple and loyal, would have been intolerable. So, then, ended that line of the vladikas of Montenegro, who had done a work for freedom, as well as for religion, never surpassed in any country of the globe. Of the trappings and enjoyments of power, they had known nothing. To them, it was endeared as well as sanctified only by burdens and by perils. Their dauntless deeds, their simple, self-denying lives, have earned for them a place of high honor in the annals of mankind, and have laid for their people the solid groundwork on which the future, and a near future as it seems, will build.

Danilo did no dishonor, during his short reign, to the traditions of his episcopal predecessors. He consummated the great work of internal order, and published in 1855 the statute-book in force until 1876. In the war with Omar Pasha (1852-3), the 