The Birth of Yugoslavia. Henry Baerlein
followed the Patriarch and his priests, have based themselves, it appears, on the notes and chronicles of those priests. And the people, deprived of the guidance of their priests—who were then the spiritual and lay and military leaders—found it difficult to stand out against conversion. Half a century before this a great many Catholic and Orthodox Serbs of those parts had embraced Islam, in order to escape the financial and military burdens which were laid on Christian men; the women and girls would continue to profess Christianity. This phenomenon is described by many travellers, such as Gregory Massarechi, a Catholic missionary for Prizren and the neighbourhood, who says in his report of 1651 that in the village of Suha Reka on the left bank of the White Drin there used to be one hundred and fifty Christian houses, but that he only found thirty-six or thirty-seven Christian women, the men having all gone over to Islam. People were wont to come secretly to him for confession and to communicate; he tells how these converted men would marry Christian women, but would leave them Christian all their lives, and only on his deathbed would a man ask his wife to be converted also.
The Prophet had also found his way into many households of Montenegro, where the clans, with neither civil nor military government, had been compelled, for their protection, to live in a patriarchal fashion: the people—that is, the chiefs of the clans—elected a bishop and gathered round him as the champion of their religion against Islam. Until the time of Danilo (1697–1737) there had been fourteen bishops. During his reign the problem of Turkish penetration was taken in hand. It was intolerable that Montenegrin families should stand well with the Sultan because one of their members had gone over to Islam. The small, untidy village of Virpazar, by the Lake of Scutari, has got a certain fame, because the chosen men who were to purge the country of this evil started out from there on Christmas Eve in 1703. Those who participated in the "Montenegrin Vespers" were not likely to forget the incidents of that impressive ceremony. The Bishop celebrated Mass, and from the consecrated tapers in his hand the people lit their own. Every man was armed. They knelt—their tapers hardly trembling—and they kissed the sacred image which the Bishop held. Then he blessed their weapons and they sallied forth, running round the lake and climbing up the rough, long road to Cetinje. Every house was visited in which there was a Moslem, and the choice was given of repudiation or of death. With such missionaries and with subjects such as these to work upon, you could not hope that the negotiations would be quite pacific. Many of the Moslem, young and old, were slaughtered, and when Mass was sung on Christmas morning in the rugged, little monastery of Cetinje, many of the chosen men assembled, weary but content, and gave whole-hearted thanks to God that Montenegro had been liberated from the scourge.
As for those who came under the influence of Islam in Old Serbia, they were left after 1737 even more to their own resources, as the zone which united them to the main body of Serbs was depleted by another great exodus, under Patriarch Arsenius IV., Šakabenta. But, although these men of Serbian origin preserve sometimes this or that peculiarly Serbian custom, yet, as Mr. Tomić says:[32] "Living together with the Muhammedan Albanians, they have assumed the Albanian type and become the most savage foes of the Orthodox religion and of the people from which they are sprung. The popular saying," he adds, "is right which asserts that: 'A Christian become a Turk is worse than a real Turk.'" Of course, in order to make it appear that he was a real Albanian, there was always a tendency for an Albanized Serb to be preternaturally oppressive. And up to a short time ago it was very cold comfort for the Serbs to learn that many of these people are of Serbian ancestry. But, as we shall see further on, the old, mediæval friendship between the Serbian and Albanian rulers is extending to the people, and this—provided that a sinister external pressure can be warded off—will bear good fruit.
On behalf of the afore-mentioned 30,000 families the Patriarch negotiated with the Habsburgs and obtained very far-reaching rights, which permitted the Serbian people to form in Hungary a corpus separatum. A point which to Serbian eyes had extreme importance was the institution of a National Congress, to sit at Karlovci on the Danube in Syrmia, and, amongst other functions, to designate the Patriarch, whose seat was to be (and remains to this day) Karlovci, where a friendly white village on the rising ground, which anyhow would make it famous for the red wine and plum brandy, has received in its midst the marble palace of the Patriarch, a gorgeous church and various magnificent red and white buildings which look like so many Government offices but are, in fact, devoted to Church affairs, the training of theological students and so forth. Their Patriarchate at Karlovci appeared to the Serbs as the rock of their nationality outside Serbia. The Constitution granted to them did not make them precisely a State within a State, but at least it set up a political-religious unity—for the privileges included those of having a chief, the voivoda, and of having a certain territory with autonomous internal organization and exemption from all taxes. Here the Serbs, forming a separate and distinct group, with their own religion, calendar and alphabet, and with their own aspirations, would be able to stretch out their hands—prudently, of course—to their scattered brothers. So the Serbs began to whisper to the Croats of the ancient days; the Croats heard them gladly, but they could not stop another voice from whispering as well. They had lived for so long with another religion, another civilization, their eyes had been turned in other directions, their hearts been filled with other hopes. And now it was as if the modern voice was being interrupted by the ancient voice. The Croats were inclined to ask the interrupter to be silent, but they found they could not live without him.
ACTIVITIES OF THE SOUTHERN SLAVS UNDER THE HABSBURGS
In the Banat and elsewhere under Habsburg rule the Serbs were filling their accustomed part and fighting, now against the Turk and now against Rakoczi's insurrection, during which, between 1703 and 1711, they are said to have lost about a hundred thousand men. Prince Eugene of Savoy, in whose campaigns they took a large share, described them as "his best scouts, his lightest cavalry, his most trusted garrisons." And they are rewarded—Joseph i., making use of very chosen phrases, insists on the merits of the Serbs and confirms their privileges. And until the Treaty of Pojarevac these privileges are maintained immune. This treaty came at the conclusion of the 1716–1718 war against the Turks; it put the Banat in the hands of Austria, who made it a Crown-land, with military government and autonomous administration. From this time onward the country, which had had an exclusively Serbian colouring, begins to receive an influx of strangers. The German governing class introduce Germans from the Rhine, from Saxony, from Würtemberg, Bavaria, Upper and Lower Austria and Tirol. Not only are these colonists settled in some of the most fertile parts, but Vienna also makes enormous grants of land in the Banat to lofty military personages and to families of the aristocracy, and these in their turn assist the immigration of Germans.
But before the Habsburgs could continue in their efforts to assimilate, by one process or another, the Southern Slavs in the Empire, it was necessary to induce them to accept the Pragmatic Sanction, for Charles VI., the reigning Emperor, had lost his only son and wished to secure the succession to Maria Theresa. It is interesting to see that Croatia negotiated independently of Hungary, that she recognized the Pragmatic Sanction in 1713, whereas the Magyars did not do so until 1733. Consequently, if the Emperor had died between these two dates Croatia would have been separated completely from Hungary. Maria Theresa would have become Queen of Croatia, but the Magyars would not have been obliged to place themselves under her. The Croats on this occasion declared that the crown of Croatia was to pass to that member of the House of Habsburg who should reign not only in Austria but also in the other hereditary Austrian lands, for the Croats wanted publicly to show that any separation from the Slovenes of Carniola, Carinthia and Styria would be far less endurable for them than separation from Hungary. "It is neither by force nor yet the spirit of slavery," they said, "that we have been put under the domination of Hungary; we have submitted ourselves voluntarily, and not to the royalty but to the king of the Hungarians."
The Serb and Croat element in the Austrian army was at this time greater than the sum of all the others, and, owing to the privileges which their services acquired for them, they came to be regarded with extreme suspicion by the Magyars. It was under Magyar influence that Maria Theresa abolished the Croatian council, confided its functions to the Hungarian Government, and, on the same occasion, in 1779, proclaimed the town of Rieka (Fiume), with its surroundings, to be "separatum sacræ regni Hungariæ coronæ adnexum