March to Cettinje—The pass across the frontier—Montenegrin warriors—
Cettinje—A land of stones—The Prince's Hotel—Frontier disputes—
The commission—Montenegrin method of making war—A game of billiards—A Draconic law—A popular prince.
Early on the morning of October the 9th, we commenced our journey in earnest. We passed through the land-side gate of the town, where our Montenegrin guide with the horse was awaiting us. Just outside this gate is the Montenegrin Bazaar, as it is called. It consists merely of two rough sheds built for the use of the Black Mountaineers, who come down to sell their produce at Cattaro. Here, too, before they enter the town, they are obliged to leave their mules and arms.
The latter was found to be a very necessary regulation, as quarrels which ended in bloodshed used often to occur between the fierce highlanders and the Cattarines. The two peoples are never on the best of terms—the former being accused of many a midnight descent into the valleys, to pillage and carry off all they can lay hands on. But the present Prince of Montenegro has to a great extent reformed his savage subjects.
A small Morlak boy was deputed by the Montenegrin to lead the horse, and guide us to the capital of the land of stones.
He was the proud possessor of a lockless Turkish pistol, which he stuck jauntily in his sash, and of which he was evidently very proud, for he would stop every now and then to readjust the formidable weapon.
It is not a six hours' march from Cattaro to Cettinje.
Every few yards of progress up the zigzag path revealed some new view over the indescribably grand gulf below.
At last we were far above town and fortress. They lay at our feet like a map. The eye could follow all the windings of the Bocche; and so high were we above it, that we could look over three successive chains of lofty mountains. The blue water stretched in three long streaks between them; while far away, over the furthest range, the blue Adriatic lay peacefully under a cloudless sky. It was a scene of unparalleled vastness and magnificence.
The summit of the pass was 4500, the fortress that tops the walls 1000 feet above the sea, by our aneroid.
We had chosen a gala day for our entry into Montenegro—for following us a mile or so behind, were the Duke of Wittemburg and a numerous cortège on horseback, on their way to Prince Nikita's palace.
We turned a rocky bluff, and a stone marked the frontier of the huge Empire and little Principality.
Here, drawn up on the left side of the rough track, two deep, were about eighty armed, splendid-looking Montenegrins, awaiting to serve as guard of honour to the duke as far as the capital.
They were magnificent men, giants—all considerably above six feet in height, and broad in proportion. Each wore the long snowy coat of Montenegro—tied in with a broad sash. Their vests were red, and richly embroidered with gold and silk. Heavy plates formed of silver buttons covered their chests, well calculated to offer good resistance to sabre cut or bayonet.
They wore the national head-dress, which deserves a special description.
It is a round flat-topped cap of red cloth; round its side, and just overlapping its upper surface, is stitched a black band. In a corner of the red circle thus left at the top is embroidered a semicircle, in gold thread, into which is also often worked the initial letters of Prince Nikita's name in Sclav characters. This cap has a symbolical meaning. When the old Servian kingdom was broken up, and the South-western Sclavs became subject to strange races, the wild mountain district of Montenegro alone preserved its independence; so its inhabitants draped their red caps with black, in mourning for their enslaved brethren. The corner of gold on the red cloth is meant to represent Montenegro—the one corner of liberty on the field of blood—the one free spot of the old Sclav kingdom.
The sashes of these highlanders were stuck full of yataghans and pistols. Some were the richly-worked pistols of Albania, some the long Austrian grasser revolvers. This is the favourite small arm of the Montenegrins, who invariably scrape off the bluing when they purchase one of these weapons, as they consider it looks dirty, and prefer the bare steel.
Their guns were the Austrian breech-loading rifles of the old pattern; very fair weapons, but not to be compared to the Martini-Henrys which are so common in Albania.
These fine men—their plaids blowing to and fro with the fresh highland breeze, drawn up here on the savage mountain side, while the strains of the military band at Cattaro rose up from the abyss beneath—looked very imposing.
At Neigoussa, a miserable little village, there is a Khan. Here we halted, gave our horses a feed, and sitting on the stone bench outside, lunched off goat's milk, cheese, and sausage, while the wild people, all armed to the teeth, crowded round us, and respectfully asked to be allowed to inspect our arms. His arms are the only things a Montenegrin loves and takes an interest in. He spends half his time in cleaning and polishing them. Our guns and revolvers were always much admired, and their systems had to be carefully explained at every halt. My revolver was the new army weapon, with patent extractor. This was something entirely novel to them. How often in this country or in Albania would some chief, covetous of the Pushka Inglisi, bring out a handful of coin, and say eagerly, " Coliko, gospodiné," or " Sa pare, Zutní? " (How much, sir?), as the case might be. Our little guide had mastered its system, and would borrow it and proudly dilate on its excellencies to the men we met on the way.
At this Khan—having a large and appreciative audience round him—
he favoured it with a lengthy lecture, with detailed explanations, followed, as far as I could make out, by a biography of the two English travellers. Startling it must have been, too, judging from the admiring and awe-struck way in which the men turned and stared at us during the narrative.
CETTINJE. Page 65.
Early in the afternoon we marched down the high-street, or rather the solitary street, of the smallest capital in Europe.
Cettinje is but a village of sordid huts, above which rises, imposing in contrast to the other buildings, the palace of Prince Nikita.
My sketch represents the view from the hotel—for Cettinje now possesses this luxury.
The winged house in the centre is the palace. On the right is the Bishop's residence and cathedral, if this term can be applied in this case. In the background is the well-known tower on which the heads of slain Turks were wont to be stuck on spikes, exposed to the jeers of the populace. The present Prince has put an end to this practice and has constructed a wooden belfry on its summit, in which is a large bell, only rung in cases of great emergency, when the hillsmen are to be suddenly called in order to repel some more perilous foray than usual from beyond the border. Cettinje is built in a broad plain, not over fertile, surrounded by lofty hills. This is not the richest plain in Montenegro; but considering what a desert of stones this country for the most part is, it appears a very well favoured spot indeed to the mountaineers.
The legend says that the Almighty, when he distributed stones over the earth, accidentally upset the bag which contained them over Montenegro. It truly looks like it—a more desolate and barren region it is difficult to find: a desert of broken masses of limestone piled one on the other in fantastic heaps. Its character is expressed in the names given it by its neighbours. Montenegro in Italian, Karatag in Turkish, Tchernagora in Sclav, all have the same meaning—The Black Mountain.
As a Montenegrin told me, "This is a poor, rocky country of ours: we produce but two things—fighting men and flea-powder."
This insecticide of Montenegro, made of a certain rock-plant, is renowned all over the East, and is largely exported. It is very efficacious, and well bears out the dogma so impressed upon us in our youth, that bountiful Providence ever finds the antidote where she gives the evil. "The nettle and the dock grow side by side."
The hotel is the finest building in the capital after the palace. It belongs to the Prince, who, observing that inquisitive tourists were beginning to visit his realm, bethought him of this good speculation.
He has placed a sergeant of his army in it as manager.
On entering it we were ushered into a comfortable room, not by a smiling chamber-maid, but by a gigantic barbarian bristling with arms.
We sat down and rested for an hour, discussing our plans.
Here we were at last, in the capital of the war-like little State of which the world has heard so much of late—a State which has been belauded far and wide; a State whose fierce sons Mr. Gladstone speaks of in such warm terms, as very far the bravest, noblest warriors of modern Europe; a State which has for so many hundreds of years successfully withstood the Turk in many a heroic battle; but which now, spoiled by too much praise, petted by the rest of Europe, swollen with pride, dreams of aggrandizement at the expense of Turkey, and nurses vast and ambitious projects, in which the central idea is—Cettinje the capital, Prince Nikita the king, of a vast confederacy of the Southern Sclavs.
The Austrian occupation of Herzegovina and Bosnia was naturally very displeasing to the Montenegrins, crushing several of their grand hopes. That Montenegro for years carried on intrigues in the Herzegovina, incited the Christian population to revolt, and encouraged them to look forward to the day when they should be subjects of Prince Nikita, is notorious. The Principality was ever a place of refuge for Herzegovinian fugitives; and, as my readers know, lent valuable assistance in that last insurrection which ended in a great European war.
In the late war Montenegro was very successful, as we all know. Her troops on several occasions defeated the Turks with great slaughter.
It is true that her foemen were not of the first line, but starving, shoeless, demoralized Redifs. However that may be, the representatives of the Powers, at the Congress of Berlin, considering that the prowess and success of her armies merited some recompense, handed over to her a large slip of Turkish territory, giving her what she had so long coveted, a seaport—Antivari.
Her new territory has proved rather troublesome to her, a not unalloyed good. The inhabitants of it do not approve of being thus unceremoniously handed over to the hated Karatags, and offered—
and are, I shall have to show by and by, still offering—a formidable resistance to the Prince's troops. As I am on the subject, I may state that the wise men at Berlin made a very serious mistake when they drew a line across the map, to represent the new frontier.
In the first place, whereas it would have been easy to have handed over lands to Montenegro which are inhabited by co-religionists of hers, who would have welcomed their new masters, it was thought fit to give her districts and villages inhabited by the most fiercely fanatical Mohammedans of Albania. That bloodshed and future troubles would result, any one who knew the country could have foreseen. I shall have a good deal more to say on this subject when I get to Albania. The fact of the matter is, there is no reliable map of this country, so the representatives at Berlin worked in the dark, confused between the utterly contradictory description of the region given by Turkish and Montenegrin envoys.
A good story is told, illustrative of the geographical knowledge of some members of the congress. A noble English representative was conversing with one of the Turkish representatives. He had recently been studying the map of this coast.
"Now," said he, "look here. This little Montenegrin difficulty must be settled. They want a sea-port; give them one: let them have Cattaro."
"We have no objection to that," replied the Turk with a smile, for he knew that the port in question belonged to Austria.
The Englishman was delighted. He went straight to his Austrian colleague. "Ah, the Montenegrin difficulty is settled," he said. "All is smooth now; the Turks have given in."
"I am glad of that. What, then, is proposed?"
The amusement of the Austrian can be imagined when he heard that the Turks had no objection to giving up an Austrian fortress to Prince Nikita.
A frontier commission was sent over last spring to mark out definitely the new boundary-line. It was composed of course of representatives of all the Powers interested. I heard, from several people I met, of the sufferings and difficulties of this much-to-be-pitied expedition. To draw out any frontier-line based on the instructions they had received was hopeless.
At last, about two months before our arrival, a melancholy troop might have been seen descending the rough track that leads from Cettinje to Rieka. The gates of the heavens were opened. The path was converted into a foaming torrent. They reached Rieka wet and miserable. The commissioners then retired to bed and hot beverages, fearful of fever and rheumatism.
At last a happy thought struck one. "The rainy season is commencing. We must postpone our labours till next spring. Let us return to our wives and families."
The English commissioner alone held out, and urged that they should continue their work now. He told them that the rainy season was a good two months off yet. In vain; the others had had enough of it; they threw up the sponge. The commission broke up. What excuse was made to the several Powers that had sent it out, I know not, but the real cause was a rain-storm on the Montenegrin hills.
The English commissioner was much admired by the populace, and made himself by far the most popular of the lot. He was a good foot taller than any other member of the expedition, and looked like a fine man, as well as a diplomat, for so every one is called here who works for a foreign government. He was attended, as far as I could make out, by two smart non-commissioned officers of the line, also big and imposing. One of these thought it incumbent on him to sport a fez at Scutari, which at once stamped the English branch of the commission as Turcophil.
We were aroused suddenly by a loud barbaric shout, not much resembling the cheers of an English crowd.
The Duke of Wittemburg had arrived, so we walked down the high street to see his reception. The whole of the capital had turned out—a picturesque mob, every man of which bristled with arms. The Albanian or Montenegrin never leaves his doorstep without buckling on a very arsenal of formidable-looking weapons. The women, of whom some were pretty, mixed freely with the throng. These wear the same sleeveless white coats as the men do, but no sash ties it in at the waist. Under this is a many-hued dress or petticoat of thick and rough material, which falls some six inches or more below the coat.
Their legs are wrapped in shapeless gaiters. They wear the opunka on their feet. They are fond of stringing small Turkish coins, half-piastres and the like, with which they ornament their heads and breasts. Some of the necklaces constructed with the small silver coins are really very pretty.
About 200 men or more were drawn up along the road-side, near the palace, who fired a salute as the cortége arrived. Some Montenegrin nobles, in their extravagantly gorgeous dress, mounted on small wiry horses, rode hither and thither, giving orders to the men. Fine specimens of guerilla chieftains they were, all of great height, handsome, and sinewy.
Very characteristic of this country was it to see the men fall into their places. A gun was fired—the signal that the duke and his party had been sighted in the pass. Then all down the high-street you might see tobacconist, leather merchant, and baker, leap from his counter or leave his work, seize his rifle—always at hand, and always loaded—
and run down to the palace gate, where he would take up his position with his fellows in the line. The discipline seemed rather slack, but the strict discipline of a European army would be useless for these men, trained to fighting from their childhood as they are, and who never or rarely descend to the plain to join battle with regular troops, but fight behind the rocks and stones they know so well.
Montenegro has no regular paid army. Every man is a soldier in time of war. Prince Nikita telegraphs his orders to the various Voyades or chieftains, and each of these calls out the fighting men of his district.
It requires but little time to mobilize these wild forces.
There is no commissariat to be organized, no heavy transport train.
Each man buckles on his belt of cartridges, throws his plaid over his shoulders, seizes his rifle, and stalks out of his door, ready for the campaign. The women take the place of the commissariat. Each man's wife, or mother, or sister, as the case may be, is his commissariat. The women come and go between home and camp, bearing provisions and ammunition. For the particular nature of the service required of the Montenegrins this system is perfect; for they never carry war beyond their frontiers, and the distance between home and the front is never very great. No less hardy than the men, the women here are surprisingly active and strong, and walk nimbly across these fearful mountains with incredibly heavy burdens on their backs.
We dined at the table-d'hôte of the Prince's hotel to-day, in very aristocratic company.
The highest officers of the little State are regular habitués of the hotel dinner.
We sat down with the court painter—a young Ragusan who had travelled in America and France, and spoke a curious English, with a half foreign, half American accent, freely larded with Yankee idioms; our landlord; the Secretary of State, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Prince's adjutant.
The latter is a handsome young fellow, a cousin of the Prince, and with him has been educated at the Lycée St. Louis le Grand, at Paris.
All the grandees were in full Montenegrin dress, bristling with pistols and yataghans; for in Montenegro the men do not put by their weapons when in a friendly house, as is the case in Albania.
The conversation turned on politics. Mr. Gladstone, of course, was their hero. They were all well acquainted with his pamphlet, which has been translated into their tongue. The hatred they expressed for Lord Beaconsfield was intense. They were by no means reserved in the terms of their abuse.
There was one thing that excited their astonishment to a great degree. "You Englishmen," said one, "Christians—civilized—a great people! How comes it that you allow a Jew to govern you?"
Seeing that we were not quite of one mind with them, and were not such great admirers of Holy Russia as were they, they politely turned the conversation.
We then got on the subject of the perpetual wars on the Turkish frontier, which in ferocity and romantic incident excel the old feuds of our Northern border-land.
A man happened to enter the room while we dined. Our landlord introduced him to us as a very brave fellow, who had cut off twenty-three heads in one battle of the late war, and who, in consideration of his prowess, had received a medal from the hands of the White Czar.
From cut-off heads and noses we got on the subject of Prince Nikita.
His praises were loudly sung. This autocrat is greatly beloved by his people. He is a handsome man, tall and powerfully built; married to a very lovely Montenegrin. That the Prince has done much for his country is certain. He has succeeded in abolishing many of the more barbarous customs of his subjects.
Quarter is now given in war by the Montenegrins; and though the mutilation of captured and dead foemen is practised as of old, yet the Turkish heads are no longer bought by the bishop prince at so much a head, to be exhibited on the tower which overlooks the capital.
In the good old times, if you paid a friendly call on the late Metropolitan, a genial kind old gentleman, it was quite a common thing to have your conversation and coffee interrupted by the unceremonious entrance of some wild fellow staggering under the weight of a heavy sack. "Ah! good, good, my son!" the old prelate would say, with sparkling eyes. "How many of them?"
The man would then empty the bag on the floor. Its ghastly contents would be numbered, and the price of blood paid over. The heads would be raked up again and carried off to the tower, then the conversation would be quietly resumed where it left off.
Brigandage is now unknown in Montenegro, for the Prince has done all he could to make his country respectable and of good fame throughout Europe.
His subjects have the reputation of being great pilferers.
The Draconic laws of the country punish this offence with hanging.
The Prince has lately mitigated the penalty to whipping. In the eyes of his children this is a still more horrible punishment.
A whipped Montenegro is worse than dead—disgraced—outraged—
an outcast on the earth. Many who have been condemned to the whipping have been known to fall down at the Prince's feet and pray to him for mercy—for death—death with torture, rather than the great infamy.
A Montenegrin whipping is no joke; so severe is it, that death often follows the punishment.
I must say, in justice to this people, it is not on that account that the penalty is so dreaded. For like his neighbour the Albanian, the Montenegrin is indifferent to death or physical suffering. He is indeed perfectly brave.
Dinner completed—a much better dinner, I may add, than any Dalmatian hotel can afford—we retired to the adjoining café, in which was a very inferior billiard-table. The room was full of armed Montenegrins, smoking and raki-drinking, a wild-looking crew. It is to be feared that so civilized a luxury as a café and billiard-table must lead many young Montenegrin gentlemen into dissipated habits.
Here—playing together for pots of Austrian beer—were the Minister of Finance, the Prince's adjutant, the innkeeper, the postman, and the pot-boy. In what metropolis, even of the most democratic republic, would one meet with such fraternizing equality as in this little absolute despotism of Montenegro? It was an exceedingly funny sight. All the players were terribly in earnest—quiet and stern over their game.