Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle | Page 5

office, but was not
consecrated till 1700. Till then the Vladikas of Montenegro had been
consecrated by the Serb Patriarch at Ipek. But in 1680 Arsenius the

Patriarch had decided to accept the protection of Austria and emigrated
to Karlovatz with most of his flock. The turns of fortune's wheel are
odd. The Serbs have more than once owed almost their existence to
Austrian intervention. The Turks permitted the appointment of another
Serb Patriarch, but Serb influence in the district waned rapidly and the
Albanians rapidly resettled the lands from which their forefathers had
been evicted. In 1769 the Phanariotes suppressed the Serb Patriarchate
altogether, for the Greek was ever greedy of spreading over the whole
peninsula, and the Vladika of Montenegro was thus the only head of a
Serb Church in the Balkans and gained much in importance.
Danilo was a born ruler. He soon absorbed all the temporal power, and
latterly left matters ecclesiastic to his nephew Sava.
The outstanding feature of his rule was his suppression of
Mahommedanism. At this time conversions to Islam were increasing.
Danilo, when on a visit to the plain of Podgoritza, to consecrate a small
church by permission of the Pasha of Scutari, was taken prisoner by the
local Moslems, though he had been promised safe conduct, and put up
to ransom. He was bought off only by the sacrifice of the church plate
of the monastery, and returned home hot with anger.
To avenge the insult and clear the land of Islam he organized the
wholesale massacre of the Moslems of Montenegro. On Christmas Eve
1703 an armed band, led by the Martinovitches, rushed from house to
house slaughtering all who refused baptism. Next morning the
murderers came to the church, says the song: "Their arms were bloody
to the shoulders." Danilo, flushed with joy, cried: "Dear God we thank
Thee for all things!" A thanksgiving was held and a feast followed.
Danilo thus gained extraordinary popularity. Such is the fame of his
Christmas Eve that it was enthusiastically quoted to me in the Balkan
War of 1912-13 as an example to be followed, and baptisms were
enforced with hideous cruelty. The Balkan Christian of to-day is no
whit less cruel than the Turk and is more fanatical.
Danilo's prestige after this massacre was so great that the tribes of the
Brda formed a defensive alliance with him against the Turks. And his
fame flew further, for Russia, now for the first time, appeared in

Montenegro. Peter the Great sent his Envoy Miloradovitch to Cetinje in
1711--a date of very great importance, for from it begins modern
Balkan policy and the power of the Petrovitches. Peter claimed the
Montenegrins as of one blood and one faith with Russia and called on
them to fight the Turk and meet him at Constantinople where they
would together "glorify the Slav name; destroy the brood of the Agas
and build up temples to the true faith."
The Montenegrins rushed to the fray with wild enthusiasm and on the
high ground between Rijeka and Podgoritza won the battle called "The
Field of the Sultan's Felling," such was the number of Turks who,
entangled in the thorn bushes, were slaughtered wholesale, as the
Montenegrin driver recounts to this day when he passes the spot.
A great victory--but Russia and Montenegro have not yet met at
Constantinople. The Turks sent a strong punitive force and, not for the
first time, burnt the monastery at Cetinje, wasted the land and doubtless
removed enough gear to pay the haratch [tax] which Danilo had
refused.
1715 is noteworthy as the date of Danilo's visit to Petersburg, when he
was given the first of the many subsidies which the Tsars have
bestowed till recently upon the Petrovitch family.
In a land which is rat-poor, the family which has wealth has power. The
Petrovitches had gained power and they kept it. Fighting almost till the
last, Danilo died full of years and fame, in 1735, and named his nephew
Sava, who had acted for some time as ecclesiastical head, as his
successor.
Sava had no ambition to be aught but a Churchman. He built the
monastery of Stanjevitch and retired to it, leaving his nephew Vassili to
govern.
Vassili, who was already in holy orders, had much of the quality of
Danilo. He organized the defence of the land and defeated more than
one attack upon it. Montenegro was now largely fighting against the
Moslem Serbs of Bosnia and the Herzegovina. In fact the "Turk" with

whom the Balkan Christian waged war was as often as not his
compatriot, turned Moslem.
Vassili and Sava further strengthened their alliance with Russia by
visiting Petersburg, where the Empress Elizabeth promised them a
yearly subsidy of 3,000 roubles and money for schools. Vassili died in
Russia in 1766