The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II

by William James Stillman

CHAPTER XXIX

WAR CORRESPONDENCE AT RAGUSA

The splendid victory of Muratovizza led to the recall of our old enemy Shefket Pasha, who was sent to Bulgaria and replaced in the Herzegovina by a more competent and humane man, an old friend of Cretan days, Raouf Pasha, one of the most competent and liberal Circassian officers in the service of the Sultan. Of the operations which followed I have no direct cognizance, and I am not writing the history of the war, except as it mingles with my own experiences. The lull that followed the change of command left me time to study Montenegro and its people, and I made many friends. The battle at Muratovizza had developed a quarrel between Socica, who commanded there with a most distinguished ability, and old Peko Pavlovich, who had refused his coöperation in the battle, to the great diminution of the consequences of the victory. Peko had now come to follow the suggestions of the Russian consulate at Ragusa, from which his fortunate rival would accept no indications. The Russian Slavonic committees had begun to work, and their contributions and influence, more than the direct action of their government, gradually brought the whole movement under Russian influence. I noticed here again what had happened in Crete, that the Russian agents, profiting by the irresponsibility which must always be the accompaniment of a despotic government so extensive as that of Russia, acted without orders and on their own inspiration, sometimes with disastrous results. The personal rivalry between Derché and his Russian colleague in the beginnings of the Cretan troubles had, I have no doubt, a much greater influence on the event of all the negotiations than any desire of the Russian government to provoke an insurrection, and so here the feuds that arose between the agents of the Slavonic committees and the consulate at Ragusa no doubt refracted the intentions of the authorities at St. Petersburg more than was suspected.

There is no doubt that Jonine, on his own responsibility and in opposition to the wishes of the Czar, did what he could to stimulate the movement in Herzegovina, and that this was the tendency of all the Russian agents in the Balkans. Of this I had many opportunities of assuring myself, and, as I sympathized in that feeling, I had no difficulty in finding it where it existed. Those agents systematically provoked hostility to Turkey, which was natural and consistent with the good of the people, for the Turkish abuses are incurable and always merit rebellion, but also against Austria, which was unjust and aggravated the trouble of the rayahs needlessly. The Slavonic committees in Russia, too, went far beyond the desire of the government, and there were continual rivalries between them and the consular agents, the latter feeling obliged to outbid the committees to keep their influence. They had, generally, the mania of activity and zeal, and commonly went beyond their orders, trusting that if the luck followed them they would be approved, and if it deserted them they would find protection in the surroundings of the throne, as they generally did, activity in the Slavonic cause covering many sins against discipline. During the lull after the defeat of Servia (to anticipate a little the course of my narrative), I made the acquaintance of the Russian General Tcherniaieff at an English watering-place. We became great friends, for personally I have always liked the Russians, and he told me with no little glee how he had outwitted the Czar, who, learning that he intended to go to Herzegovina to fight, called him and made him swear that he would not go to "fight with those brigands, the Herzegovinians." He swore, and then went, evading the surveillance of the police and with a false passport, to Belgrade, where he gave himself to inciting the Servians to war, and, when Servia declared war the following spring, he commanded the army. So he never came to Herzegovina or to Montenegro, and he was personally hostile to the Prince, as I found most Russian officers to be. But he assured me that the Czar was bitterly opposed to the movement, and that if it had been suspected that he was going to the Balkans he would have been arrested. The prudence of the Czar is always in danger of being nullified by the imprudence of his agents.

The pressure of the Turkish government on Montenegro became severe, and the Prince, in the failure of Servia to respond to the Montenegrin proposals to fight it out, was unwilling to take the responsibility of a war. But the Sultan inclined to war so strongly that Raouf Pasha, who advised him that his army was not prepared for it, was recalled, partly on account of that advice, and partly because he declared that the insurrection was to a great extent justified by the bad government of Bosnia, and was replaced by Achmet Mukhtar, later the Ghazi, who came breathing flames and extermination. The bands of Montenegrins were ordered to leave the frontier of the principality, and came down to the vicinity of Ragusa; and as the interest at Cettinje diminished I followed the war. The winter set in with great and unremembered rigor, the refugees suffered the greatest misery, and many of the Turkish troops in the high mountain country died of exposure. I saw deserters at Ragusa who declared that there would be very general desertion were it not that the troops were assured, and believed, that, if they deserted, the Austrian authorities would certainly send them back to their regiments.

Before this the "Times" had come to the conclusion that the movement had come to stay awhile, and I was informed that I should be henceforward placed in the position of its special correspondent. As I had thoroughly mastered the field and enjoyed the confidence and friendship of the Prince, I had, as long as the war lasted, no rival on the English press. The suffering amongst the families of the Herzegovinians, exiled almost en masse into Dalmatia and Montenegro, was very great; but the influence of the letters which appeared in the "Times" produced a wide and happy charitable movement, and I received at Ragusa supplies of money and clothing, which made the wretched Christians bless England continually. I had a sharp attack of bronchitis from the absolute impossibility of finding quarters where I could do my work in a tolerable comfort; for the usual mildness of the climate of Dalmatia leaves every house unprovided for the cold, which that winter was unprecedentedly severe. I used to sit at my writing-table wrapped in all the blankets I could keep on me. Fireplaces seemed to be unknown.

On the Greek Christmas (January 6) I met at the house of Colonel Monteverde, the agent of the Russian committees, a number of the insurgent chiefs who had come in for a consultation, the forces of the insurrection having separated into two general commands in consequence of the quarrel between Peko and Socica. Socica remained in supreme command in the mountainous Piva district, now buried under the snow, and Peko took the direction in the lower country, and established himself at the old camp at Grebci, driving Ljubibratich and his Herzegovinians out of the field. Peko had then a force of about 1500 men, and Mukhtar did not attempt an attack, but, having made a military promenade through the lower Herzegovina, went back to Mostar and into comfortable winter quarters. Peko took position astride the road from Ragusa to Trebinje, and held the latter place effectually blockaded. A provision train was about to leave Ragusa, and a force of five battalions of Turkish regulars, with 400 irregulars and six guns, was sent from Trebinje as escort. A force of two companies was posted on two hills commanding the road about midway, and, though Peko had decided to wait for the train, he, being a natural strategist, saw that this force must be disposed of to give him a clear field. He accordingly attacked the main body and drove it back to Trebinje with a loss of 250 men (counted by the noses brought in). He then put a cordon around the posts on the hills, lest the men should escape in the night, and, having prepared for an assault the next morning, sent us word to join him. He promised to send us horses for the journey at daylight, and we went to the rendezvous breakfastless, not to lose time, but he forgot us, and, after waiting for the horses till past 8 A.M., we set out on foot.

The snow lay a few inches deep, but the sun had come out strong, and it was melted in patches, so that we stepped alternately in mud and in snow, slipping and picking our way in the best haste we might until 2 P.M., when we arrived at Vukovich, a tiny village where Peko had his headquarters for the moment, the entire population having taken refuge across the frontier. Here the Russians had established an ambulance, and we found the wounded coming in, and some young Russian medical students dressing the wounds. We could hear the firing, and the echoes of it rolling around the hills, and even the shouting of the chiefs in the, to us, inarticulate insults to the enemy and encouragement to their own men. One of the surgeons took his rifle and offered himself as guide to the battlefield.

Vukovich is in a deep hollow, and, as we rose on the ridge that separated it from the higher land on which the fight was going on, a rifle ball sung over my head and went on into the village. Others followed, some plunging into the earth near us, and some striking the rocks. We were just in the range of the insurgents, who were fighting up hill on the farther side of the hill, round the summit of which was the circle of breastworks held by the doomed Turkish force, and the bullets of the assailants ranged over to us. It was my first experience under a prolonged fire, though not of being fired at, and I must admit that it put me in a terrible funk. I put the largest Montenegrin of the group which accompanied us between myself and the firing party. I had not eaten a crumb since the day before, or taken even a cup of coffee, and my legs were in cramp from the hard walking for six hours in mud and snow, and I was ready to drop from fatigue and hunger. One of the chiefs who came by on his way to the ambulance, where the ghastly procession of wounded was now coming in, seeing me pale and exhausted, offered me his flask of slievovits (plum brandy), of which I drank a half-tumbler raw. The effect was marvelous, and enabled me clearly to understand the meaning of the familiar term "Dutch courage," so that I watched from afar the fight to the end without a return of funk.

The Turks were entrenched within a double line of stone wall, concentric, and the insurgents were fighting upwards, and when we came on the scene the fighting was still at the lower wall. Presently there was a more rapid firing, then a moment's lull, and then the firing broke out again from the upper breastwork. The insurgents had charged and carried the lower line and reversed it, and the poor Turks surviving were driven into the inner circle of about a hundred feet in diameter, out of which not one could hope to come alive. The rest of the garrison of Trebinje were so cowed by the result of the fighting the day before that they dared not come out to the relief of their comrades.

And so the night fell on us, and the bands returned to their camp, leaving a cordon to pen in the few remaining Turks. We had many wounded, and a few killed, amongst whom was Maxime Bacevich, voivode of Baniani, and a cousin of the Prince of Montenegro, one of the bravest of the brave, whose death was moaned over by all as we gathered together that night in the large hut that served as headquarters. It was a stone cabin of one room, at one end the stall for the cattle, and in the centre a fireplace, the smoke from which went out by a hole in the roof. Three sides of the room were surrounded by a stone platform, wide enough for the tallest man to lie with his feet to the fire; but there was no furniture, not even a bundle of straw. This was the bed of fifty men, lying side by side on the bare stone, my pillow being my felt hat, and my bedding my overcoat. The fire was hot, and the smell indescribable,—fifty pairs of dirty feet, and the bodies of fifty men, most of whom had not washed for a month, with the cattle stall at the end,—that was our lodging; but, tired as I was, I slept. At daylight the scouts came in to tell us that in the night the little body of Turks had escaped, probably through a sleeping cordon, and scattered up and down along the road between Ragusa and Trebinje, the most of them having been caught and killed as they ran. There was no mercy in this war, and a man who was left behind was a dead man. One of the fugitives had nearly reached Trebinje when he was met in the way by a Herzegovinian, of whom he begged for quarter in the usual Turkish form, "aman" (mercy), to which the Herzegovinian replied "taman" (enough), and cut him down.

A week or more elapsed before Mukhtar Pasha, hurrying from Mostar, could concentrate troops enough to clear the road and provision Trebinje, and then he succeeded only by the most infantile blunders on the part of the Christian forces. From that time until the spring there was a succession of isolated conflicts with no connection, the Turks attempting to provision the little fortresses in the mountains, and the insurgents to damage the Turks as much as opportunity permitted. The powers were by this time thoroughly aroused, and the Austrian intervention followed. Baron Rodich, the governor of Dalmatia, called a conference of the insurgent chiefs at Sutorina to arrange a pacification. I went to see Rodich, a shrewd, precise functionary, liberal, as far as one could well be in his position, and I saw at once that, while he was determined to obey his orders, and urge a pacification because it was in accordance with his orders, he had no faith in success, and had a great sympathy with the insurgents. He was peremptory, and had a soldier-like aversion to special correspondents; but he was very just, and might have done much had the situation admitted any other result than the fighting it out. The Turks would make no concession and admit no reverse, and the insurgents, having been victorious in three out of four combats, and having brought the Turkish forces into the most desperate demoralization (as I was able to learn by the Turkish deserters who came daily into Ragusa), were not in the least disposed to relinquish the hold on the position they had won. In the rude shelter obtainable within the Austrian territory there were thousands of women, children, and wounded men, supported by the charity of Europe, now largely excited, leaving the active insurgents free for their operations.

At Ragusa I watched the course of events with informants in every part of the field of action, having become by this time regarded as the unflinching friend of the insurrection, to whom all good Slavs were under obligation of service. I then made the acquaintance and acquired the friendship of that admirable diplomat whose subsequent career and mine have repeatedly crossed each other, Sir Edward Monson, then diplomatic agent at Ragusa, and of a brave and good soldier, the Austrian commander, General Ivanovich, of whom and of whose excellent family I have the most delightful recollections, and whose society during all the time I remained in Ragusa was my sole social refuge from the wretched life of a special correspondent in half-civilized regions. It was a poetic and attractive household, and the light of it, the beauty of Madame Ivanovich and her two daughters, and the serenity which fell on me when I entered it, remain in my memory as the sunny oasis in the life of that period. Then, too, I made the acquaintance of an eminent scholar who was to be for many years after the stanchest of friends and allies, Professor Freeman, the great historian, but greater humanitarian, whose too early death I still feel to be my great personal loss. He had two companions, of whom one was Lord Morley, who had come to Ragusa to see what there was in the affair of the Herzegovina; and to their impressions was no doubt due much of the weight given to the "Times" reports subsequently.

Between fruitless negotiations, attempts to delude the insurgents by insincere promises, and the greatest efforts on the part of my soi-disant friend, Danish Effendi, to win over the body of correspondents by this time collected at Ragusa (he told me in so many words that he had informed the Turkish government that my pen was worth 40,000 francs to it), the rest of the winter passed away quietly. It was evident that war would be declared in the spring between the principalities and Turkey, and I went home thoroughly worn out and ill. I went by the way of Venice, and had my first sight of the city coming in at early morning from Trieste by steamer. Accustomed as I had been to the color of Turner as the aspect of the Grand Canal, it seemed to me that what I saw from the steamer was the ghost of Venice, pallid, wan, faded to tints which were only the suggestion of Turner's, but still lovely in their fading, and the impression was more pathetic than it would have been with all the glow of the great Englishman's palette. My wife met me at the steamer, and we went home by short stages, for I was too weak to bear a long railway journey.