The Balkan Trail

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Behind the soldiers straggled several hundred Albanians, raw Redifs (first reserves), who had come up on our train in cattle-cars marked in bold letters, in a language they knew not of, ‘8 Chevaux ou 48 Hommes.’ And behind the Arnauts trailed a score of prisoners protesting violently at being driven to gaol through the mire. These were Christians impregnated with the sense of free men’s rights. They were attired in ‘Francs,’ fezzes, and handcuffs—with the exception of one, a priest, who wore only the manacles in common with the others, apparently the conductors of a Bulgarian gymnasium temporarily out of business.

Before the school teachers paraded a grinning gypsy bearing on his back a bundle of old muskets.

‘See, see!’ said the pasha. ‘They were captured in arms. There are the guns.’

‘8 CHEVAUX OU 48 HOMMES’: ALBANIAN RECRUITS.

But a foreign Consul, wise in the ways of the wily Government, told us that this gypsy and his parcel of rifles was the ostentatious advance guard of every detachment of Bulgarian prisoners. The manœuvre was designed to deceive those representatives of the Powers and newspaper correspondents who were particularly prying.

Uskub is a stern place with a breath of the mountains upon it. It is but an eight hours’ journey from Salonica, but, thanks to the restrictions of travel and intercourse, wholly free of a Levantine atmosphere. It is peopled principally by Arnauts—as the Turks call the Albanians—and Slavs, both men of character, though their morals are of a peculiar code. These Albanians and Slavs are natural enemies, and of the Slavs again there are Bulgarians and Servians, not good friends. The Kossovo vilayet, of which Uskub is the capital, has been described as a prolongation of Albania, Servia, and Bulgaria. The provincial delimitations of Turkey were undoubtedly designed with a view to encompassing under the same administration as many hostile elements as possible.

The differences between the Servians and the Bulgarians of Macedonia are almost entirely a matter of education. The two races have long since forgotten the enmity of their ancient emperors, and in five centuries of similar suffering under a mutual monarch they have at heart but one desire. They have become assimilated to an extent in these ages, and in some sections it is difficult to determine one from the other. Their language, here where the two races blend, can be spoken of as one. They have duplicate religions, similar ideas, identical customs. The peasants dress alike, and only the partisans and propagandists are distinguishable by their attire. A European cut of clothes is worn by those who attend the Bulgarian gymnasium, while a military jacket attests the adherents of the rival school.

At one time, prior to 1878, the territorial ambition of the Servians and that of the Bulgarians did not clash. The Servians aspired to a confederation of all Serbs, hoping for the annexation of Bosnia and Hertzegovina and a union with Montenegro. But the Treaty of Berlin gave a mandate to Austria-Hungary to occupy two Turkish provinces peopled by Serbs, thereby severing the two Serb States apparently for all time. Servian nationalists were horrified at this injustice, and frenzied attempts were made to undo this act of the famous treaty. But all efforts were unavailing against the power of the great neighbour, and in desperate fear of being shut in from the sea for ever, a petty, dwarfed State, the Servians turned from the Adriatic and faced the Ægean, and sought to acquire a right of way by that route to the world at large.

Notwithstanding the fact that in Macedonia only what is known as Old Servia—that section of Kossovo between Uskub and Servia proper—is extensively peopled by Serbs, Servian patriots laid claim to all the Slav elements in the districts to the south, straight away to the coast, arguing that the Bulgarians, originally a Tartar people, had been assimilated by the Slavs. The Servians spread their schools beyond the territory rightly theirs, establishing gymnasiums in Salonica and Monastir to compete with the Greeks and Bulgarians in converting the population. But below Old Servia, only purchased support of their cause was forthcoming from the people, and nowhere south of Uskub did the Servian campaign seriously worry the two big propagandas.