Serbia: A Sketch

by Helen Leah Reed

The Nations of Europe that had over-looked Serbia in her days of strength—she was so young, and so far away, half hidden in her wilderness of mountains—the Nations of Europe that had turned deaf ears to her cries when the Turk attacked her, began to make inquiries about the little sister. She had been asleep so long that some of them really imagined her dead. But they heard some plaintive music: they recognized her voice as she sang. They saw that she was not only alive, but awake, thoroughly wide awake, and that she was asking for help. But they had troubles enough of their own—revolutions and things of that kind. The people were altogether too troublesome—so at least the rulers said—and the people, who ought to have heeded poor Serbia's cries, did not take time to find out just who she was, and what she desired. All might have been different had they known that Serbia was one of themselves, acknowledging no privileged classes and desiring little but a chance to get on her feet and walk alone. For this she needed space to expand in, space in which to exhale the spirit of freedom that filled her. The Turk, her master, was growing weaker. She could almost strike off her own shackles when suddenly a deliverer came—one of her own people, a son of her mountains.

When her master was driven away, Serbia began to look about her, a little humbly at first, for she was trying to understand herself. She saw that she needed education before she could take her proper place in the world. So she set herself bravely to learn from books. She noticed that the stronger Nations were governed by rules, and she gave herself a Constitution patterned on theirs. Regular work was hard for her, but she worked diligently and saved a little, though disinclined to hoard. She had rich treasures hidden away but she had never thought about them, even as playthings. What does a child care for diamonds? But when it was made clear to her that wealth is power, she worked more heartily.

The other Nations began to admit that Serbia was no longer Nobody. Indeed she was so near being Somebody that many thought it would be wise to win her friendship, and wiser to put her under obligations. So when she asked for an Hereditary Prince, presto! the thing was accomplished! though once she had hardly dared ask more than the privilege of naming her own chief.

In outward aspect Serbia began to be more like other people, although some of her neighbors remembered too well her hoydenish days and her years of poverty. Still, they could flatter her sometimes, for she held the key to certain things that several of them needed—trade routes, fertile lands, and other things that no ambitious Nation should live without. Soon some of her neighbors desired to control the sale of things that modestly enough she had begun to offer to the world. She had heard that money was power, and she hoped to send her goods to market in the best way. She noticed that every one who made a success of business had a place by the sea. In the whole family of Nations she was the only one who had not a place by the sea, except the littlest one perched up in the high mountains. But this little one makes a success by trading in beauty. Yet beauty is an intangible thing to carry to any market and is best disposed of in the mountains themselves.

When Serbia first expressed her longing for the sea every one frowned. "Impossible!" There were other things that ought to please her as well—opportunities to help them in their wars, little snips of territory here and there if she helped them gain anything. But a seaport—ridiculous! Why, the Imperial cousin on one side of her would be insulted! What better could little Serbia wish than to market her goods to him, or at least send them over routes he had picked out?

Then Serbia said less and thought more. She sang less, but she composed more songs, and she listened to the people talking, not singing. She found she could not live by poetry alone. The Young Serbs and the Panslavs told her their plans and she looked hopefully at her big fur-clad Cousin. But though with him it wasn't a question of trade, he had ambitions of his own. He wasn't sure but that Serbia with a seat by the sea might watch him too closely. Then all the others in the great family of Nations took sides with one or the other.

Serbia was restless, but she knew she could wait. Her household was now much more closely united than in the days of her youth, and she had realized what had once seemed a vain dream—comparative independence. So she could wait!

Who would look at pictures of massacres extending throughout Serbia! at plundered villages! at tortured women and fatherless children shrieking in agony! All the horrors inflicted by the Turks on the Serbs in the early nineteenth century were the convulsive movements of one near his end. The Turk himself was growing weaker and weaker, and his weakness was Serbia's opportunity. But where was the man to lead her out of bondage? There was now no heir to her throne, the throne of what had once been a proud kingdom. Assassination and exile had led also to the passing of the old nobility. Although the family of the ancient kings was no more, the old racial stock had little changed. The Serbs were still of the same indomitable race, still breathing the spirit of freedom, still bound to one another in a true brotherhood. Yet, loyal though they were, ready to die for Serbia, where could they look for a leader?

In the early part of 1804, Mustapha Pasha, the Turkish Governor of Belgrade, was much too kind and benign a man to suit the Janissaries and the Dahias, their leaders. They had dealt slaughter right and left, and at last had killed Mustapha himself because he had opposed their cruelty. While they were planning a general massacre of the most eminent Serbs in the country, all Serbs who could were fleeing to the mountains. The rumored massacre was the last straw, and a silent cry arose, "Oh, for the right man!" Then came the whisper that a leader had been found—Karageorges, Black George, a prosperous raiser of swine, at this time about forty years old. He had served in the Austrian armies nearly twenty years before under Joseph I, that Emperor who, of all the Austrian monarchs, is said to have meant the most and to have done the least.