On this a female servant, dreading her master's fate, gave Socivisca his arms, and he fled into the woods close by, where he lurked long enough to see the probatim arrive with a party of Timariots, who surrounded the house. On this the fugitive withdrew and retired towards the mountains, swearing by every saint in his church to have a terrible revenge!
Assembling his followers, he descended in the night, and guarding all the avenues to prevent escape, he set fire to the house of the probatim, who perished miserably with sixteen of his family, all of whom were burned alive, save a woman, who was killed by a rifle-shot when in the act of leaping from a window with an infant in her arms.
After these affairs the Pacha of Bosnia, a three-tailed dignitary who resided at Traunick, scoured the country with his Timariots, and made such incredible efforts to capture Socivisca, that though the latter multiplied his slaughters, raids, and robberies, he was ultimately driven, with his brothers, his wife, and two children (a son and daughter), over the Montenegrin frontier to Karlovitz, a small place in the Austrian territory, famous only as the scene of Prince Eugene's victory over the Ottoman troops in the early part of the last century. The Hungarians being, like the Illyrians, of Slavonian blood, there he found a comfortable shelter for three years under the protection of the Emperor Francis I. and the Empress-Queen, and during that time his conduct and life were alike blameless and without reproach. One of his brothers, however, having strayed across the frontier, fell into the hands of the Turks, and would have died a miserable death, had his escape not been favoured by one who proved friendly to him, a Timariot named Nouri Othman.
In October, 1757, Osman III. died, and was succeeded by Mustapha, son of the deposed Sultan Achmet. Karlovitz is only forty miles from the Bosnian frontier; so the pacha, who never lost sight of Socivisca, anxious to please the new sovereign and display his activity, by a lavish disposal of gold, and by the aid of some person or persons unknown, had the exile betrayed and made prisoner. He ordered him to be conveyed at once to Traunick, and to be placed in the same prison where his younger brother perished so miserably.
Though elaborately tied and bound, by some of that skill which the rope-tricksters display in the present day, he contrived, en route, to get free, and, escaping, reached Karlovitz, where he had the unhappiness to find that, by a singular stroke of misfortune, his wife and two children had in the interim fallen into the hands of the pacha, that in his flight he had actually passed them on the road, and that they were now in the strong prison of Traunick, from which escape or release seemed alike hopeless.
By messengers from Karlovitz he strove to negotiate for their release, but the pacha was inexorable. He then wrote the following letter, which appeared in a newspaper for March, 1800, where it was given "as a curious specimen of social feeling operating on a rugged and ardent disposition;" moreover, it is no bad specimen of the outlaw's literary power:—
"I am informed, O Pacha of Bosnia, that you complain of my escape; but I put it to yourself, what would you have done in my place? Would you have suffered yourself to be bound with cords like a miserable beast, and led away without resistance by men who, as soon as they arrived at a certain place, would put you to death?
"Nature impels us to avoid destruction, and I have acted only in obedience to her laws.
"Tell me, Pacha, what crime have my wife and little children committed that, in spite of law and justice, you should retain them like slaves? Perhaps you hope to render me more submissive; but you cannot surely expect that I shall return to you and hold forth my arms to be loaded with fresh bonds.
"Hear me then, Pacha! You may exhaust on them all your fury without producing the least advantage. On my part, I declare I shall wreak my vengeance on all Turks who may fall into my hands, and I will omit no means of injuring you!