THE OLD MONUMENT ON STARO SELO, THE OLD VILLAGE, WHERE THE ORIGINAL SETTLERS OF IDVOR LIVED IN SUBTERRANEAN DWELLINGS
As I look back upon my childhood days in the village of Idvor, I feel that the cultivation of old traditions was the principal element in the spiritual life of the village people. The knowledge of these traditions was necessary and sufficient to them, in order to understand their position in the world and in the Austrian Empire. When my people moved into Austria under Patriarch Charnoyevich and settled in the military frontier, they had a definite agreement with Emperor Leopold I. It was recorded in an Austrian state document called Privilegia. According to this ancient document the Serbs of the military frontier were to enjoy a spiritual, economic, and political autonomy. Lands granted to them were their own property. In our village we maintained our own schools and our own churches, and each village elected its own local administration. Its head was the Knez, or chief, usually a sturdy peasant. My father was a Knez several times. The bishops and the people elected their own spiritual and political heads, that is, the Patriarch and the Voyvoda (governor). We were free and independent peasant landlords. In return for these privileges, the people obligated themselves to render military service for the defense of the southern frontiers of the empire against the invading Turks. They had helped to drive the Turks across the Danube, under the supreme command of Prince Eugene of Savoy, in the beginning of the eighteenth century. After the emperor had discovered the splendid fighting qualities of the Serbs of the military frontier, he managed to extend the original terms of the Privilegia so as to make it obligatory upon the military frontiersmen to defend the empire against any and every enemy. Subsequently the Serbs of the military frontier of Austria defended Empress Maria Theresa against Frederick the Great; they defended Emperor Francis against Napoleon; they defended Emperor Ferdinand against the rebellious Hungarians in 1848 and 1849; and in 1859 and 1866 they defended Austria against Italy. The military exploits of the men of Idvor during these wars supplied material for the traditions of Idvor, which were recorded in many tales and stirring songs. Reading and writing did not flourish in Idvor in those days, but poetry did.
Faithful to the old customs of the Serb race, the people of Idvor held during the long winter evenings their neighborhood gatherings, and as a boy I attended many of them at my father’s house. The older men would sit around the warm stove on a bench which was a part of the stove and made of the same material, usually soft brick plastered over and whitewashed. They smoked and talked and looked like old senators, self-appointed guardians of all the wisdom of Idvor. At the feet of the old men were middle-aged men, seated upon low stools, each with a basket in front of him, into which he peeled the yellow kernels from the seasoned ears of corn, and this kept him busy during the evening. The older women were seated on little stools along the wall; they would be spinning wool, flax, or hemp. The young women would be sewing or knitting. I, a favorite child of my mother, was allowed to sit alongside of her and listen to the words of wisdom and words of fiction dropping from the mouths of the old men and sometimes also from the mouths of the middle-aged and younger men, when the old men gave them permission to speak. At intervals the young women would sing a song having some relation to the last tale. For instance, when one of the old men had finished a tale about Karageorge and his historic struggles against the Turks, the women would follow with a song describing a brave Voyvoda of Karageorge, named Hayduk Velyko, who with a small band of Serbians defended Negotin against a great Turkish army under Moula Pasha. This gallant band, as the song describes them, reminds one of the little band of Greeks at Thermopylæ.
Some of the old men present at these gatherings had taken part in the Napoleonic wars, and they remembered well also the stories which they had heard from their fathers relating to the wars of Austria against Frederick the Great during the eighteenth century. The middle-aged men had participated in the fighting during the Hungarian revolution, and the younger men had just gone through the campaigns in Italy in 1859 and 1866. One of the old men had taken part in the battle of Aspern, when Austria defeated Napoleon. He had received a high imperial decoration for bravery, and was very proud of it. He also had gone to Russia with an Austrian division during Napoleon’s campaign of 1812. His name was Baba Batikin, and in the estimation of the village people he was a seer and a prophet, because of his wonderful memory and his extraordinary power of description. His diction was that of a guslar (Serbian minstrel). He not only described vividly what went on in Austria and in Russia during the Napoleonic wars in which he himself participated, but he would also thrill his hearers by tales relating to the Austrian campaigns against Frederick the Great, which his father upon his return from the battle-fields of Silesia had related to him. I remember quite well his stories relating to Karageorge of Serbia, whom he had known personally. He called him the great Vozhd, or leader of the Serbian peasants, and never grew weary of describing his heroic struggles against the Turks in the beginning of the nineteenth century. These tales about Karageorge were always received at the neighborhood gatherings with more enthusiasm than any other of his stirring narratives. Toward the end of the evening Baba Batikin would recite some of the old Serbian ballads, many of which he knew by heart. During these recitations his thin and wrinkled face would light up; it was the face of a seer, as I remember it, and I can see now his bald head with a wonderful brow, towering over bushy eyebrows through which the light of his deep-set eyes would shine like the light of the moon through the needles of an aged pine. It was from him that the good people of Idvor learned the history of the Serb race from the battle of the field of Kossovo in 1389 down to Karageorge. He kept alive the old Serb traditions in the village of Idvor. He was my first and my best teacher in history.
The younger men told tales relating to Austrian campaigns in Italy, glorifying the deeds of valor of the men of Idvor in these campaigns. The battle of Custozza in 1866, in which the military frontiersmen nearly annihilated the Italian armies, received a great deal of attention, because the men who described it had participated in it, and had just returned from Italy. But I remember that every one of those men was full of praise of Garibaldi, the leader of the Italian people in their struggles for freedom. They called him the Karageorge of Italy. I remember also that in my father’s house, in which these winter-evening gatherings took place, there was a colored picture of Garibaldi with his red shirt and a plumed hat. The picture was hung up alongside of the Ikona, the picture of our patron saint; on the other side of the Ikona was the picture of the Czar of Russia, who only a few years before had emancipated the Russian serfs. In the same room and hanging in a very conspicuous place all by itself was a picture of Karageorge, the leader of the Serbian revolution. The picture of the Austrian emperor was not there after 1869!
The Serb ballads recited by Baba Batikin glorified the great national hero, Prince Marko, whose combats were the combats of a strong man in defense of the weak and of the oppressed. Marko, although a prince of royal blood, never fought for conquest of territory. According to the guslar, Prince Marko was a true champion of right and justice. At that time the Civil War in America had just come to a close, and the name of Lincoln, whenever mentioned by Baba Batikin, suggested an American Prince Marko. The impressions which I carried away from these neighborhood gatherings were a spiritual food which nourished in my young mind the sentiment that the noblest thing in this world is the struggle for right, justice, and freedom. It was the love of freedom and of right and justice which made the Serbs of the military frontier desert their ancestral homes in old Serbia and move into Austria, where they gladly consented to live in subterranean houses and crawl like woodchucks under the ground as long as they could enjoy the blessings of political freedom.
The military frontiersmen had their freedom guaranteed to them by the Privilegia, and, in exchange for their freedom, they were always ready to fight for the Emperor of Austria on any battle-field. Loyalty to the emperor was the cardinal virtue of the military frontiersmen. It was that loyalty which overcame their admiration for Garibaldi in 1866; hence the Austrian victory at Custozza. The Emperor of Austria as a guardian of their freedom received a place of honor in the selected class of men like Prince Marko, Karageorge, Czar Alexander the Liberator, Lincoln, and Garibaldi. These were the names recorded in the Hall of Fame of Idvor. When, however, the emperor, in 1869, dissolved the military frontier and delivered its people to the Hungarians, the military frontiersmen felt that they were betrayed by the emperor, who had broken his faith to them recorded in the Privilegia. I remember my father saying to me one day: “Thou shalt never be a soldier in the emperor’s army. The emperor has broken his word; the emperor is a traitor in the eyes of the military frontiersmen. We despise the man who is not true to his word.” This is the reason why the picture of the Emperor of Austria was not allowed a place in my father’s house after 1869.
As I look back upon those days I feel, as I always felt, that this treacherous act of the Austrian emperor in 1869 was the beginning of the end of the Austrian Empire. It was the beginning of nationalism in the realm of Emperor Francis Joseph of Hapsburg. The love of the people for the country in which they lived began to languish and finally died. When that love dies, the country also must die. This was the lesson which I learned from the illiterate peasants of Idvor.