[240] Blunt, Voyage into the Levant, p. 8. Anno 1634.
[241] Eugenii Heldenthaten, cited in Spicilegium, &c.
[242] See Ranke’s Bosnia, ch. 1, and especially ‘The Danubian Principalities,’ vol. ii. p. 345.
[243] Miss Irby and Miss Johnston are at the present moment engaged, amid the barbarous wilds of Slavonia, in alleviating the urgent needs of the Bosnian refugees, with a philanthropy and devotedness worthy of the land which can number among its daughters a Mrs. Fry and a Florence Nightingale. Those who, by subscribing to the ‘Bosnian and Herzegovinian Fugitives’ Orphan Relief Fund,’ have aided their efforts, will be glad to learn that these practical manifestations of English sympathy have rescued hundreds from incalculable misery, and produced a profound impression on all South-Sclavonic peoples.
[244] See ‘Bosnia in 1875,’ an interesting paper by Miss Irby in the Victoria Magazine for Nov. 1875.
[245] The Cattle-tax is of three kinds: the Porez, or from fifteen to twenty piastres on every head of large cattle; the Resmi Agnam, of two piastres on every head of small cattle; and the Donuzia, or hog-tax. To these pastoral imposts may be added the Travarina or Herbatico, four piastres for every head of neat cattle pastured in mountain forests claimed by the State; four piastres levied on every plot of ground planted with Broc, a flower which produces a red dye much used in Bosnia; a tax of four piastres on every beehive; the Rad, or labour-tax, of about twenty-five piastres; Corvée on public roads; and the Komore, or forced loan of horses.
[246] ‘The tax in lieu of military service, which is paid by all non-Mussulmans, weighs very heavily on the poor, who have to pay, equally with the rich, twenty-eight piastres for every male. In the poorest and most miserable family this sum must be paid for the male infant who has first seen the light a few hours before the visit of the tax-gatherer. I have heard the bitterest complaints of the cruelty of this tax on the young children of the rayah.’—Miss Irby, loc. cit. p. 79. In principle this tax (known as Bédélat Askarié) is only levied on males between the ages of sixteen and sixty. In practice it is levied on old men of eighty as well as infants in arms, and often amounts to thirty piastres. A round sum is demanded from every village, and the Knez, or Mayor, has to divide it as best he may; but the sum demanded by the Government is always out of all proportion to the number of those who are legally called on to pay it.
[247] The tithe or ‘dime’ was converted into an eighth a few years ago, (to pay the expense of the Sultan’s European tour), by the imposition of an extra two-and-a-half per cent., which, by an artifice common to the thimble-rigging financiers of Stamboul, was called ‘a temporary aid.’ Since the revolt this aid has been given up by the Iradè of October 10, 1875.
[248] See on this device of extortion, M. Yriarte’s Bosnie et Herzégovine, souvenirs de voyage pendant l’insurrection. Plon, Paris, 1876, p. 199.
[249] To show that these and other tortures are by no means new in Bosnia, I may be allowed to cite a curious passage from a book on Turkish Manners and Customs, and having especial reference to the Turkish border-province of Dalmatia, written in the sixteenth century by a citizen of Zara, Messer Luigi Bassano, and entitled I Costumi et i Modi particolari de la vita de Turchi. Roma, 1545. Ch. xxxiii. is headed ‘Modo che usano d’impalare, e d’altre sorti de Morti, e torture che danno.’ After giving the most ghastly details as to the method of impalement, and instancing the case of a certain Capitan Lazero Albanese, who had been recently captured on the Dalmatian-Herzegovinian frontier, and had suffered in this way, the writer continues: