The Military Frontier has ceased to exist, but the old order of things has not yet passed away; and we were the more anxious to catch if but a glimpse of that antique society, so long artificially preserved from change by the military needs of the monarchy, before it dies away from the memory of man. For to cross the Military Frontier is to survey a phase of society so primitive that it was already antiquated when the forefathers of the English sate among the heaths and fens and forests of the Elbelands. It is to go back, not indeed into Feudal times—for to call this frontier organisation Feudal shows an ignorance of what Feudalism really means—but to wander beyond the twilight of history, and take a lantern as it were into the night of time.
If the Turkish invasion can be likened to the encroachment of an ocean, it resembled it in nothing more than its denuding action. Throughout the whole of Eastern Europe there set in a great levelling of baronial peak-lands. The South-Sclavonic nobility fell at Kóssovo or Mohatch and a hundred other fields, or skulked away into foreign lands; and, indeed, this Feudal overgrowth was always more or less of an exotic among Serbs and Croats. The Turkish conquest was a fiery trial, in truth, and yet it had the effect of purging the sterling democratic ore of society from all this hæmatitic dross. The semi-feudal organisation which had sprung up in these lands—partly owing to the imperfect devices of an acephalous society to gain the unity of action required in war, partly to infiltrations of Western ideas viâ Hungary or the Empire—was now levelled away by the Turks, where it was not, as in Bosnia, assimilated. Society reverted to that almost patriarchal form which the Sclavonic settlers had carried with them into the Illyrian triangle when they settled here in the days of Heraclius. Vlastela and magnates now make way once more for simple house-fathers, distinctions of rank are merged in the old equality and fraternity that reign within the paling of the house-community. We have seen an Imperial ukase work much the same result among the Sclaves of Russia as was wrought by the Turkish scimitar for their brethren of the south.
Then, too, not only were the higher ranks of society cleared away, but influences were at work to make even the communistic village government go back a step in archaism. Vast tracts of land were depopulated and were parcelled out amongst new settlers, chiefly immigrant families from beyond the Turkish frontier. But the single farms of those backwoodsmen could not grow into villages all at once, and so it would happen that the mark—as we may call the allotment—reverted to a very primitive stage, being held in common, not so much by a village-community, as by a single household. Thus the Starescina, or alderman of the community, was often literally the elective elder of the household.
But it was evident that if the new military organisation was to be self-supporting, each family must contain several adult male members—for how else could men be spared from the tillage necessary for the support of the household? And how else could contributions in kind be afforded to the military chest—the cassa domestica—for the keep of soldier house-brothers?
Therefore it was that the Government thought well to strengthen the Sclavonic family tie, always strong, by legal fetters which forcibly bound the household together and artificially checked the development of individual proprietorship. It was forbidden, as far as possible, to alienate the property of a house-community, or to subdivide it among its members; and so literally was this enforced that, near Siszek for example, we heard of families still existing containing over three hundred members all living within the same palisaded yard, and forming a village of themselves; nor is it by any means rare to find villages in the Granitza consisting of a couple of households.
Aug. 7.—It was to survey this primitive régime that we now sallied forth from Karlovac, and, crossing the bridge over the Kulpa, found ourselves, as was manifested still by a conspicuous sign-board, in what was once the Sluin Regiment of the Military Frontier—a suburban street of Karlovac, in fact, belonging to the ex-military district. It must, however, be remembered that side by side with this military communism exists a civil population: clergy, teachers, artizans, tradesmen, innkeepers, and so forth, who enjoy exceptional liberties; so there was not much to notice of special interest in military Karlovac, except a spacious government school for Granitza children. A pretty country walk brought us to the little village of Radovac, where we lighted on a native, an intelligent young fellow, who acted as a guide, and interpreter of primitive institutions.
We looked into several of the cottages, each in its yard, with due complement of outbuildings, garden and orchard for common use. The households here are not so large as in other parts of the frontier, and it is evident that in former times the inhabitants must have found some means of evading the law, and dividing their property. The old order of things still exists; each cottage has its house-father and house-mother, and everything is held in common. But the effects of the Theilungsgesetze are beginning to be felt, and the right of any family to claim an equal division of the property among its members is being taken advantage of. We were shown one house where the family had just quarrelled and split up. In this case the old house-father and house-mother still retained their military exemption; but the heads of the new family offshoots were liable to service, and were not recognised as house-fathers and house-mothers by the eye of the law; though some of them still arrogate the time-honoured titles. In other parts of the Frontier the overgrown households are availing themselves of the new permissive law to escape from the imprisonment of the common paling. We heard of instances of partition near Siszek, and further east, near Brood in Slavonia. Thus the old communal life is dying a natural death.
A Granitza Homestead.