Through Bosnia and the Herzegóvina on foot during the insurrection, August and September 1875

by Sir Arthur Evans

Diagram of Salt-mill.

But the wine shop carried one back to some tavern of antiquity. It displayed a wooden bar facing the street, covered with an array of jars, ‘testjas’ as they are still called hereabouts, Roman alike in shape and name, behind which the vendor stood and filled brimming cups and jars with thick red wine for the passers-by. The whole scene called to mind a more classic wine-bar, as it is still to be seen on the monument of a Gallo-Roman taverner discovered at Dijon.

We now directed our footsteps to the old castle that crowns the summit of the hill. The ‘Starigrad,’ as it is called here, is one of the most interesting historic relics in the whole of Bosnia. A glance from its mouldering walls makes one realise the importance of its situation. The peak on which the castle of Doboj stands juts out abruptly into the valley of the Bosna just at the point where in one direction the Sprecca opens out an avenue towards the Drina and Serbian frontier, and in the other the pass of Dervent conducts the road to Croatia. The castle, therefore, was the key to the whole valley of the Bosna against a foe coming from the Hungarian plains, and commanded the highway through the province of Ussora to the very heart of the Bosnian kingdom. The maize-covered river-flat that spreads below it seems one of those spots destined by nature to be the battle-field of nations; and the very name of Doboj or Dvoboi, as it was formerly written, means in Bosniac ‘the two fights.’

Old Castle of Doboj.

As Prince of Ussora, this castle belonged to Tvartko I., who first erected Bosnia into a kingdom. He entrusted the stronghold to the safe keeping of the Croatian Ban, John Horvath, with whom he was bound by common jealousy of the Hungarian suzerain. It was within its walls that the Ban, the bishop of Agram, and the King of Bosnia, concocted, in 1387, the plot by which the Hungarian queen and queen-mother were seized, and the Croat and Bosnian magnates revolted against Sigismund, the King of Hungary. But Sigismund was victorious, and in 1391 the Ban and bishop were shut up within the walls of Doboj,[172] and captured; the Ban while attempting to escape, the bishop in the castle itself, which was forced to surrender; while the King of Bosnia, seeing his province of Ussora overrun, was forced to return to his allegiance. In 1408 another revolt, under Tvartko III., against the Hungarian suzerain, was crushed under these same walls, and the King of Bosnia himself captured in the battle. A terrible vengeance now followed, and 180 nobles, Bosnian and Croatian, are said to have been executed within these walls, and their bodies thrown into the river below. This was at a time when both Hungary and Bosnia should have been united against the Turkish invaders. But the sad national tragedy was being played out, and in due course Doboj, the key of the Christian kingdom, became the stronghold of the Turk. It is a place full of dismal associations for the Christians of Bosnia; they seem to shrink instinctively from the ill-omened site, and at this day the population of Doboj is almost exclusively Mahometan. We could not wonder at coming upon a tradition among the rayahs of this neighbourhood that it was within these walls that the old Bosnian nobility forswore their faith and country and renegaded to the Infidel.

Under the Turks the castle appears to have long since fallen into the decay in which it now moulders. Prince Eugene seems to have found no difficulty in taking it en passant during his hasty dash into Bosnia in 1697; and in 1717 it again fell for awhile into the hands of the imperialists under General Petrasch. At the present day even the Turks recognise it as a ruin, and apparently throw no obstacle in the way of those who may wish to explore it. We, at any rate, entered the old fortress unopposed, passing through a now broken archway, the former outer gate of the castle, which opens on its least precipitous side upon the neck of the hill where the present upper town of Doboj is situated.

We now found ourselves in the outer yard, between the castle and the exterior walls, in a kind of covered causeway leading to the inner gateway of the castle itself. Here, groping among the rubble, we discovered an old cannon of apparently very early date, with two dolphins forming handles—an ancient trophy, we liked to think, from the Venetians; but though we looked carefully about the walls and fragments for any inscriptions or elegant details of architecture, we hit on nothing except an old square stone with an almost effaced chevron moulding round it, set in a dark and inaccessible position in the wall inside the castle-gateway, and which may have had some further device on it. Entering by this gateway, the arch of which is of ogival shape, we passed the remains of what may have been the dwelling-house of some former Turkish commandant, now in a state which makes it dangerous to the passer-by. Then clambering up among the more ancient and massive ruins, we came upon an old chamber in the wall, with a barrel-vaulting, where we discovered a quantity of rotten musket-stocks, which must have been mouldering here for centuries, and a small arsenal-full of stone cannon-balls, such as from time to time turn up on Bosworth Field. Further on we came to the tower which forms the northern corner of the castle, which is tolerably perfect inside, and in shape resembles a halved octagon. There appear to have been two other towers at the two other corners of the castle, which in shape is triangular; but I will not attempt more than a rough plan of this medley of ruins, which, half-concealed with brambles and wild vine, and tufted in every crevice with maidenhair and rue-fern, are more picturesque than intelligible.

Having returned to our Han, we found our Mudìr seated on a divan in one of the rooms, which was strewn with bright Roumelian carpets, in general character very like the Slavonian. He knew no tongues but Bosniac, Arabic, Turkish, and modern Greek; but though I succeeded in describing to him our visit to the castle in the language of Thucydides, we found it on the whole better to make use of our host—a Montenegrine by birth, who has picked up a little Swabian—as an interpreter. The Mudìr told us that the Turkish government were anxious to dispose of the old castle as an eligible site, or a useful quarry for building purposes. Shade of Bosnian kings! Our Mahometan, with the greatest sangfroid, ordered a bottle of thick red Slavonian wine, and proceeded to consume it before our eyes; but the wine-bar in the upper town had already familiarised us with the laxity of true-believers.

As the Mudìr could not understand German, the Montenegrine, who was an ardent Southern Sclave, could give vent to his patriotic sentiments without reserve. He literally devoured our map of the Herzegovina, and entreated us to sell it him. He believed the insurrection would be successful, and had heard that Mostar was blockaded—for rumours of the first slight successes of the insurgents in the Narenta valley had penetrated in an exaggerated form to the extremities of Bosnia. We asked if he believed that the Christian Bosniacs of the neighbourhood would rise?