We found that affairs here had taken a very serious turn. On Saturday last Dervish Pashà, the Vali or Governor-General of Bosnia, had left to take the command in Herzegovina, where the revolt was making head. On Sunday—this country being now left without any competent head—the revolt broke out in Bosnia. The news, as may be imagined, produced great excitement here, and threw the Christian minority into a state verging on consternation. The old rumours of an approaching massacre once more gained credence. But the panic became universal last night, when flames were observed rising from the immediate neighbourhood of the new cathedral, and in the centre of the Christian quarter, amongst houses inhabited by the leading Christian merchants. The Governor, Hussein Pashà, by repute a weak and incapable man, hearing the guns and cannon—which are here the usual fire-signals—and seeing the conflagration, at once jumped to the conclusion that the anticipated outbreak was beginning; and instead of sending the troops—who in Serajevo supply the place of a fire-brigade—to put out the fire, kept them in barracks waiting for the light to reveal the supposed disturbers of the peace. Thus the fire—which in its origin was, as we learnt from the most authentic source, purely accidental, and so far from being the work of a Moslem fanatic, had actually originated in the house of a well-known Mahometan, a renegade detested by the Christians—was allowed to spread, and fifteen houses in the most flourishing quarter of Serajevo were reduced to ashes before the Pashà could be undeceived, or proper measures be taken to bring the flames under. The danger to the whole city was imminent, the houses being mostly of wood and plaster; and, indeed, Serajevo had been previously burnt down on four several occasions. Perhaps the motives which induced the Mahometans to lend active help to the Christians in conquering the flames were not altogether disinterested.
Meanwhile, from the unfortunate quarter in which the conflagration had arisen, and from the electric state of the political atmosphere, it lay in the very nature of things that the origin of the disaster should be misrepresented, and that the majority of the Christian population took it for granted that it was the work of Moslem spite. Thus a purely accidental circumstance had added fuel to the general uneasiness, and to-day a panic prevailed among the Christians of Serajevo.
From the English Consulate, where we are now lodged, we hastened to pay our respects to two English ladies whose acquaintance we had already had the good fortune to make on the Save, and who are prosecuting a work in Bosnia of which their own country may well be proud, and for which a more civilised Bosnia may hereafter be grateful. Some years ago Miss Irby first travelled through many of the wildest parts of Turkey in Europe in company with Miss Muir Mackenzie, and the book composed by these two ladies on the Sclavonic Provinces of Turkey is well known to all Englishmen who take an interest in those neglected lands and their down-trodden Sclavonic cousins. But Miss Irby, with the practical spirit of her race, was not content with acquainting the world with the lamentable condition of the Serbian people under the Turkish yoke, but set herself to work to remedy these evils. It was the backward state of education among the rayah women of even the better classes which struck her as one of the peculiar obstacles in the way of national progress, and it was this which she resolved to overcome. In 1865 Miss Irby settled in Serajevo, and since that date she and a fellow-labourer, Miss Johnston, have devoted their lives to a propaganda of culture among the Bosnian Christian women. Nothing in their efforts has been more conspicuous than their good sense. As the best way to promote the spread of a liberal education among the women, these ladies have formed a school in which to bring up native school-mistresses. There has been no attempt at Protestant proselytism; the pupils, whether of the Greek or Romish Church, being left to the spiritual charge of their own pastors.
We found these ladies engaged in packing up their effects preparatory to removing from the country for the present with their most promising pupils. They had only arrived the previous Thursday by the tedious post from Brood; but the state of affairs seemed so threatening, that there was nothing for it but to take the children elsewhere and wait for quieter times. They experienced some difficulty in obtaining permission from the Pashà to take the embryo school-mistresses with them, as the Pashà considered that their departure would increase the panic among the Christians of Serajevo, by whom they are widely known and respected. It could not, however, well have been greater. Already, several of the leading Serb merchants had presented themselves at the English school-house, and begged to be allowed shelter if the expected butchery commenced. The Austrian Consul had just taken away his wife, and a general exodus of Christians from the city was going on. Miss Irby[243] and Miss Johnston finally obtained the required permission, and, as we were afterwards happy to learn, have succeeded in planting their school at Prague till this tyranny be overpast. It is difficult indeed for the liberal arts to flourish at the best of times in a Turkish province! The other day, on the opening of a rayah school at Banjaluka, the authorities issued peremptory orders prohibiting the teaching of history or geography! So rigid has become the censorship of the press, that Miss Irby, though provided, like ourselves, with an autograph Bujuruldu from the Governor-General of Bosnia, was not allowed to bring her little store of books into the country, and was forced to leave them at Brood. The state of literature in Serajevo itself may be gathered from the following fact: in a city of between fifty and sixty thousand inhabitants there is not a single book-shop!
Aug. 22.—To-day we made the acquaintance of the German Consul, Count Von Bothmar, who expressed considerable surprise at our arriving here unmolested. From him and the other members of the consular body, who were very ready to supply us with full details as to the stirring events that are taking place around us, we learnt many interesting facts relative to the causes and course of the insurrection in Bosnia. These accounts, and others from trustworthy sources, reveal such frantic oppression and gross misgovernment as must be hardly credible to Englishmen. We have heard all that can be said on the Turkish side, but the main facts remain unshaken.
The truth is that outside Serajevo and a few of the larger towns where there are Consuls or resident ‘Europeans,’ neither the honour, property, nor the lives of Christians are safe. Gross outrages against the person—murder itself—can be committed in the rural districts with impunity. The authorities are blind; and it is quite a common thing for the gendarmes to let the perpetrator of the grossest outrage, if a Mussulman, escape before their eyes. There is a proverb among the Bosnian Serbs, ‘No justice for the Christian.’ Miss Irby, who has made many enquiries on these subjects, estimates that in the Medjliss, the only court where Christian evidence is even legally admitted, ‘the evidence of twenty Christians would be outweighed by two Mussulmans.’[244] But why, it may be asked, do not the Christians appeal to the Consuls for protection? In the first place, in a mountainous country like Bosnia, with little means of communication, to do so would in most cases be a physical impossibility. In the second place, as Count Bothmar assured us, if such complaint is made to a Consul, so surely is the complaining rayah more cruelly oppressed than before; henceforth he is a marked man, nor is consular authority so omnipresent as to save him and his family from ruin. ‘God alone knows,’ he exclaimed, ‘what the rayahs suffer in the country districts!’ Remembering the revolting scenes, of which I had been a witness, at the Christian gathering near Comušina, I could believe this.
But the most galling oppression, and the main cause of the present revolt, is to be found in the system and manner of taxation. The centralised government set up in Bosnia since 1851 is so much machinery for wringing the uttermost farthing out of the unhappy Bosniac rayah. The desperate efforts of Turkish financiers on the eve of national bankruptcy have at last made the burden of taxation more than even the long-suffering Bosniac can bear. It was the last straw.
The principal tax—besides the house and land tax, the cattle tax,[245] and that paid by the ‘Christian’ in lieu of military service which is wrung from the poorest rayah for every male of his family down to the baby in arms[246]—is the eighth,[247] or, as it is facetiously called by the tax-collector, the tenth, which is levied on all produce of the earth. With regard to the exaction of this tax, every conceivable iniquity is practised. To begin with, its collection is farmed out to middle-men, and these, ex-officio pitiless, are usually by origin the scum of the Levant. The Osmanlì or the Sclavonic Mahometan possesses a natural dignity and self-respect which disinclines him for such dirty work. The men who come forward and offer the highest price for the license of extortion are more often Christians—Fanariote Greeks—adventurers from Stamboul, members of a race perhaps the vilest of mankind. No considerations of honour, or religion, or humanity, restrain these wretches. Having acquired the right to farm the taxes of a given district, the Turkish officials and gendarmerie are bound to support them in wringing the uttermost farthing out of the misera contribuens plebs, and it is natural that this help should be most readily forthcoming when needed to break the resistance of the rayah.
These men time their visitation well. They appear in the villages before the harvest is gathered and assess the value of the crops according to the present prices, which, of course, are far higher just before the harvest than after it. But the rayahs would be well contented if their exactions stopped here. They possess, however, a terrible lever for putting the screw on the miserable tiller. The harvest may not be gathered till the tax, which is pitilessly levied in cash, has been extorted. If the full amount—and they often double or treble the legal sum—is not forthcoming, the tax-gatherer simply has to say ‘then your harvest shall rot on the ground till you pay it!’ And the rayah must see the produce of his toil lost, or pay a ruinous imposition which more than swamps his profits.
But supposing, as often happens, the Spahi, or tithe-farmer, who is shrewd enough to know that ex nihilo nihil fit, sees no means of wringing the required amount from the village till after the harvest has been disposed of. In that case he imposes on the Knez or village elder, who represents the commune in the transaction, an assessment drawn up in the Turkish tongue,[248] and as intelligible to the rural Bosniac as so much Chinese. The money from the grapes or corn or tobacco assessed having been realised, the Spahi presents himself again to the village, and demands, perhaps, double what had been agreed on. The astonished Knez takes out the written agreement, a copy of which had been supplied to him, and appeals to it against the extortioner. But if he carries the matter before a Turkish court, the first Effendi who sets eyes on it will tell him that every iota of the Spahi’s claims is borne out by that precious document!