4. That they should be protected from the violence of the Zaptiehs.
5. That the tithe-farmers should take no more than they were legally entitled to, and that they should take it at the proper time.
6. That every house should pay in all only one ducat a year.
7. That no forced labour, either personal or by horses, should be demanded by the government; but that labour, when needed, should be paid for, as was the case all over the world.
The last two demands were added on Dervish Pashà himself appearing at Nevešinje; the Pashà promised that he would do all in his power to satisfy their demands, but that they must first lay down their arms. This, the Christians, who as yet had committed no overt act of hostility, expressed themselves ready to do, if the Pashà would first find means to protect them from the armed Mahometan fanatics by whom they saw themselves surrounded. This the Vali either could not or would not do, and on his departure the Christians, alarmed by the hostile attitude of the native Mahometans, fled once more to the mountains.
The weakness of the government now became deplorably evident. The native Mussulmans, headed by a Beg, a great landowner of the neighbourhood, who was also one of the tithe-farmers, broke into the government store and armed themselves with breech-loaders; and on the 1st of July the civil war in the Herzegovina was begun, not by the Christians, but by Mussulman fanatics, who butchered all the Christians they could find in Nevešinje—a few sick rayahs, who, unable to support the hardships of mountain-life, had returned to their homes.
The Christian refugees now descended from the mountains to retaliate on the perpetrators of the massacre; whereupon the government, instead of interfering in an impartial spirit to stop the disturbances and punish the malefactors, dispatched two battalions of Turkish troops to aid the Mahometan assassins, and attack the Christians indiscriminately. It was now that the rayahs of the neighbouring districts, who had been suffering from the same outrages, answered the urgent appeal of the men of Nevešinje, and a great part of the Christian population, from the Roman Catholic districts of the right bank of the Narenta to the orthodox Greek clans of the Montenegrine border, flew to arms.
Since then a guerilla warfare has been carried on among the mountains with uncertain results, but with great atrocity on both sides. In such matters religion counts for little, human nature for everything; and there seems no good reason a priori for doubting the worst instances of Christian atrocity that we heard of. But granting that the Christians were guilty, as our Consul asseverated, of the terrible auto da fè of Ljubinje, the blame must be laid at the door, not of the poor wretches who perpetrated these enormities, but of the tyrants who have brutalized them for centuries; just as the worst horrors of the French Revolution were but a counter-stroke to the accumulated misdeeds of the despotism that had preceded it. It is also true that the rayahs have in some instances forced Christian villages to join their cause by burning the crops and houses of the recalcitrants; but if desperate men, standing at bay against overwhelming numbers, have been forced to seek recruits by this means, it is that long-continued tyranny has enslaved the very spirit of many Christians. As with the miserable provincials of the Roman empire, who saw themselves annually pillaged by barbarian invaders, it was not that injuries were wanting which should have urged freemen to take up arms, but that the sense of injury itself—the last relic of self-respect—had been deadened within them:—
Jam nulli flebile damnum!
Sed cursus sollemnis erat, campusque furori