CHAPTER XXXI
RUSSIAN INTERVENTION AND THE CAMPAIGN OF 1877
With the return of spring I resumed my position, and when I arrived at Cettinje, in the beginning of April, the situation was one which made it politic for the Sultan, had he known his pressing interests, to yield to the conditions on which peace could have been preserved. Montenegro held a position stronger than that of the year before, and the Prince, under diplomatic pressure, withdrew the conditions which he had originally insisted on, except two, viz., the recognition of the independence of the Kutchi and the repatriation of the refugees from Herzegovina, with guarantees for their tranquillity. This latter was a sine qua non of the restoration of Montenegro to its original condition, for the principality was supporting on the slender basis of its always insufficient means a population almost equal to its own, and was already in a state approaching famine. Russia was sending shiploads of corn, and English charity was, as it always is, large, but the retention of the refugees permanently was impossible, even with foreign aid. They were destitute not merely of homes but of earthly goods, to an extent that made them as helpless as children, for there was no more work to be done in the principality than the women were accustomed to do in war time.
Russia declared war on the 25th of April, and the English agent left four days later, warmly saluted by the Prince, who had found in him a true and disinterested friend. Jonine's animosity towards Monson was intense, and as the former, as Russian plenipotentiary, considered himself entitled to give direction to the diplomacy of Cettinje, he was furious over the evident favor with which Monson was regarded by the Prince, who often followed his advice. It was a sore point with the Montenegrins, from the Prince down, that Jonine was so officious in his intervention even in military advice, where he had not the least competence; and in general the Montenegrins resented the dictation of the Russian staff, even where it had every reason to urge its own views of the operations. On the occasion of the next birthday of the Czar, which was as usual celebrated in Montenegro by a diplomatic and official dinner, the Prince refused to come to the table, sending Duby to preside. Jonine was extremely unpopular with Prince and people, owing to his dictatorial ways. The Austrian representative had an opening to great influence which he might have seized if he had been a man of tact, but he was ostentatiously hostile to the Prince and the Montenegrin cause. Monson, on the other hand, and Greene, the English consul at Scutari, exerted their influence in every way for the principality, and but for them the supplies of grain from Russia, which had been sent on during the armistice and had been maliciously delayed by the authorities at Scutari as they came by water through the Boyana, would probably have been stopped at the critical moment by the outbreak of hostilities.
The news of the declaration of war by Russia produced immense enthusiasm in the principality, and the people now felt that they were in a position to fight out with the Turks the quarrel of four hundred years. With the Prince and his staff, I went to the new headquarters at Orealuk, where he had a little villa nearly midway between the pass to the plain of Niksich and Podgoritza. The southern frontier was held by the division of "Bozo" (Bozidar) Petrovich on the west of the Zeta, and on the east by that of the minister of war, Plamenaz, posted on the heights over Spuz. They were opposed by Ali Saib Pasha and two or three subordinate generals. On the north, at Krstaz, was Vucotich, the father-in-law of the Prince, a brave man, but neither a good general nor a good administrator, and to his incompetence as strategist the Montenegrins were indebted for the egregious failure of the northern defense. This failure at one moment menaced the total collapse of the Montenegrin campaign, from which the ability of Bozo saved it. Suleiman Pasha, later distinguished by his Bulgarian campaign, had replaced Mukhtar, and had spent three months in drilling and disciplining his troops for the Montenegrin method of fighting. The terrible passes of the Duga offered ideal positions for a defense by such a force as the Montenegrin,—brave, good shots, and absolutely obedient to orders; and the best military advice on our side pronounced them impregnable if properly defended.
So the Prince went to Ostrog, and the northern army took position on the plain of Niksich, the advance posts being connected with headquarters at Ostrog by telegraph, and I took up my quarters with the Prince in the convent. With great ability, Suleiman out-manoeuvred Vucotich in the Duga, and debouched in the plain near Niksich before the Montenegrin army could reach Plamnitza, where the valley of the Zeta and our position at Ostrog were to be defended, and if Suleiman had pushed on without stopping to recruit he might have taken us all in our quarters. The mendacious dispatches of victory from the Montenegrin commander gave us to believe that the Turks were kept at bay, until we found that they were actually in Niksich, and there was not a single battalion to serve as bodyguard to the Prince at Ostrog. Simultaneously with the attack on Duga, the army of Ali Saib attacked on the south; but, defeated most disastrously two days in succession, was obliged to relinquish the effort to meet Suleiman in Danilograd, where, if united, they would have held the principality by the throat.
The reports of the fight from Bozo sent me down to get the details of the victory, of which he had given me by telegraph a summary account, and I arrived at his headquarters at Plana, overlooking the Turkish movements, late that afternoon, accepting an invitation to pass the night and see the operations of the next day. Until I arrived at his camp Bozo had received no information of the passage of the Duga, nor of the relief of Niksich; but I had not been with him two hours before we saw the smoke arising from the villages on the northern slopes of the heights that commanded the head of the valley of the Zeta, which connects the plains of Niksich and Podgoritza and divides Montenegro into two provinces, anciently two principalities,—the Berdas and the Czernagora or Black Mountain. This conflagration showed that Suleiman had crowned the heights, and would have no more difficulty in descending through the valley to Danilograd. Suleiman's campaign was planned on the idea of a triple attack on the heart of Montenegro, by himself from Krstaz, Ali Saib from Spuz, and Mehemet Ali, my old friend in Crete, from Kolashin via the upper Moratsha, the three armies to meet at Danilograd. Ali Saib and Mehemet Ali were disastrously defeated, though before I left Plana in the morning a third attack from Spuz was begun, and fought out under my eyes while I waited, the Turks being driven back again.
I started for a leisurely ride back to Ostrog, and half way there met a fugitive who told me that the Turks were at the convent, and the Prince retreating on the western side of the valley. Another half hour and I should have been in the hands of the irregulars, who were skirmishing and burning, killing and plundering, as they followed the eastern side, the two armies being hotly engaged in the forests along the crest of the mountains above us around Ostrog. I retrograded to Plana, and thence, by the urgent counsels of Bozo, to Cettinje, as the position was critical, and the campaign might take an unexpected turn and make my escape impossible.
The army of Suleiman took ten days of fighting to cover the distance I had made in three hours' leisurely ride, and reached the plain of Spuz so exhausted and decimated that Suleiman had to reorganize it before he could make another move. He had narrowly escaped a great disaster, possibly the surrender of his whole army, only by the incompetence of the Montenegrin commander. He had abandoned all his communications with Niksich, like Sherman at Atlanta in the American war, and had to depend on what he carried with him, for the country offered nothing. Vucotich, instead of intrenching himself with his main force in the woods in front of Suleiman, adopted the tactics of opening to let him pass, and then attacking him in the rear, though he was strong enough to have stopped him and starved him into surrender. As it was he lost 10,000 men in the passage of the Bjelopawlitze. At this moment the English consul at Scutari, Mr. Greene, came to Cettinje and visited the camp of Suleiman, in which visit I wished to imitate him, but he warned me that it would be probably a fatal call, as I would not have been allowed to return. Mr. Greene gave me Suleiman's account of the fighting in the Duga, in which the Turkish general described the Montenegrin attacks as displaying a courage he had never before witnessed. They charged the solid Turkish squares, and, grappling the soldiers, attempted to drag them from the ranks. The Montenegrin loss was 800 killed. The ammunition was bad, and the mountaineers often threw their rifles away and attacked with the cold steel. The average advance of the Turks was about a mile a day.
So we waited for the next news from Suleiman with an anxiety in Cettinje not known for a generation. It was supposed that Suleiman would repeat the campaign of Omar Pasha, moving on Cettinje by Rieka, and all the fighting men were called out and the villages on that side evacuated. In this state of painful expectation the news arrived of the passage of the Danube by the Russian army, and the recall of Suleiman and his army for the defense of the principalities. The relief in Cettinje rose to jubilation, and we all returned to our habitual life.