The fall of the virgin fortress filled the Bosniaks with dismay. At the news of Mohammed’s invasion, Stephen Tomashevich had withdrawn with his family to his capital of Jajce, hoping to raise an army and get help from abroad while the invader was expending his strength before the walls of Bobovatz. But its surrender left him no time for defence. He fled at once towards Croatia, closely followed by the van of Mohammed’s army. At the fortress of Kljuch (rightly so-called, as being a “key” of Bosnia) the pursuers came up with the fugitive. The secret of the King’s presence inside was betrayed to the Turks; and their commander, anxious to avoid a lengthy siege, promised Tomashevich in writing that, if he surrendered, his life should be spared. The King relied upon the pardon and gave himself up to Mohammed’s lieutenant, who brought him as his prisoner to the Sultan at Jajce. Meanwhile, the capital, like the King, had thrown itself upon the mercy of the conqueror, and thus, almost without a blow, the three strongest places in Bosnia had fallen. Tomashevich himself helped the Sultan to complete his conquest. He wrote, at his captor’s direction, letters to all his generals and captains, bidding them surrender their towns and fortresses to the Turk. In a week more than seventy obeyed his commands, and before the middle of June, 1463, Bosnia was a Turkish Pashalik, and Mohammed, with the captive King in his train, set out for the subjection of the Herzegovina. But the “heroic Herzegovina” offered greater obstacles to the invader than “lofty Bosnia.” Against those bare limestone rocks the Turkish cavalry was useless, while the natives, accustomed to every cranny of the crags, harassed the strangers with a ceaseless guerilla warfare. Duke Stephen and his son, Vladislav, who in better days had wasted their energies in civil war, now joined hands against the common foe, and Mohammed, after a fruitless attempt to capture his capital of Blagaj, withdrew to Constantinople. But before he left he resolved to rid himself of that encumbrance, the King of Bosnia, who could now be no longer of use to his conqueror. Mohammed was bound by the solemn promise of his lieutenant to spare his prisoner’s life. But, as soon as his wishes were known, a legal excuse was invented for his inexcusable act of treachery. A learned Persian in his camp, Ali Bestami by name, pronounced the pardon to be invalid because it had been granted without the previous consent of the Sultan. Mohammed thereupon summoned Tomashevich to his presence on the “Emperor’s meadow,” near Jajce, whereupon the lithe Persian drew his sword, and, with a spring in the air, cut off the head of the last Bosnian King. According to another version, Tomashevich was first flayed alive. By the command of the Sultan, the fetva, in which Ali Bestami had composed the captive monarch’s sentence, was carved on the gate of Jajce, where as late as the middle of the last century could be read the words, “The true believer will not allow a snake to bite him twice from the same hole,” an allegory by which the pliant Persian strove to excuse his master’s treachery by representing his victim as the traitor. The body of Tomashevich was buried by order of the Sultan at a spot only just visible from the citadel of Jajce. In 1888 Dr Truhelka, the distinguished archæologist and custodian of the museum of Sarajevo, discovered on the right bank of the river Vrbas the skeleton of the King, the skull severed from the trunk just as history had said, with two small silver Hungarian coins, current in Bosnia in the fifteenth century, on the breast-bones. When the present writer visited Jajce, he found the skeleton set up in the Franciscan church there—a sad memorial of Bosnia’s past greatness. His portrait adorns the Franciscan monastery of Sutjeska. His uncle, Radivoj, and his cousin were executed after him; his half-brother and half-sister carried off as captives, and his widow, Maria, became the wife of a Turkish official[906].
Thus, after an existence of eighty-seven years, fell the Bosnian Kingdom. Mainly by the faults of her people and the mistakes of her rulers, mediæval Bosnia lost her independence. The country is naturally strong, and under the resolute government of one man, uniting all creeds and all classes beneath his banner, might have held out, like Montenegro, against the Turkish armies. But the jealousies of the nobles, and the still fiercer rivalries of the Roman Catholics and the Bogomiles, prepared the way for the invader, and when he came the persecuted heretics welcomed him as a deliverer, preferring “the mufti’s turban to the cardinal’s hat.” This lesson of Bosnia’s fall is full of meaning for our own time, and those who meditate on her future destinies should not forget her past mistakes. She is perhaps the best and the saddest example of what boundless mischief religious persecution can accomplish.
Bosnia had entered upon her four centuries of submission to the Turks. Her King was dead, his consort and his step-mother, Queen Catherine, in exile, and his people at the mercy of the conqueror. Many of them were enlisted in the Turkish corps of Janissaries; many more fled to Croatia, Istria and the Dalmatian towns; a few took to the mountains, like the more or less mythical hero Toma, the Robin Hood of the Bosnian ballads, and lived as brigands and outlaws; most of the Bogomiles embraced the faith of Islâm, and became in the course of generations more fanatical than the Turks themselves. It seemed as if they would be left in sole possession of the land, but the earnest appeal of a Franciscan monk induced Mohammed to grant the Christians the free exercise of their religion and thus stay the tide of emigration from the country. But, though Bosnia could not defend herself, the Turks were not allowed undisturbed possession. Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, had been outwitted by the rapid march of Mohammed, but in the autumn of the very year in which Bosnia fell he set out to her rescue. The campaign was successful, and, aided by Duke Stephen’s eldest son Vladislav[907], and a Herzegovinian contingent, the Hungarians recovered Jajce, Banjaluka, and about twenty-five other towns. Even the return of Mohammed in the next spring failed to secure the second surrender of Jajce. Such was the terror of the Hungarian arms that the mere report of the King’s approach made him throw his cannon into the Vrbas and raise the siege. Matthias Corvinus now organised the part of Bosnia which he had conquered from the Turks into two Duchies or banats, one of which took its name from Jajce and the other from Srebrenik. Over these territories, which embraced all Lower Bosnia, he placed Nicholas of Ilok, a Hungarian magnate, with the title of King. Thus, under Hungarian rule, two portions of the old Bosnian Kingdom remained free from the Turks for two generations more, serving as a “buffer State” between the Ottoman Power and the Christian lands of Croatia and Slavonia.
The Herzegovina, which had repulsed the conqueror of Bosnia, did not long survive the sister state. The great Duke Stephen Vuktchich died in 1466 and his three sons Vladislav, Vlatko and Stephen, divided his possessions between them. The eldest, however, whose quarrels with his father had wrought such infinite harm to his country, did not long govern the northern part of the Herzegovina, which fell to his share. He entered the Venetian service, and thence emigrated to Croatia, where he died. The second brother, Vlatko, assuming the title of Duke of St Sava re-united for a time the remains of the Duchy under his sole rule, relying now on Venetian, now on Neapolitan aid, but only secure as long as Mohammed II allowed him to linger on as a tributary of Turkey. In 1481 he ventured to invade Bosnia, but was driven back to seek shelter in his stronghold of Castelnuovo. Two years later Bayezid II annexed the Herzegovina, whose last reigning Duke died on the island of Arbe. The title continued, however, to be borne by Vladislav’s son, Peter Balsha, as late as 1511. The youngest embraced the creed and entered the service of the conqueror. Under the name of Ahmed Pasha Herzegovich[908], or, “the Duke’s son,” he gained a great place in Turkish history, and after having governed Anatolia and commanded the Ottoman fleet, attained to the post of Grand Vizier. His name and origin are still preserved by the little Turkish town of Hersek, on the Gulf of Ismid, near which he was buried.
All Bosnia and the Herzegovina, with the exception of the two newly formed banats of Jajce and Srebrenik, were now in the hands of the Turks. On the death of Nicholas of Ilok the meaningless title of “King of Bosnia” was dropped, and his successors contented themselves with the more modest name of ban, which had already been so familiar in Bosnian history. But the Turks did not allow the Hungarian viceroys undisturbed possession of their lands. Jajce became the great object of every Turkish attack, and against its walls the armies of Islâm dashed themselves again and again in vain. But after the capture of the banat of Srebrenik in 1520, it was clear that the doom of Jajce could not be long delayed. Two great feats of arms, however, shed lustre over the last years of the royal city. Usref, the Turkish governor of Bosnia, who will always be remembered as the founder of the noble mosque which is the chief beauty of Sarajevo, had vowed that he would succeed where his predecessors had failed. So he collected a large army and invested Jajce. But, finding force useless, he pretended to raise the siege, so as to take the place unawares. But Peter Keglevich, who was at that time its ban, easily outwitted his crafty assailant. He bade the wives and daughters of the garrison sally forth and dance and sing—for it was the eve of a festival—on the “King’s meadow” outside the walls. Deceived by this feint, the Turks made a night attack upon the town. As they came near, they heard the sound of the gusle and saw the feet of the maidens dancing in the moonlight on the green sward. The sight was more than they could bear. Casting their scaling ladders aside, they rushed upon the damsels instead of climbing the walls. At that moment Keglevich charged at the head of his men, while at the sound of the cannon a second detachment, which he had sent out into the woods, attacked the besiegers in the rear. Even the women bore their part in the fight, and not a Turk left the field alive. Once again Keglevich held his capital against the foe. Usref reappeared with a new army and laid siege to the city for a year and a half. Hunger began to make its appearance, even horse-flesh was unprocurable, and one mother threw her child into the Vrbas rather than see it die a lingering death; it seemed as if the garrison must surrender or starve. But Keglevich managed to despatch a trusty messenger to Buda-Pesth, where, in Count Frangipane he found a ready listener. Backed up by King Louis II of Hungary and the Pope, he raised an army and relieved the town, after a great battle. Frangipane received from the delighted King the title of “Defender and Protector of the Kingdoms of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia” in return for this signal service. But next year King Louis fell in the fatal battle of Mohács at the hands of the Turks, and from that moment Hungary was unable to protect her Bosnian outpost. Keglevich, weary of warfare and old in years, gave up the banat of Jajce to King Ferdinand I, who put a German garrison into the capital. But the German soldiers had had no experience of Turkish warfare, and their new commanders lacked the spirit of old Keglevich. Usref saw that the moment had come to redeem his former failures. Hungary and Croatia were in the throes of civil war, and not a hand was stretched out to save the doomed city. A ten days’ siege by the allied forces of Usref and his colleague, the Vizier of Serbia, was sufficient to make Jajce surrender. Banjaluka held out a little longer, and its brave governor set fire to the town rather than give it up to the enemy. With its fall, in 1528, all Bosnia was in the possession of the Turks, and for the next 170 years the German Emperors, who were now also Kings of Hungary, could make no effort to substantiate the old Hungarian claims to the lands south of the Save. Bosnia served as the starting-point from which Turkish armies ravaged their adjoining territories, and until the Ottoman power began to wane at the end of the seventeenth century, the Habsburgs had quite enough to do in defending their own land.
Left to themselves, the Turks organised the conquered provinces, without interfering with the feudal system, which had struck its roots so deep in Bosnian soil. A Turkish governor, called at first by the title of sandjak beg and then by those of Pasha and Vali, represented the majesty of the Sultan, and moved his residence according to the requirements of Turkish policy. In the early days his seat was at Vrhbosna, round which the city of Sarajevo grew up; but, as the Turkish arms advanced further, Banjaluka was chosen as the official capital, while, when they receded at the close of the seventeenth century, the Pasha moved to Travnik, whence he issued his proclamations as “Vali of Hungary.” But, however high-sounding his titles, the Turkish governor was often, as the Bosnian Kings had been, the mere figure-head, while all real power was in the hands of the great nobles, who gradually became hereditary headmen or capetans of the forty-eight divisions of the province. So strong was their influence that they long resisted all attempts to transfer the Turkish headquarters from Travnik back to Sarajevo, and permitted the Pasha to visit the present capital only on sufferance and to remain there no more than forty-eight hours. It was not till 1850 that Omar Pasha put down all resistance and re-established the seat of government at Sarajevo, where it has since remained. But throughout the Turkish period the native aristocracy of Bosnia merely tolerated the Sultan’s representatives, of whom there were no less than 214 in 415 years, or an average of one every twenty months, and at times even flatly refused to obey orders from Constantinople itself. In a word, Bosnia under the Turks was an aristocratic republic, with a titular foreign head.
The social condition of the country changed, indeed, very little with the change of government. The Bogomiles, who had formed the bulk of the old Bosnian aristocracy, hastened to embrace the faith of Islâm upon the Turkish invasion. They had preferred to be conquered by the Sultan than converted by the Pope; and, when once they had been conquered, they did not hesitate to be converted also. The Mussulman creed possessed not a few points of resemblance with their own despised heresy. It conferred, too, the practical advantage upon those who embraced it of retaining their lands and their feudal privileges. Thus Bosnia presents us with the curious phenomenon of an aristocratic caste, Slav by race yet Mohammedan by religion. Hence the country affords a striking contrast to Serbia. There the Mohammedans were never anything more than a foreign colony of Turks; here the Mohammedans were native Slavs, men of the same race as the Christians, whom they despised. But, while the Bosnian nobles, henceforth styled begs or agas according as they were of greater or less distinction, never forgot that they were Bosniaks, they displayed the customary zeal of converts, and out-Ottomaned the Ottomans in their religious fanaticism. On the one hand, they carefully preserved the heirlooms of their Bogomile forefathers, the Serb speech, and the old Glagolitic script; on the other, they were keener in the cause of Islâm than the Commander of the Faithful himself. The iron of papal persecution had entered into their ancestors’ souls, and the legacy thus inherited influenced the whole future of Bosnia. The Turks were not slow to recognise the merits of these new allies. It soon became a maxim of state that “one must be the son of a Christian renegade to attain to the highest dignities of the Turkish Empire.” In the long list of Pashas of Bosnia, we notice several who were called “the Bosniak” from their race. As early as 1470 we find mention of a native governor, Sinan Beg, who built the mosque at Tchajnitza, his birth-place. Just a century later a Herzegovinian renegade became Grand Vizier, and his successor was a member of the famous Bosnian family of Sokolovich, to whom tradition ascribes the foundation of Sarajevo. The natural aptitude of the Bosniaks for managing their own countrymen led the Sultans to choose their representatives from among them; for, in a highly aristocratic community like Bosnia, the head of an old family enjoyed far more respect, even though he were poor, than an upstart foreigner, who had nothing to commend him but his ostentation and his office. Now and again we hear of a Turkish governor like Usref, the conqueror of Jajce, whose word is supreme, and whose religious endowments are “richer than those in any other province of the Empire.” But the general rule is that the native nobles are the repositories of power, while the Sultan’s representative is a mere fleeting figure, here to-day and gone to-morrow.
While most of the Bogomiles had gone over to Islâm, there still remained some who adhered to the ancient doctrines of that maligned sect. The question has been much discussed as to the existence of these sectaries in Bosnia to-day. That some of them were still to be found in the beginning of the seventeenth century is clear from the report of a traveller of that period. A century and a half later the Franciscans asserted that the sect was extinct. This sweeping assertion does not, however, accord with later discoveries. There are parts of the Herzegovina, almost inaccessible till the construction of the railway from Sarajevo to Mostar, where traditions of the Bogomiles still linger. Thus, in the neighbourhood of Jablanitza, a region covered with Bogomile tombstones, the women, although Mohammedans, go unveiled—a custom all the more remarkable because the Mussulmans of Bosnia are, as a rule, far more particular about veiling than their co-religionists at Constantinople. It is, therefore, thought that this may be an old Bogomile observance, and it is stated by a recent ecclesiastical historian that only a few years before the Austrian occupation a family named Helej, living near Konjitza, abandoned the “Bogomile madness” for the Mohammedan faith.
Bosnia, “the lion that guards the gates of Stambûl,” as the Turkish annalists called her, had to bear the full brunt of the struggle between Christendom and Islâm, as soon as the power of the Turks was beaten back from before the walls of Vienna, and driven out from within the walls of Buda-Pesth. The tide of Ottoman invasion began to ebb at the close of the seventeenth century from Hungary, Croatia and Slavonia, and the rivers Save and Una once more formed the boundaries between the domains of the Crescent and the Cross. Not without reason did the Bosniaks talk of “going to Europe” when they traversed the Save.
And now, after more than a century and a half of forgetfulness, the House of Habsburg remembered the ancient claims of the Hungarian Crown to the old Bosnian Kingdom. Henceforth, from being the starting-point of every Turkish attack upon the Hungarian dominions, Bosnia became the object of every expedition from beyond the Save and the Una. Ten times did the Imperial troops enter the country without permanent results, until at last in our own days the Austro-Hungarian forces occupied it with the consent of Europe. The first expedition, led by Prince Louis of Baden in 1688, entered Bosnia from the east, captured Zvornik, but collapsed before the strong fortifications of Banjaluka. Two years later an Imperial general beat the Turks near Dolnja Tuzla, and took back a number of Catholic Bosniaks with him to Croatia. In that year, indeed, the condition of the country was most miserable. Famine and pestilence raged unchecked, and the quaint old Franciscan monk who wrote a chronicle of that time, tells us how “blood-red snow fell upon the mountains,” and how the devil went about with bow and arrows to slay the people. One memorial of that année terrible still remains in the shape of a Turkish copper coin, which was minted in Sarajevo to defray the expenses of the Turkish army, and is almost the only example of a separate Turkish currency for Bosnia. A third invasion from the side of Croatia in 1693, although fairly successful, pales beside the daring exploit of Prince Eugène in 1697. This twenty days’ campaign has never been forgotten, and it is all the more interesting, because the dashing Prince of Savoy took the same route which was followed by the main body of the Austro-Hungarian army in 1878. Crossing the Save at Brod with 6000 men, the Prince went straight up the valley of the Bosna, along the course of the present railway to Sarajevo, capturing on his way Doboj, Maglaj, Jeptche and the picturesque Vranduk, rightly named in Turkish “the gate” of the country. Sarajevo itself seemed at his mercy, but the Bosnian Christians did not respond to his appeals, there was no rising of the rajah in his favour, and he retired with an immense booty and 40,000 Christian refugees, whom he settled in Slavonia. The peace of Carlovitz two years later ratified the old boundaries of the Turk and Christendom.