Bosniaks

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ By its geography, no less than racially, Bosnia is an integral portion of Serbia. For over a thousand years Bosnians and Serbians have had a mutually common civilization. The same historical and political vicissitudes have been shared by the two peoples. Common economic aims and the identity of inhabited territory have furthermore acted as unifying factors. Whatever be the name applied to Croats, Dalmatians, Slavonians, Bosnians or Serbs, all speak the Serbian language. All have striven for centuries to promote their individuality as a nation. ”

“ The history of Bosnia under the Roman empire is possessed of too little interest to call for any particular observation; but, considered as one of the most fertile and beautiful of the European provinces, overrun by the Moslem armies, it is well entitled to the mature consideration of all who take an interest in the important question now at issue, to wit, the fusion of the Eastern and Western worlds. ”

“ It is impossible that the material resources of Bosnia, magnificent as they are, should be developed to the good of her civilization, while the enterprise of Europe has first to satisfy what is insatiable—the avarice of the Divan. The Bosniacs themselves are still blessed with many of the virtues of a primitive people, and left to themselves might secure honesty and justice in their public officers. At present the Bosnian employés must first learn their Osmanlì language, and imbibe the secrets of Osmanlì government, at the source and seminary of Turkish demoralization ”

“ Bosnia, where was assassinated the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, of Austria, was a Turkish province, west of Servia, and under the treaty of Berlin was to be administered for an undefined period by the Austrian government. The little section contains about 16,000 square miles and has a population of about 1,750,000, largely of Slavonic origin. They are partly Mohammedans, partly Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics. In the middle ages Bosnia belonged to the Eastern Empire. Later it became a separate kingdom, dependent upon Hungary, only to be conquered by the Turks. ”

“ Stephen Kotromanich proved himself to be the ablest ruler whom Bosnia had had since Kulin, and laid the foundations upon which his successor built up the Bosnian kingdom. His reign of over thirty years was marked by a series of successes. He began in 1325 by annexing the Herzegovina, which, as we have seen, had been under Serbian authority for the last two generations, as well as the sea-coast from the river Cetina as far south as the gates of Ragusa. Thus, for the first time in its history, Bosnia had gained an outlet on the sea, and was not entirely dependent upon foreigners for its imports. ”

“ The history of Bosnia now centres around the fortifications of Jaycze. The city was again and again besieged by Mahomet and Bajazet; but the citizens, amongst whom we learn were a large number of Bogomiles, [129] showed that, when under the inspiration of a sovereign like Mathias, they knew how to fight, and, while the town held out, Hungarian armies inflicted disastrous defeats on the Turks under its walls. In 1520 two generals of Sultan Solyman II., the Bey of Semendria and the Pashà of Turkish Bosnia, inflicted the severest blow on the Banat of Jaycze that it had yet experienced. ”

“ From this period onwards the history of Bosnia for centuries consists of little more than a series of such bloody inroads; but there are here none of those details which secure for the heretics of Alby the commiseration of mankind. Cities are sacked, but there is not here a Beziers or Carcassonne; the first germs of a civilization are trodden under foot, but these are not the full-blown roses of Provence ”

“ But it should always be remembered that, with the exception of a handful of officials and a certain proportion of the soldiery, the Mahometan inhabitants [xci] of Bosnia and the Herzegovina are of the same race as their Christian neighbours, speak the same Serbian dialect, and can trace back their title-deeds as far. It is a favourite delusion to suppose that the case of Bosnia finds a parallel in that of Serbia ”

“ From the twelfth century to the final conquest of the Turks in the sixteenth, when the fight of religious freedom had been won in Northern Europe, Bosnia presents the unique phenomenon of a Protestant State existing within the limits of the Holy Roman Empire, and in a province claimed by the Roman Church. Bosnia was the religious Switzerland of Mediæval Europe, and the signal service which she has rendered to the freedom of [lvii] the human intellect by her successful stand against authority can hardly be exaggerated. ”

“ But this much is certain, that at the present day these gorgeous barbarians speak Bosniac like their neighbours.
To the left of our Hunnish friend sits a woman in the most civilized costume of Christian Bosnia, and which, with peculiarities of its own, is eminently Serbian, of the Danube, and will recall the maiden of Tešanj. Here, however, besides the hair plaited round a tasselled fez, and the scarf crossed X-wise over the bosom, is the expanding skirt and the fur-bordered jacket, such as the ladies of Belgrade delight in wearing. ”

“ Nor must we omit another characteristic which marks off the Christian Bosniacs from their Serbian neighbours. As Bosnia of old was the debateable ground between the Roman Catholics and the Bogomiles, so, to-day, she is distracted between the adherents of the Eastern and Western Churches, who hate each other more cordially than the infidel. ”

“ The last King of Bosnia, Stefan Tomashovitch, a Catholic, asked help of the Pope, and endeavoured to raise troops among the Catholics of Dalmatia and Croatia. This enraged his Bogumil subjects, who preferred the Turks. The Sultan's army met little resistance; Stefan was taken prisoner and beheaded by the Turks in 1463, and soon all Bosnia was included in the Turkish Empire. As in other Balkan lands, the rights of the Christians were recognized. ”

“ But the expulsion of forty thousand did little to diminish the strength of the Bogomiles in Bosnia. In 1462, as we know from the Roman [lvi] archives, heresy was as powerful as ever in Bosnia. Already, twelve years before, [72] the Bogomiles had invited the Turks into Bosnia as their deliverers; in 1463 the invitation was repeated, a successful negotiation was opened with the Sultan, and, on Mahomet II.’s invasion, the Catholic king found himself deserted by his people. The keys of the principal fortress, the royal city of Bobovac, were handed over to the Turk by the ‘Manichæan’ governor ”

“ If this book should do anything to interest Englishmen in a land and people among the most interesting in Europe, and to open people’s eyes to the evils of the government under which the Bosniacs suffer, its object will have been fully attained. Those who may be inclined to ‘try Bosnia’ will meet with many hardships. They must be prepared to sleep out in the open air, in the forest, or on the mountain-side. ”

“ In the interests of humanity, as well as of European peace, in discharge of responsibilities which no adroitness of European statesmanship can disavow, an armed occupation of Bosnia by civilized forces has become indispensable. When the Christian population of Bosnia have been rescued from the grave that yawns before them, when the robber bands of fanaticism have been disarmed, and the remnant of the refugees enabled to return to what were once their homes ”

“ The history of modern Bosnia begins in Justinian's reign. The Slavs then began to threaten the Empire. Tribes began to drift across the Danube and settle in groups already in the fifth century, but were stopped for a while by the Huns and Ostrogoths, who swept over the Peninsula and infested Illyria and Epirus. ”

“ The Slavs were no longer regarded as a hostile race, but the power of certain Croatian magnates, notably the counts of Bribir, was from time to time supreme in the northern districts (see Croatia-Slavonia) ; and Stephen Tvrtko, the founder of the Bosnian kingdom, was able in 1389 to annex the whole Adriatic littoral between Cattaro and Fiume, except Venetian Zara and his own independent ally, Ragusa (see Bosnia and Herzegovina) . Finally, the rapid decline of Bosnia, and of Hungary itself when assailed by the Turks, rendered easy the success of Venice ”

“ Epic lays of the fatal day of Kóssovo are still sung every day to throngs of peasant listeners by minstrels of the people, whose rhapsodies, set to the dolorous strains of the ghuzla, resound in a great national dirge along the willowed banks of Save and Danube, through the beechwood glens of Bosnia, the dark recesses of the Balkan, the mountain strongholds of the Czernagora, till, far away across the Illyrian desert, they find an echo in that caverned waste of rock that frowns above the blue waters of the Adriatic. ”

“ Dalmatian soil the flowers of Greek and Italian genius. This is the nursing mother of those enterprising merchants who in the Middle Ages laid bare the mineral wealth of the Bosnian mountains, and infused the spirit of commerce into their inmost recesses. This is ‘the Palmyra between great empires,’ the City of Refuge which received, within walls that never betrayed a fugitive, the hunted remnants of Christian chivalry who, when Bosnia was trodden down beneath the hoofs of the Infidel, preferred exile to renegation. ”

“ Whatever terms the Great Powers may wish to impose on Bosnia and the Turks, let England at all events exert her influence against any setting up of an ecclesiastical tyranny. In the interests of all the warring creeds which distract the country, let the secular character of the future government be beyond suspicion. Let an European guarantee secure to the Mahometan minority of Bosnia the free exercise of their religion and complete equality before the law, and half the battle of conciliation will have been won. ”

“ The artificial bureaucracy of 1851 has collapsed under the shock, and the long-restrained savagery of the old dominant caste has burst forth like a caged lion for the defence of Islâm. The marauding bands now desolating Bosnia are for the most part headed by Begs or Agas, scions of the old Bosnian nobility: the Bashi-Bazouks are simply feudal retainers following their lords. ”

“ You cannot get a native to tell you folk-tales while you draw the interior of his hut, if a policeman is sitting waiting till it is done. Nor can you live with a family and see its habits. Just as I had plodded round Serbia in spite of the police, so I would not be put off Bosnia, but to this day I regret the great amount of most interesting material that was there at my hand and which I could not gather. Bosnia was a mine of old-world lore and belief. As in Serbia, however, it was obvious that there was something the authorities wanted to conceal. ”

“ The Bosnian Crisis.—In 1908 the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary and the revolution in Turkey brought about an acute crisis. Many Serbs still hoped for the realization of the so-called “Great Servian Idea,” i.e. the union in a single empire of Servia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Old Servia (Stara Srbiya) or the sanjak of Novibazar with north-western Macedonia—all countries in which the population consists largely, and in some cases almost exclusively, of Orthodox Serbs. ”

“ The temperament of the Southern Sclaves is preëminently kindly and easy-going, and nothing but the interested wiles of the Osmanlì, to whom Bosnian union meant his own expulsion, could have checked the development of a spirit of toleration. We have in Bosnia a common language and a common national character born of the blood; and that national character, whatever may be said to the contrary, is not prone to revolution. It is slow, it is stubborn, it is not easily roused, and it possesses a fund of common sense which has led a keen French observer to compare the Serbian genius with the English. ”

“ Order has been brought out of anarchy; all races and religions are not only tolerated, but are encouraged, and the immigration from other Turkish provinces has been large.
Whatever has been done in Bosnia might also be done in Macedonia but for the jealousy of the Powers.
Bosnia and Herzegovina are situated in the northwest corner of the Balkan Peninsula, bounded on the north by the Slavonian province of Austro-Hungary, on the east by Servia, Turkey and Montenegro, and on the south and west by Dalmatia and the Adriatic Sea. ”