length to overhang them. A cartridge was worth a ducat, such was their necessity; when five hundred of their men attacked a Turkish division, and had for their invaluable reward a prize of powder. And now all fear had vanished. They assailed before dawn the united forces of the pashas of Roumelia from the south and Bosnia from the north. Again they effected the scarcely credible slaughter of twenty thousand Turks with three thousand horses, and won an incredible booty of colors, arms, munitions, and baggage. So it was that the flood of war gathered round this fortress of faith and freedom, and so it was that flood was beaten back. Afflavit Dominus, ac dissipantur.
In 1782 came Peter[1] to the throne, justly recorded, by the fond veneration of his countrymen, as Peter the Saint. Marmont, all whose inducements and threats he alike repelled, has given this striking description of him: "Ce vladika, homme superbe, de cinquante ans environ, d'un esprit remarquable, avait beaucoup de noblesse et de dignite dans ses manières. Son autorite positive et legale dans son pays était peu de chose, mais son influence était sans bornes."[2] As bishop, statesman, legislator, and warrior, he brought his country safely through eight-and-forty years of scarcely intermitted struggle. Down to, and perhaps after, his time, the government was carried on as in the Greece of the heroic age. The sovereign was priest, judge, and general; and was likewise the head of the assembly, not representative, but composed of the body of the people, in which were taken the decisions that were to bind the people as laws. This was called the Sbor; it was held in the open air; and when it became unruly, the method of restoring order was to ring the bell of the neighboring church. Here was promulgated for the first time in the year 1796, by his authority, a code of laws for Montenegro, which had hitherto been governed, like the Homeric communities, by oral authority and tradition. In 1798 he appointed a body of judges, and in 1803 he added to the code a supplement. With the nineteenth century, in round numbers, commenced the humanizing process, which could not but be needed among a race whose existence, for ten generations of men, had been a constant struggle of life and death with the ferocious Turk. From his time, the haradsch was no more heard of.[3] Here is the touching and simple account of the calm evening that closed his stormy day: —
On the 18th of October, 1830, Peter the First, who was then in his eighty-first year, was sitting, after the manner of his country, by the fireside of his great kitchen, and was giving to his chiefs, assembled round him, instructions for the settlement of some local[4] differences which had arisen. The aged vladika, feeling himself weak, announced that his last hour was come, and prayed them to conduct him to the humble cell which, without fire, he inhabited as a hermit would. Arriving there, he stretched himself on his bed; urged upon his chiefs to execute with fidelity the provisions set forth in the will he had that day dictated to his secretary; and then, in conversation and in prayer, rendered up his soul to God. So died this illustrious man, whom a Slavonic writer has not scrupled to call the Louis XIV. of Tsernagora, but who in a number of respects was also its Saint Louis.[5]
Thirty-five years after his death, Miss Mackenzie and Miss Irby, in their remarkable tour, visited the country. They found still living some of those who had lived under St. Peter; and thus they give the report of him which they received: —
There are still with us men who lived under St. Peter's rule, heard his words, and saw his life. For fifty years he governed us; and fought and negotiated for us; and walked before us in pureness and uprightness from day to day. He gave us good laws, and put an end to the disorderly state of the country. He enlarged our frontier, and drove away our enemies. Even on his deathbed he spoke words to our elders, which have kept peace among us since he has gone. While he yet lived we swore by his name. We felt his smile a blessing, and his anger a curse. We do so still.[6]
The voice of his people declared him a saint. Did the Vatican ever issue an award more likely to be ratified above? I have already indicated resemblances between the characteristic features of Montenegro and of Homeric or Achaian Greece. One of the most remarkable among them is the growth of men truly great in small theatres of action. Not Peter the First only, but his successors, will bear some comparison with those, whom the great Greek historians of the classic period have made so famous. To
- ↑ F. and W., pp. 35-59.
- ↑ I quote from F. and W., p, 495.
- ↑ G., p. 21, n.
- ↑ Among the plemenas, which may be called parishes: subdivisions of the eight nahias, say hundreds. All Montenegro is but a moderate county.
- ↑ F. and W., p. 58.
- ↑ "Travels" of Miss Mackenzie and Miss Irby, p. 628 (ed. 1867), Also see Goptchevitch, p. 21.
