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From Macmillan's Magazine.
MONTENEGRO.

BY EDWARD A. FREEMAN.

I REMEMBER, twenty or twenty-one years ago, when the madness of the Russian war was at its height, how an English paper gave out, in a boastful tone, that Russia had no ally but "the marauding bishop of Montenegro." This kind of talk aptly represented the kind of feeling which Englishmen had then brought themselves to entertain towards a state which, small as it is, may claim to share with Poland, Hungary, and Venice, the glorious name

of

Europe's bulwark 'gainst the Ottomite.

This kind of talk represented also the amount of knowledge which Englishmen then had of the state of south-eastern Europe, an amount of knowledge which most of us sturdily refused to increase. It had become a kind of point of honour not to know anything about the quarter of the world in which we had so strangely taken it into our heads to appear as belligerents. We had gone mad with the most amazing of passions, the love of Turks; and we thought it a matter of duty to see everything, past and present, through the spectacles of our beloved. That a Christian state should have presumed to preserve its independence against Mahometan invaders seemed, in the frenzy of the moment, a high crime and misdemeanour. It became a piece of patriotism to hurl some bad name or other at such daring offenders. "Marauding" is an ugly name certainly, though perhaps it might be only human nature for one who is beset by marauders to maraud a little back again in self-defence. Then to talk about a "marauding bishop" seemed a hit of the first order. Of all people in the world, bishops ought not to be marauders; how great must be the iniquity of the people who not only go marauding, but go marauding under the leadership of a bishop. English bishops perhaps felt thankful that they were not as this unbishoplike Montenegrin. They would not go marauding even against a Russian; it was enough to stay at home, and preach and pray against him with the full cursing power of an Irish saint. The

picture of the marauding bishop, the one
ally of Russia, was indeed a climax of art
in its own way. The only thing to be said
against it was that it was all art, and an-
swered to nothing to be found in nature.
When the Russian war broke out, Monte-
negro was no longer governed by a bishop.
It might have been questioned whether the
marauding part of the picture could be
justified at all; it was quite certain that
the picture of the "marauding bishop"
was purely imaginary. But to patriotic
Englishmen of that day such a trifling in-
We should have
accuracy did not matter.
thought it strange if a Russian paper had
spoken of England as governed by a pro-
tector, or even by a king, marauding or
otherwise. But about Montenegro or any
other part of Eastern Christendom, it was
safe for any man to say anything that he
chose, provided only it took the form of
abuse. We should have thought it an in-
sult to ourselves and our illustrious con-
federates, if any one had said that England
and France had no allies except the "ma-
rauding mufti at Constantinople." In one
sense the epithet would have been less
applicable. No one can charge the sul-
tans of the present day with marauding, or
doing anything else, in their own persons.
But surely, at least when we are not at
war with Russia, the efforts of the Turk to
subdue an independent Christian state
might be thought to come nearer to ma-
rauding than the efforts of the Christian
state to maintain its freedom. But, as the
Grand Turk is in some sort a sacred per-
son, not a mere sultan or padishah, but
the caliph of the prophet on earth, it would
surely have been less inaccurate to give
him a religious description of some kind
than it was to bestow the title of bishop on
a potentate so purely secular as the prince
of Montenegro was in 1854.

I am tempted to ask whether most of us really know much more about these matters now. I have myself been asked, since the present war began, whether the prince of Montenegro was a Christian, and whether the Montenegrins were on the side of the Turks or on that of the patriots. Certainly no great increase of knowledge or right feeling on such matters can come from the last book about

that part of the world which chance has | yet the Montenegrin gentleman "did not

like him." It is perhaps on the ground of this very natural dislike that the Scamperer goes on to sneer at the Montenegrin officers for having, like their prince, the good sense to keep to the national dress; and perhaps the feeling of having misjudged and slandered a race may have led Mr. James Creagh to write a sentence of such atrocious libel as this: —

Except in the richness of their costumes or of their arms, a stranger discovers no difference in the appearance of separate classes. The former and the latter are equally coarse;

that dignified and proper deportment so often found among people not altogether civilized is rarely seen in Montenegro; and their evil countenances, or low and cunning aspects, made me little anxious for their society.

Who the "former" and the "latter" may be the Scamperer does not explain;

thrown in my way. This calls itself "Over the Borders of Christendom and Eslamiah," by James Creagh. The writer describes himself as "author of 'A Scamper to Sebastopol and Jerusalem in 1867;'" and he professes to have been in Montenegro in the summer of 1875. We know pretty well what to look for from people who write "Scampers" to Sebastopol or any other place. If they are simply flippant, ignorant, and conceited, there is no special ground for complaint; they simply do after their kind. But the present Scamperer is something more; he is coarse, vulgar, and libellous. He professes to have been in Montenegro; but all that he can do is to give hard names to everything that he saw there. 66 Marauding bishop' would be a very small flower of speech in his vocabulary. He thinks it clever to call the whole people of Montenegro "peasants," as if "peasant" were a name of reproach. We hear of "an old peasant dignified with the name of archbishop; "panions came across came under the head we are told that "an armed peasant who, of "former" or "latter." It is merely a in his natural state, might be considered a guess that the prince and his chief officers very respectable person, is made extremely may come under the head of "former." ridiculous when called the minister of But, whether former or latter, the whole war, secretary of state for foreign affairs," picture is a base slander. Yet it is peretc., etc. These armed peasants happen haps nothing more than the ingrained to be cultivated gentlemen, speaking most habit of a man who, while he cannot help of the languages of Europe in a way that seeing and recording the efforts which the might shame most of their English visit-present prince is making for the improveOne of them, it seems, at least a ment of his country, while he really has Montenegrin gentleman of some kind, nothing to say of him except what is to paid the Scamperer a visit which he allows his honour, still thinks it decent to speak to have been "friendly." This friendli- of him through page after page as his ness perhaps a little surprised a man who Ferocity." was so ignorant of the customs of hospitable Montenegro that, when he saw a visitor coming, he behaved in a way which is best told in his own words:

ors.

Thinking suddenly of stories which I had heard about the daring and ferocity of these lawless highlanders, I quietly, and without removing it from my pocket, cocked my pistol, and aiming it at my visitor as well as I could, prepared to shoot him through the lining of my coat-tail in the event of his giving any evidence of hostility.

After this, it is perhaps not very wonderful that the Scamperer found out that, though no evidence of hostility was shown,

so I do not feel clear whether those inhab

itants of Montenegro whom I and my com

66

But enough of such trash as this. It is just possible that the libellous vulgarity of the book may pass for "liveliness" in quarters where, perhaps Lady Strangford, certainly Sir Gardner Wilkinson, would be voted "dry." Still the general feeling of decent Englishmen is disgusted by mere brutal coarseness. Those who can be set against Montenegro and its prince by such a book as "Over the Borders of Christendom and Eslamiah," must be already so far gone in the way of bad taste and bad feeling that it can hardly be worth while to waste many words upon them. For .others, who are simply led

warfare between Montenegrins and Turks has not always been carried on with the same delicacy and courtesy which may be observed by the commanders of Western armies. It is one thing when men fighting for their hearths and altars and all that man holds most dear carry on an endless warfare with a foe who never knew what faith or mercy meant. It is another thing when paid and professional soldiers, who have no personal quarrel, who have hardly any national quarrel, against those with whom they are set to fight, march forth to settle some paltry point of honour, or to decide some intricate question of genealogy. It is true that, five-andtwenty years back, the heads of foreign enemies were set up on the tower of Cettinje. It may be as well to remember that, not much more than a hundred years back, the heads of domestic rebels were set up on Temple Bar. It is hard to touch pitch, and not to be defiled; men who through so many generations have had to deal with the Turk may be pardoned if, in some of their doings, they

away by the cry of the moment, the present may not be a bad time for calling attention to one of the most interesting corners of the earth. Since the Turk so happily left off paying his debts, that strange love of Turks which was in full force twenty years ago seems to have some what abated. It may therefore not be so offensive now as it was then to dwell on the fact that, in one mountainous corner, among surrounding lands which have been brought under the yoke of the infidel, one small people have, through long ages of battle, at once stuck to their faith and kept their freedom with their own swords. Did we hear or read of such a people in any other age, or in any other part of the world, their name would have passed into a proverb. We do not give the name of marauders to the men who fought at Marathon, or to the men who fought at Morgarten. But the whole life of the people of Montenegro was, for long years and centuries, simply one prolonged fight of Marathon or of Morgarten. It was one long unbroken struggle against the assaults of the most cruel and faith-have become a little Turkish themselves. less of enemies, against the common foe And as for being the pensioners of Rusof the religion and civilization of Europe. sia, where is the crime? One-and-twenty But simply because the strife which they years ago we chose to make an enemy of waged was waged in the noblest of all a people who had done us no wrong. causes, while the names of men who have Ever since that time it has been thought done the like in other lands have passed a point of patriotism to see some frightful into household words, the men who have danger to the human race in every act of kept on the strife for faith and freedom that people and of all other people who on the heights of Cernagora have been can be suspected of any friendly dealings doomed half to obscurity and half to slan- with them. The Russian bugbear is one der. They are rebels; they are ma- purely of our own setting up. But, since rauders; they cut off the heads of their it has been set up, to call any man or any enemies; and, blacker crime than all, nation a friend of Russia has been much they are pensioners of Russia. The the same as giving a dog a bad name and word "rebel" is a convenient one. It is hanging him. I heartily wish that the easily applied by an invader who is also Montenegrins were not pensioners of a conqueror to those who withstand his Russia. That is, I wish that they were invasion; in this case it is somewhat strong enough to dispense with the help more daringly applied to those who have of Russia or of any other power. But, withstood an invader who has not proved standing as they have so long done, a to be a conqueror. The Montenegrins handful of men defending their freedom have been marauders, if that is the right against a vast empire, forsaken and dename for men who, while their own land spised by every other power, it is not likeis unceasingly attacked by a barbarian ly that they should cast back the sympathy enemy, have sometimes made reprisals or even the money, of the one great power, upon the land of the barbarian. Nor is it a power of their own race and creed, which very wonderful or very blameworthy, if | has looked on them with an eye of friend