18 The Throes of Regeneration: Independent Serbia, 1830–1903

During his rule of Serbia, which lasted virtually from 1817 till 1839, Prince Miloš did a very great deal for the welfare of his country. He emancipated the Serbian Church from the trammels of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1831, from which date onwards it was ruled by a Metropolitan of Serb nationality, resident at Belgrade. He encouraged the trade of the country, a great deal of which he held in his own hands; he was in fact a sort of prototype of those modern Balkan business-kings of whom King George of Greece and King Carol of Rumania were the most notable examples. He raised an army and put it on a permanent footing, and organized the construction of roads, schools, and churches. He was, however, an autocratic ruler of the old school, and he had no inclination to share the power for the attainment of which he had laboured so many years and gone through so much. From his definite installation as hereditary prince discontent at his arbitrary methods of government amongst his ex-equals increased, and after several revolts he was forced eventually to grant a constitution in 1835. This, however, remained a dead letter, and things went on as before. Later in the same year he paid a prolonged visit to his suzerain at Constantinople, and while he was there the situation in Serbia became still more serious. After his return he was, after several years of delay and of growing unpopularity, compelled to agree to another constitution which was forced on him, paradoxically enough, by the joint efforts of the Tsar and of the Sultan, who seemed to take an unnatural pleasure in supporting the democratic Serbians against their successful colleague in autocracy, who had done so much for his turbulent subjects. Serbia even in those days was essentially and uncompromisingly democratic, but even so Miloš obstinately refused to carry out the provisions of the constitution or in any way to submit to a curtailment of his power, and in 1839 he left his ungrateful principality and took refuge in Rumania, where he possessed an estate, abdicating in favour of his elder son Milan. This Prince Milan, known as Obrenović II, was seriously ill at the time of his accession, and died within a month of it. He was succeeded by his younger brother Michael, known as Obrenović III, who was then only sixteen years of age. This prince, though young, had a good head on his shoulders, and eventually proved the most gifted ruler modern Serbia has ever had. His first reign (1840-2), however, did not open well. He inaugurated it by paying a state visit to Constantinople, but the Sultan only recognized him as elective prince and insisted on his having two advisers approved and appointed by the Porte. Michael on his return showed his determination to have nothing to do with them, but this led to a rebellion headed by one of them, Vučić, and, though Michael’s rule was not as arbitrary as his father’s, he had to bow to the popular will which supported Vučić and cross the river to Semlin. After a stormy interval, during which the Emperor Nicholas I tried to intervene in favour of Michael, Alexander Karagjorgjević, son of Kara-George, was elected prince (1843). No sooner was this representative of the rival dynasty installed, however, than rebellions in favour of Michael occurred. These were thrown into the shade by the events of 1848, In that memorable year of revolutions the Magyars rose against Austria and the Serbs in southern Hungary rose against the Magyars. Prince Alexander resolved to send military help to his oppressed countrymen north of the Save and Danube, and, though the insurgents were unsuccessful, Prince Alexander gained in popularity amongst the Serbs by the line of action he had taken. During the Crimean War, on the other hand, Serbia remained strictly neutral, to the annoyance of the Tsar; at the Congress of Paris (1856) the exclusive protectorate of Russia was replaced by one of all the powers, and Russian influence in the western Balkans was thereby weakened. Prince Alexander’s prudence, moreover, cost him his popularity, and in 1858 he in his turn had to bid farewell to his difficult countrymen.

In December of the same year the veteran Prince Miloš Obrenović I was recalled to power as hereditary prince. His activities during his second reign were directed against Turkish influence, which was still strong, and he made efforts to have the Turkish populations removed from the eight garrison towns, including Belgrade, where they still lived in spite of the fact that their emigration had been stipulated for in 1830. Unfortunately he did not live long enough to carry out his plans, for he fell ill at Topchider, the summer palace near Belgrade, in the autumn of 1860, and died a few days afterwards. He was again succeeded by his son Michael Obrenović III, who was already thirty-six years of age. This able prince’s second reign was brilliantly successful, and it was a disaster for which his foolish countrymen had to pay dearly, when, by their fault, it was prematurely cut short in 1868. His first act was with the consent of a specially summoned skupština to abolish the law by which he could only appoint and remove his counsellers with the approval of the Porte. Next he set about the organization and establishment of a regular army of 30,000 men. In 1862 an anti-Turkish rebellion broke out amongst the Serbs in Hercegovina (still, with Bosnia, a Turkish province), and the Porte, accusing Prince Michael of complicity, made warlike preparations against him.

Events, however, were precipitated in such a way that, without waiting for the opening of hostilities, the Turkish general in command of the fortress of Belgrade turned his guns on the city; this provoked the intervention of the powers at Constantinople, and the entire civilian Turkish population had to quit the country (in accordance with the stipulations of 1830), only Turkish garrisons remaining in the fortresses of Šabac, Belgrade, Smederevo, and Kladovo, along the northern river frontier, still theoretically the boundary of the Sultan’s dominions. After this success Prince Michael continued his military preparations in order to obtain final possession of the fortresses when a suitable occasion should arise. This occurred in 1866, when Austria was engaged in the struggle with Prussia, and the policy of Great Britain became less Turcophil than it had hitherto been. On April 6, 1867, the four fortresses, which had been in Serbian possession from 1804 to 1813, but had since then been garrisoned by the Turks, were delivered over to Serbia and the last Turkish soldier left Serbian soil without a shot having been fired. Though Serbia after this was still a vassal state, being tributary to the Sultan, these further steps on the road to complete independence were a great triumph, especially for Prince Michael personally. But this very triumph actuated his political opponents amongst his own countrymen, amongst whom were undoubtedly adherents of the rival dynasty, to revenge, and blind to the interests of their people they foolishly and most brutally murdered this extremely capable and conscientious prince in the deer park near Topchider on June 10, 1868. The opponents of the Obrenović dynasty were, however, baulked in their plans, and a cousin of the late prince was elected to the vacant and difficult position. This ruler, known as Milan Obrenović IV, who was only fourteen years of age at the time of his accession (1868), was of a very different character from his predecessor. The first thing that happened during his minority was the substitution of the constitution of 1838 by another one which was meant to give the prince and the national assembly much more power, but which, eventually, made the ministers supreme.

The prince came of age in 1872 when he was eighteen, and he soon showed that the potential pleasures to be derived from his position were far more attractive to him than the fulfilment of its obvious duties. He found much to occupy him in Vienna and Paris and but little in Belgrade. At the same time the Serb people had lost, largely by its own faults, much of the respect and sympathy which it had acquired in Europe during Prince Michael’s reign. In 1875 a formidable anti-Turkish insurrection (the last of many) broke out amongst the Serbs of Bosnia and Hercegovina, and all the efforts of the Turks to quell it were unavailing. In June 1876 Prince Milan was forced by the pressure of public opinion to declare war on Turkey in support of the ‘unredeemed’ Serbs of Bosnia, and Serbia was joined by Montenegro. The country was, however, not materially prepared for war, the expected sympathetic risings in other parts of Turkey either did not take place or failed, and the Turks turned their whole army on to Serbia, with the result that in October the Serbs had to appeal to the Tsar for help and an armistice was arranged, which lasted till February 1877. During the winter a conference was held in Constantinople to devise means for alleviating the lot of the Christians in Turkey, and a peace was arranged between Turkey and Serbia whereby the status quo ante was restored. But after the conference the heart of Turkey was again hardened and the stipulations in favour of the Christians were not carried out.

In 1877 Russia declared war on Turkey (cf. chap. 10), and in the autumn of the same year Serbia joined in. This time the armies of Prince Milan were more successful, and conquered and occupied the whole of southern Serbia including the towns and districts of Nish, Pirot, Vranja, and Leskovac, Montenegro, which had not been included in the peace of the previous winter, but had been fighting desperately and continuously against the Turks ever since it had begun actively to help the Serb rebels of Hercegovina in 1875, had a series of successes, as a result of which it obtained possession of the important localities of Nikšić, Podgorica, Budua, Antivari, and Dulcigno, the last three on the shore of the Adriatic. By the Treaty of San Stefano the future interests of both Serbia and Montenegro were jeopardised by the creation of a Great Bulgaria, but that would not have mattered if in return they had been given control of the purely Serb provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina, which ethnically they can claim just as legitimately as Bulgaria claims most of Macedonia. The Treaty of San Stefano was, however, soon replaced by that of Berlin. By its terms both Serbia and Montenegro achieved complete independence and the former ceased to be a tributary state of Turkey. The Serbs were given the districts of southern Serbia which they had occupied, and which are all ethnically Serb except Pirot, the population of which is a sort of cross between Serb and Bulgar. The Serbs also undertook to build a railway through their country to the Turkish and Bulgarian frontiers. Montenegro was nearly doubled in size, receiving the districts of Nikšić, Podgorica, and others; certain places in the interior the Turks and Albanians absolutely refused to surrender, and to compensate for these Montenegro was given a strip of coast with the townlets of Antivari and Dulcigno. The memory of Gladstone, who specially espoused Montenegro’s cause in this matter, is held in the greatest reverence in the brave little mountain country, but unfortunately the ports themselves are economically absolutely useless. Budua, higher up the Dalmatian coast, which would have been of some use, was handed over to Austria, to which country, already possessed of Cattaro and all the rest of Dalmatia, it was quite superfluous. Greatest tragedy of all for the future of the Serb race, the administration of Bosnia and Hercegovina was handed over ‘temporarily’ to Austria-Hungary, and Austrian garrisons were quartered throughout those two provinces, which they were able to occupy only after the most bitter armed opposition on the part of the inhabitants, and also in the Turkish sandjak or province of Novi-Pazar, the ancient Raska and cradle of the Serb state; this strip of mountainous territory under Turkish administrative and Austrian military control was thus converted into a fortified wedge which effectually kept the two independent Serb states of Serbia and Montenegro apart. After all these events the Serbs had to set to work to put their enlarged house in order. But the building of railways and schools and the organization of the services cost a lot of money, and as public economy is not a Serbian virtue the debt grew rapidly. In 1882 Serbia proclaimed itself a kingdom and was duly recognized by the other nations. But King Milan did not learn to manage the affairs of his country any better as time went on. He was too weak to stand alone, and having freed himself from Turkey he threw himself into the arms of Austria, with which country he concluded a secret military convention. In 1885, when Bulgaria and ‘Eastern Rumelia’ successfully coalesced and Bulgaria thereby received a considerable increase of territory and power, the Serbs, prompted by jealousy, began to grow restless, and King Milan, at the instigation of Austria, foolishly declared war on Prince Alexander of Battenberg. This speedily ended in the disastrous battle of Slivnitsa (cf. chap. II); Austria had to intervene to save its victim, and Serbia got nothing for its trouble but a large increase of debt and a considerable decrease of military reputation. In addition to all this King Milan was unfortunate in his conjugal relations; his wife, the beautiful Queen Natalie, was a Russian, and as he himself had Austrian sympathies, they could scarcely be expected to agree on politics. But the strife between them extended from the sphere of international to that of personal sympathies and antipathies. King Milan was promiscuous in affairs of the heart and Queen Natalie was jealous. Scenes of domestic discord were frequent and violent, and the effect of this atmosphere on the character of their only child Alexander, who was born in 1876, was naturally bad.

The king, who had for some years been very popular with, his subjects with all his failings, lost his hold on the country after the unfortunate war of 1885, and the partisans of the rival dynasty began to be hopeful once more. In 1888 King Milan gave Serbia a very much more liberal constitution, by which the ministers were for the first time made really responsible to the skupština or national assembly, replacing that of 1869, and the following year, worried by his political and domestic failures, discredited and unpopular both at home and abroad, he resigned in favour of his son Alexander, then aged thirteen. This boy, who had been brought up in what may be called a permanent storm-centre, both domestic and political, was placed under a regency, which included M. Ristić, with a radical ministry under M. Pašić, an extremely able and patriotic statesman of pro-Russian sympathies, who ever since he first became prominent in 1877 had been growing in power and influence. But trouble did not cease with the abdication of King Milan. He and his wife played Box and Cox at Belgrade for the next four years, quarrelling and being reconciled, intriguing and fighting round the throne and person of their son. At last both parents agreed to leave the country and give the unfortunate youth a chance. King Milan settled in Vienna, Queen Natalie in Biarritz. In 1893 King Alexander suddenly declared himself of age and arrested all his ministers and regents one evening while they were dining with him. The next year he abrogated the constitution of 1888, under which party warfare in the Serbian parliament had been bitter and uninterrupted, obstructing any real progress, and restored that of 1869. Ever since 1889 (the date of the accession of the German Emperor) Berlin had taken more interest in Serbian affairs, and it has been alleged that it was William II who, through the wife of the Rumanian minister at his court, who was sister of Queen Natalie, influenced King Alexander in his abrupt and ill-judged decisions. It was certainly German policy to weaken and discredit Serbia and to further Austrian influence at Belgrade at the expense of that of Russia. King Milan returned for a time to Belgrade in 1897, and the reaction, favourable to Austria, which had begun in 1894, increased during his presence and under the ministry of Dr. Vladan Gjorgjević, which lasted from 1897 till 1900. This state of repression caused unrest throughout the country. All its energies were absorbed in fruitless political party strife, and no material or moral progress was possible. King Alexander, distracted, solitary, and helpless in the midst of this unending welter of political intrigue, committed an extremely imprudent act in the summer of 1900. Having gone for much-needed relaxation to see his mother at Biarritz, he fell violently in love with her lady in waiting, Madame Draga Mašin, the divorced wife of a Serbian officer. Her somewhat equivocal past was in King Alexander’s eyes quite eclipsed by her great beauty and her wit, which had not been impaired by conjugal infelicity. Although she was thirty-two, and he only twenty-four, he determined to marry her, and the desperate opposition of his parents, his army, his ministers, and his people, based principally on the fact that the woman was known to be incapable of child-birth, only precipitated the accomplishment of his intention. This unfortunate and headstrong action on the part of the young king, who, though deficient in tact and intuition, had plenty of energy and was by no means stupid, might have been forgiven him by his people if, as was at first thought possible, it had restored internal peace and prosperity in the country and thereby enabled it to prepare itself to take a part in the solution o£ those foreign questions which vitally affected Serb interests and were already looming on the horizon. But it did not. In 1901 King Alexander granted another constitution and for a time attempted to work with a coalition ministry; but this failed, and a term of reaction with pro-Austrian tendencies, which were favoured by the king and queen, set in. This reaction, combined with the growing disorganization of the finances and the general sense of the discredit and failure which the follies of its rulers had during the last thirty years brought on the country; completely undermined the position of the dynasty and made a catastrophe inevitable. This occurred, as is well known, on June 10, 1903, when, as the result of a military conspiracy, King Alexander, the last of the Obrenović dynasty, his wife, and her male relatives were murdered. This crime was purely political, and it is absurd to gloss it over or to explain it merely as the result of the family feud between the two dynasties. That came to an end in 1868, when the murder of Kara-George in 1817 by the agency of Miloš Obrenović was avenged by the lunatic assassination of the brilliant Prince Michael Obrenović III. It is no exaggeration to say that, from the point of view of the Serbian patriot, the only salvation of his country in 1903 lay in getting rid of the Obrenović dynasty, which had become pro-Austrian, had no longer the great gifts possessed by its earlier members, and undoubtedly by its vagaries hindered the progress of Serbia both in internal and external politics. The assassination was unfortunately carried out with unnecessary cruelty, and it is this fact that made such a bad impression and for so long militated against Serbia in western Europe; but it must be remembered that civilization in the Balkans, where political murder, far from being a product of the five hundred years of Turkish dominion, has always been endemic, is not on the same level in many respects as it is in the rest of Europe. Life is one of the commodities which are still cheap in backward countries.

Although King Alexander and his wife can in no sense be said to have deserved the awful fate that befell them, it is equally true that had any other course been adopted, such as deposition and exile, the wire-pulling and intriguing from outside, which had already done the country so much harm, would have become infinitely worse. Even so, it was long before things in any sense settled down. As for the alleged complicity of the rival dynasty in the crime, it is well established that that did not exist. It was no secret to anybody interested in Serbian affairs that something catastrophic was about to happen, and when the tragedy occurred it was natural to appeal to the alternative native dynasty to step into the breach. But the head of that dynasty was in no way responsible for the plot, still less for the manner in which it was carried out, and it was only after much natural hesitation and in the face of his strong disinclination that Prince Peter Karagjorgjević was induced to accept the by no means enviable, easy, or profitable task of guiding Serbia’s destiny. The Serbian throne in 1903 was a source neither of glory nor of riches, and it was notoriously no sinecure.

After the tragedy, the democratic constitution of 1888 was first of all restored, and then Prince Peter Karagjorgjević, grandson of Kara-George, the leader of the first Serbian insurrection of 1804-13, who was at that time fifty-nine years of age, was unanimously elected king. He had married in 1883 a daughter of Prince Nicholas of Montenegro and sister of the future Queen of Italy, but she had been dead already some years at the time of his accession, leaving him with a family of two sons and a daughter.