Victor Berard Heroic Serbia

7/28/2019 Victor Berard Heroic Serbia

1/50

r


2/50

LOS ANGOES


3/50


4/50


5/50

Heroic SerbiaFROM THE FRENCH OFVICTOR BERARD

Women's Printing Society, Ltd.,Brick Street, Piccadilly, W,

'? LIBRARY '

1-03 A,


6/50

M. VICTOR BERARD.M. VICTOR BERARD is one of the ablest and

most cultivated French political writers. Born in1864 and educated at the Ecole Normale Sup6rieurehe rapidly distinguished himself by the brillianceof his intellect and the versatility of. his talent.His Hellenic studies stimulated his interest inNear Eastern questions, and after publishing, in1894, his first important work *' De 1'Origine desCultes Arcadiens," he produced in rapid successionvaluable works upon Turkey and Hellenism, thepolicy of Sultan Abdul Hamid, Macedonia, andCretan affairs. In 1900 he published one of thebest books yet written on England and BritishImperialism, in the preparation of which he hadthe assistance of the late Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.Returning then to his classical studies he producedan excellent work upon the Phoenicians and theOdyssey, which was followed by a series of volumeson foreign questions, including works on Russia andon " France and William II."

Since the beginning of the war he has devotedhimself entirely to spreading in France knowledge ofthe Allies, and of the allied cause. He has lecturedand written constantly upon Serbia and SouthernSlav unity, of which he is an ardent supporter,All his writings are marked by profound knowledgeand by a vivacity of mind which renders attractivehis treatment of even the most arid subjects.


7/50

HEROIC SERBIAI. SERBIA AND ITS HISTORY.

UNTIL the year 1912 Serbia was one of theweakest states in Europe and her veryexistence as a nation was threatened.Though larger than Belgium (11,000 square miles),Holland (12,500 square miles) or even Denmark(15,500), and Switzerland (15,900), Serbia was farmore sparsely populated. Its territory was eleventimes smaller than that of the United Kingdomand its population fifteen times less ; for in an areaof 18,600 square miles (the United Kingdom has121,600) Serbia had only 2,900,000 inhabitants (asagainst 45,000,000). The whole population ofSerbia scarcely equalled that of Paris alone.

Serbia's geographical situation was even lessfavourable that that of the other small Europeanstates. Completely cut off from any sea-board,she lacked those commercial relations and possi-bilities of expansion which have given to Denmark,Holland and Belgium their good fortune and theirsecurity. She was shut in on all sides likeSwitzerland by land frontiers : powerful states cut


8/50

4 HEROIC SERBIAher off from the rest of the world and she had notyet become, like Switzerland, a road and railwaycentre where the travellers of half Europe meet.Switzerland has been called the shunting pivot ofthe railway engines and tourists of the West. TheSerbia of 1912 remained what she had been forfive or six centuries past the battlefield on whichthe ambitions and diplomatic intrigues of the Eastmet. Already neighbouring armies were markingit out as the rendezvous for the battles of themorrow.

For five or six centuries Serbia had neverknown complete independence. During the closeof the Middle Ages, before the arrival of the Turksin Europe, she had been a great and prosperousstate stretching from the Save to the Adriatic.Peopled entirely by Jugoslavs (Southern Slavs), shewas Christian and highly civilised. Thanks to herAdriatic ports, where the fleets of Venice touched,she could preserve contact with the West andespecially with the Latin nations. She hadintimate relations with the Italian cities and withthe Kings of France and Spain. Western influenceintroduced to her our ideas, fashions and arts, andSerbia still has churches erected by the ancientmaster-builders and decorated by the fresco paintersof the West.

But in the middle of the fourteenth centurythe Turks of Asia Minor invaded the Europeanprovinces of the Byzantine Empire. Theyadvanced by the valley of the Vardar into the


9/50

HEROIC SERBIA 5heart of the Serbian lands, to the plain of Kosovo," the field of the blackbirds." At the battle ofKosovo (1389) Serbian heroism was crushed bysuperior numbers ; the Turks reduced the wholeof Serbia, and not long afterwards Hungary, upperand lower, and the whole plain of the middleDanube to within easy distance of Vienna.

For four centuries then (1400-1804) Serbiawas massacred and pillaged. A quarter of herpopulation was reduced to serfdom or perished bythe sword, another quarter was forcibly convertedto Islam, the religion of the Turks and Arabs, andbecame under the name of Bosniaks a Moslempeople which still spoke the language of itsancestors, the same Slav language as the otherSerbs, but which was attached by a community ofreligion to the service of the conquering Turks.A third quarter emigrated to Russia, to Italy andeven to Provence, but above all to the " MilitaryFrontiers" of the Habsburg Monarchy. It wasthe Southern Slav race which during four centuriesfurnished the House of Austria with those famousCroat regiments which proved its best defendersagainst invasion from without and rebellion fromwithin.

In what had once been Serbia there onlyremained two groups of mountaineers, unchangeablyattached to the soil and to the faith of theirancestors, the men of the Sumadija (the forests ofmodern Serbia), and the men of the BlackMountain (Montenegro, as the Latins of the


10/50

6 HEROIC SERBIAAdriatic call it, Crna Gora as it is called by theSlavs themselves).

At the beginning of the nineteenth century theideas of the French revolution rekindled thecourage and patriotism of this nation of slaves.In 1804 the Serbs were the first Balkan people torise against the Turks, and followed the Frenchpeople in its conquest of the Rights of Man. It isinteresting to note that Stephen Zivkovic, directorof the insurgents' powder magazine at Valjevo,translated into Serb the Telemaque of Fenelon.Throughout last century an indomitable courageand patriotism, aided by Russia and France, wonfirst autonomy and then independence for the twogroups of Serbs which had always remainedChristian and recalcitrant in the Sumadija and inMontenegro. Piece by piece the remnants of theirancestral territory was delivered and dividedbetween the two Serbian States, which became thePrincipalities and eventually the Kingdoms ofSerbia and Montenegro, with their two capitals inBelgrade and Cetinje.

In 1912 Serbia and Montenegro were stillseparated from each other by the two Turkishprovinces of Kosovo and Novibazar. The Serbswere still far from having attained their nationalresurrection. To the south, and in the centre ofthe Great Serbia of former days, Turkey still helda million Serbs in subjection, in Macedonia andKosovo. To the north, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, inSlavonia, in the Banat of Temesvar, in Croatia and


11/50

HEROIC SERBIA 7in Dalmatia, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy hadfor two centuries taken the place of the Turks,whom the arms of loyal Croats and Serbs hadexpelled from these dependencies of Hungary.Austria persisted in subjecting to its bureaucracyand police as the victims of intolerance and exploi-tation, five or six million of these*}ugoslavs, whospeak one and the same language but practisethree religions. The Croats of Croatia andDalmatia are Roman Catholics, the Serbs areOrthodox, while a considerable section of theinhabitants of Bosnia- Herzegovina are Mohamme-dans. But all these peoples in Austria-Hungarybelong to the same branch, the Serbo-Croat, ofthe Jugoslav race ; all speak an identical languageand are one in outlook in the present as in the past.The imperial and royal dynasty of Austria-Hungary, the House of Habsburg, which held byright of conquest the countries of Croatia, Slavonia,Dalmatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, had the design,publicly avowed, of adding to them sooner or laterthe two independent Serbian states, Serbia andMontenegro, with the object of creating a singleSerbo-Croat Kingdom, to be annexed to its otherkingdoms of Hungary, Bohemia, Poland andAustria.

The Habsburg dynasty regarded the conquestas legitimate because the annexation of the twoSerbian kingdoms seemed to it necessary if theMonarchy was to endure. This Monarchy hasnever known such a thing as national unity, it


12/50

8 HEROIC SERBIAincludes seven or eight subject nations under tworuling peoples, the German and the Magyar, withtwo capitals, Vienna and Budapest, the one Germanand the other Magyar. It owes its survival to abalance maintained with difficulty between thesetwo peoples and states which are not so muchfriends as rivals. It has repeatedly been foundnecessary to negotiate an agreement or " com-promise " as it is called, between the two cabinetsof Vienna and Budapest, between the two govern-ments of this " Dualist " regime. Thus the futureof the dynasty was precarious. The Heir Apparent,Francis Ferdinand, who expected to becomeEmperor upon the death of the aged FrancisJoseph (born in 1830), had the idea of substitutingfor this Dual system a project of " Trialism," morefirmly planted on the triple base of the threekingdoms which would be obtained by annexingall the Jugoslav peoples and thus adding a Serbo-Croat kingdom of Agram or of Belgrade to theAustrian kingdom of Vienna and the Hungariankingdom of Budapest.

Since the year 1906 the official journalists olVienna saw but a single alternative for the futureof the Jugoslav race. Either all the Southern Slavs,forcibly annexed to the Habsburg Monarchy,would become the subjects of the Germans ofVienna or of the Magyars of Budapest or, left freeto make their own choice, the people of Croatia,Dalmatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina would sooneror later unite with the Serbs of Belgrade and


13/50

HEROIC SERBIA 9Cetinje to make a single independent kingdom, anational and democratic state of Serbia, just asformerly Neapolitans, Romans, Tuscans, VenetiansLombards and Piedmontese had united to make anational kingdom of Italy.

Since 1906, but above all since 1909, Austriawas only looking for an opportunity or a pretextfor throwing her millions of soldiers against thetwo little Serbian states. She counted upon easilyinvading and annexing the kingdom of Belgrade,and then encircling and reducing by hunger thekingdom of Cetinje. Every year from 1909 to1914 the government of Vienna found some perfi-dious complaint to raise against the Serbs ; itmobilised against them, threatened to make war,but recoiled at the last moment before the diplo-matic intervention of the Triple Entente. In 1914the renewed menace ended in war. The greatSerbian victories of 1912-1914 kindled the enthu-siasm of all the Jugoslavs and turned the heart ofevery Serb and Croat towards Belgrade. Austriathought that she could no longer give way.

II. THE THREE WARS.From 1912 to 1916 the Serbs have had to

endure three great wars :(1) The war against the Turks, 1912.(2) The war against Bulgaria, 1913.(3) The war against Austria-Hungary,

Germany and Bulgaria, 1914-1915.(i) The war against the Turks. In September,


14/50

10 HEROIC SERBIA1912, the Turks still held in Europe the pro-vinces of Albania, Macedonia and Roumelia,that is to say the whole centre of the BalkanPeninsula between the Adriatic and the BlackSea. These Ottoman provinces were inhabitedby a Christian majority Bulgars, Serbs, Greeksand Vlachs and a Moslem minority of Albaniansand Turks. They had always been very badlyadministered. Since 1894 they were a preyto anarchy and insurrection as the result ofadministrative pillage and of the theocratic regimeof the Turks. On paper the Turkish administra-tion was organised on European lines, but theofficials never being paid, they^ resorted to everykind of theft in order to live. As the phrase goesin that part of the world, they " ate," and theappetite of these " eaters " was insatiable. As thegenerals and officers stole the pay, food, andclothing of the troops, so soldiers and gendarmesplundered in the towns and on the high roads. Asthe prefects did not pay the salaries in their offices,the officials under them demanded money fromthe public for the simplest documents, and nothingwas possible in Turkey without innumerable docu-ments. Even to travel in the interior a passportwas needed.

Above all the Christian peasantry were theprey of the tax collector. The tenth part of theharvest was due to the government, and thegovernment farmed out this tax to middlemen,who extorted from the peasants a fifth and even a


15/50

HEROIC SERBIA 11quarter of his crop. Besides this the peasant wasmolested, robbed, beaten and often killed by theMussulman chiefs who arrogated to themselves allseignorial rights and treated the Christians assubject to imposts and corvees. The Albanianchiefs, above all the Begs of the plain of Kosovo,employed methods, one of which has remainedfamous under the name of Tash-parassi, the"tooth-penny." Every spring and every autumnan Albanian Beg installed himself with his bandin one of the villages of Kosovo. They led ajolly life, emptied the hay loft, the cellar and thefarm-yard and on leaving extracted from theruined peasant the

"tooth-penny" to pay for thewear and tear of their lordly jaws during this

pleasant week.For fourteen years (1894-1908) it had been

possible to lay the responsibility for these excessesupon the Sultan himself, who is at the same timethe supreme pontiff of Islam, the Mussulman Popeor Caliph. At that time the Sultan-Caliph ofConstantinople was Abdul Hamid, who affectedextreme religious fanaticism. By his massacre ofArmenians he had earned the name of the " RedSultan," in Macedonia he continued his Armenianexploits and he alone was believed to be responsible.But when in the month of June, 1908 the outbreakof the Young Turkish revolution had changed thepolitical facade of the Ottoman Empire, and whenthe coup d'etat of August, 1909 had replaced thetyranny of Abdul Hamid by that of the Committee


16/50

12 HEROIC SERBIAof Union and Progress, it was remarked that thefate of the Christians in European Turkey was inno way improved. On the contrary the YoungTurks, while calling themselves patriots andliberals, were in reality fanatical imperialists, andin order to earn pardon for their revolution againstthe supreme Pontiff of Islam, they affected thesame religious zeal as Abdul Hamid and an evengreater hatred of the Christians.

They dreamt of driving all the MacedonianChristians from their native soil, and they wishedto replace them by Mussulman emigrants, whomthey summoned from the provinces recentlyannexed by Austria-Hungary and Russia. Underthe pressure of these emigrants, stripped of every-thing and subject to pillage, the Christians ofMacedonia and Roumelia saw themselves forcedto fly by thousands and take refuge in the neigh-bouring kingdoms with their blood brothers inSerbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece.The arrival of these unhappy victims madelife very difficult for the government and peoplesof these kingdoms. The spectacle of such distresskindled popular anger. The maintenance ofthousands of famished people involved greatexpense upon individuals and upon the states,while the subjects of these neighbouring stateswere themselves persecuted and plundered inTurkey by the Young Turkish administration,which showed the same police tendencies and thesame appetite as that of Abdul Hamid,


17/50

HEROIC SERBIA 13Moreover during the summer of 1912, profiting

by the Turco-Italian war in Tripoli, Serbia,Montenegro, Bulgaria, and Greece demandedunder a threat of hostilities that Turkey shouldbecome a tolerable home for all her subjects, andthat the Christians of Macedonia and Roumeliashould be assured of a minimum of personalsecurity, and of regular laws and administration,and that, so far as is possible in Turkish countries,massacre and pillage should be punished. Theadvice of Germany and her ambassador at Con-stantinople decided the Young Turks to reject allthe demands of the Balkan States. The Turco-Balkan war broke out in October, 1912. Whilethe Bulgarians marched on Adrianople and Con-stantinople, gained the bloody victories of Kirk-Kilisse and Lule-Burgas and advanced right up tothe lines of Tchatalja, within a few short miles ofthe Bosphorus ; while the Greeks in Macedoniaand Southern Albania won the victories which ledthem to Salonica and Janina ; the Serbs ofBelgrade returned as victors to that plain ofKosovo whose sad memory had been so longcelebrated by their national songs.The lofty plain of Kosovo is a sort of fertileoasis in a framework of mountains. In places theground is studded with masses of light quartzresembling in shape broken fragments of bread.The Serbian legend pretends that these are thelast provisions of the Christian combatants in 1389,miraculously turned to stone when the Turks were


18/50

14 HEROIC SERBIAabout to devour them. Ever since 1389 all Serbiaawaited the day when they would take theirrevenge by driving the Turks from the plain, andwould return to eat the " bread of Kosovo."

For three centuries the Christian villages ofKosovo were decimated by the Albanian Begs andforcibly converted to Islam, and especially duringthe last fifty years the number of Christians in thearea of cultivation has steadily decreased. Inorder not to be massacred, these unhappy peoplehad to renounce their national costume andmother tongue, to assume Albanian dress and tospeak Albanian in public. When the troops ofvictorious Serbia returned in November, 1912, tothis country of their ancestors, they were greetedby the last bands of these unhappy victims, who,clothed in Albanian rags but speaking the purestSerb, wept as they kissed their hands. " Brothers,"said an old man who led one of these bands," Brothers, it was high time that you came. Wehad waited 500 years for you, but in a few yearsmore you would have found no one left."Then descending from Kosovo the Serbs, stillvictorious, destroyed the Turkish army of Mace-donia at the three great battles of Kumanovo,Prilep and Monastir. Along the borders of thelovely lakes of Prespa and Ochrida and throughmany mountain gorges they crossed Albania to aidtheir brothers of Cetinje who, from the heights ofthe Black Mountain, had thrown themselves uponthe Albanians, but for lack of artillery could not


19/50

HEROIC SERBIA 15reduce the strong fortress of Scutari. After fivecenturies (1389-1912) the Serbs reappeared on theAdriatic coast, at the ports of Durazzo and SanGiovanni di Medua, which restored them tointimacy with the West. After five centuries theSerbs once more occupied the whole south of theirnational territory between the Vardar and theAdriatic. They had recovered that Macedoniandistrict of Ochrida and that Adriatic plain ofAlessio, which had been, with Kosovo, the bestprovinces in ancient Serbia. After five centuriesthey recovered the free sea and across the Adriaticwere once more in a position to enter into com-mercial and friendly relations with the West, toreturn to the schools of Italy and France, and tobecome throughout the Jugoslav world the propa-gators of Western ideas and democratic manners.

Henceforth the Turks and their military theo-cracy were ejected from almost all their conquestsin Europe. All that was left to them was Constan-tinople and a narrow slip of territory along theDardanelles and Bosphorus. The victory of theBalkan Allies was the triumph of modern ideas,of democratic patriotism, and it also appeared tobe the dawn of an era of peace and civilisation inthe Balkan world. This triumph of the smallnations rid the Peninsula of its oppressors andpartitioned it among the states who had delivered it.

(2) The Serbo-Bulgarian War. But Austria,which could only survive at the expense of thesenationalities and through their subjection to its


20/50


21/50

HEROIC SERBIA 17against invasion by the waters of the Save and theDanube. Belgrade was always at the mercy of abombardment or a sudden assault. Belgrade atthe junction of the Save and the Danube occupieda site very similar to that of Lyon during theRoman epoch : Lyon was at that time planted onthe high hill of Fourvieres, washed by the junctionof the Rhone and the Saone. From the height ofits hill which dominates the junction of the Saveand the Danube, Belgrade looks far out across thegreat Danubian plain which stretches out flat andmarshy to that hill, 180 miles away, from whichthe old Hungarian fortress of Buda looks out uponPest. Hungarian territory begins where these tworivers join, at Semlin, whose cannon, with thebatteries of Austro-Hungarian monitors, commandBelgrade and the river.The Austro-Hungarian customs weigh stillmore heavily upon the whole economic life of theSerbs. In order to starve Serbia and force her tosurrender, Austria-Hungary had no need to makea " war of men " ; a " war of pigs " seemed" to hersufficient. Serbia exports a very large number ofthese animals ; it is the sale of these pigs abroadwhich forms the chief item in her revenue, butvirtually her only way of exporting them wasthrough Austria-Hungary, and the Austro-Hun-garian market was her best client. It was sufficientfor the latter under pretext of some contagiousmalady, to close the Semlin customs house toSerbian imports, and the pig war already raging,


22/50

18 HEROIC SERBIAand the Serbian people and state were deprived oftheir principal commerce.

(3) The Austro-Serbian War. Even cur-tailed by the creation of an Albanian state andthreatened and ruined by the policy of Austria,the Serbia of 1913, national and victorious,independent and parliamentary, tolerant anddemocratic, remained a bugbear for a feudal andinquisitorial state like Austria-Hungary. TheSouthern Slavs, always oppressed by the HabsburgMonarchy as their brothers and cousins ofMacedonia had been by the Ottoman Empire,applauded the victory of the Serbs. That justrevenge for Kosovo which all had awaited for fivecenturies, seemed to them the first step in theircomplete and final deliverance, in the resurrectionof the entire race.

Serbia, victorious and exhausted, only dreamtof peace and repose. She had lost men by tens ofthousands ; she had missed her harvest in 1913(and this peasant people draws its whole revenuefrom the soil) ; she had expended millions inarmaments and military outlay ; she needed tenor fifteen years of peace to restore her people, herarmy and her finances and to organise andassimilate her recent acquisitions. But Austriawas resolved to profit by this exhaustion to realisethe " great design " which one of her militaryjournals, Danzers Armeezeitung, had publicly putforward since the year 1906. This semi-officialorgan demanded the occupation by the Austrian


23/50

HEROIC SERBIA 19army of the Serbian towns and fortresses ofBelgrade and Nis. It regarded the annexation ofSerbia to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy asnecessary in order to re-open to the House ofHabsburg the route of the Vardar, the conquest ofMacedonia and of Salonica, the Drang nachOsten und nach Silden to which Vienna had aspiredfor three centuries. The financiers of Viennaagreed with the soldiers, that Serbia must beannexed in order to make of Salonica anAustro-German port and place the LevantineMediterranean under German control.

In the month of May, 1914, the GermanEmperor, William II., and the Austro-HungarianHeir Apparent, Archduke Francis Ferdinand,met at Konopisht and drew up the plan for theoperations which was regarded by the Austrianand German generals as capable of easy and rapidexecution and as indispensable. The Albaniankingdom artificially erected in 1913 could scarcelybe kept alive, and the German Prince William ofWied, who had been installed as Mpret (king),was insulted by his unruly subjects. WouldSerbia and Montenegro then recover Scutari andDurazzo, of which Austrian diplomacy had robbedthem in 1913?The Albanians for five or six centuries pasthave had a peculiar conception of the state.Other peoples differ in their opinion as to the bestform 9f government ; some remain faithful tomonarchy, others prefer a republic, but all consider


24/50

20 HEROIC SERBIAthat the first duty of a subject or a citizen is topay taxes to the state and to contribute to itssupport. The Albanians alone considered that thestate ought to pay all its subjects or citizens andask of them nothing save military service.From the spring of 1914, a few months afterthe installation of the Albanian kingdom, revolu-tion seemed inevitable and might have furnishedto the Austrians a pretext for invading the newSerbian provinces, in the guise of a temporarypassage'while restoring order in Albania. In June,1914, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, once inagreement with William II., went to Bosnia tosupervise on the Serbian frontier the completion ofthe Austrian preparations and to announce to thetroops that in the near future the Serbs wouldhave J:o count upon their prowess. A fanatic ofthe name of Princip assassinated him in Sarajevo.[J^jtPrincip was of Serb nationality but an Austriansubject ; he was not a Serb of Serbia or of Monte-negro, but a Herzegovinian born in Austro-Hungarian territory of Orthodox parents. InBosnia-Herzegovina the Orthodox Christians havealways been affronted and even persecuted bythe Austrian bureaucracy, because they are of thesame religion as the Serbs of Belgrade and Cetinje,and because Austria would have liked to convertthem to Catholicism in order to place them willynilly under the supremacy of her clergy. In allthe Southern Slav provinces of Austria-Hungarythe Catholic is favoured, the Mussulman protected,


25/50

HEROIC SERBIA 21but the Orthodox oppressed. The Herzegoviniansas near neighbours of Montenegro were even moreharshly treated than the others. Hence theydetested Austria and only dreamt of deliverance,as the Italians of Lombardy and Venetia in thedays of Silvio Pellico. Princip was the incarnationof all the rancour and hatred of all Herzegovin-ians against the abuses of Austro-Hungarianadministration. He shared the hopes of all Serbo-Croats for speedy liberation, and like them dreamtof national unity. Princip had been expelled fromthe gymnasium at Sarajevo and had seen anumber of his comrades at Mostar insulted byofficers of the Austrian garrison.As early as 1908 a Serbo-Croat agitation hadbroken out in the Hungarian province of Croatia,and the government of Vienna had accused Serbiaof fomenting revolution in its territory. The cele-brated Agram trial had been instigated andbrought to a conclusion on Austro-Hungarian soiland had proved that Serbia had had no sharewhatever in these affairs. In 1909 a new attemptwas made. A Viennese historian, Dr. Friedjung,had published documents which he regarded asproving a secret accord of the Serbo-Croat agitatorswith Serbia. At the instance of the Croat deputiesa new trial, the Friedjung trial, opened in Viennaitself. At it the documents produced were provedto be forgeries, and these forgeries were proved tobe the work of the Austro-Hungarian Minister atBelgrade, Count Forgach ; finally in open court


26/50

22 HEROIC SERBIADr. Friedjung admitted his error and declared thatthese false documents had come to him from thevery highest quarter.In 1914 came the third attempt. The authorof these forgeries, Count Forgach, had becomeUnder Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign affairsat Vienna. No sooner had the murder of theArchduke become known, than the Viennese pressaccused the government of Belgrade of being itsinstigator ; for a whole month the official journalsof the whole Monarchy repeated this accusationwithout giving the slightest proof.

After this campaign of calumny at the endof July, 1914, the government of Vienna sent anultimatum to Serbia. Under threat of war, itdemanded that the military and civil authoritiesof Austria-Hungary should have the right to enterSerbia to pursue their enquiries and bring to bookthe guilty, whom however they did not designateby name. In a veiled form this was the assertionof Austrian control over the government ofBelgrade, the subjection of Serbia to the officialsand to the armies of Vienna, in short the first stageof annexation.

Despite the two wars which had so recentlyexhausted and ruined her, Serbia preferred a thirdwar to this dishonouring subjection. But as in1909-1913, Russia, France and Britain inter-posed and sought to negotiate an acceptableagreement between Vienna and Belgrade. Austriaagain seemed on the point of yielding to the just


27/50

HEROIC SERBIA 23remonstrances of all civilised peoples, and wasoffering new conditions, when the EmperorWilliam II. brusquely declared war on Russia, inorder, he said, to defend his Austrian ally, who, onthat very day, had given her complete adherenceto the Russian proposals. It is thus that Austriawas driven by Germany into this war, in which theTriple Entente has intervened to defend the rightof all independent peoples against the bad faith ofthe two Central Empires.On 29 July, 1914, the Austrians openedhostilities by bombarding the open town ofBelgrade. Belgrade, being exposed to thebatteries and flotillas of Austria, had beenabandoned by the Serbian government, which hadwithdrawn to the centre of the country at Nis. Atfirst Belgrade was only defended by a regiment ofthe third Ban (Territorial reserve) ; for 127 days(Aug.-Dec., 1914) the Austrians bombarded thetown at intervals, but only made their entranceon 2 December, to be driven out very soonafterwards.

During this period the Austrians had twiceinvaded Serbia from the West. In the month ofAugust an army of 200,000 men coming fromBosnia crossed the Drina, but was held up on theslopes of Mount Tser in the valley of the Jadar,where it was routed by 100,000 Serbs after fourdays of bayonet attacks (15-19 Aug.). In Octobera new Austro-Hungarian army of 250,000 menagain crossed the Drina. On a frontier of 100


28/50

24 HEROIC SERBIAmiles the Serbs held themselves entrenched forover six weeks ; but at the end of November therains forced them to evacuate the centre, theirammunition began to run short and it was foundnecessary to withdraw into the interior as far asthe slopes of Rudnik. The reinforced Austrianshurried their pace, thinking that they already hadtheir hands upon Kragujevac, Serbia's only arsenal,and Nis, the temporary seat of government.Meanwhile the other army occupied Belgrade.But when the ammunition arrived from France,the Serbs assumed the offensive once more, andfrom 3 to 7 December they flung back these300,000 Austrians beyond the Drina and the Save,driving them from Belgrade at the same time. By 14December the whole of Serbia had been freed fromthe invader, and an immense booty of rifles, cannon,ammunition and stores, with 60,000 prisoners,remained in Serbian hands. The Austrian assaultsupon the other little kingdom of Montenegro hadnot been more successful. Thus two little peopleswhich together count less than 5,000,000 inhabi-tants, had put to flight the armies of an Empire of50,000,000.


29/50

HEROIC SERBIA 25

III. THE SERBIAN PEOPLE.If these two little kingdoms have been able

to hold in check the Dual Monarchy with its50,000,000 inhabitants, it is because they havebeen armed from French munition factories andaided by the Triple Entente. During the threewars which Serbia has had to wage, her principalarm has been the French cannon, and it is theFrench 75 and the officers with French training towhom the victories of Kumanovo and Monastir, ofZadar and Rudnik are due.

Francuzi su s nama (the French are with us),the Serbian soldiers exclaim joyously when theyhear the sound of the 75, for out there the 75 iscalled the Frenchman, and is credited with all thequalities usually ascribed to the men of France.The 75 is always gay and always ready, he is agileand of an accomplished and obliging humour, andyou very soon get to know and love him. At thefirst great battle of 1912 at Kumanovo theFrench 75 served by the Serbs was faced by Kruppcannon served by the Turks. This first duelenabled one to judge the worth of the two ad-versaries. The Serbian batteries reduced theKrupp cannon to silence and next day when theSerbian troops occupied the enemy's position, theyfound that all the Turkish officers and men alikewithout flinching had bravely fallen by their guns.They had been overwhelmed by the rapid avalanche


30/50

26 HEROIC SERBIAof Creusot shells. The " Frenchman " had beentwice as quick as the "Schvaba" (this is theSerbian name for the German " Swabians "). TheTurkish officers had found it so difficult to servetheir German guns, that some of the dead werefound with the little Krupp artillery manuals stillgrasped in their stiffened fingers. The " Schvaba "is a very learned cannon but only useful to men ofscience and training, while the " Frenchman " is avery logical and simple cannon who from the firstmakes himself understood by every sensible man.With her cannon France had given to the Serbsthe pupils of her University. At the battle ofTserthere fell heroically Lieutenant Garasanin, formerpupil of the Lycee Janson-de-Sailly, son of thatSerbian Minister in France who fought in theranks of the French army in 1870.But if French armaments won such victories,it is because they have been placed in the handsof a people who is fully conscious of its nationalrights and duties, is accustomed to collaborate andhas a profound sense of democratic solidarity, anintimate knowledge of the sufferings and exploitsof its ancestors a knowledge spread throughoutall classes for many generations, and taught inevery hamlet by the poets and singers of itsnational songs. The Serbian people conquered byits patriotism, its democratic manners and itspopular poetry. Nine-tenths of the Serbian nationconsists of peasants owning the soil ; it is a nationof small proprietors who live upon their crops and


31/50

HEROIC SERBIA 27their vines, their flocks and their fruit trees, whichthey cultivate with their own hands. Every Serbwas well aware that in opposing the invaders hewas defending his own fields and the daily breadof himself and his family. This war of inde-pendence was for him a struggle for life. Heknew what fearful exploitation Turkish tyrannyhad imposed upon his fathers and the rapacitywhich Austrian tyranny still imposes upon theJugoslav peoples. With one heart the wholenation flung itself upon the invader all for oneand one for all ; from the old men to the children,from the King to the last shepherd, all took toarms.

On 2 November, 1914, the following noticecould be read in the Serbian press :"Crown PrinceAlexanderhas just signed, on theproposition of the Minister of War, the promotionto the rank of corporal Dragoljub Zelic, aged twelveyears. This boy's father was killed at the battleof Kumanovo in November, 1912. Being a pupilot the 6th class in the gymnasium of Sabac andnot being able to enter the regular army, Dragol-jub joined a corps of volunteers and took part withthem in seven fights against the Austrians.Wounded at the battle of Suva, he refused toleave the firing line and continued to fire until hewas exhausted. In a night attack he penetratedwith several comrades into the Austrian lines, andthe success of this adventure secured him a militarymedal,"


32/50

28 HEROIC SERBIAAt the battle of Rudnik the old King Peter,

aged 71 and a martyr to rheumatism, seated him-self among the combatants and addressed them inthe second person like a father or a big brother,and himself took a rifle like one of the Frenchgenerals of the revolutionary era. As a formerpupil of St. Cyr and an officer of the French armyduring the war of 1870, he set the example to hiscitizen army, just as French citizen-generals to-dayset the example to the French nation under arms.Dusan Nikolic was twenty when the war of1914 broke out. He was the son of the formerSerbian Minister at Paris, Andrew Nikolic, whohad become President of the Chamber at Belgrade.He had made his first studies at the Lyce Janson-de-Sailly and was a student of law. Called to thecolours with the class of 1914 he soon got hisstripes, owing to his sporting qualities (he had beenone of the founders of sport in Serbia). At thefront where he was sent, his colonel was very care-ful of this young class of 1914, which he wanted toharden gradually before exposing it too much.Besides Mr. Nikolic had already lost four childrenof croup on the same day. But Dusan Nikolicdemanded the most perilous missions :

" I am theson of the President of the Chamber," he said oneevening, in giving in his report, " I ought to gobefore all the others." His colonel sent him. Thefirst day Dusan returned with very valuableinformation, the second day he was missing, and aweek after, when the Serbian army expelled the


33/50

HEROIC SERBIA 29Austrians from the conquered territory, they foundthe body of Dusan Nikolic, former pupil of theLycee St. Janson-de-Sailly.The following is a mourning announcement inthe official journal Srpske Novine :

Slobodan P. Jovanovic.Sub-Lieutenant of Infantry, commanding the3rd Company, 4th Battalion, ist regiment of theMorava division, wounded 3Oth November beforeBelgrade, died i8th December, 1914, buried in thechurchyard of Mali-Pozarevac."My son! I saved thee seven times from illnessand from death. I saved thee, I brought thee up tothy nineteenth year, to see thee my first born givethy life for thy country. Thou \vast hardworking,intelligent, loyal. When thy comrades found timeto return to house and family, thou didst remainat the front because thou couldst not, and wouldstnot neglect thy work. Thy masters, comradesand officers preserve thy memory. If thy fatherhad lived he would have been too old to take hisplace in this Holy War. Thou hast replaced himand hast done thy duty, thou hast given thy life todeliver our hearths and our country which hassuffered so terribly. Thy young brother, thymother and thy three sisters weep for thee. Butthou hast found again thy father and thy colonelMilutin Petrovic, who was killed beside thee. Weknow that thou hast died as an intrepid hero forthe salvation of Serbia, We pray God to recom-pense thee. May thy ancestral soil which hassuffered so much rest lightly on thee. Thyunhappy mother Vasilja."

The Victory of the Serbs is the triumph of afree and conscientious nation. It is the victoryof the Greeks at Marathon, at Salamis and at


34/50

HEROIC SERBIAPlataea ; it is the victory of theSwiss at Morgarten ;it is the victory of the French at Valmy.

The Serbs have a life of "fraternity" ; thefamily, the commune, the nation, the race, have asense of fraternity which is not to be traced in thesame degree in any of the neighbouring peoples.The peasant family is ordinarily grouped inZadrugas, for permanent association of propertyand work, under the authority of the eldest ormost able member. The property is not partitionedup; the lands, flocks and houses are held incommon ; all the children are educated together,and all live in one big menage round the samecourt in different apartments.The Zadrugas are united bythesamesolidarity.On the day fixed for the harvest or the vintage, inthis or that field or vine-yard, all work withoutremuneration for the Zadruga. which providesfood and drink for its voluntary workers. Abeginning is made with fields which have lost theirmen and are cultivated by widows or orphans.The commune is an hereditary association ofZadrugas. where all common interests are freelydiscussed and dealt with under the influence of themost respectable and capable.But the sentiment of national unity and racialaffinity dominates this particularist life. In even-Serbian hamlet children are taught that not onlythe " brothers " make up the Zadrugas, the kingdom,the country, but that beyond the existing frontierthey hold the sister countries and kingdoms of


35/50

HEROIC SERBIA 31Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, etc.One of the proverbs of this Serbian race, dividedbetween three religions, Orthodox, Catholic andMussulman a saying known to all and repeated inSerbia as in Bosnia, in Croatia as in Montenegrois " Brat je mio, Koje vjere vio " (He is my brother,whatever his religion may be).

After the battle of Kumanovo, November,1912, they brought back to the village of Radljevothe body of a young officer, the son of the priest(the Orthodox popes are, and must be married).When the father had officiated with the popes ofthe neighbourhood, he said to the villagers : " Nowbrothers, let us bear him to the cemetery." Butfrom the crowd of women, children and old menwho surrounded the coffin, the old mayor advancedand said : " What cemetery, most reverend father ?The cemetery is for the old and the women whohave done nothing for the country. Him we willinter here before the church, that he may serve asan example to all our children, that is the desire ofall our people." The pope refused, because thelaw forbids burials round the churches. " Nevermind, go on," said the mayor, " we will go to theKing, to the Chamber ; you will not be troubled."The pope yielded. They dug the grave in front ofthe church and placed in it the coffin with theuniform and the sabre of the deceased man. Butthe pope, taking back the sabre, gave it to his littleson of twelve, with the words : " Alexa, my son,take and keep this precious gift Serbia will still


36/50

32 HEROIC SERBIAhave need of it, and after Serbia we shall havemillions of brothers to liberate, when the countrycalls you to the service of the race."After the battle of Rudnik in December, 1914,the old King Peter was visiting the field ambulance.They led him up to a dying man who had a badwound in the head. He looked up and recognisedthe King. " Where are we, gospodar (sire) ? " heasked. " We have beaten the Austrians and re-taken Valjevo." The man raised himself andcried " Long live the King, Long live the nation."Then he asked for his uniform, pulled out of it hispocket book and gave it to the King. " It is forthe army," he said, and died. The pocket bookcontained 700 dinars (28), all the savings of thiswell-to-do peasant.

In mid-winter of 1912-1913, the Serbian troopsat last reached the Adriatic coast at Durazzo, aftertwo weeks of forced marching in the snow and icywater of the Albanian highlands. On the lastheights when the sea came in sight an immensejoy overcame them all. They all understood thatin the history of the race and nation, it was amemorable day. The gates of deliverance andcivilisation were open once more, and the lastof those peasants thought of the free future of hisregenerated country and felt that the Serbianpeople was getting back its " lungs. 1 ' They rantowards Durazzo ; before entering the town theranks were reformed and the troops marched tothe water's edge in admirable order. The Serbian


37/50

HEROIC SERBIA 33flag was planted in the sea amid cries of Zivelosrpsko more (long live the Serbian sea). Thatevening at the field ambulance the doctors dealtwith the cases of 147 men who had frostbittenfeet, but who, carried or supported by theircomrades, had reached the Serbian sea, and hadinsisted upon marching to the shore like the others.

It is these democratic habits, this nationalsolidarity, which have made it possible for the non-combatants to till the fields and gather in theharvest during these four years of almost con-tinual war. All able-bodied men were at thefront, fighting for all ; the whole population ofwomen, children and old men were in the fields,cultivating for all. The families of the woundedand killed were helped in their work, succoured intheir distress and grief, fed in their need by the" brothers " of the Zadrugas or the villages. Thewhole nation being but a single family shared incommon its resources, and its invincible hope.Thus gradually among the Serbs the heritageof a distant past has always been maintained by anational popular literature of which the ancientGreeks alone, or at a later date the French, hadan equivalent. The poets and singers of Pesmeshave during four centuries, from the defeat ofKosovo in 1389 to the insurrection of 1804, beenthe true defenders of the independence of theSerbian race and language. When the whole racelay crushed under the double tyranny of Turkeyand Austria, the singers and poets celebrated


38/50

34 HEROIC SERBIAeverywhere the memory of their ancestors, theirexploits and defeats. Kosovo ! Kosovo ! forfive centuries Serbia has re-echoed to this name ofsorrow as medieval France to the name ofRoncevaux. But at Roncevaux the FrenchRoland had fallen. At Kosovo, in spite of thedefeat, the Serbian Roland, Marko Kraljevic, hadmiraculously escaped ; he was living always, merelyfallen asleep in his mountain grotto, whence hisinvincible aid would return to his people on thegreat day of " Kosovo avenged."On the day of " Kosovo avenged," in 1912, in1913, in 1914, Marko Kraljevic fought in realtruth in the ranks of his people. Along the wholefront, in all the battles, the popular singers, theguslars, who accompany on a one-stringed fiddle,recited the virtues of Marko, and held up asan example his incomparable bravery, his indomit-able strength, his hatred of tyranny and oppression,his love of the weak and his eternal victory overthe " three-headed Arab." As ancient Greecehad in its Achilles, medieval France in its Rolandand modern France in its Jeanne D'Arc, itsBayard, its Hoche and Marceau, the ideal andtype of their national virtues, so it is MarkoKraljevic who incarnates and maintains thedevotion of the Serbs to their past, their race andtheir national duties.

In 1912 the first Serbian troops crossed theTurkish frontier. They arrived in torrents of rainin a muddy plain furrowed by torrents. They had


39/50

HEROIC SERBIA 35to remain in the water ; their convoy had not beenable to follow them, and the wind brought downthe tents. It was a night of hunger and suffering,a night too of anxiety. For the Turks were knownto have their railway station only a few miles offand were receiving reinforcements and provisionsfrom Mitrovitza. When dawn came, there be-came visible on a distant hillock the mosque whereonce the Sultan Murad, the conqueror of theSerbs, had been interred. One word ran throughthe army : Kosovo ! they had reached Kosovo !In one minute the whole front was dancing andsinging, and the march was resumed, as thoughthey had slept and eaten. At the station ofMitrovitza, evacuated by the Turks, they foundeight truck-loads of biscuits, and the Serbianofficers merely had to distribute to the troops the" bread of Kosovo."

In Macedonia after the hard field of Kumanovoanother battle had lasted all day before the townof Prilep, the historic home of Marko Karljevic.The Turks, strongly entrenched, had repelled fourassaults ; the Serbians were exhausted and beganto give ground. A ray of sunshine suddenlyilluminated the old tower of Marko above the river.An officer started one of the Pesmes which cele-brated the hero's exploits. " Forward " andMarko himself led the avengers. By eveningPrilep was in Serbian hands.

Ljuba Kovacevic, the former minister, is awell-known Serbian historian. He had five


40/50

36 HEROIC SERBIAdaughters and a son, Vladeta Kovacevic, formerstudent of the University of Paris. At the battleof Kumanovo, where he commanded the Mitrail-leuses, Vladeta was killed. His body was broughtback to Belgrade. On the day of the funeral hismother and five sisters wept and groaned aloud.At the grave the old father without a tear madethe following speech :

"My son, depart in peace.Thou hast done thy duty. My son, I do not weep:

I am proud of thee. Thou hast joined the heroeswhose sufferings and death of old saved by millionsthe lives and souls of our nation. Tell theheroes of Kosovo, Dushan and Lazar and all themartyrs of former days, that to-day Kosovo isavenged."


41/50


42/50


43/50

Heroic SerbiaFROM THE FRENCH OFVICTOR BERARD

PRINTEDFORTHE KOSSOVO COMMITTEE

PRICE THREEPENCE NET


44/50


45/50


46/50

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARYLos Angeles

PUE on the last date stamped below.

MAR


47/50


48/50

IIJ : f i!> i - " i r*l


49/50

ill II III 1 13 1158 01093 2712

LIBRARY FACILITY

A 000 036 569 2

1RYom or CALIFORNIALOS. ANGELES


50/50

STAC!

ar

Victor Berard Heroic Serbia

Documents

Transcript of Victor Berard Heroic Serbia