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Updated: September 20, 2025
To which Power or group should it belong? I arrived in Cetinje at the end of April to find things about as bad as they could be. Depression was general, and the place in a hush of terror. Every one hastened to warn me against every one else. The Prince was due next day on his return from Petersburg, whence great things were expected, and a general holiday was proclaimed in honour of the event.
At Rijeka we waited in an inn for the carriage, which we had ordered by telegraph from Cetinje to take us back to Podgorica, and were startled to hear a revolver-shot fired in the village. Everyone was running excitedly to a certain small "dugan," or shop, and thither we also directed our steps and found a bleeding Montenegrin standing over a prostrate and insensible Turk.
Bulgaria was to gain nothing. Serbia meant to be top dog. The Serbian Press attacked Prince Nikola so violently that an indignation meeting was held at Cetinje and the populace crowded outside the palace and shouted "Zhivio." The tug between Petrovitch and Karageorgevitch had begun. The regicides had not ended the Obrenovitches to be baulked by the Petrovitches.
Near the door of the Monastery of Cetinje is the grave of one of the Karageorgevitches and the priest who showed it me told that the families Petrovitch and Karageorgevitch had been on very friendly terms.
Why not go to Cetinje or Nikšić?" "Men know me for a hero," he answered proudly. "What would they say if I ran away and sought safety elsewhere? I should be a double coward, for I should leave my brothers to inherit my fate. No, I shall wait here till they come, and they shall not find me unprepared or sleeping.
There was something truly Balkanic in the surrender of Cetinje, arranged by the Grand Hotel and his son-in law, which appealed to my sense of humour. I soon learnt my guess was true. The Fates willed that I should meet a Montenegrin official. Last time we met during the Balkan war I had vituperated him about the cutting off of noses. Now in a strange land we were old friends.
King Nicholas, as is generally known, has been remarkably successful in marrying off his daughters, two of them having married Kings, two others grand dukes, while a fifth became the wife of a Battenberg prince. Remembering this, I was sorely tempted to ask the King as to the truth of a story which I had heard in Cetinje years before.
Like Esau, with the smell of the field upon them, they love to listen, too, to stories of unknown lands, where the houses are even larger and finer than those of Cetinje or Podgorica, which towns many even have not seen; but too much of the outside world one cannot tell them, for then they look hurt at being deemed so childish.
M. Lobatcheff and Petar Plamenatz, however, gave all their energies to working on this element and keeping it as discontented as possible. Lobatcheff was very friendly to me. Being introduced by the Russians in Cetinje, I was expected to supply and convey information. The politics of the little consular world are funny.
The Prince has recently built himself a large palace, the Russians have erected a large church, and roads are now in the course of construction connecting it with Risano on the Bocche di Cattaro, and Cetinje, and again with the Cattaro-Cetinje road. When these roads are completed, Nikšić will have a most central position, and the unquestionably rich and fertile plain can be opened up.
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