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He suppressed all pro-Greek action, executed twenty pro-Greek conspirators, and exposed their bodies at the roadside, and in an evil hour for Serbia had Karageorge assassinated and sent his head to the Pasha. From that day onward the feud between the two houses raged with ever increasing fury. Until to-day every ruler of Serbia has been either exiled, murdered, or has had his life attempted.
And Bollati for the first time realized the Balkans. The bride was cousin to King Alexander Obrenovitch who had no direct heir. Failing one, she was one of the nearest relations to the Obrenovitch dynasty. The astute Prince Nikola, having married a daughter to the Karageorge claimant to the throne, now strove to make assurance doubly sure by marrying a son to a possible rival candidate.
One thing the Serb people have never forgotten and that is that in Dushan's reign Bulgaria was Serbia's vassal. The reconstruction simultaneously of Big Bulgaria and Great Serbia is impossible. And neither race has as yet admitted that a middle course is the safest. The Zaitshar affair had shown King Milan pretty clearly that the blood of the murdered Karageorge still howled for vengeance.
The Serbs rose in mass and called Karageorge, grandfather of the present King Peter of Serbia, to be their leader. He refused at first, saying that his violent temper would cause him to kill without taking council first. But he was told that the times called for violence. Born of peasant stock about 1765, his upbringing was crudely savage; his ferocity was shown from the first.
Scarcely was Milosh well established when Karageorge returned from his long absence. The break-up of the Turkish Empire had begun. The Greeks were in a ferment. Russia supported them. The Hetairia had been formed and a plan was afoot for a great simultaneous rising of Greeks and Serbs and Roumanians. Karageorge was to be one of its leaders.
He escaped trial by renouncing all rights to succession to the throne, and his brother, Prince Alexander, became heir. Alexander was said to have the support of the regicide officers' party, the Black Hand. George, too, had his partisans, who declared that if he were as mad as his great-grandfather, old Karageorge, so much the better, he would lead Serbia to glory.
When his wrath was once aroused it was unrestrainable, and he struck down and killed many of his own followers. Discontent arose and spread. The Serbs divided into many parties, each with rival leaders. Russia, who had supported Karageorge, was now herself engaged in a life and death struggle with Napoleon. The Russian regiment which had been quartered at Belgrade, left the country.
A case worth the study of students of heredity. A contemporary of old Karageorge thus describes him: "His bold forehead bound with a tress of black hair gave him a look rather Asiatic than European. . . . This man was one of the bold creations of wild countries and troublous times beings of impetuous courage, iron strength, original talent and doubtful morality."
Coming back to Serbia from Montenegro was like slipping from a warm into a cool bath. One is irresistibly reminded that the Lords of Serbia withdrew to Montenegro, leaving the peasantry behind, for every peasant in the black mountains is a noble and carries a noble's dignity; while Karageorge was a pig farmer.
Of Serb politics I knew at that time little beyond the fact that King Alexander was unpopular owing to an unfortunate marriage and the still more unfortunate attempt of Queen Draga to plant a false heir upon the country by pretending pregnancy; that his father's career had been melodramatic and that the history of Serbia for the whole period of her independence had been one long blood-feud between the rival dynasties of Karageorge and Obrenovitch, neither of which seemed popular in Montenegro.
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