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Updated: May 29, 2025
Firstly and foremostly, we had no food, watch would have to be kept all the time, over the horses and at the hut, using up two men, so the prospect was not pleasing. So we saddled up and left about three for Zatrijebać, four hours' distance, happy to be rid of our unwilling hosts. The difference between the treatment of strangers by Albanians and Montenegrins was very marked.
The Turks, commanded by Mahmoud Pasha, a good Hungarian general, were about 20,000 men, as I afterwards learned from various sources, including the English consulate at Scutari, comprising 7000 Zebeks, barbarians from the country back of Smyrna, accustomed to the yataghan, and supposed to be qualified opponents of the Montenegrins in the employment of the cold steel.
Montenegrins do not squander soldiers without reason; and then one's mind went back to the four armed guards who were accompanying us. We discovered the truth later, let us tell the story here. Berane, to which we were descending, was once a populous growing Turkish town. After the Balkan war it fell into Montenegrin territories.
The Vladika was spiritual head of the Bocchese and the Montenegrins considered them as part of themselves. The new frontier caused much wrath. Russia hurried to support the Vladika. Austria strove in vain for influence. Her Envoy wrote in 1798, "The Gubernator sees his authority daily weakening while that of the Vladika increases."
But before I arrived there I had passed through Montenegro, and I had there received reports from Montenegrins, which to some extent discounted the high praise given to them. When I asked a Montenegrin his opinion of his neighbours in the matter of marching and hill climbing, he could only contemptuously spit.
This was the work of the pro-Turkish party, enraged by the sympathy evoked by my correspondence on behalf of the Montenegrins, and Sir Henry Elliott had made himself the mouthpiece of it. Mr. Gladstone, having become warmly interested in the little mountain principality by my correspondence, had taken its case up in a strong review article, and had persuaded Tennyson to devote a sonnet to it.
Various Montenegrins came and looked at us, and an old veterinary surgeon, also en route, but in the opposite direction, conversed in bad German. The old vet. was a Roumanian, and the only animal doctor in all Montenegro. To their great surprise we demanded something to eat. "Supper is at nine," they said severely. "But we have had nothing since ten this morning," we protested.
Many Turkish and Albanian costumes lighten up the crowd with their brilliant colours and quaint shapes, Bosniaks and Montenegrins are occasionally seen, and a fair number of Morlacchi, though fewer than lower down the coast. The weather-beaten Chioggian fishermen, too, with their red caps and waist-scarves, black curly hair and great rings in their ears, are very picturesque, though less unusual.
But I did get close enough to one man a member of the general staff to learn that in the event of reverses to Serbian arms, the Serbian army will retreat into Greece." "So? I had deemed it most likely they would fall back and join the Montenegrins." "Such is not the plan of the general staff.
I am afraid this was a little stroke of crooked policy on my part; for at this gate is held, every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, a market, to which the hill-people flock, and I knew it would be in full activity at that moment, and my dear Montenegrins would be there in their trimmest apparel.
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