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When the victorious Russians drew up the Treaty of San Stefano at the very gates of Constantinople Prince Nikola, "the Tsar's only friend," received liberal treatment, and Serbia, suspected of Austrian leanings, but scant recognition. The Treaty of Berlin reversed this.
Prince Nikola had asked me suddenly, when I last visited him. "You, of course, Sire!" said I, and wondered at the time why he had Ferdinand on the brain. That the Turkish Empire would now soon break up, was the general belief, and Kings Ferdinand and Nikola would divide the peninsula. Bulgaria would obtain her Alsace-Lorraine, Macedonia, and Nikita would reign over Great Serbia from Prizren.
The changes were too quick for the people; they preferred the old Turkish tracks and pack beasts to carts and the new roads, and that they suspected everything new. He himself got on with the people excellently, took me into several houses where they had portraits of Prince Nikola of Montenegro, and chaffed them about wanting to join that land.
Prince Nikola leapt at any evidence that would help him crush his enemies, and Nastitch, the spy, took advantage of his terror to help widen the gap that already yawned between Serbia and Montenegro. The Prince was terrified. Not only was his life threatened, but even if that were spared he dreaded losing the one thing for which he had lived and striven the throne of Great Serbia.
If the French want a king, they may keep him!" "And who is responsible for killing the Archduke?" "Who knows? It was done certainly by some of those mad students of Belgrade. You remember how they tried to kill King Nikola? Well! The Serbs wanted war. Now they have got it let us hope they are content. Politics, as you know, are all cochonnerie.
Montenegro had had the praise of England's great men, and the political and financial support of Russia. But from the day when England and France began "military Conversations" the tables were turned. Prince Nikola might strive for popularity with "Constitutions," but, unless a miracle happened, the fate of the Petrovitches was sealed. They would never ascend the throne of Great Serbia.
At the house of Dom Nikola Kaciorri, a plucky little Catholic priest, I found an Orthodox Albanian priest from Meljani, near Leskoviki, who told how the Greeks had burnt his village and ordered all those who belonged to the Orthodox Church to come along with them, using force to make them, and falling on those who refused.
Nikola had looted fourteen ships, and had apparently murdered twenty-two people with his own hand two of them women and there was the affair of Rowley's boats. "The pinnace," the clerk read, "of the British came within ten yards. The said Nikola then exclaimed, 'Curse the bloodthirsty hounds, and fired the grapeshot into the boat. Seven were killed by that discharge.
"Are you Nikola Pavlovitch, of whom I have heard so much from the Governor? I thought you were only a common soldier. I have met you at last." We felt we were really consorting with the great.
While we were discussing the situation, in hurried Yougourieff, one of the Russian officers attached to the Legation, and superintending the Military Cadet School financed by Russia, who, though she was no longer supporting Nikola, was actively training young Montenegrins as cannon-fodder. He stopped short on seeing me; hesitated; said something in Russian. Seeing I was de trop, I rose to go.
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