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Updated: May 24, 2025
He was very anxious to know how much money I had been paid for my book, and was as inquisitive about my pecuniary situation as the most upcountry of his subjects, and hoped the book would bring hosts of wealthy tourists to the land. I stirred him up by telling him that the Albanians intended some day to make a state larger than Montenegro and take back Antivari and Podgoritza.
From Montenegro news was no better. I learnt of the boycott of the Albanian population of Podgoritza the people who, in fact, carried on most of the trade of Montenegro, and heard: "As to the Moslems there is a regular exodus of them from the 'liberated' country.
It was all more like a fairy tale than real life. But the black coated Ministers Plenipotentiary were all quite real. From Cetinje we went to Podgoritza where for the first time I saw Albanians. Podgoritza was full of them, all in national dress, for Montenegro had as yet done little towards suppressing this. Nor in this first visit did I go further inland.
When the Turks had eaten and began to smoke, Millianoff gave the word to charge; and though the Turks had built thirteen breastworks to fall back on as they advanced, they yielded to the vigorous assault of the first line, and the Montenegrins swept through the whole series with a rush, not permitting the Turks to form again or gather behind one, and drove those who escaped under the walls of Podgoritza, leaving 4700 dead on the way, for no prisoners were taken.
Prince Nikola, who had already refused to acknowledge Milan as leader of the Serb peoples and regarded him with jealous eyes, thereupon declared war next day. The Great Serbian Idea was already causing rivalry. Nikola fought and won his first battle at Vuchidol. Montenegrin arms were successful everywhere penetrated far into the Herzegovina; took Podgoritza, Nikshitch and Antivari.
Madame Yanko begged me to go with her husband and photograph his entry into Prizren. The whole campaign, it appeared, was expected only to last a few weeks, and only 150 beds had been made ready at the hospital. The Montenegrins honestly believed that theirs was the finest army for its size in Europe. General Martinovitch told me to go off to Podgoritza if I wanted to see the first shot fired.
Until I arrived at his camp Bozo had received no information of the passage of the Duga, nor of the relief of Niksich; but I had not been with him two hours before we saw the smoke arising from the villages on the northern slopes of the heights that commanded the head of the valley of the Zeta, which connects the plains of Niksich and Podgoritza and divides Montenegro into two provinces, anciently two principalities, the Berdas and the Czernagora or Black Mountain.
The outstanding feature of his rule was his suppression of Mahommedanism. At this time conversions to Islam were increasing. Danilo, when on a visit to the plain of Podgoritza, to consecrate a small church by permission of the Pasha of Scutari, was taken prisoner by the local Moslems, though he had been promised safe conduct, and put up to ransom.
He was champing, as the Government were commandeering the wireless company's motor cars right and left using them to cart benzine; and now they were going to send a refugee Serb officer's family to Podgoritza in his motor, leaving him sitting. We spent the next morning waiting for the motor, not knowing if it would arrive or no.
He laughingly asked me if I had been at Podgoritza, and I as good-humoredly replied that I had not come to complain of my treatment there, but to pay my compliments to a fellow man of letters. His broad, good-natured face lighted up with pleasure, and, dropping politics and fighting, we talked poetry and letters.
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