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He spoke with contempt of Ismail Kemal and the provisional governmental Liter, at the house of Avdi bey, a number of refugees from Dibra arrived and told of the sufferings in the villages annexed by the Serbs. They asserted five hundred burnt-out destitute persons had been prevented by the Serbs from receiving help from the agent of the Macedonian Relief Committee. We arranged to send maize.
In 1891 the Porte conceded Bulgarian bishops to Ochrida and Uskub, in 1894 to Veles and Nevrokop, and in 1898 to Monastir, Strumnitza, and Dibra.
They proceeded to make good their threat by capturing the important town of Dibra and driving the Servians from the neighborhood of Djakova and Prizrend. Since then the greater part of northern and southern Albania has been practically in a state of anarchy.
The few guns, limbers, and munitions which these fragments of the Serbian army had brought with them were transported to Brindisi. At about the same time that the Austrians occupied San Giovanni di Medua, a Bulgarian detachment had occupied Dibra, in southern Albania, just above the Greek frontier and not far from Lake Ochrida and Monastir.
In vain the American missionaries warned them not to believe this. Dibra was their one hope and desire. A party of armed men, led by one of the Dutch officers, went to parley with the insurgents, and took a machine gun. Unluckily, Captain Saar was ignorant of local customs. Alarmed unnecessarily, he ordered his men to fire at a group of three armed men.
Day by day, thousands of men, ill-clad and ill-shod, or with bare and bleeding feet, so famished that they fed on the flesh of dead horses by the wayside, stumbled painfully and wretchedly along, over trails deep in snow, some going west toward Scutari, others attempting to reach Greece through Elbassan and Dibra.
The Dibra refugees were still camped in Albania, and the Prince hoped for as a Messiah still did not come. Prince Arthur of Connaught was the desire of the Albanians. "Give us even your King's youngest son," they said, "and we shall be safe. No one will dare attack us." Essad now insisted on being a member of the provisional government. All feared him. None wanted him.
The ignorant Moslem inhabitants had been told that the Prince meant to abolish Islam and promote incestuous marriages, and bidden to demand his immediate withdrawal. There were also the mass of refugees from Dibra and Gostivar. They had passed the winter wretchedly enough, and were told that if they would combine and drive out Wied the Serbs would restore to them their lost lands.
The Albanian Moslems were soon furious to find that instead of giving them freedom, it meant that they would all now have to give military service. The districts of Ipek, Prizren, Djakova, Upper Dibra, Scutari, and others who had hitherto been exempt, declared that they had not fought the Turk for years in order to be conquered now.
The conference agreed upon the northern and northeastern boundaries of Albania. In order to carry her point that Scutari must be Albanian, Austria-Hungary agreed that the almost exclusively Albanian towns of Ipek, Djakova, Prizrend, and Dibra should go to the Serbs.
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