The Races of European Turkey. Their history, condition, and prospects, etc

Front matter

PART THIRD. THE TURKISH SLAVONIANS, THE WALLA- CHIANS, AND THE GYPSIES. The leading Authorities followed are : The Histories of Gibbon and Finlay. " Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations, ' by Talvi (Mrs E. Robinson). Ranke's History of Servia, the Servian Revolution, and Bosnia, with the Treatise of Cyprien Robert on "The Slave Provinces of Turkey;" Bohn's Slandard Library. Upham's History of the Ottoman Empire. "Dalmatia and Montenegro; with a Journey to Mostar in Herzegovina, and Remarks on the Slavonic Nations ; the History of Dalmatia and Ragusa ; the Uscocs ; " Sec. , Sac. , by Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, F. R. S. Brace's " Races of the Old World." ■'Travels in the Slavonic Provinces of Turkey in Europe," by Lady Muir Mackenzie, and Miss Irby. , "Servia and the Servians," and "Serbian Folk-Lore," by Rev. \Y. Denton, M.A. " The Eastern Shores of the Adriatic in 1863." by Vicountess Strangford.

"The Slavonic Provinces South of the Danube," by William Forsyth, LL.D., London, 1S76. •' Servian Popular Poetry," translated by Sir John Bowring. Owen Meredith's " Serbski Pesme, or National Songs of Servia. pecial Eastern Correspondence of the London Times, in the years 1875 and 1876. Articles on " Montenegro," Edinburgh Review, April, 1859; "Servia," London Quarterly Review, January, 1865 ; " The True Eastern Question," Littell's Living Age, January 8th and February 12th, 1876; "The Herzegovinian Question," International Review, January, 1876.

Chapter I. The Slavic Race

Of the widespread Japhetic, Indo-European or Ar yan race, the various families of which have extended their conquests and their settlements from the Ganges on the East to the shores of the Pacific on the West, the Teutonic or German branch has now for five cen turies held the foremost place in civilization, wealth, and power. But at the present time another family of the same imperial race is rising rapidly to a position second only to that of its Teutonic neighbors. It may well be doubted whether, in the course of another hundred years, the Slave will not fully equal the Teuton, not only in military and political power, but in social and intellectual culture, in all the highest developments of a Christian civilization. In point of numbers the Slavic race is hardly inferior to the Teutonic.

Its several families — the Russians, Poles, Bohemians, and Moravians, the Slovaks of Hun gary (in distinction from the Magyars, who are a Scythic or Turanian people akin to the Turks), the Croats, Ser vians, and Bulgarians — have for a thousand years occupied little less than the eastern half of the continent of Eu rope. The several peoples of this race are separated by a two-fold division. The first and most ancient division is into Eastern and Western.1 The Russians, Bulgarians, and Servians received Christianity from the East, and became associated, both politically and ecclesiastically, with Constantinople. The Western tribes received their faith from Rome, and connected themselves politically with the German Empire. Except in the case of the Dalmatians and Austrian Croats, this separating line still exists with undiminished clearness.

But during the past century another division has de veloped itself which may be destined in the future to prove yet more important. While the Northern Slavonic nations have been slowly forming their national character and advancing in civilization under the despotic govern ments of Russia and Austria, the kindred tribes of the South, including the Bulgarians and Servians of Turkey, the independent Montenegrins, and the inhabitants of Dalmatia, Croatia, and Slavonia, the three south-western provinces of Austria, have begun to display a common and intense national spirit. Almost everything in their circumstances and mutual relations tends strongly to this result. Geographical position, similarity of blood and language, the glorious memories of their early history, and the fact that they all stand upon the same social level, and are inspired by the same feelings, sympathies, and aspirations — the result of ages of common and bitter oppression — all these things tend strongly to draw and bind them together, and to impel them onwards to a com n.on destiny. 1 Talvi, p. 8 ; Brace, 112.

TURKISH SLA VONIANS. 311 As a convenient designation, these tribes may be called the Southern Slavonians. In distinction from their Northern brethren, they are characterized by an intensely democratic spirit.1 Turkish despotism has wrought at least this beneficial result. It has placed the despised rayahs all upon the same level, and made every man among them the equal of every other ; so that as they rise they all rise together. It may be that there is a deep purpose of the Divine Providence in thus developing these two opposite political tendencies side by side in kindred tribes of the same race ; and that while the Russians of the North are displaying the grandest experiment which modern times have seen of centralized despotic power, the Servians of the South may be destined to show to the world a new and surprising example of the measureless energy of free institutions in promoting the progress of society and the well-being of mankind.

The primitive Slavonians,2 although squalid and sav age barbarians, exceedingly cruel, and always ready to ravage the territories of weaker neighbors, were in many respects a most interesting people, and one of the noblest 1 That the Austrian Croats, who have never been subject to Turkish power, who have for centuries been separated from their Servian kindred by their Roman Catholic faith and their partially Latinized language, should show so strong a tendency to unite with the Slaves of Turkey, who are mostly df the Greek Church, is somewhat surprising. The fact is to be accounted for by the strong sympathies of race, and similarity of social position. For, while the Croats have never been subject to Turkish power, their troubled and dangerous situation in the border land between Islam and Christianity has been a great hindrance to their progress in civilization ; and they now find themselves upon very nearly the same social level, and in nearly the same circumstances generally, with their Servian brethren. 2 Gibbon, iv. 196 ; Finlay's Greece under the Romans, p. 310. of the Japhetic races.

They were wholly unlike the Ger mans, having neither their lofty stature, their military ardor and invincible valor, nor their aptitude for political organization. They were rather quiet and unmilitary in their habits, inclined to agriculture and commerce. In the early centuries of the Middle Ages they built Kief on the Dnieper, Novgorod on the Volkof, Vineta at the mouth of the Oder, and Arcona on the Island of Rugen, and conducted a large and important traffic between the Black and Baltic seas.1 As such characteristics would lead us to expect, they were more industrious, thrifty, and wealthy than the other races about them. Not be ing very warlike, they were easily subdued by other tribes, and were tyrannized over by Goths, Avars, Huns, and Tartars, until at last, having acquired strength and order from the slow progress of civilization, they passed from subjects to masters, and two great Empires, the Rus sian in the North and the Servian in the South, rose to a prominent place among the semibarbarous powers of Europe in the Middle Ages.

But while the early Slavonians were not a very war like race, in devotion to the great idea of personal freedom they surpassed the Germans themselves. " The Slavonian disdained to obey a despot, a prince, or even a magistrate ; . . . but each tribe or village existed as a separate republic, and all must be persuaded where none could be compelled." 2 The sam~ simple communal organization of society, which still prevails in Russia, and in a modified form among the Southern Slaves also, existed among their rude progenitors from the earliest times. 1 Wilkinson, ii. 14. * Gibbon, iv. 197. SLAVIC POETRY. 313 Their most remarkable quality, however, was a patient, much-enduring toughness of character, which enabled them to hold their ground indestructibly, while one mur derous wave after another of Gothic or Scythian invasion passed over them, so that they remain to-day strong, flourishing, and predominant in the very seats which their fathers occupied at the dawn of authentic history.

As a race, the Slavic peoples have always been marked by the same general characteristics. They are grave, serious, and sincere; quiet, peaceable, industrious, ajnd frugal ; very earnest, reverent, and devout ; very docile, tractable, and loyal. As soldiers, while they lack the fiery valor of the Gaul and the invincible courage of the German, they have always displayed a steadfast patience, fortitude, and fidelity to their national cause, which in the critical emergencies of their history have made them no less heroic and no less successful than the more brilliant peoples of the West. In all its branches and tribes, the Slavic race has al ways been among the most poetical, the most song-loving of mankind.1 Long before it had been reduced to writing, in the far distant ages of an unknown past, the Slavic language, like the Greek and the Arabic, had be come, as it remains to the present day in almost all its various dialects, the vehicle of an immense body of un written poetry ; and through that poetry it had been carried to a high degree of richness and literary culture.

Popular poetry is still the spontaneous, the constant and abundant product of the Slavonic mind. " The general prevalence of a musical ear and taste among all Slavic 1 Talvi, 318. U nations is indeed striking." " Where a Slavic woman is," says Schaffarik, " there is also song. House and yard, mountain and valley, meadow and forest, garden and vineyard, she fills them all with the sound of her voice. Often, after a wearisome day, spent in heat and sweat, hunger and thirst, she animates, on her way home, the silence of the evening twilight with her melodious songs. What spirit these popular songs breathe, the reader may learn from the collections already published. Without encountering contradiction, we may say that among no other nation of Europe does natural poetry exist to such an extent, and in such purity, heartiness, and warmth of feeling as among the Slavi."1 An immense number of epic and heroic poems, to which new pieces have been constantly added, are continually sung by the winter hearth and the festal table of the Ser vians, among whom, and among them alone, the Homeric age has been continued to the present day.

" Indeed, what epic popular poetry is, how it is produced and propagated, what powers of invention it naturally exhibits — powers which no art can command — we may learn from this multitude of simple legends and complicated sables. The Servians stand in this respect quite isolated ; there is no modern nation that can be compared to them in epic pro ductiveness ; and a new light seems to be thrown over the grand compositions of the ancients."2 The Slaves are evidently one of the latest offshoots from the great Aryan stock. Their geographical and chronological relations to the other races of Europe can 1 Talvi, 318-19. 2 Id., 374- ARRIVAL IN EUROPE. 315 be made plain in a few words.1 The aboriginal inhabit ants of Europe were a Finnic or Scythian race, akin to the Tartars of the North of Asia.

Relics of this early population, as is known from their language, still exist in the Finns and Lapps of the North of Europe, and the Basques of the North of Spain. Then came the first wave of Japhetic or Aryan immigration in the once mighty race to the Celts (or Kelts), the fathers of the ancient Gauls, Britons, Scots, and Hibernians.2 Following this, though after what interval of time no one can say, came two great movements of other families of the same race. The German tribes passed into Europe to the north of the Black Sea, while another mi gration, from which sprung the Lydians, Phrygians, Thra cians, Macedonians, Greeks, and Romans, settled the western regions of Asia Minor, and passed on into the South of Europe. In the wake of the German tribes came the Slavonians, who were settled upon the vast plains of Eu ropean Russia long before the Christian era.

From these their primitive seats they gradually moved west ward, until they had occupied the territory which their descendants still retain. At what time the Slaves began to infiltrate themselves into the Roman Empire it is difficult to say. It is pro bable, however, that it was as early as the third or fourth 1 Brace's Ethnology, 78-122. See also Max Miiller's Lectures on the Science of Language ; and Languages of the Seat of War. 2 Unless the Pelasgic or Illyrian race was an earlier offshoot from the Japhetic stock, and the first to find its way into Europe. Italy seems to have been occupied by Pelasgic tribes of Japhetic blood before the arrival of the Celts. — Brace, p. 93. See also the views of Max Muller and Prof. Pott, cited in Part Second, chap. v. of this volume. century of our era that they began to be numerous in Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia^ as a class of hardy, industrious shepherds and laborers, very much as the Bulgarians now are in the neighborhood of Constantino ple, on both sides of the Bosphorus, or as the Irish are among ourselves.

By the sixth century, they had evidently become an important element of the population. They not only filled the north-western provinces as a simple agricultural and pastoral peasantry, but had begun to rise to the higher walks of civil and military life ; and from that time we frequently find them in the highest and most commanding positions of the Empire. The famous Emperor Justinian, who ascended the throne of Constantinople in 527, and became the lawgiver, not of the Roman Empire alone, but of a great part of the Christian world from that day to this, was a Slave, as appears from his native name, Upravda, of which Justi nian is a Latin imitation.1 As the Empire declined, and wide districts began to be left uninhabited, this Slavic immigration rapidly in creased. By the year 700, an immense population of rude Slavonian peasants and shepherds, many of them little better than barbarian robbers, had occupied all the 1 Justinian was born at Tauresium, near the modern Skopia, in north western Macedonia.

His father's name was Istok, and his mother and sister were both called Wigleritza. These names seem to place the Slavo nian descent of Justinian beyond a question. — Finlay's Greece under the Romans, p. 235. See also Mackenzie and Irby, p. 134. This very valuable work contains much carefully collected and authentic information upon the early history as well as the present condition of all the Christian peoples of European Turkey. SLA VONIANS IN GREECE. 317 more open and unprotected districts from the Danube to the Gulf of Corinth. " They became almost the sole possessors of the territories once occupied by the Illy rians and the Thracians. They advanced southward, occupying the waste lands ; but, as they penetrated into the heart of Greece, they met with more obstructions froni a denser population, especially in the neighborhood of the still remaining walled towns.

In the early part of the eighth century, nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus was occupied by the Slavonians. It was then regarded by pilgrims from Europe as Slavonic soil ; and the com plete colonization of the whole country of Greece and the Peloponnesus is dated by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus from the time of the great pestilence that depopulated the East in 746. . . . Such are the principal facts known in history with regard to this extraordinary series of events, by which an old population was almost entirely displaced in the course of two centuries by swarms of another race coming into the country, partly as warriors and enemies, partly as agri culturists, herdsmen, and shepherds, to occupy the lands left vacant by the greatly diminished numbers of the Greeks. . . . When they were once established, they lived in a rude and wild independence.

They took possession chiefly of the valleys and the interior of the provinces. . . . The Greeks themselves still held the seacoasts and the large towns. . . . The singu larity of this chapter in Greek history consists in the fact that this great body of intrusive settlers gradually dis appeared from the soil of Greece as mysteriously as they came. Some had, of course, mingled with the Greeks, THE SLA VIC RACE. 318 were converted to Christianity in the course of time by the blending of families, became Hellenized in language, manners, and blood, and were to all intents and purposes Greeks ; just as the descendants of foreign settlers in England, mingling their blood with the native race, lose the original nationality of their ancestors, and become Englishmen." x So steadily and so far did this invading wave recede, that after the Turkish conquest the several races of the European provinces were distributed much as they are now, and few Slavonic settlements existed south of Mace donia.

The modern representatives of those early Slaves, who, before the time of Justinian, had already swarmed so numerously into the decaying provinces of the Empire, and whose descendants have held their ground even to the present time, are seen, not in the Servians, but in the Bulgarians. The Servians had another and later origin, as we shall presently see. The vast region extending from the Adriatic to the Danube had been already ruined by incessant barbarian inroads, when Justinian surrendered it to the Lombards, that in them he might find a barrier against the tribes of the North. The Lombards had not been long in posses sion, when, becoming weary of the poverty and desolation which everywhere surrounded them, about the year 570, they migrated in a body for a new and permanent conquest in the North of Italy.

This was just at the time when the formidable Kingdom of the Avars was rising 1 Felton's Greece, Ancient and Modern, ii., 311-12. In the latter part of the ninth century, the Greeks were rapidly recovering their ascendency in the Peloponnesus. — Finlay's Byzantine Empire, i. 303. SERVIAN MIGRA TION. 319 into power to the north of the Danube.1 It was to repeo ple the territory thus left vacant by the Lombards, and at the same time to raise a firm barrier against the power of the Avars, that the Emperor Heraclius, who reigned from 610 to 641, invited the Servians and the Croats to migrate from the neighborhood of the Carpathian Moun tains, and seek a permanent home within the limits of the Empire. The invitation was accepted, and several tribes of these Western Slaves, a race far more spirited and warlike than their eastern kindred, took up their abode in the seats which their descendants have ever since retained.

This movement proved eminently advantageous to the Empire. The Servians entered at once into quiet possession of their new homes, readily blending with the considerable Slavic population, which had before occupied the country, as the oppressed servants of the Lombards, and formed the Zupanias (Zhupanias) or Bannats of Servia, Croatia, Bosnia, Rascia,2 and Dalmatia. The chiefs of these small barbarian kingdoms were called Zupans (Zhupans), a title to which Pan or Ban seems to have been nearly equiva lent. The Voivode was a leader in war and a judge in peace ; the nobles were called Boyars ; Kniaz or Knez, the proper title (with Gospoda or Hospodar) of the pre- 1 The Avars were a Tartar tribe, driven from Asia by the Turks, whose conquests at this time first revealed their name and nation to the world. — Gibbon, iv. 200. 2 Rascia was the ancient Dardania, named from the river Rashka, the small stream on which stands the modern Novi Bazaar.

Novi Bazaar occupies very nearly the site of the capital of Nemanja, the founder of the Servian Monarchy. — Wilkinson, ii. 283, note ; Mackenzie and Irby, p. 315 ; Forsyth, p. 22. THE SLAVIC RACE. 320 sent sovereigns of Montenegro and Servia — was equiva lent to Prince, Krai to King, and Tzar to Emperor.1 These Servian principalities acknowledged a nominal allegiance to the Emperors of Constantinople, but were from the beginning essentially independent, and pursued unre stricted their own normal and healthful political development.2 1 Wilkinson, ii. 25-6; Mackenzie and Irby, pp. 148-9. 2 Finlay's Greece under the Romans, p. 408.

Chapter II. The Bulgarians

THE EARLIER AND LATER BULGARIAN KINGDOMS. As already observed, the modern Bulgarians represent in the main that great Eastern Slavic population, which, before the year 600, had become established in the re gion to the south of the Danube. Their name is derived from a Finnish or Hunnish tribe, which first subdued them, long ruled over them, and finally became lost among them. It was very much as if the Normans, after the victory of William the Conqueror, had given their name to the English nation. The Huns, Avars, Turks, Tartars, and Bulgarians were all kindred Turanian or Scythian tribes from Central Asia. The Bulgarians l are said to have been mentioned by Armenian writers as early as six hundred years before Christ, when they are reported to have invaded Armenia from their primitive seats beyond the Caspian.

Some centuries later a branch of the nation moved westward and settled upon the River Volga, which derived its name from them. About A. D. 500, they moved still further westward, and subdued the Huns and Slaves upon the north-west shores of the Black Sea, and the lower Dan- 1 Gibbon, iv. 195; and Finlay's Greece under the Romans, 311-18. 1 + ube, thus coming into dangerous proximity to the Roman Empire and the civilized regions of the South. In the weakness and confusion which marked the last years of the long reign (A. D. 527-565) of the Emperor Justinian, the mingled tribes of the Bulgarians, Huns, and Slaves became a terrible scourge to the declining Empire. Breaking across the Danube, these fierce enemies entered upon a long career of slaughter and devastation. At first the aged Belisarius (himself as well as his master probably a Slave) took the field against them, and added the crowning glory to his long career by inflicting upon them a serious defeat.

This check, however, was but momentary, and very soon the waves of this fearful in vasion rolled almost unresisted over the devoted regions of Thrace, Macedonia, and Greece. Year by year the barbarians returned to renew the work of destruction, and the Byzantine historians bitterly complain that in every inroad they robbed the Empire of two hundred thousand of its people. Vast multitudes of these unhappy captives were put to death with cruel tortures, while the rest were carried into slavery or held for ransom. Before many years, however, these tribes fell under the yoke of the Avars, and for a time their destroying career was checked. In the year 635, the Bulgarians again made them selves free, and established a widely extended dominion, reaching from the Carpathian Mountains to the Sea of Azof.

It was about the year 670 that Asparuch, a powerful chief of this Bulgarian kingdom, crossed the Danube at the head of his tribe and perhaps an equal number of Slavonian allies and subjects, not so much for FIRST BULGARIAN KINGDOM. 323 plunder as for conquest and permanent settlement.1 The Slavic inhabitants, then almost the only occupants of the district between the Danube and the Balkan Moun tains, readily united with the invaders, and Asparuch established his throne at Varna, upon the Black Sea. An expedition sent against him by the Emperor Con stantine Pogonatus was totally defeated ; the humiliated Emperor was compelled to pay tribute to the Bulgarian chief, and the whole of the district now known as the province of Bulgaria was left quietly in his possession. Thus was founded the first Bulgarian kingdom within the ancient territory of Rome.

Soon after the capital was removed to Preslav (Marcionopolis), the ruins of which may now be found about fifteen miles south of the city of Shumla. For two hundred years longer the Bulgarians remained a pagan people, but in process of time, familiar and constant intercourse with the now reinvigoratcd Byzantine Empire began to impart to them some rudi ments of civilization. Commerce, the great civilizer, was beginning to bend them to her potent sway. The passes of the Balkans were the channels through which flowed the rich and extensive traffic between Constantinople and the vast regions of Central Europe ; and of this source of wealth the Bulgarians soon learned to avail themselves. This social progress 2 prepared the way for 1 Finlay's Greece under the Romans, p. 4S5. 2 Before their conversion to Christianity, the Bulgarians advanced in the aits of war far more rapidly than in those of peace.

The Bulgarian armies appeared at the very gates of Constantinople armed in complete steel, and in possession of all the military engines then in use. In the year 811, the Emperor Nicephorus I. was completely defeated by them and Christianity; and, strange as it may appear, the frequent and cruel wars between this barbarian kingdom and the Greek Empire had much to do in conveying the first knowledge of the gospel to the Bulgarians. In every war numerous captives were taken on both sides ; and these captives of either party proved efficient propagators of Christianity among the Bulgarians. The Greek captives were rarely wanting in zeal for their faith ; and not infrequently Bulgarian men and women, living for years in captivity among a Christian people, embraced Chris tianity, and returned to communicate their new religion to their brethren at home.1 Christianity was first actively preached in Bulgaria about the year 813, by a captive bishop, whose labors met with little success, and won him a martyr's crown.

But in the year 861, a sister of King Bogoris, who had been detained at Constantinople as a captive or a host age, and had there embraced Christianity, returned to her brother's court and set herself with great earnestness to secure his conversion. At first her efforts were vain ; but, softened by trouble and famine, the King began at length to listen more thoughtfully to his sister's instruc tions, and even to call for help from the Christians' God. At this time there appeared at the Bulgarian court — purposely sent for, according to some accounts, by the King's sister — a monk named Methodius, who was a skillful painter. This monk was employed by the King fell upon the field of battle, leaving his skull to be made into a drinking cup by the Bulgarian king. — Finlay's Byzantine Empire, i. 124-38. 1 For the conversion of the Bulgarians, see Neander, iii. 307-15 ; and Maclear's History of Christian Missions in the Middle Ages, 279-83.

CONVERSION OF THE BULGARIANS. 325 to paint for him the walls of a hunting-lodge ; but in stead of depicting the scenes and incidents of the chase, he improved the opportunity to paint a vivid repre sentation of the Day of Judgment. The King and his attendants are said to have been greatly impressed by this painting, and, by earnestly asking its meaning, to have given the artist what he desired — an opportunity to preach Christ and Him crucified. Soon afterwards the King avowed himself a Christian and was baptized. Having himself forsaken the religion of his fathers, he at once proceeded, and with no little violence and cruelty, to force his subjects to a like change in their faith ; and thus it was that about the year 865 the Bulgarians became nominally a Christian people. For a time, however, their religious affairs re mained in such confusion that Bogoris finally applied to Pope Nicholas I. for instruction, and for a definite state ment of the doctrines of Christianity.

Nicholas re sponded by sending him two bishops and an excellent letter of counsel and instruction. After this the Bul garians wavered for a time between Rome and Con stantinople, but finally turned to the latter, and became, as they have ever since remained, attached to the Greek communion. About the year 850, Cyril1 and Methodius, two bro thers of Thessalonica, themselves probably of Slavonic descent, entered upon their noble career as the great apostles of the Slavonic race. Whether Methodius, the brother of Cyril, was the same person with the 1 The baptismal name of Cyril was Constantine. At Constantinople he was known as Constantine the Philosopher. — Neander, iii. 314. artist monk of the same name, already spoken of, is not sure. The Bulgarians believe that they were the same ; and for this reason, in the pictures of the two brothers in the old Bulgarian churches, St. Methodius is always represented with his painting in his hand.1 About the year 860, Cyril invented what has ever since been known as the Cyrillic alphabet, and reduced the Slavonic language to writing.2 Soon afterwards the two brothers translated portions of the Scriptures into the Slavonic language. and, with a liberality beyond their age, they everywhere conducted in this, the dialect of the common people, all the services of public worship.

From that day to this the language of the Cyrillic Scriptures has remained the sacred language of the Bul garians, the Servians, and the Russians. The modern dialects have not so far deviated from it but that it is still easily understood by all the families of the Slavonic race ; and of late years the Southern Slaves arc every where reviving this grand old language as their best and most vital bond of nationality. The names of Cyril and Methodius are spoken with reverence by the whole Sla vonic race. In the year 1862, the thousandth anniversary of these great apostles of Eastern Europe was cele brated with a deep and sacred enthusiasm " by more than eighty millions of Slavonic Christians, without dis- 1 Mackenzie and Irby, p. 40. 2 The Servians still employ this alphabet, while the Bulgarians make use of the modified form of the same character, which, ever since the days of Peter the Great, has been in use in Russia.