ART. V.-Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Austria.

(1.) The Slavonic Provinces of Turkey in Europe. MACKENZIE and IRBY.

(2.) Through Bosnia and Herzegovina on Foot during the Insurrection. A. J. EVANS.

(3.) Illyrian Letters. A. J. Evans.

(4.) Bosnie et Herzégovine, souvenirs de voyage pendant l'insurCHARLES YRIARTE.

rection.

(5.) Consular Reports.

(6.) Documenti Diplomatici.

(7.) L'Herzégovine. Etude Géographique, Historique, et Statistique. ST. MARIE.

THE European mandate to Austria to occupy these provinces is, there is every reason to believe, the result of a long-matured plan between the three northern Empires, Russia, Austria, and Germany, the chief conspirator being Prince Bismarck, who has not even yet achieved his task of gathering and welding together a vast German Empire strong enough to stand between Russia and France. In the year 1872 we were in Belgrade, and had a conversation on the politics of Eastern Europe with the late British consul-general, an elderly man of great experience, and a philo-Turk of the school of Palmerston, nay, almost of Urquhart. The consul, like the rest of his party, could not quite shut his eyes to the proofs all round him of the growing impatience of Christian races of the yoke of an effete Moslem power and of its persistent barbarism. The beautiful idea of Fuad Pasha and his school of a beneficent secular Ottoman Empire, according real religious equality to all its subjects, thereby shaming the most advanced powers of the West, seemed as far off as ever; while there were ominous signs in the utterances of Earl Russell, Earl Derby, and Count Beust that the statesmen of the West were losing patience.

The consul, who in early life had been treated with great kindness and hospitality by certain Turks, had his heart more than his intellect engaged on the side of the Turks, with the usual result of a remarkable blindness to their faults. He was engaged in watching the politics of Eastern Europe, and he was convinced of the existence of a conspiracy, as he called it, against the integrity of the Ottoman Empire (that precious fetish on which we have sacrificed millions of treasure and rivers of blood). The event has proved that his conviction was not unfounded.

This conspiracy, or, to use a gentler term, the arrangement which far-seeing statesmen were bound to make in view of the storm which was obviously approaching, was seen clearly enough by Servian statesmen, some of whom were, in confidential conversation, as eloquent on Russian and Austrian intrigues as even a Beaconsfield could desire. The Servians had an important rôle to play, with Austria as a formidable competitor, while they had the overpowering dread, common to all these East European nationalities, of being swallowed up by Russia. Strange it is that this valuable factor in the game of politics should have been so blindly and so perversely overlooked or ignored by such politicians as Layard and Disraeli, who could not get beyond the crumbling formula of the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire.' Their sole idea of the duty of English statesmen in pursuit of British interests was to uphold the Turks and depress the Christians, thereby thrusting them into the arms of Russia. To such an extent was this stupid policy carried out that even Lord Stanley in a speech at King's Lynn expressed astonishment that the claims of rising Christian races should be so overlooked. When he came into office, it need hardly be observed, he at once put his neck into the yoke of the Foreign Office, which can learn nothing and forget nothing, and carried out the traditional policy of that unreformed institution.

On the southern banks of the Danube and Save ambitions similar to those nourished on the Spree brooded in the breasts of such men as the late Prince Michael and his minister Ristich. The former, a most able and patriotic prince, was removed by assassination; but it was he who armed his nation with breechloaders in place of antique and useless firelocks, and at one epoch (about 1868) he had formed a secret conspiracy with Roumania, Greece, and Montenegro, openly to declare war on the Porte on the signal of a general rising of the Christian population in Old Servia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Thessaly, and Epirus-a rising that would, he calculated, inevitably bring Russia into the field, whose imputed greed of territory he hoped would be satisfied by some addition to her Asiatic possessions.

The aim of Servia, or of Servia as represented by some of her statesmen, was to play in the Balkan peninsula the part played by Cavour and Victor Emmanuel in the Italian peninsula. It was proposed to unite all the Slavonians of these provinces under the Servian prince, and form an empire, kingdom, or confederacy, composed of Servia (including Stara Serbie, or Old Servia), Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Bulgaria; in

short, to resuscitate with modifications the Empire of Dushan which perished on the fatal field of Kossovo. Russia, who has always encouraged and patronized Slavonian ambitions, would, it was supposed, look favourably on the scheme, and in the event of the Moslem power proving too strong for the Christian confederation, it was hoped that she might even be drawn into the fray.

But what of Austria? Some millions of the subjects of the Kaiser actively sympathised with the ambition of their Ugo Slav brethren. We attended the coronation of the Prince of Servia in 1872, and by the enthusiastic speeches of sundry Slavonian deputies from Austria, no less than by the petty and vexatious action of the Hungarian police towards the hundreds of visitors to Belgrade, we were convinced that the aspirations of the Servians commanded the fullest sympathy amongst the millions of Slavonians in that empire; and equally sure were we that a government, dominated in a great measure by the Hungarians, a haughty and tyrannical race, whose persecutions of the Slavonians have run up a heavy bill of retaliation --some of which was paid in 1848, thereby increasing the mutual hatred-would most certainly endeavour to take into its own hands the popular movement in Turkey, whenever it took the form of open rebellion.

When we hear of Austria undertaking to hold Bosnia, and when Lord Beaconsfield talks of checking that Panslavistic confederacy and conspiracy which has already proved so disadvantageous to the happiness of the world,' we may inquire who are the Austrians, and how are they likely to check the aspirations of the Slavonians? Austria is largely peopled by Slavonians who have enthusiastically thrown themselves into Panslavic ambitions. We hear much of the bitter hostility of the Hungarians to all such movements; but perhaps English politicians are scarcely aware that a large part of Hungary is peopled by Slavonians, entertaining a bitter antipathy to the Magyars, whose policy has always been to hold down these people and to crush out their nationality. With this view every attempt has been made by the Hungarian government to extirpate the languages or dialects spoken in their midst or around them, wherever their authority could be exercised; attempts which have only aroused resistance, excited hatred, and given rise to ardent national aspirations. The enforcement of the Magyar tongue upon officials living in the midst of Serb-speaking populations has often been a serious hardship to Slavonian middle-aged men, who were in the dilemma of having to learn a difficult language or to lose

their employment. It is probable that sundry groups of population have at times lost their nationality, and more would have done so had it not been for the conservative force of the Greek Church, to which many, perhaps most, of these southern Slavonians belong, and which has always been forced into intense opposition to the much less tolerant Catholic Church. In North-west Hungary, and in the various little patches throughout the kingdom, are to be found about 1,800,000 Slovacks, pure Slaves, who emigrated to this part of the world to fill up a void caused by Turkish devastation. They are considered the least aggressive and self-asserting portion of the race; they have however produced Jan Kollár, one of the most soul-stirring of the Slavonian poets, whose great theme has always been the solidarity of the Slavonian raceanother mode of expressing that dreaded idea, Panslavonism. Living in a country which has been as forward as England in its loud-spoken sympathy for the Turks, these Slovacks have never ceased denouncing these barbarians in their newpapers as savage Asiatics who ought to be expelled from Europe.

In East Gallicia and North-east Hungary are 3,200,000 Ruthenians (or little Russians), who are spoken of by a writer in Fraser,' who contributed in July, 1876, a very remarkable paper on the different races of Austria, as sympathising but feebly with the struggles of their race against the Turks; but though these people may have no ardent aspirations for the success of their kindred in a distant struggle, they unquestionably count for much in Austria itself, as they are a check to both the Poles and Hungarians, whose sympathies are with the Turks, though the former are pure Slavonians, who, however, have been separated from their kindred through the influence of the Roman Catholic Church.

The most remarkable branch of the Slavonian nationality in the Austrian Empire is the Czechs, or people of Bohemia, numbering about 5,200,000. The reason of the prominent and efficient part they play in the south-eastern politics of Europe would scarcely be avowed by them; but the fact is that, being isolated from their kindred and surrounded by Germans, they have frankly accepted the civilization of the West-in other words, have been civilized by the Germans.

Fifty years ago, before the disturbing and perplexing factor of ethnology had been introduced by scientific men into politics, the Czechs were well-nigh denationalized by the influence of the Roman Catholic religion and the teaching of the Jesuits, who to the best of their power obliterated their national history. But these people have of late been the most

The Czechs and Poles.

397

fanatical of political ethnologists, and have been of immense use in civilizing those Slavonian nations who had been more or less barbarized by the baleful rule of the Turk. During our travels in Servia and Bosnia, whenever we met with a remarkable schoolmaster, or the organizer of any national institution, he was sure to be a Czech. We were shown the national museum at Belgrade, and introduced to Dr. Shafarik, a most learned man. He was a Czech; so was Dr. Meissner the librarian, albeit owning a German name; the famous General Zach, who organized the Servian army, was a Czech; as were sundry other learned workers in the cause of Slavonian civilization. Although the Czechs owe their civilization to the Germans, they have been truly apt pupils, and at present can boast of some of the foremost men of science, such as Rokitansky the physiologist, who died quite recently; Palacky the historian, Dobrowsky and Shafarik the philologists, Purkynji the naturalist, and Skoda the physician, all of whom have European reputations.

The Czechs are the most ambitious and vexatious of all the nationalities that annoy Austrian statesmen. Their deputies abstain from taking their seats in the Reichrath, but form a sort of irreconcilable opposition, with demands that are considered incompatible with the unity of the Empire. Their paper agitation on behalf of Slavism knows no bounds. They appeal to foreign nations by publishing some of their appeals in French in the midst of Slavonian articles, so that the attention of travellers and European men of letters may be attracted to their ethnological complaints against the government of Austria. Of late their papers have been filled with stories of the sufferings of the enslaved Slavonian rayahs, of the heroism of the insurgents, and of Turkish atrocities.

An important Slavonian nation, and the best known in Europe, are the Poles, who have, or had, national aspirations of their own, which have been diverted from Panslavism by the Roman Catholic religion. These number in Austria about 2,380,000. The author of the article in Fraser' declares that the Poles are hated by all the other Slaves,' which, if true, would remove them altogether from the forces of Slavonism; but the writer, though showing a curiously exact knowledge of the populations of Austria, evidently allows his anti-Slavic antipathies to influence his judgment in reckoning on national aspirations and sympathies; for, speaking of the Bulgarians, he says, 'In spite of all Panslavic agitations, they show no inclination to join in the insurrection.' The ink with which this was written was scarcely dry before the