The Turkish Dominion 1496-1796


The lot of the Serbs under Turkish rule was different from that of their

neighbours the Bulgars; and though it was certainly not enviable, it was

undoubtedly better. The Turks for various reasons never succeeded in

subduing Serbia and the various Serb lands as completely as they had

subdued, or rather annihilated, Bulgaria. The Serbs were spread over a far

larger extent of territory than were the Bulgars, they were further
/> removed from the Turkish centre, and the wooded and mountainous nature of

their country facilitated even more than in the case of Bulgaria the

formation of bands of brigands and rebels and militated against its

systematic policing by the Turks. The number of centres of national life,

Serbia proper, Bosnia, Hercogovina, and Montenegro, to take them in the

chronological order of their conquest by the Turks, had been notoriously a

source of weakness to the Serbian state, as is still the case to-day, but

at the same time made it more difficult for the Turks to stamp out the

national consciousness. What still further contributed to this difficulty

was the fact that many Serbs escaped the oppression of Turkish rule by

emigrating to the neighbouring provinces, where they found people of their

own race and language, even though of a different faith. The tide of

emigration flowed in two directions, westwards into Dalmatia and

northwards into Slavonia and Hungary. It had begun already after the final

subjection of Serbia proper and Bosnia by the Turks in 1459 and 1463, but

after the fall of Belgrade, which was the outpost of Hungary against the

Turks, in 1521, and the battle of Mohacs, in 1526, when the Turks

completely defeated the Magyars, it assumed great proportions. As the

Turks pushed their conquests further north, the Serbs migrated before them;

later on, as the Turks receded, large Serb colonies sprang up all over

southern Hungary, in the Banat (the country north of the Danube and east

of the Theiss), in Syrmia (or Srem, in Serbian, the extreme eastern part

of Slavonia, between the Save and the Danube), in Ba[)c]ka (the country

between the Theiss and Danube), and in Baranya (between the Danube and the

Drave). All this part of southern Hungary and Croatia was formed by the

Austrians into a military borderland against Turkey, and the Croats and

immigrant Serbs were organized as military colonists with special

privileges, on the analogy of the Cossacks in southern Russia and Poland.

In Dalmatia the Serbs played a similar role in the service of Venice,

which, like Austria-Hungary, was frequently at war with the Turks. During

the sixteenth century Ragusa enjoyed its greatest prosperity; it paid

tribute to the Sultan, was under his protection, and never rebelled. It

had a quasi monopoly of the trade of the entire Balkan peninsula. It was a

sanctuary both for Roman Catholic Croats and for Orthodox Serbs, and

sometimes acted as intermediary on behalf of its co-religionists with the

Turkish authorities, with whom it wielded great influence. Intellectually

also it was a sort of Serb oasis, and the only place during the Middle

Ages where Serbian literature was able to flourish.



Montenegro during the sixteenth century formed part of the Turkish

province of Scutari. Here, as well as in Serbia proper, northern Macedonia

(known after the removal northwards of the political centre, in the

fourteenth century, as Old Serbia), Bosnia, and Hercegovina, the Turkish

rule was firmest, but not harshest, during the first half of the sixteenth

century, when the power of the Ottoman Empire was at its height. Soon

after the fall of Smederevo, in 1459, the Patriarchate of Pe['c] (Ipek)

was abolished, the Serbian Church lost its independence, was merged in the

Greco-Bulgar Archbishopric of Okhrida (in southern Macedonia), and fell

completely under the control of the Greeks. In 1557, however, through the

influence of a Grand Vizier of Serb nationality, the Patriarchate of

Pe['c] was revived. The revival of this centre of national life was

momentous; through its agency the Serbian monasteries were restored,

ecclesiastical books printed, and priests educated, and more fortunate

than the Bulgarian national Church, which remained under Greek management,

it was able to focus the national enthusiasms and aspirations and keep

alive with hope the flame of nationality amongst those Serbs who had not

emigrated.



Already, in the second half of the sixteenth century, people began to

think that Turkey's days in Europe were numbered, and they were encouraged

in this illusion by the battle of Lepanto (1571). But the seventeenth

century saw a revival of Turkish power; Krete was added to their empire,

and in 1683 they very nearly captured Vienna. In the war which followed

their repulse, and in which the victorious Austrians penetrated as far

south as Skoplje, the Serbs took part against the Turks; but when later

the Austrians were obliged to retire, the Serbs, who had risen against the

Turks at the bidding of their Patriarch Arsen III, had to suffer terrible

reprisals at their hands, with the result that another wholesale

emigration, with the Patriarch at its head, took place into the

Austro-Hungarian military borderland. This time it was the very heart of

Serbia which was abandoned, namely, Old Serbia and northern Macedonia,

including Pe['c] and Prizren. The vacant Patriarchate was for a time

filled by a Greek, and the Albanians, many of whom were Mohammedans and

therefore Turcophil, spread northwards and eastwards into lands that had

been Serb since the seventh century. From the end of the seventeenth

century, however, the Turkish power began unmistakably to wane. The Treaty

of Carlowitz (1699) left the Turks still in possession of Syrmia (between

the Danube and Save) and the Banat (north of the Danube), but during the

reign of the Emperor Charles VI their retreat was accelerated. In 1717

Prince Eugen of Savoy captured Belgrade, then, as now, a bulwark of the

Balkan peninsula against invasion from the north, and by the Treaty of

Passarowitz (Po[)z]arevac, on the Danube), in 1718, Turkey not only

retreated definitively south of the Danube and the Save, but left a large

part of northern Serbia in Austrian hands. By the same treaty Venice

secured possession of the whole of Dalmatia, where it had already gained

territory by the Treaty of Curlowitz in 1699.



But the Serbs soon found out that alien populations fare little better

under Christian rule, when they are not of the same confession as their

rulers, than under Mohammedan. The Orthodox Serbs in Dalmatia suffered

thenceforward from relentless persecution at the hands of the Roman

Catholics. In Austria-Hungary too, and in that part of Serbia occupied by

the Austrians after 1718, the Serbs discovered that the Austrians, when

they had beaten the Turks largely by the help of Serbian levies, were very

different from the Austrians who had encouraged the Serbs to settle in

their country and form military colonies on their frontiers to protect

them from Turkish invasion. The privileges promised them when their help

had been necessary were disregarded as soon as their services could be

dispensed with. Austrian rule soon became more oppressive than Turkish,

and to the Serbs' other woes was now added religious persecution. The

result of all this was that a counter-emigration set in and the Serbs

actually began to return to their old homes in Turkey. Another war between

Austria-Hungary and Turkey broke out in 1737, in which the Austrians were

unsuccessful. Prince Eugen no longer led them, and though the Serbs were

again persuaded by their Patriarch, Arsen IV, to rise against the Turks,

they only did so half-heartedly. By the Treaty of Belgrade, in 1739,

Austria had to withdraw north of the Save and Danube, evacuating all

northern Serbia in favour of the Turks. From this time onwards the lot of

the Serbs, both in Austria-Hungary and in Turkey, went rapidly from bad to

worse. The Turks, as the power of their empire declined, and in return for

the numerous Serb revolts, had recourse to measures of severe repression;

amongst others was that of the final abolition of the Patriarchate of Pee

in 1766, whereupon the control of the Serbian Church in Turkey passed

entirely into the hands of the Greek Patriarchate of Constantinople.



The Austrian Government similarly, perceiving now for the first time the

elements of danger which the resuscitation of the Serbian nationality

would contain for the rule of the Hapsburgs, embarked on a systematic

persecution of the Orthodox Serbs in southern Hungary and Slavonia. During

the reign of Maria Theresa (1740-80), whose policy was to conciliate the

Magyars, the military frontier zone was abolished, a series of repressive

measures was passed against those Serbs who refused to become Roman

Catholics, and the Serbian nationality was refused official recognition.

The consequence of this persecution was a series of revolts which were all

quelled with due severity, and finally the emigration of a hundred

thousand Serbs to southern Russia, where they founded New Serbia in

1752-3.



During the reigns of Joseph II (1780-90) and Leopold II (1790-2) their

treatment at the hands of the Magyars somewhat improved. From the

beginning of the eighteenth century Montenegro began to assume greater

importance in the extremely gradual revival of the national spirit of the

Serbs. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries it had formed part

of the Turkish dominions, though, thanks to the inaccessible nature of its

mountain fastnesses, Turkish authority was never very forcibly asserted.

It was ruled by a prince-bishop, and its religious independence thus

connoted a certain secular freedom of thought if not of action. In the

seventeenth century warlike encounters between the Turks and the

Montenegrins increased in frequency, and the latter tried to enlist the

help of Venice on their side but with indifferent success. The fighting in

Montenegro was often rather civil in character, being caused by the

ill-feeling which existed between the numerous Montenegrins who had become

Mohammedans and those who remained faithful to their national Church. In

the course of the eighteenth century the role which fell to Montenegro

became more important. In all the other Serb countries the families which

naturally took a leading part in affairs were either extinct or in exile,

as in Serbia, or had become Mohammedan, and therefore to all intents and

purposes Turkish, as in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Ragusa, since the great

earthquake in 1667, had greatly declined in power and was no longer of

international importance. In Montenegro, on the other hand, there had

survived both a greater independence of spirit (Montenegro was, after all,

the ancient Zeta, and had always been a centre of national life) and a

number of at any rate eugenic if not exactly aristocratic Serb families;

these families naturally looked on themselves and on their bishop as

destined to play an important part in the resistance to and the eventual

overthrow of the Turkish dominion. The prince-bishop had to be consecrated

by the Patriarch of Pe['c], and in 1700 Patriarch Arsen III consecrated

one Daniel, of the house (which has been ever since then and is now still

the reigning dynasty of Montenegro) of Petrovi['c]-Njego[)s], to this

office, after he had been elected to it by the council of notables at

Cetinje. Montenegro, isolated from the Serbs in the north, and precluded

from participating with them in the wars between Austria and Turkey by the

intervening block of Bosnia, which though Serb by nationality was solidly

Mohammedan and therefore pro-Turkish, carried on its feuds with the Turks

independently of the other Serbs. But when Peter the Great initiated his

anti-Turkish policy, and, in combination with the expansion of Russia to

the south and west, began to champion the cause of the Balkan Christians,

he developed intercourse with Montenegro and laid the foundation of that

friendship between the vast Russian Empire and the tiny Serb principality

on the Adriatic which has been a quaint and persistent feature of eastern

European politics ever since. This intimacy did not prevent the Turks

giving Montenegro many hard blows whenever they had the time or energy to

do so, and did not ensure any special protective clauses in favour of the

mountain state whenever the various treaties between Russia and Turkey

were concluded. Its effect was rather psychological and financial. From

the time when the Vladika (= Bishop) Daniel first visited Peter the

Great, in 1714, the rulers of Montenegro often made pilgrimages to the

Russian capital, and were always sure of finding sympathy as well as

pecuniary if not armed support. Bishops in the Orthodox Church are

compulsorily celibate, and the succession in Montenegro always descended

from uncle to nephew. When Peter I Petrovi['c]-Njego[)s] succeeded, in

1782, the Patriarchate of Pe['c] was no more, so he had to get permission

from the Austrian Emperor Joseph II to be consecrated by the Metropolitan

of Karlovci (Carlowitz), who was then head of the Serbian national Church.



About the same time (1787) an alliance was made between Russia and

Austria-Hungary to make war together on Turkey and divide the spoils

between them. Although a great rising against Turkey was organised at the

same time (1788) in the district of [)S]umadija, in Serbia, by a number of

Serb patriots, of whom Kara-George was one and a certain Captain Ko[)c]a,

after whom the whole war is called Ko[)c]ina Krajina (=Ko[)c]a's country),

another, yet the Austrians were on the whole unsuccessful, and on the

death of Joseph II, in 1790, a peace was concluded between Austria and

Turkey at Svishtov, in Bulgaria, by which Turkey retained the whole of

Bosnia and Serbia, and the Save and Danube remained the frontier between

the two countries. Meanwhile the Serbs of Montenegro had joined in the

fray and had fared better, inflicting some unpleasant defeats on the Turks

under their bishop, Peter I. These culminated in two battles in 1796 (the

Montenegrins, not being mentioned in the treaty of peace, had continued

fighting), in which the Turks were driven back to Scutari. With this

triumph, which the Emperor Paul of Russia signalized by decorating the

Prince-Bishop Peter, the independence of the modern state of Montenegro,

the first Serb people to recover its liberty, was de facto established.



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