Herzegovina and the Late Uprising; The Causes of the Latter and the Remedies. the Causes of the Latter and the Remedies (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. ]N arriving at Trieste at the end of August, 1875,1 found that there was very little knowledge of, or interest in, the Herzegovinian movement there. Bands were known to be hanging about Klek, Trebinje, and Zubci, but there seemed to be nothing known of the upper Herzegovina. Two or three bands were formed in Piva, Baniani, and other districts on the immediate borders of Montenegro, in which was a certain element of Montenegrins proper, and many Crivoscians (Austrian subjects from the Bocche di Cattaro), most of which were under the command of Herzegovinians, the sole exception being that of Peko Pavlovics, an old Montenegrin Turk-fighter, whose courage had been tried in more than sixty battles, and whose presence was an unfailing element in any war or revolt against the Ottoman empire on or near the borders of Montenegro. There was a committee at Trieste for aiding the movement by supplying arms and forwarding volunteers. The greatest deficiency was that of arms and ammunition, and the Trieste committee could at that time only send old muzzle-loaders of all models, contributed more than purchased. There was no concert and no plan as to any definite object in the insurrection, and all the animus I could perceive was thechronic sympathy with a people who were known to be grossly oppressed, and who were fighting against their masters. What political tone I could find was distinctly Austrian, and the members of the committee were all Dalmatians, with whom, as with the Dalmatian patriots generally, the best end of the affair would be the union of Bosnia and part, at least, of Herzegovina to Dalmatia. There was no Russian leaning or influence. My Cretan experience hardly left me to conjecture on the immediate causes of discontent, and inquiry going down the coas...