CHAPTER II.
THE OLD MILITARY FRONTIER, SISCIA, AND THE SAVE.
The Military Frontier, its Origin and Extinction—Effects of Turkish Conquest on South-Sclavonic Society—Family Communities—Among the House-fathers—Granitza Homesteads—The _Stupa_—Liberty, Equality, Fraternity—Contrast between Croats of Granitza and Slovenes—The Advantages and Defects of Family Communities—Larger Family Community near Brood—A little Parliament House—Croatian Brigands—A Serb Lady—Turkish Effendi and Pilgrim—Siszek—Roman Siscia; her Commercial Importance—Her Martyr—Remains of ancient Siscia—Destiny of Siszek—Croatian Dances and Songs—Down the Save—New Amsterdam—South-Sclavonic Types—Arrive at Brood—Russian Spies!—A Sunset between two Worlds—Marched Off—Bearding an Official—A Scaffold Speech—In Durance vile—Liberated!
It was the necessities of the Hungarian Kingdom and the Empire, when they had to bear the brunt of still encroaching Islâm, that some three hundred years ago created the Military Frontier—the Granitza, as it is known to its Slavonic denizens. The Hungarian and Imperial statesmen of the sixteenth century had just the same immense problem set before them as the Romans of the earlier empire—how to defend a long line of frontier from the perpetual incursions of barbarians—and they solved it much in the same way as the Western Cæsars of yore. The Roman Emperors, under parallel circumstances, parcelled out the march-lands of that awkward angle between the Rhine and the Danube among rude Allemannic tribes, to be held of the Emperor on condition of military service in their defence. So now the Hapsburgh Cæsars divided out the provinces bordering on the Turks among primitive Sclavonic house-communities, each of which held its allotment in common of the King of Hungary on condition that it provided, in proportion to the number of men in the family, one or more soldiers for watch and ward against the Infidel. The frontier was divided into territorial divisions known by the military appellation, Regiments. Every soldier when not on active service might change his sword for a spade, and sank into a peasant like the rest; and the officer, or ‘_Ober_,’ left the camp to preside as judge in the law courts. It was a peasant militia. To this day the Grenzer uniform is but an adaptation of old Croat costume; the military waggons are the simple village carts; the soldier transforms himself into a boor, the boor into a soldier, at a moment’s notice. Thus it was an organisation economical, self-supporting—and who would not fight bravely when his neighbouring homestead was at stake?—but military over-pride was tempered by the peaceful instincts of husbandry. Thus the Turk was successfully fended off, and a long watch-service sentinelled along the whole frontier. The watch-towers at intervals, with their wooden clappers, may be still seen in places, as well as the now unused beacons whose telegraphic chain could once rouse to arms the whole population from the Adriatic to the easternmost Carpathians in a few hours.
Thus the Military Frontier was originally the outwork of Christendom, the political sea-wall of her provinces painfully reclaimed. But the force of that flood had long been spent—Islâm had ceased to be militant. What had once been a military became merely a sanitary cordon, or was turned to account to protect the absurd tariffs of slow Swabian finance. Nay, it had even ceased in part to mark the boundary line between Frank and Osmanlì. Free Serbia had risen beyond it. It was superannuated—a mere survival. The Military Frontier, as it existed a few years ago, might be compared to an old Roman dyke that once marked the limits of the chafing North Sea, but now runs inland across the flats of Ouse—a monument of a vanquished ocean perverted to hedgerows, given over to the plough. And, indeed, about three years ago it at last struck the Austro-Hungarian Government that this unproductive rampart might be resigned to cultivation; for human culture in the Granitza was at a very low ebb, and the artificial clogs to social development produced industrial depression. Accordingly the military organisation was assimilated to that of the rest of the Empire, and by the _Theilungsgesetze_, which facilitates the transfer of land and the break-up of families, the old communal system has received its death-blow.
The Military Frontier has ceased to exist, but the old order of things has not yet passed away; and we were the more anxious to catch if but a glimpse of that antique society, so long artificially preserved from change by the military needs of the monarchy, before it dies away from the memory of man. For to cross the Military Frontier is to survey a phase of society so primitive that it was already antiquated when the forefathers of the English sate among the heaths and fens and forests of the Elbelands. It is to go back, not indeed into Feudal times—for to call this frontier organisation Feudal shows an ignorance of what Feudalism really means—but to wander beyond the twilight of history, and take a lantern as it were into the night of time.
If the Turkish invasion can be likened to the encroachment of an ocean, it resembled it in nothing more than its denuding action. Throughout the whole of Eastern Europe there set in a great levelling of baronial peak-lands. The South-Sclavonic nobility fell at Kóssovo or Mohatch and a hundred other fields, or skulked away into foreign lands; and, indeed, this Feudal overgrowth was always more or less of an exotic among Serbs and Croats. The Turkish conquest was a fiery trial, in truth, and yet it had the effect of purging the sterling democratic ore of society from all this hæmatitic dross. The semi-feudal organisation which had sprung up in these lands—partly owing to the imperfect devices of an acephalous society to gain the unity of action required in war, partly to infiltrations of Western ideas viâ Hungary or the Empire—was now levelled away by the Turks, where it was not, as in Bosnia, assimilated. Society reverted to that almost patriarchal form which the Sclavonic settlers had carried with them into the Illyrian triangle when they settled here in the days of Heraclius. _Vlastela_ and magnates now make way once more for simple house-fathers, distinctions of rank are merged in the old equality and fraternity that reign within the paling of the house-community. We have seen an Imperial ukase work much the same result among the Sclaves of Russia as was wrought by the Turkish scimitar for their brethren of the south.
Then, too, not only were the higher ranks of society cleared away, but influences were at work to make even the communistic village government go back a step in archaism. Vast tracts of land were depopulated and were parcelled out amongst new settlers, chiefly immigrant families from beyond the Turkish frontier. But the single farms of those backwoodsmen could not grow into villages all at once, and so it would happen that the mark—as we may call the allotment—reverted to a very primitive stage, being held in common, not so much by a village-community, as by a single household. Thus the Starescina, or alderman of the community, was often literally the elective elder of the household.
But it was evident that if the new military organisation was to be self-supporting, each family must contain several adult male members—for how else could men be spared from the tillage necessary for the support of the household? And how else could contributions in kind be afforded to the military chest—the _cassa domestica_—for the keep of soldier house-brothers?
Therefore it was that the Government thought well to strengthen the Sclavonic family tie, always strong, by legal fetters which forcibly bound the household together and artificially checked the development of individual proprietorship. It was forbidden, as far as possible, to alienate the property of a house-community, or to subdivide it among its members; and so literally was this enforced that, near Siszek for example, we heard of families still existing containing over three hundred members all living within the same palisaded yard, and forming a village of themselves; nor is it by any means rare to find villages in the Granitza consisting of a couple of households.
_Aug. 7._—It was to survey this primitive régime that we now sallied forth from Karlovac, and, crossing the bridge over the Kulpa, found ourselves, as was manifested still by a conspicuous sign-board, in what was once the Sluin Regiment of the Military Frontier—a suburban street of Karlovac, in fact, belonging to the ex-military district. It must, however, be remembered that side by side with this military communism exists a civil population: clergy, teachers, artizans, tradesmen, innkeepers, and so forth, who enjoy exceptional liberties; so there was not much to notice of special interest in military Karlovac, except a spacious government school for Granitza children. A pretty country walk brought us to the little village of Radovac, where we lighted on a native, an intelligent young fellow, who acted as a guide, and interpreter of primitive institutions.
We looked into several of the cottages, each in its yard, with due complement of outbuildings, garden and orchard for common use. The households here are not so large as in other parts of the frontier, and it is evident that in former times the inhabitants must have found some means of evading the law, and dividing their property. The old order of things still exists; each cottage has its house-father and house-mother, and everything is held in common. But the effects of the _Theilungsgesetze_ are beginning to be felt, and the right of any family to claim an equal division of the property among its members is being taken advantage of. We were shown one house where the family had just quarrelled and split up. In this case the old house-father and house-mother still retained their military exemption; but the heads of the new family offshoots were liable to service, and were not recognised as house-fathers and house-mothers by the eye of the law; though some of them still arrogate the time-honoured titles. In other parts of the Frontier the overgrown households are availing themselves of the new permissive law to escape from the imprisonment of the common paling. We heard of instances of partition near Siszek, and further east, near Brood in Slavonia. Thus the old communal life is dying a natural death.
[Illustration: A Granitza Homestead.]
But let us examine one of these homesteads where the house-fathers and house-mothers still preside—and the description of the one we saw first will serve for all. In order to find our way to the dwelling-house we had to enter by a yard, enclosed by a rough wooden fence, called the ‘_plot_.’ Within this, to the right, was the ‘_Kucica_’ or common cottage, and then followed in order the pig-sty, the barn, the hay-loft and cart-shed, the round conical-peaked hay-stack, and another store-house. This homestead square reminded one of old English, Norse,[160] and Franconian farms; and we found the dwelling-houses trisected into a sleeping-room, a kitchen, and a store-room, like the homesteads of Scandinavian backwoods. The centre room of the three is the kitchen, in one corner of which is a flat stone hearth, a small paved square for cooking on, such as is universal in Illyria. In the other corner there was a stove of a kind which also occurs throughout all these lands; it was of baked clay, square below, and bell-shaped above, bayed all over with circular pigeon-holes, which in Bosnia, where still ruder forms of this stove occur, are actually pots embedded into the clay; though whether this practice arose from a scientific desire to gain a greater heating surface, or whether for the celebration of certain culinary mysteries, or whether for ornament, or, what is more probable, by reason of some exigencies of structure—we were never able to determine.
Before the kitchen was a kind of fore-hall, as in a Northern cottage; but, in this warm climate, open to the air, and forming a verandah, which in the larger houses runs along the upper storey, where the family live. We peeped into the dormitory, which was the largest room of the three, and saw beds ranged round the room, and a picture of a saint suspended from the wall. The house itself was of wood, and showed in parts the rich time-stains of an Alpine chalet. Yet in places one might notice the Sclavonic tendency towards whitewash and mud plaster. The roof was double; first a shingling of short wooden planks, and above that a substantial thatch.
[Illustration: Stupa]
As to the inmates, they were engaged in the yard in a very curious occupation. Just outside the store-house was the most greedy-looking machine we ever set eyes on—all teeth and jaw, without even the decency of a stomach. It turned out to be a stamping-mill for beating flax, which we had already noticed on our way, going through preliminary processes of water-retting and grassing. At first sight the masticator looked like a monstrous variety of the trap which children use for ‘bat and ball;’ it was all of wood, except a metal pivot or axis, on which the upper jaw worked, and its motive power was supplied by two Croats, a man and a woman, who took their stand on the upper jaw, and, placing one foot on each side of the pivot, imparted a see-sawing motion to it, by throwing their weight simultaneously first on one foot and then on the other, from which treading the mill gains the Croatian name _Stupa_ or tread-mill. Meanwhile another woman took a wisp of the ready retted and dried flax, and fed the wooden crocodile with it; and when it had been sufficiently chewed, and the useless stem or boom separated from the useful bark or harl, she handed the wisp on to another woman, who combed out the fibres in a heckle, made by the simple process of sticking iron nails through a paw of wood fixed into the fence, and being now both clawed and chewed, the flax was laid in a heap, and the preparation was concluded. The mill seems a very primitive form of the Scotch foot-brake, but it is at least better than the hand-mill of our forefathers, for the principle of co-operation of labour is invoked, and the flax therefore prepared more expeditiously.
One would think that the fact that the rude Croats of the Granitza have arrived at a stage of manufacture even so comparatively advanced as this, may be due to an advantageous influence of the Communistic system. For if self-interest is in the long run the best spur to industry, yet it sometimes keeps it back, owing to a want of readiness to combine with others. But here we find the common interest of the house-community in the results of labour, teaching the great economic lesson of combination, though it certainly discourages extraordinary energy in individuals. Thus the land is tilled in common, the harvest gathered in in common, and, _ceteris paribus_, it is far more probable that agricultural machinery could be introduced in one of the large Granitza families, containing some three hundred members, than in a village of the same population tenanted by the small, selfish peasant-farmers of France or Germany.
Besides this readiness to combine, another favourable aspect of this Communistic society was especially striking to one fresh from among the somewhat churlish, close-fisted Nether-Saxons. This was a certain geniality, an open-handed readiness of good cheer, whether of homely apples or homelier wine. Nothing here of that jealous attitude towards strangers so characteristic of your peasant-farmer or petty ‘_Eigenthümer_.’ You have only to muster up unabashed intrusiveness enough, and you may spy out the land and all the ins and outs of a Granitza dwelling-house without let or hindrance. You may rove at your sweet will through yard and garden, take stock of horned and feathered, seat yourself on the three-legged stool before the culinary hearth—and pray do not let false delicacy or closed doors deter you from unclewing the inmost mysteries of the bed-chamber! The inmates are only too proud to see a visitor. A comfortable sense of co-partnership grows upon you. You find yourself arguing some _post-liminal_ right of adoption as you cross the threshold, and end by asking yourself whether after all there can be any gulf ’twixt _meum_ and _tuum_ when every potsherd and goosequill is common property?
‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!’ Let this, then, be the motto of the stranger who visits the Granitza homesteads. Obviously new rules of social decorum must be invented for the occasion, and our code was simple—‘Make yourself at home.’ The idea that we could be intruding became really too preposterous; and as for the truly insular notion that a house could be a castle, we laughed it to scorn! We were Communists for the nonce. The _Genius loci_ inspired us. We penetrated without the introduction of a guide into yards and houses; or if we came to larger farms, where the ground-floor of the house is apportioned to cows and the dwelling-rooms of the scansorial part of the family are above, only approachable by external ladders, we hesitated not to effect entrance by escalade, and the inmates were as little taken aback, and received us with as hearty a good-day as if they had been expecting us for weeks.
We could not help thinking of the contrast they presented to the people of the same Sclavonic race, and almost the same language, beyond the mountains that fringed the north-western horizon; to the Wends, namely, and Slovenes, of Carinthia and Carniola. For when Goldsmith tells how
The rude Carinthian boor Against the houseless stranger shuts his door,
he is only stating what we knew by actual experience to be still true. It is not so soon forgotten—that chilly night, when, for want of a single hospitable roof in a whole village to shelter midnight travellers, we were fain to stall ourselves in the creepiest of church porches—and had we not sundry other reminiscences of slammed doors and long parleyings to boot in the moonlight of the Julians? There was always something morose in the temperament of those Slovenes; something too much in harmony with the prevailing black of the Upper-Carinthian costume, with the sad weirdness of their music—what a dirge it was that accompanied our way to that ghostliest of shelters! The Granitza folk, on the contrary, are light in heart as in garment; sociable, hospitable; finding their poetic portraiture rather among those Acadians of whom it is written that
Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows, But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of their owners.
Is it that these Croats of the Marches still retain the old Sclavonic communism, which the Wends and Slovenes have lost?
It is most delightful, too, to come upon a place where ‘charity’ in its mischievous, oriental form, is kept from the door. Here every community is of its very essence a kind of benefit club; the common homestead is the only asylum for the old, infirmary for the sick; in times of war it was not the least important advantage of the Military Frontier, that each house-community formed a hospital for disabled soldier house-brothers. The communal system prevents moreover the rise of an actual proletariate; the flunkeyism of service is absent where all are alike fellow-helps and fellow-masters; and no doubt if a brother be disproportionately lazy, moral suasion of an unmistakable kind is brought to bear on him by the rest of the community. Here we have a kind of industrial police organisation.
Endued with all this brotherly co-operation, these social advantages and virtues, Granitza life cannot be said to be without its brighter aspects; but alas that it should have shadow as well as sunshine! After all we must own that those earnest staid Slovenes, likened by the German to his Mecklenburgers and Nether-Saxons, possess, with all their moroseness, a more solid civilization. It was admitted to us here—who, indeed, could not see it?—that education was far behind-hand, and the children unkempt and neglected; indeed, the mortality among Granitza infants is said to be outrageous. Why, indeed, should they be better cared for? Why in the name of Fortune should the celibate portion of the community be mulcted for the sake of philoprogenitive brothers? Agriculture here is at a standstill, and the fields undunged.
This wretched wind-wry shanty before us, how little does it answer to the richness of the soil! The inmates, like those around, are poor in the midst of plenty. Dame Nature certainly would fain be bounteous; you have only to look at the luxuriant wild flowers that crowd along the garden skirts to see that; they are at least quite as good as the niggard garden patches, themselves half-wild, of sunflower, marigold, and zinnia,—just see! how scornfully yon aspiring tufts of saffron meadow-sweet climb above the paling, or peep between the rickety bars as if to make fun of those cockered garden favourites within! The apples and plums in the orchard to the side are, as such, puny and poor of flavour; but the hedgerow which fences it round is loaded with sloes very nearly as fat as damsons; and as to the rose hips, you might take them for filberts, scarlet-mantled. Further beyond you catch a glimpse of the contours of Mt. Capella masted with oak-woods, now mere pannage for swine, but fit to timber a hundred fleets.
The truth is, that the incentives to labour and economy are weakened by the sense of personal interest in their results being subdivided. Even the social virtues engendered by this living in common are apt to run off into mere reckless dissipation. One may think their fruit poor, and their wine abominable; but their maxim is none the less, ‘Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.’ True, a man has a legal right to lay by his share of the profits; but who does? To do so would be to fly in the face of public opinion, and this Granitza way of life is favourable to the growth and influence of public opinion of a kind. At Radovac there is a well-known yearly market, and the peasants, as we heard from an innkeeper’s son, drink away their whole earnings on this greatest of money-making occasions in the four inns which compose the moiety of this little village. In short, the house-communities have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. One may regret the Military Frontier from an antiquarian point of view. Some pleasant features of this unique society may be lost; but on the whole no one can quarrel with the government for passing that permissive bill which entails its speedy self-immolation.
There is no need to give special descriptions of the other villages that we saw in this part, as Radovac has been made the peg on which to hang wider generalisations. The village of Trn may be noticed, as there we came upon peasants belonging to the Greek Church, called ‘Vlachs,’ like the Sluin folk, but not like them a peculiar people, and indeed differing in nothing from their Roman Catholic neighbours, except that Greek icons were hung in their rooms in place of Romish saints. But in the villages about Karlovac the house-communities are generally small, division has already been at work, and I will therefore ask the reader to accompany us _per saltum_ to a more easterly part of the Granitza which we explored a few days later, namely to the neighbourhood of Brood in Slavonia.
Making our way through a country as smiling as that which we had left behind, through common-fields of the family communities, a-bloom with sky-blue flax, and enclosed by old-world hedges overgrown with clustering wild vines, or through the common meadowland—the old English _ing_—we came to the village of Bukovje, and were introduced to the largest family community of the place by the kind Roman Catholic vicar.
[Illustration: Homestead of Family Community, near Brood, Slavonia.]
Some idea of the arrangement of the homestead will be given by the accompanying diagram. We made our way into the premises by the yard-gate and found ourselves in a spacious farmyard fenced in by a stout palisade. To the left was the common dwelling-house, and around the skirts of the enclosure ranged in order the common barn, cow-house, stables, maize-garner, goat-shed, and pig-stye; the common stillery for making _slivovitz_ or plum-brandy, which here has succeeded sour wine as the favourite drink of the peasantry; the common well, with its bucket attached to a monster fishing-rod; the common oven; and last, not least, the common goose-house. In one corner was a small patch of maize, and beyond the bottom of the yard was the common orchard with its usual crop of poor plums, pears, and apples.
We were received in the yard by a member of the family, voted unanimously to be the house-father, who cordially invited us in, and having satisfied our curiosity as to the various outbuildings, bade us enter the common dwelling-houses, of which there were two; one a long wooden erection with the usual verandah, used as a summer abode, and divided into compartments for each _sub_-family; the other, a palatial residence compared with the Radovac hovels, brick-built and whitewashed, and with its porch and double tiers of massive arches which open on long corridors as in some old monasteries (for there is something conventual too about these closes), and entered withal by an imposing flight of steps, was not without its dignity. The family consisted of some three dozen individuals, mostly absent at the time on field-work, insomuch that the garrison consisted of our house-father and two house-sisters all told. Thus it was scarcely more than a tenth as big as those monster families we heard of near Siszek with their three hundred members; but it afforded a good example of the house arrangements, nevertheless; for in these larger family communities, such as we saw higher up the Save, you may see several dwelling-houses ranged in a row within the common ‘_plot_,’ so that really only a little multiplication is needed to gain an idea of the family community on its grandest scale from a view of this Bukovje homestead. There is, however, this difference, that in the larger families the common hall and kitchen are often separate buildings.
The house consisted of two floors. Ascending the porch-steps at the house-father’s bidding, we found ourselves in a ground-floor with the fore-hall and usual tripartite division of the ruder Granitza cottages, consisting of a common hall or refectory, a kitchen and another room, used in this case, I believe, as a bedroom for the house-father. These three rooms opened on to the front corridor; and ascending some stairs, at the end of this airy arcade we found ourselves on the second storey, divided exclusively into bedrooms, of which there were thirteen, one for each sub-family. Above this again was a loft running under the whole length of the roof, and set apart for stores.
[Illustration: Plan of Common Dwelling.]
In the middle of the kitchen, whose besooted rafters were supported by a massive beam as swarthy as themselves, was the large common hearth, the wonted square of flat stones, the logs on which were kept in place by two quaint fire-dogs; while by their embers a large green jar of earthenware was simmering with a savoury mess of chopped bean-pods, eyed from time to time lovingly by the house-sister, she who had welcomed us on entering with a bountiful apronful of apples. By the side walls were three other lesser hearths, communicating with the honeycombed stoves in the other rooms, so that one fire fed both a hearth and a stove. On these hearths reposed cylindrical pots with curious lids, and above the fire great iron caldrons, capable of providing for many mouths, were hung from the wooden arms of primitive jacks, such as I remember having seen in Finnish cottages.
The common hall contained little but a long table and two long benches, recalling, except for its honeycombed stove, the furniture of an Oxford College hall. It is here that the whole family take their meals; and in the winter time, when the stoveless summer dwellings are uninhabitable, it is here that the men take shelter from the blast to make or mend their rude implements of husbandry, and the women ply their homely looms. They told us further that this was the room in which the family met to choose their house-father or house-mother, and to transact all common business; and, since dinner is the natural time for all the family to be assembled together, it is after dinner that these matters of household economy are mooted, and the house-father, who represents the family in dealings with the authorities, and the house-mother, who shares with her consort[161] his patriarchal sway over the rest of the house-community, are elected. It is here, too, that the domestic government is thrown out if it does not continue to give satisfaction to its constituents. In short, this is their little Parliament-House, and these the earliest germs of Constitutional Government.
But we must leave Slavonia for the present, and transport ourselves back in some aërial fashion to Karlovac, from which town we are about to make our way to Siszek by the last strip of railway we were to see for many a long day. It may be that it was lucky that such a means of transit was still at our disposal, since, if we had been obliged to foot it, we must have run the gauntlet of a band of robbers then infesting the country near Petrinia. As a rule our Croatian friends were never tired of assuring us that it was beyond the frontier that these gentry flourished; and the hilly country that rose to the south-west—the Kraina, as the promontory of Turkish territory is known, which acts as a thorn in the side of Austria—was pointed out as a regular asylum for wild characters, and in fact was long the only part of the frontier where the watch-service was still needed. At the present moment, however, even the Croats were fain to admit that Bosnia was free from robbers, while their own country was insecure; and, indeed, I am afraid that this was not such an exceptional state of things as they would have had us believe, for when we arrived two days later in the Slavonian lands of the lower Save we found the whole country under martial law, owing to the murderous infestations of brigands in the Syrmian highlands; and though several had been hanged, the reign of terror was such that the military government was still continued. Indeed, just after the Austro-Prussian war, the state of Croatia had become so deplorable by reason of the increasing brigandage, that ‘Standrecht’ had to be proclaimed there, and no less than forty robbers were hung. For some time a gibbet with its ghastly appendages was to be seen from the train on nearing Agram.
On the whole, then, it was more comfortable to indulge in such reflections as we shot through the mighty oak-forest in a railway-carriage bound for Siszek, than to sneak through these mysterious shadows on foot with the feelings of one of our great-grandfathers, when doomed to traverse Hampstead Heath on a dark night. These Croatian highwaymen, however, immediately under notice, had hitherto conducted the business of the road on the most gentlemanly principles; and though a kind of ‘commercial’ with whom we travelled seemed a bit scared, even he could report no thrilling tales of bloodshed. There were sixteen of these Hajduks,[162] as the Croats called them, who had taken to outlawry to avoid the military conscription, which has just superseded the older organisation of the Granitza. Soldiers have been in pursuit, but fruitlessly, since not only are the hills about covered with unfathomable forest and hollowed—so we were told—with caverns, but the peasants, like those of Greece and Southern Italy, are in league with the brigands, supplying them with food, and refusing to reveal their hiding-places. The gendarmes, indeed, express hopes of seizing their quarry when the leaves have fallen and the snow is on the ground. Meantime they are at large. Nor let us judge too harshly of their profession, for in this old world East of Europe the Hajduk is often a gentleman in his way. ’Tis Robin Hood and his merry men who still live on, roughly redressing their wrongs in a vicarious fashion against that society which refuses them legal requital, but capable none the less of much tenderness to women and children, and discriminating their friends from the class that oppresses them. Across the Turkish frontier the cause of national freedom, hopelessly lost centuries ago on the battlefield, has been championed from generation to generation by the Hajduks of the forest mountain, in achievements not unsung by Sclavonic bards; and, likely enough, these Croatian brothers are striving too for ancient liberties, as they understand them.
It was late at night by the time we arrived at Siszek, so we were glad enough to avail ourselves of a car bound for the ‘White Ship’ inn on the Kulpa Quay, in company with a Serbian lady and her child—she disdaining not either for herself or boy the national costume of Free Serbia. And verily she had her reward. For what could be more appropriate than the rich silver embroidery flowered on the purple-velvet field of her mantle—efflorescent with the poetic yearning of the race for that gorgeous Orient, a yearning as lively as the abhorrence from its yoke—an echo from the Serbian lyre—a protest against your cold foggy West—but subdued withal by a Roman-matronly coiffure wondrously becoming to the tranquil grace of Serbian motherhood?
Arrived at our inn, we found ourselves plunged at once into Turkish society, for many Bosnian corn-merchants from Bihac, Serajevo, and other towns, betake themselves in the way of trade to Siszek. Among the group of Turks who, in various awkward and frog-like postures, were endeavouring to accommodate themselves to chairs, was an Effendi, a title which implies not only a certain grade of Turkish gentility, but an education for Bosnia most polite, namely, the ability to read and write; and, what is by no means ordinary among the Mussulman Sclaves of Bosnia, an acquaintance with Osmanlì. Thus it was with a conscious sense of superiority that our Effendi, learning our intentions in Bosnia, expressed a desire to see the pass which the Vali Pashà had been good enough to supply us with. He seemed extremely surprised to see that it was in the Vali’s own handwriting; but having convinced himself of the fact, he first read it aloud with pleasing gusto in the original Turkish, and then translated it into Bosniac for the benefit of the Sclavonic Mahometans and our Croatian landlord, with many assurances that with such an ‘open sesamé’ we should have no difficulty in unlocking the innermost fastnesses of Bosnia or even the Herzegovina, where the revolt had now broken out.
There was also a venerable Turk of singularly dignified mien, with patriarchal beard and capacious turban, who sat in mild contemplation, lulled by the measured purring of his narghilé, lost to all mundane concerns, sagely superior to the curiosity which our pass and travelling gear were exciting in less exalted bosoms, and benignantly indifferent even to the indignity of a chair. Our host told us that he was a Hadji, or pilgrim, then on his way from Buda, where he resided as a merchant, to Mecca.
_Aug. 8._—Next morning we sallied forth to explore what might remain of ancient Siscia. For we are now on classic ground. Siszek is but the corruption of a name great in all ages of imperial Rome, and greatest in the twilight of her empire. There was a time when Siscia was one of the sovereign cities of the world. She was a bulwark against barbarians, an emporium of commerce, a seat of emperors, a mother of martyrs, a gathering point for Roman-Christian Saga. And her older name, Segestica, takes us back to times prior to the Roman conquest itself, when she formed part of that Celtic empire of race, dim, commercial, reaching from Gades to the swamps of Nether Rhine; from glacial Ierné to the mouths of Ister. Segestica! we have no record of her dealings with the Adriatic votaries of Belenus,[163] nor what Taurisk gold passed current in her streets; and yet her peasant citizens of to-day plough up an abundance of bronze-age sickles as if to bear witness of her old Celtic industry and her very name calls up golden harvests of antiquity ready garnered into her warehouses from rich Pannonian plains, with a side suggestion perchance of her
Seges clypeata virorum,
that twice withstood the arms of Rome successfully, till Augustus reduced her, and made of her a stationary camp for his cohorts.
She is now Siscia, a convenient _point d’appui_ for Dacian campaigns; the winter quarters for Tiberius in his Pannonian war; by Septimius Severus made the seat of military government for his world, and so benefited by him that she took the name of Septimia Siscia. Probably under Vespasian,[164] a Roman colony had been already planted here, and Siscia became a Republic with municipal liberties modelled on those of the parent city. An inscription still recalls her Duumviri, who, in Rome’s provincial mirrors, reflected the two Consuls. Later on, Siscia becomes the chief city of Upper Pannonia; then, when Savia was made a province, the residence of its Corrector. She was the seat of an imperial treasury, and it was here that the ‘most splendid Provost of the Ironworkers’ received the revenue from Noric mines. Here, too, was established the Premier Mint of the Roman Empire; and Siscia shares with Rome herself the distinguished honour of first imprinting her name in full on the imperial currency. What numismatist does not know and covet that coin of Gallienus? or that choice piece of the Emperor who sprang from her Savian rival Sirmium (though from this legend one would think he was really of Siscia), with the proud inscription, ‘Siscia Probi Aug.’—the Siscia of Probus? On it is to be seen the personification of the queenly city, holding in her hands the laurel-wreath of empire, while at her feet her two subject rivers pour bounteously from their tributary urns.
But this medallic fertility, which has scattered the coins of Siscia over the fields of remotest Britain, was only the natural result of her commercial eminence. She was the staple of trade between the Adriatic and the Danubian basin—old Celtic trade-routes probably surviving the Roman conquest. ‘Siscia,’ says Strabo, ‘lies at the confluence of many rivers, all navigable. It is at the foot of the Alps, whose streams bear to it much merchandise, Italian and other. These are borne in waggons from Aquileja over Ocra, the lowest part of the Alps, to Nauportus, and thence by the Corcoras into the Save,’—and so to Siscia. The wine and oil wafted from more southern climes into the havens of that Venice of Roman Adria; the carpets and woollens of Patavium that rumbled into her markets by the Æmilian Way; the furs and amber that the barbarian dealers bore her from the cold shores of the Baltic, and Fennic forests; perhaps, too, her own costly wine stored up in wooden barrels—all these, we may believe, and more, were piled on the Aquilejan waggons and dragged up the Alpine steep by oxen, thence to be floated down the Save to the Siscian wharves. In the markets of Siscia the Aquilejese merchants might lay in their stock of grain, or hides, or keen Noric steel, and take their pick of cattle, or tattooed Illyrian slaves. From the whole of Eastern Europe wares might flow together here; for not only was Siscia at the confluence of the Save and Kulpa, but she was at the junction of great roads, which, with their branches, connected her with the Upper and Lower Danube, with the interior of Dalmatia as well as her coast-land, and with Nauportus and Italy, overland.
Not long ago an interesting relic was found in Croatia, which perhaps speaks more clearly than anything else of the majesty to which Siscia ultimately attained. It is a cedarn chest, once gilt, on which are carved, by a late Roman hand, what are meant to be personifications of the five premier cities of the Roman world. In the centre—
Prima urbes inter, Divum domus, Aurea Roma,[165]
Rome, with her usual attributes of helmet, spear, and shield, is enthroned as a goddess. To her right two more female figures, distinguished by scrolls as Constantinople and Carthage, hold wreaths in their hands and look towards Rome. On her left, two other goddess-cities do the same; one is Nicomedia, the other Siscia. The carving is probably fourth-century work; and certainly, exalted as is the position claimed on it for Siscia, it is almost borne out by her coinage of the same period, for the activity of her mint shows that her commercial splendour was still at its zenith down to at least the days of Theodosius the Great; while the coins of her rival Sirmium wax fewer and fewer, and finally cease altogether. For Sirmium may have been of greater value as a military station,[166] and perhaps a pleasanter residence for emperors and bishops, and therefore of greater administrative importance, and of more frequent mention by historians; but that she was a greater city than Siscia—as is so confidently assumed by some writers—may reasonably be doubted, and the very bustle of Siscian markets may have deterred princes from fixing here their court.
The comparatively high state of Siscian civilisation is also attested by her coins—those superb medallions of gold and silver—those gems of the fourth-century monetary art that stand out among the poorer products of mints Gallic and Britannic. But what distinguishes the Siscian coins as much as their workmanship is their peculiarly Christian character. It is here that the first purely Christian type—that, namely, which alludes to the vision of Constantine, first makes its appearance—indeed, during the fourth century the sacred monogram may almost be regarded as a Siscian mint-mark. And we know from other sources that Christianity had early struck root here; for not only is its existence attested by two sepulchral inscriptions of Roman date discovered here, but its vitality is celebrated by a relation of Jerome and a hymn of Prudentius,[167] recording the martyrdom of a Siscian citizen and bishop, Quirinus:—
Insignem meriti virum Quirinum placitum Deo, Urbis mœnia Sisciæ Concessum sibi martyrem Complexu patrio fovent.
It was during the persecution of Diocletian and ‘Duke’ Galerius, as Prudentius styles him, that Quirinus, bishop of Siscia, refused to burn incense on the heathen altar at the bidding of the Governor Maximus, on the plea—countenanced, indeed, by inspired writers, but which a little philology would have spared him—‘that all the gods of the Gentiles were demons.’ ‘If you will allow,’ said Maximus, ‘that the gods which the Roman Empire serves are powerful, you shall be made priest to the great god Jove, otherwise you shall be sent to Amantius, præfect of First Pannonia, and receive from him condign sentence of death.’ The stout-hearted bishop, refusing these terms, is sent to Sabaria, where he is tried and condemned in the theatre, and with a millstone round his neck is thrown from the bridge above into the river; when, lo! despite the weight of rock, the water miraculously supports him:—
Dejectum placidissimo Amnis vertice suscipit; Nec mergi patitur sibi, Miris vasta natatibus Saxi pondera sustinens,
till, having exhorted the faithful and confounded the heathen from his watery pulpit, his spirit ascends and the laws of gravity resume their sway.
In the dark period which followed the barbarian invasions, something of her old secular glory was still reflected in the Siscian Church. After the destruction of Sirmium by the Huns in 441, Siscia transferred her ecclesiastical allegiance to Salona. Her decline was more lingering than that of her rival, for her prosperity had rested on a more solid foundation. Her bishops survive the settlement of the Sclaves hereabouts in the time of Heraclius. In the ninth century we find her the residence of a Sclavonic prince; but she suffered from the Frankish invasion, and in the tenth century was finally razed by the Magyars. Now at last the Siscian episcopate dies out, to live again with renewed splendour at Agram.
The old walls of Siscia are traced in a pear-shaped form on the left bank of the Kulpa between it and the Save. But just outside our inn, on the right bank of the river, we came upon several fragments of old Siscia, some sculptures and inscriptions walled into the foundations of modern houses. In the tympanum of a door are three sculptures, one of which may be meant for Apollo, though only the head and half the body survive, and another for Andromeda; these two of base art; but the third, a griffin, of somewhat better work. Here and there were stumps of columns, and Roman tiles might be seen still in use. On the hill above, still on the right side of the Kulpa, the wooden cottages almost always rested on foundations composed of Roman blocks, amongst which many inscriptions may lie hid, though we discovered none that had not already been conscientiously described by Agram antiquaries. It was strange, however, to observe how the irony of fate had converted to modern utility the pomp of ancient funerals and the furniture of the ‘immortal gods’! A Roman altar, with its face and what inscription there may have been (for we could not get it raised), buried in the dust, had been turned into a seat for Croat wives; a Roman sarcophagus in one of the cottage yards had been converted into a horse-trough, and another had been emended so as to form a serviceable sofa.
On the summit of the heights which here overlook the river is the site of a Roman cemetery, and the owner of the vineyards where most of the remains had been discovered kindly showed us over his domain. Many fine sarcophagi—the best of which are to be seen in the Agram museum—had been dug up here, containing the usual amount of coins, lamps, urns, and ashes, amongst which the skull-bones were most distinguishable. In one place we were shown a Roman conduit, square in shape, and the outside glazed as if by a conflagration. Near the old cemetery might be seen Roman walls, and some cottage foundations consisting entirely of Roman tiles.
The most interesting Roman fragments were, however, on the left side of the Kulpa, where the town walls are traceable, in a garden by the railway-station. There we found an altar with an inscription[168] showing that it was dedicated to Ceres, with a vase and patera engraved on one side, and on the other a jar full of spikes of corn. Close by lay mutilations of what once had been Corinthian capitals, with rich acanthus-leaves decayed by many winters; fragments of a marble frieze with wavy vine-sprays loaded with bunches of grapes fit for the Land of Promise; besides, other marble bits on which were sculptured beakers and telescopic flowers unknown to botanists, and spiral knot-work which seemed almost Byzantine. It was pleasant to believe that they all formed part of a temple of the corn-goddess, though I doubt whether all the fragments could be attributed either to the same building or the same age; and perhaps Father Liber or Isis, whose altars have also been discovered here, may lay as good claim to some of these vinous and floral devices as Mother Ceres.
But whatever view be taken, these remains are interesting as an illustration of the old position of Siscia as centre of a corn and vine-growing district; nor indeed are they inappropriate even to her present state. The present town of Siszek derives what trade she possesses mainly from the transport of cereals. Hither the maize and wheat from the rich alluvial plains of the Banat and the Possávina, as well as from the interior of Bosnia, are conveyed by the Save and its tributaries; for Siszek is the point where the land-carriage to the north and west commences, and she really stands to Trieste and Fiume, with respect to the traffic between the Danubian basin and the Adriatic, in much the same relation as her Roman ancestress stood to Aquileja. Siszek has two really busy seasons in the year—in the spring when the maize crop is gathered, and again the corn harvest in August and September; and at these times her population, normally reckoned at 3,800, rises to twice, or even, it is said, to three times that number. The town, however, like many other sites of Roman cities, is not so healthy as it was in former times, and a curious plague of emerods is epidemic here. This decrease of salubrity is attributed by the Siszekers themselves to the great destruction of forests that has taken place in the neighbourhood; with what reasons, let doctors decide.
However, modern science and drainage may probably be trusted to remedy the present unhealthy state of the Siscian atmosphere; and it requires no extraordinary gift of prophecy to be able to foresee for Siszek a glorious future, and to predict that, before many years are passed, she will have done much to regain the splendour of Roman Siscia, whose functions, as we have seen, she still to a certain extent performs. For she has been dowered with a situation destined by nature for a great emporium of commerce, nor are signs wanting that the fulfilment of her destiny is at hand. Already Siszek is fixed as the point at which the railway that is to connect Western Europe directly with Stamboul, and eventually perhaps the furthest Orient, is to meet the lines leading to Vienna and Trieste, and another line is projected, connecting Siszek directly with the Adriatic.
Siszek used to be divided by the Kulpa into the civil and military towns, the latter under ‘regimental’ government; but since the new legislation the whole has been placed under the municipal authorities. In neither half is there anything worth seeing except the Roman remains.
On the bank of the Kulpa, however, just at the confluence with the Save, about a mile from Siszek, rises the old castle of Caprag, built in a triangular form, with a round conical-roofed tower at each corner. This castle brings home to us the old days when the Empire was engaged in a life and death struggle with the Turk. It was built in the sixteenth century, with the Emperor Ferdinand’s permission, by the bishop and canons of Agram, and in 1592-3 it was gallantly defended against the Pashà of Bosnia by two canons of the cathedral chapter; till, after withstanding two sieges successfully, it yielded to a third attempt, and for a year belonged to the Infidel.[169]
As we were exploring the former military quarter of Siszek, whose habitations, tenanted by the ordinary peasants of the Granitza, are for the most part mere huts, as compared with the more stylish houses of the civil town, our ears were saluted by sounds of unearthly revelry proceeding from a neighbouring wine-shop. Entering it, we found ourselves in the midst of a Croat merrymaking: an orchestra of four men strumming on tamburas and tamburitzas as for dear life, and accompanied by such a whisking, and whirling, and stamping as never was! The dance they were engaged in when we went in was known to them as the Kardatz, to the Germans as ‘Kroatisch’—though the Croats say that it was taught them by the Magyars. Properly it was danced by the women alone, but there were often enough male interlopers. It is so pretty that it deserves to be known beyond the limits of Croatia; so I will give the general arrangement of the dance, as far as I could catch it.
Six Croat maidens—any number divisible by six and two would do as well—sorted themselves into two groups of three, which for awhile seemed to ignore each other’s existence, the sisters of each triad alternately dancing to one another, and then joining hands, like three Graces as they were, and circling round; till of a sudden the rival orbits seemed to feel each other’s influence, a quick _rapprochement_ took place, and all six, interlacing their arms, tripped round in a fairy ring, faces outwards, till a starry disruption once more surprised us, and in a twinkling the revolving orb was split up into a new triad of twin constellations spinning round on their separate axes, till it made one giddy to look at them—ribbons, kerchiefs, and cometic plaits—and, sooth to say, the nebulous envelopes of the statuesque!—flying off centrifugally.
The dance was in parts surprisingly graceful; and the dancers, though mostly homely, were certainly prettier than the average North-German _Bauerin_. Their hair was inclined to light shades which one hardly expected to see in so southern a clime, and their eyes were generally blue. There was one maiden, however, more comely than the rest, with dark almond eyes and raven hair, of a strange type, that one meets with now and again in South-Sclavonic regions; a waif from the lands of the morning, an Oriental beauty shrouded in no winding-sheet and entombed in no harem, but set off by the light white muslin of Croatia.
Then there were other dances in which the men performed, which were distinguished by stamping, and every now and then interrupted by a comic ‘spoken.’ We heard some songs, too; such as one would imagine might break from a flock of sheep if they were to burst into spontaneous melody—a wearisome succession of baa-baas, varied at intervals by an attempt to see how long they could keep on at one note! The poverty of the instruments seemed to narrow the range of the human voice.
Next morning betimes we bade farewell to Siszek, and took a passage on the Save steamer for Brood, from which place we were to begin our foot journey through Bosnia. During the early part of the voyage there was little to see. Mud banks lined with willows, now and then villages of dark timber, where, within the palings of the large house-communities, were clustered together several dwelling-houses of tea-caddy shape and somewhat pagoda-like appearance, due to their having eaves projecting over the ground-floor as well as the upper storey. The Save, as we enter it, takes a muddier hue than the Kulpa, which at Siszek possessed something of the emerald purity of a limestone stream. Opposite the confluence of the Save and Unna was Jassenovac, taken and held for awhile by the Pashà of Bosnia in 1536, after the battle of Mohacz; it is a small town of about 1,100 inhabitants, and, being built on piles, is sometimes called New Amsterdam. It might also recall the Swiss lake-dwellings, to restorations of which many Granitza villages bear a certain family likeness; but I doubt if the boats that float off Jassenovac are not even more primitive than those of the old lake-dwellers, for they are simply great oak-trunks hollowed out in a Crusoe-like fashion. Further on we passed floating mills, paddle-boats of Noah’s Ark-like construction anchored in the current, or left behind us large flat barges which looked like giant cockchafers turned over on their backs.
We are now on the watery boundary-line between Christendom and Islâm, and the contrast between the two shores is one of the most striking that can be imagined, recalling that between the Bulgarian and Wallachian banks of the Lower Danube. On one side Croat men, white tunicked and white breeked, with blue vests, and fringes of homely lace to their trowsers; bare-legged women, with the shortest of apron-skirts, washing their linen in the shallows, coifed in the rosy Rubatz. Now and then a town, white houses and bulbous church-spires, and citizens in the mourning hues of Western civilisation. On the other bank minarets and narrow wooden streets, gorgeous Turkish officials, brilliant maidens and mummied dames, cheerful fezzes and red Bosnian turbans; and it is to be remarked that the men on the Turkish bank, owing to their wearing such comparatively shadeless head-gear, are distinctly more sunburnt than the Slavonians of the Austrian side in their broad, black, felt wideawakes. The one side was cold and dull, if comparatively clean; the other dirty but magnificent.
Various types illustrative of the South Sclavonic world are to be seen on deck: a Syrmian woman of an Oriental cast of feature already spoken of, with dark hair and eyes, and a purple skirt; the grave hadji whose acquaintance we had made at Siszek, who vouchsafes me a majestic nod of recognition; a Dalmatiner—one of those Italianised Sclaves who man the Austrian navy—with blue sailor-blouse and bright red sash, sounds the shallows, when the steamer slackens speed, with a long pole. A Slavonian of that dissipated type which becomes more frequent as we approach Syrmia, the mother-country of the famed plum-brandy—the Syrmian slivovitz—with low eyebrows, a ferocious moustache and an eminently Sclavonic nose, is caught by our artist napping, and pocketed as below.[170] Beyond Gradisca we came to the prettiest part of the river scenery, where the watery mirror reflects the undulations of wooded hills; thence on and on through this magnificent oak forest—some of the finest timber in all Europe—the home of wolves and bears and sovereign eagles, and a few days later to be the refuge of the panic-stricken Christian refugees of Bosnia.
As we neared our destination the question arose whether we should sleep in the Austrian or Turkish town of Brood; but we decided, from a previous slight acquaintance with a Bosnian town, that we were more likely to secure sleep on the Austrian side, where, accordingly, we landed and put up at the comfortable ‘Red House,’ and presently went out to take stock of the place. Slavonian Brood is a large wooden village, more abominably paved, or rather cobbled, than any town I remember. What especially struck us was the chimneys, which are of every kind of shape and material, stone and wooden, capped with canopies arched and peaked; and suggesting in turn huts, towers, haystacks, tunnels, toadstools, and umbrellas!
Now, whether it was the fact that we took out our sketch-books to immortalise, so far as in us lay, these sooty orifices, or whether in the way in which we eyed them there was something of the insidious invader, certain it is that our motions did not escape the observation of an active and intelligent gendarme, who ‘knew directly,’ as he afterwards expressed it to a Croat who gave us the relation with great glee, ‘that we were Russian spies.’ Acting on which supposition with commendable alacrity, he came up and demanded our pass. Now there is a natural tendency amongst Englishmen to resent such a demand as an antiquated absurdity; but our official was so honeyed in manner, so profuse of ‘_bittes_’ and protestations of ‘_Pflicht_,’ that we could not find it in our hearts to refuse to satisfy the poor fellow’s curiosity. Whereupon our friend looked at the paper and twisted it first to one side and then to another; and as he did not understand one word of it, shook his head very wisely and handed it to his mate, who, not understanding any more, shook his head more sagely still, and handed it us back, professing—sly dog!—that they were satisfied.
Those chimneys were ‘the beginnings of evils!’
We, however, had not recognised the first drops of the thunderstorm, and, proceeding tranquilly on our way, strolled down past an old church and monastery to the high bank overlooking the Save. It was a beautiful picture!—a glorious sunset, crimson, golden, opalescent, mirrored on the silvery expanse of quiet waters, broken only by a small green island where stately oak-trees huddled together in mid-flood like the giants of an older world;—far beyond the sky-line, mingling with the mysterious blue of distant mountains; on the Slavonian bank, pale rows of poplars and conical haystacks, in relief against the dark fringe of primeval forest; on the further side, a verandahed guardhouse and the tip of a minaret—a fore-glimpse of another world—and hark! as the sun goes down, the solemn tones of the muezzin are faintly borne by the evening breeze to the shores of that Christendom which once rang with _Allah akbar_!
But we roused ourselves from the reveries which such a scene could not fail to awaken, for the darkness was gathering, and a voice within bade us seek the good cheer of our inn; when we were arrested by the sounds of music and the sight of a booth near the market-place, and, finding that a peep-show was going on, paid our kreutzers and went in. A moonlight view of the Tuileries is hardly what one would go to Brood to see, and we were beginning to think the show a trifle dull, when the serenity of the sightseers was broken in upon by the abrupt entry of two police-officers, and from their evident designs on some person or persons unknown we were congratulating ourselves on the prospect of a more lively spectacle. These expectations were indeed justified by the two officials pouncing upon L⸺ and myself, and ordering us to accompany them immediately to the Commissär of Police.
‘Tell the Commissär of Police that if he wants to see us he had better come himself,’ said I, who acted as our spokesman.
‘Very sorry, sir,’ said the official addressed, ‘but our orders were to bring you.’
‘Tell him,’ I said, ‘that we are Englishmen, and are not accustomed to be treated in this way!’
Here a Slavonian gentleman intervened. He said that there must be some misunderstanding; that it was a most unfortunate occurrence; but, in fact, these men had orders to arrest us if we did not follow them at once.
Evidently, to avoid a row, there was nothing for it but to take his advice; so we were marched along the streets of Brood with a gendarme on each side of us, to all intents and purposes under arrest; till at last, in no very accommodating humour, we arrived at the official’s house, a long way off in the suburbs. Here we were stumped through a court, and then ushered into a dirty little room, where we found his highness seated at table in his shirt-sleeves, chewing a Coriolanan meal of maize. He did not get up from his chair to receive us, or even offer us a seat; but glancing at us in a way which made us wish to knock him down and conclude the business offhand, asked us in a surly and (we fancied) a slightly husky voice who we were. ‘We are Englishmen,’ replied I, in German. ‘Give me your pass!’ shouted the Commissär in a still rougher tone; ‘what do you mean by entering the town without reporting yourselves to ME?’
To which I replied that he ought to know as well as we did that travellers could pass from one town in the monarchy to another without being subjected to such annoying regulations; but that, so far as Brood was concerned, we had as a matter of fact already shown our passes to two gendarmes. What was more, we need scarcely inform him that at the present time Englishmen could pass into Austria, just as Austrians into England, without a passport being demanded. ‘And I think, sir,’ I added, ‘as you wished to see us, it would have been more civil if you had called in person at our hotel.’
A Polizei-Commissär, bearded in his den by tramps and vagabonds like us—it was too much for his petty Majesty! Any strictures on the ceremonial of his state reception which I may have held in reserve, were cut short by his roaring out, in a still more insufferable tone, ‘I tell you I will see your pass!’
‘Sir,’ I replied, ‘just to prove to you that we _are_ Englishmen, and out of pure courtesy, we are willing to show you our pass; but we must nevertheless protest that you have no right whatever to demand it!’
‘No right!’ screamed the P.-C., almost choking with rage, and bouncing from his chair with a spoon in one hand, and a maize-stalk in the other. ‘_I_ no RIGHT! We’ll soon see about that. Take them off!’ he cried to his satellites; ‘take them off, I say, to the lock-up. Remove him!’—as I attempted to insert the thin end of a protest, and hurled a few consuls, ambassadors, thrones and dominions, at the official’s head; while the gendarmes, seeing that it was a disgraceful business, hesitated to carry out their chief’s commands—‘Do you hear me? I tell you they shall pass the night in gaol. They shall show me their pass to-morrow. Quick!’ And we left him muttering ‘No right!’
Meanwhile rumours of the successful capture and impending doom of two outrageous disturbers of the peace had spread throughout the length and breadth of Brood, and all Brood was rapidly assembling to see the majesty of the law vindicated on our persons; so that when we were led forth again by the police, we were followed through the streets by a kind of funeral _cortége_. Presently we turned down another larger court, and, ascending some steps, found ourselves on a raised platform outside the door of our intended prison, from which I seized the opportunity of addressing a kind of scaffold speech to the assembled soldiers and people, which at least had the effect of delaying our incarceration.
I endeavoured to urge on them the seriousness of what was about to take place. Two Englishmen, travelling under the protection of a passport which they were willing to produce, were about to be cast into a dungeon on the mere fiat of a petty magistrate. That for ourselves, gross as was the indignity, we regretted it principally for the sake of the Polizei-Commissär. That it would be but merciful to allow him a short space for repentance; and here I sketched out vaguely some of the tremendous consequences which such conduct might bring down on his head. That they, too, the gendarmes, would do well to think twice before lending a hand in such a business. That Brood itself might rue the day; nor did I neglect this opportunity to call up an apparition of a British fleet on the Save. Finally, I enquired who was the highest authority in Brood, and hearing that it was the Stadthauptmann, or Mayor, despatched a gendarme to beg that functionary’s immediate attendance.
We flatter ourselves that this harangue was not without its effect on our audience, who mostly understood German; but the minions of the law must obey, and the police ushered us into a wretched cell some seven feet by ten, quite dark, with a daïs of bare boards to sleep on. We were allowed neither light, nor straw, nor water; and when we asked for food—for we were very hungry, having tasted nothing since noon, and it being now dusk—that was also refused, till we offered a bribe to the officer, who then saw the matter in quite a different light. He then left the dungeon, the iron bolt grated in the lock, and we prepared to shift for the night as best we might. Outside we heard a voice of weeping, proceeding apparently from a woman and a child, as if touched at our sad fate—though L⸺ preferred to believe that the sobs were due to the prospective annihilation of the Commissär. Had our sympathisers listened, they would have heard a sound of chuckling within, which might have been a considerable relief to their feelings.
Yet, we had not dined.
But our threats had begun to work on the official mind of Brood, and, as it afterwards turned out, they were seconded by no less an advocate than the leader of the National party in the Croatian Diet, Dr. Makanec, who, fired with that enthusiasm for the cause of freedom which shortly after led him to secede with his party from a bureaucratic assembly, made such representations to the Mayor on the outrageous conduct of the Commissär, and its probable consequences, as moved his worship to immediate action.
Thus it was, that we had not been in durance vile half-an-hour when hurried footsteps were heard in the court. The door of our cell was thrown open, and the Stadthauptmann was before us, bowing and scraping, and entreating us with the most profuse apologies to step out. He protested that it was an unfortunate misunderstanding, and as he had not offended us we were the more ready to grant him pardon, and permitted ourselves to be escorted in triumph by his whole _posse comitatus_ down the street, his worship affecting the most polite interest in our tour.
Thus we returned victoriously to our inn, where we were met by our host, who had been expecting us for dinner for some time, with the expressive question ‘Eingesperrt?’ (‘Locked up?’) ‘Eingesperrt!’ said I. ‘So was my waiter a day or two ago,’ continued our host. ‘What for?’ we demanded. ‘Ah! that I cannot tell you.’ ‘The fellow ought to be shot!’ chimed in the aggrieved waiter. It appeared that the Commissär was a petty tyrant in the place, and our successful stand against his insolence created everywhere in Brood the liveliest sensations of delight. But why should the Brooders have left it to stray Englishmen to beard their despot? and which is the viler, the people who knock under to such arbitrary treatment, or the government which delegates to its officials the license to abuse the personal liberties of its subjects? This is not the first time that, for an equally paltry charge, I have seen the inside of an Austro-Hungarian prison. The free life of the great cities of the empire deceives those foreigners whose observations have been confined to the _Prater_; what ought to be realised is, that while London in a sense extends all over England, Pest and Vienna are bounded by their suburbs. The truth is, that the Metternichian régime has not died out entirely in the country districts. But when, as I believe was the case in this instance, the traditions of the ‘Police-State’ are followed out by Magyar—or at least _Magyarizing_—officials, there is less excuse for such conduct, and the Hungarians should be warned that, by setting up an alien and oppressive bureaucracy in their Sclavonic Provinces they are not likely to retain the high opinion which their noble stand against similar tyranny has won for them among Englishmen.
[Illustration: Head of Sclavonian.]