Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle | Page 9

known Vladika
Petar and Vuko Radonitch, the new Gubernator, summoned the
tribesmen, swooped down on Cattaro, stormed the Trinity fort and
captured Budua. A short-lived triumph. Russia, wishing peace with
Austria and having no further use for Montenegro, ordered the Vladika
to yield his newly conquered lands and they were formally allotted to
Austria by Treaty.
During these years the resurrection of Serbia was taking place. In this
Montenegro was unable to take active part, being more than enough
occupied with her own affairs. But the Vladika himself sang
Karageorge's heroism and tried to send a force to his aid.
Vladika Petar I died in 1830. He left Montenegro larger and stronger
than he found it, for he had worked hard to unite the ever-quarrelling
tribes by establishing laws to suppress blood-feuds. Inability to cohere

is ever the curse of Slav lands. Only a strong autocrat has as yet welded
them. Petar earned the fame he bears in the land.
His body is to this day deeply reverenced by the superstitious
mountaineers. Some years after burial it was found to have been
miraculously preserved from decay and he was thereupon canonized
under the name of St. Petar Cetinski.
When dying he nominated as his successor his nephew Rada, then a lad
not yet in holy orders, and made his chiefs swear to support him.
Such an irregular proceeding as appointing a youth of seventeen to an
Archbishopric could hardly have been carried out, even in the Balkans,
had it not been for the terror of a dead man's curse--a thing still dreaded
in the land. And also for the fact that Rada's election had the support
too of Vuko Radonitch the Gubernator.
Vuko hoped doubtless to obtain the upper hand over such a young rival.
Rada, with no further training, was at once consecrated as Vladika
Petar II by the Bishop of Prizren and this strange consecration was
confirmed later at Petersburg, whither the young Petrovitch duly went.
Russia has all along consistently furthered her influence and plans in
the Balkans by planting suitable Bishops as political agents. Russia was
now powerful in Montenegro. A Russian officer led the clans a-raiding
into Turkey and returned with so many decapitated heads to adorn
Cetinje, that the Tsar thought fit to protest. The tug between Austria
and Russia continued. Vuko, the Gubernator, and his party, finding the
youthful Archbishop taking the upper hand with Russian aid, entered
into negotiations with Austria. The plot was, however, detected. Vuko
fled to Austria. His brother was assassinated; the family house at
Nyegushi was burnt down and the family exiled. Russia would tolerate
no influence but her own and had begun in fact the same policy she
afterwards developed in Serbia. From that date--1832--the office of
Gubernator was abolished. Imitation is the sincerest flattery. The
Petrovitches began to model themselves on their patrons, the Tsars, and
strove for absolutism.

Petar II ranks high as author and poet. He further organized the laws
against the blood-feuds which were sapping the strength of the nation
and ingeniously ordered a murderer to be shot by a party made up of
one man from each tribe. As the relatives of the dead man could not
possibly avenge themselves on every tribe in the land the
murder-sequence had perforce to end. To reconcile public opinion to
this form of punishment he permitted the condemned man to run for his
life. If the firing party missed him, he was pardoned. The point gained
was that the murder became the affair of the central government, not of
the local one.
Petar also did much to start education in the land. He died before he
was forty of tuberculosis, in 1851, one of the early victims of the
disease which shortly afterwards began to ravage Montenegro and has
killed many Petrovitches.
He named as his successor his nephew Danilo.
Danilo's accession is a turning point in Montenegrin history. He at once
stated that he did not wish to enter holy orders and would accept
temporal power only. He was, in fact, about to marry a lady who was
an Austrian Slav. For this, the consent of Russia had to be obtained, for
till now it was through the Church that Russia had ruled in Montenegro.
She had ever--with the sole exception of the usurper Stefan
Mali--supported the Vladika against the Gubernator. This office was,
however, now abolished. There had been difficulty more than once
about transmitting the ruling power from uncle to nephew. Russia
decided that she could obtain a yet firmer hold of the land if she
established a directly hereditary dynasty. Danilo was proclaimed Prince
and ecclesiastical affairs alone were to be administered by the Bishop.
The Sultan who had accepted the rule of the Bishop in Montenegro as
in other Christian districts, protested