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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MOXTIILY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



aid of the Ottoman Turks. In 1356 he closed a 

 prosperous career by a sudden death. On the 

 fatal field of Kossovo, in 1389, treachery allied 

 itself with Ottoman prowess to bring about the 

 defeat of the Servian army ; and again it was by 

 treacherous advances that a qualified subjection 

 was converted into an absolute servitude. The 

 West, with all its chivalry, can cite no grander 

 examples of martial heroism than those of Marko 

 Kraljevitch, so fondly cherished in the Servian 

 lands, and of George Castriotes or Scanderbeg, 

 known far and wide, and still commemorated by 

 the name of a vicolo of Eome. 



The indifference, or even contempt, with which 

 we are apt to regard this field of history, ought 

 to be displaced by a more rational, as well as 

 more honorable, sentiment of gratitude. It was 

 these races, principally Slavonian, who had to 

 encounter in its unbroken strength, and to reduce, 

 the mighty wave, of which only the residue, pass- 

 ing the Danube and the Save, all but overwhelmed 

 iiot Hungary alone, but Austria and Poland. It 

 was with a Slavonian population that the Austrian 

 emperor fortified the north bank of the Save, in 

 the formation of the famous Military Frontier. 

 It was Slav resistance, unaided by the West, which 

 abated the impetus of the Ottoman attack just to 

 such a point, that its reserve force became capa- 

 ble of being checked by European combinations. 

 Among the Servian lands was the flourishing 

 principality of Zeta. It took its name from the 

 stream which flows southward from the mountain 

 citadel toward the lake of Scutari. It comprised 

 the territory now known as Montenegro or Tser- 

 nagora, together with the seaward frontier, of 

 which a niggardly and unworthy jealousy had not 

 then deprived it, and with the rich and fair plains 

 encircling the irregular outline of the inhospitable 

 mountain. Land after land had given way ; but 

 Zeta ever stood firm under the Balchid family. 

 At last, in 1478, Scutari was taken on the south, 

 and in 1483 the ancestors of the still brave popu- 

 lation of Herzegovina on the north submitted to 

 the Ottomans. Ivan Tchernoievitch, the Monte- 

 negrin hero of the day, hard pressed on all sides, 

 applied to the Venetians for the aid he had often 

 given, and was refused. Thereupon he, and his 

 people with him, quitted, in 1484, the sunny tracts 

 in which they had basked for some seven hundred 

 years, and sought, on the rocks and amidst the 

 precipices, surety for the two gifts, by far the most 

 precious to mankind, their faith and their free- 

 dom. To them, as to the Pomaks of Bulgaria, 

 and the Bosnian Begs, it was open to purchase 

 by conformity a debasing peace. Before them, 



as before others, lay the trinoda nccessitas, the 

 alternatives of death, slavery, or the Koran. 

 They were not to die, for they had a work to do. 

 To the Koran or to slavery they preferred a life 

 of cold, want, hardship, and perpetual peri!. 

 Such is their Magna Charla ; and, without re- 

 proach to others, it is, as far as I know, the no- 

 blest in the world. 



To become a centre for his mountain-home, 

 Ivan had built a monastery at Cettinje, and de- 

 clared the place to be the metropolis of Zeta. 

 What is most of all remarkable in the whole 

 transaction is, that he carried with him into the 

 hills a printing-press. 1 This was in 1484, in a 

 petty principality ; they were men worsted in 

 war, and flying for their lives. Again, it was 

 only seven years after the earliest volume had 

 been printed by Caxton in the rich and populous 

 metropolis of England, and when there was no 

 printing-press in Oxford, or in Cambridge, or in 

 Edinburgh. It was only sixteen years after the 

 first printing-press had been established (1468) 

 in Rome, the capital of Christendom ; only twen- 

 ty-eight years after the appearance (1456) of the 

 earliest printed book, the first-born of the great 

 discovery. Then and there — 



"They few, they happy few, they band of brothers, 1 ' 3 



voted unanimously their fundamental law, that, 

 in time of war against the Turk, no son of Tser- 

 nagora could quit the field without the order of 

 his chief; that a runaway should be forever dis- 

 graced, and banished from his people ; that he 

 should be dressed in woman's clothes, and pre- 

 sented with a distaff; and that the women, strik- 

 ing him with their distaffs, should hunt the cow- 

 ard away from the sanctuary of freedom. 



And, now for four centuries wanting only 

 seven years, they have maintained in full force 

 the covenant of that awful day, through an un- 

 broken series of trials, of dangers, and of ex- 

 ploits, to which it is hard to find a parallel in the 

 annals of Europe, perhaps even of mankind. 



It was not to be expected that the whole mass 

 of any race or people should have the almost pre- 

 terhuman energy which their lot required. All 

 along, from time to time, the weaker brethren 

 have fallen away ; and there were those who said 

 to Ivan, as the Israelites said to Moses, " Where- 

 fore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, 

 to bring us unto this evil place?" 3 The great 

 Ivan died in 1490, and was succeeded by his el- 

 dest son, George, who in 1499 was persuaded by 



1 Frilley and "Wlahoviti. p. 18. 

 2 Shakespeare, " Henry V. 1 ' * Numbers xx. 5. 



