SERVIA. 



775 



to its ultimate conclusions the liberal Constitu- 

 tion extracted from King Milan at his abdica- 

 tion. Radical rule was wrecked on the rock 

 of finance, and when the Government became 

 insolvent, and a system of foreign control had 

 to be accepted in regard to a part of the revenue, 

 M. Ristich succeeded in ousting the Radicals and 

 gaining the offices for his own party, which set 

 to work exterminating the Radicals in order to 

 make the tenure secure. The country was drift- 

 ing toward civil war when the young King, on 

 April 1, 1893, declared himself of age, dismissed 

 the regents, and abrogated the Constitution. Ex- 

 King Milan, who had suggested the coup d'etat, 

 was recalled from banishment, and, though re- 

 siding much of the time abroad and keeping in 

 the background at first, guided with his cunning 

 hand the policy of his son, becoming gradually 

 bolder, until, having effected a- formal reunion 

 with Queen Natalie, he was appointed generalissi- 

 mo of the Servian army in 1898. At the elections 

 which followed the Radicals were only allowed 

 to send one Deputy to the Skupshtina, and he 

 immediately resigned. 



In the session of the Skupshtina which closed 

 on Jan. 23, 1899, a general tariff was adopted, 

 with other measures designed to strengthen the 

 finances of the state. The Russian minister, M. 

 Jadovski, lost no opportunity of showing dissat- 

 isfaction with the presence of ex-King Milan, 

 who in violation of his compact to reside abroad 

 and interfere no more in Servian affairs was now 

 the supreme military dictator. Early in March 

 M. Jadovski departed from Belgrade, leaving Rus- 

 sian interests in the care of a charge d'affaires. 



In the spring border fights occurred between 

 Servian peasants and their Mohammedan neigh- 

 tors, who had driven many of the Christians out 

 of the Turkish vilayet of Kossovo and forced 

 them to emigrate into Servia. This engendered 

 conflicts, in which the frontier was violated on 

 both sides. A serious affray took place on June 

 16, when a large body of Albanians gathered 

 threateningly on the border was fired upon by 

 Servians in ambush and Turkish nizams from 

 the neighboring fort joined in the fighting. The 

 Servian Government dispatched 8 battalions to 

 the spot, informing the Porte that it was com- 

 pelled to provide protection for the frontier, since 

 Turkish promises to respect it had proved un- 

 trustworthy. The Turkish Government replied 

 that the Ottoman troops had only acted in self- 

 defense when they were fired upon and some of 

 them killed by Servian gendarmes. The Al- 

 banians, who had recently been supplied with 

 Mauser rifles from the Turkish arsenals, returned 

 to their homes, and the incident was closed, with- 

 out the blame being fixed on either side, by the 

 appointment of a joint commission to prevent fur- 

 ther disorders. 



On July 0, as ex-King Milan was driving 

 through one of the principal streets of Belgrade, 

 a political adventurer fired at him twice with 

 a revolver, grazing his body. His aid-de-camp 

 interposed and received a wound, and as the 

 would-be assassin was seized he fired a fourth 

 shot at his own head, but missed. He was a 

 Bosnian, who had served in the fire department, 

 a young man named Giuro Knezevich, who im- 

 plicated several of his acquaintances and told 

 a story of going to Roumania and receiving a 

 thousand imperials frbm a stranger, presumably 

 the Karageorgevich pretender or his agent. Prince 

 Alexis Karageorgevich, son-in-law of Prince Nico- 

 las of Montenegro, was heard of at this time 

 in a Hungarian town near the Servian frontier. 

 A suspicious character who gave the name of 



Krezovich, a Turkish subject, had recently been 

 arrested and had given information against promi- 

 nent members of the Radical party. Other in- 

 formers told of peasants who had predicted a 

 change of Government in a few days. King Milan 

 assumed that there was a widespread conspiracy 

 to overturn the Obrenovich dynasty in favor of 

 Peter or Alexis Karageorgevich or the Prince of 

 Montenegro. He assumed that all his enemies 

 and critics were involved in it. Martial law was 

 proclaimed, and all the leaders of the Radical 

 party and the independent writers and speakers 

 who had expressed disapproval of the Government 

 were arrested, as well as the persons incriminated 

 by Knezevich's confession and the villages who 

 hoped for the return of the Radicals to power. 

 A cousin of the Prince of Montenegro, one Bozo 

 Petrovich, who had received a pension from the 

 Servian Government, was conducted across the 

 frontier. Gen. Sava Gruich, Servian minister at 

 St. Petersburg, was relieved of his functions be- 

 cause he had censured the Government in a pri- 

 vate letter. He was once the head of a Radical 

 Cabinet, but had since taken no part in domestic 

 politics. The Czar conferred a decoration upon 

 him in response to the message discharging him 

 from his post, dismissing him from the army, 

 and summoning him home to stand trial for com- 

 plicity in a treasonable conspiracy. When Pasich, 

 the leader of the Radical party, was arrested the 

 police found notes of a committee meeting at 

 which the heads of the party discussed the plan 

 of counseling the peasantry to withhold their 

 taxes until the collectors called upon them to 

 pay, as they expected in the meantime to get 

 control of the offices. Pasich, Taushanovich, 

 Listich, Protich, and other prominent Radicals 

 were arrested, including the Pope Jurich, a re- 

 nowned political orator, also Prof. Milenko Ves- 

 nich, of the Belgrade University. Russia and 

 Austria-Hungary refrained from diplomatic inter- 

 ference, as they were bound by a secret mutual 

 understanding not to intervene directly in the 

 affairs of the Balkan states. Both, however, gave 

 unmistakable unofficial warnings against the at- 

 tempt of ex-King Milan to seize this opportunity 

 to get rid of all his political opponents. Of 56 

 persons arrested, 16 were set at liberty after the 

 preliminary examination. The trial, which was 

 held at Nish, began, after several postponements, 

 early in September, and lasted three weeks. 



Meanwhile the Skupshtina was summoned to 

 meet in extraordinary session, principally for the 

 purpose of granting a bill of indemnity for the 

 proclamation of a state of siege. Before it met 

 the Minister of the Interior, M. Andonovich, and 

 the Minister of Commerce, M. Lozanich, handed 

 in their resignations, which were accepted. M. 

 Petrovich, the Minister of Finance, was appointed 

 on Aug. 11 to be Minister of Commerce ad in- 

 terim and M. Genshich to be Minister of the In- 

 terior. On the eve of the state trial one of the 

 prisoners, the Prefect Angjelich, believing that 

 the Government had deserted him, and being anx- 

 ious to secure for his widow her pension, found 

 means to hang himself in his cell. As the trial 

 was conducted under the law of the minor state 

 of siege, the prisoners were not allowed to con- 

 fer with their counsel, nor were the counsel in- 

 formed of the specific charges and proofs brought 

 out against their clients in the preliminary in- 

 vestigation ; neither were they permitted to cross- 

 examine witnesses during the trial. When the 

 prisoner Knezevich was interrogated he retracted 

 his former confession, and said that he alone 

 had planned the crime, because an acquaintance 

 had told him that ex-King Milan, to whom he 



