148 SERVIA, AUSTRIA, TURKEY, AND RUSSIA. 



The Servians of Austria, who settled in parts of Hungary and 

 Slavonia after the disaster at Kossovo, faithfully fulfilled the en- 

 gagements into which they entered by the Treaties of 1690, 1691, 

 and 1695 ; for they not only reinforced the armies of Austria with 

 "brave soldiers and brilliant officers," but, as admitted by historians 

 devoted to the Etaipire, they . loyally defended, when the occasion 

 arose, the Austrian frontiers against the invasion of the Ottoman 

 armies, and cheerfully and lavishly poured out their life-blood in 

 defence of the Empire against the vaulting ambition of Mahomedan 

 power ; and by these great sacrifices they rendered signal services to 

 the Throne of the Hapsburgs, and saved the Austrian Empire, in 

 critical periods of its history, from what appeared to be an inevitable 

 dismemberment. 



But how were these services and sacrifices, so freely rendered by 

 the Servians to Austria and Hungary, recompensed ? History, alas ! 

 proves that since the Treaty of Sistova, the policy of Austria has been 

 a black record of perfidy, cruelty, and wrong, for which, happily, there 

 are few similar parallels to be found in European relations. 



We have referred to the events which characterised the settlement 

 of the Servian race in Montenegro and Austria, after the disaster at 

 Kossovo in 1356, through successive centuries, and we will now 

 return to the terrible experiences and the cruel sufferings of the 

 Servians vs^ho were unwilling or unable to leave Servia, and who 

 remained subject to the oppressive Turkish domination, 



They constituted the greater proportion of the entire Servian race, 

 and their history, after the overthrow of Servian independence, in 1356, 

 is a sad and revolting record of the atrocious rule of the Ottoman 

 Empire. For four cehturies they were exposed to the most cruel 

 .sufferings, bravely and patiently borne, and the description given 

 by their historians of those cruelties and sufferings, is unutterably 

 painful to contemplate, as it is too horrible to attempt to describe. 



Their Turkish oppressors seemed to have revelled in the most 

 revolting and detestable crimes, that the base wickedness of the 

 dehumanised mind of the Turk could possibly conceive or execute. 



These monstrous atrocities were perpetrated by the Moslem sol- 

 diery on the unoff'ending Servian race, without respect to sex, age, or 

 condition, unrestrained by their officers, and unpunished by the ruling 

 authorities and Governors of the Provinces, but what is more shock- 

 ing, sanctioned, if not authorised, by them. 



The details are too horrible to describe, for they were the proto- 

 type of those terrible Bulgarian actrocities, in 1876, that shocked the 



