15° SERVIA, AUSTRIA, TURKEY, AND RUSSIA. 



FROM 1717 TO 1860. 



At the beginning of the last century, However, an attempt was 

 made to overthrow this grinding Ottoman tyranny, and Servia passed 

 through the fiery ordeal of successive conflicts, and change suc- 

 ceeded change with their ever-varying scenes of terror and of 

 suffering 



In 1717, Prince Eugene of Savoy, at the head of an Austrian 

 army, besieged and captured Belgrade, and overran the whole of 

 Servia, with the result that in the following year, Servia was ceded 

 to the Austrian Empire. 



In 1739, in consequence of a victorious war waged by Turkey, she 

 again occupied Servia, and by the Treaty of Peace which followed, 

 its capital, Belgrade, was guaranteed to the Turks. 



In 1788, an Austrian Army pnder the famous Marshal Loudon, 

 recaptured Belgrade, which however, in 1791, by the Treaty of 

 Sistova, was restored to Turkey. 



In these fierce struggles waged between Austria and Turkey for 

 supremacy in Servia, it was natural that the various Servian races, 

 wherever scattered, rallied to the Austrian banners, and in the brief 

 intervals of Austrian successes, they faintly and partially reahsed 

 their ancient dreams of freedom. But, alas ! that freedom was 

 short-Uved, for no sooner was the fortune of war reversed, and the 

 unrestful ambition of Turkey had triumphed and driven the Austrian 

 forces across the Save, than inevitably and irretrievably the Servians, 

 abandoned by their professed deliverers, fell an easy prey to the 

 dastardly revenge of their hateful Moslem conquerors. 



We now approach a series of remarkable events in the history of 

 Servia, a turning point in her tragical and chequered history, events 

 the most memorable, because they were the inauguration of a 

 brighter and a happier era in her melancholy career of defeats, 

 disasters, and degradations. 



Servia had suffered long and horribly from Turkish oppression, 

 without the faintest hope of deliverance, and she had proved by 

 painful experience that the domination of Austria brought her but 

 little mitigation of suffering and sorrow, for it was characterised by 

 the basest treachery, unworthy of a great and enhghtened civilised 

 State, such as the Austria-Hungarian Empire proudly boasts of 

 claiming for herself in Europe. 



Servia and her people had good grounds to refuse and disown 

 the paternal government of the House of Hapsburg, for its record 



