19th Century Bosnian Uprisings
The Bosnians are no more Turks than the English, neither do they speak Turkish ; but having been conquered by the first Murad on the fatal field of Kossovo (August 27, 1389), the aristocracy accepted the Koran, on condition of preserving their estates and feudal privileges, and ever since were more fanatical than the Turks who converted them. But their fanaticism was that of a privileged Church. It was of a solid material kind, not spiritual ; it was a religious zeal not unknown in other countries, where men not remarkable either for morals or faith will fight zealously for the established religion. These Bosnian nobles were apt to have their children or themselves baptized secretly during dangerous sickness, showing that they were not, after all, so absolutely convinced of the truth of the dogmas of Islam, though they were more than convinced of the desirability of keeping intact a state religion which permitted them to treat their unbelieving serfs as beasts of burden. On 29 May 1453 Constantinople fell to the Sultan Mehmet II "The Conqueror", who thereupon decided on a policy of Balkan consolidation. As far as the Danube on the north and the Ionian sea on the west he claimed suzerainty over all the Balkan peoples and their rulers. But these rulers, permitted by Mohammed's predecessors to continue in the exercise of local autonomy, were visibly restive under the foreign scepter. By 1459 the last Serb rulers and their kin had either been killed or scattered, and Serbia, merged in the Ottoman empire, had disappeared beneath the Moslem flood. To the west of Serbia lay Bosnia, which next attracted the attention of Mohammed.
Bosnia, a mountain region, like Serbia, and racially homogeneous with it, bad never, except for certain border sections, been united with Serbia even in the heyday of Nemania rule. Exposed equally to attack from the Serb sovereigns and the kings of Hungary, it had somehow managed to lead a more or less independent existence under rulers of its own. Its princes, who finally took the ambitious title of king, were, like the sovereigns of Serbia, involved in constant quarrels with a powerful nobility. Consequently in both domestic and foreign affairs they had exhibited the shiftiness and irresolution which are the usual concomitants of political weakness.
With Serbia conquered, the road into Bosnia was open, and Mohammed's hosts were soon pushing into the valleys and attacking the Bosnian strongholds. Bosnia, even more than Serbia, was a house divided against itself, though not merely because of its cantankerous feudal nobility. For centuries it had been a battle-ground of the Latin and Greek churches. Bewildered by the quarrel of the two irreconcilable Christian groups, the inhabitants had in large numbers turned their backs on both faiths to attach themselves to the beliefs and practices stigmatized by the Orthodox as the Bogumil heresy.
Whole sections of the Bosnians did not scruple to see in Islam a deliverer. Numerous castles treacherously opened their gates to the enemy, and when the wretched Bosnian king, despairing of his cause, surrendered in 1462, he was, in spite of a solemn promise made in writing, cruelly decapitated under the eyes of the sultan. Like his Christian contemporaries Mohammed held the convenient doctrine that a pledge made to a dog of an infidel possessed no binding character. Thus Bosnia, sharp on the heel of Serbia, perished.
Situated at the extreme northwest corner of the Ottoman empire, the distance from Bosnia to Constantinople might have proved a favorable factor in any movement of liberation if this remoteness had not been offset by a number of circumstances highly unfavorable to anything resembling a successful Christian uprising. Bosnia and Herzegovina constituted a mountain area so difficult of access that, shut off not only from the empire to which they belonged, but also from Europe, influences making for change long failed to penatrate at any point, thereby perpetuating political ideas and social forms which reached back to the Ottoman conquest.
The tone of this conservative society was set by the ruling class, the medieval Serb nobles, who, in order to save their property and preserve their power, had gone over to Islam. The Serb peasants, on the other hand, constituting the majority of the inhabitants, had remained loyal to Christianity, which, generally speaking, took the Orthodox form, though Catholicism was represented in the western section adjoining Catholic Croatia.
Before the disruption of the old feudal constitution of Bosnia by Sultan Mahmoud, this duchy had much of the beau-ideal of feudal and middle-age life. The old families inhabited the mediaeval castles built upon fastnesses, the drawbridge being raised every night. The great Bosnian lords, now calling themselves Begs or Capetans, reside still in the feudal castles reared by their Christian ancestors; they keep then- old escutcheons, their Sclavonic family names, their rolls and patents of nobility inherited from Christian kings; they lead forth thei* retainers, as of old, under then- baronial banners, and continue to indulge in the chivalrous pastime of hawking. Each noble had his family, kinsmen, and dependents, forming a miniature court, with honorary officers, pipe-bearers, chamberlains, &c The old armour of the feudal ages was kept bright as heirlooms, and up to 1820 the finest blades of Toledo, Ferrara, and Damascus were often to be found in Bosnia. The real political power was as much in the hands of the nobility, as the influence in the highlands of Scotland in those of the chiefs up to the year 1745. Seraieno, the capital, which in the flourishing period of Bosnia contained above a hundred thousand inhabitants, was governed solely by the aristocracy, and was a species of oligarchical republic.
Much as in the Middle Age, the peasants of the nineteenth century still cultivated the fields for a bare livelihood, while the lords (begs), who owned the fields, exacted certain personal services as well as a fraction of the crops, fixed in theory but disconcertingly variable in practice. If there had always been a social chasm between the two classes, it became an impassable gulf when the ruling class went over to an alien and abominated faith. From that day onward the life of the peasant took on a more tragic hue; for the nobles, on the other hand, the only considerable difference in the situation before and after the coming of the Turks lay in the circumstance that the sovereign of the country, instead of residing in their midst, dwelt in distant Constantinople. And that was wholly to their advantage. Especially since the decay of the Ottoman empire had palpably set in, the landlords had arrogatedto themselves more and more power until the pasha sent to govern them played a largely ornamental role. In sign of their ascendancy the Bosniaks did not even permit him to stay in Sarajevo, the capital city, but obliged him to take up his residence in provincial Travnik.
Loyal to the traditional system, to things as they were, they felt no personal loyalty toward their suzerain. If the chance which rules the affairs of men should ever give to the empire a sultan with an itch to introduce political and social novelties, he would soon discover that the Bosnian begs stood, a solid wall, across his path. For, than these Islamized Serbs there were no more fanatic Moslems within the whole compass of the padishah's dominion.
In view of this attitude of mind, the gestures of reform of Mahmud II [r. 1808-39] and Abdul Medjid [r. 1839-61] affected the reforms of the the feudal warriors of the western mountains. They refused at the first news of Mahmud's innovations to believe their ears, and, forced at last to believe, they raised a mighty outcry against the attack on the inherited system. Even the abolition of the Janissaries was received unfavorably, for were the Janissaries not an integral part of a sacred tradition? An ominous uprising took place, mild precursor of the veritable frenzy that swept over these stalwarts of the old regime when the tanzimat of 1839 impertinently abolished the inferior, the rayah status of the Christian peasants.
The reform of the Ottoman government contemplated by the sultan Mahmud II. (1808-1839) was bitterly resented in Bosnia, where Turkish prestige had already been weakened by the establishment of Servian autonomy under Karageorge. Many of the janissaries had married and settled on the land, forming a strongly conservative and fanatical caste, friendly to the Moslem nobles, who now dreaded the curtailment of their own privileges. Their opportunity came in 1820, when the Porte was striving to repress the insurrections in Moldavia, Albania and Greece. A first Bosnian revolt was crushed in 1821; a second, due principally to the massacre of the janissaries, was quelled with much bloodshed in 1827. After the Russo-Turkish. War of 1828-29, further attempt at reform was initiated by the sultan and his grand vizier, Reshid Pasha.
Two years later came a most formidable outbreak; the sultan was denounced as false to Islam, and the Bosnian nobles gathered at Banjaluka, determined to inarch on Constantinople, and reconquer the Ottoman empire for the true faith. A holy war was preached by their leader, Hussein Aga Becrberli, a brilliant soldier and orator, who called himself Zmaj Bownski, the " Dragon of Bosnia," and was regarded by his followers as a saint. The Moslems of Herzegovina, under Ali Pasha Rizvanbegovic, remained loyal to the Porte, but in Bosnia Hussein Aga encountered little resistance. At Kossovo he was reinforced by 20,000 Albanians, led by the rebel Mustapha Pasha; and within a few weeks the united armies occupied the whole of Bulgaria, and a large part of Macedonia. Their career was checked by Reshid Pasha, who persuaded the two victorious commanders to intrigue against one another, secured the division of their forces, and then fell upon each in turn. The rout of the Albanians at Prilipe and the capture of Musiapha at Scutari were followed by an invasion of Bosnia. After a desperate defence, Hussein Aga tied to Esseg in Croatia-Slavonia; his appeal for pardon was rejected, and in 183? he was banished for life to Tribizond. The power of the Bosnian nobles, though shaken by their defeat, remained unbroken; and they resisted vigorously when their kapelanates were abolished in 1837; and again when a measure of equality before the law was conceded to the Christians in 1839.
The Ottoman government entered on a career of reform, for the Tanzimat, or Hatt-y-Humayoon, was published in 1839 - an edict which promised liberty, equality, and fraternity to all Ottoman subjects, and when the exercise of capital punishment was forbidden to all provincial governors.
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