BY

REV. W. DENTON, M.A.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

BELGRADE—BEAUTY OF SITUATION—CITADEL—DRUSE PRISONERS—
TURKISH PASHAS— GATES — CITY—WHARF — TURKISH SHOPS—
MARKET—THE SAVE—SUBURBS.

.

Few capital cities in Europe have a finer of, commercially speaking, a better situation than Belgrade. Its position on a kind of promontory at the junction of the Save and the Danube, gives it the command of the trade of both these important rivers; whilst the rising ground on which the city is built, which looks all the higher from the contrast which it presents to the long low banks which characterise the left or Hungarian side of both these rivers, adds greatly to its picturesque effect. The whole of the houses in the city, as they rise tier above tier, are seen at one view as the ground slopes upward from the Save on the west, or from the Danube on the cast, The walls of these houses are almost invariably white, and the effect of this is heightened, and the houses are made to look all the whiter, from their standing out from amongst the green foliage of lilac, fig, walnut, chestnut, and other trees, which, as in all Oriental towns, surround many of the houses. ‘These mingled rows of trees and houses give the city an aspect of great beauty. The view which the eye rests upon on all sides, is, indeed, very pleasing and striking. The fortress with its large mosque, and the palace of the Pasha adjoining, comes first into sight ; and then a little beyond the glacis, the tower of the cathedral, surmounted by its spire of chocolate colour and gold, situated on the highest ridge of the city, and looking down upon mosques and minarets, upon low, red-tiled, and quaint Turkish shops, and more ambitious German houses. From whatever quarter the traveller approaches Belgrade, the beauty of its situation is very impressive. Whether he is coming from Western Europe, and in descending the Save gets his first glimpse of the city from the west, or he is returning from the shores of Asia, and sees it first from its eastern side, he will equally own that its name Beogrady—the white fortress—has been appropriately given, and he will even acquiesce in the fitness of that form of its name, half corrupted and half translated, by which it is known to Western Europe, and which, by a curious but not infelicitous jumble of Latin and Sclavonic, typical of Servian history and character, has changed its native name into Belgrade—the beautiful fortress.

‘The city has been aptly likened by a recent traveller to a gigantic sea-turtle, to which, at least on the map, it bears a certain rude resemblance. Such quaint similitudes are like the memorial verses which are sometimes used to fasten facts and dates upon the mind. In the present case, the comparison will, perhaps, assist the reader in understanding the topographical outline of the city. The extremity of the promontory on which the fortress stands, will be represented by the horny head of the animal; the desolate esplanade which stretches between and disconnects the fortress from the city, will correspond to the neck; whilst the city itself, sloping down on either side, from a central ridge, and channelled by narrow Ianes running down to the banks of the two rivers on which it stands, will be represented by the shell of the turtle.

The treaty of Bucharest, which recognised the virtual independence of, Servia, and regulated the annual amount of tribute which the principality was in future to pay to the Sultan of Turkey, stipulated that the seven fortresses of the country were to remain in the hands of the Sultan, and be garrisoned by a Turkish force. Of these seven places five are situated on the Save and the Danube, and two in the interior of the country, not far from the frontiers of Bosnia. Beyond the walls of these fortresses, the Porte possesses no authority, and both the law of Servia and an express firman of the Sultan prohibit Mussulmans from holding landed property in any other part of the country. Of these seven towns the only one which possesses’ a fortress of any real strength is Belgrade; and the care with which the external works of this fortress are maintained, shows the importance attached to it by the government of Turkey. The citadel is particularly formidable on the water-front and on its eastern side, and presents a singular mixture of military architecture and works in use in the ancient and modern systems of fortification.

On the land side, the fortress looks down upon a dreary esplanade, where, within the memory of many of the present inhabitants of Belgrade, scores of patriots were impaled, and their bodies left to moulder and pollute the air. This esplanade has been the scene of many a sanguinary conflict between the Turk and Austrian in the various sieges of Belgrade, as well as between Moslom masters and Servian subjects in the struggle for independence. The blood, however, which has been so lavishly poured out upon this small spot of ground, has had no power to fertilise the soil, for grass of a browner tint and a more doubtful vitality cannot be found. One part of the esplanade has been lately taken by the Turks for the purpose of a cemetery, and is now rugged with graves scooped out of the few inches of earth which make up the scanty soil. The only redeeming feature of this arid and dusty waste is, that it commands a magnificent view of both rivers; and with due care, and in the hands of other masters than the Turks, will no doubt become a great ornament to the city.

But if the fortress is thus dingy on the outside, in the inside it is desolate, ruinous, and very dirty. Indeed, the only building which appears to be in good repair is the Pasha’s palace, which stands on the highest piece of ground in the citadel, and overlooks the two rivers; and the only pleasant and shady spot on the dreary rock is the garden which surrounds the palace. Near the residence of the Pasha stands the principal mosque of Belgrade. It is appropriated to the use of the soldiers of the garrison, but is in very bad repair, the plaster having peeled off in large masses from the body of the building, as well as from the minaret by its side, Internally, the whole building is
as ruinous as on the outside. Close to the gate which leads into the square stands a tomb, which a former pasha erected to the memory of his daughter, who has the reputation of a saint amongst the Turks. The tomb itself stands in a small apartment with glazed windows; and half a dozen wreaths of flowers strewed on the floor or hanging over the tomb, carried the imagination back to Pare la Chaise, and the jet-black immortelles of a French cemetery. Round this and a second quadrangle are barracks for the accommodation of about four thousand men, and in a low irregular building in the main square are, at this moment, confined three hundred and sixty Druse prisoners. Their numbers, however, are fast diminishing: a cheerless fortress, a black hole almost as bad as that of Calcutta, and a sun at times hardly less powerful, are converting their sentence of imprisonment into one of death.

However strongly our sympathies are called forth for the suffering Christians of the Lebanon, I confess that the treatment which the Druse chieftains have received has always appeared a shocking instance of the capricious tyranny and injustice which are found throughout Turkey. These chieftains have but too faithfully complied with the traditions of their country and with the barbarous instigation of the Government, and it is hard that their fidelity should be rewarded with the cruel punishment which they are now suffering merely to enable that same Government to set itself right in the eyes of Christian Europe. Had it not been for the interference of England and France, it cannot be doubted but that the murder of the Maronite Christians would have been tacitly approved or even actually rewarded by the Porte; but the authorities which at first prompted and then connived at the massacre of the Christians, have been allowed to purge themselves by visiting the consequences of their sin upon the heads of the instruments of the wrong, Turkey is governed not by acts of parliament, nor even by the hatti-cherifs and firmans of the Porte, nor by treaties made with foreign powers, but by public opinion and the Koran; and so long as the Koran, which is the very foundation of all authority in Turkey, prescribes or encourages acts of outrage towards unbelievers, it is hard that obedience to its dictates should, in order to satisfy the Western powers, subject men to the cruel and continuous torture under which the Druse chieftains are at this moment groaning and dying.

The government of five of the six fortresses which have been reserved by treaty to the Turks, together with the diplomatic intercourse with the Servian authorities, is at present divided between two Pashas, one of whom, Achir Pasha, possesses the chief rank and authority, and resides in the palace within the fortress of Belgrade. To him is intrusted the conduct of the civil affairs of the pachilate. A second and subordinate Pasha, Ethem, has the responsibility of all military affairs within the same jurisdiction, and the actual command of the garrisons. The salary of each of these Pashas is said not to exceed 2,000 l. per annum. This is a great falling off from the time when the Pasha who ruled within the walls of the citadel was of three tails, and drew 8,000 l. a year from the Turkish treasury. The present chief Pasha of Belgrade has bowed to the stern necessities of the times, and to the spirit of economy which has even reached Constantinople; and since 2,000 l. a year is clearly not enough for the expenses of the Hareem as it existed in the palmy days of Mahommetan power, Achir Pasha bas retrenched all superfluous expenses, and contents himself with one wife.

The fortress of Belgrade is at present garrisoned by about four thousand men. These soldiers are mostly drawn from the provinces of Macedonia and Bosnia. In case of war, however, with Servia, every Turkish shopkeeper living in the town is bound to serve in the castle as an artilleryman, and a small yearly payment is made to him as a retaining fee for his services. The whole yearly expenses of tho fortress are estimated not to exceed 200,000 l. sterling. The treaty under which the Turks were allowed to return to Servia, and to re-occupy the fortresses, has already given rise to serious complications. By this treaty their presence was limited to certain citadels, but in Belgrade, in addition to the fortress, half the present city has been claimed by the Turks, and is inhabited by them. The city of Belgrade, it was contended by the Turks, was once included within the walls of some kind of-a fortification; and though it was clearly not the intention of those powers who guaranteed the observance of the treaty to transfer the city of Belgrade itself to the Turks, yet they have advantaged themselves of the jealousy of the Western powers, and have contrived to maintain their ground here.

The only vestiges of any former fortification of the city consist of four dilapidated gates, the remains of some earthen entrenchment, the lines of which are barely traceable here and there, together with a ditch, still partly palisaded. So greatly, however, has the city “extended itself since its delivery from Turkish rule, that the prinefpal gate of the old city now stands in the centre of Belgrade. The name of this portal, which is called the gate of Constantinople, raises expectations of grandeur in the mind of the traveller, not destined, however, to be realized, since there are no vestiges of even former greatness in the ruinous arch, half stone, half plaster and mud, under which he will walk into the city, and which is tenanted by industrious Turkish cobblers, with a strange assortment of second-hand shoes, European and Asiatic; three or four lounging sentinels, looking sullen and uncomfortable in their ill-made and ill-fitting Frankish coats and trousers ; together with a swarm of martins and house-swallows, whose nests, grey with age, and telling of a long, uninterrupted possession by many generations of birds, hang in clusters under every projection of the gateway. This is the only gateway at which any show of defence is kept up; the others are fast mouldering, and parts of them are washed away by every shower of rain: the gates indeed are still remaining, and are partly hanging to the hinges, but the wood is too rotten, and the hinges too weak, to allow of the gates being closed. Indeed, the whole structure—mud, archway, and wooden gates—will probably be removed in a very few years, and be replaced by dwelling-houses. All within the bounds of the ancient city is still, however, reckoned, at least by the Turks, as a part of the empire, though it is properly no longer under Turkish rule, and they are naturally strenuous in their opposition at the removal of any token of even a disputed right. In this state of uncertainty, a guard, composed of equal numbers of Mussulman soldiers and of Servian police, makes its nightly round, and reminds the traveller of the divided nature of that authority which temporarily, at least, directs the government of Servia.

Formerly, the Turkish quarter of the city was exclusively occupied by Mahometans. Adjoining this is still a quarter which custom, if not right, has appropriated for the residence of the Jews, and near this another quarter less sharply defined yet still distinct from the rest, in which the gipsies, who are a very numerous and important class in Servia, “most do congregate.” The Turkish quarter of the city, however, is daily contracting its limits. From one cause or another, but chiefly from the poverty and decay of those who were once lords of the soil, one site after another is being sold, when the ground is immediately cleared of the ricketty tenements which have covered it for the last two or three centuries; and the little Turkish stalls are replaced by more stately shops, dwelling-houses, and warehouses of the ordinary German type. The low one-storied house, such as is met with so commonly throughout the dominions of the Turk, and is still the characteristic of the Mussulman quarter of Belgrade, is now everywhere within the city looked down upon by ambitious houses of three or four stories, with white or green venetian blinds to the windows. At the present moment, some twenty or thirty houses of this kind are rising from the midst of the Turkish houses, and in a very few years, unless anything should occur in the meantime to interrupt the material progress of Servia, the Turkish quarter, with its tiny shops and its listless sleeping tenants, will be numbered amongst the things that were. All this is looked upon by the Turk as inevitable and felt to be his destiny, and hence, whilst he resignedly submits to the course of events, he is growing less and less careful to cling to that property which he knows he must lose in a few years. Indeed, he is at present chained to the spot, and compelled to live amongst the encroachments of Christian civilization, not of his own will, but by the policy of the Government at Constantinople. Every shopkeeper throughout Servia is considered a member of the Turkish militia, and bound to act as an artilleryman whenever needed; and as the Porte has never relinquished the hope of again reducing Servia and the other Christian principalities of the Danube under the yoke which formerly galled them into rebellion, these Mahometan traders are compelled to remain at their posts, not for the purpose of trade, but in order to line the walls of the fortresses, whenever the Sultan shall think fit to make an assault upon the hardly-extorted liberties of the Christians.

When I landed on the quay at Belgrade, the mixture of Oriental and Western life appeared very singular. There were plenty of sights and sounds to assure me that I was not in a wholly Mahometan country, mingled with others that told me that, at least, I was in an outpost of the Turkish empire. Servian gendarmes were standing in front of the custom-house, with notions about passports borrowed from their Austrian neighbours; smart carriages from Pesth were waiting for the permit of the authorities of the custom-house ; whilst amidst the hubbub and bustle of German engineers, Bosnian and Albanian traders, Dalmatian and Servian sailors, two or three vacant-eyed listless Turkish porters were waiting to be hired if it pleased any passenger to do so: they could scarcely be said to be doing anything so active as plying for hire. These remains of tho soldiers who overturned the Eastern Empire, and were for ages the terror of all Europe, were stretched out on the heaps of goods which lay upon the wharf in tom jackets and tattered turbans, which had evidently once—but that a long time ago—been white. A few years since, as I am told, the wearers of turbans predominated at the waterside, and on the rivers the boatmen who wore the Turkish dress outnumbered those of any other nation. But all this has passed away for ever. A few Mussulmans still earn a scanty living by serving as porters or boatmen at the water-side, but these diminish in number every day, and their place is being supplied by a motley crowd, drawn from the nations and tribes in the neighbourhood of the Danube. Few Servians take to this kind of life. The population of Servia is at present too scanty to compel its inhabitants to betake themselves to any kind of drudgery which is not congenial to their inclinations. ‘They are industrious agriculturists, successful traders, and thriving shopkeepers; but they rarely become “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” and, at least, in the towns situated upon the banks of the Danube, never domestic servants, This necessary class is recruited from Germany, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Wallachia. The drivers of wagons are almost always Wallachians, the coachmen Hungarians, and the cooks are imported from Germany.

Having satisfied the authorities of the regularity of our passports from Austria, we walked from the waterside to our hotel up a flight of steps, built at the expense of the reigning prince, passing through narrow streets of Turkish shops—which are nothing but open stalls—having their owners stretched at full length on the shop-board, or seated cross-legged, gravely smoking the chibougue. Some were employed in botching antique oriental saddles, or stitching leather girdles with gay and variegated thread. Others, again, were making slippers, or working as tailors, whilst in the recesses of several other shops the owners were plying their trade of the barber. Every third or fourth shop was devoted to the sale of tobacco or of fire-arms, two descriptions of goods which appeared in equal demand. Here, dangling in front of these stalls, were muskets of every conceivable form, and of every age, from the first rude attempt at a flint lock to the last improved Enfield rifle, together with bayonets of every pattern in use throughout Europe, presents from half a dozen European powers, plunder of the battlefield, and gleanings after a retreat. Many of them, no doubt, had done service on the fields of Alma and of Inkerman, and might yet be used against the mountaineers of Montenegro or the Herzegovina. Intermingled with these stalls were the frequently recurring coffee-shop, with its glazed front, from behind which came the sound of gipsy songs and the noise of the tambourine. The stalls of the Albanian butchers usually occupied the corners of the street, and were furnished for the most part with a carcase and a couple of kid skins, the latter hung up at once as a sign of what might be purchased within, and as a testimony, not altogether unnecessary, of the species of the animal exposed for sale. Together with these were one or two suspicious, not to say repulsive-looking joints of the smallest mutton—or at least meat of some kind—that I had ever seen.

Behind all these shops ran narrow and quiet lanes of mud walls, sun-baked and, like all things in the Turkish quarter, ruinous. The walls inclose little gardens, where the families of the shopkeepers enjoy that privacy which is dear to the Oriental, and that luxury of shade which is necessary to his comfort during the summer heats of this climate. Here and there the monotony of the long line of mud wall is broken by a fountain—as a stone, some three or four foot square, with a little stream of water issuing from the centre of it, is called—and occasionally by a mosque, with its graceful minarets half stripped of its plaster, and looking as squalid and dilapidated as the rest of the buildings in that quarter. In these quiet lanes the traveller will get occasional glimpses of those ghost-like figures, Turkish women, tumbling awkwardly along, and enveloped from head to foot in white linen, except where a space of a few inches is left for the eyes. In the main streets, as we passed along, we had to thread our way through swarms of children of all ages. Here were younglings of a few months old, left by their parents, with perfect confidence, to forage for themselves, and crawling on all-fours between the feet of the passengers to the common goal of all, the gutter, in the middle of the street. Others were making their first tottering attempts at walking, and steadying themselves by clinging to the walls of the houses, whilst mingled with these were older children, importunate for piastres, and in more than one sense veritable Arabs of the streets.

Across this busy quarter runs a street which bears the German name of the Lange Gasse, in which are the ruins of what is called Prince Eugene’s Palace, from an absurd tradition that the building was not only occupied by him, but that it was erected by his direction after the capture of Belgrade by the Austrians in 1717. The lower story of this ruin, however, presents such undoubted traces of early Servian, if not of late Roman work, that the fiction which would attribute the erection of the palace to so Iate a period as the time of the Turkish occupation, may be dismissed as utterly unworthy of a moment’s credence. The ruins are now made use of for a cattleshed, and as a receptacle for miscellaneous lumber ; and when we saw it, the stack of chimneys which rises above the walls was surmounted by a stork’s nest, in which the parent bird was standing erect in tho quiet meditative attitude which is characteristic of this bird.

In the centre of the old part of the city is a large desolate square, in which the daily market is held. This piece of ground was formerly a Turkish cemetery, and it is still crossed in every direction by the narrow-paved pathways which are usually found in such places. Though the Turks see it used in this very secular way every morning, yet the attempt of the Servian Government to have the whole of it inclosed and planted so as to become ornamental to the city, has been successfully resisted because of the former use to which it had been put. The Turkish houses have almost all disappeared from this part of the city. An unfinished palace—for this is the only name by
which it can be called—built by a wealthy salt-merchant, whose family occupy a less ambitious but spacious house adjoining, and a dirty second-rate German hotel,
“The Crown,” are the chief buildings on one side of the square. On the opposite side is an old Turkish building, now occupied by the Servian Government as a police-station, flanked on one side by a large Turkish guard-house, some barracks, and a fine mosque, whilst on the other side is a small cemetery, in which stands the residence of a wheeling dervish, who every Friday, the Mussulmans’ Sabbath, performs his gyrations in the market-place.

‘The chief market in Belgrade is held in this place, and appears to be well supplied with goods; as I passed through it, I saw charcoal for sale, various kinds of grain, wheat, oats, millet, and maize, together with young gooseberries, cherries, potatoes, onions, haricot-beans, garlick and dried herbs, rock-salt, milk, cream, flour, butter, eggs, cheese, as well as horses, sheep, goats, and cows, together with long tubs or, more frequently, skins of wine. Here, early in the morning, the stranger will have a good opportunity of studying the national costume. Customers of all kinds attend the market, from the lady in her expensive dress of velvet and silk, to the servant in her cotton
gown. Mingled with these are market-women, with the ordinary head-dress, a yellow kerchief, or the moon-shaped head-dress, with its fall of the same colour pendant to the waist behind. Gipsy-women, with their Egyptian faces and dresses of the same pattern which are seen in the tombs of old Thebes, and Wallachian and Servian peasants, with little more covering than a linen tunic, or petticoat, according to the sex of the owners, but varied in colour and ornament according to the district from which the wearers had come.

Beyond this old quarter, in which the Servian element is every day increasing, and outside the gates, the city is exclusively tenanted by Servians, though a ruinous and deserted mosque still remaining near the hay and wood-market reminds us of the time when the Turks were masters of the whole of the city, and ruled over the whole country. This mosque was entered by some of the soldiers of Kara George at the capture of Belgrade, during the War of Independence, and has been, for that reason and from that time, abandoned by the Turks; and since they are no longer permitted to reside in this part of the city, it is now going fast to decay. On all sides from this point stretches the new or Servian city, and here, in handsome houses, live the ministers of state, the chief senators, and the officers of the Government. Here also are most of the public buildings and Government establishments. Within a circle of a few hundred yards are the palace of the prince, with the residence of the British consul immediately opposite; the Senate-house, the military school and hospital, together with the offices of the ministers for foreign affairs, for war, and for ecclesiastical purposes.

The view of the river from this quarter of the city, which overlooks the Save, is of the most charming kind. The clear atmosphere enables the eye to take in a most extended prospect, and as you look upon it from the windows or gardens of the houses, it requires some effort to remember that you are not looking upon a picture in which the greatest distances are brought near to the eye. The view, indeed, is more like a clear, sharp piece of photography than anything which we are accustomed to see in our more misty climate. The foreground is occupied with Turkish houses of the better class of building, with their heavy, open galleries and projecting roofs peeping out of lines of acacias and walnut-trees, and beyond that a still river, in which everything on the land is faithfully repeated. The water is fringed on the one side by a very fertile strip of meadow-ground, and on the other by a well-wooded rising bank, whilst its surface is dotted over with long low islets covered with willow, oak, and ash, with sweet-scented shrubs and the greenest of all swards, reflected with the most perfect fidelity in the placid mirror of the river, where—

“Each tree seems double—
Tree and shadow.”

For quiet beauty, I know no river-scenery that exceeds the Save.

‘The suburbs of Belgrade, in the direction of the interior of the country, bring back to the mind the pictures and descriptions which we have of some of our own youthful and rising colonial cities, where the traveller steps at once from roughly-cultivated and pathless fields on to the street of a bustling and thriving town—where ambitious houses abut upon small cottages, each standing in the centre of a small allotment, and where the spaciousness of the roadway, though suggestive of the future importance of the youthful city, contrasts strongly with the low fronts of most of the houses and the actual condition of the city itself. The wide boulevard, with the roadways laid out for streets, which at some future time are to intersect it at right angles, but which remain yet to be built, and the row of young-chesnut-trees which mark the line of the future pavement, will, in the course of time, make an appropriate entrance to a great city. At present, the width of the paved road seems sadly out of proportion to the majority of the houses on either side. Every day, however, the small Servian cottage, with its walls of logs or of cob, and its roof of thatch or shingle, with a huge chimney of wood covering one-fourth of the whole surface of the roof, is giving lace to houses of at least a second story and of more durable materials; so that when the present cottages have altogether disappeared, it will only require side pavements to make the entrance into Belgrade from the country as handsome as the approaches to any city in Europe. All these contrasts, however, are strictly in keeping with the history and present position of this rising country; and the low cottage, hastily constructed of wood or of some other common and inexpensive material, with its grim and squalid walls, and the uncomfortable bed of baked mud from which the traveller steps at once upon the broad pebble-paved road of the city, with promising but certainly not a sheltering line of chesnut-twigs, which are to be trees at some time or another, is a material picture of the resolute attempts at advancement to the level of the other cities of Europe which is being made by a people who have probably a great future before them, but who in reality escaped only thirty years since from the yoke of the Turk—who are continually menaced by their late master, and who have not yet lost all traces of past subjection or the memory of the atrocious cruelties which drove them, unaided by any Christian power, into what at first sight appeared the madness of their long war of independence.