DK Presented to the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY by the ONTARIO LEGISLATIVE LIBRARY 1980 -<v^ //i^'^,^.^ /^c^ / C^ THE STRUGGLE FOR SCUTARI /Vio/0. /'v .I/;-. /'. /'•(-/;. Till-: Althor (jn kki.ikf work. THE STRUGGLE FOR ^ SCUTARI ^ (TURK, SLAV, AND ALBANIAN) BY M. EDITH DURHAM AUTHOR OF THE BURDEN OF THE BALKANS," "HIGH ALBANIA," ETC. 7 -no 8 ILLUSTRATED BY PHOTOGRAPHS AND SKETCHES BY THE AUTHOR LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 1914 [All rights reserved] TO MAUD AND HERBERT PREFACE None who have not Hvecl through the past few years on the spot can imagine the fraud, the treachery, the cold-blooded cruelty and brutality with which the various rulers of Europe have striven, each against each, to obtain, by hook or by crook, possession of, or influence over, that little corner of land in the Near East which has been lately the seat of war, and is now the seat of hopeless misery. To detail the mass of suffering which I myself have witnessed would take several volumes of monotonous horror. To unravel the complicated mesh of intrigues and hes would be impossible. I have tried only to tell a plain tale of the main facts that came directly under my notice, and in no w^ay to write a history of the war. One short explanation only I would give. Want of space has forced me to take for granted in my readers a certain amount of knowledge about the scene of action—North Albania—which, as I am aware, is a rash thing to do. Such as desire a detailed " account of the country I must refer to my High Albania." To the others I would state only that Maltsor (sometimes spelt ^lallissor) means merely — viii PREFACE "a mountain-man": from '' mal," a mountain; "' malt," mountains " Maltsor," man of the moun- tains. Every mountain-man all over Albania, be lie Moslem or Christian, is a Maltsor. The Maltsors are divided into very numerous tribes, or clans, of which the Mirdites form one. There has been so much misunderstanding on this subject that at the beginning of the war a well-known illustrated paper pubhshed a photograph of some Circassians labelled " Mallissori, the Albanian shep- herd tribe," whereas in the Scutari vilayet alone there are some thirty tribes. So much for the past. The present is unspeakably miserable. Whole districts have been purposely de- populated, for the aim of most Balkan States is, so far as possible, to evict members of an alien race. These, hunted out from their lands and robbed of all they possess, are appealing now urgently for help. Each month has so far brought fresh victims of racial ferocity. In conclusion, I would offer most hearty thanks to the generous donors of money and clothing—many of them complete strangers to me—who have enabled me to relieve some of the misery and save a good many lives. And I would beg all readers never to forget that there is one thing much more awful than war, and that is the period which follows it, when such as have escaped a merciful death by shot and shell are left to face starvation on the mountain-side. M. E. DURHAM. May, 1914. CONTENTS PAET I BEFORE THE CHAPTER WAR PAGB I. PRELIMINARY 3 II. 1908-1910 - 9 III. 23 IV. - . 41 V. THE GREAT BETRAYAL 71 PART II THE GATHERING OF THE WAR-CLOUDS VI. THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT (1911-1912) 87 VII. MUBLEZ 1 MUBLEZ II 122 VIII. THE REFORM - COMMISSION - . 137 IX. PLOT AND - COUNTERPLOT - . 148 X. THE LAST SCENE OF THE FOURTH ACT 159 PART III WAR XI. - . 181 XII. 200 XIII. THE GLORIES OF WAR 227 XIV. THE FALL OF SCUTARI 265 XV, SCUTARI 379 IX X CONTENTS PART IV OF WAR THE HABVEST ^^^^ CHAPTBK _ 293 - " ' * XVI THE HARVEST OF WAR - 311 XVII. LAST WORI>S - - 317 INDEX LIST OF PLATES THE ATTTHOR ON "" RELIEF WOBK (PHOTO Br MR. B. LOCH) .......X' THE sultan's accession DAY, 1910 12 MEN OF HOTI COMING TO CELEBRATE THE CONSTITITTION 1908 12 34 SOKOL BATZI (PHOTO BY MARUBBI OF SCUTARI) 34 GROUP OF MALTSLl E JLiDHE MEX 54 MALTSORS AT TUZI 80 RETURNED REFUGEES AT BAITZA 92 INNOCENT YICTIMS 92 ESSAD PASHA 116 DED SOKO 116 CETTIGNE'S FIRST PUBLIC MEETING ..." 166 MONTENEGRIN FRONTIER BLOCKHOUSE AT DZAMIYA 174 SERB " PEASANTS FROM IPEK NAHIA COME TO FETCH RIFLES^J^*i^£.S AT ANDRIYEVITZA . 176 DECmCH AND THE BURNT TURKISH BLOCKHOUSE 194 MONTENEGRINS OCCUPYING THE TURKISH FOR^ESS SHIPCHAN-IK^^=^^^ DDIEDIATELY AFTER ITS STOREXdER . 194 THE HOUYHNHNM 198 T£[E MONTENEGRINS IN TUZI 198 UBA MESIT 216 MONTENEGRIN ARMY REITRING OVER BOJANA BRIDGE AS THE ADMIRALS ROWED BENEATH IT - ''88 V1CE-AD>nRAL BURNEY LANDING AT SCUTARI TO TAKE POSSESSION ^90 BURNT HOUSE AT GRIZHA - 296 BURNT-OUT CHILDREN AT SKJERZI - 296 XI PART I BEFORE THE WAR VIOLENCE IS THE ENEMY OF RIGHT i — THE STRUGGLE FOR SCUTARI CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY " The Causes and Motives of Seditions are ; Innovation in Religion ; Alteration of Lawes and Customes ; Breaking of Privi- leges ; Generall Oppression ; and Whatsoever by Offending People, joyneth and knitteth them in a Common Cause." Bacon. *' The Turkish Empire is like a very old house. Leave it untouched, and it may stand yet a hundred years. Tiy to repair it—move but one stone—and it will all fall down on your head.'' Thus said to me, shrewdly, an old Albanian in 1904; and the outburst of wild rejoicing which took place when the Turks proclaimed the Constitution in 1908, filled me with little, if any, hope; for it sprang from a false conception of the state of affairs. When, to my amazement, I learnt that the Powers of Europe had taken the Young Turks at their own valuation and withdrawn the sole means of control— the international gendarmerie—from Mace- donia, I regarded the situation as already lost. That withdrawal was, in fact, expressly planned by certain Powers, who wished to precipitate the downfall, on the principle of " give him enough rope and he will hang himself," and there were diplomatists who boasted openly that it would hasten the end. 4 THE STRUGGLE FOR SCUTARI Never to this day have I been able to understand those enthusiasts at home and abroad who believed that the Young Turk could possibly succeed, over- whelmed the new Government with praise, before it had had time to display the smallest capacity for governing, and started its representatives upon their career, surfeited with the most fulsome flattery and with their heads more than sufficiently turned. Be it clearly understood that I speak only of Turkey in Europe, for of Asiatic Turkey I have no experience. Consider the situation, and you will see that it was bound to spell disaster. Turkey in Europe, with the exception of the neighbourhoods of Constantinople and Adrianople, contained comparatively few Turks, save officials and soldiers. The native population con- sisted of Greeks, Bulgars, Albanians, Serbs, and Kutzo Vlahs, with a considerable sprinkling of Jews and Gypsies. The fierce race hatred felt by each of the four first- named peoples for each other, first enabled the Turk to penetrate Europe. The same hatred, continued from the Early Middle Ages up to the present day, enabled him to remain. Having subdued one race after the other, he con- trived by an ingenious policy of rubbing one against t'other that they should never unite against him. He did not succeed in assimilating them. Perhaps he never tried. Even those who turned Moslem retained their language and a great deal of their racial customs and characteristics. Partly Turkish policy, partly the great unsolved mystery of race, kept all these peoples separate, as in water-tight compartments. BEFORE THE WAR 5 The Turk was never more than a great soldier. He reached his zenith in the seventeenth century, and then declined slowly. As the Turkish race de- generated and lost power, so did the subject peoples slowly revive. And with them revived their old ambitions—the hates and aspirations of the Middle Ages. Partly by their own efforts and partly by the help of one or other of the Great Powers, Serb, Greek, and Bulgar each in turn emerged from the Turkish Empire. It is important to note that they never all rose together, for the sufficient reason that their am- bitions were incompatible. On the strength of their brief medieval empires, each claimed the greater part of the peninsula. Turkey disintegrated slowly. After the war of 1876-77, only the fact that all the Great Powers, as well as all the small Balkan States, desired to inherit the Turk's remaming European property enabled that tottering Turkish house to stand at all. It was shored up with jealousies both within and without. Whether the short-lived Constitution and Parliament of 1876 would have succeeded better than the ill-fated ones of 1908 we will not waste time in inquii'ing. Given the many already irreconcilable elements, it is prob- able that they could not. Be that as it may, Abdul Hamid chose to pursue the policy which had been successful since the Middle Ages. With amazing skill and entire unscrupulousness, he played Power against Power, race against race, religion against religion, and quelled rebellion by massacre. It was a losing game, and its weak point was the apparently immutable fact the East is East and West is West. 6 THE STRUGGLE FOR SCUTARI While the Moslem child, if he went to school at all, squatted in the balcony of the village mosque, and droned passages from the Koran in a tongue he did not understand, or, as I have seen more than once, tried to learn writing by inscribing Arabic letters in the air with outstretched forefinger—the hodja set- ting aerial copies to save the expense of pen and paper—while, in short, the Moslem stood still, Greek, Bulgar, and Serb vied with each other in the number and efficiency of the schools they provided in the Turkish Empire, poured out money lavishly, and fought and intrigued fiercely over the children.