BELGRADE (9 page)

Karađorđe was hence spurred on by international events that seemed detrimental to the Ottoman Empire, and he put his hopes on the Russian connection. Yet when Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, the Tsar hurriedly made a treaty with Turkey to free his southern flank. The Treaty of Bucharest included mention of Serbia, but only to confirm that Russia agreed that the province be returned to its old position under Ottoman suzerainty, giving the Serbs some limited control of local affairs. The Turks now took their chance to crush the rebellion without outside interference. Three armies entered Serbia in 1813, and Karađorđe was forced to flee across the Sava into Austrian territory. The Uprising was over and a terrible revenge was extracted against the local population by the triumphant Turks. Nonetheless, the desire for independence from Ottoman rule was kindled and became the central platform of Serbian policy for most of the nineteenth century.

Ottoman rule over the Balkans excluded the local Christian population from positions of authority and power, leaving them an illiterate peasant society. The achievements of the medieval Serbian state and Church, evident in the art and architecture of churches, monasteries and royal palaces, receded into a distant memory. The writing practised in the administration of the country, in replicating the Holy Scriptures and in recording the lives of the saints of the Orthodox Church was lost and became moribund. Although the continued existence of the Church was an important factor in maintaining a commemorative link with the past, the written language became largely ossified in the form used in the fifteenth century, moving ever further away from the spoken vernacular as it evolved in everyday use. The language of law and government was that of the imperial rulers. In these circumstances, oral literature, songs and stories of different kinds came to represent the most vibrant form of local art.

Serbian national songs, or epic ballads, developed over the centuries along quite sophisticated lines and some have been compared to the achievements of Homer’s
Iliad
. These ballads tell stories from Serbian history in the form of heroic myths. They were sung by a bard called a
guslar
to the accompaniment of a simple single-stringed instrument, the
gusle
. He did not know his songs by heart, but as compositions made up of traditional phrases and formulaic expressions on which he could call each time he sang. His repertoire was based on a type of rapid composition recalling these fragments and lines and guiding them into place for each performance. Some of the parts were just phrases: a hero’s “black horse” or a maiden’s “white throat”, in which the adjective barely registers its meaning. Other parts were long descriptions of soldiers arriving at a battlefield, details of the arms they carried, the numbers in each contingent, confrontations between heroes and their enemies. Thus, each song was composed anew at each performance. The narrative outline of a story was well known to the audience, rather like some modern film genres such as the Western. The audience revels in the fulfilment of expectations while taking pleasure in the singer’s skill to add a new turn of phrase.

Some of the best-known songs are about the Battle of Kosovo and the legendary hero, Prince Marko (Kraljević Marko). The songs about Kosovo celebrate the battle of 1389 as a tragic Serbian defeat and the beginning of Turkish rule. According to the myth, Prince Lazar is visited by the prophet Elijah who offers him a choice: he can win the day and build an earthly kingdom, or lose but in defeat earn for himself and his people a heavenly kingdom. Lazar, naturally, chooses the latter option. He and his lords meet for a last supper on the eve of battle and with a sense of premonition he accuses his loyal retainer Miloš Obilić of treachery. Greatly hurt, Obilić denies any such thought and declares that he will kill the Ottoman leader, Sultan Murat. The Serbs are indeed betrayed, but by Vuk Branković, who leads his men away from the field when he should support the main army. Both Lazar and Obilić fulfil their epic roles: Lazar dies a martyr, and Obilić is hacked to pieces after killing Murat.

This bare outline is the myth of the famous battle as preserved in the song “The Fall of the Serbian Empire” (Propast carstva srpskoga). The Kosovo cycle contains many other songs that tell of associated events—the fear of the wives of the Serbian lords as they head off for Kosovo, the Kosovo Maiden who gives comfort to the wounded heroes, all telling a narrative with numerous strands and various characters. The Serbs are defeated because of betrayal from within, while preserving the integrity of their heroic demise framed in a strong biblical allegory.

If the Kosovo cycle offers compensation in piety and heroism, the other well-known cycle of epic ballads about Prince Marko offers a different kind of consolation. He is the most highly developed character of all the ballads, an archetypal hero and yet also something of an anti-hero. He is strong and determined in action, but will use tricks and subterfuge in order to win. He shows a comical side: when his mother wants him to get married, he points out that she wants a daughter and he wants a wife, and that these are not compatible aims. He drinks copious amounts of red wine, as does his horse. This mixture of epic and comic elements makes him a more grounded type, someone with whom the peasant society which created him could easily identify.

The legendary prince is based on a real historical figure, Marko, the son of King Vukašin, a Serbian feudal lord. The real Marko was a Turkish vassal who fought for the sultan and paid homage to his authority. The epic Marko is also a servant of the Ottoman Empire, but a servant whom the sultan fears and on whom he has to rely to fight his enemies. Marko can afford to be kind in a cruel world, and very severe when affronted or when he sees dishonesty. He upholds the honour of his family according to the traditional values of a patriarchal code, and at the same time one can laugh with him and at him. In fact, he reflects the very complicated relationship that developed between the Serbs and their Ottoman masters. Not challenging the status quo, the mythic Marko works within its framework, an invention of the colonized imagination, an image of a preferred world.

The epic ballads were not the only form of oral literature. There were other types of songs providing a whole library of material that could cover all occasions while working or celebrating, at harvest time or at a wedding. Yet the large-scale stories and colourful characters in the epics have persisted longer and, perhaps more importantly, they captured the imagination of Europe in the nineteenth century. Goethe and other German Romantics considered these songs to possess an authentic ring which their more sophisticated, modern equivalents had long since lost. The Serbian epics offered a nostalgic glimpse of a purer national soul about which people abroad wanted to know more. Their reputation spread and translations soon appeared in Germany, France and Britain. In Serbia, however, the songs remained very much a daily entertainment, which, like all art, could be enjoyed on many different levels. Although the product of an agrarian and illiterate society, with their place in an urban, educated context limited, they survived within modern Serbian culture as they form a background to later developments.

Belgrade is one of the settings for one of the last great ballads created by the blind bard Filip Višnjić (1767–1834), “The Start of the Revolt against the Dahijas” (Početak bune protiv dahija). The song reworks the story of the First Serbian Uprising using the recognizable formulaic expressions of the traditional ballads and augmenting the historical outline with more dramatic flourishes.

The opening sets the scene for the remainder of the story; the translated lines here are taken from Geoffrey N. W. Locke’s
The Serbian Epic Ballads: An Anthology
(in which the translator prefers the spelling Dahiyas):

Dear God, what great and wondrous happenings!
When in the Serbian lands there first swelled up
The tide of change that swept away the Turks,
And saw the realm of Serbia restored.
It was not done by princes waging war,
Nor did the Turkish gluttons wish for it.
The hungry common people of the land
Arose—they could no longer pay the tax,
Nor bear the threefold burden of the Turks.
For all those who were blessed by God were roused—
The blood began to boil up through the earth.
They knew the time had come for waging war,
The time to shed their blood for Christianity,
And to avenge their ancestors at last.

This celebration of the Uprising stresses some elements of the Serbian cause that were absent from the real context. It begins with a reference to God and the hint that this war is a holy crusade, fused with the popular nature of the campaign against the Turks prompted by the “hungry common people”. In reality, the Serbian standard was raised at Orašac by local chieftains coming together under Karađorđe’s leadership. The song suggests that Serbia will be restored as a consequence of the rebels’ action, although it was actually returned as a province to the Ottoman Empire with limited local powers. Blood will be inevitably spilled, since this is a conflict between two diametrically opposed sides, a basic story of good versus evil, in which the downtrodden Serbian peasant will carry the cross of Christ into battle. The final line focuses on vengeance and the demand for retribution for “their ancestors”, which the Serbian audience would understand to mean the Battle of Kosovo. Thus, the Uprising is invested with a divine call to arms supported by the cultural memory of the community.

The song, however, continues to tell a rather more complicated story. The Turks themselves are not looking for a fight, which in a roundabout way reflects the historical position of Sultan Selim III, who tried to pursue a more conciliatory policy toward the Serbs. In the ballad the local leaders, the Dahijas, meet by the Istanbul Gate and go to the Danube to fill a bowl with water. They carry it from the banks of the river to the top of the Nebojša Tower at Kalemegdan where, standing round the bowl, they hope to see their futures in the water. What they see disturbs them greatly, as each of them stares at an image of himself without his head. The oldest among them councils that they have wronged the Serbs who will seek their freedom and he recalls the dying words of Sultan Murat after his victory at Kosovo:

O brother Turks! Vezirs and Generals!
Now I must die; the empire falls to you.
Hear what I say; you must obey my words,
So that your rule may last a thousand years.
Do not be cruel to the Serbian folk;
Do right to them, and be considerate.

Sultan Murat is advising his followers to act justly toward the Serbs, but the Dahijas have forgotten these wise words and will pay for their cruelty. The younger hotheads ignore the advice and propose to pool their resources and execute all Serbs who plot against them. Karađorđe is one of their targets but he manages to escape their murderous plans and raises a force to combat them. His rebels come from rural Serbia and go around the villages killing the Turks they find before turning on the towns, the centres of Ottoman power. Karađorđe demands that the Turkish tyrants be handed over to him and his men. The Serbs beat them as they had been beaten, save those who ask for mercy, baptize some, and execute the rest. Those who deserve punishment are punished, justice prevails and Serbia is liberated “from Kosovo to fair Belgrade”.

The poem, unlike the Kosovo cycle, does not celebrate defeat but victory. It plays on the edges of historical events; some of its details are quite accurate, and others are clear embellishments. It represents one of the last examples in the national tradition of epic ballads; in fact, it appears on the cusp between two eras as the Serbs begin their return to Belgrade.

Two years after the defeat of Karađorđe’s rebels, the Serbs in the region of Belgrade rose for a second time against intolerable local conditions, this time led by Miloš Obrenović (1780–1860). He was not a revolutionary patriot, nor was he keen to meet the Ottoman Empire in open battle. Rather, he was pragmatic, open to negotiations and ready to compromise. His situation was helped by the post-Napoleonic international order in which Russia was free once more to meddle in Ottoman affairs. With pressure from Moscow a deal was struck in 1817 that left Miloš as the knez, or prince, of Serbia. The country was not independent but it was invested with more local autonomy on which Miloš could build. Karađorđe returned to Serbia secretly, but his methods and intentions were not what the new leader had in mind. Hearing of his presence in the vicinity, Miloš dispatched some of his men to kill him and, as proof of his loyalty to the sultan, sent his rival’s head to Istanbul.

The new knez was not only a brutal despot but also a prosperous businessman. The Serbian economy was by now based on the rearing and export of pigs to the lucrative Habsburg market. Miloš was already successful in this regard and intended to use his position to increase his share of exports and control the frontier. He rapidly grew richer and was able to bribe and buy loyalty, but his enterprise relied on keeping local political power in his hands. The sultan lived far away and it was in Miloš’s interests to make himself indispensable to the security of the Ottoman Empire’s border with Austria. Such stability also served to stimulate the very trade on which his economic future depended.