Sultan, who was to acknowledge the Vladika as their reigning Prince, on their stipulating to pay to the Porte a trifling tribute annually. The bait took with the simple-minded mountaineers, particularly as it came from a Bosnian of their own race-a Slavon renegade; consequently, their principal warriors, the Sirdars and chiefs of the various communes, proceeded to the camp of the Pacha, for the purpose of ratifying the treaty, "where," says the piesma, "they were all hung as rebels, to the number of thirtyseven." The perfidious Mussulman having secured the chiefs, lost not a moment in falling upon the mountaineers, who, to add to their other misfortunes, found themselves without ammunition. A mournful piesma recounts the barbarities perpetrated by Keuprili and his horde of Mussulman savages, too horrible for publication. It is sufficient to say, that every human being, of whatever sex or age, who fell in their way, was massacred. Even inanimate things did not escape their vengeance, for, as usual with this destructive people, the towns, villages and hamlets were consumed, and every green tree cut down, till the entire country became a desert-a desolation upon desolation.

For many years subsequent, Tchernegora was not even heard of; however, a position so admirably fortified by nature could not fail to become the

refuge of the discontented Rayahs of the neighbouring districts, since in 1757 we find it again inhabited by a daring race, who were sufficiently brave and numerous to repel several successive invasions of the Turks, and even to carry their arms into the territory of their old enemies the Arnouts, and wrest from them several important districts inhabited by their Slavonian brethren.

About this time an impostor, assuming the title of Peter III., Czar of Russia, made his appearance among the mountaineers, whose plausible story so completely won upon their simplicity, that he reigned for four years, and became exceedingly popular. According to one of their piesmas, entitled Bogovanie (the work of God), they obtained under his rule and guidance another great victory over the Turks, in which they were singularly aided by a terrific storm of thunder and lightning, which set fire to the Turkish camp, and by igniting the powder destroyed thousands, while the mountaineers, to whom these storms were familiar, fell upon their enemies and totally routed them.

During the joint invasion of Turkey by Russia and Austria, from 1787 to '91, the mountaineers rendered considerable service to their allies, but at the conclusion of the war they were as usual abandoned to their own resources. They had now again

provoked the vengeance of the Turks, who attacked them with an immense force, under the command of the famous Mahmoud, Pacha of Scutari, a descendant of their own greatest chief, Ivan, the Black Prince. A spirited piesma, after detailing a succession of sanguinary conflicts, ends by relating the total discomfiture of the Mussulman army, and the capture of its valiant leader, Mahmoud, whose embalmed head, among the other trophies taken from the Turks, is still to be seen at their little capital, Cetinie.

The destinies of Tchernegora were now to be mingled with those of the great nations of Europe. Buonaparte, who, in his mad ambition, dreamed of conquering the world, trampling in the dust the political rights of man, here creating kings by a stroke of his pen, and there tearing asunder the ancient ties that bound nations to their hereditary princes, among his other infractions of international law, forcibly took possession of Venice and her dependencies on the Adriatic. The Allied Powers now saw the value of the warlike mountaineers of Tchernegora, and their songs record the victory they gained over the French, commanded by Marshal Marmont, and the powerful aid they rendered in driving the Gauls from the shores of the Adriatic, they also tell how, in conjunction with the English, they succeeded in

obtaining possession of the strong fortress of Cattaro, which, according to a treaty with their Vladika, was from henceforth to form a part of their territory, and which they had already made the capital of Tchernegora. But this did not suit the views of Austria, and by one of the articles of the Congress of Vienna in 1814, Cattaro, with the other dependencies of despoiled Venice, was handed over to Austria; hence, when the whole of Europe enjoyed the blessings of peace, Cattaro sustained a murderous siege, and it was not till the mountaineers had expended their last cartridge against the Austrians, and saw before them the horrors of starvation, that they surrendered.

The piesma, describing the seige, and the treachery of the Allied Powers, pathetically appeals to their old comrades, the Ingleski-the lions of the sea— to come to their assistance, and cause the treaty with their Vladika to be respected. England responded not, and the mountaineers had no other alternative but submission. They made, it is true, several ineffectual attempts to recover possession of a port which brought them in direct communication with the civilization of the West, so necessary to the prosperity of their little state. In 1840, the prudent Vladika, fearful of the effects of a war with so powerful a state as Austria, invoked the good offices

of the Emperor of Russia, to calm the warlike effervescence of the people when a treaty of peace was concluded with Austria, and the boundaries of the two states definitively marked; and for the first time, Tchernegora took its rank as a free state, and was acknowledged as such by two of the leading powers of Europe.

Previous to this event, in 1832, the Grand Vizier, Reschid Pacha, to whom we have before alluded, having quelled the revolt of the insurgent Mahometans of Bosnia and Albania, directed the whole of his forces tried soldiers, and accustomed to victory-against the mountaineers of Tchernegora. He had selected a most favourable moment for his enterprize; the Vladika Petrovich, who had so ably conducted the affairs of his little state during times of great peril, was dead, and his nephew and successor had scarcely attained his eighteenth year. The wily Asiatic, unlike other powerful Pachas, who, to make use of one of their own favourite phrases, were doomed to eat dirt in their contests with the mountaineers of Tchernegora, had recourse to the potent agency of gold, flattery and promises. Those among the chiefs who were confessedly at variance with the family of the Vladika, or had any cause of complaint against their administration, were tampered with by his agents, and plentifully sup