culture for the Serbs,
whose literary revival came from Neusatz, Karlowitz and even Buda. It was
not only under Prince Eugene that they looked to the Habsburgs for aid.
Kara George, who led their first serious rising in 1804 more than once
offered himself to Vienna.

In the Balkans the Serbs were the first to revolt, and won their own
freedom, with less help than Greeks, Roumanians or Bulgarians, and under
far less favourable circumstances. Thus Serbia is essentially a self-made
man among States, built from the foundations upwards, and possessing no
aristocracy and hardly even a middle class. Her curse has been the rivalry
of two, or rather three native dynasties, the Karageorgevitch, the
Obrenovitch and the Petrovitch; and this rivalry has borne fruit in three
dastardly political crimes--the murder of the heroic Black George in 1817,
by order of his rival Milosh Obrenovitch; of Prince Michael, Serbia's
wisest ruler, by the adherents of George's son; and finally of King
Alexander and his wife in June 1903. The history of the Southern Slavs
for the last century has been a slow movement towards national unity,
overshadowed, sometimes hastened, sometimes paralysed, by the rivalry of
Austria and Russia for the hegemony of the Balkan Peninsula. Till 1875 the
influence of the two Powers alternated in Belgrade, and there was nothing
definite to suggest which influence would win, though of course Russia may
be said to have possessed an advantage in her position as the foremost
Orthodox power and as the greatest among the Slavonic brotherhood of races.
That year, however, brought a fresh rising of Bosnia and Herzegovina
against Turkish rule, and in defence of this purely Serbo-Croat province
public opinion in Serbia and Montenegro rose. Side by side the two little
principalities fought the Turks and risked their all upon the issue. The
provinces were to the last man friendly and welcomed their action. Then,
when the battle seemed won, Austria-Hungary at the Congress of Berlin
stepped in and occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina--with the active approval
of Disraeli and Salisbury. The inhabitants resisted stoutly, but were
overcome. Thus was realised the first stage upon the road of the Austrian
advance towards Salonica. Serbia received compensation at Nia
, Pirot, and
Vranja; Montenegro acquired the open roadstead of Antivari and a scrap of
barren coast-line; but the hearts of both still clung to Bosnia.

Henceforth the friction betw