he serfs were judged by
the noble upon whose land they were. They paid taxes; had to give
him two days' work a week, and three if he had vineyards; cut hay
and corn for him, and so forth. In pre-Turk days the rule of the
chieftain seems to have been severe. Under the Turk the system
continued, and the "Turk" of many a ballad who oppresses his
Christian peasant was in fact the Slav feudal nobleman who, having
turned Moslem carried on the ancestral tradition, and to the tyranny
of the feudal noble added religious intolerance.

There was little organized government under the Turks. The
traditional ballads give us vivid pictures of the heyduks, or
brigands. Highway robbery up till, and well into, the nineteenth
century was both a lucrative business and a sport which well suited
the lazy but adventurous spirit of the people. It perpetuated in
fact the everlasting raids of one noble against another in pre-Turk
days. To this day a Montenegrin "junak" delights in pillaging a
village. But continuous work is abhorrent to him.

Armed Turkish patrols guarded the main trade routes between Ragusa,
Constantinople and Vienna. They cleared the route from time to time,
and then woe to the captured heyduk, whether Moslem or Christian.
Heavy the ransom to buy his freedom. But brigandage was rampant
before the Turk came, and, as we have seen, the history of the
Peninsula was one of incessant bloodshed and disorder. The Turk, in
fact, showed more toleration for his Balkan subjects than they did
for each other. Each aimed at the extermination of the other.
Probably, had not the Turk overwhelmed them all, one or other would
have ultimately predominated, and absorbed or exterminated the rest.
Under the Turk all survived. He slapped them each impartially and
allowed no one to exterminate the other. Nor was their hatred of the
Turk ever great enough to cause them to combine against him till
1912, and then they were at each other's throats again so soon as he
was removed.

Though, as we have seen, Montenegro was recruited by refugees from
Bosnia, the converse also holds good. Many a Serb and Montenegrin
flying from blood-vengeance, many a Slav criminal flying from
Austrian justice, refuged in Turkish territory and turned Moslem.
Nor when, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Serbs
struck for independence did Bosnia join them. The Slav Vezir and the
Pashas of Bosnia led great armies against them. By then the whole
situation had chan