ness
of his language, and having joined the detractors of the prince at a
critical moment, although he owed everything to him, Milosh ordered
his head to be struck off. Fortunately his brother Prince Ievren met
the people charged with the bloody commission; he blamed them, and
wished to hinder the deed: and knowing that the police director was
already on his way to Belgrade from Posharevatz, where he had been
staying, he asked the momkes to return another way, saying they had
missed him. The police director thus arrived at Belgrade, was
overwhelmed with reproaches by Milosh, and pardoned.
A young man having refused to marry one of his cast-off mistresses, he
was enlisted in the army, but after some months submitted to his fate.
He used to raise to places, in the Turkish fashion, men who were
unprepared by their studies for them. One of his cooks became a
colonel. Another colonel had been a merry-andrew. Having once received
a good medical advice from his butler, he told him that nature
intended him for a doctor, and sent him to study medicine under Dr.
Cunibert.
"When Milosh sent his meat to market, all other sales were stopped,
until he had sold off his own at a higher price than that current, on
the ground of the meat being better."
"The prince considered all land in Servia to belong to him, and
perpetually wished to appropriate any property that seemed better than
his own, fixing his own price, which was sometimes below the value,
which the proprietor dared not refuse to take, whatever labour had
been bestowed on it. At Kragujevatz, he prevented the completion of
the house of M. Raditchevitch, because some statues of wood, and
ornaments, which were not to be found in his own palace, were in the
plan. An almanack having been printed, with a portrait of his niece
Auka, he caused all the copies to be given back by the subscribers,
and the portraits cut out."
There can be no doubt, that, after the miserable end of Kara Georg,
and the violent revolutionary wars, an unlimited dictatorship was the
best regimen for the restoration of order. Milosh was, therefore, many
years at the head of affairs of Servia before symptoms of opposition
appeared. Allowances are certainly to be made for him; he had seen no
government but the old Turkish regime, and had no notion of any other
way of governing but by decapitation and confiscation. But this
system, which was all very well for a prince of the fifteenth century,
exhaust
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