Turkish houses--some of them are
extant to this day--he gave audience as a Turkish pasha, seated amid
cushions on the floor, his room was hung with captured Turkish flags,
and on his head he wore a turban. It was often rumoured that when he
had gained sufficient money he would not continue to forbid the
working of the Serbian salt-mines, lest the profits of his own mines
in Roumania should diminish; and it is not creditable that he should
have made his subjects pay their contributions to the Turkish Tribute
in the currency of Austria, while he would forward it in Turkish
currency--of course less valuable--and keep the difference. He also
tried to monopolize the swine trade, the most lucrative in the
country; he seized whatever he coveted--lands, mills and houses--and
even burned down a part of Belgrade in order to build a new
Custom-House, whose takings would flow into his pocket. "Am I not the
chief," he said, "the Gospodar, and shall I not do what I like with my
own?" But he was a real Prince. After the Peace of Adrianople in 1829
an edict was issued by the Sultan, which recognized Serbia as an
independent principality, with Milo[vs] as hereditary prince. He
organized a standing army and built roads and schools and churches. He
abolished, in 1833, the old Turkish system of land-tenure and
introduced that peasant proprietorship which causes the Serbs, down to
this day, to go into battle in defence of their own lands. In 1836 he
offered the bishopric of [vS]abac to the famous Bulgarian monk,
Neophyte Rilski, who wrote the first Bulgarian grammar and translated
the New Testament, of which the first edition was burned by the Greek
Church at Constantinople, while the second edition sold to the then
enormous extent of 30,000 copies. The modest monk, who was born in
1793 and died in 1881, preferred the life of a student and
teacher;[39] he therefore declined an offer which was so creditable to
him who made it.... Yet in spite of Milo[vs]'s great services to his
country he had his detractors. It was one of them, perhaps, who
painted the portrait that one usually sees of him--an incongruous
portrait, because the uniform is most correct--he is holding in his
hand the Serbian military headgear, not a turban--but the face, with
its serpent-like moustaches, high cheek-bones and black eyes, looks
more like that of a Tartar than anything else. Those who did not care
for Milo[vs] said that it was barbarism not to let the laws be put