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son to punish him.... Peter had far greater merits as a poet than as a ruler. In fact, Pushkin is perhaps the only Slav poet who surpasses him, and his philosophy is more original than that of Tolstoi. There came to Montenegro one Ivanovi['c], a Russian missionary, whom Peter appointed to be President of the Senate. Peter used to live chiefly in Venice, Rome or Naples, only coming to Montenegro as a guest, and it was during his residence in Naples that Ivanovi['c] introduced a number of reforms. According to the general opinion, Peter was the greatest Yugoslav that ever lived; as a ruler he was neither good nor bad. AUSTRIA POURS OUT A GERMAN FLOOD Now that the Austrians had escaped from all their perils, and Napoleon's _coup d'etat_ had removed the danger of another revolution in France, they took in hand the burying of the recent Constitution which had given so much umbrage to the Magyars and to the Croats no vast pleasure. In its place, in 1851, the policy of Bach, an absolutist and a German policy, was introduced. The Croats and the Serbs of southern Hungary were treated differently, the latter being given not the territory they had claimed but one much more extensive, so that they themselves were in a great minority.[42] The Croats found themselves, of course, no longer joined to the Dalmatians. Everywhere a flood of Germans, the "huzzars of Bach," was loosened on the population; German was erected to be the official language. But the Slovenes took advantage even of the German atmosphere. Their national consciousness, which Napoleon had awakened after centuries, was now aroused. They took small interest, as yet, in politics, but strove to make material progress, principally in agriculture, partly too in commerce, such as in the exploitation of their splendid forests. Like the Slavs of Istria, they had no educated class--except the clergy--which was strong enough and was sufficiently well organized to lead them. Consequently it was difficult to make much headway in the towns against the Germans here and the Italians there. But they were not discouraged; by means of organizations, political and economic, they fought this denationalizing effect of the towns. That they succeeded in arresting the tendency--for example at Gorica and Triest--is even more laudable in view of the serious educational handicap which for years they had to face, and which the Austrians continued to inflict upon them until 1914. The provin
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