is last
sufferings he wrote a history of the heiduks from the days of the
Turkish conquest. He died on October 20, 1867.

The statesmen who then governed the Great Powers may have deprecated
Rakovski as much as he deprecated them. It must have been exasperating
for those solid persons subsequently to acknowledge--if they did
so--that this unbalanced agitator weighed them very well. But the
Balkan countries were too weak; they had to suffer being thrown aside,
pushed here and there, and trampled on; for when the Great Powers came
down to the Balkans they could really not pay much attention to the
little peoples of the country and at the same time keep their eyes
upon each other. Afterwards the Balkan countries found that it was
better for them when the Great Powers fought each other there than
when they came to friendly understandings. It was profitable and
diverting for Albania when the Austrians and the Italians glowered at
each other in that silent land: it was terrible in 1878 for Bosnia and
Herzegovina when the Great Powers were on such good terms with one
another that they allowed one of themselves to make off with those two
waifs of whom he was not even the wicked uncle.

Russia had been taking a keen interest in the Balkans after Austria's
disaster in 1859 at Sadowa. It was then that Prince Gortchakoff and
his colleagues in the Ministry were inspired by the doctrines of
Katkoff, who in his _Moscow Gazette_ exercised much authority over
public opinion and even over the Tzar. Panslavism, according to
Debidour,[49] which a short time ago had been shivering in the
background, lifted its head proudly and spoke of the new era which
holy Russia was about to inaugurate, of the sacred mission that was
incumbent on the Tzar. And the sanctity was greater in that it was not
to be defined by merely mediaeval but by modern language; the Tzar must
not alone protect all those who practised his religion, he must be a
patron saint who patronizes.

RUSSIA AND AUSTRIA SOW DISCORD IN THE BALKANS

To this end committees, in Moscow and in Petrograd, deliberated;
newspapers and pamphlets spread their views; agile agents propagated
them throughout the Balkans, calling on the Bulgars and the Bosniaks
to rise, promising aggrandizements to Serbia and Montenegro, spurring
on the fiery Cretans to make their revolt of 1866. All promised well.
There was to be a Balkan federation formed at the expense of Austria
and the Porte: Serbia woul