These maps were, no doubt wrongly, looked upon as the plans of Russian policy, and on this account the Bulgars became still more unapproachable for an understanding or for united work; it appeared to the Macedonian _intelligentsia_, whose hope was to see their country set free, that Bulgaria was the land which fortune and the Russians favoured. Except the foundation of the Bulgarian Exarchate in Macedonia and the creation of Bulgaria at San Stefano, perhaps nothing contributed so much to the estrangement of the Balkan nations as these maps; for it was long before one could be persuaded that this Slav society had produced the maps through ignorance and false information, so that, as Professor Cvijić remarks,[55] "the educated classes in Serbia were as culpable for the pernicious effects of these maps as were the Russian authors themselves." And Serbs and Bulgars had good reason to complain of the manner in which Russia treated them. AUSTRIAN, RUSSIAN AND TURKISH MANŒUVRES While Bulgaria came from the San Stefano peace dazzled with jewels that she was not to clasp, the Serbs continued walking in the shadows which had, from the time of Michael's death, been gradually falling round them. No practical result was obtained from a letter which the Serbian Government ordered their representative to read to the Greek Patriarch, pointing out that only such parishes should be held as unquestionably Bulgarian which had formerly been subject to the Patriarchate of Trnovo, even as those of the Peć Patriarchate were undoubtedly Serbian, while those of Ochrida were disputable, since that region had belonged in turn to both of them. Small advantage accrued to the Serbs from their fidelity to the Greek Patriarch: in Macedonia they came to be regarded by many Slavs as foes to the new national Church, while the only desire of the Greeks was to use them for their own purposes. "There are no Serbs in this parish," wrote a Bishop when the Patriarch commanded him to permit the Serbian priests now and then to celebrate a Slav service, "there are no Serbs but merely Greeks" (in which official terminology the Serbs were included) "and hellenized Vlachs." ... The Serbs about this time were most unfortunate in warfare. Prince Milan tried to secure, without coming to blows, from the Sultan what he expected that his victorious armies would give him, namely, the administration of Bosnia-Herzegovina. After the failure of the 1874 crops the peasants of Herzegovina and then of Bosnia were driven to desperation by the demands of the tax-gatherers. Miss Irby's eloquent description[56] tells us of the terrible state of these provinces during the years that preceded the outbreak. Taxes of one-eighth were demanded by the Governor, one-third or one-half by the Beg, taxes for exemption from military service, taxes for pigs, cattle and everything "you have or have not." One informant said, "I have seen men driven into pigsties and shut up