As far back as January 1876, Sir H. Elliot had informed Lord Derby of “the system employed by the Montenegrins in aid of the Herzegovinian insurgents. All the men (in Montenegro), capable of bearing arms, are considered to be soldiers, and are made into battalions of 600 men. The commanders and majors of these battalions, who are called commanders and pod‐commanders, receive pay; the remaining officers and men are unpaid. When an expedition is contemplated, each man takes with him potatoes and bread, if he has any, for five days, and a reserve of provisions from each village is carried by women or baggage horses. The Austrian Committees, having provided surgeons and medicines, hospitals and ambulances have been organised in some villages on the frontier. The prince furnishes all those who join the insurgents _without authorisation, but he sends one‐fifth of his effective forces into the Herzegovina. Not to overtire these poor people, His Highness takes care to change them at the end of each expedition, or when their provisions are exhausted. Reforms alone, it is stated, will never put an end to the insurrection, and force is of no avail so long as the insurgents and their Montenegrin friends have only to cross the frontier to be in safety._”[35] As for Servia, Consul‐General White had for months past warned his Government of what was preparing, and of the wholesale influx of Russians into the Servian army, nor had Prince Milan made any disguise of the fact of the likelihood of his being drawn into the _mêlée_, but a certain almost comic jealousy existed between the rulers of these two little principalities, lest the one should steal a march on the other, and acquire a better right to the title of the “liberator of the Slav race.” They consequently agreed to declare war on Turkey together. As Servia, confident in her new levies, was now determined to act, Montenegro could not afford to be behindhand, however much it might have suited her to continue the particular mode of safe warfare that she had, for twelve months, been indulging in.