During the second Vizierate of Essad Pasha, certain movements of a suspicious nature took place on the Montenegrin frontier which would have arrested the attention of a more vigilant Government. A party of sixty Slav peasants from the village of Nevesinje in the Commune of Mostar, on some trivial quarrel with the local authorities, emigrated in a body across the frontier into Montenegro. In a short time, through the good offices of the Russian Ambassador, they obtained leave to return to their homes; but very soon, in concert with their Montenegrin friends, they organised a _razzia_ on the lands of the neighbouring Mussulmans. Instead of nipping this incipient rebellion in the bud and enquiring into its cause, the local authorities temporised with its leaders and awaited instructions from Constantinople as to how they were to proceed. Encouraged by this impunity, and with the assurance of external support, the insurgent bands rapidly increased in numbers, and when at last the Government determined to act, it found itself in presence of a serious rebellion. Essad Pasha, well‐intentioned but weak, and preoccupied with the serious outlook of affairs generally, accepted the insidious offer of the Russian and Austrian Ambassadors to intervene between the leaders of the bands and the Supreme Government. No policy could have been more fatal. It afforded the greatest possible encouragement to the rebels, who considered the step an acknowledgment by the Government of its own inability to deal with the movement; it practically conceded belligerent rights to the rebels, and it encouraged the habit and consecrated the principle of interference by foreign governments in the internal affairs of the empire. The hollowness of the offer was apparent the moment the terms of surrender came to be discussed, and the net result of this diplomatic comedy was, as was no doubt intended, that what was at first an insignificant rising of a handful of peasants was raised to the dignity of a recognised rebellion that could negotiate on equal terms with the Imperial Government through the medium of foreign consuls and ambassadors. Mahmoud Nedim had now succeeded Essad Pasha as Grand Vizier (1875), and as no effective measures were taken to suppress the rising, it went on spreading from village to village and district to district till the contagion was caught in Bulgaria. There, in the beginning of 1874, a commencement of unrest showed itself in the districts of Drenova, Kazanlik, and Zagra; but the local authorities (warned by what had taken place in the Herzegovina through the neglect of initial precautions) had all the leaders of the movement arrested. Thereupon General Ignatieff made such energetic representations to the Porte, that orders arrived not only for the release of the imprisoned malcontents, but for the dismissal of all the functionaries concerned in their arrest.[6]