But the Janissaries who ruled the roast at the Serai were something more than a turbulent rabble of bravoes. They were Sclaves, descendants, most, of the ruling families of the older Bosnian kingdom. They spoke the native tongue. They were imbued with provincial patriotism. They were in close alliance with the haughty provincial aristocracy, who perpetuated feudalism under a Mahometan guise. These Sclavonic Janissaries refused to take to the celibacy and barrack-life of their order. They took wives. They became landed proprietors. They even settled down to mercantile pursuits. Thus, with their participation and patronage, Bosna Serai, the chosen seat of the Bosnian nobility, the Camp of her Prætorians, acquired rights and immunities which made her a Free City. Nothing in this curious history is more interesting to observe than the way in which the primitive institutions of Sclavonic family life assert themselves in this municipal constitution. The Civic Communism—I use the word in its uncorrupted sense—grows out of the domestic. Just as the Bosnian family communities elected, and still elect, their elders, so now the families who owned the surrounding lands were represented by a hereditary _Starešina_; and the artisans and merchants bound themselves into _Bratsva_ or brotherhoods, each guild electing its _Starost_ or alderman. Thus arose a civic government, based on the possession of real property and prosperity in trade.[242] Enjoying such a municipal constitution, actively protected by the Janissaries at Stamboul, the Serai rose to an almost sovereign position in Bosnia. So jealous was its senate of its privileges, and so irresistible its authority, that it actually established a municipal law by which the Vizier of Bosnia was forbidden to tarry more than a day at a time within the city walls. For a single night he was entertained at the public expense; next morning he was escorted without the gates. Even in the exercise of his shadowy authority at Travnik, the Sultan’s lieutenant stood in perpetual fear of the patriarchs of the real capital; for if he presumed to offend these haughty elders, they had but to lodge a complaint against him with the Odjak of the Janissaries at Stamboul, and the Vizier was forthwith recalled. The Porte, indeed, endeavoured to assert its sovereignty within the city by appointing two officers to decide disputes between Moslems and Rayahs, but the citizens retained the right of dismissing these at their pleasure.