The last two demands were added on Dervish Pashà himself appearing at Nevešinje; the Pashà promised that he would do all in his power to satisfy their demands, but that they must first lay down their arms. This, the Christians, who as yet had committed no overt act of hostility, expressed themselves ready to do, if the Pashà would first find means to protect them from the armed Mahometan fanatics by whom they saw themselves surrounded. This the Vali either could not or would not do, and on his departure the Christians, alarmed by the hostile attitude of the native Mahometans, fled once more to the mountains. The weakness of the government now became deplorably evident. The native Mussulmans, headed by a Beg, a great landowner of the neighbourhood, who was also one of the tithe-farmers, broke into the government store and armed themselves with breech-loaders; and on the 1st of July the civil war in the Herzegovina was begun, not by the Christians, but by Mussulman fanatics, who butchered all the Christians they could find in Nevešinje—a few sick rayahs, who, unable to support the hardships of mountain-life, had returned to their homes. The Christian refugees now descended from the mountains to retaliate on the perpetrators of the massacre; whereupon the government, instead of interfering in an impartial spirit to stop the disturbances and punish the malefactors, dispatched two battalions of Turkish troops to aid the Mahometan assassins, and attack the Christians indiscriminately. It was now that the rayahs of the neighbouring districts, who had been suffering from the same outrages, answered the urgent appeal of the men of Nevešinje, and a great part of the Christian population, from the Roman Catholic districts of the right bank of the Narenta to the orthodox Greek clans of the Montenegrine border, flew to arms.