Thus it is that Bosnia is the head-quarters of Mahometan fanaticism, and that when, at the beginning of this century, Sultan Mahmoud II. endeavoured to introduce his centralising innovations and reforms into Bosnia, which also promised the Christians a certain amount of religious liberty, he found himself opposed here not only by the feudal caste, who rallied round the Janissaries, but by a race of Mahometans whose religion had assumed a national character of a more fanatical hue than was fashionable in the capital. The wars between the Giaour Sultan, as the Bosniac Mussulmans contemptuously called the head of their faith, and his refractory vassals, have been described by Ranke,[140] and need not be dwelt on here. It was not till 1851 that Omer Pashà finally succeeded in breaking the resistance of Mahometan feudalism in Bosnia, and re-subjugated the country for the Sultan. Since that date the privileges of the native nobility have been greatly curtailed, and Sclavonic Mussulman and Sclavonic Christian alike have bowed before a new Osmanlì bureaucracy. That the state of the country has not improved since that date may perhaps be gathered from the following pages. That at the moment of Omer Pashà’s conquest some good was done by breaking the strength of Bosnian feudalism, and setting a limit on the exactions of the native Mahometan landholders, is undeniable. The most turbulent of the native aristocracy were proscribed; the most galling of their feudal privileges were taken from them, and the Christians who had helped the Osmanlì in this second Turkish conquest of Bosnia received at the moment some partial compensation at the expense of their former lords. But when the Osmanlì ceased to garrison the country and prolonged his occupation in a bureaucratic form, it lay in the very nature of things that he should conciliate as far as possible those whose opposition was most formidable to him, his co-religionists, namely, the Bosniac Mahometans. Thus it is that since the period immediately succeeding Omer Pashà’s conquest the state of the Christian population has suffered a relapse, while in the Herzegovina, more especially, as I have shown elsewhere, the tyranny of the old feudal caste has recrudesced, and the _misera contribuens plebs_ of those countries has to bear a double burden of extortion, from the landowner who represents the old régime and the Turkish officials and middle-men who represent the new; so that now the Christian rayah sees himself forced to serve two masters where he served one before. The present Government of Bosnia consists of a small body of foreign Osmanlì officials, speaking, in many cases, a language which is unintelligible to the native Sclaves; ill educated, totally unable to check the malpractices of their agents even when they themselves have honest intentions. Though often, let it be said to their credit, less bigoted themselves, they are altogether unable to place a restraint on