Twenty Years of Balkan TangleDurham, M. E. (Mary Edith)
History
Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle
Durham, M. E. (Mary Edith)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel; Balkan Peninsula -- History; Eastern question (Balkan)
At Constantinople, I learnt that the Albanian revolution had broken
out. Popovitch, the Montenegrin Minister, complained bitterly that
his Government gave him no information, and left him to answer the
Turks' charges of complicity as best he could. He was so anxious
about the affair that it was obvious Montenegro was "dipped" in
whatever was happening, and he begged me to go straight to the scene
of action.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
1911 AND THE INSURRECTION OF THE CATHOLICS
I arrived in Cetinje on May 5th, and found Italy had built a
Legation bigger than that of Austria. France had erected a gay villa
in the main street. Great Britain still only parlour-boarded at the
hotel for a few months in the year. The elephantine Vladni Dom
(Government House) dominated the town, and two ridiculous new houses
in the "new art" style had been built in the main street out of
the "pickings" so folk said, of the British loan, the whole of which
had been spent on useless ostentation. I had hoped that it would
have been used for irrigating, or otherwise developing the land, and
promptly sold out my few shares in disgust--and at par. I wonder how
many other people got out as cheaply?
Vuko Vuletitich was swollen with pride over his daughter, who, as
Madame Rizoff, held a great position as wife of the Bulgarian
Minister in Rome and was known as "la bella Montenegrina." Through
Rizoff I was told Montenegro hoped to attain to much.
I had been so disgusted over the bomb affair in 1908 that I had
fully intended not to visit Montenegro again. I was sick of the web
of intrigue which entangled the land. But now it seemed that only
from Montenegro could I watch the case for Albania.
I was summoned to the palace, and received by the whole royal
family, who were very gay, and did not conceal the fact that they
expected and wanted war, and bade me go to Podgoritza, where the
Queen's cousin, General Yamko Vukotitch, was in command of affairs.
The details of the insurrection I have told in my book, The Struggle
for Scutari. Here I will narrate only those political facts which
fear of injuring my informants compelled me then to withhold.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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