DUŠAN T. BATAKOVIĆ
BELGRADE IN THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
A
HISTORICAL SURVEY
For
Dimitrije ‘’Uncle Mita’’Djordjevic
The Serbian revolution: Nation-Building and
Modernization
After the long centuries of Ottoman
rule, only temporarily interrupted by the Habsburgs, it was only in the age of nationalism,
that Belgrade eventually came under the control of the Serbs.
The peasant revolt of 1804, widely known as the First Serbian Uprising was
turned, within two years, from a modest rebellion against local Ottoman
janissaries into a Balkan-size national and social revolution which the eminent
German historian Leopold von Ranke described, in
comparison to the French example, as the Serbian
revolution.
Terrorized by the local janissaries, Serbian peasants of
the twelve districts of pashalik
of Belgrade (formally sanjak
of Smederevo), led by local elders (knezes), mostly
merchants enriched by livestock trade with neighbouring Habsburg Empire, rose
to rebellion after the slain of dozens of local leaders (seča knezova). Formally fighting to restore
their own privileges within the Ottoman system, insurgents - tacitly supported
by the wealthy Serbian community from southern Hungary (present-day Vojvodina) and Serb officers from Austrian Military Border
- offered themselves to be placed under the protection of Austria, Russia and
France respectively, entering, as a new political factor, into the converging
aspirations of the Great Powers during the Napoleonic wars in Europe.
The demands for self-government in
1804 within Ottoman Empire turned into a war for independence in 1807, encouraged by the
Imperial Russia. Combining patriarchal peasant democracy with modern national
goals the Serbian revolution was attracting thousands of volunteers among the
Serbs of Montenegro, Herzegovina, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Dalmatia and southern Hungary.
The Serbian Revolution soon became a symbol of the coming nation-building in
the Balkans, provoking peasant unrests among the Christians in both Greece
and Bulgaria.
Seized by 25.000-men strong rebel
forces led by the charismatic leader (vožd) Karageorge (Karadjordje Petrović) on 8 January 1807, Belgrade became the capital of insurgent Serbia,
until its final defeat in 1813. The Governing Council (Praviteljstvujušči Sovjet), High
School (Velika škola),
Theological
School (Bogoslovija) and other
administrative bodies were established in the city abandoned by the majority of
the Ottoman population. Karageorge and other
insurrection leaders sent their children to the
Belgrade
High School
which had among its students also Vuk Stefanović Karadžić
(1787-1864) the famous reformer of Serbian alphabet. Belgrade was repopulated by local military leaders, merchants and craftsmen
but also by an important group of enlightened Serbs from the Habsburg Empire
who gave a new cultural and political framework to the egalitarian peasant
society of Serbia. Dositej Obradović,
a prominent figure of the Balkan Enlightenment, the founder of the High School
in 1808 became the first minister of Public Instruction of Serbia in 1811.
The further development of
Belgrade depended
on developments dictated by the Napoleonic wars in Europe. After Napoleon invaded Russia,
the Bucharest Treaty between Russia
and the Ottoman Empire was concluded in 1812 granting local government for Serbia
within the Ottoman realm. The Serbs rejected any solution but independence and
faced Ottoman invasion. Facing complete defeat, Karageorge
and most of the insurgent leadership left Belgrade passing to
Austria to eventually find asylum in Russia. Recaptured by the Ottomans in October 1813,
Belgrade became a
scene of brutal revenge, with hundreds of its citizens slaughtered and
thousands (including men, women and children) sold as slaves on Ottoman
markets. Serbia went back to direct Ottoman rule, while the Muslim population
returned to Belgrade and other cities of Serbia.
After a short series of clashes with
the Ottomans during the Second Serbian Insurrection in 1815 - the second phase
of the Serbian Revolution - the struggle for autonomy within the Ottoman Empire led by Prince Miloš Obrenović, a notable
of Karageorge who stayed in Serbia
after the 1813 catastrophe, entered a new phase. Miloš
made an agreement with local Ottoman officials on maintaining peace and order
in Serbia, while in return he obtained concessions in governing Serbia himself
and collecting taxes for the Ottoman treasury.
Political and diplomatic means in negotiations between the Serbian
Prince and the Porte instead of permanent armed rebellion coincided with the
political rules within the framework of Metternich’s Europe. Prince Miloš Obrenović, an astute
politician and able diplomat, in order to confirm his hard won loyalty to the
Porte in 1817 ordered the assassination of Karageorge
shortly after his secret return to Serbia to start a new Balkan-wide uprising.
The new political strategy of
step-by step enlargement of self-government for Serbia
proved successful after a Russo-Ottoman War in 1828-1829. Prince Miloš became by special decree (berat) the hereditary prince of Serbia, while autonomy of the autonomous
Principality within Ottoman Empire, was guaranteed by Russia, referring to the
stipulations of 1812 Treaty of Bucharest. The Imperial decree (Hatt-i-Sharif)
from Constantinople that granted autonomy to Serbia
was solemnly read in Belgrade in 1830. Serbia obtained full autonomy after the Hatt-i-Sharifs of 1830 and 1833
which ended Ottoman feudalism in Serbia.
According to the stipulation of the 1833 Hatt-i-Sharif, the withdrawal of Muslims, apart from those who remained in the
fortresses of the autonomous Principality of Serbia, was to be completed in
five years with compensation for their properties. Muslims, however, remained
in Belgrade, but most of them, except for garrison, weakened by Serbian
self-government and control of the economy, gradually moved towards other
provinces of Empire. In 1834, out of 15,000 Muslims living in Serbia,
6,000 of them still lived in Belgrade, but in 1837, out of 20,000 inhabitants only 3,000 were Muslims.
The French traveller Boislecomte in 1838 described
the position of Muslim/Turkish population thus: “At a first glance it would
seem that they dominate the land inasmuch as they hold the country’s
fortresses, but because of the Porte’s neglect they are nothing more than
hostages of prisoners, and in order to live, they are forced to depend on the
mercy of the populace they had supposedly remained to keep in check.”
In contrast, Prince Miloš Obrenović, since 1830,
was tacitly repopulating Belgrade with peasant immigrants coming from inner
Serbia, but also with Austrian Serbs, establishing major state institutions
before he eventually moved his court to the vicinity of the city – in Topčider district. Apart from Serbs and Muslims
(mostly Islamized Slavs and some Turks and Albanians) Belgrade was also
inhabited by Greeks, ‘Tzintzars’ (Hellenized Vlachs), who, for several decades, before being absorbed by
the Serbian population, controlled some of local trade and export business with
neighbouring Austria and other parts of Ottoman Empire. The first decades after
the establishment of Serbian autonomy, Belgrade still had
a strong Ottoman and Levantine air. Western travellers in the 1830s and 1840s
were still underlining the sparkling difference between European and Ottoman
way of life by simple crossing of the Sava and Danube from Zemun
to Belgrade.
In the 1870s, a Serbian writer Milan Dj. Milićević recalled
that ‘several decades ago, the chief city of Serbia was part Turkish, part
Greek, part cosmopolitan, but least of all Serbian. Turkish and bad Serbian was
spoken on the street, largely Greek in the stores, and in church and school
more Greek than Serbian. The houses, stores, shops, dress, mode of life and all
the customs were oriental.”
Until the early 1830s Serbian
cultural life was still dominated by local Greek community: Serbian merchants
were sending their children to Greek schools in Belgrade to learn
Greek language as the lingua franca
of Balkan commerce. The church in Serbia,
after the abolishment of Patriarchate of Peć in
1766, was dominated by Greek prelates until 1831 when the last Greek
Metropolitan Antim left Belgrade. The
Belgrade Metropolitan, appointed from the ranks of the Serbian prelates became
integrated into the domestic order by autonomy granted by the Patriarchate of
Constantinople in 1832.
Becoming increasingly Serbian,
Belgrade gradually developed, after Novi Sad in the southern part of the
Habsburg Empire (capital of today’s Autonomous Province of Vojvodina
in Serbia), into the most important cultural centre of the nation: the first
Serbian book in Cyrillic script, after 1552, was printed in Belgrade in 1832,
along with the first number of official Serbian
Gazette (Novine Srbske),
while the first almanac was published in 1833. Within the ninety books printed
in Belgrade from 1832 to 1839, the most important project were volumes of
collected works of Dositej Obradović,
“the Serbian Voltaire”, as he was called for being the main promoter of the
ideas of the Enlightenment. The Belgrade grammar school established in 1839 had five classes by 1842-1843,
while the High School (Licej)
was moved from Kragujevac to Belgrade already in
1841.
Belgrade as the
newly-established capital of Serbia
was soon recognized by the Great Powers. The first foreign representative
appointed in Belgrade was an Austrian consul in 1836. The British consulate was
established in 1837, French and Russian consulate followed in 1838 and in 1839.
Dynamic political activities marked by the growing conflict between the autocratic Prince Miloš and an influential group of oligarchs among the
notables, ended by the change of dynasty. Prince Miloš,
unwilling - according to the 1838 Constitution
- to accept power-sharing with the notables of the seventeen member
Council, decided to leave the Serbian throne in 1939, while his successor,
Prince Mihailo (Michael), after clashes with insurgents led by notables,
eventually abdicated in 1842. The new ruler of Serbia, elected by the National
Assembly became a son of Karageorge, Prince Aleksandar Karadjordjević,
who, far from being strong as charismatic as his father, was under the strong
influence of the oligarchs of the Council known as Defenders of the Constitution
(Ustavobranitelji)
or Constitutionalists. The change of dynasty, recognized by the Sublime Porte
and Russia after series of difficult negotiations, started a half-century long
political struggle among the two most distinguished families and their followers
in Serbia.
The Constitutionalists: The Europeanization of Serbia
The leading figure among the
Constitutionalists was Ilija Garašanin, the first
modern statesman of Serbia, author of a famous memorandum on foreign policy, called Načertantije (Draft). In cooperation with
Paris-based Polish émigrés led by Prince Adam Czartoryski,
who were looking for an ally in the Balkan to continue their struggle against
the Habsburgs and Russians, Ilija Garašanin in 1844
elaborated a detailed plan that would make Serbia the centre of a movement for
unifying Serbs and other South Slavs into a large state under the Karadjordjević realm. Belgrade became the
centre of a Pan-Slavic agitation, attracting patriots from Bosnia
and Croatia. Ilija Garašanin (1813-1874) however, was
suspicious that the dissolution of Habsburg Monarchy was imminent, as foreseen
by Polish émigrés, and limited their initial revolutionary plan for a larger
South Slav state to the more realistic project of Serbian unification within Ottoman Empire, comprising
kindred population of Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro and a coastal part of Northern
Albania. This goal, as Garašanin
saw it, was achievable if Serbia
was supported by the Western Powers, France
and Great Britain in particular. Although the plan remained secret for several
decades Načertanije
was the confirmation of long-term political aspirations of Serbia.
For next ten years, until Ilija Garašanin was in office, a network of secret agents in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Old Serbia and other parts of Turkey-in-Europe was set, responsible to the political committee in Belgrade. The
Montenegrin Prince-Bishop Petar II Petrović Njegoš (1813-1851), the greatest Serbian poet
of all times, was closely collaborating with Garašanin in drafting his
ambitious foreign policy plans. As stressed by the
French consul in Belgrade in 1953: “Belgrade is the political, moral, and almost the religious centre of the South Slavs of Turkey.”
The first counsellor of Garašanin was Matija Ban from
Dubrovnik (Ragusa) a poet and a playwright, professor
of French at Belgrade High School. As a leading intellectual of the
Constitutionalist rule, Matija Ban, a Roman Catholic
Serb from Dubrovnik, who gave his name to a large district of today’s Belgrade (Banovo brdo), was
trying to instil a classical spirit in modern Serbian literature that would
soon be forgotten in the face of the Romantic poetry of younger generations.
In order to modernize Serbia,
the Constitutionalists (1842-1858) employed hundreds of educated Austrian
Serbs, adepts of cameralist methods of government, to
serve in a previously very modest state apparatus. They wanted to remove the
Ottoman-style rule established by Prince Miloš and
impose a Central-European model of centralized administration. In 1844, the Civil Code (Gradjanski Zakonik) of Serbia, a
combination of Austrian law and Code Napoléon, elaborated by Austrian Serbs was promulgated.
The Civil Code made all citizens equal before the law, while private property
was guaranteed. Additional efforts were
made by Constitutionalists to establish a stable legal system (courts) and to
promote the education of the Serbian peasantry. Already in 1839, a dozen of
young students, chosen by the government, were given scholarship and sent to study
abroad, in Austria, Saxony and France. They were to become a new class of native Serbian bureaucrats.
Constitutionalist also helped provided facilities for the students from the
tiny Serbian principality of Montenegro to study at the Belgrade High School.
Constitutionalists, comprising both
reformists and conservatives, made an important contribution to the gradual
transformation of Serbia from an egalitarian to a modern society. However, the
bureaucratization that they imposed turned into a burden that additionally
separated peasant masses from civil servants who became a highly privileged
social group. Constitutionalist considered the Serbian peasantry immature to
interfere into the governing system, and imposed harsh method of punishment for
any kind of public disobedience.
The challenge to Constitutionalist
regime came from a first generation of western-educated native Serbian youth. Young
liberals (Jevrem Grujić,
Vladimir Jovanović, Milovan
Janković, Jovan Ilić)
brought to Serbia the romantic ideas of the nation, the French notion of popular
sovereignty and the British example of parliamentarism. The early Liberals, called ‘Parisians’
brought into Belgrade not only the manners and habits of Western Europe and a cult of
science, but also a passion for political debates. Belgrade became the
centre of political discussions on national policy and political freedoms among
the youth association (Družina mladeži srbske), liberal-minded professors (Dimitrije
Matić and Kosta Cukić) and their students of the High School. They
criticized Constitutionalists for their “draconic legislation and a hollow and corrupt
system of administration”.
The Belgrade Liberals were combining
national Romanticism with general liberal ideas. They considered the peasant
society of Serbia, deprived of aristocracy, as naturally destined for democracy, and
extended family (zadruga),
as a nucleus of democratic order with pater familias as its constitutional ruler. The nation was
the only authentic source of legitimate power. Therefore, the highest
expression of national sovereignty and self-government was to be the National
Assembly (Narodna Skupština),
seen as a genuine Serbian democratic institution. In contrast to the oligarchic
rule of the Constitutionalists, the National Assembly was, as a Convent in the
French Revolution, to become the highest legislative and executive body.
The demands for political freedoms,
already voiced at National Assembly during the 1848 Revolution, when Belgrade
youth was protesting against the official neutrality of Serbia in the face of
Revolution in Hungary and the Serbian movement within the self-proclaimed Serbian
Duchy (Vojvodstvo Srbije,
shortened afterwards into Vojvodina). The Hungarian revolution of 1848 accelerated the
gradual transformation of the city from Oriental to a modern European-like
capital. Many citizens of Belgrade rushed over Sava and Danube to support the armed struggle for autonomy of their brethren in Vojvodina. After Novi Sad was
completely destroyed and burnt down during the fierce fighting between Serbs
and Hungarians, many Serbian families from Novi Sad, at that
time the most European Serbian city in the Habsburg Monarchy, crossed over to Serbia
and settled in Belgrade. Their way of living was gradually accepted as a model, replacing
the Oriental habits of dressing and housing. The suburbs, however, remained
Oriental.
After the Crimean War (1853-1856),
the international position of Serbia
had improved: the guarantees for its autonomy passed from Russia to
a concert of powers. In 1858, after a series of internal crises the Great
National Assembly, composed of 439 deputies was convoked in Belgrade on St.
Andrew Day (12 December). Led by young Liberals who served as its secretaries,
the St. Andrew Assembly turned into a Serbian version of the July Revolution of
1830 in France: Prince Aleksandar Karadjordjević
was overthrown, the exiled Miloš Obrenović
re-elected as a Prince, while the National Assembly was proclaimed the bearer
of national sovereignty and the highest legislative body. Although Prince Miloš
quickly revoked all the major liberal laws voted by the Assembly, the Liberals
had made an important step in spreading the ideas of constitutional government,
civil liberties and popular sovereignty.
The successor of Prince Miloš, Prince Mihailo (his second
reign 1860-1868) declared at the beginning of his second reign that “the law
should be the highest authority in Serbia”, but failed to meet the demands of
the Liberals, limiting the powers of the National Assembly to those of
consultative body. Prince Mihailo was convinced that
apart from a handful of Liberals, the Serbian society was not mature enough for
Western-type political freedoms. However the reforms introduced by Prince Mihailo marked the end of a patriarchal era in Serbia.
His conservative government (1861-1867), led by Ilija
Garašanin,
was more oriented towards legislative reforms, organizing a standing army out
of national militia, building a Balkan alliance system (with Montenegro, Greece
and Romania) and making preparations for a Balkan-scale insurrection against
the Ottomans. Belgrade once again became a centre of émigrés coming from Bosnia
and Bulgaria and in 1866 even from Croatia, when various plans for the creation
of the future South Slav state were discussed. The Prince Mihailo launched a political slogan «Balkans to the Balkan
nations», hoping that Serbian will asume the role of the Balkan Piedmont.
Concentrated on foreign policy, Prince Mihailo supressed the liberal movement
and their followers of the United Serbian Youth (Ujedinjena omladina srpska) who demanded internal freedom as a
precondition for the coming struggle for national unification.
The main achievement
of Prince Mihailo in foreign policy,
after abortive plans for a large-scale Balkan insurrection was the final
withdrawal of Ottoman garrisons from Serbia. The 1862 incident, when the
Ottoman troops from the fortress bombed downtown Belgrade and killed a child at
Čukur-česma, triggered a
popular demand for the immediate withrowal of all Ottoman garrisons from
Serbia. A conference of the ambassadors of the great powers was convened in
Constantinople to prevent a Serbo-Turkish war, but the final results only
partially met Serbian demands. After internal turmoils in Greek lands (Cretan
uprising in 1866) and constant fears that Serbia might trigger a far-reaching
revolt of Balkan Christians, the final withdrowal of Ottoman garrisons from
Belgrade and other cities in Serbia took place eventually in April 1867 through
sopshisticated mediation of the guaranteeing Powers.
The old fortifications and all four heavy entrance-towers were leveled in order
to unify the fortress with the city. The Ottoman flag on the Belgrade citadel
remained as the only sign of the sovereignty of the Sublime Porte in Serbia.
Prince Mihailo ruled in a manner that combined the practice of enlightened Prussian
kings and
Napoleon III. Spending several decades in exile, mostly in Vienna and Pest, the
Oriental Balkan Prince grew up to become sophisticated European gentleman,
eager to apply Western standards of living in Belgrade. In the Palace (Konak) the Prince
occasionally organized balls and social gatherings, while his generous
donations for Belgrade cultural
institutions, gave a more European outlook to the city. Assassinated in the Topčider park on 11
June 1868, in a conspiracy the motivation of which
remains obscure, Prince Mihailo did not live to see
the National Theatre on the main square of
Belgrade completed. The first show at the new theatre was a play dedicated to his
tragic end. In front of the National Theatrе the equestarian statue of the Prince Mihailo
was erected in 1882, with the Prince pointing
by the finger towards the south – symbolizing his unachieved plans for the liberation of Serbs in other parts of
Turkey-in-Europe. The memory of Prince Mihailo in
Belgrade was very strong among the Belgraders.
According to travel writers, many shops, but also private houses were having
his picture in their windows for years after his death.
The Urban Elite
The second richest man in mid-nineteenth century was Captain Miša Anastasijević, a
business partner of the richest one, Prince Miloš
himself. Anastasijević was called the ‘Prince of
Danube” or “Danube Rothschild” for his wealth and business skills. He
was the first public benefactor in Serbia and organizer of various balls for the Belgrade bourgeoisie. Captain Miša Anastasijević married his daughter to a Prince from
the ruling Karadjordjević family and built the
most impressive building in the city (Kapetan Mišino zdanje), destined to
be a new court but when this political plan failed, the building turned into an
endowment for the Fatherland, sheltering the High School and the
National Museum. The Belgrade urban elite in the nineteenth century emerged through marriage
arrangements. Two powerful families, Babadudić
and Hadžitomić, who had made their riches during
the 1860s, married their daughters to promising young ministers, politicians
and leading intellectuals educated abroad, combining fortune with political
power. Three daughters of rich merchant Hadži Toma were married
one to Jovan Ristić, a disciple of
Leopold von Ranke, a prominent statesman, diplomat
and leader of the Liberal party, a second one to Prime Minister Radivoje Milojković, a third
one for minister and diplomat Filip Hristić, the first Serb to hold a PhD from Sorbonne of
Paris University.
The clan of Babadudić family led by Živko Karabiberović, the
banker and the mayor of Belgrade boasted among their sons-in-law General Jovan Belimarković,
war minister, Jovan Avakumović, minister and
university professor, Alimpije Vasiljević,
liberal leader and professor etc. Within this influential group forming the
core of the urban elite of Belgrade an important place was reserved for the relatives of both
dynasties. Under the reign of the house of Obrenović
their relatives from the Nikolajević family were
most important while under the reign of the dynasty of Karadjordjević
the prominence went to the family of Nenadović,
distinguished already during the First Serbian Uprising in 1804. The family
ties with ruling dynasties and cabinet ministers fostered nepotism and all
kinds of lucrative business for the state.
The
Belgrade elite in the 1870s and 1880s was leaving behind the Orienal way of
life, imitating the latest fashion from Paris, Vienna and Budapest: As stressed
by M.B. Petrovich, «the interiors of home took on a pronounced European
burgeois look as the more affluent society in Belgrade, and even of the
provincial towns, copied the furniture styles ofcentral and western Euroope
often in helter-skelter mélange. There was a notable increase in the
importation of luxury items such as porcelan, small furniture, glasware and
silver. To live in 'the European manner' became such a compulsion that Belgrade
society in the 1870s quickly lost its since Ottoman and Serbian patriarchal way
of life.» The Belgrade elite was
sending their children to acquire higher education in France -
where already in the 1880's the Paris Law School was seen «as a school
for Serbian ministers» - but also in Austria, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and
Russia. Around 200 Paris-educated Serbs, the so-called 'Parisians' at the end
of the nineteenth century were performing a predominant influence on the
politicals and cultural scene of Serbia.
The rich urban elite were spending their weekends in the beautiful
Topčider park, where they drove by carriages whereas
financially modest intelligentsia, comprising poets, writers, literary critics
and actors gathered in the old quarter of Skadarlija, stretching from the
National Theatre to the slopes towards the Danube side of the
city. With many coffee shops and restaurants and local orchestras from inner Serbia and southern Hungary, including some Gypsy bands, the cheap restaurants of Skadarlija, open
until early morning, were the privileged meeting point of urban intellectuals discussing
politics, contemporary literature and recent theatre plays.
The Ascendancy of the Liberals
After
the assassination of childless Prince Mihailo, the new ruler of Serbia, elected
by the National Assembly was Prince Milan Obrenović, his fourteen-year old
distant cousin, born in Wallachia, a student of the lycée Lous Le Grand in
Paris. During his minority, Serbia was ruled by the Regency Council, which in
1869 introduced a new Constitution, drafted by
the Liberals and approved by the Regency Council. Serbia was defined as
'a hereditary constitutional monarchy with national representation.' The
one-chamber National Assembly was more
than an advisory body, but with no control over budget and legislation.
Two-thirds of the Assembly were elected by all male tax-payers (introducing,
apart from army personnel and a limited number of landless peasants, almost the
full suffrage), while the Prince was to nominate one-third of its deputies among
citizens ‘distinguished by their learning or experience of public affairs’. The Minister
were not responsible to the National Assembly but to the Prince. The ‘Regency
Constitution' fostered dynamic political life dominated by the Liberals and
young Conservatives (led mostly by western-educated sons of Constitutionalists)
marking the beginning of the parliamentary system, while the Prince accepted
the practice of cabinet government. The extension of the freedom of the press
was followed by series of important reforms on financing (silver currency unit, credits incentives)
and introduction of the metric system.
Urban development in the 1870s was somewhat chaotic, but
accelerated. As witnessed by different travel writers, great efforts were made
to widen and pave the streets and put a European imprint on the city. Jan Neruda of
Bohemia, visiting Belgrade in early 1870s underlined that Belgrade was called The Rose of
Danube, ''riveted with golden nails''. Neruda also
noticed that ''everywhere there's digging, regulation and building. Shingle
roofs are being replaced. Streets are being redrawn. At the present only one
has been completely put in order – the one passing by the Prince's palace... Appealing
private houses are being built one after the other, and even taverns, not of
the worst kind, are also multiplying.'' The Prussian travel-writer Gustav Rasch in 1873 stressed that six years ago he had ''nowhere
to 'spend the evening in Belgrade' unless Prince Mihailo's court
manager'' invited him to ''his private quarter at the Konak''
when he could meet ''the Belgrade high society, east fruit preserves (slatko) and smoke the čibuk. Now I
could choose to spend my evening in any of several very beautiful gardens, with
good music, outstanding food and pleasant company. Six years ago, the court
manager and I had to settle for some very pitiful inn found in the deserted
Turkish quarter. In today's Belgrade, during the summer season, an opera company performs in one of
the new parks giving a pretty good interpretation of Offenbach's operetta's and comedies.'' Rasch also
praised new and comfortable hotels, such as ''The Serbian Crown'', ''The
Serbian King'' and ''Hotel Paris'', but also
Kasina,
an English style club for gentlemen : ''The Casino occupies the entire first
floor of a nice, fashionable building. Along with a large reading room where
there were numerous French, English and Slav political and illustrated
magazines one finds: a wonderfully furnished room for conversations, the
billiard room, a room for cards and an entertainment hall. On the ground floor
of the same building, there is the National bookstore, opened during the
Regency period.''
During the first
years of the reign of Milan Obrenović, Serbia went through a difficult period marked by the Eastern Crisis
(1875-1878). After the Serbian peasants in Herzegovina rose against the Ottoman rule in 1875, demanding unification with
Montenegro, the revolt quickly spread to Bosnia. Serbian insurgents in Bosnia encouraged by military successes proclaimed unification with Serbia. Public opinion in Belgrade thought that the moment had come for a final confrontation with the
decaying Ottoman Empire. Thousands of enthusiastic volunteers were crossing to Bosnia to join the Serbian insurgents, while Serbia and Montenegro, militarily poorly prepared, entered the war in 1876. The Serbian
campaign on several fronts, including Bosnia, proved unsuccessful, and through the mediation of Russia Serbia
managed to negotiate a peace treaty on the basis of status quo ante bellum. The second war against the Ottomans
(1877-1878), already weakened by the large-scale struggle with Russians,
extended Serbian frontiers to the south, encompassing the former Ottoman sanjak of Niš.
Belgrade: A Royal
Capital
At the Congress
of Berlin in 1878, Serbia and Montenegro, both territorially enlarged were recognized as independent
states, but Bosnia & Herzegovina, contrary to the Serbian expectations, went under
Austro-Hungarian occupation. Abandoned by Russians who favoured Bulgaria as their main Balkan client, Prince Milan turned to
Vienna, signing a series of bilateral treaties, including a Secret
Convention (1881), a secret political treaty that authorized the Dual Monarchy
to control the foreign policy of Serbia. In return for becoming an obedient satellite of Austria-Hungary, Prince Milan was supported by Vienna to proclaim Serbia a Kingdom in March 1882, with Belgrade as its capital.
Foreign
consulates in Belgrade were elevated into legations,
while Serbia, as an independent state, became
attractive for foreign investments. The National bank (1883) and other state
institutions were established, while the railway connecting Belgrade with
central Europe on the north and the city of Niš in
the south was completed in 1884, as well as an impressive railway station in
the capital. The first telephone wires were installed in 1883, to be used only
by the army until 1889. During the visit of Nikola
Tesla, the Serbian-American inventor in 1895, the Serbian Post “caused a
sensation by connecting a simultaneous concert in Belgrade and Niš
by telephone…”
Electric
lights were installed in 1892, while streetcars started to run already in 1893.
Involved in various business arrangements, the
Belgrade political and entrepreneurial
elite built new and attractive villas and mansions that contributed to the more
European image of the city. However, the economic dependence of Serbia to Austria-Hungary until the early twentieth
century made the general progress of Belgrade and Serbia much slower than
expected.
Political life,
despite internal turmoil during the Eastern Crisis, gradually progressed. Apart
from the Liberals and the Young Conservatives (regrouped into Progressive
Party), a Radical party emerged as a new and important factor of Serbian
politics. Led by Nikola Pašić,
(1859-1926) Radical leaders were a group of western-educated intellectuals
mixing Socialist, French Radical and Slavophile ideas
with the popular demands of Serbian peasantry for lower taxes, self-government
and political freedoms. Under the progressive cabinet of Milan Piroćanac (1880-1883), supported by the Radicals, the
Serbian parliament introduced a series of French-inspired liberal laws on the
freedom of the press, public meetings and association that gave impetus to the
Radicals, who became the strongest political party, challenging authority of
the Prince. After the Radical-led
peasant revolt (Timok Rebellion in 1883), the
leadership of the Radical party was imprisoned or exiled. Prince Milan,
supported by the Progressives who were disappointed by effects of their
previous legislation on political freedoms, imposed an autocratic rule.
Austrophile in foreign policy and authoritarian in domestic
affairs, excessive in spending state funds for private purposes, involved in a
family feud with his wife Queen Nathalie, Prince Milan, especially after a
humiliating defeat in a war in Bulgaria (1885), became increasingly unpopular,
confronting the majority of his subjects who were loyal to the Radicals. In
1888, after negotiations with all three political parties King Milan engineered
the Liberal Constitution, solemnly acclaimed by an overwhelming majority of 600
deputies of the Grand National Assembly summoned in Belgrade. The 1888 Constitution introduced practically universal male
suffrage, ministerial responsibility and independent judiciary, strengthened
civil liberties and budget control.
King Milan after imposing his confidents as members of the Regency Council – on
March 6 1889, the
day of the seventh anniversary of independence of Serbia - abdicated in favour of his thirteen-year old son Aleksandar Obrenović. King
Milan was convinced that under such a liberal Constitution, Radicals will lead Serbia into political and economic disaster.
However, for
several years - until the young King organized a coup against the Regency
Council in April 1893 and assumed his royal powers – Radical cabinets
(1889-1892) managed to improve the crippled Serbian economy and stabilize
political situation. Until the mid-1880s, elections in the Belgrade constituency gave deputies for the National Assembly mostly from
the ruling parties (Liberals or Progressives). It was only in 1886 that
Belgrade ha chose the representatives of the radical opposition. Under the
1888 Constitution, the mayors of Belgrade were chosen from the party that won the elections in the city.
One of the most able mayors was the radical leader Nikola
Pašić (mayor 1895-1897). During the next
decades, until the First World War, when elections were not held under police
pressure, Belgrade was choosing mostly radical and independent radical
deputies.
In 1894, the King
Aleksandar, as advised by his father, suspended the
1888 Constitution and reinstalled the 1869 Constitution, entering a new phase
of struggle against the Radicals. A series of political and family scandals
marked the decade of the reign of King Aleksandar Obrenović. His efforts - encouraged by ex-King
Milan who returned in Belgrade in 1894 to become a commander-in-chief of the Serbian Army in
1897 - were aimed to divide and eventually destroy the Radical party. The
sudden marriage of King Aleksandar with a much older
widow Draga Mašin, former dame d’honneur
of Queen Nathalie in 1900, was strongly disapproved, not only by his father and
the political elite, but by the public opinion of Serbia as well. Weakened by a
series of family scandals and alienated from the army - a main stronghold of
the dynasty - King Aleksandar was becoming as
unpopular as his father was prior to his abdication. In 1901, the King imposed
a new Constitution, introducing bicameral legislature in order to prevent the
control of the Radicals. The older generation of Radicals, exhausted by the
constant struggle with the house of Obrenović,
entered a coalition government with the Progressives and accepted the 1901
Constitution, while the younger fraction of the future Independent Radicals,
firmly rejected the deal with the Crown. The growing dissatisfaction with the
frequent change of cabinets, three royal coups, abrogation and suspension of
Constitutions within the autocratic rule of King Aleksandar
Obrenović, however, was additionally enhanced
by dissent in the army, dissatisfied
with deteriorating financial conditions and favouritism introduced by the Queen after the royal marriage.
The 1903 Coup d'Etat
On
11 June (29 May, O.S.) 1903, Belgrade became the theater of a genuine royal
tragedy. A group of civil conspirators, mostly Liberals (former ministers
Djordje Genčić and Jovan Avakumović, General Jovan
Atanacković and merchant Nikola Hadži Toma), senior army officers
(colonels Damnjan Popović,
Aleksandar Mašin, Petar Mišić) and an ambitious group of junior officers
(Lieutenants Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis, Velimir Vemić and Antonije
Antić) recruited during 1902 and early 1903, a hundreds of dissatisfied
army officers. They executed a Coup d'Etat that ended with the
assasination of the royal couple. King Aleksandar and Queen Draga were killed
in the Belgrade Palace and their mutilated bodies were thrown from the balcony
to the garden. The two brothers of late Queen Draga, together with several
cabinet ministers and high-ranking officers loyal to the dynasty of
Obrenović, were executed the same night.
Ex-King Milan died in Vienna in 1901, two years before the tragic end of
his son. That was the end of the House of Obrenović. As previously agreed
by conspirators, the exiled Prince Petar Karadjordjević (the third son of
Prince Aleksandar Karadjordjević and a grandson of Karageorge) was
proclaimed a King to the vacant throne. The «Revolutionary government» formed
out of all main political parties, including leading conspirators, assumed power, until the arrival of the new King from
Geneva. It was one of the rare military
coups that restored democracy and transferred power to the political
parties enjoying popular support.
The
brutal regicide provoked outrage in
Europe while Belgrade, after the first shock reacted with joy,
celebrating ''the death of the tyrant''. Western press, especially in Britain,
depicted Belgrade as a ''White city of death'', while the reports of the brutal
regicide became the main cover story on the front pages of newspapers in Europe
and United States. Serbia, having already attracted the attention of Western
press in previous decades by the series of scandals within the Obrenović
family, was anew depicted as a hotbed of
dark Oriental-type conspiracies.
The new King
of Serbia, Petar Karadjordjević
(1842-1921), after his father lost the Serbian throne in 1858, was trained at
Geneva and the Saint-Cyr
military academy in Paris. He was
considered to be a liberal and a devoted patriot. In 1868 Prince Peter
translated in Serbian John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty, in 1870-1871, he joined the French army during the
Franco-Prussian War and earned a medal for his military merits. In 1875, the
pretender to the Serbian throne joined the Serbian insurgents in Bosnia and
operating under the nom de guerre of Petar Mrkonjić, formed his
own combat unit. He was married to the oldest daughter of the Montenegrin
Prince Nikola Petrović
Njegoš, and lived in Cetinje
until the death of his wife Princess Zorka. Prior to
the 1903 Coup d’Etat,
Prince Petar Karadjordjević
had been living quietly in Geneva, while his
two sons, Djordje and Aleksandar,
were in the pages corps in St. Petersburg. Prince Petar accepted the plan of the conspirators for a coup, but
there is no evidence that he consented to the assassination of the royal
couple.
After his arrival in Belgrade, both
Chambers of the Parliament proclaimed him King, under the previously introduced
1903 Constitution, a slightly revised version of 1888 Constitution. “The real
novelty – as stressed by R.W. Seton-Watson – was the appearance for the first
time in Serbian history of a sovereign who was constitutional by instinct, not
merely by necessity, and whose habits of personal effacement threw into sharp
relief the theatrical vagaries of his predecessors.”
The new elections produced, as expected, a sound majority
for the Radicals. Old and Young Radicals divided into two separate parties after
1905, alternated in the government until the outbreak of the First World War.
The main problem of the new regime remained the question of regicides. The new
King, lacking political support in the country, was relying on the army, while
the National Assembly paid tribute to the conspirators who freed Serbia from the
autocratic rule of the last Obrenović. The
British government, however, refused to recognize the new order in Serbia, demanding
that the main perpetrators of the regicide be punished. Until June 1906, when
the six leading members of the conspiracy in the army were retired,
Belgrade was under a
diplomatic boycott. The main event in Belgrade, the
coronation ceremony of King Peter I in 1904 - on the centenary of the First
Serbian Upr