Travels in Southeastern Europe

The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.

ON THE SHORES OF LAKE PRESBA. 141 whole they dreaded the committee almost as much as they did the Turks. I heard the same tale day after day-a hideous, squalid tale of wrong. Each village had been visited by secret agents, and the people lured by promises or forced by threats to join the movement. Each family had to pay heavy toll in cash or kind. The guns were mostly smuggled in by women, who carried them hidden in firewood or other goods. Then the rising took place-futile, disastrous, and foredoomed to failure. The wretched peasants, most of whom had rarely handled a gun, were led often by the schoolmaster, who, save that he could read and write, was but little better trained than themselves. They burned a Moslem house or two, made a plot to blow up the mosques which failed, allowed themselves to be trapped in a narrow valley; the survivors fled after a desperate struggle for life, and the troops fell on the village. Chiefly women, children, and old men remained in it and a few insurgents in hiding. There was a wild sauve qui peut when the soldiers came; a volley was fired into the thick. Some were killed, others suffered outrages at the hands of the enraged soldiery; the majority got away into the mountains, and stayed there till the cold drove them down. The women went into the villages at night to make bread from the pretty numerous stores of corn which, hidden in holes, had escaped looting. In some cases where the band had given much trouble the village was, burnt to the ground, and
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About this Item

Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 141
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001
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https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bosnia/ans3900.0001.001/148

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"The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 1, 2025.
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