In the same building is the room where his son Michael died in 1868, mortally wounded by the shots of assassins in the park where he was riding. The blood-stains remain upon the floor, the bed and bedding, and also upon the table where he was laid when the physicians examined the wound. The place of the assassination is half a mile or more from the house and is marked by a plain monument.
The story is the old, old tale of princely and kingly murders; an intrigue was set on foot by an aspirant to the throne of Servia, Alexander Karageorgevitch, and was assisted by a scandal which had a woman in the case. Karageorgevitch had ruled in Servia, not once, but twice, and naturally he wanted to be there again. He had many friends in Servia, and up to the time of the assassination his return was not impossible. After the murder of Michael there was a judicial inquiry which declared Karageorgevitch instigator of the assassination, and condemned him to perpetual banishment.
The Prince of Servia at the time I write is Milan Obrenovitch IV., a young man who attained his majority in 1872, and consequently has had little opportunity to make his name famous. He is said to be intelligent, and willing to listen to advice; as his country has a constitution and a Congress--called in Servian _Skoupchina_--he could not take it far on the road to ruin, supposing he wished to do so. He has made journeys to Paris and Vienna, where he was warmly received, and it was his reception at Vienna that made trouble between Turkey and Austria in 1873, and came near plunging the two nations into war. Turkey wanted to know, you know, why Austria had made so much fuss over the Prince of Servia; Austria said it was none of Turkey’s { 075}business; Turkey said it was an unfriendly action; Austria said “you’re another;” Turkey pouted, and Austria actually fished out from the pigeon-holes the passports of the Sultan’s representative at Vienna, and was on the point of sending them to that functionary with a first-class ticket (meals and cabin included, wines extra) to Constantinople, when the affair was smoothed over and war was prevented.
Servia lies between Turkey and Austria, and contains about a thousand geographical square miles. It has a population of about a million and a quarter, and of this population all are Christians, with the exception of less than twenty thousand. The country is agreeably diversified with plain and mountain, and the soil is fertile, though far less productive than it should be. The inhabitants are not very enterprising, and have given little attention to public works; the roads in the interior are not generally good, and up to the present time there are no railways. A change is about to come over Servia’s dream in this respect, as she has determined upon the construction of a line of railway southeasterly from Belgrade to connect with the Turkish railway at the frontier, to form the connecting link between the Austrian and Turkish network of railways. When this is completed there will be a through _route_ from London to Constantinople, and the present long but picturesque line of travel will become unpopular. The practical spirit of the age is playing sad havoc with the poetry of the olden time. There is a story that an old sailor exclaimed as he looked at an ocean steamer, “There’s an end of seamanship.” And he wasn’t so far out of the way. The romance and charm of the sea are knocked on the head by our new-fangled inventions.