Mohammedans and those who remained faithful to their national Church. In
the course of the eighteenth century the rôle which fell to Montenegro
became more important. In all the other Serb countries the families which
naturally took a leading part in affairs were either extinct or in exile,
as in Serbia, or had become Mohammedan, and therefore to all intents and
purposes Turkish, as in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Ragusa, since the great
earthquake in 1667, had greatly declined in power and was no longer of
international importance. In Montenegro, on the other hand, there had
survived both a greater independence of spirit (Montenegro was, after all,
the ancient Zeta, and had always been a centre of national life) and a
number of at any rate eugenic if not exactly aristocratic Serb families;
these families naturally looked on themselves and on their bishop as
destined to play an important part in the resistance to and the eventual
overthrow of the Turkish dominion. The prince-bishop had to be consecrated
by the Patriarch of Pe['c], and in 1700 Patriarch Arsen III consecrated
one Daniel, of the house (which has been ever since then and is now still
the reigning dynasty of Montenegro) of Petrovi['c]-Njego[)s], to this
office, after he had been elected to it by the council of notables at
Cetinje. Montenegro, isolated from the Serbs in the north, and precluded
from participating with them in the wars between Austria and Turkey by the
intervening block of Bosnia, which though Serb by nationality was solidly
Mohammedan and therefore pro-Turkish, carried on its feuds with the Turks
independently of the other Serbs. But when Peter the Great initiated his
anti-Turkish policy, and, in combination with the expansion of Russia to
the south and west, began to champion the cause of the Balkan Christians,
he developed intercourse with Montenegro and laid the foundation of that
friendship between the vast Russian Empire and the tiny Serb principality
on the Adriatic which has been a quaint and persistent feature of eastern
European politics ever since. This intimacy did not prevent the Turks
giving Montenegro many hard blows whenever they had the time or energy to