century. Some were Roman Catholics, but they were mostly of the Greek
Church. A colony settled at Buda. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, writing
from that town in 1717, says that the Governor of Buda assured her that
the Rascian colony without the walls would furnish him with 12,000
fighting men at any moment. They were always a card in the hands of the
Austrians against the Magyars.

Leopold I. granted the Servian refugees very considerable privileges and
immunities, causing thereby great jealousy among the Hungarians. Always
favoured by the Government of Vienna, these people have invariably shown
themselves pro-Austrian; and in 1848 they were destined to be a thorn in
the side of the proud Magyars, who despised them, and took no pains to
disguise the feeling, even at a moment so singularly unpropitious as the
eve of their own rupture with Austria. It seems that in the month of May
in that eventful year the Rascians sent a deputation to Pesth, to the
Diet, setting forth certain grievances and demanding redress. The
Magyars rejected their petition with haughty contempt, "a grievous
fault," says General Klapka in his history. The result was that the
Rascian deputies returned home in a state of great disgust at their
reception, and immediately took up arms against the Hungarians. This was
before the Government of Vienna had thrown off the mask. These facts are
not without significance at the present time. The Rascians are strongly
imbued with ideas of Panslavism, and now disdain any other name than
that of Servians; it would be a great offence to call the humblest
individual of the race by the old appellation of Rascian or Ratzen.
These so-called Servian subjects of the crown of St. Stephen number
about 800,000!

The subject is worth mentioning at some length, because a good deal of
confusion exists respecting this particular division of the great Slav