But if this patriarchal form of government was interesting, the
character of the people under it was still more so, and it was to me a
great pleasure and privilege to be enabled to study, as I did for the
three years of the insurrection and war, a nation in the earliest
stage of true civilization, corresponding as nearly as we can
reconstruct ethnology to that of the Greeks in the time of the Trojan
war, arms but not men being changed. The honesty and civic discipline
were perfect, hospitality limited only by the ability to give it, and
the courage and military discipline absolutely unquestioning. If the
Prince ordered a position to be stormed, no man would return from the
attack till the bugle sounded the recall. I remember charges made
during the war in which the half of the battalion was down, dead
or wounded, before they could strike a blow, and this without the
presence of the Prince to stimulate the soldier; but, before him, no
man would flinch from certain death when an order was given.
The honesty was singular. I remember that one day, when I was in
Cettinje, two Austrian officers came up from Cattaro, and one of them
lost on the road a gold medal he wore, which was picked up by a poor
woman passing with a load over the same road, and she went to Cattaro
and spent a large portion of the day hunting for the officer who had
lost the medal. Sexual immorality was so rare that a single case in
Cettinje was the excited gossip of the place for weeks; but to this
virtue the influence of the Russian officers during the year of
the great war was disastrous.
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