Note 249 — Chapter VI · THE PANIC IN SERAJEVO.

To show that these and other tortures are by no means new in Bosnia, I may be allowed to cite a curious passage from a book on Turkish Manners and Customs, and having especial reference to the Turkish border-province of Dalmatia, written in the sixteenth century by a citizen of Zara, Messer Luigi Bassano, and entitled I Costumi et i Modi particolari de la vita de Turchi. Roma, 1545. Ch. xxxiii. is headed ‘Modo che usano d’impalare, e d’altre sorti de Morti, e torture che danno.’ After giving the most ghastly details as to the method of impalement, and instancing the case of a certain Capitan Lazero Albanese, who had been recently captured on the Dalmatian-Herzegovinian frontier, and had suffered in this way, the writer continues:

‘Usano oltro l’impalare anchora l’inganciare sopra le forche, dove sono tre ganci fatti à modo d’una falcetta da mietere il grano, ma grosse tanto che possin sostenere un’huomo, e qui s’appiccha chi v’è condennato, e vi pende per molti giorne miserabilmente. Appicchano anchora con una fune sottile e lunga, tal che l’appiccato tocca quasi terra co piedi, con tutto che la forcha sia alta. Soglion’ anchora ligare l’huomo tra due tavole, e con quelle dal capo dividerlo per il mezzo con una siega. Usano tormentare lardando, hor con pece hor con lardo, metter celate rouide in testa, metter’i temperatoi sotto l’ungna, cacciare un’ asciugatoio, di quei che loro usano da cingersi, bagnato d’aceto giu per la gola e retirarlo poi su à poco à poco, e questo è un tormento crudelissimo. Sogliono tal’hora ligare un’huomo per un piede nudo à una colonna, attorno la quale fanno assai buon fuoco, l’ultimo rimedio, poi che il ligato è caldo, è di muoversi hor di la, hor di qua, ma poi che non puo piu, stanco e sforzato mancare, e morire, arrostito e rosso, com’un Gambero.’

Recent accounts of impalement in Bosnia have been received with incredulity by a portion of the English public, and that although the Turkish denials were absolutely worthless. For my own part I am credulous enough to believe that the impaled figure seen by Canon Liddon and Mr. McColl was not a scarecrow; and further, that Bishop Strossmayer was well-informed in stating that this was by no means an isolated case. The recent instances attested by Miss Irby’s friends now set the matter beyond dispute. Impalement was common in Bosnia during the disturbed times immediately preceding the Crimean war, and the supposition that a time-honoured institution like this should in a few years’ time have died out in the most conservative country in Europe, is, à priori, extremely improbable. Barbarities like these are characteristic of a certain stage of society, and need excite no surprise. Many of the tortures still practised in Bosnia are an inheritance from præ-Turkish times, and should be considered in connection with the general survival there of feudalism under a Mahometan guise.