military service, levied on every newborn male, forced labour on the
roads, forced loan of horses, a heavy excise on grapes and tobacco, and
a variety of lesser taxes combined to burden the Christian serfs; but
even more galling than the amount was the manner in which these dues
were exacted--the extortionate assessments of tax-farmers and excisemen,
the brutal licence of the soldiery who were quartered on recalcitrant
villagers. A crisis was precipitated by the example of Servian
independence, the hope of Austrian intervention, and the public
bankruptcy of Turkey.

Christian rising of 1875.

Sporadic insurrections had already broken out among the Bosnian
Christians, and on the 1st of July 1875 the villagers of Nevesinje,
which gives its name to a mountain range east of Mostar, rose against
the Turks. Within a few weeks the whole country was involved. The
Herzegovinians, under their leaders Peko Pavlovic, Socica, Ljubibratic,
and others, held out for a year against all the forces that Turkey could
despatch against them.[8] In July 1876 Servia and Montenegro joined the
struggle, and in April 1877 Russia declared war on the sultan.

Austro-Hungarian occupation, 1878-1908.

The Austro-Hungarian occupation, authorized on the 13th of July 1878 by
the treaty of Berlin (arts. 23 and 26), was not easily effected; and,
owing to the difficulty of military operations among the mountains, it
was necessary to employ a force of 200,000 men. Haji Loja, the native
leader, was supported by a body of Albanians and mutinous Turkish
troops, while the whole Moslem population bitterly resented the proposed
change. The losses on both sides were very heavy, and, besides those who
fell in battle, many of the insurgents were executed under martial law.
But after a series of stubbornly contested engagements, the Austrian
general, Philippovic, entered Serajevo on the 19th of August, and ended
the campaign on the 20th of September, by the capture of Bihac in the
north-west, and of Klobuk in Herzegovina. The government of the country
was then handed over to the imperial ministry of finance; but the
bureaucratic methods of the finance ministers, Baron von Hoffmann and
Joseph de Szlavy, resulted only in the insurrection of 1881-82. Order
was restored in June 1882, when the administration was entrusted to
Benjamin von Kallay (q.v.), as imperial minister of finance. Kallay
retained this position until his death on the 13th of July 1903, when