Serbia by Marko Attila Hoare;

Author:Marko Attila Hoare;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787385474
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc. (Tier 1)

Black Hand and White Hand

Old King Petar was a gentle man who walked among the citizens of Serbia, chatting to and smoking with them as equals, earning the affectionate nickname ‘Our King Uncle Petar’. Nevertheless, he remained unpopular. Despite his spinelessness before the conspirators, Apis did not consider him a suitable leader for the national liberation struggle. He was disappointed by his unwillingness to act decisively against Pašić and the Radicals. Apis wanted a ‘fiery king who would raise the nation to its feet, begin the war for the unification of all South Slavs, defeat Austria-Hungary and show the world and Europe who the Serbs were and what a power Serbia was’. He first placed his hopes in Đorđe, and accompanied him on a trip to Italy and Switzerland in order to become better acquainted with him. But this apparently convinced him that Đorđe too would be an unsuitable king, wholly uninterested either in politics or in his future royal duties.106 Đorđe was mentally unstable and prone to verbal and physical assaults, against his servants, brother and even father. On one occasion, he assaulted his French tutor, threatened to kill him, had to be physically restrained by his adjutants, passed out and, after awakening, continued in his tantrum to break objects in his vicinity, for which his father punished him with ten days in prison.107 Đorđe was also unwilling to kowtow to Apis and the conspirators, as his father did, and quarrelled violently with them.

The conspirators had, immediately after the putsch, obtained influential positions close to the royal family; Antonije Antić had been appointed escort to Đorđe and Petar Živković to Đorđe’s younger brother Prince Aleksandar. The second appointment produced a partnership that would play a decisive role in Serbian politics for the next three decades. According to Apis’s biographer David Mackenzie, the relationship between Aleksandar and Živković may have had a homosexual dimension and eventually involved Živković’s blackmailing of the prince, although Mackenzie’s account is heavily slanted against them both and has homophobic undertones, raising doubts about its reliability. Meanwhile, Josif Kostić became Aleksandar’s ordnance officer.108 The conspirators agitated with Aleksandar’s blessing at court and in the popular press against Đorđe, who identified Živković, his brother’s leading supporter among the conspirators, as a particular enemy. In October 1907, he obtained Živković’s exile to France for fifteen months and a decree relocating Apis to Valjevo. Apis, meanwhile, conspired with Kaclerović to overthrow Đorđe; the Social Democrats misidentified the prince as the principal representative of nationalist militarism.109 Some conspirators, including Živković and Vemić, apparently plotted with Aleksandar’s blessing to poison Đorđe; Vemić recorded in his diary that ‘at a meeting of the conspirators it was resolved to give the madman a fluid’.110 Apis acquired five bottles of poison for this purpose, but apparently had second thoughts and refused to support the plot.111

Đorđe nevertheless believed Apis and his circle wanted to kill him. He accused Antić: ‘What do you want; you, your Apis and Genčić? You killed King Aleksandar and you want to kill me too.

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