The music band and the infantry company with which Count Andrassy light-heartedly proposed to enter Serajevo were, as all the world now knows, a worthy prototype of that “excursion” to Tokio which, at a more recent date, stood in the programme of General Kuropatkin. Austria's sacrifice both in men and money during the occupation of Bosnia must surely have grown rather pale in the memory of those who in 1908 so vehemently opposed the annexation.

Ever since 1875 matters had been shaping towards this end. In July of that year armed bands of Christians appeared in the south of the Herzegovina, and took revenge upon the Mahomedan population for the murder of a Franciscan monk who had ventured to pay his respects to the Emperor Francis Joseph during his recent progress through the neighbouring Dalmatia. The Turkish reprisals which followed were so barbarous that hundreds of Christian families sought refuge across the frontier, mostly upon Austrian territory. These unfortunates consisted of those who at the time of the Turkish conquest in 1463 had held fast to their faith. Ever since then they had been groaning under the heel, not only of their conquerors, but likewise of their renegade compatriots, of whom most of the better situated had accepted the Islam, in order to keep their possessions. Favoured and petted by their new masters, these renegades—the notorious Begs—had become the despots of the land; while the Christians, disarmed and deprived of all civil rights, were contemptuously classed as the Rajah (herd).