TOWER OF SKULLS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16591, 14 January 1916, Page 6

TOWER OF SKULLS

THE STORY OF NISH.

Nish (a photograph of which appears io our illustrated pages) has had its brief year of greatness. For 12 months jfe has been the capital of Serbia, with a Sing in residence, a general staff, and a Diplomatic Corps, and all the other incidents that make a capital. When the Austrians made Belgrade untenable, this little country town lying among the hills blossomed out as a place where th®y made history. But this was not its first appearance in that capacity, for is on the site of the Roman city Naisst**, and Constantino the Great, the 'first Christian Emperor, was born there in a.d> 274.

Five years before his birth there was fought under the "walls of the ancient Roman city the great battle in which the Emperor Claudius destroyed the Gothic army. After the death of Constantino the Emperor Julian -was at Nish, and ira. proved its defences. The Huns under Atilla destroyed 1 it in the fifth centuTy, and the Bulgarians took it in the ninth century. They had to give it up to the Ausfcrians, from -whom it passed to the Byzantine Emperors. In the twelfth "sectary the Serbian Prince Stephen Nemanjr? was master of Nish, and received there the German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and his crusaders. Then came the struggles with the Turk, In J. 375 Nish was captured. _ It was recovered by the allied Hungarians and Serbians, but in 1456 the Turks recaptures! ■it, and for 300 years it remained in their possession, although there were_ brief periods when the Austrian® held it. In 1809 occurred the most tragic episode in the chequered history of Nish. The Serbians, who had recovered most of their country from the Turks, besieged Nish, but were defeated with great loss. The Turks, to fcelebrate their victory, erected a rough tower, composed alternately of himps of rock and skulls of Serbians cemented together. It is related that there were originally 1200 skulls in the Tower of Nish, and when Lainartine visited the East the skulls still had haiT clinging to them, and presented a gruesome spectacle. For a long period it was the habit of travellers to Nish to carry oS a skull as a souvenir, and this reduced their numbers. But in the Kusso-Turkish war the Serbian army under the command of King Milan besieged Nish, and the fortress fell on January 10, 1878. The remaining skulls were then reverently buried by the Serbian troops except one, which was too deeply embedded in the plaster to be extracted. so-called '"Tower of Skulls" is now only about four feet in height, and only one skull can be seen to Temind the traveller of its gloomy history. The fortress, which is approached by a handsome bridge over the River Nishava, is an obsolete structure now, defended by a few breechloading howitzers. The Konak, which is . the Royal Palace, was formerly the house of a Turkish Pasha. It has been the custom of the King of Serbia to reside here for several months of the year, and the gardens of the Konak are very Oriental in their wild profusion. Nish is the seat of a bishopric, and there is a lofty modern cathedral erected since the Serbian occupation. There still remains one mosque not far from the Tower of Skulls, where the muezzin calls to prayer. The repairing shops of the Serbian railways are at Nish, end several of the chief Balkan high roads converge at this spot, so that it is-of considerable strategic importance. In recent years the town (which has a population of 24,000) has been modernised in the Austro-Frenoh style, with cafes and casinos, but there still remain the winding alleys and picturesque houses of the older Nish—the peasant capital whioh saw the birth of Constantino the Great, and has fallen temporarily to the talons of Ferdinand the Little.