The successful uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina,…

The successful uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina, backed unofficially by Serbia and Montenegro, has aroused enormous popular sympathy in neighboring Serbia, an autonomous principality within the Ottoman Empire.

Serbia’s Prince Milan Obrenovic, dominated during the first years of his reign by a regency that had adopted a seemingly liberal constitution in 1869, has tried to develop close relations with Austria, which has made Milan generally unpopular.

After assuming personal control of the government in August 1872, he had further alienated public opinion by his frivolous extravagance; by his unfaithfulness to his wife, the Russian-born Natalie Petrovna Keshko, whom he had married in 1875; and by his refusal to accommodate the pan-Slavist sentiments of his subjects or support the rebels of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Only when threatened with a revolution does he abandon his policy of neutrality and, looking for an opportunity to expand Serbian territory in the area and using the pretext of defending the Orthodox church, joins Prince Nicholas of Montenegro in declaring war on Turkey on June 30, 1876.