Editing History of Montenegro (section)

==== Elective Vladikas (1516–1696) ====
{{main|Prince-Bishopric of Montenegro}}

For 180 years after their first appointment, the Vladikas were elected by the [[Serbian Patriarchate of Peć]] and the clans — an arrangement which was ultimately abandoned in favour of the hereditary system in 1696. For most of this period the Montenegrin people were in constant struggle for its autonomy inside of the Ottoman Empire .

A pretender to Montenegrin throne, one of the [[Crnojević noble family|Crnojević]] family who had converted to [[Islam]], invaded Montenegro just as [[Skenderbeg Crnojević|Staniša]], thirty years before, and with the same result. Vukotić, the civil governor, repulsed the attack of Turks. Montenegrins, encouraged by the victory, besieged [[Jajce]] in modern-day [[Bosnia and Herzegovina]], where the Hungarian garrison was closely hemmed in by the Ottoman army. The Turks were too much occupied with the Hungarian war to take revenge. The next Ottoman invasion of Montenegro took place in 1570.
[[File:Bajo Pivljanin ubija Turčina.jpg|thumb|Montenegrin leader [[Bajo Pivljanin]] decapitates Turkish officer.]]
The national historians are silent upon the subject of the [[Haraç]] (tax in Ottoman Empire), which the invaders are said to have exacted from the inhabitants of the free mountains. The refusal of high-spirited Montenegrin clans to pay tax any longer was the cause of the Pasha's invasion during the reign of the [[Hajduk|Hadjuk]] [[Rufim Njeguš|Bishop Rufim]], when the Turks were driven back with heavy loss in [[Battle of Lješkopolje]] in 1604. About 1500 Montenegrin warriors attacked the Turkish camp on Lješkopolje field during the night, which counted 10.000 Ottoman soldiers.

In 1613, Arslan Pasha gathered army of over 40,000 men to attack part of [[Old Montenegro]]. Ottoman soldiers were twice as numerous as whole population of Old Montenegro. On 10 September the Montenegrins met the Turkish army, on the same spot Skenderbeg Crnojević was defeated nearly a century ago . The Montenegrins, although assisted by some neighbouring tribes, counted 4000 and were completely outnumbered. However, the Montenegrins managed to defeat the Turks. Arslan Pasha was wounded, and the heads of his second-in-command and a hundred other Turkish officers were carried off and stuck on the ramparts of Cetinje. The Ottoman troops retreated in disorder; many were drowned in the waters of the [[Morača]]. Others were killed by Montenegrin pursuers.

Much light is thrown upon the condition of Montenegro at this period and the causes of its invariable success in war even against fearful odds are explained by the accounts of a contemporary writer, Mariano Bolizza. This author, a patrician of Venice, residing at [[Kotor]] in the early part of the seventeenth century, spent a considerable time in the [[Old Montenegro]], and published in 1614 a description of [[Cetinje]]. At the time, the whole male population of Cetinje available for war consisted of 8,027 persons, distributed among ninety-three villages.

The condition of the country at this period was naturally unsettled. War was the chief occupation of its inhabitants from sheer necessity, and the arts of peace languished. The printing-press, so active a century earlier, had ceased to exist; the control of the Prince-Bishop over the five ''nahije'' ({{Singular abbr|''nahija''}}, from the [[Turkish language|Turkish]] ''[[nahiyah]]'', i.e. "district"), which then composed the principality, was weak; the capital itself consisted of only a few houses. Still, there was a system of local government. Each ''nahija'' was divided into [[Tribes of Montenegro|tribes]] ({{lang-sr-lat|plemena}}), each presided over by a chief ({{lang-sr-lat|knez}}), who acted as a judge in disputes between the tribesmen.<ref>Stephen Clissold (1966). ''A short history of Yugoslavia from earliest times to 1966''</ref>