No More Learning

The re-establishment of the Greek Empire
at Byzantium, which had been the goal of the Bulgarian Tsars, offended
the national susceptibilities of the nobles, and a sovereign who owed
his election to that powerful class and who was half a foreigner would
naturally desire to shew himself more Bulgarian than the Bulgarians.
Thus a conflict with the Greeks was inevitable. Its only result was the
loss of all Bulgaria south of the Balkans.
Constantine Asên was also occupied in the early years after the
recapture of Constantinople with resisting Hungarian invasions from
the north. The Kings of Hungary had always resented the resurrection
of the Bulgarian Empire and the independence of Bosnia ; and the
patronage of the Bogomile heresy by the rulers of both those countries
gave them, as the champions of the Papacy, an excuse for intervention.
The history of Bosnia during the half-century which followed the death
of Kulin in 1204 mainly consists of Hungarian attempts to acquire the
sovereignty over the country by means of its theological divisions. First
the King of Hungary and the Pope granted Bosnia to the Hungarian
Archbishop of Kalocsa, on condition that he purged the land of the
“ unbelievers ” who infested it. Then, when the Bosniaks retorted by
making Ninoslav, a born Bogomile, their ban, the king took the still
stronger step of bestowing their country upon his son Koloman, who
in 1237 made himself master of not only Bosnia but of Hum also. The
great defeat of the Hungarians by the Tartars four years later tem-
porarily rid Bosnia of Hungarian interference, and the Papacy tried
concessions instead of crusades, allowing Ninoslav, now become a
Catholic, to reign unmolested, and the priests to use the Slavonic
tongue and the Glagolitic characters in the services of the Church.
At last, however, in 1254 religious differences and a disputed
succession caused both Bosnia and Hum to fall beneath Hungarian
suzerainty. Bosnia was then divided into two parts; while the south
was allowed to retain native bans, the north, for the sake of greater
security against Bulgaria and Serbia, was at first entrusted to Hungarian
magnates, and then combined with a large slice of northern Serbia,
which under the name of the bunat of Mačva was governed by the
Russian prince Rostislav, whose name has been already mentioned
in connexion with Bulgaria, and who, as son-in-law of the King of
Hungary, could be trusted to carry out his policy. This enlarged
(and in 1264 reunited) banat or duchy of Mačva and Bosnia, as it was
officially called, thus formed, like Bosnia in our own time, an advanced
post of Hungary in the Balkan peninsula.
Bulgaria was stronger and less exposed than Bosnia ; but it was
equally coveted by the Hungarian sovereigns. One of them had
already assumed the title of “ King of Bulgaria”; another, after a
series of campaigns in which the Hungarian armies reached the walls
יל


## p. 527 (#569) ############################################

Stephen Uroš I
527
יר
וי
of Trnovo and temporarily captured the “ virgin fortress” of Vidin,
not only adopted the same style, but handed down to his successors
a shadowy claim to the Bulgarian crown. Thus, in the second half
of the thirteenth century, the Hungarian monarchs were pleased to
style themselves “ Kings of Bulgaria, Rascia, and Rama," sovereigns
(on paper) of all the three South Slavonic States.
When the Hungarian invaders retired, Constantine Asên bethought
him of revenge upon the Greeks.
the Greeks. He did not scruple to call the Sultan
of Iconium and the savage Tartars to his aid ; Michael Palaeologus
narrowly escaped capture at their hands, and it was long before the
rich plain of Thrace recovered from their ravages. These exhausting
campaigns caused the Greek Emperor to propitiate so active an enemy.
Constantine's wife was now dead, and Michael VIII accordingly en-
deavoured to attach the Bulgarian Tsar to the new dynasty at
Constantinople by offering him the hand of his own niece Maria,
with Mesembria and another Black Sea port as her dowry. No sooner,
however, had the marriage been celebrated than Michael refused to
hand over those places, on the plea that their inhabitants, being Greeks,
could not be fairly transferred to Bulgaria against their will. To his
surprise, his niece, as soon as she had become a mother, threw in her lot
entirely with her adopted country, and urged her husband to assert his
claims. The Greek Emperor only avoided a Bulgarian invasion by
another diplomatic marriage, that of his natural daughter to the powerful
Tartar chief Nogai Khan, who from the steppes of southern Russia kept
Bulgaria quiet.
The great design of Charles of Anjou, now established on the throne
of Naples, for the recovery of the Latin Empire, affected both Bulgaria
and Serbia. Stephen Uroš I had married a daughter of the exiled
Latin Emperor Baldwin II, and Queen Helena, whose name is still
preserved in the cathedral at Cattaro and in a ruined church on the
river Bojana, played as important a part as the Bulgarian Empress in
advocating an attack upon the Greeks. In vain the Greek Emperor
tried to win over the Serbian monarch by a marriage between one of
his daughters and a son of Stephen Uroš. But the pompous Byzantine
envoys, who were ordered to report upon the manners and customs of
the Serbian court, were horrified to find “the great” king, as he was
called, living in a style which would have disgraced a modest official
of Constantinople, his Hungarian daughter-in-law working at her spindle
in an inexpensive gown, and his household eating like a pack of hunters
or sheep-stealers. The lack of security for property, which was to be char-
acteristic of the Serbian lands under Turkish rule, deepened this bad
impression, and the projected marriage was broken off. Negotiations
were resumed between Naples and the Serbian and Bulgarian monarchs,
and the Greek Emperor sought to save himself by accepting the union
of the Churches at the Council of Lyons, and by repudiating the rights
CB. XVII.


## p. 528 (#570) ############################################

528
Ivailo the Swineherd
כי
had only
of the Bulgarian and Serbian ecclesiastical establishments to autonomy.
But here again the crafty Palaeologus over-reached himself. By his
concessions to the Ecumenical Patriarch he aroused the national pride
of the two Slav States; by his concessions to the Pope he alienated
the Orthodox party in his own capital. At the Bulgarian court the
Empress Maria, who was in constant communication with the opposi-
tion at Constantinople, worked harder than ever against him, and even
tried to incite the Sultan of Egypt to attack the Byzantine Empire in
conjunction with the Bulgarians.
This ambitious woman now wielded the supreme power in Bulgaria,
for the Tsar was incapacitated by a broken leg, and their son Michael,
whom she caused to be crowned and proclaimed as his colleague, was
still a child. One powerful chieftain alone stood in her path, a certain
James Svętslav, who in the general confusion had assumed the style
of “ Emperor of the Bulgarians. ” A Byzantine historian has graphically
described the sinister artifice by which his countrywoman first deluded,
and then destroyed, this possible but ingenuous rival. She invited him
to Trnovo, and there, in the cathedral, amidst the pomp and circumstance
of the splendid eastern ritual, adopted the elderly nobleman as her son.
Svętslav's suspicions were disarmed by this solemn act of adoption, but
he found when it was too late that his affectionate “mother
embraced him in order the better to kill him. Even this assassination
did not, however, leave her mistress of Bulgaria. A new and popular
hero arose in the place of the murdered man. Ivailo (such seems to
have been his real name) had begun life, like some much more famous
Balkan heroes, as a swineherd, and his nickname of “the lettuce," from
which the Greeks called him Lachanâs, may have been given him from
his habitual diet of herbs. Saintly forms appeared to him in visions
as he tended his herd, urging him to seize the throne of the nation
which he was destined to rule. His credulous comrades flocked to the
side of the inspired peasant; two victories over the Tartar hordes,
which were devastating the country with impunity, convinced even the
better classes of his mission to deliver their country; and the lawful
Tsar, crippled by his malady and deprived by his wife's cruel machinations
of his most faithful adherents, fell, in a forlorn attempt to save his
crown, by the hand of the triumphant swineherd.
The success of this adventurer disturbed the calculations of the
Greek Emperor, whose recent attempts at obtaining influence over
Bulgarian policy had so signally failed. His first idea was to attach the
peasant ruler to his person by giving him one of his own daughters in
marriage. But on second thoughts he came to the conclusion that the
swineherd would doubtless fall as rapidly as he had risen, and that it
would be therefore wiser to set up a rival candidate to the Bulgarian
throne. He readily found an instrument for this purpose in the person
of the son of the former claimant, Mytzês, whom he married to his


## p. 529 (#571) ############################################

The Dowager-Empress Maria
529
daughter Irene and proclaimed Emperor of the Bulgarians under the
popular name of John Asên III. Meanwhile the Dowager-Empress
Maria was placed in a position of the utmost difficulty in the capital.
Menaced on three sides-by the citizens of Trnovo, by the swineherd,
and by the Byzantine candidate -she saw that she must come to terms
with one of the two latter. Self-interest suggested Ivailo as the more
likely to allow her and her son to share the throne with him, especially
if she offered to become his wife. At first the peasant was disinclined to
accept as a favour what he could win by force; but he was sufficiently
patriotic to shrink from a further civil war, agreed to her proposal,
and early in 1278 celebrated the double festival of his marriage and
coronation with her at Trnovo. But this unnatural union failed to
secure her happiness or that of her subjects. The savage simplicity of
the swineherd was revolted by the luxury of the Byzantine princess, and
when their conjugal discussions became too subtle for his rude intelligence,
he beat her as he would have beaten one of his own class. Another
Tartar inroad increased the perils of the situation; the Byzantine
claimant, at the head of a Greek army, invested Trnovo; and, though
the cruelty of Ivailo struck terror into the hearts of the besiegers,
accustomed to obey the recognised rules of civilised warfare, the report
of his defeat at the hands of the Tartars in 1279 caused the wearied
citizens to deliver both the Empress Maria and her son to the Greeks
and to recognise John Asên III as their lawful sovereign.
Maria was
led away enceinte to Hadrianople, and ended her career, so fatal to her
adopted country, unlamented and unsung.
But the removal of this disturbing element did not bring peace to
Bulgaria. John Asên III ascended the throne as a Greek nominee,
supported by a foreign army, while the most popular man in the country
was a certain George Terteri, who, though of Cuman extraction, was
connected with the native nobility and was well known for his energetic
character and shrewd intelligence. Byzantine diplomacy saw at once
the danger ahead, and sought to avoid it by the usual method, a
matrimonial alliance between the dangerous rival and the reigning Tsar.
Terteri consented to wed John Asen's sister, even though he had to
divorce his wife, who had already borne him an heir, in order to make
this political marriage. But it was not long before circumstances made
him the inevitable ruler of Bulgaria. Ivailo, supposed to have disap-
peared finally from the scene, suddenly reappeared in the summer of
1280 with a Tartar general at his side. In vain the Greek Emperor
sent two armies to defend the throne of his minion; two successive
defeats convinced John Asên that it was time to flee alike before the
enemy outside and the rival within. He took with him all the portable
contents of the Bulgarian treasury, including the imperial insignia which
the founders of the Empire had captured from Isaac Angelus ninety
years earlier, and which thus returned with their unworthy successor
C. MED. H. v0L. IV. CH. XVII.
31


## p. 530 (#572) ############################################

530
The Tartars in Bulgaria
to Constantinople. Such was the indignation of Michael VIII at the
cowardly flight of the man whom he had laboured to make the instru-
ment of his policy for the reduction of Bulgaria to a vassal state, that he
at first refused him admission to the city. Meanwhile, George Terteri
was raised to the vacant throne by the general desire of the military and
the nobles. Such was his reputation that Ivailo at once retired from
a contest to which he felt himself unequal single-handed.
Ivailo betook himself to the court of Nogai Khan, the Tartar chief
who had once before been the arbiter of Bulgaria. There he found his
old rival, John Asên III, well provided with Byzantine money, and
calculating on the fact that the chief's harem contained his sister-in-law.
For some time the wily Tartar was equally willing to receive the
presents and listen with favour to the proposals of both candidates, till
at last one night in a drunken bout he ordered Ivailo to be killed as the
enemy of his father-in-law, the Greek Emperor. Asên only escaped a
like fate thanks to the intervention of his wife's sister, who sent him back
in safety to Constantinople. Thenceforth, he abandoned the attempt to
recover the Bulgarian crown, preferring the peaceful dignity of a high
Byzantine title and founding a family which played a prominent part in
the medieval history of the Morea. His rival, even though dead, still
continued to be a name with which to conjure; several years later, a
false Ivailo caused such alarm at Constantinople that the Dowager-
Empress Maria was asked to state whether he was her husband or no;
even her disavowal of his identity availed nothing with the credulous
peasants, who regarded him as their heaven-sent leader against the
Turks. For a moment Byzantine statecraft thought that he might be
utilised for that purpose ; but, as his followers became more numerous
and more fanatical, caution prevailed, and the pretender vanished in one
of the Greek prisons.
Andronicus II, who had now succeeded to the Byzantine throne,
realising the hopelessness of any further attempt to restore John Asên,
not only made peace with Terteri, but sent back to him his first wife on
condition that he divorced his second. Thus, the Tsar was able to
pacify the scruples of the Bulgarian hierarchy, which had regarded him
as excommunicated, nor could the united efforts of Pope Nicholas IV
and Queen Helena of Serbia induce him to abandon the national Church.
But the founder of the new dynasty was soon forced to flee before
another Tartar invasion. In vain he had tried to prevent that calamity
by a matrimonial alliance; Nogai Khan ravaged Bulgaria ; and, while
the Tsar was a suppliant at the Greek court, one of his nobles,“ prince
Smilec," was appointed by will of the Tartar chief to rule the country as
his vassal. Smilec's reign was, however, brief; upon the death of Nogai,
his son Choki claimed Bulgaria as the son-in-law of Terteri and was
ostensibly supported by the latter's son, Theodore Svętslav. The allies
were successful; Smilec disappeared, leaving as the one memorial of his


## p. 531 (#573) ############################################

Peaceful development of Serbia
531
name the monastery which he founded near Tatar-Pazardzhik; and Choki
and Svętslav entered Trnovo in triumph. Then the Bulgarian appeared in
his true colours; a sudden stroke of fortune enabled him to spend money
freely among his countrymen, who naturally regarded him as the rightful
heir to the throne ; at last, when he thought that the moment had come
for action, he ordered his Tartar ally to be seized and strangled, and the
Bulgarian Patriarch, who had long been suspected of intrigues with the
Tartars, to be hurled from the cliffs. Two attempts to drive out the
new ruler failed. There was a small Grecophil party in Bulgaria which
proclaimed Michael, the son of Constantine Asên and the Empress
Maria; but the reception with which he met on his arrival convinced
him that his cause was hopeless. The Byzantine Court then supported
the brother of Smilec, who was in his turn defeated, and the number of
Byzantine magnates who were captured on that occasion enabled Svetslav
to ransom his father from the custody in which the Greeks had placed
him. His filial piety did not, however, so far prevail over his ambition
as to make him yield the throne to the founder of his dynasty. He
placed him in honourable confinement in one of his cities, where he was
allowed to live in luxury provided that he did not meddle with affairs of
state.
The Bulgarian Empire no longer occupied the great position in
Balkan politics which it had filled half a century earlier. The rivalries
of pretenders, foreign intrigues, and the sinister influence of a woman
had weakened the fabric so rapidly raised by the energy of the previous
Tsars. In contrast with the feverish history of this once dominant
Slavonic State, that of Serbia during the same period shews a tran-
quillity which increased the resources of that naturally rich country
and thus prepared the way for the great expansion of the Serbian
dominions in the next century. The “great king,” Stephen Uroš I,
whose simple court had so profoundly shocked the Byzantine officials,
after a long and peaceful reign, only disturbed by a Tartar inroad, was
ousted from the throne in 1276 by his elder son Stephen Dragutin (or
“the beloved "), assisted by the latter's brother-in-law, the King of
Hungary. The old king fled to the land of Hum, where he died of a
broken heart, but his cruel son did not long wear the Serbian crown.
Disabled by an infirmity of the foot from the active pursuits necessary
to a Balkan sovereign in the Middle Ages, he abdicated in favour of
his brother Stephen Uroš II, called “Milutin" (or “the child of
grace "). But, like other monarchs who have resigned, he soon grew
weary of retirement, and returned to the throne, till his malady,
combined with qualms of conscience, compelled him, at the end of
1281', to withdraw definitely from the government of Serbia.
As some
compensation for this loss of dignity and as occupation for his not
too active mind, he received from his brother-in-law, the King of
1 Miklosich, Monumenta Serbica, 54, 55, 561.
сH, хуІІ.
34-2


## p. 532 (#574) ############################################

532
Stephen Uroš II
Hungary, the Duchy of Mačva and Bosnia, and also governed Belgrade.
There he busied himself entirely with religious questions; while he
mortified his own flesh, to atone for his unfilial conduct, he and his
son-in-law and vassal, Stephen Kotroman, the founder of the subsequent
Bosnian dynasty, persecuted the Bogomiles with a zeal which became
all the greater after his conversion to the Roman Church. At his
request, the Franciscans, who have since played such an important part
in Bosnian history, settled in the country; but, even with their aid, the
fanaticism of Dragutin could make no headway against the stubborn
heretics. At his death in 1316, the bishopric of Bosnia had been
“almost destroyed,” despite all the efforts of the Popes.
Stephen Uroš II has been judged very differently by his Serbian and
by his Greek contemporaries. One of the former, who owed everything
to him, extols his qualities as a ruler; one of the latter, who was naturally
opposed to him, depicts him as a savage debauchee. The two characters
are, however, by no means incompatible; and if this “ pious king,” the
founder of churches and the endower of bishoprics, was anything but an
exemplary husband, he left Serbia in a stronger position than she had
ever held before. The chief object of his foreign policy was to enlarge
his kingdom at the expense of the Byzantine Empire, which, he bitterly
complained, had annexed foreign territory without being able to defend
its own. Some two years before his accession, the Serbian troops under
the guidance of a Greek deserter had penetrated as far as Seres; and the
first act of his reign was to occupy Skoplje and other places in Macedonia,
an undertaking all the easier in that his father-in-law, the bold Duke
John of Neopatras, at that time the leading figure of Northern Greece,
was at war with the Byzantine Emperor. Michael VIII died before he
could punish the confederates, and his successor contented himself with
sending the Tartar auxiliaries whom his father had collected to glut
their desire for plunder in Serbia, and thus incidentally to weaken a
nation which caused constant vexation to his subjects. The Tartars
came and went, but the Serbian raids continued; Serbian standards
approached the holy mount of Athos, and the Greek commander of
Salonica confessed that his orthodox tactics were no match for the
guerrilla warfare of these marauders. He therefore advised the Em-
peror, especially in view of the Turkish peril in Asia Minor, to make
peace
with the Serbs. Andronicus II took his advice and, to render
the treaty more binding upon the volatile Serbian temperament, re-
solved to give the hand of one of the imperial princesses to Stephen
Uroš. Such marriages were not, as a rule, happy; had not the gossips
told how the “first-crowned” king had turned his Greek wife out
of doors ali but naked ? Stephen Uroš II, it was pointed out, had
an even worse reputation. That uxorious monarch, the Henry VIII
of the Balkans, had already, it was true, had three wives, and had
divorced two of them, while the third was still his consort. But


## p. 533 (#575) ############################################

His Greek marriage
533
Byzantine sophistry declared the second and third marriages null, as
having been contracted during the first wife's lifetime; as she was now
dead, it followed that her husband could put away his third wife and
marry again without offending the canons of the Church. Stephen Uroš
was nothing loth; he wanted an heir, and had no further use for his
third wife, a daughter of the dethroned Tsar Terteri; the only difficulty
was that the widowed sister of Andronicus vowed that she, at any rate,
did not share her brother's views as to the legality of such a second
marriage. The Greek Emperor was not, however, discouraged by her
refusal ; he sacrificed his only daughter Simonis, though not yet six
years of age, to the exigencies of politics and the coarseness of a
notorious evil-liver who was older than her father and in Greek eyes
his social inferior. The scruples of the Ecumenical Patriarch, increased
by the theological flirtations of Stephen Uroš with the Roman Church,
availed as little as the opposition of the Queen-Dowager Helena, who, as
a good Catholic, regarded her son's marriage with abhorrence. The
parties met on an island in the Vardar; the King of Serbia handed over
his Bulgarian consort together with the Greek deserter who had for
so long led his forces to victory, and received in exchange his little bride
with all the humility of a parvenu marrying into an old family.
This matrimonial alliance with the imperial family suggested to the
ambitious mind of Stephen Uroš the possibility of uniting the Byzantine
and Serbian dominions under a single sceptre. His plan was shared by
his mother-in-law, the Empress Irene, who, as an Italian, was devoid of
Hellenic patriotism, and, as a second wife, knew that her sons could
never succeed to their father's throne. In the King of Serbia she saw
the means of acquiring the Byzantine Empire for her own progeny, if
not for the offspring of Simonis, then for one of her own sons. From
her retreat at Salonica she made Stephen Uroš the confidant of her
conjugal woes, loaded him with presents, and sent him every year
a more and more richly-jewelled tiara, almost as splendid as that of
the Emperor himself. When it became clear that Simonis was not
likely to have children, she persuaded the King of Serbia to adopt one
of her two surviving sons as his heir. · But the luxurious Byzantine
princeling could not stand the hard and uncomfortable life in Serbia,
and his brother also, after a brief experience of the Serbian court, was
thankful to return to the civilisation of northern Italy. Simonis herself,
when she grew up, disliked her adopted country quite as much as her
brothers had done. She spent as much of her time as possible at
Constantinople; and, when her husband threatened vengeance on the
Greek Empire unless she returned to him, she was sent back in tears to
his barbarous embraces. Obviously, then, Balkan capitals were even
less agreeable places of residence for luxurious persons of culture at that
period than they are now.
The Greek connexion had naturally given offence to the national
CH. XVII.


## p. 534 (#576) ############################################

534
Serbia and the Papacy
party in Serbia, which was opposed to foreign influence and suspicious
of feminine intrigues. Stephen Dragutin protested from his retirement
at an arrangement which might deprive his own son Vladislav of the
right, which he had never renounced for him, of succeeding to the
Serbian throne upon the death of Stephen Uroš. A more dangerous
rival was the king's bastard, Stephen, who had received the family
appanage in the Zeta, but was impatient of this subordinate position
and ready to come forward as the champion of the national cause against
his father's Grecophil policy. Stephen Uroš, however, soon suppressed
his bastard's rebellion ; the rebel fled to the banks of the Bojana, where
stood the church which still bears his father's name', and begged for
pardon. But the king was anxious to render him incapable of a second
conspiracy, and his Byzantine associates suggested to him that blinding
was the best punishment for traitors of the blood royal. The operation
was, however, only partially successful; but the victim had the sense to
conceal the fact, and lived unmolested in a monastery at Constantinople,
until his father in his old age, at the instigation of the historian Daniel,
recalled him to Serbia and assigned him the ancient royal city of Dioclea,
whose ruins may yet be seen near the modern Podgorica, as a residence.
The failure of his scheme for the union of the Serbian and Greek
realms under his dynasty by peaceful means led Stephen Uroš to enter
into negotiations, in 1308, with Charles of Valois, then seeking to
recover the lost Latin Empire of Constantinople in the name of his
daughter, the titular Empress. In order the better to secure the aid
of the West, the crafty Serb expressed to Pope Clement V the desire
to be received into that Roman Church of which his mother had been
so ardent a devotee, and which could protect him from a possible French
invasion. A treaty was then concluded between him and Charles,
pledging both parties to render mutual assistance to one another, and
securing for the King of Serbia the continued possession of Prilep, Stip,
and other Macedonian castles formerly belonging to the Byzantine
Empire. A further proposal for a marriage between the two families,
contingent on the conversion of Stephen Uroš, fell through, and the
feebleness and dilatoriness of the French prince convinced the shrewd
Serbian monarch that such an alliance would not further his designs,
and that he had nothing to fear from that quarter. He therefore
abandoned Western Europe and the Papacy, and was sufficient of a
Balkan patriot to assist the Greeks against the Turks.
The death of his brother Dragutin gave Stephen Uroš an opportunity
of expanding his kingdom in another direction. He imprisoned his
nephew, whom the royal monk had commended to his care, and made
himself master of his inheritance in Mačva. Stephen Uroš II was now
at the zenith of his power. It was no mere flourish of the
pen
which
made him sign himself “King of Serbia, the land of Hum, Dioclea,
1 Wissenschaftliche Mittheilungen, vii. 231.


## p. 535 (#577) ############################################

Policy of Stephen Uroš II
535
Albania, and the sea-coast,” for his authority really corresponded with
those titles, and under him Serbia had, what she has at last regained,
a sea-board on the Adriatic. But his unprincipled annexation of a
former Hungarian land brought down upon him the vengeance of the
King of Hungary, while his designs against the Angevin port of
Durazzo', which he had already once captured, aroused the animosity
of its owner, Philip of Taranto, now husband of the titular Empress
of Constantinople. The Pope bade the Catholic Albanians fight against
the schismatic Serb who had played fast and loose with the Holy See,
and the league was completed by the adhesion of the powerful Croatian
family of Šubić, which had latterly become predominant in Bosnia and
would brook no Serbian interference in their domain. Stephen Uroš
lost his brother's Bosnian duchy together with Belgrade; but to the
last he was bent on the extension of his dominions. Death carried
him off in 1321, as he was scheming to make political profit out of the
quarrel between the elder and the younger Andronicus.
Stephen Uroš II was an opportunist in both politics and religion.
His alliances were entirely dictated by motives of expediency, and he
regarded the filioque clause as merely a pawn in the diplomatic game.
If he delighted the Orthodox Church by his gifts to Mount Athos, and
his pious foundations at Salonica, Constantinople, and even Jerusalem ;
if a chapel near Studenica still preserves the memory of this “great-
grandson of St Simeon and son of the great King Uroš”—he was so
indifferent, or so statesmanlike, as to permit six Catholic sees within
his realm and to allow Catholic bishops and even the djed, or “grand-
sire," of the Bogomiles to sit in his Council at Cattaro. One of his
laws prevented boundary disputes between villages; he was anxious
to encourage commerce; and, though he more than once harassed Ragusa,
he wrote to Venice offering to keep open and guard the great trade
route which traversed his kingdom and then led across Bulgaria to
the Black Sea. But in commercial, as in other matters, his code of
honour was low, and his issue of counterfeit Venetian coin has gained
him a place among the evil kings in the Paradiso of Dante.
Upon the death of Stephen Uroš II the crown should have naturally
devolved upon his nephew Vladislav, who had now been released from
prison. But the clergy, always a dominant factor in Serbian politics,
favoured the election of the bastard Stephen, who, during his father's
later years, had borne all the royal titles 3 as a designation of his
ultimate succession, and had already once championed the national
idea. Stephen proclaimed that he was no longer blind, and astutely
ascribed to a miracle what was the result of the venality or clumsiness
בל
1 Angevin 1272, Serbian 1296, Angevin 1305, Serbian 1319, Angevin 1322,
Albanian 1368, Venetian 1392, Turkish 1501, Serbian 1912, Albanian 1913.
XIX. 140-1.
3 Mon. spect. hist. Slav. Merid. 1. 192.
2
CH. XVII.


## p. 536 (#578) ############################################

536
Stephen Dečanski and his court
of the operator. To cover his illegitimacy, he assumed the family name
of Uroš, already associated in the popular mind with two successful
kings, but posterity knows him by that of Dečanski from the monastery
of Dečani in Old Serbia, which he founded. With the ruthlessness of
his race, he speedily rid himself of his two competitors, Vladislav
and another natural son of the late king, a certain Constantine.
Vladislav died an exile in Hungary ; Constantine was nailed to a cross
and then sawn asunder; while the usurper tried yet further to strengthen
his position by wooing a daughter of Philip of Taranto and by obtaining
from the Pope a certificate of his legitimacy. To secure these objects
he surrendered Durazzo and offered to become a Catholic, only to
withdraw his offer when the support of the Orthodox clergy seemed
more valuable to him than that of Rome.
The civil war which was at that time threatening the Byzantine
Empire involved both the neighbouring Slav states, each anxious to
benefit by the struggle, which ultimately resulted in a pitched battle
between them. The dynasty of Terteri had become extinct in Bulgaria
a year after the accession of Stephen Uroš III to the Serbian throne.
Svętslav, although he had domestic difficulties with Byzantium, had kept
on good terms with the Serbs, and his warlike son George Terteri II, who
succeeded him in 1322, died after a single Greek campaign. Bulgaria
was therefore once more distracted by the claims of rival claimants,
of whom the strongest was Michael of Vidin, already styled “Despot
of Bulgaria," and founder of the last dynasty of Bulgarian Tsars. His
father had established himself as a petty prince in that famous Danubian
fortress; the son, as was natural in one living so near the Serbian
frontier, had married a half-sister of the new King of Serbia and owed
his success to Serbian aid. In order, however, to secure peace with
the Greeks and at the same time to consolidate his position at home,
he now repudiated his consort with her children, and espoused the
widow of Svętslav, who was a sister of the younger Andronicus. This
matrimonial alliance led to a political treaty between the Bulgarian
T'sar and the impatient heir of Byzantium ; they met in the autumn
of 1326, and came to terms which seemed favourable to both : Michael
promised to assist Andronicus to oust his grandfather from the throne;
Andronicus pledged himself to support Michael against the natural
indignation of the insulted Serbian king, and, in the event of his own
enterprise succeeding, to give money and territory to his Bulgarian
brother-in-law. On the other side, the elder Andronicus sent the
historian Nicephorus Gregorâs on a mission to the Serbian government,
with the object of conciliating Stephen Uroš III. The literary diplo-
matist has left us a comical picture of the peripatetic Serbian court,
then in the vicinity of Skoplje, as it struck a highly-cultured Byzantine.
The inadequate efforts of his barbarian majesty to do honour to the
high-born Greek lady whose daughter he had recently married, seemed
יי


## p. 537 (#579) ############################################

Condition of Serbia
537
ridiculous to a visitor versed in the etiquette of Constantinople.
Still
,
as the historian complacently remarked, one cannot expect apes and
ants to act like eagles and lions, and he re-crossed the Serbian frontier
thanking Providence that he had been born a Greek. Similar opinions
with regard to the Balkan Slavs are still held by many of his countrymen.
After making, however, due allowance for the national bias of a
Greek author, it is clear that Serbia, then on the eve of becoming the
chief power of the peninsula, was still far behind both the Greek and
Latin states of the Levant in civilisation. The contemporary writer,
Archbishop Adam, who has left a valuable account of the country at this
period, tells us that it contained no walled and moated castles ; the
palaces of the king and his nobles were of wood, surrounded by palisades,
and the only houses of stone were in the Latin towns on the Adriatic
coast, such as Antivari, Cattaro, and Dulcigno, the residences of the
Catholic Archbishop and his suffragans. Yet Rascia was naturally a
very rich land, producing plenty of corn, wine, and oil, well-watered, and
abounding in forests full of game. Five gold mines and as many of silver
were being constantly worked, and Stephen Uroš II could afford a gift of
plate and a silver altar to the church of St Nicholas at Bari. But his
subjects were too heterogeneous to be united; the Latins of Scutari and
the coast-towns, as well as the Albanians, also Catholics, were oppressed
by the Serbs, whose priesthood was debased and whose bishops were
often in prison. As against this last statement, obviously caused by the
theological zeal of the archbishop, we may set the gloomy account of the
abuses in the six Roman churches of Serbia, which we have from Pope
Benedict XI some twenty years earlier, while, at the moment when
Adam wrote, the Orthodox Archbishop was no less eminent a man than
the patriotic historian Daniel. If, then, Serbia was still uncultured,
if the manners and morals of her rustic court still left much to desire,
she was obviously possessed of great natural energy and capacity, which
only awaited a favourable moment and the right man to develop them.
While the Serbian nobles, whose influence was usually predominant
in deciding questions of public policy, soon wearied of supporting the
elder Andronicus, and plainly said that if their sovereign insisted on
fighting he would fight alone, the Bulgarian Tsar suddenly changed
sides, warmly espoused the cause of the old Emperor, and sent 3000
horsemen under a Russian general with the object (so it was suspected)
of seizing Constantinople for himself and thus realising the dream of
his greatest predecessors. Self-interest and patriotism alike urged the
younger Andronicus to warn his grandfather of the danger which he
would incur if he entrusted the palace to the custody of these untrust-
worthy allies. Andronicus II acted on this timely hint from his rival;
for neither of them could desire to see a Bulgarian conquest of
Constantinople as the result of their family disputes. The Russian was
alone admitted within the gates, and the reproaches and bribes of the
CH. XVII.


## p. 538 (#580) ############################################

538
Battle of Velbužd, 1330
younger Andronicus speedily effected the recall of the Bulgarian force.
A few days later Andronicus III entered the city in triumph; Byzantium
never again so nearly fell beneath the Bulgarian yoke as in that me-
morable spring of 1328, until the famous campaign of 1912–13.
The same Bulgarian Tsar, who had thus all but achieved the ideal of
every Balkan nationality, was destined to bring his country to the verge
of ruin. Stephen Uroš III had never forgiven the insult to his sister,
and Michael therefore resolved to forestall a Serbian invasion by acting
first. He had no difficulty in forming a formidable coalition against the
rising Serbian state. Andronicus III, whose Macedonian frontier near
Ochrida had lately been ravaged by the Serbs, joined the league and
menaced Serbia from the south; the Prince of Wallachia and 3000 Tartar
mercenaries swelled the native army of Bulgaria, already 12,000 strong.
At the head of such forces, Michael boasted that he would be crowned
in his enemy's land, and set out down the valley of the Upper Struma to
cross the frontier a little to the north of Köstendil, then a Serbian but
now a Bulgarian town. On 28 June 1330, the most decisive battle in
the mutual history of the two Slav states was fought in the plain of
Velbužd, as Köstendil was then called. The Tsar was taken by surprise,
for he had expected no fighting that day; indeed, it was afterwards
stated that his opponent had given his word not to begin hostilities till
the morrow. Thus, at the moment when the Serbs charged from a
narrow defile into the plain, the bulk of the Bulgarian army was away
foraging. Aided by a body of several hundred tall German knights,
Stephen Uroš easily routed his distracted foes; Michael himself was
unhorsed, and died, either in the battle, or of his wounds a few days
afterwards; but the conquerors merely disarmed the fugitives, whom, as
men of their own race, it was not lawful to take captive. On the hill
where his tent had been pitched, the victor founded a church of the
Ascension, the ruins of which still serve as a memorial of this fratricidal
Bulgaria was now at his mercy, for the rest of the native army
had fled at the news of their sovereign's defeat, and Andronicus III at
once returned to Constantinople. The proud Bulgarian nobles, who had
deemed themselves their Tsar's “ half-brothers,” came to meet their
conqueror and hear his decision. Stephen Uroš might have united the
two Slav states under his own sceptre, and thus prevented those further
rivalries which have governed Balkan politics in our own time. But
he preferred to allow Bulgaria, then more than twenty days' journey in
extent, to remain as a dependency of his family; he contented himself
with restoring his sister and her young son John Stephen to the
throne of the Tsars. The immediate effect of this policy was the
expulsion of the late ruler's Greek consort, which gave her brother
Andronicus an excuse for annexing a large part of Southern Bulgaria.
Thus Greeks and Serbs alike had profited by the victory of Velbužd;
Serbia had won the hegemony of the Balkan States.
war.


## p. 539 (#581) ############################################

Accession of Stephen Dušan
539
Stephen Uroš III did not long enjoy the fruits of his triumph. His
worst enemies were those of his own household, and he fell a victim to
one of those domestic tragedies which were characteristic of his family.
He had married a second time, and his eldest son Stephen, then twenty-
two years of age but still unprovided with a wife, looked with suspicion on
the offspring of his Greek step-mother, a cousin of Andronicus III. He
had been carefully educated as a crown prince; indeed, his father had
had him crowned with himself, and had promised to make him ruler over
half his kingdom. The courtier-like Archbishop Daniel, anxious to please
his young master, asserts that Stephen Uroš had not kept this promise ;
an impartial Greek contemporary says that the prince's suspicions were
exploited by those Serbian nobles who were weary of his father's rule and
hoped to benefit by a change. They proclaimed him king; he was
crowned on 8 September 1331 ; the flower of the army, attracted by his
prowess at Velbužd, focked to his standard; the old king was easily
captured and imprisoned in the castle of Zvečan near Mitrovica. There,
two months later, he was strangled, either by the orders? or at least
with the tacit consent of his son, who durst not oppose the will of his
powerful followers? ; and the name of Dušan, by which Stephen Uroš IV
is known in history, is variously derived, according to the view taken of
his share in his father's murder, either from duša (“ soul ”), a pet name
given him by his fond parent, or from dušiti (“ to throttle”). The
epithet of “strong," which his countrymen applied to him, was fully
justified by the masterful character and the great achievements of this
most famous of all Serbian sovereigns.
His first care was to secure himself on the side of Bulgaria, where, a
few months before, a revolution organised by two court officials had
driven the Serbian Empress and her son from the throne, and had placed
upon it John Alexander, a nephew of the late Tsar, who assumed the
ever popular surname of Asên. Instead of attempting to restore his
aunt to Bulgaria against the will of the nobles, Dušan adopted the wiser
policy of marrying the sister of the usurper and thus attaching the
latter to his side, while John Stephen, after wandering as an exile from
one land to another, now a suppliant at Constantinople and now a :
prisoner at Siena, ended his days at Naples. Thus Bulgaria under
John Alexander was practically a dependency of Serbia.
But Dušan by his Bulgarian marriage disarmed the enmity, and
gained the support, of another powerful Balkan ruler, the Prince of
Wallachia, who was father-in-law of the Bulgarian Tsar, and who had
first made the land which was the nucleus of the present kingdom of
לל
1 Adam (Pseudo-Brochart) in Rec. hist. Crois. , Doc. Armén. 11. 438, 446, who
wrote in 1332, thus confirming the date of Dušan’s accession (cf. Rad. xix. 180;
Mon. spect. hist. Slav. Merid. xii. 337; xxv. 122), which Miklosich (Monumenta
Serbica, 115) had placed in 1336.
Nicephorus Gregorâs, 1. 457.
2
CH. XVII.


## p. 540 (#582) ############################################

540
Foundation of Wallachia and Moldavia
יל
came.
Roumania a factor in Balkan politics. During the former half of the
thirteenth century, while Serbia and Bulgaria were already independent
states, the opposite bank of the Danube had been traversed by successive
barbarian tribes, the Cumans and the Tartars, who had driven the
Roumanian population before them to the mountains. A Slav popula-
tion dwelt in the plains, the banat of Craiova, or "little Wallachia," was
Hungarian, while here and there the fortresses of the Teutonic Knights
and the Knights of St John availed but little to stem the tide of
invasion. But about 1290 the Roumanians descended from Transylvania
into Wallachia to escape the religious persecutions of the Catholic Kings
of Hungary, and the generally received account ascribes the foundation
of the principality to a colony from Fogaras, which, under the leadership
of Radou Negrou, or Rudolf the Black, established itself at Campulung,
and
gave to the essentially flat country of Wallachia the local name of
“ land of mountains," in memory of those mountains whence the founder
His successor, Ivanko Basaraba, the ally of the Bulgarians in the
campaign of 1330, extended his authority over "little Wallachia,”
completely routed the Hungarians, and strengthened his position by
marrying his daughter to the new Tsar of Bulgaria. About the same
time as the foundation of the Wallachian principality, a second princi-
pality, dependent however on the Hungarian crown, was created in
Moldavia by another colony of Roumanians from the north of
Transylvania under a chief named Dragoche. This vassal state threw
off its allegiance to Hungary about 1349, and became independent.
Such was the origin of the two Danubian principalities, which thenceforth
existed under various forms till their transformation in our own day into
the kingdom of Roumania,
Thus connected with the rulers of Bulgaria and Wallachia, Dušan
was able to begin the realisation of that great scheme which had been
cherished by his grandfather of forming a Serbian Empire on the ruins
of Byzantium. While his ally, the Bulgarian Tsar, recaptured the
places south of the Balkans which Andronicus III had so recently
occupied, Dušan, assisted by Sir Janni, a political adventurer who had
abandoned the Byzantine for the Serbian court, easily conquered nearly
all Western Macedonia. The assassination of Sir Janni by an emissary
of the Byzantine Emperor and the threatening attitude of the King of
Hungary led him, however, to make peace with the Greeks and even to
seek their aid against this dangerous enemy. The Greek and the
Serbian monarchs met and spent a very pleasant week in one another's
society; and this meeting had important results, because it gave Dušan
an opportunity of making the acquaintance of the future Emperor
John Cantacuzene, then in attendance on Andronicus. Thus, for the
moment, peace reigned between the Greeks and the Balkan Slavs;
Dušan was content to bide his time ; John Alexander obtained the
hand of the Emperor's daughter for his eldest son, and could afford


## p. 541 (#583) ############################################

Dušan and Cantacuzene
541
to ignore the appeal which the Pope made to him to join the Church
of Rome.
Dušan availed himself of this peace with the Greeks to attack the
Angevin possessions in Albania. Durazzo, however, the most important
of them, resisted all his efforts, and the Angevin rule there survived the
great Serbian conqueror. But this aggressive policy had made him an
object of general alarm. The King of Hungary, himself an Angevin,
and the powerful Bosnian ban, Stephen Kotromanić, who had succeeded
the family of Šubić in 1322, regarded him with suspicion, and their
attitude so greatly alarmed him that he wrote to Venice in 1340,
begging for a refuge there in the event of his being defeated by his
numerous enemies, offering to assist the republic in her Italian wars,
and guaranteeing her merchants a safe transit across his dominions on
their
way to Constantinople. Venice bestowed the rights of citizenship
upon the serviceable Serbian monarch and his family.
The death of Andronicus III in 1341 and the rebellion of John
Cantacuzene against the rule of the young Emperor John V and his
mother Anne of Savoy were Dušan's opportunity. He at once dis-
regarded his treaty with the Greeks, and overran the whole of Macedonia.
Soon this barbarian, as the elegant Byzantine authors considered him,
had the proud satisfaction of receiving at Priština, which, though it had
been the Serbian capital, was still only an unfortified village, bids for his
alliance from both parties in the struggle for the dominion of the
Empire. Cantacuzene, in the hour of need, sought a personal interview
with him there; the King and Queen of Serbia welcomed their dis-
tinguished suppliant with every mark of respect; but, when it came to
business, Dušan demanded as the price of his assistance the whole of the
Byzantine Empire west of the pass of Christópolis near Kavala, or, at
any rate, of Salonica. Cantacuzene informs us that he indignantly
declined to give up even the meanest of Greek cities; the utmost
concession which he could be induced to make was to recognise Dušan's
rights over the Greek territory which he already held. Anne of Savoy,
as a foreigner, was less patriotic; she more than once promised Dušan
that, if he would send her Cantacuzene alive or dead, she would give him
what her rival had refused, so that the Serbian Empire would stretch
from the Adriatic to the Aegean. The matter was referred to the Council
of twenty-four officers of State whom the Serbian kings were wont to
consult, and this Council, acting on the advice of the queen, repudiated
the suggestion of assassinating an honoured guest, and advised Dušan to
be content with a formal oath from Cantacuzene that he would respect
the territorial status quo. Baffled in her negotiations with the King of
Serbia, Anne of Savoy did not scruple to purchase the aid of the
Bulgarian Tsar by the cession of Philippopolis and eight other places,
the last aggrandisement of the Bulgarian Empire. Thus, the divisions
of the Greeks benefited Serbia and Bulgaria alike, while both Canta-
CH. XVII.


## p. 542 (#584) ############################################

542
Dušan crowned Emperor, 1346
cuzene and his rival found ere long that their Slav allies only looked to
their own advancement. In the general confusion, both parties invoked
the assistance of the Turks, who had taken Brūsa (Prusa) in 1326 and
Nicaea in 1330, and who now appeared sporadically in Europe. Brigand
chiefs formed bands in the mountains, changing sides whenever it suited
their purpose, and one of these guerrilla leaders, a Bulgarian named
Momchilo, not only survives in the pages of the imperial historian but
is still the hero of Slavonic ballads.
It was the policy of Dušan to allow the two Greek factions to
exhaust themselves, and to strengthen his position at the expense of
both. While they fought, he occupied one place after another, till, by
1345, he had acquired all that he had originally asked Cantacuzene to
cede, and the whole of Macedonia, except Salonica, was in his power.
It was scarcely an exaggeration when he described himself in a letter to
the Doge, written from Seres in this year, as “ King of Serbia, Dioclea,
the land of Hum, the Zeta, Albania, and the Maritime region, partner
in no small part of the Empire of Bulgaria, and lord of almost all the
Empire of Romania. " But for the ruler of so vast a realm the title of
King seemed insignificant, especially as his vassal, the ruler of Bulgaria,
bore the great name of Tsar. Accordingly, early in 1346, Dušan had
himself crowned at Skoplje, whither he had transferred the Serbian capital,
as “Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks,” soon to be magnified into “Tsar
and Autocrat of the Serbs and Greeks, the Bulgarians and Albanians.
Shortly before, with the consent of the Bulgarian, and in defiance of the
Ecumenical, Patriarch, he had raised the Archbishop of Serbia to that
exalted dignity with his seat at Ipek, and the two Slav Patriarchs
of Trnovo and Ipek placed the crown upon his head. At the same
time, on the analogy of the Western Empire with its “King of
the Romans," he had his son Stephen Uroš V proclaimed king, and
assigned to him the old Serbian lands as far as Skoplje, reserving for
himself the new conquests from there to Kavala. Byzantine emblems
and customs were introduced into the brand-new Serbian Empire; the
Tsar assumed the tiara and the double-eagle as the heir of the great
Constantine, and wrote to the Doge proposing an alliance for the
conquest of Constantinople. The officials of his court received the
high-sounding titles of Byzantium, and in the papal correspondence
with Serbia we read of a “Sebastocrator,” a “Great Logothete," a
“Caesar," and a “Despot. ” The governors of important Serbian cities,
such as Cattaro and Scutari, were styled “Counts,” those of minor
places, like Antivari, were called “Captains. ” In vain did Cantacuzene,
as soon as the civil war was over, demand the restitution of the Greek
territory which Dušan had conquered since their meeting in 1342. The
Tsar had no intention of keeping his word or of returning to the status
quo of that year.
יל
1 Mon. spect. hist. Slav. Merid. 11. 278–9.
בל
לל


## p. 543 (#585) ############################################

Serbo-Greek treaty of 1350
543
ול
On the contrary, he still further extended his frontiers to the south,
where they marched with the former despotat of Epirus. That important
state, founded on the morrow of the Latin conquest of Constantinople,
had maintained its independence till, in 1336, it had been at last re-united
with the Byzantine Empire. Cantacuzene had appointed one of his
relatives as its governor; but upon his death in 1349 the Serbian
Tsar, who had already occupied Joánnina, annexed Epirus and Thessaly,
assuming the further titles of “Despot of Arta and Count of Vlachia. "
His brother, Simeon Uroš, was sent to rule Acarnania and Aetolia as
his viceroy, while the Serbian “Caesar,” Preljub, governed Joánnina
and Thessaly. Thus a large part of northern Greece owned the sway
of the Serbs. Cantacuzene resolved at once to punish this culminating
act of aggression. The moment was favourable to his plans, for Dušan
was engaged on the Bosnian frontier, and several of the Serbian nobles,
always intolerant of authority, deserted to the popular Greek Emperor,
whom they knew and liked. Such was his success (for even the Serbian
capital of Skoplje offered to surrender in the absence of the Tsar) that
Dušan hastened back and came to terms with his enemy. The two
Emperors met outside Salonica ; Cantacuzene reproached the Tsar with
his breach of the treaty made between them eight years earlier; and, if
we may judge from the speeches which he composed for himself and
his opponent, Dušan was completely dumbfounded by his arguments.
A fresh treaty was drawn up between them, by which Acarnania,
Thessaly, and the south-east of Macedonia as far as Seres, were to be retro-
ceded to the Greeks, and five commissioners were appointed on either side
for the transfer of this territory. But the renewal of the unhappy quarrel
between Cantacuzene and John V thwarted the execution of this agree-
ment. Emissaries of the young Emperor advised Dušan to resist, telling
him that he would obtain better terms by aiding their master against
Cantacuzene. The Tsar thereupon repudiated the treaty which he had
just signed, promised his assistance to John V, and urged him to divorce
Cantacuzene's daughter and marry the sister of the Serbian Empress.
Cantacuzene in vain warned his young rival to beware of Serbian
intrigues ; in vain did Anne of Savoy endeavour to prevent the unholy
league; a new triple alliance was formed between John V and the two
Serbian and Bulgarian Tsars. Thus Dušan was able to retain his Greek
conquests, with a flagrant disregard for the treaty of 1350 which recalls
the futility of such instruments in the settlement of Balkan questions.
It was not, however, only the other Christian races of the Near East
who profited by the fatal dissensions between the two Greek Emperors.
The nation, which a century later was destined to grind them all to
powder, owed its first permanent settlement in Europe to their divisions.
The Ottoman Turks from their capital of Brūsa could aid either party,
according as it suited their convenience, nor did Cantacuzene hesitate to
buy the support of the Sultan Orkhān by giving him his daughter
CH. XVII.


## p. 544 (#586) ############################################

544
First Turkish settlement in Europe
to wife. For some years the Turks were content to raid the neigh-
bouring coast; then their marauding bands penetrated farther inland,
and so severely devastated Bulgaria that John Alexander complained to
Cantacuzene of the depredations of his savage allies. Cantacuzene was
sufficient of a statesman to foresee the coming Turkish triumph; he
replied by offering to keep up a fleet at the Dardanelles for the
protection of the European coast, if the Bulgarian Tsar would con-
tribute towards its maintenance. A popular demonstration at Trnovo
in favour of common action against the Turks convinced the Tsar of the
wisdom of accepting Cantacuzene's proposal. But at the last moment
Dušan wrecked the scheme by remonstrating with his vassal for paying
what he scornfully called “tribute” to the Greek Empire. In vain
Cantacuzene warned the offended Bulgarian that Bulgaria would one
day, when it was too late, rue his decision. Not long after, in 1353
according to the Greek, or in 1356 according to the Turkish account,
Orkhān's son crossed the Dardanelles and occupied the castle of Tzympe,
the first permanent settlement of the Turks in Europe. Cantacuzene
had offered them money to quit, and they were preparing to go when a
sudden convulsion of nature tempted them to break their bargain; the
great earthquake of 2 March 1354 laid the neighbouring towns in
ruins'; and Gallipoli, the largest of them, was colonised and re-fortified
by these unwelcome guests, who had now come to stay and conquer.
It has been mentioned that Cantacuzene's successes in 1350 were
favoured by Dušan's absence in Bosnia. That Napoleonic ruler could
not be expected to acquiesce in the co-existence of another Serb state
adjacent to, yet independent of, his own. He had an old grudge
against Stephen Kotromanić, the Bosnian ban, because the latter had
annexed, in 1325, the land of Hum, which for the previous two genera-
tions had been a dependency of the Serbian crown and furnished one
of Dušan's many titles. Kotromanić had further gained for Bosnia
what she had never had before, an outlet on the Adriatic, and both
Hungary and Venice were glad of the aid of so powerful a ruler, who
thus laid the foundations of the future kingdom built up by his
As soon as he had sufficient leisure from his Macedonian
conquests, Dušan demanded the hand of the ban's only daughter for
his son and, as her dowry, the restitution of the Serbian territory which
his rival had annexed ; and, though Venetian intervention prevented
an immediate conflict, a collision between the two Serb potentates was
clearly inevitable. The Bosnian ban thought it wiser to begin the
successor.
1 The Byzantine chronicle (in Sitzungsberichte der k. Akademie, ix. 392) gives
the date of the earthquake; the Turkish settlement was, according to N. Gregorâs
(11. 224) “ about two years earlier,” and due to Cantacuzene (11. 202); the latter
(111. 242, 276) puts it in 1353, and is confirmed by the Bulgarian Chronicle (in
Archiv für slav. Philologie, xii. 537) which narrates it immediately after his
embassy to John Alexander.


## p. 545 (#587) ############################################

Dušan invades Bosnia
545
attack; he availed himself of Dušan's Greek campaign of 1349 to
invade the Serbian Empire and to menace the town of Cattaro. Dušan,
as soon as the subjugation of Epirus and Thessaly was complete, marched
into Bosnia, and laid siege to the strong castle of Bobovac, whose
picturesque ruins still recall the memory of the many Bosnian rulers
who once resided within its walls. The invader found valuable allies
in the Bogomiles, whose support Kotromanić had alienated by embracing
Catholicism, and who, as has usually happened in the history of Bosnia,
flocked to the standard of anyone who would free them from their
persecutor. Their power had greatly increased ; they possessed a
complete organisation ; their spiritual head, or djed, resided at Janjići
in the Bosna valley, and twelve “teachers ” formed a regular hierarchy
under his orders. Moreover, the conflicts of the Dominicans and
Franciscans for the exclusive privilege of persecuting the Bosnian heretics
had naturally favoured the growth of the heresy. Bobovac, however,
resisted all attacks, for the chivalry of its garrison no less than the zeal
of the besiegers was aroused by the presence of the ban's beautiful
daughter within the castle. Dušan was recalled by the troubles in his
own Empire, nor did the few remaining years of his reign leave him
time for repeating this invasion. The death of Kotromanić in 1353,
and the succession of his young nephew Tvrtko I under the regency
of a woman, might otherwise have been the Serbian Tsar's opportunity;
for the Bosnian magnates, many of whom were zealous Bogomiles, were
contemptuous of a ban who was not only a child but a Catholic, nor
could his mother have opposed a second Serbian attack. But Dušan
was occupied with greater schemes; the moment passed for ever, and
it was reserved for the despised Tvrtko to make for himself the greatest
name in Bosnian history, to found a kingdom, and to unite Serbia,
Croatia, and Dalmatia beneath the sceptre of the first Bosnian king.
At the moment of Tvrtko's accession, Dušan was engaged in war
with Hungary. Louis the Great, who now sat on the Hungarian throne,
had aided Kotromanić against the Serbs and had married his fair
daughter, whose hand Dušan had demanded for his son, and whom he
had besieged in Bobovac. The two monarchies had long been rivals,
as they were yesterday; the Serbian Tsar marched to the Danube and
the Save ; Belgrade, the future Serbian capital, lost a generation earlier
and already beginning to be an important fortress, was recovered. But
in the following year the Catholic king made such formidable prepara-
tions for an attack upon the schismatic Tsar, that the latter considered
it prudent to revert to the time-honoured diplomacy of his predecessors
in such cases, and to affect a desire for conversion to Catholicism, so as
to secure the intervention of the Pope on his behalf. He therefore wrote
offering to restore to the Catholics of his dominions most of the
monasteries and churches which he had taken from them, and begging
the Pope to send him some men learned in the Catholic faith. At the
C. MED, H. VOL. IV, CA. XVII.
35


## p. 546 (#588) ############################################

546
Dušan's death, 1355
792 he was
same time he asked to be appointed “ Captain of the Church” against
the Turks. Innocent VI, with the ingenuousness characteristic of the
Papacy in its negotiations with the Balkan Slavs, imagined that Dušan
was in earnest, and sent two bishops to his court, while he diverted the
King of Hungary's projected attack upon so hopeful a proselyte. When,
however, the papal legate and his companion arrived in 1355 at the
Serbian court, they found that the Tsar had no longer any interest in
becoming a Catholic. Cantacuzene had just been deposed; the Byzantine
Empire had fallen into the hands of John V; and there was a party
among the Greeks themselves who thought that the only way of saving
the remnant from the Turks was to invoke the protection of the
powerful Serbian Emperor', whose chances would naturally be all the
greater if he remained a member of the Orthodox Church. Accordingly,
when the legate was introduced into the presence of the Tsar, “of all
men of his time the tallest, and withal terrible to look
upon,
expected to conform to the usual custom of the Serbian court and kiss the
Emperor's foot. On his refusal, Dušan ordered that none of his Catholic
subjects should attend the legate's mass under pain of losing his eyesight;
but neither the orders nor the savage mien of the insistent tyrant availed
against the fervid faith of his German guard, whose captain, Palmann,
boldly told him that they feared God more than they feared the Tsar.
Dušan might well believe that the moment had come for completing
his conquests by that of Constantinople, and establishing what a poetic
Serbian prince of our own day once called a “Balkan Empire,” which
should embrace all the races of the variegated peninsula within its
borders, and keep the Turks beyond the Bosphorus, the Hungarians
beyond the Save. The former were threatening his enemies, the Greeks ;
the latter were about to attack his friends, the Venetians. On St
Michael's Day, 1355, if we may believe the native chronicler, he
assembled his nobles, and asked whether he should lead them against
Byzantium or Buda-Pesth. To their answer, that they would follow
him whithersoever he bade them, his reply was “to Constantinople,”
from which Thrace alone separated his dominions. But on the way he
fell ill of a fever, and at Diavoli, on 20 December, he died. By a
strange irony, the very site of his death is uncertain ; for, while some
think that he had not yet left his own dominions, others place Diavoli
within a few leagues of the imperial city. No Serbian ruler has ever
approached so near it; possibly, had he succeeded and had another
Dušan succeeded him, the Turkish conquest might have been averted.
i Mon. spect. hist. Slav.