nia, Servia, and
Dalmatia; leaving only to the Byzantine Empire--whose civilization
he introduced and sedulously promoted among the Bulgarians--the
cities of Constantinople, Saloniki, and Adrianople with the
territory immediately surrounding them. But this first Bulgarian
Empire was shortlived, though the western part remained independent
under Samuel, who reigned, with Ochrida as his capital, from 976 to
1014. Four years later the Byzantine Emperor, Basil II, annihilated
the power of Samuel, and for a hundred and fifty years the Bulgarian
people remained subject to the rule of Constantinople. In 1186 under
the leadership of the brothers Asen they regained their
independence. And the reign of Czar Asen II (1218-1240) was the most
prosperous period of all Bulgarian history. He restored the Empire
of Simeon, his boast being that he had left to the Byzantines
nothing but Constantinople and the cities round it, and he
encouraged commerce, cultivated arts and letters, founded and
endowed churches and monasteries, and embellished his capital,
Trnovo, with beautiful and magnificent buildings. After Asen came a
period of decline culminating in a humiliating defeat by the
Servians in 1330. The quarrels of the Christian races of the Balkans
facilitated the advance of the Moslem invader, who overwhelmed the
Serbs and their allies on the memorable field of Kossovo in 1389,
and four years later captured and burned the Bulgarian capital,
Trnovo, Czar Shishman himself perishing obscurely in the common
destruction. For five centuries Bulgaria remained under Moslem
despotism, we ourselves being the witnesses of her emancipation in
the last thirty-five years.

The fate of the Serbs differed only in degree from that of the
Bulgarians. Converted to Christianity in the middle of the ninth
century, the major portion of the race remained till the twelfth
century under either Bulgarian or Byzantine sovereignty. But Stephen
Nemanyo bought under his rule Herzegovina, Montenegro and part of
modern Servia and old Servia, and on his abdication in 1195 in favor
of his son launched a royal dynasty which reigned over the Serb
people for two centuries. Of that line the most distinguished
member was Stephen Dushan, who reigned from 1331 to 1355. He wrested
the whole of the Balkan Peninsula from the Byzantine Emperor, and
took Belgrade, Bosnia, and Herzegovina from the King of Hungary. He
encouraged literature, gave to his country a highly advanced cod