made an alliance with
the Greeks against his brother-in-law Stephen Uro[)s] III and dispatched
his wife to her home. During the war which ensued the unwonted allies were
utterly routed by the Serbs at Kustendil in Macedonia in 1330.

From 1331 to 1365 Bulgaria was under one John Alexander, a noble of Tartar
origin, whose sister became the wife of Serbia's greatest ruler, Stephen
Du[)s]an; John Alexander, moreover, recognized Stephen as his suzerain,
and from thenceforward Bulgaria was a vassal-state of Serbia. Meanwhile
the Turkish storm was gathering fast; Suleiman crossed the Hellespont in
1356, and Murad I made Adrianople his capital in 1366. After the death of
John Alexander in 1365 the Hungarians invaded northern Bulgaria, and his
successor invoked the help of the Turks against them and also against the
Greeks. This was the beginning of the end. The Serbs, during an absence of
the Sultan in Asia, undertook an offensive, but were defeated by the Turks
near Adrianople in 1371, who captured Sofia in 1382. After this the Serbs
formed a huge southern Slav alliance, in which the Bulgarians refused to
join, but, after a temporary success against the Turks in 1387, they were
vanquished by them as the result of treachery at the famous battle of
Kosovo in 1389. Meanwhile the Turks occupied Nikopolis on the Danube in
1388 and destroyed the Bulgarian capital Tirnovo in 1393, exiling the
Patriarch Euthymus to Macedonia. Thus the state of Bulgaria passed into
the hands of the Turks, and its church into those of the Greeks. Many
Bulgars adopted Islam, and their descendants are the Pomaks or Bulgarian
Mohammedans of the present day. With the subjection of Rumania in 1394 and
the defeat of an improvised anti-Turkish crusade from western Europe under
Sigismund, King of Hungary, at Nikopolis in 1396 the Turkish conquest was
complete, though the battle of Varna was not fought till 1444, nor
Constantinople entered till 1453.

10

_The Turkish Dominion and the Emancipation,_ 1393-1878

From 1393 until 1877 Bulgaria may truthfully be said to have had no
history, but nevertheless it could scarcely have been called happy.
National life was completely paralysed, and what stood in those days for
national consciousness was obliterated. It is common knowledge, and most
people are now reasonable enough to admit, that the Turks have many
excellent qualities, religious fervour and military ardour amongst others;
it is also undeniable tha