d that country and Croatia, so
that in their enfeebled condition they could give no assistance to the
towns and islands of Dalmatia which for so long had been struggling to
elude the grip of Venice. But even so--and with many places handing
themselves over voluntarily, in disgust at the almost incredible
treason of their elected monarch, Ladislas of Naples, who, after long
bargaining, sold his rights to Venice for a hundred thousand ducats,
and with many places, in dread of the Turks, placing themselves under
the protection of Venice--even so the Venetians had a great deal of
trouble in occupying Dalmatia, and a hundred years elapsed before they
had the whole of it. As for the two ports, Triest and Rieka (Fiume),
they had passed through various episcopal or aristocratic hands.
Triest had been in a position to set her face against falling to
Venice, of whom she had had, from the tenth to the twelfth centuries,
an adequate experience. Both Triest and Rieka were now to pass into
the power of the Habsburgs.

GATHERING DARKNESS

For a few years after Kossovo the Serbs resisted; but their efforts,
now at Belgrade, which was made the capital and fortified by Stephen
the chivalrous son of Prince Lazar, now at Smederevo on the Danube,
were spasmodic. Bands of Turks and also of Magyars were terrorizing
the country; and the sagacious old despot George Brankovi['c] was the
last to offer opposition to the Turk at Smederevo. Meanwhile in
Bosnia, the Bogomiles, driven to despair by persecution, had been
calling to the Turk. Constantinople fell in 1453, Serbia laid down her
arms in 1459, while in 1463 Muhammed II. appeared before Jajce,
Bosnia's capital, where one can still see the skeleton of Stephen
Toma[vz]evi['c], the last king, who was executed by the Sultan's
order. And now in this land of heresy, which had become so hostile to
the established Churches, hundreds of those who professed the Bogomile
faith went over eagerly to Islam; they hoped that in this way they
would triumph at the expense of their late persecutors. Those who had
worldly possessions were the first to embrace Islam, in order to
safeguard them. Those who had neither wealth nor much accumulated
hatred remained Christians. One would expect that people who had
adopted a religion under these impulses would be even more
uncompromising than the usual convert, and indeed, as a general rule,
the ex-Christian begs and aghas displayed until recent times not only
a mor