Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/238

 226 THE LATER MIDDLE AGES an organised state, and Russia was at last beginning to follow suit. The German Empire was made up of a group of definite states, though their association under a single emperor was of a very loose kind. Hungary, also outside the empire, was a vigorous state; and there was a degree of permanence even in the political divisions into which Italy had formed. But it was not so with the Balkan peninsula, that part of Europe which had once formed the European portion of the The Eastern Greek Empire. There, unity and political develop- Empire. ment had been finally wrecked by the attack of the Latin crusaders upon Byzantium. Out of that wreck had grown a new Bulgarian kingdom, with a Servian kingdom to the west of it. When the Latin Empire collapsed, and the Greek dynasty of the Palaeologi returned to Constantinople, they never held secure sway over any large portion of the peninsula ; and soon after the middle of the fourteenth century the Ottoman Turks The otto- na< ^ pl ante cl themselves on European soil. The mans in Servian kingdom had just made itself the strongest Europe. power in the peninsula; but on the death of the King Stefan Dusan, the prospect of a united dominion again collapsed, and the Ottomans began gradually to extend their conquests. At the close of the fourteenth century, Constanti- nople was already isolated ; the Turks were attacking Hungary, and Sigismund advancing against them was routed in the great battle of Nicopolis. But at this moment the Turkish advance was checked by the descent upon them of a new conqueror from the east. This was Timur or Tamerlane, himself a member of another branch of the Turkish race. As the Otto- mans had wrested the supremacy from the Seljuks, so it now seemed that Timur would wrest the supremacy from them. Timur in fact overthrew Bajazet, but turned again eastwards to die without having consolidated an empire. But he had brought confusion upon the Ottoman Empire, and for a time the Ottoman advance was stayed. A few years later, however, the Turks were again advancing, held in check only by the skill and valour of the Hungarian, John Hunyadi, and the Albanian chief, Skanderbeg, a name which is the corruption of Alexander