Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/715

Rh S E R V I A 689 who was shut up in Thessalonica. He now divided his kingdom into eight districts and arranged everything on the Byzantine model. He conquered the whole of Macedonia, and caused himself to be crowned emperor of Servia, his son Urosh as king (kral, rex], and the archbishop of the country as patriarch. In 1349, at a diet, lie published his celebrated Zakonik or " Book of Laws" (see be- itests low). In 1356 he began a new campaign against the Greeks, his a object being to seize Constantinople, to place the Greek crown upon ks. his head, and drive the Turks out of Europe ; but in the midst of his schemes he died at Deabolis in Albania on 18th December 1356. His son Urosh was then but nineteen years of age, and, being sickly in body and weak in mind, he was unable to struggle against the revolted governors of his provinces, some of whom wished to make themselves independent. He was killed in a conflict Avith one of them in 1367, who ascended the throne under the name of Vukashin. This monarch was at first successful against the Turks, now already masters of considerable portions of the Byzantine empire ; but he lost the decisive battle of Tanarus, and with it his life, in 1371. According to the chroniclers, the Serbs were surprised and many slain while sleeping. Many also were drowned in the waters of the Maritza, "and there their bones lay and were never buried." The fate of Vukashin and of his brother Goiko was uncertain. The empire of Dushan now began to fall to pieces and Servia was again without a ruler. Marco, the son of Vukashin, declared himself the successor of his father ; but the line was unpopular with the Serbs, and at a diet at Pec (Ipek) in 1374 they elected a young noble, Lazar Greblianovich, a connexion of the old princely house. He did not, however, take the title of either emperor or king, but only of knez or prince. Bosnia was separated from Servia and fell under the rule of a noble named Tvertko. Sultan Murad had already conquered the Bulgarian sovereign Shishman and now marched against Servia. On the 15th of June 1389 the Serbs were tie of completely defeated at the battle of Kosovo, the "field of black- tovo. birds." No event has been so much celebrated in the national songs as this. Many are the lays which tell of the treachery of Vuk Brankovich and the glorious self-immolation of Milosh Obilich, who stabbed the conqueror on the battlefield. The silken shroud, embroidered with gold, with which his wife Militza covered the body of her husband is still preserved in the monastery of Vrdnik in Syrmia, and a tree which she planted is shown to travellers at 2upa. According to one account Lazar was killed in the battle ; according to others he was taken prisoner and executed before the eyes of the dying Murad. The bones of Lazar now rest at Ravanitza fia. on the Frushka Gora in Syrmia. We hear no more of independent utary Serb princes ; the country was now tributary to Turkey, and its rulers were styled despots. Stephen, the sou of Lazar, was confirmed key. in this title by Bajazid, the successor of Murad. Militza died in a convent in 1406. Stephen died in 1427 childless, and was suc- ceeded by George Brankovich, a man sixty years of age, whose reign was a troubled one. In 1437 he was compelled to fly to Hungary to avoid the wrath of Murad II., and did not recover his territory till Hunyadi and Scanderbeg drove back the Turks in 1444. George fell, in the ninety-first year of his age, in battle with a Hungarian magnate named Michael Szilagyi on 24th December* 1457. His youngest son Lazar succeeded him after committing many crimes, but only survived his father five weeks. His widow, Helena Pala- ologus, gave the country to the pope in order to secure his assist- ance against the Turks. Upon this the sultan ravaged Servia in the most pitiless manner, burnt the churches and monasteries, and carried off 200,000 persons into captivity. Servia became in all respects a Turkish province, although we occasionally find the empty title of "despot" borne by some of the descendants of its einces. Great numbers of the Serbs subsequently migrated to ungary. In 1689 some thousands under the command of the despot George Brankovich entered the imperial (German) army. In 1691 the Servian patriarch, Arsenius Chernoyevich, led about 36,000 families to settle in various parts of Hungary, chiefly in Syrmia and Slavonia. These zadrugos, as they are called, are not families in our sense of the word, consisting of parents and children, but communities of families according to the custom still found among the Croats of the Military Frontier. The number of the emigrants at that time would probably amount to 400,000 or 500,000 persons. Others followed them in 1738 and 1788. These Serbs have kept their religion and language in spite of the desperate efforts of the Government to Magyarize them. The last despot of Servia was George Brankovich, who died in captivity in Austria in 1711. In consequence of the splendid victories of Prince Eugene, Austria acquired the greater part of Servia by the treaty of Posharevatz in 1718, but the Turks regained it by the peace of Belgrade in 1739. For upwards_of four centuries the Serbs groaned under the Turkish yoke, until, in 1804, unable to endure the oppression of the Turkish dahis, they broke out into rebellion under George Petrovich, sur- named Tsrni, or " Black George " (in Turkish Kara). Kara George was born at Topola (Tapolja) in 1767 ; at first he merely aimed at conquering the dahis, but afterwards he attempted to drive the Turks out of Servia. This he succeeded in doing after many failures. In 1813, however, they reconquered the country, and George with his adherents was compelled to fly to Austria. He returned in 1817, but was treacherously murdered by order of Milosh Obrenovich, who had now become the Servian leader. We have no space here to Struggles sketch the struggles of Milosh to secure the independence of Servia. for inde- He was himself of peasant origin and in his youth had been a swine- pend- herd. The Turks had contrived to kill or drive out of the country ence. all the Servian aristocracy, leaving only peasants to till the ground, feed swine (one of the great industries of the country), and pay the harach. Milosh was declared prince by the national assembly, and in 1830 secured the consent of the Porte to his enjoyment of the title with the succession reserved to his family. Turkey allowed Servia a quasi-independence, but held and garrisoned several for- tresses. Milosh had so little forgotten his Turkish training that he made himself obnoxious to his subjects by his despotic acts. He was a man of simple, even coarse habits, as many of the anec- dotes told of him testify. He was compelled to abdicate in 1839 in favour of his son Milan, who, however, was of too feeble a con- stitution to direct the government, and, dying soon afterwards, was succeeded by his younger brother Michael. He also abdicated in 1842 and the Serbs then elected Alexander, the son of Tsrui George, or, to give him his Servian patronymic, Karageorgevich. His rule lasted seventeen years ; he was compelled to resign in 1859, and Milosh, now very old, was invited to come from Bucharest. He lived, however, only one year, dying in 1860, and left the throne to his son Michael, then aged forty, who was thus a second time elected prince of Servia. Michael was a man of refinement and had learned much during his exile. The condition of the country improved during his reign, and in 1862 he succeeded in getting the Turkish garrisons removed from Belgrade. The Moslem in- habitants have gradually withdrawn from the country, so that they are now represented by a very few families. Of the two mosques still remaining in Belgrade, one is devoted to their use, the other having been turned into a gas-work. While walking in his park, called Koshutniak or Topshidere, near Belgrade, Michael was assassinated by the emissaries of Alexander Karageorgevich on 10th June 1868. fie was succeeded by his second cousin, Milan, grand- son of Yephrem, a brother of Milosh. Milan was born in 1854 ; he became prince of Servia in 1872. In 1875 he married a Russian lady, Natalie de Keczko. In 1878 the Serbs declared war against Turkey, but their arms were unsuccessful, and they were only saved by the intervention of Russia. By the treaty of Berlin, July 1878, the country received a large accession of territory, and the prince caused himself to be proclaimed king. Peace continued till the year 1885, and during this period the Serbs seemed to make con- siderable progress as a nation, in spite of the bitterness of political faction. In 1885, however, Servia made an ill-judged and selfish attack upon Bulgaria, which was ignorniniously beaten off. LITERATURE. For some account of the Servian language, see SLAVS. Under Servian literature the Dalmatian and Croatian in the limited sense of the term must be included. The latter, however, is somewhat meagre. This literature is divided into three periods (1) from the earliest times to the fall of Servian independence at the battle of Kosovo, 1389 ; (2) from the rise of the importance of Ragusa in the 15th century till its decay towards the end of the 17th ; (3) from the time of Dositei Obradovich to the present day. First Period. The earliest composition which has come down to Early us in the Servian or Illyrian language, to use a term in which we chroni- may include the Dalmatian Slavs, who are essentially the same cles. people, is the production of an unknown priest of Dioclea (Doclea), now Duklya, a heap of ruins, but formerly a city of considerable importance on the river Moratza. His title in Latin is " Anonymus Presbyter Diocleus," or in Slavonic "Pop Dukljanin." He must have lived about the middle of the 12th century, as the chronicle compiled by him extends to the year 1161. It is a tedious pro- duction, and possesses only antiquarian interest ; it is printed by Kukuljevic Sakcinski 1 in the Arkiv za Povestnicu Jugoslavensku (Agrarn, 1851). The oldest documents of the Servian language in the narrower sense of the term are a letter of Kulin, the ban of Bosnia in 1189, and the letter of Simeon or Stephen Nemanya to the monastery of Chilander on Mount Athos. These productions are simply Palseoslavonic with a mixture of Serbisms. The history of early Servian literature has been thoroughly investigated by Schafarik in his Serbische Lcsckorner (Pesth, 1853). We have only space to mention the more important productions. (1) The Life of St Simeon by his son St Sabbas or Sava, the first archbishop of Servia, was written about 1210. The early manuscripts have been lost and the oldest copy known only dates from the 17th century. Besides this work, Sava also compiled a tipik or collection of statutes for the monastery of Studenitza, of which he was hegoumen or abbot. He was the founder of the celebrated Chilander monastery. (2) The History of St Simeon and St Sabbas by Dometian was eom- piled in 1264, and is preserved in a manuscript of the 14th centuiy. 1 In citing the names of those members of the Servo-Croatian race who use Latin letters the original orthography is preserved. XXI. 87