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From the large purchases of Scotch rugs recorded it seems probable that these were issued on other occasions than those of childbirth. As to shoes, however, the record is silent. The Irish provisions cost annually about £300, and the English supplies about £1000, not including such extra outlays as that of £1355 in 1793 for new stills, worms, and coppers.

The Mussulmans, in their turn, crossed the Dardanelles at Gallipolis in 1355, and took possession, one after the other, of the European provinces of the Eastern Empire, to which the Latins had themselves given the fatal blow.

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.

In 1355 the Narrows of Gallipoli passed into Ottoman hands, and opened a bridge to unexpected conquests in Europe. Serbia and Bulgaria collapsed at the first attack, and the hosts which marched to liberate them from Hungary and from France only ministered to Ottoman prestige by their disastrous discomfiture.

When, in December, 1355, at the summons of a deplorably incapable and feeble king, Marcel, a simple burgher of Paris and quite a new man, entered the assembly of the states-general of France, itself quite a new power, he was justly struck with the vices and abuses of the kingly government, with the evils and the dangers being entailed thereby upon France, and with the necessity for applying some remedy.

The powers committed to the English commissioners show that Edward was at this time really desirous of making a permanent peace with France; but the French ambassadors raised numerous and unexpected difficulties, and after lengthened negotiations the conference was broken off. The truce came to an end in June, 1355, and great preparations were made on both sides for the war.

During the reign of John Palæologus, son of Andronicus the Younger, which began in 1355, the eastern empire was nearly subverted by the Genoese. On the return of the legitimate sovereign to Constantinople, the Genoese, who had established their factories and industries in the suburb of Galata, or Pera, were allowed to remain.

Disintegration was greatly increased by the practice of the partition of territories among brothers in place of primogeniture. A preponderating authority was given to the electors by the Golden Bull of Charles IV. in 1355. The power of the emperor as against the princes was increased, as that of the latter was counterbalanced by the development of free cities.

Starting from the fiction that the coronation of poets was a prerogative of the old Roman emperors, and consequently was no less his own, he crowned, May 15, 1355, the Florentine scholar Zanobi della Strada at Pisa, to the annoyance of Petrarch, who complained that the barbarian laurel had dared adorn the man loved by the Ausonian muses, and to the great disgust of Boccaccio, who declined to recognize this laurea Pisana as legitimate.

Faith and hope fill a prominent place in the lives of peoples as well as of individuals; having sprung into real existence in 1355, the states-general of France found themselves alive again in 1789; and we may hope that, after so long a trial, their rebuffs and their mistakes will not be more fatal to them in our day.