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Mourning added to the general gloom, for the two infant sons of Prince Mirko, the only direct heirs to the throne, had died within a month or two of each other of tubercular meningitis. Baby Stefan had been playfully called Stefan Dushan II, with the hope that he would reign at Prizren and he was dead. All hope of a child to Prince Danilo had been given up; much had died with Baby Stefan.
This antique principle of tesselation applied by the Byzantines to perpendicular walls, and occasionally adopted and varied ad infinitum by the Saracens, is magnificently illustrated in the upper exterior of the ducal palace of Venice. Formation of the Servian Monarchy. Contest between the Latin and Greek Churches. Stephan Dushan. A Great Warrior. Results of his Victories. Knes Lasar.
It was nothing less than the capture of Constantinople and the union of Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks into an empire which might defend Christendom against the rising power of Islam. Dushan was within forty miles of his goal with an army of 80,000 men when he died suddenly in camp on the 20th of December, 1355. Thirty-four years later Dushan's countrymen were annihilated by the Turks at Kossovo!
A parchment document, which extended to twice the length of a man, was now unrolled, and proved to be a patent of Stephan Urosh, the father of Stephan Dushan, endowing the great convent of Dechani, in Albania. Another curiosity in the collection is the first banner of Kara Georg, which the Servians consider as a national relic.
They were furious with Austria, because they had ordered a quantity of the usual propaganda prints, grotesque portraits of Stefan Dushan, Milosh Obilitch, the nine Yugovitches, etc., for their schools in order to preach Great Serbia. Had had them sent by Austrian post so that they might not fall into the hands of the Turks and the Austrians had stopped them.
Every mistake possible to make in Albania, the Young Turks made, and while they still rubbed Albania up the wrong way, Austria was still boycotted. Kral himself tried vainly to unload a barge of sugar. And still Serbia, Montenegro, and Austria showed their teeth on the frontier. The Crown Prince George of Serbia was reported to be about to assume the command of the army as a second Stefan Dushan.
We get a clear idea of the pre-Turk social conditions from the laws of Tsar Stefan Dushan, which show the strongly marked class difference of noble and serf. The noble was almost tax-free, but had to supply troops. The serf was tied to the land, and could only leave it with his lord's permission. Different punishments were inflicted upon nobles and serfs, the nobles' being naturally the lighter.
In consequence of the wars which Stephan Dushan, the Servian emperor, carried on against the Greeks in the fourteenth century, he made the archbishop of Servia independent of the patriarch of Constantinople, who, in turn, excommunicated Stephan and his nominee.
"Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive." The Great Serbian Idea the scheme for the reconstruction of Tsar Dushan's mediaeval Empire now began to sprout and germinate. In truth that Empire had been constructed by Dushan by means of mercenary armies, partly German, by aid of which he temporarily subdued Bosnians, Albanians, Bulgars and Greeks.
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.
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