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revolts of feudal nobles all over the country, and perpetual ebb and flow

of the boundaries of the warring principalities which tore the fabric of

Bulgaria to pieces amongst them. From the point of view of foreign

politics this period is characterized generally by the virtual

disappearance of Bulgarian independence to the profit of the surrounding

states, who enjoyed a sort of rotativist supremacy. It is especially

remarkable for the complete ascendancy which Serbia gained in the Balkan

peninsula.



A Serb, Constantine, grandson of Stephen Nemanja, occupied the Bulgarian

throne from 1258 to 1277, and married the granddaughter of John Asen II.

After the fall of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in 1261, the

Hungarians, already masters of Transylvania, combined with the Greeks

against Constantine; the latter called the Tartars of southern Russia, at

this time at the height of their power, to his help and was victorious,

but as a result of his diplomacy the Tartars henceforward played an

important part in the Bulgarian welter. Then Constantine married, as his

second wife, the daughter of the Greek emperor, and thus again gave

Constantinople a voice in his country's affairs. Constantine was followed

by a series of upstart rulers, whose activities were cut short by the

victories of King Uro[)s] II of Serbia (1282-1321), who conquered all

Macedonia and wrested it from the Bulgars. In 1285 the Tartars of the

Golden Horde swept over Hungary and Bulgaria, but it was from the south

that the clouds were rolling up which not much later were to burst over

the peninsula. In 1308 the Turks appeared on the Sea of Marmora, and in

1326 established themselves at Brussa. From 1295 to 1322 Bulgaria was

presided over by a nobleman of Vidin, Svetoslav, who, unmolested by the

Greeks, grown thoughtful in view of the approach of the Turks, was able to

maintain rather more order than his subjects were accustomed to. After his

death in 1322 chaos again supervened. One of his successors had married

the daughter of Uro[)s] II of Serbia, but suddenly made an alliance with

the Greeks against his brother-in-law Stephen Uro[)s] III and dispatched

his wife to her home. During the war which ensued the unwonted allies were

utterly routed by the Serbs at Kustendil in Macedonia in 1330.



From 1331 to 1365 Bulgaria was under one John Alexander, a noble of Tartar

origin, whose sister became the wife of Serbia's greatest ruler, Stephen

Du[)s]an; John Alexander, moreover, recognized Stephen as his suzerain,

and from thenceforward Bulgaria was a vassal-state of Serbia. Meanwhile

the Turkish storm was gathering fast; Suleiman crossed the Hellespont in

1356, and Murad I made Adrianople his capital in 1366. After the death of

John Alexander in 1365 the Hungarians invaded northern Bulgaria, and his

successor invoked the help of the Turks against them and also against the

Greeks. This was the beginning of the end. The Serbs, during an absence of

the Sultan in Asia, undertook an offensive, but were defeated by the Turks

near Adrianople in 1371, who captured Sofia in 1382. After this the Serbs

formed a huge southern Slav alliance, in which the Bulgarians refused to

join, but, after a temporary success against the Turks in 1387, they were

vanquished by them as the result of treachery at the famous battle of

Kosovo in 1389. Meanwhile the Turks occupied Nikopolis on the Danube in

1388 and destroyed the Bulgarian capital Tirnovo in 1393, exiling the

Patriarch Euthymus to Macedonia. Thus the state of Bulgaria passed into

the hands of the Turks, and its church into those of the Greeks. Many

Bulgars adopted Islam, and their descendants are the Pomaks or Bulgarian

Mohammedans of the present day. With the subjection of Rumania in 1394 and

the defeat of an improvised anti-Turkish crusade from western Europe under

Sigismund, King of Hungary, at Nikopolis in 1396 the Turkish conquest was

complete, though the battle of Varna was not fought till 1444, nor

Constantinople entered till 1453.