9

The Serbian Supremacy and the Final Collapse, 1258-1393

From 1258 onwards Bulgaria may be said to have continued flickering until its final extinction as a state in 1393, but during this period it never had any voice in controlling the destinies of the Balkan peninsula.  Owing to the fact that no ruler emerged capable of keeping the distracted country in order, there was a regular chasse-croise of rival princelets, an unceasing tale of political marriages and murders, conspiracies and 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.