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 _chassé-croisé_ 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