befell Hercegovina. Albania had already been conquered after stubborn
resistance in 1478. There remained only the mountainous coastal province
of Zeta, which had been an independent principality ever since 1371. Just
as inland Serbia had perished between the Turkish hammer and the Hungarian
anvil, so maritime Serbia was crushed between Turkey and Venice, only its
insignificance and inaccessibility giving it a longer lease of independent
life. Ivan Crnojevi['c], one of the last independent rulers of Zeta, who
had to fly to Italy in 1480, abandoning his capital, [)Z]abljak, to the
Turks, returned in 1481, when the death of Sultan Mohammed temporarily
raised the hopes of the mountaineers, and founded Cetinje and made it his
capital. His son George, who succeeded him and ruled from 1490 till 1496,
is famous as having set up the first Serbian printing-press there. Its
activities were naturally not encouraged by the Turkish conquest, but it
was of great importance to the national Serbian Church, for which books
were printed with it.

In 1496, Venice having wisely made peace with the Sultan some years
previously, this last independent scrap of Serb territory was finally
incorporated in the Turkish dominions. At the end of the fifteenth century
the Turks were masters of all the Serb lands except Croatia, Slavonia, and
parts of Dalmatia, which belonged to Hungary, and the Dalmatian coast and
islands, which were Venetian. The Turkish conquest of Serbia, which began
in 1371 at the battle of the Maritsa, and was rendered inevitable by the
battle of Kosovo Polje, in 1389, thus took a hundred and twenty-five years
to complete.



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