ecclesiastical books printed, and priests educated, and more fortunate
than the Bulgarian national Church, which remained under Greek management,
it was able to focus the national enthusiasms and aspirations and keep
alive with hope the flame of nationality amongst those Serbs who had not
emigrated.

Already, in the second half of the sixteenth century, people began to
think that Turkey's days in Europe were numbered, and they were encouraged
in this illusion by the battle of Lepanto (1571). But the seventeenth
century saw a revival of Turkish power; Krete was added to their empire,
and in 1683 they very nearly captured Vienna. In the war which followed
their repulse, and in which the victorious Austrians penetrated as far
south as Skoplje, the Serbs took part against the Turks; but when later
the Austrians were obliged to retire, the Serbs, who had risen against the
Turks at the bidding of their Patriarch Arsen III, had to suffer terrible
reprisals at their hands, with the result that another wholesale
emigration, with the Patriarch at its head, took place into the
Austro-Hungarian military borderland. This time it was the very heart of
Serbia which was abandoned, namely, Old Serbia and northern Macedonia,
including Pe['c] and Prizren. The vacant Patriarchate was for a time
filled by a Greek, and the Albanians, many of whom were Mohammedans and
therefore Turcophil, spread northwards and eastwards into lands that had
been Serb since the seventh century. From the end of the seventeenth
century, however, the Turkish power began unmistakably to wane. The Treaty
of Carlowitz (1699) left the Turks still in possession of Syrmia (between
the Danube and Save) and the Banat (north of the Danube), but during the
reign of the Emperor Charles VI their retreat was accelerated. In 1717
Prince Eugen of Savoy captured Belgrade, then, as now, a bulwark of the
Balkan peninsula against invasion from the north, and by the Treaty of
Passarowitz (Po[)z]arevac, on the Danube), in 1718, Turkey not only