Stephen Du[)s]an's empire extended from the Adriatic in the west to the river Maritsa in the east, from the Save and Danube in the north to the Aegean; it included all the modern kingdoms of Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and most of Greece, Dalmatia as far north as the river Cetina, as well as the fertile Morava valley, with Nish and Belgradethe whole eastern part of Serbia, which had for long been under either Bulgar or Magyar control.

The Serbs, who had already had an unsuccessful brush with the advance guard of the new invaders near Demotika in 1351, met them again on the Maritsa river in 1371, and were completely defeated.

Several of the upstart princes who had been pulling Stephen Du[)s]an's empire to pieces perished, and Tsar Uro[)s] only survived the battle of the Maritsa two months; he was unmarried, and with him died the Nemanja dynasty and the Serbian Empire.

That part of the country to the south of Skoplje fell completely under Turkish control; it was here that the famous national hero, Marko Kraljevi['c] (or King's son), renowned for his prowess, ruled as a vassal prince and mercenary soldier of the Turks; his father was one of the rebel princes who fell at the battle of the river Maritsa in 1371.

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.

In this concentration-area it gathered momentum during the earlier part of the seventh century A.D., and then burst out with irresistible force in all directions, eastward across the Maritsa basin till it reached the Black Sea, and southward down the Vardar to the shores of the Aegean.

A few fortified cities held out, Adrianople on the Maritsa continued to cover Constantinople; Salonika at the mouth of the Vardar survived a two hundred years siege; while further south Athens, Korinth, and Patras escaped extinction.

By the spring of 1913 the three fortresses had fallen, and, under the treaty finally signed at London, Turkey ceded to the Balkan League, as a whole, all her European territories west of a line drawn from Ainos on the Aegean to Midía on the Black Sea, including Adrianople and the lower basin of the river Maritsa.

(1) The eastern section, conveniently known as Thrace, consisted of the lower basin of the Maritsa.

Geographically, however, the whole district is intimately connected with Bulgaria, and the railway that follows the course of the Maritsa down to the port of Dedeagatch offers a much-needed economic outlet for large regions already within the Bulgarian frontier.

Serbia maintained that the veto imposed by Austria upon her expansion to the Adriatic, in coincidence with Bulgaria's unexpected gains on the Maritsa to which Serbian arms had contributed, invalidated the secret treaty of the previous summer, and she announced her intention of retaining the Monastir district and the line of the Salonika railway as far as the future frontier of Greece.

He desired to leave Bulgaria a broad zone of Aegean littoral between the Struma and Maritsa rivers, including ports capable of satisfying Bulgaria's pressing need for an outlet towards the south.