consciousness.  What still further contributed to this difficulty was the fact that many Serbs escaped the oppression of Turkish rule by emigrating to the neighbouring provinces, where they found people of their own race and language, even though of a different faith.  The tide of emigration flowed in two directions, westwards into Dalmatia and northwards into Slavonia and Hungary.  It had begun already after the final subjection of Serbia proper and Bosnia by the Turks in 1459 and 1463, but after the fall of Belgrade, which was the outpost of Hungary against the Turks, in 1521, and the battle of Mohacs, in 1526, when the Turks completely defeated the Magyars, it assumed great proportions.  As the Turks pushed their conquests further north, the Serbs migrated before them; later on, as the Turks receded, large Serb colonies sprang up all over southern Hungary, in the Banat (the country north of the Danube and east of the Theiss), in Syrmia (or Srem, in Serbian, the extreme eastern part of Slavonia, between the Save and the Danube), in Ba[)c]ka (the country between the Theiss and Danube), and in Baranya (between the Danube and the Drave).  All this part of southern Hungary and Croatia was formed by the Austrians into a military borderland against Turkey, and the Croats and immigrant Serbs were organized as military colonists with special privileges, on the analogy of the Cossacks in southern Russia and Poland.  In Dalmatia the Serbs played a similar role in the service of Venice, which, like Austria-Hungary, was frequently at war with the Turks.  During the sixteenth century Ragusa enjoyed its greatest prosperity; it paid tribute to the Sultan, was under his protection, and never rebelled.  It had a quasi monopoly of the trade of the entire Balkan peninsula.  It was a sanctuary both for Roman Catholic Croats and for Orthodox Serbs, and sometimes acted as intermediary on behalf of its co-religionists with the Turkish authorities, with whom it wielded great influence.  Intellectually also it was a sort of Serb oasis, and the only place during the Middle Ages where Serbian literature was able to flourish.

Montenegro during the sixteenth century formed part of the Turkish province of Scutari.  Here, as well as in Serbia proper, northern Macedonia (known after the removal northwards of the political centre, in the fourteenth century, as Old Serbia), Bosnia, and Hercegovina, the Turkish rule was firmest, but not harshest, during the first half of the sixteenth century, when the power of the Ottoman Empire was at its height.  Soon after the fall of Smederevo, in 1459, the Patriarchate of Pe[’c] (Ipek) was abolished, the Serbian Church lost its independence, was merged in the Greco-Bulgar Archbishopric of Okhrida (in southern Macedonia), and fell completely under the control of the Greeks.  In 1557, however, through the influence of a Grand Vizier of Serb nationality, the Patriarchate of Pe[’c] was revived.  The revival of this centre of national life was momentous; through its agency the Serbian monasteries were restored, 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.