established.  The oriental Servians had the chief seat of their power in the present Turkish province of Serf-Vilayeti; and governed by princes called Shupans, we see them in a constant war of resistance against the Greek emperors, and during several centuries also against the powerful Khans of Bulgaria; now conquered, subjugated, destroyed almost to annihilation, but recovering with effort and rising again in power, with such energy as to enable them under the great Tzar, Stephan Dushan, not only to hold all their neighbours in awe, but to take a menacing position towards Byzantium itself, and dictate conditions of peace to the imploring envoys of that proud imperial court.  But this brilliant point of Servian glory, which even now after five hundred years still lives in the hearts of the people, and is the subject of a thousand legends and songs, was only a meteor.  It vanished in almost the same moment that it appeared.  Stephan’s immediate successors, enfeebled by their domestic dissensions, sunk under the superior forces of the Turks, who had broken into Europe thirty-four years earlier.  They soon became the conquerors of the Servians, though not without fierce and bloody struggles; and they still remain their masters and oppressors.[3]

The western Servians were early divided into small states, some of which adopted an aristocratic republican form of constitution.  Among these, only the republic of Ragusa requires to be mentioned here, as the cradle of the Dalmatian branch of Servian literature.  The local situation of these western states made them dependent on Hungary; and thus Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, sometimes under the title of kingdoms, and now as dukedoms, became at length mere provinces of that larger kingdom, and ultimately of the Austrian empire.  Bosnia and Herzegovina, which form the boundary between the Servians of the East and West, were subject to the influence of both; and are to the present day divided in religion and in language.

1. Literature of the Servians of the Oriental or Greek Church.

However small the circuit of country, properly called Servia, is in proportion to the whole extent over which the southern Slavi are spread, the name of Servians nevertheless appears to modern philologists as the best adapted for being employed as the common name of them all.  Dobrovsky thinks it even appropriate to become the general appellation for all Slavic nations.  Although of obscure derivation, it is at least sufficiently ascertained that it is of pure Slavic origin; glorious associations are attached to it; it is moreover still a living name, while the learned appellation of Illyrians, formerly more in use, is dead; and that of Bosnians, preferred by some Dalmatian writers, rests upon no satisfactory grounds.  The name of Servians, however, was never, till recently, applied to the Dalmatians.  It is indeed still rejected by themselves; and they continue to call themselves Illyrians.