to the Eastern Church, which influences their policy to the present time.  The principality of Dioclea, or Zeta, as it soon became called, was one of the confederate Serb states formed by Heraclius in 622 A.D., to act as a buffer state against the inroads of the Avars.  Each state was ruled by a Zupan or Prince who owed allegiance to the Grand Zupan, the head of the heptarchy.  But the confederation was very loose, the rival chieftains fighting amongst one another for the supremacy, for the Serb race has ever been noted for its lack of unity and corresponding love of freedom.  The famous Bulgarian Czar Samuel, circa 980, who had overrun the rest of the Serb states, and made for himself a great empire, found that he was powerless to conquer the warlike John Vladimir of the Zeta; and again, nearly a century later, in 1050, we find the Zeta Zupa so powerful that their Prince assumes the title of King of Servia, and is confirmed in his right by Gregory VII., the famous Pope Hildebrand.  Dissensions then broke out again, and for the next hundred years the land owned the sway of the Greek Empire.  The two most celebrated Serb kings—­Stefan Nemanja (1143) and Stefan Dusan (1336-1356)—­both ascended to the head of the confederation from the principality of the Zeta.  The latter raised the Serb kingdom to its zenith, and formed an ephemeral empire which bears many a resemblance to that of Napoleon.  Montenegro had all this time been steadily growing, and on the accession of Dusan to Servia, the district of the Zeta fell to the Balsic, who proved themselves to be a strong and competent race of rulers.  They increased their territories to such an extent that, at the time of the battle of Kossovo, they could boast to ruling over all the land from Ragusa to the mouth of the Drin, including the present West Montenegro and Southern Hercegovina, with Skodra as the capital.  After the overthrow of the great Servian Empire on the field of Kossovo, Montenegro became entirely independent of outside suzerainty, and from the year 1389 to the present day, is the only Balkan state which has successfully defied the invasions of the Turk.  The Balsic engaged themselves in several fruitless wars with Venice, by which they lost Skodra, so that, when their line died out and the succession fell to Stefan Crnoievic (the name Crnoievic, Black Prince, is supposed by some to be the origin of the name Crnagora or Black Mountain), a new capital must perforce be built, at the northern end of the lake, called Zabljak.  Stefan Crnoievic allied himself with Skenderbeg, the King of Albania, and within twelve years is said to have fought over fifty battles with the Turks who, in their impotent rage, poured army after army into the land, but entirely failed to break the courage of this brave little people.  His people gave him the title of Voivoda of the Zeta, but the limits of his principality seem to have been very undefined.  The position of his son Ivan was, however, of greater danger, for in 1444 the kingdom