[161] La Brocquière, 366.
[162] Θρῆνος, line 720.
[163] According to Scholarius and Manuel the Rhetorician, John shortly before his death declared against the Union. In such a matter, however, both these witnesses are suspect.
[164] La Brocquière, p. 341.
[165] Ibid. p. 340.
[166] La Brocquière, p. 339.
[167] Perhaps it could be contended successfully that the relaxing climate of Constantinople had much to do with the enervation of its population, and that every race which has possessed the city has suffered from the same cause.
[168] Mr. D. G. Hogarth in The Nearer East (London, 1902), on pp. 280–1, speaks of the country as a ‘Debateable Land distracted internally by a ceaseless war of influences, and only too anxious to lean in one part or another on external aid.’... ‘Macedonia has been torn this way and that for half a century.’ The whole chapter on ‘World Relation’ is valuable and suggestive. The same diversity of interests and hostility arising from differences in race and religion is well brought out in the best recent book on Turkey in Europe, by Odysseus.
[169] The Turkish system of occupying conquered territories by military colonies and driving away the original inhabitants excited great opposition among the Serbians and led, says Von Ranke, to the struggle which ended in 1389 on the plains of Cossovo. (History of Serbia, Bohn’s edition, p. 16.)
[170] Cantacuzenus, iv. 8.