The relations between Stephen and Venice during the period between 1345 and 1350 show how easily an alliance between the Serbians and the Venetians might have been concluded. It was a critical time for Orkhan. Had Stephen Dushan, with the help of the Venetians, attacked Constantinople before 1350, the Osmanlis would have lost their goal. After his coronation, the ‘Roman emperor’ sent an embassy to Venice to secure the Senate’s aid for the definite purpose of acquiring Constantinople.[174] In 1347 the Senate, in response to a second overture, congratulated Stephen on having been crowned ‘emperor of Constantinople’, but regretted the impossibility of aiding him. There was a truce between Venice and the Byzantine Empire, and they were at that moment engaged in a war with Zara.[175] However, like typical merchants, they consented to sell arms to Stephen.[176]
In January 1348 the Senate congratulated Stephen upon his exploits,[177] and later in the same year granted him three, then four, galleys.[178] This seems to be the extent of the help rendered by Venice to Stephen Dushan. The success of Stephen in subjugating Thessaly, and his progress farther south until, in 1349, the Serbian flags waved on the mainland opposite the Venetian castle of Ptelion in Euboea, alarmed the Venetians. The Senate complained of the piracy of the Serbians in the Aegaean, and tried to re-establish peace between Serbians and Greeks.[179] Stephen became more insistent and the Senate more reluctant. On April 13, 1350, the Senate considered several demands made upon them by an envoy of ‘Stephen Dushan, emperor of Serbia and Romania, despot of Arta and count of Wallachia’. Among them were Venetian citizenship for himself, his wife and his son, a conference with the Doge at Ragusa, and substantial aid for the attack upon Constantinople, ‘when he shall have conquered the ten parts of Romania outside of Constantinople.’[180] The chart of citizenship was accorded. But he was informed that the Doge never left Venice during his tenure of office, and that there was a treaty of friendship with the Byzantines which prevented Venice from joining in an attempt to capture the imperial city.[181]
Convinced that he could expect no substantial assistance from Venice, Stephen planned to work the old trick of the Byzantine emperors. The Serbians were already excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church. Stephen negotiated with the Pope for the return of the Serbians into the Roman fold.[182]
When war arose between Venice and Genoa, Stephen sent envoys to Orkhan to propose a union of the Serbian and Ottoman armies for a campaign against Constantinople. The marriage of his daughter to Orkhan’s son was to seal the alliance. Orkhan accepted this proposal. An embassy was immediately sent to Stephen to arrange the details of the alliance. But Cantacuzenos determined to prevent this change of Orkhan’s allegiance by a most drastic measure. He did not fear the anger of Orkhan as greatly as he feared a union between Orkhan and Dushan. The Ottoman envoys were ambushed. Some were killed. Those who escaped, together with the presents destined for Stephen, were taken to Demotika.[183]
Neither Stephen nor Orkhan tried to reopen the negotiations. They realized that their ambitions were too nearly identical to permit a harmonious agreement as to a division of the spoils. Macedonia was as hard to divide in the fourteenth century as it is in the twentieth. After 1351 Stephen watched to see what effect the war between Venice and Genoa was going to have upon his fortunes. He also intrigued, as Orkhan was doing, in the civil war of the Byzantines. These were his Capuan days. They were fatal to the fame of Stephen—outside of the Serbian folk-lore! The first expedition of Orkhan’s son Soleiman, in 1353, so alarmed Stephen that he tried to become reconciled to the Orthodox Church. He sent an embassy to Constantinople, but the patriarch refused his blessing until Stephen had renounced the title of emperor and his conquests east of the Vardar.[184] Stephen could not do this. Nor could he wait longer. If he did not strike quickly, the Osmanlis would be in his path. He took what was now a gambler’s chance. With eighty thousand men he started for Constantinople. Death claimed him on the second day of the march.[185] The Serbian Empire did not outlive its founder.
X
The public life of John Cantacuzenos was contemporary almost to the year with that of Stephen Dushan. He was associated with Andronicus III in the capacity of grand chancellor and confidential adviser throughout the decade which saw the loss of Nicaea and Nicomedia. Shortly after he had succeeded in deposing his grandfather, Andronicus III was taken with a violent fever. His crime-stained mind could not rid itself of the idea that he was going to die, even after he had become convalescent. He solicited Cantacuzenos to assume the imperial purple. He wanted to abdicate and take monk’s orders. A drink from a miraculous spring gave him a new grip on life.[186] For eleven years he lived on, in every crisis irresolute, in every disaster unkingly, bending always before the stronger will of Cantacuzenos. In 1341, at the early age of forty-five, his worthless life ended. His legacy to the Empress Anna and his child heir was the guardianship of his ‘friend and counsellor, John Cantacuzenos’. The grand chancellor accepted the regency with alacrity.[187]
Three months after the death of Andronicus III, Cantacuzenos crowned himself emperor at Demotika. He put the imperial crown also upon the head of his wife Irene, a Bulgarian princess. Neither in Constantinople nor in Adrianople were the pretensions of Cantacuzenos admitted. The widow of Andronicus, Anna of Savoy, refused to acknowledge the usurper. In Adrianople the inhabitants called in both Bulgarians and Turks to defend them against Cantacuzenos.[188] The Bulgarian Czar took sides secretly against his son-in-law.
The year 1342 saw the Byzantines engaged in another terrible civil war. The self-appointed emperor did not hesitate to go to Pristina and offer to Stephen Dushan Macedonia as far as Serres in exchange for Serbian aid against the Palaeologi.[189]
When the Serbian assistance proved unsatisfactory, Cantacuzenos called in the Turks of Aïdin. Omar, with 83 ships and 29,000 soldiers, came to his aid, but, because of the severe cold, returned to Asia before anything could be accomplished.[190] He came back in the spring of 1343 with 290 vessels and helped Cantacuzenos to enter Salonika. In the fall of this year Cantacuzenos led his Turkish mercenaries into Thrace. Anna appealed in vain to Venice to exercise a pressure upon the Turks and Serbians, so that they would no longer support her rival.[191] In desperation she gave Alexander of Bulgaria nine strongholds in the Rhodope Mountains in exchange for a few thousand soldiers. She resorted also to bribing the Turks in Cantacuzenos’s service, and made overtures to Orkhan.