Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

The external policy of Byzantium during the reigns of the Andronicoi 

Page 10

During the civil war between the two Andronicoi, the Serbian Kral (King) supported the grandfather. The victory of the Serbs in 1330 over the Bulgars, who were allies of Andronicus III, near Velbuzd (now Kostendil), in Upper Macedonia, had great significance for the future of Serbia. The young prince, Stephen Dushan (Dusan), destined to be the famous king of Serbia, is believed, despite some discrepancy of sources, to have had a decisive share in the victory. In his flight the Bulgarian king was unhorsed and slain. The results of the battle at Velbuzd were of great importance to the young Serbian Kingdom. The Greco-Bulgarian alliance was dissolved, and, any possibility that Bulgaria might restrain the further rise of Serbia was destroyed forever. Thereafter the Kingdom of Serbia played the leading role in the Balkan peninsula.

But Serbia reached the climax of her power under Stephen Dushan, 1331-55. Ten years before he mounted the throne, Stephen and his father had been crowned together with the benediction of the archbishop. Sources call him, therefore, Stephen, the young Kral (King), rex juvenis, in opposition to the old Kral, rex veteranus. T. Florinsky commented, this simultaneous coronation of father and son was a new and remarkable phenomenon in the history of Serbia. It showed clearly the influence of Byzantium, where it was an old custom of the emperors to appoint their co-rulers and have them crowned with the imperial title.

During the first ten years of his rule, while Andronicus III reigned in Byzantium, Stephen Dushan took advantage of the fact that the Emperor and John Cantacuzene were occupied in the east by the Ottoman danger, to open his aggressive policy, on one hand, by the annexation of northern Macedonia, and on the other, by the occupation of the major part of Albania, where Andronicus' troops had recently fought with success. Before the death of the Emperor in 1341, Stephen Dushan, though he had not fully developed his plans against Byzantium, nevertheless had already shown how strong an enemy he was to prove to the Empire.

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