Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

John V, John VI Cantacuzene and the apogee of Serbian power

Page 5

The statement in the later chronicles of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) that Dushan undertook a vast expedition against Constantinople in the very year of his death, which alone prevented its being carried into effect, is not confirmed by any contemporary information, and the best scholars do not consider it true. In 1355 the Great Master of Serbia died without realizing his ambition. Thus, Dushan failed to create a Greco-Serbian Empire to replace the Byzantine Empire; he managed to form only the Empire of Serbia, which included many Greek lands, but which after his death fell, as John Cantacuzene said, into a thousand pieces.

The existence of Dushan's monarchy was of such short duration, that, as Florinsky says, in it, properly speaking, only two moments may be observed: the moment of formation during the whole time of Dushan's reign, and that of disintegration, starting immediately after the death of its founder. Ten years after, another Russian scholar wrote, the grandeur of the Serbian Empire seemed to belong to a remote past. Thus, the most grandiose attempt of the Slavs, their third and last, to create in the Balkan peninsula a great Empire, with Constantinople at its head, ended in failure. The Balkan peninsula was open and almost defenseless to the aggressive plans of the warlike Ottoman Turks

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