The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

the hands of the German lords, who in the name of Charlemagne ruled the eastern parts of the Frankish Empire, the Southern Slavs suffered every kind of humiliation and exaction. The chronicles say that the Slavs were permitted to eat only that which remained after the dogs of the Frankish lords had fed. They revolted under the leadership of the Slavonian prince Ludevit Posavski, who formed a mighty Southern Slav State which, extending from the upper reaches of the Save to the Lower Danube and as far as Laibach (Ljubljana) beyond the river Timok, united in itself for a short time all the Southern Slav tribes, which later on were differentiated under the names of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Thus their first State was the only precursor of that State which they now hope to form after eleven centuries of struggle, partial liberty and foreign subjugation. But this first Southern Slav State (818-823) soon succumbed to foreign foes. The new beginning of their independent State life was on the shores of the Adriatic, and since the ninth century the growth of the Serbo-Croat States has proceeded on normal lines. With every advance to the North and East, the Serbo-Croat rulers incorporated more people of their own race into their National States, liberating them from the foreign Byzantine, Frankish, Magyar or Bulgarian yoke, and, far from being aggressors or conquerors of alien peoples, they were only the 34