The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

THE RECONSTRUCTION OF

with Hungary was a heavy blow to the Serbian States, as now they had to fight a new and powerful enemy. By incorporating Croatia, Hungary not only increased her own strength, but was fortified in a position whence the invasion of Serbia and Bosnia was most easy, and consequently the encroachments and invasions of Hungary in Bosnia and Serbia, became more frequent and vigorous after that date.

In spite of all this the Serbian States progressed with every year. They acquired and developed within their nation all the institutions of contemporary civilisation. Little by little, welded in the hard school of warfare and resistance, they acquired fighting qualities which enabled them to stem the tide of foreign invasion and conquest. From the twelfth century onwards we find Serbian rulers married to Byzantine, French, or Hungarian princesses, and the Serbian State rose high in the esteem and respect of the nations. The high standard of their civilisation can be judged by remaining monuments, churches and monasteries scattered all over their territories. Of their medieval social institutions let us only mention that in the first decades of the fourteenth century, in the reign of King Milutin, the system of trial by jury was already introduced into Serbian tribunals, and was later, in 1349, codified by his grandson the Emperor Stephan Dugan. In the fourteenth century the Serbo-Croatian

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