The reconstruction of South-Eastern Europe

IV AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AND THE SOUTHERN SLAVS

We have seen in the preceding chapter that when the independence of the Serbian States was completely extinguished, owing to the advance of the all-conquering Turk, a considerable number of the Southern Slavs were already living in Austria and Hungary, at that time represented by two separate states. In the west the Slovenes had ever since the tenth century been incorporated with Austria, and from the beginning of the twelfth century Croatia had been incorporated with Hungary. After Kossovo great masses of the Serbian people were emigrating northward, to avoid the new barbarian invasion from the East. Thus already about the end of the fourteenth century, during the reign of King Sigismund, we find Serbs in great numbers inhabiting the county of Arad on the river Morish, which was governed by Dimitrius son of the Serbian King Vukasin who perished in the battle of Maritza (1371). Dimitrius probably emigrated thither with great numbers of Serbs from Macedonia who mingled with their kinsfolk who had remained in those regions since the great migration of the sixth and seventh centuries.

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