Travels in Southeastern Europe

The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.

32 THE BURDEN OF THE BALKANS. tion of his Empire is still extant. Prisren was his capital, and there he held his Court with great state and magnificence. You may see him now, stiff and gorgeous, frescoed upon the walls of his father's church at Dechani, bearded, moustachioed, clad in a long, straight Byzantine robe, heavily bordered with gold, and crowned with the imperial diadem, from either side of which hangs a string of gems. Tsar of almost the whole peninsula, he planned to add Greece and Byzantium to his Empire, and to keep the Turk from Europe. Dushan started with a fabulously vast army. Had his enterprise succeeded, and he lived long enough to consolidate his Empire, the fate of East Europe might have been very different, for he was undoubtedly one of the strongest~ men the peninsula has produced. But in the midst of his power and glory, on the very eve of his great undertaking, he died suddenly (treacherously poisoned, it is said) within a few miles of Byzantium. Dushan is still a popular hero, and prances on a fiery steed in grotesquely primitive prints on many a cottage wall both in Servia and Montenegro, and in the name of Dushan many a Serb of to-day claims broad lands as his birthright. I remember the sudden joy of a gendarme who was laboriously deciphering my name, printed in Roman type on my passport case. ' It is Dushan,' he cried, ' the name of our great Tsar! ' Alas for the briefness of Balkan glories! Dushan's Great Servia but added to the fatal list of 'one
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Title
The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham.
Author
Durham, Mary Edith, 1863-1944.
Canvas
Page 32
Publication
London :: Nelson,
[1905]
Subject terms
Eastern question (Balkan)
Balkan Peninsula -- Description and travel.

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https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001
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"The burden of the Balkans / by M. Edith Durham." In the digital collection Travels in Southeastern Europe. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/ans3900.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 30, 2025.
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