tory, made an alliance with Kalojan, and once again Greek and
Bulgar fought side by side, defeating the Franks and taking the Emperor
Baldwin prisoner. Then the alliance ended--never, it seems, can Bulgar
and Greek be long at peace--and a war raged between the Greek Empire and
Bulgaria, until in 1207 Kalojan was assassinated.

A brief period of prosperity continued for Bulgaria while John Assen
II. was on the throne. He was the most civilised and humane of all the
rulers of ancient Bulgaria, and there is no stain of a massacre or a
murder remembered against his name. He made wars reluctantly, but always
successfully. An inscription in a church at Tirnova records his prowess:

In the year 1230, I, John Assen, Czar and Autocrat of the
Bulgarians, obedient to God in Christ, son of the old Assen,
have built this most worthy church from its foundations, and
completely decked it with paintings in honour of the Forty holy
Martyrs, by whose help, in the 12th year of my reign, when the
church had just been painted, I set out to Roumania to the war
and smote the Greek army and took captive the Czar Theodore
Komnenus with all his nobles. And all lands have I conquered
from Adrianople to Durazzo, the Greek, the Albanian, and the
Servian land. Only the towns round Constantinople and that city
itself did the Franks hold; but these too bowed themselves
beneath the hand of my sovereignty, for they had no other Czar
but me, and prolonged their days according to my will, as God
had so ordained. For without Him no word or work is
accomplished. To Him be honour for ever. Amen.

John Assen II. was a great administrator as well as a great soldier.
Whilst he declared the Church of Bulgaria independent, repudiating alike
the Churches of Rome and of Constantinople, he tolerated all religions
and gave sound encouragement to education. With his death passed away
the last of the glory of ancient Bulgaria. Her story now was to be of
almost unrelieved misfortune until the culminating misery of the Turkish
conquest.

Internal dissensions, wars with the Venetians, the Hungarians, the
Serbs, the Greeks, the Tartars,--all these vexed Bulgaria. The country
became subject for a time to the Tartars, then recovered its
independence, then came under the dominion of Servia after the battle of
Kostendil (1330). The Servians, closely akin by blood, proved kind
conquerors, and for some years the two