Next day we went to look at the remains of Servian royalty. A shattered gateway and ruined walls, are all that now remain of the once extensive palace of Knes Lasar Czar Serbski; but the chapel is as perfect as it was when it occupied the centre of the imperial quadrangle. It is a curious monument of the period, in a Byzantine sort of style; but not for a moment to be compared in beauty to the church of Studenitza. Above one of the doors is carved the double eagle, the insignium of empire. The great solidity of this edifice recommended it to the Turks as an arsenal; hence its careful preservation. The late Servian governor had the Vandalism to whitewash the exterior, so that at a distance it looks like a vulgar parish church. Within is a great deal of gilding and bad painting; pity that the late governor did not whitewash the inside instead of the out. The Natchalnik told me, that under the whitewash fine bricks were disposed in diamond figures between the stones. This antique principle of tesselation applied by the Byzantines to perpendicular walls, and occasionally adopted and varied _ad infinitum_ by the Saracens, is magnificently illustrated in the upper exterior of the ducal palace of Venice. CHAPTER XX. Formation of the Servian Monarchy.--Contest between the Latin and Greek Churches.--Stephan Dushan.--A Great Warrior.--Results of his Victories.--Knes Lasar.--Invasion of Amurath.--Battle of Kossovo.--Death of Lasar and Amurath.--Fall of the Servian Monarchy.--General Observations. I cannot present what I have to say on the feudal monarchy of Servia more appropriately than in connexion with the architectural monuments of the period. The Servians, known in Europe from the seventh century, at which period they migrated from the Carpathians to the Danube, were in the twelfth century divided into petty states. "Le premier Roi fut un soldat heureux." Neman the First, who lived near the present Novibazar, first cemented these scattered principalities into a united monarchy. He assumed the double eagle as the insignium of his dignity, and considered the archangel Michael as the patron saint of his family. He was brave in battle, cunning in politics, and the convent of Studenitza is a splendid monument of his love of the arts. Here he died, and was buried in 1195. Servia and Bosnia were, at this remote period, the debatable territory between the churches of Rome and Constantinople, so divided was opinion at that time even in Servia Proper, where now a Roman Catholic community is not to be found, that two out of the three sons of this prince were inclined to the Latin ritual.