After Kossovo some of the Serbian nobles had fled to Hungary, to Bosnia and to Montenegro. It was among the almost inaccessible, bleak rocks of Montenegro that a few thousand Serbs managed to retain their liberty. Various Serbian tribes or clans thus found a refuge, and owing to their isolation from each other they preserved their differences. They have, in fact, preserved them, as well as the tribal organization, down to the present day. And then there was Dubrovnik, the stalwart little republic. Now that she stood alone she needed all her acumen. Yet if she paid necessary tribute to the powerful, she would not give up helping the fallen. From this Catholic town in 1390, the following message was sent to the Serbian Prince Vuk Branković: "If--and God forbid that it should be so--Gospodin Vuk should not succeed in saving Serbia, and should be driven thence either by the Magyars or the Turks or anyone else, we will receive the Gospodin Vuk and the Gospodja Mara his wife, together with their children and their treasure, in all good faith in our city; and if Gospodin Vuk desire to build a church of his own faith here for his use, he shall be at liberty to do so."[19] Darkness lay over the world of the Southern Slav--under the Turk there was no history. Generation followed generation, but the day of Kossovo does not seem to the Serbs as though it were a distant day. Do not we who go about our business in the brilliance of the morning sometimes linger to recall the frightful setting of the sun? And every year the Serbian people sing the Mass for the repose of them who died at Kossovo.... When, after more than five hundred years, the Serbian soldiers in the Balkan War came back to this historic plain one saw them halting, without being ordered to do so, crossing themselves and presenting arms. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 4: From the word _sloviti_, to speak--meaning those who can speak to and comprehend one another.] [Footnote 5: Premrou quotes from the account of this ambassador's journey in the year 965, which was published at Petrograd in 1898.] [Footnote 6: Cf. _Serbia_, by L. F. Waring. London, 1917.] [Footnote 7: The sources of the ancient history of Croatia have been collected by F. Rački in his _Documenta historiæ Croaticæ periodum antiquam illustrantia_, Zagreb, 1877. Cf. also his well-known and excellent essays in _Rad. jugoslav. Akad._; the _Poviest Hrvata de Vjekoslav Klaič_, Zagreb, 1899-1911, and a short but very good account by F. Sišić in _Pregled povijesti hrv. naroda_, Zagreb, 1916. I am indebted for these references to Dr. Yovan Radonić, who is regarded as among the first of Croat historians.] [Footnote 8: This book, dating from 1395, is in the town library of Reims.] [Footnote 9: "The Bulgarians, in their historical, ethnographical and political frontiers." Text in four languages. Berlin, 1917.]