Orkhan had one rival whose goal was similar to his own. Stephen Dushan, kral of Serbia, was openly aspiring to the imperial throne. Byzantium had no more formidable enemy than this warrior king, who in twenty-five years led thirteen campaigns against the Greeks.[167] The memory of his ephemeral empire has been cherished by the Serbians to this day. In their folk-lore Stephen Dushan and his deeds are immortalized. The halo of romance still surrounds the man and his conquests. It is in vain that historical science has demonstrated the purely temporary character of Stephen’s conquests. It is in vain that he has been divested of the glamour of the chronicles and songs, and pictured in conformity with fact. To the Serbian peasant he is Saint Stephen, the glorious Czar, who brought the Serbian Empire to its zenith. All the cities in which this adventurer and raider set foot are claimed in the twentieth century as a legitimate part of ‘Greater Serbia’. Men have engaged in a bloody war and have died for this fiction.[168] Stephen Dushan demands our attention because he is the one man who could have anticipated the Osmanlis in winning the inheritance of the Caesars. A statement of his career is necessary before we take up the narration of the events which led to the invasion of the Balkan peninsula by the Osmanlis. Stephen came into prominence in 1330 during the war which his father, Urosh, made upon Bulgaria. Czar Michael had repudiated the Serbian princess Anna in order to marry a sister of Andronicus III. The Bulgarians were badly beaten. Stephen received for his brilliant part in the campaign the province of Zenta. Although he was only twenty-three, his ambition to rule was already awakened. Dissatisfied, he demanded a half of his father’s possessions. Urosh refused. Stephen marched against him, dethroned him, and imprisoned him. According to some authorities, he had Urosh killed.[169] Whether he actually ordered the assassination or not, he profited by the crime. During the first decade of his reign, Stephen gathered a majority of the Serbian-speaking peoples under his rule, pushed down to the Dalmatian coast, and asserted Serbian supremacy over a large portion of the territory which his race had hitherto contested with the Bulgarians. His appearance on the Adriatic led to a nominal alliance with Venice.[170] In 1340 he began the invasion of lower Macedonia. When the valley of the Vardar was conquered, he attacked Serres. This city fell into his possession. He now considered himself ready for the advance on Constantinople. Drunk with success, he crowned himself at Serres[171] ‘King by the grace of God of Serbia, of Albania, and of the maritime region, prince of the Bulgarian empire, and master of almost all the Roman empire’.[172] A few months later he changed the title to ‘emperor and autocrat of Serbia and Romania’.[173]