The dramatic death of Stephen Dushan, in 1355, just as he was starting upon the expedition against Constantinople for which his whole life had been a preparation, is recorded in the previous chapter. Stephen’s son was so unfit to inherit the aspirations and carry on the work of his father that he was called in derision by his people Nejaki, the weakling.[322] The nobles and generals of Stephen Nejaki ignored him. Each man seized what territory he could hold and defend against his neighbour. There was anarchy in Macedonia and Serbia. The dissolution of Stephen Dushan’s conquests resulted in a bloody and destructive civil war between cities and factions.[323] The dowager Czarina managed to preserve a semblance of prestige, if not of authority, at Serres. But the ‘empire’ was no more. As local rulers, Serbians stayed in the principal cities of Macedonia. There was undoubtedly a Serbian element in the village population. Many villagers, however, who acknowledged the overlordship of Stephen’s warriors and other Serbian nobles, did not know then, _any more than they know now_, to what race they themselves belonged. This has always been the Macedonian problem. The defeat of the crusaders on the banks of the Maritza in 1363 had been a defensive battle on the part of the Osmanlis. There was no attempt to invade Macedonia. While Murad was occupied in the subjugation of Thrace and of southern Bulgaria, several efforts were made by the Byzantines to come to an understanding with the Serbians. In 1364, the patriarch Callixtus went to Serres to see Stephen’s widow, who had retired to a convent. His purpose was to form an alliance. Soon after reaching Serres, Callixtus succumbed to the hardships of the journey.[324] His effort came to nothing. That Stephen’s son still held to the pretensions of his father and had no intention of treating with the Byzantines, is demonstrated by a bull, dated from Pristina in 1365, in which he calls himself ‘emperor of the Servians and of the Greeks’.[325] Stephen Urosh, the ‘weakling’, died in 1367.[326] Uglesa, who usurped the kralship of Serres and shared the ‘empire’ of Stephen Dushan with his brothers and fellow adventurers, Vukasin and Goiko,[327] sent an embassy to the patriarch Philotheos declaring that he would annul the bull of 1352, by which Dushan had created an autocephalous Serbian Church,[328] and would cause all the Serbians to return to the Orthodox allegiance.[329] After three years of negotiation, precious time wasted with trifling formalities, the reconciliation and union of the Serbian and Greek Churches was effected.[330] But, if we are to believe the authorities of Orbini, Uglesa, while he was negotiating with the Greeks of Constantinople, had levied tribute upon the Greeks of Salonika, and would have made himself master of Salonika, had not his untimely death prevented the consummation of the great Serbian dream.[331]