little pressure, as the conquest of the Dalmatian seaboard was one of his chief ambitions. When the Venetians sent their fleet to Palestine in 1105 he occupied Zara, Traù, and Spalato, and forced the citizens to swear fealty to him. The Ragusans were not disturbed, but they sent him another deputation. The Venetians, exhausted with their last efforts in the Holy Land, were unable to do anything for the moment.[57] In 1116 hostilities recommenced, and ended in 1118 with the defeat of the Venetians, who agreed to a five years’ truce with Hungary. War broke out again in 1124, and lasted for several years, with varying success. Bela II., who succeeded to Koloman, while the Venetians were occupied elsewhere, crossed the Narenta and conquered the Serb principalities of Tribunia, Zachulmia, and Rama, and tried to induce the coast towns to rebel against Venice. The Ragusans once more applied for Venetian help, and even requested that Venetian counts should be sent to govern them. Both requests were granted. Of the next twenty-eight years of Ragusan history there is little to tell. “Esadastes” mentions the names of four Venetian counts—Marco Dandolo, Cristiano Pontestorto, Jacopo Doseduro or Dorsoduro, and Pietro Molina. Resti mentions a plague in 1145, which, he says, carried off three-quarters of the inhabitants, evidently an exaggeration. In 1148, according to the same writer, the Servian Prince Dessa, ancestor of the Nemanjas, granted the island of Meleda to three Benedictine monks, with the provision that its civil government should be entrusted to Ragusa. This is the most distant possession which the Republic had as yet acquired. In 1152 the series of Venetian counts came to an end,[58] the last of them having apparently received notice to quit from the Ragusans themselves, who sent him home in one of their own galleys, with many gifts, as a reward, “Esasdastes” says ironically, for having ruled the city so well for thirty years; but he adds the following extract from an early chronicle:— “These counts had begun to tyrannise, and, moreover, Ragusa being at war with the Bosnians, five hundred soldiers who had come from Venice to aid us outraged our women and committed countless robberies. To free the city from them the Council ordered them to be so placed in the van of the army that they should all be killed. This stratagem having succeeded, they sent the Venetian rector back to Venice.” Whether this story be true or not, it is characteristic both of the customs of the time and of the feelings with which the Ragusans ever regarded the Venetians. For the latter and their government no native historian ever has a good word to say.