South Slavic

The South Slavic group includes the Slavs of the eastern Alps and the Balkan Peninsula: the Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bosnians, among others. Late Roman writers first mention them in the sixth century as the Sclaveni, who crossed the Danube into the Byzantine provinces. Each people then formed its own realm.

In 1346 Stefan Dušan was crowned emperor of the Serbs and Greeks, and in 1377 Tvrtko I became king of Bosnia. After the Ottoman victory at Kosovo in 1389, Bulgaria fell in 1396, Serbia in 1459 and Bosnia in 1463. The Slovenes lived under the Habsburgs, and Croatia accepted a Habsburg king in 1527.