36 THE REPUBLIC OF RAGUSA
and appointed his nephew, Almus, Count of Cismontane Croatia. On his death in 1094 he was succeeded by another nephew, Koloman, who in the following year crossed the Velebit mountains and invaded Maritime Croatia. He defeated and killed the Croatian king, KreSimir, at Petrovogora, became master of the littoral from Istria to the Narenta, and prepared to conquer the Serb states of Rascia and Tribunia. By marrying Busita, daughter of King Roger, he allied himself with the Normans, and enlisted their help for his schemes. At Beograd he crowned himself King of Dalmatia and Croatia. These conquests were not at all to the taste of the Ragusans, who had every interest in the maintenance of a number of weak but independent Slavonic buffer States at their back, whereas they dreaded the advance of a powerful military monarchy like Hungary. At first they tried to conciliate Koloman with gifts,1 but as this availed them little they applied to their old enemies, the Venetians; the latter made a treaty with the Hungarian king, by which the Latin municipalities of Dalmatia were recognised as outside the Hungarian sphere. But it was not respected for long. The Emperor Alexius, annoyed with the Venetians for their action in the First Crusade and in the Levant generally, intrigued with Koloman, and induced him to violate his pledges. The Magyar king needed but little pressure, as the conquest of the Dalmatian sea-board was one of his chief ambitions. When the Venetians sent their fleet to Palestine in 1105 he occupied Zara, Trail, and Spalato, and forced the citizens to swear fealty to him. The 1 J. C. von Engel, Geschichte des Freystaates Ragusa, § 6.