TUARTKO
55
regards Dalmatia and the seaboard, so essential to the development of his Bosniac kingdom, a good example of the dominant problem of Dalmatian history, the necessity for the mainland lords to reach the sea. He advanced into Dalmatia, captured Cattaro, Lissa and Almissa, and threatened Ragusa and Spalato. He came to the aid of Palisna, who was besieged in his stronghold of Vrana by the townsmen of Zara. Sigismund sent no help, and by 1390 all Dalmatia and the islands of Lesina, Brazza and Curzola were in Tuartko’s possession, and he proclaimed himself “ King of Serbia, Bosnia and the maritime parts ”. But the next year his great general, the Prior of Vrana, died, and was soon followed by Tuartko himself, and his Dalmatian conquests fell to bits under menace from the Turk against the eastern frontiers of his kingdom.
  The Lady Elizabeth may have owed her misfortunes to an act of sacrilege not sufficiently atoned. Legend has it that at Zara arrived a traveller from a foreign land who brought, among his luggage, the body of one whom he pretended was his brother. While breaking his journey and taking a rest, he deposited the corpse in the cemetery; but he himself died in Zara, and it was