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THESSAlY
History Today Map by L. P. Thomas
Anne Kindersley
T
NHE EARLY MORNING of St Vitus' Day, June
15th, 1389, the Ottoman Turks under Sultan
Murad 1 defeated the Serbian ruler Prince
Lazar and his Bosnian allies at Kossovo Field, a
high rolling plateau some sixty miles north of
Skopje. This battle, once celebrated in Western
contend in the West with two Balkan EmpiresSerbia, and to a lesser extent, Bulgaria==and with
the destructive influence of the last Crusaders,
who wanted to bring them under Papal supremacy.
Although occasional Crusades were still planned,
and the last great action fought by Western
knights took place at Nicopolis in 1396 (Varna,:
in 1444, was a much smaller affair), the new
prosperity of Europe had doused the impulse to
strike out against Islam. The war between
Christian and Moslem had, by 1350, taken on a
different pattern. The main bulwark against the
Ottoman invasion of Europe was the Serbian
Empire, an Orthodox power that derived its
religion and its culture large1y from Byzantium,
with some influences from Western Europe. It
was a feudal state, and by mid-century had
reached its greatest strength under the Emperor
Stephen Dusan, a descendant of the twelfthcentury founder, Stephen Nemanja.Its boundaries
stretched from the N eretva to the Gulf of Corinth,
from the Iron Gates of the Danube to the
Thracian coast. Epirus, Albania, Thessaly and
Macedonia all came within Dusan's frontiers. His
aims were both aggressive and defensive: he hoped
to conquer Byzantium and then to drive the
Ottomans out of Europe by uniting the forces of
Christendom against them. He could obtain no
support from Pope Innocent VI who underestimated the Turkish menace; while from his
Hungarian neighbours, eager to convert South
Slavs to Roman Catholicism, the most he could
get was a truce. The Papacy, the Western powers
and Hungary were to ally themse1ves against the
Turks only in 1390-6, when it was too late; it
resulted in the disaster at Nicopolis when the
Crusader knights charged haphazardly at the wellorganized Ottoman army, and were massacred.
Meanwhile, Dusan and his army, in 1355,
prepared to march on Byzantium alone: but the
Serbian Emperor died, perhaps from poisoning,
on his way there. His death probably changed the
course of European history, as he could almost
certainly have taken Byzantium, and for a time, at
least, have checked the Ottoman advance.
The death ofDusan caused the disintegration of
the Serbian Empire. There were squabbles among
his successors and among the feudal nobility. The
last chance of a confrontation on equal terms
349
35
but according to Serbian popular tradition, confirmed by Neshri, his army set out from Krusevac.
This was Lazar's capital and a strategic point
from which he could quickly march out in any
direction towards territory endangered by the
Turks. The Serbs' route to Kossovo would have
taken them southwards through Kursumlija, They
arrived on the battlefield before the Turks andmust
have encamped somewhere to the north of them.
The Kossovo plateau is bounded to the north
and to the west by two rivers, respectively the
Lab, flowing at that point east to west, and the
Sitnica, flowing north-west. They form two sides
of a triangle, never more than five miles wide and
narrowing to its apex in the north, where the
rivers join below Vuitrn. These natural boundaries contained the action of the battle.
The main road from Prstina, leading to Belgrade and the Danube, bisected the triangle in a
north-westerly direction, running parallel with
the Sitnica. On the next morning, J une ryth, both
sides had drawn up their troops for battle
straddling this road. The Serbian lines faced
south-east. The centre was commanded by Prince
Lazar himself, acerrimus bellator, who had
royally feasted his commanders the previous
night.' Now his son-in-law, Vuk Brankovi, was at
the head of the right wing, probably because he
had supplied the largest contingent of soldiers.
The left wing was headed by Vlatko Vukovi and
his Bosnian troops sent by King Tvrtko; with him
were the Serbian leader Milos Obili and his men.
The Serbs had no standing army: Lazar
depended mainly on troops raised by feudallords
from their lands and by his allies. Foreign mercenaries were also employed. Archers from the
feudal levies were placed in the front rank, and
behind them were ranged the cavalry, who
bristled with weapons. Each horseman wore a belt
slung diagonally over his shoulder: on the left
side hung his terrible two-edged sword, on the
right, long and short knives were stuck into the
belt, ready to hand. Some carried halberds and
knobbed maces. They had fantastically-shaped
helmets, some horned or shaped like an eagle, and
heavy armour. Their stout shields, made ofwood
4 The
Serbian epic poem which describes this banquet
has echoes of the Last Supper, but the veill d'armes was in
fact a medieval custom.
351
352
The action at Kossovo remains full of unanswered questions. When and how was Murad
killed? During the battle by a Serbian knight
posing as an informer or afterwards by one who
shammed dead and leapt on him from a pile of
corpses? Why did the Serbs give way so easily at
the end? Had the Bosnian contingent withdrawn
earlier? Did the Turks and Serbs have fire-arms,
as one manuscript version of Neshri states and an
early Serbian source seems to imply? Or was this
improbable in an age when cannon were so
clumsy that they could only be used in siegewarfare? One conclusion can reasonably be
drawn: that the Turks won the battle because of
their superior discipline. Their army fought as' a
united force and not as distinct feudal companies
each with its own leader. Again, their tactics were
more organized than those of the Serbs: they
counted on an opening which used their defensive
strength-that
is, their foot-soldiers-followed
by a strong counter-attack. Two larger questions
remain. How complete was the Turkish victory?
How important was it historically?
By courtesy
Photo:
The Sultan
354
BAJAZETH 1, 1 389-92,'from
Bodleian
Library
A Generall Historie of
the Turkes, 1603