The Balkans at Their Height
Until this time the fourteenth century was the peak of the history of the Balkan peoples. Hardworking Slavs in Wallachia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia and Albania cut forests, mined, cultivated the land, herded flocks and diligently increased the number of their successors. From the Adriatic to the Black Sea, and from the Black Sea to the Baltic, Slavs, Italians, Magyars, Bulgarians, Greeks and Jews were engaged in trade between East and West, and new towns sprang up along their routes.
Stefan Dušan
The greatest man in Serbian history in this age is Stefan Dušan. His father, Stefan Uroš III, begot him outside the one-wife rule and gave him the affectionate name Dušan, meaning "soul," and as his presumptive heir put the crown of the crown prince on his head. When a more legitimate son was born to Uroš, who also received a name showing the father's affection, Stefan deposed his father and, the book says, ordered him strangled, and ruled Serbia with great power for a generation. A contemporary writes that "he was taller than all the men of his time, and more terrible to look at."
The Serbs forgave all his faults, because he fought victoriously. He raised and trained a large army, commanded it masterfully, and conquered Bosnia, Albania, Epirus, Acarnania, Aetolia, Macedonia and Thessaly. He moved his capital from Belgrade to Skopje, where he convened an assembly of nobles and ordered it to unify the laws of the various lands of his realm. The result, "Tsar Dušan's Code," marks a stage of legal development and civic progress no lower than that of western Europe.
Serbian art, nourished financially and perhaps in inspiration by this political rise, equaled in the fourteenth century the contemporary art of Constantinople and the Morea. Great churches were founded whose mosaics were freer and livelier than the conservative clergy of central Greece usually allowed. In 1355 Dušan gathered his troops for the last time and asked which they would rather attack, the Eastern Roman Empire or Hungary. The soldiers answered that it was for him to choose, and he cried: "On to Constantinople!" But he fell ill on the way and died.
A Fragmenting Empire
His empire was so ill-assorted that only a man of keen intelligence and disciplined energy could lead it. Bosnia broke away and, under Stephen Tvrtko, for a glorious moment dominated the other regions of the Balkans. Bulgaria, under John Alexander, lived its last age of greatness. Wallachia, once part of the Eastern Empire, separated (about 1290) and dominated the fertile delta of the Danube. Moldavia broke its allegiance to Hungary (1349).
The Turkish Crossing
The Turkish scourge fell on these small states, which shunned centralization, even before John V Palaiologos declared the Eastern Empire a fief of Sultan Murad I. Suleiman, son of the warrior sultan Orhan, led Turkish troops to the aid of John VI Cantacuzenus and as a reward received, or seized, the fortress of Tzympe on the European side of the Dardanelles (1353). When an earthquake brought down the walls of nearby Gallipoli, Suleiman rushed into the defenseless city. At his invitation, Turkish colonists crossed from Anatolia and spread along the northern shore of the Sea of Marmara up to Constantinople itself.
Suleiman invaded Thrace with a large army and took Adrianople (1361). Five years later Sultan Murad made this city the European capital of his empire. From there for a century the Ottoman Turks made the scattered peoples of the Balkans the target of their attacks.
Maritsa, Nish and Salonica
Pope Urban V grasped the importance of the Turks' gradual spread in Europe and called Christendom to another crusade. An army of Serbian, Hungarian and Wallachian troops bravely advanced toward Adrianople. On the banks of the Maritsa they celebrated their unimpeded advance. In the midst of drinking and revelry a relatively small Turkish force took them by surprise in a night attack. Many were killed before they could take up arms, and many who tried to retreat across the river drowned. The rest fled (1371).
In 1385 Sofia surrendered and half of Bulgaria fell to the Ottoman Turks. The Turks took Nish in 1386 and Salonica in 1387, and with its capture the gates of all Greece were open to them. Bosnia held back the Ottoman flood for a year with a heroic defense. Stephen Tvrtko united his forces with the Serbian troops commanded by Lazar I and defeated the Turks at Plochnik (1388).
Kosovo
A year later Sultan Murad, with an army that included many Christians, marched west. At Kosovo he met the allied army of Serbia, Bosnia, Hungary, Wallachia, Bulgaria, Albania and Poland. A Serbian warrior, Miloš Obilić, pretended to be a disgraced soldier who wished to report news to the sultan. He gained entry to the sultan's tent, killed him, and was himself killed. Murad's son and successor, Bayezid I, led the Turks to battle with furious courage and won. King Lazar fell into Turkish hands and lost his head. Serbia became tributary to the Turks, and its new king, Stefan Lazarević, was compelled to send troops and arms for Sultan Bayezid.
In 1392 the province of Wallachia, under John Shishman (so the book names the ruler), joined the tributaries of the Ottomans. Only Bulgaria and the Eastern Empire still defended themselves.
The Fall of Tarnovo
In 1393 Sultan Bayezid invaded Bulgaria. After a three-month siege, its capital Tarnovo fell. Churches were desecrated and palaces burned, and the city's leading nobles were invited to a council and all put to death. The Pope again called Christendom to holy war, and Sigismund, King of Hungary, urged Europe to take arms and raise troops. France, though caught in a deadly war with England, sent an army under the Count of Nevers. The Count of Hohenzollern, grand master of the hospitaller knights, arrived with followers, and the Elector Palatine brought a gift of a troop of Bavarian horses. John Shishman refused obedience to the sultan and joined the allies with his troops to fight the Ottomans under the King of Hungary.
Nicopolis
The allied army, of 60,000 fighting men, swept through Serbia and besieged the Turkish garrison at Nicopolis. The French warriors, their heads warm with wine and the love of women, on learning that Bayezid was advancing with a huge army from Asia to break the siege, promised to destroy him and his army. They boasted that if the sky fell they would hold it up on the points of their lances. Bayezid in turn swore that he would put his horse's feed trough on the high altar of St. Peter's in Rome.
To deceive the enemy, he placed the weak regiments of his army in the van. French knights first cut up those troops, then 10,000 Janissaries, and then 5,000 Turkish cavalry. Then they charged boldly up a hill, and just beyond it found themselves facing the main body of the Ottoman army, 40,000 spearmen.
The nobles fought honorably and were killed or captured or fled, and the allied infantry fell into disorder at their flight and retreat. Even so, the Germans and Hungarians pushed the Turks back; but at this moment Stefan Lazarević, King of Serbia, came with 5,000 Christians to fight his coreligionists and decided the great battle of Nicopolis for the sultan (1396).
After Nicopolis
Seeing the countless bodies of his soldiers on the battlefield and hearing from the rescued garrison that the besiegers had killed Turkish prisoners, Bayezid was enraged and ordered 10,000 prisoners of war massacred. The Count of Nevers and 24 knights were spared because of the ransom they promised. From sunrise into the afternoon, in the midst of bloody ceremonies, several thousand Christians were beheaded, until Turkish commanders at last persuaded the sultan to forgo the blood of the rest.
From that day until 1878 Bulgaria was a province of the Ottoman Empire. After this victory Bayezid subdued most of Greece, and then set his sights on Constantinople.