Serbia

The Turkish Invasion: Kosovo.

After a few years of in decision and anarchy the Sabor met at Ipek in 1374 and elected Knez (count) Lazar Hrebelyanovich, a kinsman of Urosh, as ruler of the Serbs. He tried to stop the further disruption of the empire and to organize a Christian league against the Turks. This was the real cause of the Turkish attacks on Bulgaria and Serbia in 1389, which resulted in the subjugation of Bulgaria and in the defeat of the Serbs at Kosovo (June 15, 1389). No event has made such a deep impression on the Serbs as the battle of Kosovo —probably because the flower of the Serb aristocracy fell in that battle, and because both the tsar of the Serbs, Lazar, and the sultan of the Turks, Murad I., lost their lives. The Sultan was killed by the Serb knight or voyvode Milosh Obilich (the later alteration of the inelegant Kobil "son of a brood-mare"). There exists a cycle of national songs—sung to this day by the Serb bards (guslari)—concerning this battle.

The

Despotate.—After the battle of Kosovo Serbia existed for some seventy years (1389-1459) as a country tributary to the sultans but governing itself under its own rulers, who received from the Greek Emperor and bore the Greek title of "despot." The first despot was Tsar Lazar's eldest son, Lazar II. or "Stephen is a term of endearment, derived from dusha, "the soul," and not, as formerly believed by Western philologists, from dushiti, "to strangle." the Tall," who was an intimate friend of Sigismund IV., king of Hungary and emperor of the Germans. Being childless, Stephen appointed his nephew, George Brankovich, to be his successor. George worked to establish an alliance between Serbia, Bosnia and Hungary. But before such an alliance could be arranged, Murad II. attacked Serbia in 1437 and forced George to seek refuge in Hungary, where he continued to work for a Serbo Hungarian alliance and organized an expedition, under the joint command of the Despot George and of Hunyadi Janos, which defeated the Turks in a great battle at Kunovitsa in 1444• The sultan was forced to restore all the countries previously taken. At the age of ninety George was wounded in a quarrel with the Hungarian governor of Belgrade, Michael Szilagyi, and died on Dec. 24, 1456. His youngest son Lazar III. succeeded him, but only for a few months. Lazar's widow Helena Palaeoliogina offered Serbia to the pope, hoping thereby the secure the assistance of Roman Catholic Europe against the Turks. Indeed, for a few months, a Roman Catholic prince, Stephen Tomashevich, son of the king of Bosnia, who had married Lazar M.'s daughter, was "despot" at the then capital of Semendria. But no one in Europe moved a finger to help Serbia, and Sultan Mohammed II. occu pied the country in with the aid of the anti-Catholic Serbs, making it a pashalik under the direct government of the Porte.

For fully 345 years Serbia remained a Turkish pashalik, endur ing all the miseries which that lawless regime implied (see TURKEY: History). But the more or less successful invasions of

the Turkish empire in Europe by the Austrian armies in the 18th century—invasions in which thousands of Serbs always partici pated as volunteers—prepared the way for a new state of things.

The defeat of Kosovo reduced Serbia to a passive role : she looked on helplessly when the Turks overran Bulgaria (1393) and when Sigismund of Hungary's new crusade ended in the disaster of Nicopolis (1396). The Turks thus entrenched themselves firmly to the south and east, and all that Stephen Lazarevie could hold was the country lying between the Danube, Save, Drina and Timok, as far south as Nil. Stephen paid tribute to the Sultan and served as his vassal at Angora (1402), afterwards escaping to Byzantium and receiving from Manuel II. the title of Despot. In this dignity he was succeeded in 1427 by his nephew George BrankoviC, who married a Cantacuzene and maintained himself by alliance with the Eastern Empire and Hungary. King Sigis mund seized Belgrade and forced George to transfer his capital to the Danubian fortress of Smederevo (Semendria), but compen sated him with huge grants of land in Southern Hungary. Though he gave his daughter Mara in marriage to Sultan Murad (1433), George was attacked and expelled by the Turks in 1439 and only recovered his dominions thanks to King Ladislas of Hungary's vic torious Balkan campaign in 1443. The Turkish triumph at Varna next year ended all hope of a general Christian Coalition, and the rest of George's reign is filled by precarious intrigue and negotia tion with Turk, Hungarian and Venetian, with Skanderbeg and the new ruler of Hercegovina. George died at the age of 8o in 1456, in the same year that John HunyLly died after his successful defence of Belgrade against Mohammed II. George's son Lazar only survived him one year, the succession was disputed, and in 'Smederevo and all Serbia were finally overrun by Moham med. The fall of Bosnia (1463) and of Hercegovina (1483) set the seal to Turkish predominance in the Balkans. The only frag ments of Southern Slav territory to retain independence were the Ragusan Republic (Dubrovnik) and Montenegro. Under the Sul tans Selim I. (1512-20) and Suleiman I. (152o-66) the Turks resumed the offensive northwards : in 1521 Belgrade was wrested from Hungary, and in 1526 the battle of Mohacs broke Hun gary's powers of resistance, and led to her partition. The numer ous Serb colonies which had been formed along the Danube and in Southern Hungary after the conquest of Serbia, shared the fate of the Magyars : the Banat of Jajce, Syrmia and parts of Croatia and Dalmatia were also seized by the Turks, whose constant raids into Croat and Slovene territory forced the Habsburgs to organize the defensive Military Frontiers (q.v.).