1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Krushevats

KRUSHEVATS (or Kruševac), a town of Servia, lying in a fertile region of hills and dales near the right bank of the Servian Morava. Pop. (1900), about 10,000. Krushevats is the capital of a department bearing the same name, and has an active trade in tobacco, hemp, flax, grain and livestock, for the sale of which it possesses about a dozen markets. It was in Krushevats that the last Servian tsar, Lazar, assembled his army to march against the Turks, and lose his empire, at Kosovo, in 1389. The site of his palace is marked by a ruined enclosure containing a fragment of the tower of Queen Militsa, whither, according to legend, tidings of the defeat were brought her by crows from the battlefield. Within the enclosure stands a church, dating from the reign of Stephen Dushan (1336–1356), with beautiful rose windows and with imperial peacocks, dragons and eagles sculptured on the walls. Several old Turkish houses were left at the beginning of the 20th century, besides an ancient Turkish fountain and bath.