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a supreme effort to stem the advancing tide. In alliance with Tvrtko, King of Bosnia, he won a victory over the Turks on Toplitza river in 1387. Encouraged by this success, the Bulgarians who had already been compelled to submit to Turkish over-lordship, threw off their allegiance, but in the course of the following year Amurath[1] succeeded in crushing them once more, and turned about to deal with the Serbian foe. In the meantime the Serbs had rallied to Lazar's standard at Krushevatz, and on the 28th of June (O.S. June 15th), 1389, "Tsar" and Sultan met in bloody strife on the sun-parched plain of Kossovo. "In the battle of Kossovo," writes Gibbon, "the league and independence of the Sclavonian tribes was finally crushed[2]. As the conqueror walked over the field, he observed that the greatest part of the slain consisted of beardless youths, and listened to the flattering reply of the vizier that age and wisdom would have taught them not to oppose his irresistible arms. But the sword of his janizaries could not save him from the dagger of despair: a Serbian soldier started from the crowd of dead bodies, and Amurath was pierced in the belly with a mortal wound." The struggle thus briefly described by the great historian was one of the decisive battles of the world. The South Slav barrier had broken down, and thereafter the Turkish storm-wave was destined to surge forward across Europe to break furiously at last against the walls of Vienna.
- ↑ This name occurs as "Amurath," "Murad" and "Murat."
- ↑ "Historically," says Sir Arthur Evans, "the battle of Kossovo was essentially a drawn battle.... It was not without reason that the commander of the Bosnian and Primorian contingent, Vlatko Hranitch, who drew off his own forces from the field in good order, sent tidings of victory to his master. King Tvrtko, passed on by him to the citizens of Trail and Florence. In the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Te Deums of thanksgiving for the success of the Christian arms were actually celebrated in the presence of the King of France.... Thus the first impression of the fight was that of an heroic combat between equals. The bards who carried on the Court poetry that had already existed in the days of Tsar Dushan and earlier kings, dramatized the incidents of the battle without any particular reference to historic consequences. It was only the later realization of its far-reaching effects that made the Lay of Kossovo an epic record of what proved to have been the last united effort of the Serbian race to resist the Asiatic invader." Serbia's Greatest Battle, published by the Kossovo Day Committee, 1917.
