Chapter III · MURAD THE OSMANLIS LAY THE FOUNDATIONS OF AN EMPIRE IN EUROPE (continued 2)

It was not a moment too soon. An Ottoman army had already crossed the Vardar and was marching forward for the invasion of Bosnia. Thirty thousand Serbians and Bosnians under the command of Tvrtko and Lazar met the invading army at Plochnik, in the valley of the Toplika. Of twenty thousand Osmanlis scarcely one-fifth escaped death or captivity.[403] The Bosnians successfully opposed two other Ottoman armies at Rudnik and Biletchia.[404]

A delirium of joy spread through the Slavic population of the Balkans at the news of the battle of Plochnik. The uninterrupted chain of thirty years of Ottoman victories had been broken. The slavery and horror of military service with the Osmanlis, price of their vassalage, so vividly depicted by the survivors of the Karamanian campaign, had made the Slavs desperate. This victory, following closely upon the moral revolt against the Osmanlis, gave them hope. The South Slavs are like children in the extremes of their emotions. Tears to laughter—laughter to tears: easily despairing, as easily hopeful, and from as little cause. The slightest reverse brings distrust in their ability to cope with forces that have once successfully opposed them. Slight success brings overwhelming confidence, and leads to colossal mistakes of judgement. With this trait of character is coupled an intuitive distrust of one’s neighbour, of the disinterestedness of his motives, and an intuitive resentment of ‘the other fellow’ doing something better than you do it. This makes impossible solidarity and esprit de corps. The South Slavic character explains the series of events which brought the Serbians to their final and irretrievable disaster.

Around Lazar the Serbian nobles rallied as they had never rallied before. Kral Tvrtko of Bosnia, George Kastriota of Albania, and the minor princes of Albania and Serbia joined in an alliance against the Osmanlis. The two remaining successors of Alexander of Bulgaria, Sisman and Ivanko, son of Dobrotich, threw off their allegiance to Murad, and promised contingents for the common struggle. The prince of Wallachia assured Lazar of the co-operation of the Rumanians.

Venice, fearing lest Murad fall upon the Peloponnesus to seek vengeance for the defeat of Plochnik, tried to form a league of all the Greek and Frankish lords in the Morea and central Greece.[405] As far as one can judge from the records, the effort of Venice was an intention rather than an action. It did not get beyond the paper stage. The Senate gave to the Slavic alliance no encouragement more substantial than words. On the other hand, some of the border nobles of the Hungarian banats, of their own volition, informed Lazar of their intention to co-operate in an offensive movement against the Osmanlis.

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Murad did not set his army in motion against the Serbians immediately after the disaster at Plochnik. There was none of that feverish haste which had characterized his movements when he received the news of the Serbian and Hungarian crusade in 1363. For while the victory had aroused in the Balkan Christians a determination that they must drive the Osmanlis out of Europe, and a feeling that they could accomplish this end, its immediate result had been merely to repel the projected Ottoman invasion of Bosnia. Ali pasha disposed of sufficient forces to hold the conquests that had already been made. Murad had come to know the people with whom he was dealing. It was not so much to recruit his own army as to give the allies time to fall out with each other that Murad remained in Asia during the early months of 1388. To strike in the first flush of enthusiasm and buoyant hope would have brought him face to face with a united enemy. If he waited, he knew from past experience with the Balkan princes that the poison of jealousy would permeate the ranks of his ostensibly united enemies. The Osmanlis never made a mistake of judgement in dealing with Balkan alliances until the autumn of 1912.

Far from planning an offensive movement against the Serbians, Murad allowed Evrenos of Yanitza to lead a band of Ottoman mercenaries into the Morea, at the invitation of Theodore Palaeologos, to support the authority of the Byzantine Empire against the Frankish barons.[406] At the same time he ordered Ali pasha to cross the Balkans into northern Bulgaria.

Ali pasha started from Adrianople in the spring of 1388 with thirty thousand men to complete the conquest of Bulgaria. He crossed the Balkans by the pass north of Aïtos, which has ever since been called by the Osmanlis Nadir Derbend from the neighbouring town of Nadirkeuy.[407] Provadia was taken by surprise in the night. Shuman and the villages around it were next conquered. After an unsuccessful attack upon Varna, the Osmanlis retraced their steps through Provadia and Shuman, following the line of the modern railway from Varna to Sofia. Tirnovo, the ancient capital of Bulgaria, capitulated after a short struggle.

Sisman withdrew to the Danube through the valley of the Osma, and shut himself up in the fortress of Nicopolis. Owing to the ease of provisioning from the river side, it was impossible to starve him out. Ali pasha was compelled to call upon Murad, who had just crossed over from Asia to Thrace. When Murad arrived before Nicopolis, Sisman sued for peace. The conditions of Murad, that he pay the tribute due from the previous year and allow an Ottoman garrison to occupy the fortress of Drster as gage of future good conduct, were gladly accepted.

No sooner had Murad started southward than Sisman decided upon a final desperate resistance. He refused to give up Drster. But he had forgotten that Ali pasha was master of Shuman and the route to Varna. The Osmanlis took Drster by storm. Many villages along the Danube between Rustuk and Nicopolis fell into the hands of the Osmanlis. Ali pasha besieged Sisman for a second time in Nicopolis. The revelation of his own weakness and of the strength of the Osmanlis was a crushing blow to Sisman. He surrendered without conditions, and was taken, with his wife and children, to Murad’s camp. For reasons which the chroniclers do not indicate, Sisman was able to secure forgiveness and restoration to his former position as vassal prince of Bulgaria. But the Osmanlis were now installed in north-central Bulgaria up to the Danube River. Shuman and Nicopolis were Ottoman fortresses. Sisman had been rendered impotent to give effective aid in the great alliance.[408]

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Not all the Christians were loyal to the cause of Balkan freedom. In their conquest of the Balkan peninsula, it is remarkable that the Osmanlis never fought a battle without the help of allies of the faith and blood of those whom they were putting under the Moslem yoke. At the beginning of this chapter, it has been shown that there is no historical basis for the assertion that the Osmanlis conquered the Balkan states by the use of the janissaries. But they did have Christian aid of a far more powerful kind than the janissaries could have given them. The old fiction of the janissaries won for the Balkan people the sympathies of western Europe. The truth concerning the Christian aid which the Moslem conquerors received alienates rather than wins our sympathies.

When, in the spring of 1389, Murad found himself ready to exact vengeance for Plochnik, and started from Bulgaria on his punitive expedition, he was joined by Constantine of Kustendil, by the Serbian Dragash, to whom he had given Serres as fief, and even by the sons of Vukasin, the Serbian kral who had been killed in 1371 at Cernomen.[409] Balsa, prince of Zenta (upper Albania), postponed his march to join the allies, and entered secretly into correspondence with Murad through a Serbian nobleman in the Ottoman camp. Lazar knew of this treachery. He knew also that some of his own lieutenants had in all probability arranged to sell him out to the Ottoman emir.[410]

Kossovapol, the plain of the blackbirds, is the name given to the valley of the Sitnika River (an upper tributary of the Morava) west of Pristina and south of Mitrovitza.[411] Here the decisive battle for Serbian independence was fought on June 20, 1389.[412]

Serbian chronicles state that Murad had enjoined upon his soldiers that they should neither destroy nor sack the rich castles, villages, and cities of this region after the battle. Only four castles in all were destroyed.[413] This command shows that Murad was confident of the outcome. He was fighting for the possession of this country, for the wealth and the prestige that it would give him. He had no intention of destroying what he knew would be his to enjoy, nor did he desire to alienate the Serbian peasantry by unnecessary harshness. Here, as elsewhere, new Osmanlis rather than Ottoman subjects were the desiderata: they could be won only by kindness. Since the clemency of the Osmanlis in dealing with the vanquished after the battle is frankly recorded by the Serbians themselves, we cannot doubt that the wise and far-seeing provisions of the conqueror were carried out.

Of Kossova much has been written. It was the culminating event in that legendary period of Serbian history which had begun fifty years before with the exploits of Stephen Dushan. Lazar, Serbian chieftain with no long line of royal ancestors behind him, with no great weight of authority among his contemporaries, who began his career by craven submission to Murad and, after eighteen years in which no deed to his credit is recorded, survived a crushing defeat to be executed on the field of battle—this is the Charlemagne of Serbian poetry. On the anniversary of Kossova, the Serbians pray for his soul. As a saint, he gets many more candles at his shrine than his namesake of Bethany who was raised from the dead. Such is legend in history. But what amazes one is the curious fact that the very folksongs that glorify Saint Lazar and lament Kossova reveal a frank and true picture of the events, and prove how little warrant there is for the legend!

The Serbians despaired of their cause before the battle. The enormous number of the enemy dismayed them.[414] Rumours of treachery were current in the allied camp. Their lack of courage, and the spirit of distrust of each other’s good faith, is strikingly voiced in the oration of Lazar at a banquet the evening before the battle. He pleaded for a courage and confidence which he himself did not feel. He openly accused his son-in-law, Milosh Obravitch, of treason. Gloom and hopelessness had settled over the Serbian camp, reflected from leaders to the common soldiery. The battle was already lost. For victory is never won by those who feel that they are going to lose.[415]

The battle was begun by the Osmanlis. Murad sent forward an advance guard of two thousand archers.[416] The allies responded with a charge in which the left wing of the Ottoman army was broken through by Lazar. For a while the issue seemed in doubt. Bayezid held out against the impetuosity of the Serbians, but the Osmanlis made no attempt to take the offensive. At this critical juncture, when the battle was by no means decided, Vuk Brankovitch, another son-in-law of Lazar, quietly withdrew from the field with twelve thousand men. This desertion, which had probably been arranged for with Murad, so weakened the Serbians that they broke and fled. Lazar and many of his leading noblemen, and thousands of his soldiers, were taken prisoners. It was not a fight to the bitter end.[417]

Murad won the battle of Kossova at the cost of his own life. From the story which Clavijo de Gonzáles heard fifteen years later, one might infer that Murad was killed in the course of the battle, and that the fighting was renewed around his body.[418] It was then that Bayezid cut down Lazar with his own sword. Pray declared that the two sovereigns were mortally wounded in a personal combat.[419] The Ottoman historians believed that Murad met his death when walking across the field after the battle. A wounded Serbian soldier, who was believed to be dead, rose with a supreme effort to his knees and thrust his sword into Murad as he passed.

According to the Serbian songs, whose testimony the Byzantine historians corroborate, and whose story has been followed by some Osmanlis as well, Murad was assassinated after the battle, or perhaps while the battle was in progress, by Milosh Obravitch. Stung by the unjust accusation of treason in the speech of Lazar on the eve of the battle,[420] Milosh determined to prove his loyalty beyond any question. He got through the Ottoman ranks as a deserter, of whom there must have been many on that fatal day. His claim of high rank, which was attested by his princely bearing, secured for him an audience with Murad. When he was face to face with the emir, he plunged his dagger into the destroyer of his country’s liberties. It is a commentary on the Serbian character that this questionable act has been held up to posterity as the most saintly and heroic deed of national history.

In the seventeenth century it was believed, and this belief has been reproduced as a fact by some modern writers on the Ottoman Empire, that the custom of holding a foreign ambassador’s arms when he entered the presence of the sultan, originated from a regulation to prevent the recurrence of such a crime.[421] Like many other Ottoman customs, however, this consistorial ceremony is found among the usages of the Byzantine court,[422] and has persisted in some oriental courts to the present day. It has been explained on the ground that ‘a stranger before the sovereign is so overwhelmed by the effulgence of his rays that he cannot stand without support’.[423]

The statements of the numbers engaged in the battle of Kossova are so conflicting that it is impossible to determine how many men took part in the action, or which side was the stronger. The Serbian folksongs dwell upon the tremendous number of the enemy, while the Ottoman historians report that the Osmanlis mustered so few in comparison with the reported strength of the Serbians that there was serious question before the battle of the advisability of taking so great a risk as to engage a foe whose numerical advantage was so marked. Including the prisoners, who were massacred when Murad’s death was learned by the soldiers, the Serbians calculated their loss at seventy-seven thousand killed, while only twelve thousand of the Osmanlis fell. One important fact we do know. The loss of life during the battle and subsequent massacre on the part of the Serbian nobility was so great that the nation, for the third time within thirty years, found itself without leaders.

Tvrtko hurried away from Kossova so fast that he did not realize how overwhelming had been the defeat. In fact, when he learned of the death of Murad, he wrote to Florence announcing the glorious victory won under his leadership, and the death of the arch enemy of Christendom.[424] The Florentines, therefore, celebrated the news of Kossova with a Te Deum in the cathedral. Either this perverted account also reached France, or too great significance was placed upon the death of Murad, for Charles VI went to Notre Dame to render thanks to God in all solemnity for what had happened at Kossova![425] The Serbians themselves were not deceived. To them, Kossova was the death-knell to independence. The Hungarians, also, awoke immediately to a sense of the danger that threatened them.

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For thirty years Murad had guided the destinies of the Osmanlis with a political sagacity surpassed by no statesman of his age. It is only because we know so much more of Mohammed the Conqueror and of Soleiman the Magnificent that Murad has never received his proper place as the most remarkable and most successful statesman and warrior of the house of Osman. When we measure the difficulties which confronted him, the problems which he solved, and the results of his reign, against the deeds of his more dazzling successors, we see how easily he stands with them, if not above them. The transformation effected in his lifetime is one of the most wonderful records in all history. His conquests were to endure for five centuries, until the Treaty of Berlin, in 1878: some of them have survived the cataclysm of the recent Balkan wars.

His energy and zeal for fighting, so like his father’s, and yet put to the test of being extended over a field of action far wider than his father ever dreamed of, did not flag. He never had a disagreement with any of his generals or administrators. His system of conquest and of government, unsupported by tradition or the background of a gradual growth, fitted every condition for which it had been framed. His treatment of the Greeks showed superb skill in estimating their character. Although an infidel and enemy of Christ in the eyes of the Byzantine ecclesiastics, he handled them so much better than the popes that he won their sympathies. No more striking proof of his complete success in a problem of assimilation, at once racial as well as religious, can be found than the letter of the Orthodox patriarch written to Pope Urban VI in 1385, in which it is stated that Murad left to the Church entire liberty of action.[426] In the records of the Greek patriarchate from 1360 to 1389,[427] one does not find a single instance of complaint received of ill treatment of the priesthood by the Osmanlis.

Osman gathered around him a race, Orkhan created a state, but it was Murad who founded the empire.