No More Learning

Unfortunately South Slavonic literature only began to flourish when the
Balkan States were already either dead or dying.
Stephen Lazarević was well aware that he only existed upon the
sufferance of the Sultan, and for the first thirteen years of his long
reign he thought it prudent to follow a Turcophil policy, even at the
cost of his own race and his own religion. Content with the modest
title of “Despot,” which he received from the Byzantine Emperor, he
aimed at the retention of local autonomy by the strict observance of his
1 Archiv f. slav. Phil. XIJI. p. 539, xiv. p. 274.
2 Schiltberger, Bondage, p. 3.
3 Archives de l'Orient latin, 11. pp. 389-90.
C. MED. H. VOL. IV. CH. XVIII.
36
=
it


## p. 562 (#604) ############################################

562
Battle of Angora, 1402
promises to his suzerain. Thus every year he accompanied the Turkish
troops; in 1398 his soldiers assisted in the first great Turkish invasion
of Bosnia ; in 1402 he stood by the side of Bāyazīd at the fatal battle of
Angora with 5,000 (according to others 10,000) lancers, all clad in armour.
When the fortune of the day had already decided against the Sultan, the
Serbian horsemen twice cut their way through the Tartar bowmen, whose
arrows rebounded from their iron cuirasses. Seeing that all was lost,
Stephen in vain urged Bāyazīd to flee ; and, when the latter refused to
leave the field, the Serbian prince saved the life of the Sultan's eldest son
Sulaimān, and escaped with him to Brūsa. There the Sultan's Serbian
wife, whose hand had been the price of Serbian autonomy thirteen years
before, fell into the power of Tamerlane. The brutal Mongol, flushed
with his victory, insulted both his captives by compelling the Serbian
Sultana to pour out his wine in the presence of her husband, no longer
66 the Thunderbolt” of Islām.
The Turkish defeat at Angora and the civil war between the sons of
Bāyazīd which followed it, removed for a time the danger which threatened
the Christian states of the Balkan peninsula. It was now the policy of
the Serbian Despot to play off one Turkish pretender against another.
At first he supported Sulaiman, who had been proclaimed Sultan at
Hadrianople; then, like Mirčea of Wallachia, he espoused the cause of
Mūsà, only, however, to desert him at a critical moment. But Stephen
was not the only Serb who sought to profit by the rivalry of the Turkish
claimants. George Branković, the son of the traditional traitor of
Kossovo, had succeeded his father in 1398, and, no longer content with
the lordship of Priština, had assumed the style of “ Prince of Serbia. ”
Branković undermined Stephen's influence at the court of Sulaimān, who
despatched him with a Turkish force to make good his pretensions. A
second battle on the fatal field of Kossovo, fought on 21 November 1403,
resulted in so uncertain a victory for either side that Branković and
Stephen concluded peace. The two relatives were temporarily reconciled;
Branković contented himself with his paternal heritage and the expecta-
tion that one day he might succeed the childless Stephen ; Sulaiman was
occupied by the civil war in Asia, and sorely-tried Serbia enjoyed, under
her benevolent despot, a period of peace, while an attempt of the late
Tsar's sons to raise a revolt in Bulgaria failed.
Stephen Lazarević, secure against Turkish and domestic intrigue,
devoted his energies to the organisation of his country and the patronage
of literature. We are told that he appointed a species of Cabinet, with
which he was wont to discuss affairs of state ; a second class of officials
meanwhile attended in an outer room to receive the orders of his
ministers; while a third set of functionaries waited in an ante-chamber
to carry them out. Imaginative writers have seen in these arrangements
the germs of parliamentary government; but the description rather
suggests an elaborate system of bureaucracy. He obtained Belgrade


## p. 563 (#605) ############################################

Reign of Stephen Lazarević
563
from the Hungarians by diplomacy in 1404, fortified it, and adorned it
with churches. But his most celebrated religious foundation was the
monastery of Manassia, still one of the glories of Serbia.
inclinations were in the direction of a monastic life, and he converted his
court into an abode of puritanical dullness, whence music and mirth
were banished and where literature was the sole relaxation of the pious
diplomatist who sat on the throne. Himself an author, he possessed
a rich library, and he strove to increase it by the translations of Greek
books which were made by his orders. Thus for five years the land had
rest.
Serbia had again and again suffered from the quarrels of the reigning
family; and even when it should have united to consolidate the state
against the inevitable Turkish revival, a fresh pretender arose in the
person of Stephen's next brother Vuk, who demanded half of the country
as his share and appeared at the head of a Turkish army to enforce his
demand. Stephen was compelled to retire to the strong frontier-fortress
of Belgrade, and to purchase domestic peace by ceding the south of
Serbia to his brother, under Turkish suzerainty, in 1409. Fortunately
for the national unity, Vuk did not long survive this arrangement.
Summoned to assist Mūsà in the civil war which still divided the
Turkish Empire, he played the part of traitor, after the fashion of the
day, thinking thereby to obtain the whole of Serbia from the gratitude
of Sulaimān. But on his way to seize his reward, he fell into the hands
of the Sultan whom he had betrayed. Mūsà sent him and the youngest
of the three Lazarević brothers to the scaffold; but, with characteristic
diplomacy, he spared the life of George Branković, who had shared the
treachery of the others, in order that Stephen might still have a rival,
and the Turks an ally, in his own household. Branković at first acted
as the Sultan had anticipated, and the latter, at last triumphant over
Sulaimān in 1410, invaded Serbia. In order to strike terror into the
hearts of the Serbs, the barbarous invader butchered the entire garrison
of three castles, and then ordered his meal to be spread upon their
reeking corpses. Acts of this kind made Branković revolt from contact
with such a monster. He abandoned the camp of Mūsà, was reconciled
with Stephen, and thenceforth regarded his uncle as a father whose
crown he would one day inherit. Together they aided Mahomet I,
the most powerful of the Turkish claimants, to overthrow his brother.
At the battle of Chamorlú near Samokov, on 10 July 1413, the fate of
the Turkish Empire and with it that of the Balkan Slavs was decided.
It was the lot of the two Serbian rulers, Stephen Lazarević and his
nephew, to contribute, the one by the assistance of his subjects the other
by his personal prowess, on that day to the consolidation of the Ottoman
power, and thus inadvertently to prepare the way for the complete
conquest of their country later on. Stephen, to whom some have
assigned the command of the left wing, is known to have returned home
CH. XVIII.
36--2


## p. 564 (#606) ############################################

564
Venice in Albania
before the battle? ; but Branković dealt Mūsà the blow which caused him
to flee from the field. The conqueror rewarded the Despot of Serbia
with an increase of territory, and assured his envoys of his pacific
intentions. Mahomet I was as good as his word; for the rest of his
reign Serbia remained unmolested. Nor did his warlike successor
Murād II attack that country as long as the diplomatic despot lived.
Another, and a Western, Power had now, however, obtained a footing
in Serbian lands, thus exciting the protests of the despot in his later
years. We saw that some fifty years earlier the family of Balša had
established itself in the Zeta, where it had formed an independent state,
the germ of the heroic principality of Montenegro, with Scutari as its
capital. In 1396, however, George II Balša, hard pressed by the Turks,
who had already once captured his residence, sold Scutari with its
famous fortress of Rosafa, whose legendary foundation is enshrined in
one of the most beautiful Serbian ballads and whose name recalls the
Syrian home of SS. Sergius and Bacchus, together with the neighbouring
castle of Drivasto, to the Venetian Republic. Three and four years earlier
Venice had obtained possession of Alessio and Durazzo respectively; a few
years later she occupied the sea-ports of Dulcigno, Antivari, and Budua;
in 1420 the citizens of Cattaro, long anxious for Venetian protection
against Balša on the one hand and the Bosnian barons, who had for a
generation been their lords, on the other, at last induced her to take
compassion upon their city; and that year found Venice mistress of
practically all maritiine Dalmatia, except where Castelnuovo, Almissa,
and the republic of Ragusa formed an enclave in her territory. Finally,
when in 1421 the last male representative of the Balša family died,
Venice declined to recognise his maternal uncle, the Despot of Serbia, as
his heir and cede to him the places which had once belonged to that
Hostilities broke out, but it was finally agreed that Venice should
keep Scutari, Cattaro, and Dulcigno, while Stephen should have Drivasto,
Antivari, and Budua. . The inhabitants of these three places found,
however, that the republic could give them support against the Turks,
which the Serbian rulers were unable to furnish. One after the other
they begged to share the good-fortune of Cattaro, until at last in 1444
we find them all Venetian colonies 2. In the same year, the tiny
republic of Poljica near Spalato, a “Slavonic San Marino," which had
been founded by Bosnian fugitives in 944 and had received Hungarian
bans from about 1350, placed herself under Venetian overlordship.
When Stephen Lazarević saw his end approaching, he recognised the
suzerainty of Hungary over his land, as the only means of securing it
from the Turks, and obtained from King Sigismund the formal con-
firmation of his nephew George Branković as his heir. Then, on
19 July 1427, he died, the last of his name. His tombstone at
1 Gelcich and Thallóczy, Diplomatarium, p. 226.
2 Mon. spect. hist. Slav. Merid. xvii. p. 249; XXI. pp. 156–7, 190.
race.


## p. 565 (#607) ############################################

The Bosnian King-maker
565
Drvenglave has survived the ravages of the foes whom he had seen
divided, but whose power he had unwittingly helped to consolidate;
his life is better known than that of far greater Serbian sovereigns,
thanks to the fact that he found a biographer among his contemporaries.
If, with pardonable exaggeration, the Ragusans' wrote of the just-
departed "despot as “the hammer and bulwark against the enemies
of the Christian faith," modern research has shewn him to have been
a stronger character than earlier historians had believed.
Meanwhile, the other surviving Slav state of the Balkan peninsula
had suffered more than Serbia from the Turks without and also from a
civil war within. The great Turkish invasion of 1398, which had “almost
entirely ruined Bosnia,” had convinced the Bosnian magnates that a
woman was unfit to rule over their land. Headed by Hrvoje Vukčić,
the king-maker of Bosnian history, they accordingly deposed Helena
Gruba and elected Stephen Ostoja, probably an illegitimate son
of the great Tvrtko, as their king. As long as Ostoja obeyed the
dictates of his all-powerful vassal, who proudly styled himself “the
grand voïvode of the Bosnian kingdom and vicar-general of the most
gracious sovereigns King Ladislas and King Ostoja,” he kept his
throne. Under Hrvoje's guidance he repulsed the attack of King
Sigismund of Hungary, who had claimed the overlordship of Bosnia in
accordance with the treaty of Djakovo, and endeavoured to recover
Dalmatia and Croatia for the Bosnian crown under the pretext of
supporting Sigismund's rival, Ladislas of Naples. But when the
latter shewed by his coronation at Zara as King of both those lands
that he had no intention of allowing them to become Bosnian posses-
sions, Ostoja changed his policy, made his peace with Sigismund, and
recognised him as his suzerain. The puppet-king had, however, for-
gotten his maker.
Hrvoje, the “Bosnian kinglet,” aided by the
Ragusans, laid siege to the royal castle of Bobovac, where the king
was residing; and, when Sigismund intervened on behalf of his vassal,
summoned an assembly of the nobles in "1404 to depose Ostoja and
choose a new sovereign. The assembled barons unanimously voted the
expulsion of Ostoja, and elected Tvrtko's legitimate son, who had been
passed over thirteen years before, under the title of Tvrtko II. All real
authority, however, lay as before in the hands of Hrvoje, whom the
grateful Ladislas had created Duke of Spalato and lord of Cattaro,
whom Sigismund regarded as his “chief rival,” whom a modern historian?
has described as “the most powerful man between the Save and the
Adriatic," and to whom the shrewd Ragusans wrote that “whatsoever
thou dost command in Bosnia is done. "3
A Hungarian invasion and a civil war followed the election of
לל
1 Gelcich and Thallóczy, Diplomatarium, p. 325.
2 Klaić, Geschichte Bosniens, p. 294.
3 Pucić, Spomenici srpski, 1. p. 59.
CH. XVIII.


## p. 566 (#608) ############################################

566
Civil war in Bosnia
Tvrtko II, for Sigismund was resolved to restore his influence, while
Ostoja still held out in Bobovac. After a first futile attempt, the
Magyar monarch entered Bosnia in 1408; once again the walls of
Dobor witnessed a Hungarian victory; the yellow waters of the Bosna
were reddened by the headless corpses of more than a hundred Bosnian
nobles, and Tvrtko II was led a prisoner to Buda. Hrvoje humbled
himself before the victor, and Ladislas of Naples sold all his Dalmatian
rights to Venice in despair. But Sigismund's schemes for extending
Hungarian authority over Bosnia encountered the stubborn resistance
of the national party, whose leaders came from the land of Hum, the
cradle of so many insurrections against the foreigner. They restored
Ostoja to the throne, and in their own stony country and in the south
of Bosnia their candidate held out against the Hungarian sovereign, who
dismembered the rest of the kingdom, and even bestowed Srebrenica, its
most important mining-district, upon the Despot of Serbia, thus sowing
discord between the two kindred peoples. Law and order ceased ;
members of the royal family took to highway robbery, and the
Ragusans complained that even among the heathen Turks their traders
met with less harm than in Christian Bosnia. The climax was reached
when Sigismund, occupied with the religious quarrels of Western Europe,
released Tvrtko in 1415, and sent him with a Hungarian army to
recover the Bosnian crown. Hard pressed by this formidable combina-
tion (for Tvrtko's was a name to conjure with) his rival and Hrvoje,
who had now rallied to Ostoja, committed the fatal mistake of summoning
the Turks to their aid, thus setting an example which ultimately caused
the ruin of Bosnia. The immediate result of this policy was, indeed,
successful; the Magyars were routed, but the victors could not rid
themselves of their Turkish allies so easily. In the very next year
Mahomet I appointed his general Isaac governor of the district of
Vrhbosna, which took its name from the “sources of the Bosna," and
occupied the heart of the country. From the like-named castle, on the
site of the present fortress of Sarajevo, the low-born Turkish viceroy
could dominate the plain at his feet and confirm great Bosnian nobles in
their fiefs by the grace of his, and their, master, the Sultan.
The joint authors of this Turkish occupation did not long survive
the evil which they had inflicted on their country.
In the same year
that saw the Turkish garrison installed in Vrhbosna Hrvoje died. No
Balkan noble is better known to us than this remarkable man. An
ancient missal has preserved for us his features, and we are told of his
gruff voice and rough manners which so greatly disgusted the courteous
magnates of Hungary. The coins which he struck for his duchy of
Spalato have survived, and the loveliest town in all Bosnia, the fairy-like
Jajce (“the egg” of the Southern Slavs) will ever be connected with his
There, on the egg-shaped hill above the magnificent waterfall,
he had bidden an Italian architect build him a castle on the model of
name.


## p. 567 (#609) ############################################

Mircea “ the Great” of Wallachia
567
the famous Castel dell' Uovo at Naples, and there he dug out those
catacombs which still bear his arms and were intended to serve as his
family vault? . But the influence of this Bosnian king-maker perished
with him; his widow became the wife of Ostoja, who, two years later,
died himself; another great noble, the grand voivode Sandalj Hranić
of the house of Kosača, once Hrvoje's most formidable rival, for nearly
two decades wielded from his stronghold in the land of Hum the pre-
dominant authority over the south. He did not scruple, during the
brief reign of Ostoja's feeble son and successor, Stephen Ostojić, to
increase his estates by the aid of the Turkish garrison in Vrhbosna.
Fortunately the death of “king ” Isaac on a Hungarian raid ended for
the moment the Turkish occupation. Stephen Ostojić did not, however,
long profit by the liberation of his country from this terrible foe.
Tvrtko II, who had disputed the throne with Ostoja, now once more
arose to wrest it from Ostoja's son. His attempt succeeded ; in 1421
Ostojić is heard of for the last time. Tvrtko II wore again the crown
of his father, a crown which had, however, just lost that bright jewel
which the first Tvrtko had added to it, the city of Cattaro and its
splendid fiord. Only the “ new castle” which the great king had built
to command the mouth still remained in Bosnian hands, the powerful
hands of Sandalj Hranić, and survived in those of his successors the
downfall of the kingdom itself.
Wallachia, like Bosnia, had suffered from the armies of Mahomet I.
After the defeat of Mūsà, the victorious Sultan sent an army to
ravage
the land of Mirčea, who had previously sheltered his rival, and Mirčea
was forced to purchase peace by the promise of a tribute. The spirit of
the Wallachian ruler chafed, however, at this fresh degradation. He
welcomed the advent of a self-styled son of Bāyazīd, who claimed the
Turkish throne, and supported his claim. The pretender was defeated,
and Mirčea paid for his temerity by a fresh Turkish inroad. In order
to have a base for future action against Wallachia, Mahomet occupied
the two Roumanian towns, Turnu-Severin and Giurgevo. Not long
afterwards, in 1418, Mircea “the Great," as his countrymen call him,
died, the first commanding figure in their troubled history. Un-
fortunately, “the Great” prince had won his crown by the murder of
his elder brother, and his crime was now visited upon his heirs and his
country. Wallachia was distracted by the civil wars of the rival cousins,
who appealed with success to the jealousies of the nobles and to those
misguided feelings of local patriotism which tended towards the separation
of the smaller western from the larger eastern portion of the principality.
In their eagerness to gain the throne, the hostile candidates called in
now the Hungarians and now the Turks to their aid, and thus the
resources of the country were weakened by almost constant bloodshed.
Meanwhile, the sister-principality of Moldavia, after a number of
1 Wiss. Mitt. 11. pp. 94-107.
בל
CH. XVIII.


## p. 568 (#610) ############################################

568
Condition of Moldavia and Serbia
ephemeral reigns, found in Alexander the Good a prince who managed
to maintain himself on the throne, albeit under the suzerainty of Poland,
for nearly a whole generation. His administration, which lasted from
1401 to 1433, was devoted to the internal organisation of Moldavia and
to the development of its resources. He regulated the tariff, prevented
the export of the famous Moldave horses, upon which the defence of the
country largely depended, established the official hierarchy of the Moldave
nobles, and recognised the long-disputed authority of the Ecumenical
Patriarch over the Moldavian Church. Hitherto both the Roumanian
principalities had, with rare intervals, depended in ecclesiastical matters
upon the ancient Church of Ochrida, an arrangement dating from the
time of the first Bulgarian Empire, which had had the natural result
of introducing Old Slavonic as the language of the Roumanian church
services. Even at a time when Ochrida had long ceased to be
Bulgarian and a Patriarchate, the jurisdiction of this archiepiscopal see
over the distant Roumanian lands beyond the Danube was revived, and
the literature of the Church and the official language of the princely
chanceries still remained Slav. After Alexander's time the archbishopric
of Ochrida recovered its authority, which Wallachia did not shake off
till the end of the fifteenth, and Moldavia till the seventeenth century,
when the Roumanian language, alike in Church and State, replaced the
archaic idiom of the alien Slavs.
While such was the dubious plight of the Latins of the lower
Danube, their neighbours, the Serbs, were being driven back upon that
river under the pressure of the Turkish advance to the north. Originally
a mountainous, and at its zenith a Macedonian state, Serbia under
George Branković, except for a few places on the Adriatic, was essentially
a Danubian principality, even to a greater degree than was till lately the
case. The new despot, a fine, tall man of sixty when he at last succeeded
his uncle, was an experienced diplomatist, whose life had been spent in
those tortuous political maneuvres which passed in the Near East for
the height of statesmanship. But something more than diplomacy was
needed to defend the Balkan Christians from the Turks, now that a
warlike Sultan in the person of Murād II directed their undivided
forces. As soon as Murād had leisure to attend to Serbian affairs, he
sent an embassy to the despot, demanding the whole of Serbia for him-
self, on the pretext that a sister of the late prince had married his father.
George saw that his best policy was to “pacify the dragon” by making
some concessions, and thus to save at least a portion of his territory?
He promised to sever all connexion with Hungary, to pay an annual tribute
(not a difficult undertaking for a man of his great wealth), to furnish the
usual military contingent to the Sultan's armies, and to give to the latter
the hand of his daughter Maria with a dowry of Serbian land. Delay in
the performance of this last condition brought upon Branković a Turkish
1 Ducas, p. 205.


## p. 569 (#611) ############################################

Branković at Semendria
569
invasion. Kruševac, the residence of Prince Lazar, fell before the invaders,
and ceased to be the Serbian capital; and the despot, when he had
secured a respite by the betrothal of his daughter, humbly but astutely
asked from her all-powerful suitor permission to build a new fortress at
Smederevo, or Semendria, on the right bank of the Danube. The site
was well chosen ; for, if the Sultan was induced to approve of the
construction of Semendria as a bulwark against Hungary, the despot
could easily escape thence across the river, should his suzerain attack
him there. The noble towers and ramparts of George Branković's
castle, thenceforth the Serbian capital till the Turkish conquest, still
stand by the brink of the great river; the cross of red brick which the
master-builder defiantly built into the walls has survived the long
centuries of the Crescent's domination ; and the coins which the despot
minted there commemorate the foundation of this great Danubian
stronghold. In our own day, when Serbia feared the Austrian more
than the Turk, it was a disadvantage to have the capital on the northern
frontier ; in the fifteenth century, when the Hungarian was the only
hope of safety, it was the best choice. Branković, in order to secure for
himself a comfortable refuge beyond the Danube, did not hesitate to
hand over Belgrade itself, which his uncle had rendered even stronger
than it was by nature, to the King of Hungary in exchange for a
goodly list of towns and estates in that sovereign's territory. This act
of enlightened selfishness was a sore blow to the Serbian people; it was
a bitter humiliation to them to see “the white city” transferred to the
authority of a Magyar commander. Nature herself seemed to protest
against the cession of Belgrade; thunder rolled over the betrayed
fortress; a tempest swept the roofs off the houses; and the citizens wept
at the surrender of their homes to the foreigner from beyond the Save.
More serious still, Murād was angry that so valuable a position should
be in Hungarian hands. For the present, however, he contented himself
with sending for his betrothed, who still lingered at her father's court.
Branković, who had just received from the Greek Emperor the dignity
and the emblems of despot, gave the bride a splendid outfit worthy
of a king's daughter. The charms of the Serbian princess captivated
the heart of the Sultan ; but this matrimonial alliance, from which the
Serbs might have expected much, availed nothing against reasons of
state. Branković, as a French traveller? who visited him said, was “in
daily fear of losing Serbia. ” His only safeguard was the Sultan's belief
that tributary states were more profitable to Turkey than annexation.
Murād had not been many months married to the fair Serbian when
one of those fanatics so common in Muslim lands accused him of sinning
against Allāh by allowing the unbelievers to live in peace.
The
building of Semendria, so this man insisted, had been not only a crime
but a blunder, for it barred the way to the conquest of Hungary and
1 Bertrandon de la Brocquière, in Recueil de voyages et de documents, xii. 209–10.
CH. XVIII,


## p. 570 (#612) ############################################

570
The loss of the last Serbian ports
.
ביי
of Italy beyond it—the ultimate goal of Musulman endeavour, which
might be reached by means of the immense riches of the Serbian Despot.
Murād listened to this counsel, and sent an ultimatum to his father-in-
law, demanding the surrender of Semendria.
Branković left his capital
in charge of his eldest son Gregory and one of his Greek relatives, and
crossed over with his youngest son Lazar into Hungary to obtain
assistance. Semendria, strong as were its defences, had, however,
provisions for no more than three months, so that before the pedantic
bureaucracy of the Magyar army could be put in motion the garrison
was compelled to yield. Gregory and his next brother Stephen, who
had been forced to accompany Murād to the siege, were blinded at the
instigation of the Sultan's fanatical adviser and deported to Asia Minor.
From Semendria, where he left a Turkish guard, Murād marched to the
rich mining town of Novobrdo, which a Byzantine historian calls “ the
mother of cities,”? and the minerals of which had been rented by the
Ragusans for a large sum. Novobrdo was captured, and nearly all
Serbia was in 1439 a Turkish province. Her lawful ruler was forced
to seek refuge in the maritime towns of Antivari and Budua, which
were still Serbian. Even there, however, the long arm of the Sultan
menaced him; he Aed with his vast treasures to the neighbouring
republic of Ragusa, where he hoped to find a shelter on neutral
ground. But Murād was still inexorable ; he bade the embarrassed
republicans banish their guest, and suggested that they might salve
their consciences for this breach of hospitality by appropriating the
500,000 ducats which his father-in-law had deposited for safety in their
public coffers. The Ragusans boldly refused to tarnish their honour
at the Sultan's bidding, but they none the less hinted to their guest
that he had better return to Hungary. Warned by this example, his
last possessions on, or near, the Adriatic (Budua, Drivasto, and Anti-
vari) sought and obtained from Venice that protection which he could
no longer give them. Many noble Serbs settled at Ragusa, and that
artistic city owes one of her most treasured relics, the cross of Stephen
Uroš II, to this troubled period of South Slavonic history.
Belgrade, however, with its Hungarian garrison, still rose above the
Ottoman food which had swept over the rest of Serbia, and in 1440
Murād accordingly laid siege to it by land and water. The fortress
was commanded by a Ragusan and provided with excellent artillery,
which wrought such terrible havoc among the besiegers that neither
the Turkish flotilla nor the janissaries could prevail against it. After
wasting six months before the town, Murād reluctantly raised the siege
with the sinister threat that sooner or later “ the white city” must be
his. It was not till eighty-one years after this first Turkish siege that
his threat was accomplished by one of his greatest successors.
A new figure now arose to check for a time the Ottoman advance.
1 Ducas, p. 209.


## p. 571 (#613) ############################################

John Hunyadi
571
John Hunyadi, “ the white knight of Wallachia," a Roumanian in the
service of Hungary, began his victorious career with his appointment
as voivode of Transylvania in 1441. After several preliminary defeats
of the Turks on the slopes of the Carpathians and in the neighbourhood
of Belgrade, he undertook with King Vladislav I in 1443 a great
expedition across Serbia and Bulgaria. Both Pope Eugenius IV and
Branković subsidised the undertaking, Vlad “ the Devil ” of Wallachia
joined his countryman, while the exiled despot placed his local knowledge
at the disposition of the dashing Roumanians. The Christian army rapidly
traversed Serbia, burning Kruševac and Niš on the way, and entered
Bulgaria, whose inhabitants received the Polish King of Hungary and
the Slavs in his force as brothers. Leaving Sofia behind him, Hunyadi
pressed on with his colleagues towards Philippopolis ; but he found the
pass near Zlatica already occupied by the janissaries whom Murād had
assembled, and he had to retreat. On the return march, the despot, who
was in command of the rear, was attacked by the Turks at Kunovica
near Niš, but the cavalry came to his aid and completely routed his
assailants. Murād, dismayed at this first great Hungarian raid across
the Danube, and threatened by troubles in Asia, signed, in July 1444,
the humiliating peace of Szegedin, which restored to Branković the
whole of Serbia and his two blinded sons, on condition of his handing
half the revenue of the land as tribute to the Sultan. Bulgaria remained
a portion of the Turkish Empire, and the citizens of Sofia, which ten
years earlier had been the most flourishing town in the whole country,
lamented among the ashes of their ruined houses the vain attempt of
the Christians to set them free. Their city, famous for its baths,
became the residence of the “Beglerbeg of Rumelia," the viceroy of
the Sultan in the Balkans. Wallachia, under Vlad “the Devil,” con-
tinued to pay tribute to Turkey while acknowledging the suzerainty
of Hungary, whose sovereign pledged himself not to cross the Danube
against the Turks, just as the Sultan vowed likewise not to cross . it
against the Magyars. The only real gainer by the campaign of 1443
was George Branković, who received the congratulations of Venice on
his fortunate restoration to the throne of Serbia? . Honour and policy
alike suggested the maintenance of this solemn treaty with the Turks.
But the parchment bond had scarcely been signed when the evil
counsels of Cardinal Julian Cesarini, the papal legate, caused the
Hungarian monarch to break it. The moment seemed to the statesman-
ship of the Vatican to have come for driving the Turks out of Europe.
Murād was occupied in Asia, and it was thought that the fleets of the
Duke of Burgundy and the Pope could prevent his return. In vain
Branković argued against this impolitic act of treachery ; Hunyadi, the
soul of this new crusade, was eager to free Bulgaria in order to revive
in his own person the Empire of the Tsars; the legate was ready to
1 Mon. spect. hist. Slav. Merid. xxi. pp. 186-7 ; Makuscev, 11. pp. 81-4.
CH, XVIII.


## p. 572 (#614) ############################################

572
Battle of Varna, 1444
absolve Vladislav from the oath which he had so lately sworn. Not
without forebodings of his approaching doom, the perjured King of
Hungary re-crossed the forbidden river, set fire to Vidin, and, flushed
by easy successes gained at the expense of the helpless peasantry whom
he had come to liberate, disregarded the warning of the astute voïvode
of Wallachia and pushed on to the Black Sea. Thus far his expedition
had been a triumphal march ; but among the gardens and vineyards of
Varna, the district which still preserves the name of the former Bulgarian
Despot Dobrotich, he suddenly found himself confronted by the Turkish
army. Murād had made peace with his enemies in Asia, and, thanks
to a strong wind which had prevented the Christian vessels from leaving
the Dardanelles, had crossed over to Europe at his ease where the
Bosphorus is narrowest, and had reached Varna by forced marches. The
battle which decided the fate of this last attempt of Christendom to
free Bulgaria was fought on 10 November 1444. It is only a later, if
picturesque, legend that Murād displayed before him on a lance his
copy of the broken treaty', but when night fell the scattered remnant
of the Christian army had good cause to lament alike the perjury and
the rashness of its leader. At first the prowess of Hunyadi seemed to
have broken the Ottoman ranks; but the young king, envious of the
laurels of his more experienced commander, insisted on exposing his
valuable life at a critical moment. His death was the signal for the
defeat of his army; his evil adviser, the cardinal, perished in the
carnage; the survivors Aled either across the Danube into Wallachia,
or westward to the fastnesses of Albania, where Skanderbeg a year
earlier had begun to defy the Turks in his native mountains. Hunyadi
was treacherously captured by the Wallachian “Devil,” whom he had
accused of double-dealing during the campaign, but was released on
the arrival of a Hungarian ultimatum. Two years later he wreaked
his vengeance upon his captor, whom he deprived of both crown and life,
restoring the elder branch of the Wallachian princely house to the throne
which Mirčea and his descendants had usurped from his brother and his
brother's children.
George Branković, wise in his generation, had refused to take part
in the expedition which had ended so disastrously at Varna. Like the
shrewd diplomatist that he was, he had made his calculations in the
event of either a Hungarian or a Turkish victory. In the former case
he relied on his money to shelter him from the consequences of his
neutrality; against the latter he made provision by sending news of
the Christian advance to the Sultan and by barring the road by which
Skanderbeg was to have traversed Serbia on his way to join the Christian
forces at Varna. He persisted in the same policy of enlightened selfish-
ness when, four years later, Hunyadi again attacked the Turks. On this
occasion, too, Branković betrayed the Christian cause by warning Murād
1 Zinkeisen, 1. p. 702, n. 3.


## p. 573 (#615) ############################################

Third Battle of Kossovo, 1448
573
of the coming Hungarian invasion, and refused to participate in an
expedition which he considered inadequate for the purpose intended.
Hunyadi stormed, and vowed vengeance upon him, but once more facts
proved the shrewd old Serb to be right. The armies met on the
fatal field of Kossovo on 17 October 1448, while the Serbs lurked in the
mountain passes which led out of the plain, ready to fall upon
and
plunder the fugitives. On the first and second days the issue was
uncertain; but, when the fight was renewed on the third, the Roumanian
contingent, whose leader owed his throne to Hunyadi, deserted in a body
to the Turks. Murād, however, suspecting this movement to be a feint,
ordered them to be cut to pieces. Nevertheless, their defection de-
moralised their chivalrous countryman, who fled for his life towards
Belgrade. His danger was great, for Branković, anxious to obtain
possession of a man whom he hated and whom he could then surrender
to the Sultan, had ordered the Serbs to examine and report to the
authorities every Hungarian subject whom they met, while the Turks
were also on his track. Once, like Marius, he hid himself among the
reeds of a marsh; then he narrowly escaped assassination at the
hands of two Serbian guides ; at last, driven by hunger, he was forced
to disclose his identity to a Serbian peasant. The peasant revealed the
secret to his brothers, one of the latter reported it to the local governor,
and Hunyadi was sent in chains to Semendria. The despot durst not,
however, provoke the power of Hungary by refusing to release so
distinguished a champion of Christendom, and his captive recovered
his freedom by promising to pay a ransom and never to lead an army
across Serbia again. Not only did these promises remain unfulfilled,
but, as soon as Hunyadi was free, he revenged himself by seizing the
Branković estates in Hungary and by devastating Serbian territory.
But the Serbian Despot's armed neutrality while others fought at
Varna and Kossovo was not his only crime against the common cause
of the Balkan Christians. Despite his years and the imminent Turkish
peril, he did not scruple to extend his frontiers at the expense of Bosnia
with the Sultan's permission. Tvrtko II had not long enjoyed in peace
his restoration to the Bosnian throne. His title was disputed by
Radivoj, a bastard son of Ostoja, who summoned Murād II to his aid,
and Tvrtko was forced to purchase peace by the cession of several towns
to the Sultan, already the real arbiter of Bosnia. In 1433 the puppet
king was overthrown by a combination between Branković and the
powerful Bosnian magnate, Sandalj Hranić, who paid the Sultan a lump
sum for his gracious permission to partition the Bosnian kingdom. The
despot thereupon annexed the district of Usora, watered by the lower
Bosna, while the grand voïvode ruled over the whole of what was soon
to be called the Herzegovina, and a part of what is now Montenegro.
Hranić might claim to be de facto, if not de jure, the successor of
the great Tvrtko, for the monastery in which the first Bosnian king
CH. XVIII.


## p. 574 (#616) ############################################

574
The “ Duchy of St Sava”
had been crowned, and the castle which he had built to command the
fiord of Cattaro, were both his. But the opposition of the barons
hindered, and his death in 1435 ended, his striving after the royal title.
His vast territories passed to his nephew, Stephen Vukčić, the last of
the three great Bosnian magnates whose commanding figures over-
shadowed the pigmy wearers of the crown. His land was now regarded
as independent of Bosnia ; ere long, despite a Bosnian protest, he
received, either from the Emperor Frederick III or from the Pope, the
title of “Duke of St Sava,” which, in its German form of Herzog, gave
to the Herzegovina its name'. Meanwhile, in 1436, a Turkish garrison
re-occupied Vrhbosna, and Tvrtko II, who had sought refuge in Hungary,
recovered his throne by consenting to pay a tribute of 25,000 ducats to
the Sultan. He had not, however, been long re-installed when the
Turkish invasion of Serbia up to the gates of Belgrade seemed to fore-
bode the annexation of Bosnia also. In his despair he implored now
Venice, now Vladislav I, the Polish King of Hungary, to take compassion
upon him. Venice he begged to take over the government of his do-
minions, Vladislav he urged to succour a land whose people were also
Slavs. But the diplomatic republic declined the dangerous honour with
complimentary phrases, while Tvrtko did not live long enough to witness
the fulfilment of the Hungarian monarch's promise to aid him. In 1443
he was murdered by his subjects, and with him the royal house of Ko-
tromanić became extinct. In his place the magnates elected another
bastard son of Ostoja, Stephen Thomas Ostojić, as their king.
Stephen Thomas began his reign by taking a step which had
momentous consequences for his kingdom. Although his predecessor
had been a Roman Catholic, his own family was, like most of the
Bosnian nobles of that time, devoted to the Bogomile heresy, which
had come to be regarded as the national religion. The new king came,
however, to the conclusion that he would not only enhance his personal
prestige at home, diminished by his illegitimate birth and his humble
marriage, but would also gain the assistance of the West against the
Turks, if he embraced the Roman Catholic faith. But, although he
had none of the fervour of a convert from conviction, he soon found
that the erection of Roman Catholic churches did not satisfy the zeal
of the Franciscans, of his protector Hunyadi, and of the Pope. Ac-
cordingly in 1446 an assembly of prelates and barons met at Konjica,
1 It is usually supposed that Vukčić received the ducal title either from
Frederick III in 1448, or from the Pope in 1419, when he turned Roman Catholic,
or else from the King of Aragon (Wiss. Mitt. In. pp. 503–9; x. p. 103 n. ; Klaić, p. 382).
But he is styled dux terre Huminis as early as 23 August 1445 (Mon. spect. hist. Slav.
Merid. xxi. p. 226), “Duke of St Sava in a document of 1446 (Farlati, Illyricum
Sacrum, iv. p. 68), and “ Duke” in a dubious inscription of that year (Wiss. Mitt.
111. p. 502). A less probable theory (ib. 1. p. 434) derives the name of the Herzegovina
from a Turkish word meaning “the land of stoues. ” Thallóczy (Studien zur Gesch.
Bosniens u. Serbiens, pp. 146–59) thinks that he took the title himself with the con-
nivance of the Porte.


## p. 575 (#617) ############################################

Policy of Mahomet II
575
לל
בי
the beautiful town on the borders of the Herzegovina through which
the traveller now passes on the railway from Sarajevo to Mostar. It
was there decided that the Bogomiles “shall neither build new churches
nor restore those that are falling into decay,” and that “the goods of
the Catholic Church shall never be taken from it. "? No less than 40,000
of the persecuted sect emigrated to the Herzegovina in consequence of this
decree, and found there a refuge beneath the sway of Duke Stephen, who,
although he had allowed his daughter Catherine to embrace Catholicism
and marry Stephen Thomas, remained himself a Bogomile. Thus, if the
King of Bosnia had, by his conversion, gained a divorce from his low-
born consort and had become the son-in-law of the powerful magnate
whose sovereign he claimed to be, if he had been taken under the
protection of the Holy See and had secured the support of the famous
Wallachian hero, he had estranged a multitude of his own subjects,
whose defection involved him in a war with his heretical father-in-law,
and hastened the downfall of Bosnian independence. Moreover, the old
Despot of Serbia continued to harass his eastern frontier, so long a
source of discord between the two sister-states; while, as if that were
not enough, this embarrassed successor of the great Tvrtko must needs
try to make good his mighty predecessor's title of “King of Dalmatia
and Croatia,” regardless of the hard fact that what should have been
in theory the natural sea-frontage of his inland kingdom had become
a long and practically unbroken line of Venetian colonies. Such was
the behaviour of the Balkan leaders when in 1451 their destined
conqueror, Mahomet II, ascended the throne.
It was the policy of the new Sultan to humour the Balkan princes
until the capture of Constantinople left him free to subdue them one
by one. He not only renewed his father's treaty with Serbia, but sent
his Serbian stepmother back to her father with every mark of distinction,
assigning her sufficient estates to support her in her widowhood. The
consequence was that George Branković assisted him to amuse the
Hungarians till the capital of the Byzantine Empire fell, and contributed
nothing to the defence of those walls which only five years before he
had helped to repair? When the fatal news arrived, the wily despot
and the terrified King of Bosnia hastened to send envoys to make the
best terms that they could with the conqueror. For the moment
Mahomet contented himself with a tribute of 12,000 ducats from
Serbia ; but he had already made up his mind to put an end to the
autonomy which that rich and fertile country, the stepping-stone to
Hungary and Wallachia, had been permitted to enjoy for the last two
generations. In the spring of 1454 he sent an ultimatum to the despot,
bidding him, under threat of invasion, surrender at once the former land
of Stephen Lazarević, to which he had no right, and promising him in
1 Farlati, l. c.
2 Inscription on the walls of Constantinople. Miklosich, Monumenta Serbica,
p. 441.
CH. XVIII.


## p. 576 (#618) ############################################

576
Siege of Belgrade, 1456
return the ancestral territory of the Branković family with the city of Sofia.
Only twenty-five days were allowed for the receipt of his answer. George
was, however, absent in Hungary when the ultimatum reached Semendria,
and his crafty officials managed to detain its bearer until they had had
time to place the fortresses on a war footing. Before the Sultan could
reach the Serbian frontier, Hunyadi had made a dash across the Danube,
had penetrated as far as the former Bulgarian capital, and had retired
with his plunder beyond the river. Mahomet's main object was the
capture of Semendria, the key of Hungary, but that strong castle resisted
his attack, and he withdrew to Hadrianople. In the following year he
repeated his invasion, and forced Novobrdo to surrender after a vigorous
and protracted bombardment. A portion of the inhabitants he left
there to work the famous silver mines, which, as his biographer remarks,
had not only largely contributed to the former splendour of the Serbian
Empire but had also aroused the covetousness of its enemies. Indeed,
the picture which Critobulus' has drawn of Serbia in her decline might
kindle the admiration of her modern statesmen as they read of the
cities
many
and fair in the interior of the land, the strong forts on
the banks of the Danube," the “ productive soil,” the "swine and cattle
and abundant breed of goodly steeds,” with which this little Balkan
state, so blessed by nature, so cursed by politics, was bountifully endowed.
But the “ numerous and valiant youths” who had been the pride of the
old Serbian armies had been either drafted into the corps of janissaries
to fight against their fellow-Christians, or were helpless, in the absence
of their aged and fugitive prince, against the artillery of Mahomet.
The summer was, however, fast drawing to a close; Serbia gained
another brief respite, and George to his surprise obtained peace on the
basis of uti possidetis and the payment of a smaller tribute for his
diminished territory.
In June 1456 Mahomet appeared with a large park of heavy
artillery before the gates of Belgrade, boasting that within a fortnight
the city should be his. So violent was the bombardment that the noise
of the Turkish guns was heard as far off as Szegedin, and the Sultan
hoped that all succour from that quarter would be prevented by his
fleet, which was stationed in the Danube. But Hunyadi routed the
unwieldy Turkish ships, and made his way into the beleaguered town
with an army of peasant crusaders, whom the blessing of Calixtus III
and the preaching of the fiery Franciscan Capistrano had assembled for
this holy war.
Enthusiasm compensated for their defective weapons ;
when the janissaries took the outer city, they not only drove them back,
but, headed by the inspired chaplain, charged right up to the mouths
of the Turkish cannon ; Mahomet himself was wounded in the struggle,
and retreated in disorder to Sofia, while the Serbian miners from
Novobrdo fell upon his defeated troops. Unfortunately, the pestilence
1 1. ch. 7.


## p. 577 (#619) ############################################

Death of George Branković, 1456
577
that broke out in the Hungarian camp and the death of Hunyadi
prevented the victors from following up their advantage. Belgrade
was saved for Hungary, but the rest of Serbia was doomed. Even at
this crisis, the quarrels of the despot and Hunyadi's brother-in-law
Szilágyi, the governor of Belgrade, demonstrated the disunion and
selfishness of the Christian leaders. The despot, who tried to entrap
his enemy, was himself captured ; and, although he was released, died
not long afterwards on 24 December 1456, of the effect of a wound which
he had received in the encounter. His ninety years had been spent
in a troublesome time; his character had been rather of the willow
than of the oak, and the one principle, if indeed it was not policy,
which he consistently maintained, was his refusal to gain the warmer
support of the West by abandoning the creed of his fathers and his
subjects, as he had abandoned the cause of the other Balkan Christians
to keep his own throne.
George Branković had bequeathed the remnant of his principality
to his Greek wife Irene and his youngest son Lazar; for his two elder
sons, Gregory and Stephen, had been blinded by Murād II. But the
new despot chafed at the idea of sharing his diminished inheritance
with his mother; indeed, he had refused to ransom his old father from
captivity, in order to anticipate by a few months his succession to the
throne. The death of Irene occurred at such an opportune moment
and under such suspicious circumstances that it was attributed to poison
administered by her ambitious son; and his eldest brother and his
sister, the widow of the late Sultan, were so greatly alarmed for their
own safety that they fled the selfsame day with all their portable
property to the court of Mahomet II. That great man treated the
fugitives with generosity; they obtained a home near Seres, where the
former Sultana became the good angel of the Christians, obtaining
through her influence permission for the monks of Rila to transport
the remains of their pious founder from Trnovo to the great Bulgarian
monastery which bears his name. Lazar III was now sole ruler of
Serbia, for his second brother Stephen soon followed the rest of the
family into exile, and became a pensioner of the Pope. But he did not
long profit by his cruelty. While he allowed the internal affairs of his
small state to fall into confusion, he was lax in paying the tribute which
he had promised to his suzerain. Mahomet was preparing to attack
this weak yet presumptuous vassal, when, on 20 January 1458, the latter
died, leaving a widow and three daughters. Before his death, Lazar
had provided for the succession by affiancing one of his children to
Stephen Tomašević, son and heir of the King of Bosnia—an arrangement
which would have united the two Serbian states in the person of the
future Bosnian ruler, and seemed to promise a final settlement of the
disputes that had latterly divided them.
Three candidates for the Serbian throne now presented themselves,
37
c.
ED. H. VOL. IV. CH. XVIII.


## p. 578 (#620) ############################################

578
End of medieval Serbia
Stephen Tomašević, a son of Gregory Branković, and Mahomet II.
None could doubt which of the three would be ultimately successful ;
but at first the Bosniak gained ground. In December 1458 King
Matthias Corvinus of Hungary in a parliament at Szegedin formally
recognised him as Despot of Serbia, that is to say of as much of that
country as was not occupied by the Turks. Meanwhile, in order to
strengthen herself, as she thought, against the latter, the widowed
princess, a daughter of the Despot Thomas Palaeologus, had offered
the principality as a fief to the Holy See.
as a fief to the Holy See. The marriage of the Serbian
heiress and the Bosnian crown-prince took place; the commandant of
Semendria was sent in irons to Hungary; and Stephen Tomašević took
up his abode in the capital of George Branković.