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THESSAlY
History Today Map by L. P. Thomas
Serbia under Prince Lazar I37I-89

The Batde of Kossovo, 1389

For the Serbs, 'a triumph of Good over Evil', a physical defeat
but a moral victory

Anne Kindersley
NHE EARLY MORNING of St Vitus' Day, June
T Europe, is nowadays scarcely remembered. The

I 15th, 1389, the Ottoman Turks under Sultan

Murad 1 defeated the Serbian ruler Prince
Lazar and his Bosnian allies at Kossovo Field, a
high rolling plateau some sixty miles north of
Skopje. This battle, once celebrated in Western
domination of the Balkans by the Turk is usually
linked with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, a
time when the Imperial City had already been
isolated from most ofher European neighbours for
fifty years or more. But in South-East Europe,
especiallyamong Serb and Montenegrins', Kossovo
Field is still considered to be a turning-point in
history. It is famous in three ways: as a great battle
fought with exceptional heroism, as the moment of
crisis when the Ottoman Turks overran Serbia and
condemned her to centuries of repressive rule, and
last1y as a symbol of enduring nationalism, which
found its popular expression in epic poetry, and was
eventually to inspire the Serbs to break free from
Turkish control.
The general political situation in the Balkans,
from 1350 to the turn of the century, is confused
by a mass of conflicting evidence from contem-
porary and near-contemporary chronicles: Turk-
ish, Byzantine, Slav, French and Italian; the
great Czech historian [ireek called it 'the most
obscure and difficult period in South Slavic
history'. The Byzantine Empire was already in
decline and the Ottoman Turks were expanding
their territory. They were frontiersmen from
South Bithynia in Asia Minor, 'warriors of the
faith' who fought continually against Byzantium
and turned shepherd in times of peace. In the
early years of the fourteenth century they had
come under an able ruler, Osman. He gained
possession of the southern coast of the Sea of
Marmora; his son Orhan succeeded him and
took Gallipoli, after an earthquake had conven-
ient1y breached its walls, in 1354. Two years later,
he shipped Turkish settlers to Thrace. The
Ottomans had begun their thrust into Europe,
though still on a relatively small scale. They had
already learnt their way about the Balkans in 1349,
when the Byzantine Emperor, John Cantacuzene,
had employed them as mercenaries to hold back
the Serbs.
The struggle between Byzantium and the Orto-
man power was by no means clear-cut. The
Byzantines, already racked by civil war, had to
1 Serbs and Montenegrns' are both of the same South Slav
stock and Orthodox religion, but their history differs. The
Montenegrins, once part of the medieval Serbian Empire,
stayed independent of the Turks except for a short time in
the seventeenth century. Many Serbs, because of the pro-
longed Turkish occupation of their lands, migrated to other
South Slav areas and to Hungary. In present-day Yugo-
slavia Serbia forms one Republic within a Federation of six;
numerous Serbs are to be found in at least five of the other
Republics.
The supremacy of the medieval Bulgarian Empire had
been broken by the Serbs at Velbuzd in 1330, and its
strength was finally sapped by the divisions that followed
the death ofthe Emperor Alexander some forty years later.
contend in the West with two Balkan Empires-
Serbia, and to a lesser extent, Bulgaria==and with
the destructive influence of the last Crusaders,
who wanted to bring them under Papal supremacy.
Although occasional Crusades were still planned,
and the last great action fought by Western
knights took place at Nicopolis in 1396 (Varna,:
in 1444, was a much smaller affair), the new
prosperity of Europe had doused the impulse to
strike out against Islam. The war between
Christian and Moslem had, by 1350, taken on a
different pattern. The main bulwark against the
Ottoman invasion of Europe was the Serbian
Empire, an Orthodox power that derived its
religion and its culture large1y from Byzantium,
with some influences from Western Europe. It
was a feudal state, and by mid-century had
reached its greatest strength under the Emperor
Stephen Dusan, a descendant of the twelfth-
century founder, Stephen Nemanja.Its boundaries
stretched from the N eretva to the Gulf of Corinth,
from the Iron Gates of the Danube to the
Thracian coast. Epirus, Albania, Thessaly and
Macedonia all came within Dusan's frontiers. His
aims were both aggressive and defensive: he hoped
to conquer Byzantium and then to drive the
Ottomans out of Europe by uniting the forces of
Christendom against them. He could obtain no
support from Pope Innocent VI who under-
estimated the Turkish menace; while from his
Hungarian neighbours, eager to convert South
Slavs to Roman Catholicism, the most he could
get was a truce. The Papacy, the Western powers
and Hungary were to ally themse1ves against the
Turks only in 1390-6, when it was too late; it
resulted in the disaster at Nicopolis when the
Crusader knights charged haphazardly at the well-
organized Ottoman army, and were massacred.
Meanwhile, Dusan and his army, in 1355,
prepared to march on Byzantium alone: but the
Serbian Emperor died, perhaps from poisoning,
on his way there. His death probably changed the
course of European history, as he could almost
certainly have taken Byzantium, and for a time, at
least, have checked the Ottoman advance.
The death ofDusan caused the disintegration of
the Serbian Empire. There were squabbles among
his successors and among the feudal nobility. The
last chance of a confrontation on equal terms
349
between Serbian and Ottoman forces had
vanished.
Orhan pressed on westwards. He moved his
capital to Adrianople-now Edirne on the Turkish-
Bulgarian frontier-about 136o. From this base he
began to wage war in an episodic but effective
fashion. The Turks inflicted a terrible defeat on
the Balkan powers at the battle of the River Marica
in 1371: the Serbian despots in Macedonia were
killed in action, and Marko Kraljevi, the son of
one of them, became a Turkish vassal as did the
Bulgarian ruler. A few months later, Stephen Uros
V, the ruler of Serbia, died. The Marica was
strategically a victory of the first importance, for it
enabled the Turks to establish themselves in
Macedonia, and opened up the way to Eastern
Serbia.
The Serbian Empire had crumbled, but Prince
Lazar, who had now succeeded to its northern
35
territories, began to rally his people against the
Turks. He built up a Serbian kingdom and
secured the support of his son-in-law, Vuk
Brankovi, the ruler of Kossovo and Skopje
regions. By careful diplomatic activity-which
included the marriage of other daughters-he
made alliances with his neighbours, especially
Bosnia and Hungary. It is uncertain whether he
originally envisaged military action, for the Turks
had offered reasonable terms of vassaldom to the
Balkan princes who had already accepted Otto-
man rule.
Then, in 1386, the Turks moved up to Eastern
Serbia and took Nis, and earIy in 1389, Pirot.
They had also renewed their activity in Bosnia,
where they lost one battle, fought against a joint
Serbian-Bosnian force. It was, however, Prince
Lazar's kingdom, and not that of the Bosnian king
Tvrtko, which barred their way northward to
Central Europe and the Danube. In 1389, Sultan
Murad 1, who had wintered his troops at
Plovdiv in Bulgaria, began preparations for a
major attack on Serbia.
The story of the action at Kossovo really begins
at Plovdiv, and the fifteenth-century Turkish
chronicler Neshri has left a valuable if inaccurate
account of the whole campaign. From Plovdiv
Murad had a choice of two routes into Serbia:
Sultan MURAD1, 1352-89. Drawing [rom
the collection 01 the Archduke Ferdinand
01 Tyrol
From /4 Centures ofStruggle [or Freedom, Military
Museum, Belgrade, 1968
through Sofia and Nis, the easier road, or south
through Kustendil (Velbuzd), more difficult, being
liable to flooding, but quicker. He chose the
second. At Kratovo, a Serbian envoy met him
with a letter from Prince Lazar, in which he
addressed Murad as 'my brother Khan'. Murad
sent the envoy packing; from then on, the Serbs
could only expect war.
The Turkish army moved steadily on to the
Southern Morava and reached the point where
the river forks south. Banners were unfurled,
trumpets played, drums beat, and the troops set
off again in full battle order. By mid-day they had
covered the thirteen miles to Novo Brdo; they
had hardly paused on the march except to take
captive two 'unbelievers', probably Serbian
reconnaissance troops, who strayed across their
path. Then they encamped under the walls of the
city: this famous silver-mining town was so well-
fortified that they did not attempt to take it. The
next day they reached Kossovo Field, a cross-
roads for the Balkan trade routes. They set up
camp on the high land to the north of Prstina.
Mules, horses, and camels carried in supplies,
eked out by the contributions of Konstantin
Deianovi, Murad's Macedonian vassal, for the
Turks liked to live off the country if they could.
Murad and his son Bajazeth-nick-named
Yilderim, 'lightning'-looked down from a hill on
the enemy forces: they were dismayed by the
Serbian numbers, for Prince Lazar had gathered
together about 25,000 men." In fact, the Turks
greatly outnumbered the Serbs and their forces
have been estimated at 38,000 or more. The
Serbs' alarm survives in one of their epic poems,
where a knight describes his reconnaissance of
the enemy lines :
'From Zvean Fortress, brother, to Cean,
From Cean to the mountains' summit,-
Everywhere the Turkish soldiers pressed:
Horse upon horse, hero on hero,
Their battle-lances like black mountain-peaks,
Their banners like the clouds
And their tents like winter snows;
Ifheavy rain had dropped from the sky,
Nowhere would it have fallen on the earth,
But on goodly horses and heroes.'
Far less is known of Lazar's approach to Kossovo,
3Of these, 5,000 might be cornmissariat troops and ser-
vants, who would fight as foot-soldiers.
but according to Serbian popular tradition, con-
firmed by Neshri, his army set out from Krusevac.
This was Lazar's capital and a strategic point
from which he could quickly march out in any
direction towards territory endangered by the
Turks. The Serbs' route to Kossovo would have
taken them southwards through Kursumlija, They
arrived on the battlefield before the Turks andmust
have encamped somewhere to the north of them.
The Kossovo plateau is bounded to the north
and to the west by two rivers, respectively the
Lab, flowing at that point east to west, and the
Sitnica, flowing north-west. They form two sides
of a triangle, never more than five miles wide and
narrowing to its apex in the north, where the
rivers join below Vuitrn. These natural bound-
aries contained the action of the battle.
The main road from Prstina, leading to Bel-
grade and the Danube, bisected the triangle in a
north-westerly direction, running parallel with
the Sitnica. On the next morning, J une ryth, both
sides had drawn up their troops for battle
straddling this road. The Serbian lines faced
south-east. The centre was commanded by Prince
Lazar himself, acerrimus bellator, who had
royally feasted his commanders the previous
night.' Now his son-in-law, Vuk Brankovi, was at
the head of the right wing, probably because he
had supplied the largest contingent of soldiers.
The left wing was headed by Vlatko Vukovi and
his Bosnian troops sent by King Tvrtko; with him
were the Serbian leader Milos Obili and his men.
The Serbs had no standing army: Lazar
depended mainly on troops raised by feudallords
from their lands and by his allies. Foreign mer-
cenaries were also employed. Archers from the
feudal levies were placed in the front rank, and
behind them were ranged the cavalry, who
bristled with weapons. Each horseman wore a belt
slung diagonally over his shoulder: on the left
side hung his terrible two-edged sword, on the
right, long and short knives were stuck into the
belt, ready to hand. Some carried halberds and
knobbed maces. They had fantastically-shaped
helmets, some horned or shaped like an eagle, and
heavy armour. Their stout shields, made ofwood
4 The Serbian epic poem which describes this banquet
has echoes of the Last Supper, but the veill d'armes was in
fact a medieval custom.
351
faced with leather and steel, were brilliant with
heraldic devices. Behind them was the rabble of
untrained foot-soldiers.
Opposite them, the Turks were massed in
formidable order. The greatest difference between
the Turkish and Serbian forces was that the Turks
had a standing army: firsdy, foot-soldiers paid by
the State and secondly, the corps of janissaries
founded by Murad himself; men taken as children
from Christian territories, converted to Islam and
turned into an admirable fighting force. The
larger part of the army was still made up of
feudal troops, apart from some vassal contingents,
as both Turks and Serbs had inherited from
Byzantium the system of military fief-holders
(pronoia).
Turkish archers formed the front line; behind
them was a terrible obstacle, a deep ditch studded
with sharp stakes and covered up with loose earth.
It protected the centre and right-wing infantry
only; the left wing had free if dangerous passage
towards the enemy. Then carne the cavalry:
Sultan Murad faced Prince Lazar in the centre.
Round him was a cluster of fags: four marked
the place where he stood; another, his personal
banner, had been lettered in gold. Military
hierarchy was stricdy observed: the Begler Beg of
Rumelia (Turkey-in-Europe), Murad's elder son
Bajazeth, led the right wing; the Begler Beg of
Turkey, Jakub Celebija, the left, with troops from
Asia Minor. (Had they been fighting in Asia, the
positions would have been reversed.) The Turks'
helmets were pointed and often covered with
coins. The plates of their armour were inscribed
with texts from the Koran and with the name of
the Sultan, but they preferred to wear chain-mail
if they could because it was more comfortable.
They had lit fires and brought up camels to
frighten the enemy horses when they charged.
Their cornmissariat carts were drawn up as a
barrier behind the soldiers.
The battle seems to have begun at sunrise
(4 a.m.) and to have ended about four hours later:
a long time for a medieval conflicto There have
been many contradictory accounts of the action.
What seems clear is that it fell into four phases: a
Turkish attack, met by a Serbian offensive-
apparendy successful-a Turkish counter-attack,
and the final flight of the Serbs. The Serbs
352
probably opened hostilities with a volley of
arrows, which gave the cue for the Turks to
launch their first charge. Bajazeth's right wing
was engaged with the Serbian left led by Vlatko
Vukovi and his Bosnians. With the Lab behind
them, they defended their positions fiercely. The
Serbian right wing under Vuk Brankovi must
have stayed at their vantage-point near the top of
a slope during the opening phase of the battle.
Now they charged, and this onslaught of heavily-
armoured cavalry forced the Turks back. The
janissaries and other foot-soldiers fought desper-
ately, the bowmen infticting heavy losses on the
Serbs. The battlefield, strewn with heads and
with turbans of many colours, reminded one
Turkish chronicler of a huge bed of tulips. It is
likely that at this stage of the action Sultan Murad
was stabbed to death by a Serbian cornmander,
Milos Obili, who is said to have penetrated to
the Sultan's tent by posing as an informer.
Victory seemed near for the Serbs, but the stake-
strewn trenches proved a deadly barrier and their
casualties there stopped them from following up
their advance.
Bajazeth assumed his father's command and
began to counter-attack. First he ordered out the
bukai-bozundiije: men paid by the State to alarm
the enemy. They shouted: 'The unbeliever has
been routed. He has fed.' Bajazeth saw the danger
to the Turkish left wing and centre from Vuk
Brankovi's attack, and he tried to divert the
batde westwards towards the Sitnica by attacking
the Serbian centre. It wavered, and the surviving
janissaries and cavalry from the centre seem to
have joined him as well as the retreating Turkish
soldiers who surged back to help their comrades.
The last phase of the battle was an overwhelm-
ing advance by the Turks. With their superior
numbers they were able to drive back one section
of Vuk Brankovi's forces"; the rest started to
retreat northwards towards Vuitrn and Mitro-
vica, and the whole Serbian line broke. Prince
Lazar was captured-tradition says at a village
just short of VuCitrn-along with many of his
6 Vuk Brankovi's treachery, mentioned in the Serbian
epic poems, has no historical foundation. On the contrary,
he held out against the Turks until 1392, when he finally
accepted vassalage. He may well have become a scapegoat
. because he survived the battle alive while Lazar died for his
people.
nobles and taken before Bajazeth who had already
ordered the assassination of his brother and rival
Jakub. According to Constantine the Janissary, a
fifteenth-century Serb who had been in Turkish
service:
'Then said Sultan Bajazethto Prince Lazar: "Now
thou seest my father and brothers laid on biers, how
hast thou dared to try and oppose my father?"
Prince Lazar was silent, but Duke Krajmir [of
Toplice] began to speak: "Gentle prince, answer the
Sultan thus: the head is not a willow-tree, that it
grows again a second time." And Prince Lazar said
to the Sultan: "A greater marvel is this: that thy
father dared to attack the Serban kingdom." Then
he continued: "Had 1 known what 1 now see with
my own eyes, thou wouldst have lain on a fourth
bier, but the Lord God did not will it so, because of
the magnitude of our sins. May God's will be done
this day!" Then the Sultan ordered that his head
be cut off, but Krajmir prevailed on the Sultan by
his entreaties, to hold a dish beneath the head of
Prince Lazar, that it might not fall to the ground;
then Duke Krajmir bent down his head and said to
Prince Lazar: "1 have sworn today to the Lord God
that where the head of Prince Lazar shall be, there
shall be mine", and both heads fell to the ground.
About the same time, a janissary brought in the head
of Miles Obili and threw it before the Sultan's feet,
saying: "Here, O Sultan, are the heads of your two
fiercest enemes".'
The action at Kossovo remains full of un-
answered questions. When and how was Murad
killed? During the battle by a Serbian knight
By courtesy of the Military Museum. Belgrade
posing as an informer or afterwards by one who The only known portrait of Prince LAZAR, from the Church of
shammed dead and leapt on him from a pile of Lazorica in Kruleuac
corpses? Why did the Serbs give way so easily at
the end? Had the Bosnian contingent withdrawn
earlier? Did the Turks and Serbs have fire-arms, Although the Serbs had lost the battle, their
as one manuscript version of Neshri states and an rulers and many of their leaders, for a time the
early Serbian source seems to imply? Or was this Turks seem to have been so dazed by the death
improbable in an age when cannon were so of their own Sultan and his son that they hardly
clumsy that they could only be used in siege- claimed the victory. Bajazeth withdrew to
warfare? One conclusion can reasonably be Jedren, presumably to confirm his claim to the
drawn: that the Turks won the battle because of throne, and a Russian travelling to Byzantium
their superior discipline. Their army fought as' a found the whole region in disorder.
united force and not as distinct feudal companies In the West, Kossovo was at first celebrated as
each with its own leader. Again, their tactics were a victory of the Serbs over the infidel: there was
more organized than those of the Serbs: they great rejoicing in Florence, and a Te Deum of
counted on an opening which used their defensive cornmemoration was sung in Paris at Notre
strength-that is, their foot-soldiers-followed Darne. Probably this mistake aros e from the
by a strong counter-attack. Two larger questions letter sent by the powerful Bosnian king Tvrtko
remain. How complete was the Turkish victory? to Trogir and to other cities in Dalmatia and
How important was it historically? Italy: in it he announced that he had defeated

353
the Turks at Kossovo. Doubtless, Tvrtko wished
to impress the Dalmatian cities whom he hoped to
bring under his sovereignty, but he may also
genuinely have believed, through Vlatko Vukovi,
that with such heavy casualties the Turks could
not have won a clear victory. While the Turks
certainly profited from the battle, it did not
represent the decisive moment at which Serbia
carne under their rule, but rather a diminishment
of Serbian power. A period of consolidation
followed: in the 1390S Bajazeth cleaned up
pockets of resistance in Macedonia, Bulgatia
and Eastern Hungary. The Serbian kingdom
survived in various forms for nearly seventy years
after Kossovo. Immediately after the battle it was
ruled by Lazar's widow Milica and her son
Stephen Lazarevi. After being hard pressed by
a Hungarian offensive late in 1389, Milica,
probably in 1390, negotiated Turkish vassaldom
for Serbia and gave her youngest daughter
Olivera in marriage to Bajazeth. Thereafter the
Serbs fought as bravely with the Turks as they
had done against them. The Ottomans had to
contend with other enemies in this period,
particularly the Byzantines and the rebellious
Photo:
The Sultan BAJAZETH 1, 1 389-92,'from
A Generall Historie of
the Turkes, 1603
354
Turkish emirates in Asia Minor. The situation
changed in 1402 when Bajazeth was disastrously
defeated at Angora by the Mongols of the Golden
Horde under Tarnerlane. Stephen Lazarevi had
fought there as a vassal prince, but he now took
advantage of the Ottoman weakness, accepted the
title of Despot from the Byzantine Emperor and
set up an independent Serbia with Belgrade as
his capital. Eleven years later he was forced into
vassaldom again. His successor George Brankovi
surrendered Belgrade to the Hungarians, now
his allies, and built himself a fortress-capital at
Smederevo down the Danube. The Turks, fully
recovered from the Mongol onslaught, launched
a major carnpaign against Hungary: on the way,
they over-ran Serbia: in 1459 Smederevo fell and
the Serbian state was extinguished.
When Kossovo is placed in its historical
context it becomes clear that the battle of the
Marica in 1371 or Nicopolis in 1396 has the better
claim to be considered as a turning-point in the
Ottoman advance through the Balkans: the first
opened up so much territory within Europe,
while the second represented the utter defeat of
belated Western intervention, and the triumph,
even more marked than at Kossovo, of Turkish
discipline over Western feudal disunity. Nor was
Kossovo the beginning of '500 years under the
Turks', an old saw still often repeated in Belgrade.
Direct Turkish rule of Serbia can best be dated
from the mid-fifteenth century: it lasted about 350
years, except in 'Old Serbia': the southern
districts round Kossovo itself which were only
freed after the First Balkan War of 1912.
Kossovo may have been less significant, strategi-
cally, than is sometimes made out, but in other
ways it was one of the most important battles in
the Middle Ages. It was, firstly, a major confron-
tation between Christian and Moslem forces at a
time when Europe thought, indeed had to think,
ofkeeping the infidel at bayoSecondly, in terms of
military history it was a vast pitched battle
fought on the open field in a period when, though
siege warfare was beginning to decline, it was
still the usual means of making war. Crcy in
Western, Velbuzd in Eastern Europe, were the
precedents for Kossovo, but the bloodshed there
Bodleian Library
was long remembered, and even in England,
some two hundred years later, Richard Knolles
was to write in his General! Historie o/ the Turkes:
'It is thought, greater armies than these two had
sildome before met in EUROPE'.
The influence of Kossovo in the Balkans was
long-lived. A cloud of Christian and Moslem
propaganda partly obscures the records of the
battle. The Serbian monks who wrote the first
eulogies ofPrince Lazar and wove them into their
liturgies gave the dead ruler a martyr's crown:
the Turks in their documents did the same for
Murad, alleging that Miles Obili had 'caused
the illustrious Sultan to drink the sherbet of
martyrdom' .
For both sides Kossovo was an heroic story.
It was the first time that an Ottoman Sultan had
been killed in action, and the last time that a
Serbian ruler was to meet death at the head of a
South Slav alliance. Over the next hundred years
both Turks and Serbs wrote much about it, and
the literary forms they used reflect the meaning
of the battle to each nation.
The importance of Kossovo to the Turks has
been under-rated. They described the battle at
length, in prose and verse, in their fifteenth-
century chronicles which glorified the rise of the
Ottoman Empire. It was a major episode in the
spread of their religious faith and their political
power; this, together with the tragic element, was
recorded for them as dramatized history.
For the Serbs, a subject people, the battle had
a more enduring significance. As with the Turks,
it kept a religious meaning, but of a different kind.
The cult of the 'heavenly victory' begun by
monks in the 1390S culminated in the re-naming
of St Vitus' Day (June 28th, New Style) as a
Feast of the Serbian Church in 1962, that of 'the
Holy Serbian Martyrs for the Faith'. Kossovo
was recorded not as history but as myth based on
the events ofthe battle. The first layer ofthis myth
was Christian; the second layer-into which
some Christian ideas of merey and resignation
were mixed-was pagan. Under the Turks, the
peasants from the fifteenth century onwards
created epic poems about their glorious past,
about the great Nemanjid Emperors and especially
about the defeat at Kossovo. They emphasized
the individual hero: Milos Obili, Prince Lazar,
and the cunning vassal prince Marko Kraljevi
-each acquired a legendary personality. Shame,
..
honour and revenge are the qualities which build
up a moral code, often a savage one, in the poems :
Whosoever the Serb and Serbian born,
Serbian his blood and his lineage,
Who comes not to fight at Kossovo,
By his own hand he shall bring forth nothing:
Neither golden wine nor fine white wheat.
There shall be no harvest from his lands
Nor in his house children of his blood.
While his race lives, they shall waste away.'
These warrior epics complemented the work of
the Orthodox Church in keeping alive a national
identity. They entered the imagination of a whole
people for centuries. Karageorge, who led the
first Serbian uprising in 1804, recalled Milos
Obili's name as he rode through that part of the
country associated with him to peasants for whom
the hero was a symbol of patriotismo As late as
1930, a reprint of the Kossovo cycle of poems
was advertised as 'an ever necessary, ever living
example of how to die and sacrifice oneself for
the fatherland'. In the history of the Serbian
people in both World Wars, there are constant
reminiscences of the poems in people's behaviour
and feeling: it is as if they could only meet their
own twentieth-century tragedy in terms of their
medieval ancestors.
It would be no exaggeration to say that
Kossovo is the most important date for Serbs in
the whole of their history. The Nemanja Empire
had been proof to them that they were once a
civilized state, and could be so again. Like all
memories of former power, this has had its
dangers: some Serbs continued to dream of
'Greater Serbia' during the first World War,
under Pasi, and more recently as well. But
Kossovo itself, fought in the twilight of Empire,
was proof that they had been warrior heroes.
The second piece of knowledge was the most
essential to them when, like the Greeks and other
peoples who had fallen under Turkish domina-
tion, national pride was more important to them
than statehood. The Kossovo legend gave them
hope that they could fight again and win their
I freedom: it had been a physical-defeat but a moral
victory, 'a triumph of Good over Evil'. In this
way history was translated into myth, and then
became history again, in nineteenth and twentieth-
century wars waged within the lands which, after
1918, were united as Yugoslavia.
355