1389

A reader writes:

I realize that in a rhapsody like Krikorian's, myth is more relevant than actual history, but given that he chooses the 1389 battle of Kosovo as an illustration of the exact opposite, it’s worth pointing out that that battle was, in fact, a draw.  Militarily, the real defeat of the Serbs was at Maritsa in 1371.  Maritsa was lost in large part because the Serb nation was internally divided between factions, and half the Serb lords preferred to let their rivals take the loss rather than unite against the common foe.  Kosovo was more of a mop-up action, in which the rest of the Serb nobility (ie, the ones that sat out Maritsa) were finished off.  In battle, they acquitted themselves reasonable well, with both sides being exhausted, but the Ottomans were in a position to quickly recover their strength and the Serbs were already depleted.

National myth notwithstanding, the Ottoman conquest of the Balkan peninsula was accomplished primarily with a strategy of divide-and-conquer, in which the Ottomans chose vassals looking for outside support against internal opponents.  Medieval Serbia collapsed from internal dissension; the Ottoman conquest was the instrument of its extinction but not the cause.