Spring – 17 July 1393
Tarnovo, 1393
Ivan Shishman of Tarnovo, an Ottoman vassal since 1388, holds secret talks with Sigismund in the winter of 1391–1392. In the spring of 1393 Bayezid crosses the Dardanelles at Gallipoli with troops from Anatolia, joins his army in Europe at Edirne and gives the command to his son Süleyman Çelebi. Süleyman crosses the Balkan range and lays siege to Tarnovo. Shishman is at Nikopol on the Danube, and Patriarch Euthymius leads the defence of the capital.
The charter of Tsar Ivan Shishman for the Rila Monastery, 1378Wikimedia Commons, unknown author, Public domain (Rilla charter of Ivan Shishman.png)
Tarnovo falls on 17 July 1393 after a siege of three months, to an assault from the side of the Tsarevets hill. Gregory Tsamblak, a pupil of Euthymius, writes that the city was taken by treason. The churches are turned into mosques, baths and stables, and 110 leading townsmen and boyars are killed. Euthymius is spared and sent into exile in Thrace, probably to the Bachkovo Monastery, and the Bulgarian church comes under the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Süleyman leaves an Ottoman governor in Tarnovo. Shishman keeps Nikopol and a few towns on the Danube as Bayezid’s vassal, and Ivan Sratsimir of Vidin renews his own vassalage.
Sources
- Gregory Tsamblak, Life of Patriarch Euthymius (early 15th century).
- Konstantin Jireček, Geschichte der Bulgaren (1876).
- John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (1987), 422–425.
- Ivan Božilov and Vasil Gjuzelev, Istorija na srednovekovna Bălgarija VII–XIV vek (1999).
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