15 June 1389
Bayezid’s counterattack
When the force of the Serbian charge is spent, Ottoman light horsemen and foot soldiers counterattack, and the heavy armour of the Serbian knights becomes a hindrance. Bayezid then leads a counterattack from the right that drives the Serbian forces back, and later in the day the Ottomans rout the Serbian foot soldiers. Vuković’s Bosnians move toward the centre to make up for the heavy Serbian losses.
Lazar is captured. Patriarch Danilo III and other Serbian writers of the time say that he is beheaded. Vuk Branković sees no hope of victory and leaves the field to save as many of his men as he can. Serbian tradition, first written down by Mavro Orbini in 1601, calls this a betrayal of Lazar. Most historians reject the charge.
Some time after Branković leaves, the remaining Serbian and Bosnian troops yield the field. Both armies have lost very heavily, and both rulers are dead. Patriarch Danilo writes that the fighting ended when both sides were exhausted.
Sources
- Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History (1998), 64–65.
- Rade Mihaljčić, The Battle of Kosovo in History and in Popular Tradition (1989), 117, 158.
- John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (1987), 410–414.
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