14–15 June 1389
The armies on Kosovo field
The battle is fought on 15 June 1389 on Kosovo field, about 5 km northwest of Priština, on the plain between the rivers Lab and Sitnica in the land of Vuk Branković. The accounts of it are few and late. The letters written in the months after the battle say little about the fighting, and the first detailed Ottoman account, by Neşri, dates from the early 16th century. The positions and the course of the battle are reconstructions, and the Serbian and Ottoman accounts differ.
The battle of Kosovo in the Illustrated Chronicle of Ivan the Terrible, Moscow, 1560s–1570sWikimedia Commons, unknown Russian illuminators, Public domain (Facial Chronicle - b.10, p.302 - Battle of Kosovo (1389).jpg)
Estimates of the Ottoman army range from 27,000 to 40,000 men, and of Lazar’s coalition from 12,000 to 30,000. Murad has no more than 2,000 janissaries, troops from the European provinces and from Anatolia, and the contingents of his Christian vassals, probably among them King Marko and Konstantin Dragaš. Greek, Genoese and Albanian soldiers may also fight on the Ottoman side.
Lazar’s army is mostly his own troops from Moravian Serbia, with Vuk Branković’s men and the Bosnians under Vlatko Vuković. The Albanian lord Teodor II Muzaka fights and dies on Lazar’s side, and a Hungarian contingent sent by Lazar’s son-in-law Nicholas Garai probably joins as well. Some accounts add Croatians, Vlachs and Bulgarians.
The Gazimestan monument on Kosovo field, built in 1953Wikimedia Commons, Jan Pešula, CC0 (Gazimestan monument.JPG)
Sources
- Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History (1998), 62–64.
- Thomas A. Emmert, Serbian Golgotha: Kosovo, 1389 (1990).
- Thomas A. Emmert, “The Battle of Kosovo: Early Reports of Victory and Defeat”, in Kosovo: Legacy of a Medieval Battle (1991).
- John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (1987), 409–411.
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