26 September – December 1371
Maritsa, 1371
Despot Jovan Uglješa of Serres seeks allies against the Ottomans. Byzantium and Bulgaria stay out, and only his brother, King Vukašin of Prilep, joins him. In the summer of 1371 Vukašin brings his army from Scutari (Shkodër) in Zeta, and while Murad is in Anatolia the brothers march east toward Edirne.
Despot Jovan Uglješa as a donor of Hilandar, in a painting of 1898 at the monasteryWikimedia Commons, unknown painter, Public domain (Деспот Йоан Углеша.jpg)
Their army camps by the Maritsa near Chernomen (Ormenio), about 30 km west of Edirne. Before dawn on 26 September 1371 Ottoman troops under Lala Şahin and Hacı İlbey fall on the camp, and Vukašin, Uglješa and many of their men are killed or drown in the river. The numbers are uncertain: the Serbian monk Isaiah writes of 60,000 Serbs, while modern historians think the Serbian army was probably under 10,000.
King Vukašin in a fresco of the monastery of Psača, 14th centuryWikimedia Commons, unknown painter, Public domain (King Vukašin, Psača.jpg)
The Ottomans advance into Uglješa’s lands in Macedonia, and Vukašin’s son Marko and other Serbian lords become Ottoman vassals. Tsar Uroš V dies childless in December 1371, the last ruler of the Nemanjić dynasty, and the Serbian lands are divided among regional princes such as Lazar.
Sources
- John V. A. Fine, The Late Medieval Balkans (1987).
- Donald M. Nicol, The Last Centuries of Byzantium, 1261–1453 (2nd ed., 1993).
- Clifford J. Rogers (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Medieval Warfare and Military Technology (2010).
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