Life World Library
"THE BALKANS"
Time Life books, by Edmund Stillman and the Editors of LIFE
First edition 1964, Revised 1967
Chapter 3: "Conquest, Anarchy and War"
Pages 43 - 47 (quote):
If any single factor made the
Balkans what they were in history - and what they still are today - it
was the ordeal of the Turk. But just what the 500 years of Turkish occupation
meant to the Balkans is no easy matter to define. The image
of the Turk has undergone radical transformation three times in modern
history. For us in the mid-20th Century, the image of Turkey is that of
a staunch ally of the West against the Soviets and of a modern state which
is the legacy of Mustafa Kemal, the first and in some degree the most ambitious
of the modernizers of the Islamic tradition. But that is an image that
dates only from the years after World War I and World War II. For the 18th
and 19th Centuries, the image of Turkey
was that of a rotting empire, of a corrupt, incompetent and SADISTIC national
elite PREYING ON THE SUBJECT BALKAN PEOPLES - of a cynical government whose
very METHOD OF RULE WAS ATROCITY. And for still earlier times
the image of the Turk was one of power - stark inexorable and menacing
to Europe. For as Martin Luther said in the 16th Century, "The Turks
are the people of WRATH OF GOD."...
The effect on the Balkans of the Turkish occupation in the years
of Ottoman power, stability and glory was one thing, but in the long years
of decay and humiliation it was quite another. This is the story we must
now briefly trace.
Because both [Serbian Tzar] Lazar, the leader of the Balkan confederation,
and Murat, the Sultan of the Turks, had died when the Balkan forces were
defeated at KOSOVO in 1389, there was some years afterwards uncertainty
in Europe about the significance of the battle. Church
bells, so the story goes, were rung in Paris in rejoicing the defeat of
the "seed of Ismael," as the Turks were known. But the
reality was the reverse. The power of the Balkan Christian states declined
steadily after 1389; the power of the Turks grew. In 1453 they seized Constantinople
from Constantine XI, last of the weakened Byzantine emperors. Soon they
were threatening Western Europe as well: In 1480 Turkish troops seized
Otranto in southern Italy, and in 1499 patrols raided the outskirts of
Venice and Vicenza. In 1526 the Turkish armies destroyed the power of the
Hungarian state occupying all but the west most strip of the country, which
sought the protection of Austria, and three years later they besieged the
great city of Vienna itself.
The Turkish achievement in those years was not merely a military
one. Whatever the glory of the medieval Balkan principalities may have
been before THE TRAGEDY OF KOSOVO,
conditions of order had already begun to break down in the Balkans before
the Turks ever came...
The coming of the Turks, for the savagery of the onslaught, was not
an unmitigated tragedy. In the first centuries of Turkish rule, conditions
of public order markedly improved...
The truth is that the Turks were largely indifferent in the matters
of religion, although, fearing that the religions of their subjects might
serve as focal points of resistance, they forbade
the building of all but the meanest churches, and likewise outlawed the
ringing of church bells.
What was damaging to the Balkan
people was something else: They had been stripped of pride and freedom...
While any subject boy could aspire to the highest rank in the Turkish Empire,
he had to convert to Islam to do so...
As for... Bogumils, many of them found in the austere religion of
Koran striking parallels to their own creed... They swung their allegiance
to the Turks in 1463 and opened the gates of Bosnia. (It is from this act
of apostasy that the vast majority of Moslems in the western Balkans derive.
They are linguistically and racially akin to their Christian neighbors,
rather to the Turks.)
...When the security of the Ottoman
state demanded, there were FORCED CONVERSIONS. Every four years the most
vigorous boys were [stolen from their parents] taken from the towns and
villages, willingly or not, to be trained as Janissaries
(a word from Turkish yeni cheri, or new troops). Thus even in the years
of order, the Turkish conquest was a harsh experience...
What was uniform to all [conquered Christian lands] was the experience
of alien overlordship and legacy of violence as the cohesion and power
of the Empire declined. When the Empire passed its apex of power in the
17t and 18th Centuries, the conditions of the subject peoples took a CATASTROPHIC
TURN FOR THE WORSE... It was in these later years that the proverb came
into vogue: "Where the Turk trod, no grass grows."...
...In central Macedonia, Serbia and the Sanjak, the situation was
not much different. There the brigands took to the hills and forests, carrying
on an outlaw life of rebellion...
...In the years of the Ottoman decline, the effects on the Balkans
were very largely negative. There were few positive effects, except for
the formation of certain features of the Balkan character
which have earned nearly universal admiration - PRIDE IN SELF, COURAGE
IN WAR, contempt for the suffering flesh, an unbreakable sense of community
and generosity to friends...
In 1804 the Serbian highlanders, under the leadership of... one Karageorge,
rose against the forces of the local Turkish dahis... He quickly passed
to the leadership of a NATIONAL UPRISING ON A HEROIC SCALE. Savage Turkish
repression achieved little. At Nis in south-eastern Serbia the Turks beheaded
the troops of a local chieftan and built a TOWER
OF HUMAN [SERB] SKULLS, but the rebellion dragged on.
Karageorge fled in 1813 to Austria, but in 1815 his rival, Milos
Obrenovic, led a new revolt, one that this time succeeded. The repercussions
of this victory were felt everywhere in the moribund Turkish Empire. The
Greeks rebelled in 1821; by 1829 they had won effective independence...
The autonomy of Serbia was proclaimed in 1830...
Since the battle of Kosovo the Serbs have motto:
"Only Unity Can Save the Serbs"
It was disunity that made the great Serbian Christian civilization
collapse under Turkish onslaught.
Ferdinand Schevill: "A History of the Balkans"
Barnes & Noble Books
Edition 1995 ISBN 0-88029-697-6
The book was originally published under title "History of the Balkan
Peninsula"
Page 184
Subtitle: The coming of the Ottoman Turks
Murad I (1359-1389) conquers Thrace and turns to the interior of
Balkania
(Murad I) Contending himself with forcing the (Byzantine) Emperor
John V. to acknowledge his possession of Thrace, he turned his back on
Constantinople and set his face to the interior. Here, he was aware, was
the ONLY ORGANIZED POWER WHICH HE NEED FEAR, THE
STATE OF SERBIA. True, Serbia was rapidly falling apart, owing to
the selfish policy of its feudal magnates, whom the great (Serbian tsar)
Dushan's irresolute successor did not know how to curb, but Murad needed
evidence of Serb dissolution which nothing save a test of strength could
give. In 1363 Ottoman and Serb had their first serious clash on the Maritsa
river and Murad learned from his victory that Serb vigor, though still
a fact, was patently ebbing...
(End quote)
As we see here and from other literature, the Sebs were not immediately
united in fighting the Turks. Only South-East most Serbs met the Turks
at Maritsa and thus were defeated.
The same source, page 186 (Quote):
Murad conquers parts of Bulgaria and Macedonia and reaches out toward the
heart of Serbia:
(Murad's) immediate goal was the Maritza valley, a possession of
Bulgaria. This ailing state put up no better fight against him than Constantinople
had done, with the result that before long the fertile territory between
the Rhodope and Balkan ranges was in Murad's hands. Like his Byzantine
contemporary the Bulgar ruler was glad to purchase a precarious peace by
becoming Murad's vassal. Next, the
Ottoman emir turned to MACEDONIA, A SERB PROVINCE since Stephen Dushan's
day. The tsar's GREAT EMPIRE was now a hopeless wreck. the
southern sections had definitely detached themselves from obedience of
his son, Stephen Urosh, and everywhere feudal lords, aspiring to independence,
raised a disloyal head. Pressing boldly forward, Murad seized area after
area until by a second victory won on Maritsa, some twenty miles west of
Andrianople, he completely broke the resistance of the southern Serb lords
(1371). A few months after this disaster the wretched Serb tsar died and
with him the house of Nemania...
Certainly by 1386, perhaps before, (the Turks) were firmly planted
at Nish and thus held Serbia from two sides as in vise. IN
LIGHT OF ALL THAT HAPPENED SINCE MURAD'S ARRIVAL IN EUROPE, IT LOOKED AS
IF SERBIA WOULD GO DOWN BEFORE OTTOMAN PROWESS AS WEAKLY AND DISGRACEFULLY
AS THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE AND BULGARIA.
IT IS MEDIEVAL SERBIA'S TITLE
TO DISTINCTION THAT SHE REFUSED TO PERISH WITHOUT A BLOW STRUCK IN HER
OWN DEFENSE. Murad, master by this time of perhaps two-thirds
of the peninsula, had been immensely helped in his victorious advance by
the irreconcilable divisions among the Christian princes. Each stood aloof
from the other or even looked on with malicious glee as his neighbor drained
the cup of defeat. But now the alarm, spread by the startling Ottoman successes,
was such that THE FIRST TIME something akin to BALKAN UNITY WAS BROUGHT
ABOUT.
IT WAS SERBIA, AFTER ALL THE
SOUNDEST OF THE DECAYING BALKAN STATES, THAT FOUND A HEART AND SENT ITS
WORD OF CHEER AND FRIENDSHIP TO THE OTHER PEOPLES. The most
powerful and martial of the GREAT SERB LORDS, LAZAR by name, made himself
the spokesmen of his nation. WITH SOMETHING OF THE CRUSADER'S UPLIFTED
SPIRIT HE RALLIED HIS PEOPLE ABOUT HIM, while the princes of Bosnia and
Wallachia and some of the tribal chiefs of Albania sent contingents to
swell the numbers of his army. It was indeed a great host of Balkan Christians,
but not even now, in the hour of the supreme strugle, a united Balkania
which confronted the invader. Murad, making ready to meet the storm gathering
in the west, found helpers among the lesser Serb and Bulgar lords, mostly,
it is true, constrained to this service by a cruel master who held them
at his mercy.
In the great interior plain of
Kossovo, set like an amphitheater among the mountains, on June 28, 1389,
THE HOSTS OF CROSS AND CRESCENT MET TO DECIDE THE FATE OF THE PENINSULA.
The facts in regard to the battle of Kossovo have been so obscured
by the legend-loving spirit of the South Slavs that the actual course of
the struggle will probably never be made clear. A hundred song sprang in
later years, each new singer taking pride in contributing a fresh detail
to the already rich embellishments of his predecessors. We hear of heroism,
treasons, murders, making a national epic of magnificent proportions on
which, as a spiritual manna, Serb patriotism has for centuries kept itself
alive... And yet, whatever happened on that memorable field, the final
upshot is like an open book: Lazar, the Serb champion, perished, the rout
of the Christians was complete, and Serbia was stretched prostrate at the
feet of the conqueror. That Murad too, died on that fateful day was hailed
with satisfaction by the Serbs but proved no mitigation of their lot. True,
Bayezid, Murad's son and successor, did not at once destroy the Serb state,
root and branch. He was content with the formal submission of the country
under a native ruler whom he put in office, but the
Serbs themselves, undeceived by this act of grace, mournfully
HAILED KOSSOVO AS THE GRAVE OF THEIR LIBERTY.
(End quote)
As this is only page 188 out of 533 page book, Professor Schevill,
followed the Kosovo debacle with many pages of the Serbian struggle, heroism
and glory as the Serbs endured the occupation of the brutal enemy and,
at the end, lead for total liberation of the peninsula.
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