Battle of Kosovo

On June 15, 1389, an Ottoman army under Sultan Murad I met a Christian coalition led by the Serbian prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic on the field of Kosovo near modern Pristina. Lazar's force included Serbs, Bosnians led by Vlatko Vukovic and others. Both Murad and Lazar died. Murad was killed during or just after the fighting, and Lazar was captured and executed in some accounts, and killed in the fighting in others. Contemporary sources conflict about the course of the battle, and who won tactically is disputed.¹²

The Ottomans, who had taken Adrianople and much of Thrace in the 1360s and defeated the Serbs at the Maritsa in 1371, were pushing north. After Kosovo, Lazar's son Stefan Lazarevic accepted Ottoman overlordship, paying tribute and sending troops, and Serbia became a vassal; its independence ended in 1459 when the Ottomans took Smederevo. The battle grew into the central myth of Serbian national memory. Epic songs told of Lazar choosing a heavenly kingdom over an earthly one, and of Milos Obilic killing the sultan, and the Orthodox Church made Lazar a saint. The date, Vidovdan (St. Vitus Day), became a national day, and the 600th anniversary in 1989 was used in Serbian nationalist politics before the Yugoslav wars.¹³