Battle of Kosovo (1389): Prince Lazar and Sultan Murad I Fall

The Battle of Kosovo was fought on 15 June 1389, St Vitus’ Day, on the plain of Kosovo Polje near present-day Pristina. A coalition led by the Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic met the army of the Ottoman Sultan Murad I, and by the end of the day both rulers were dead. Though the fighting itself had no clear victor, the battle weakened Serbia decisively and became the central event of Serbian historical memory.

Background: the Ottoman advance into the Balkans

In the second half of the fourteenth century the Ottomans, a Turkish dynasty from north-western Anatolia, crossed into Europe and expanded rapidly. After the death of Tsar Stefan Dusan in 1355, the Serbian Empire he had built broke up into rival lordships. In 1371 the Ottomans destroyed the army of the southern Serbian lords at the Battle of the Maritsa, and much of Macedonia became tributary to the sultan.

Prince Lazar emerged as the strongest ruler of the remaining northern Serbian lands, based around Krusevac. He allied himself with Vuk Brankovic, his son-in-law, who held Kosovo, and with King Tvrtko I of Bosnia. In 1386 the Ottomans took the city of Nis, but Lazar defeated a raiding force at Plocnik, and in 1388 a Bosnian army under Vlatko Vukovic beat another Ottoman force at Bileca. Murad I decided to deal with Serbia in person.

The armies

Murad marched through Macedonia in the spring of 1389 with his sons Bayezid and Yakub. His army combined the sultan’s household troops, including the early Janissaries, with cavalry from Anatolia and the Balkans and contingents from Christian vassals.

Lazar commanded his own troops and those of Vuk Brankovic, while Tvrtko sent a Bosnian force under Vlatko Vukovic. There may also have been smaller groups from Albania, Hungary and elsewhere, though their presence is uncertain. Medieval chroniclers gave huge numbers. Modern historians generally estimate the Ottoman army at roughly 25,000-40,000 men and the coalition at about 15,000-30,000, with the Ottomans almost certainly stronger.

What happened on the field

Detailed, reliable accounts of the fighting do not exist. The earliest sources are brief reports, Serbian religious texts and Ottoman chronicles written in the fifteenth century, which often contradict each other. Ottoman authors, for example, stress Bayezid’s heroism, while Serbian church writers focus on Lazar’s spiritual sacrifice. What follows is the outline most historians accept.

The armies met on the plain north-west of Pristina, a broad valley crossed by the Lab and Sitnica rivers that had long served as a crossroads of Balkan routes. Murad held the centre, with Bayezid commanding one wing and Yakub the other. On the Christian side Lazar took the centre, Vuk Brankovic one wing and Vlatko Vukovic the other. The battle seems to have opened with an exchange of archery, after which the heavily armoured Christian cavalry charged and drove back part of the Ottoman line.

At some point Sultan Murad was killed. The earliest accounts, including a letter from the government of Florence to King Tvrtko written later in 1389, describe twelve Serbian lords cutting their way through to the sultan. Later sources speak of a single nobleman who came to Murad’s tent pretending to defect and stabbed him. Fifteenth-century writers call this man Milos Kobilic, later spelled Obilic, but his identity cannot be proven.

Bayezid took command, rallied the Ottoman forces and counter-attacked. The coalition army was broken, and Lazar was captured and executed together with many Serbian nobles. Several sources say that Bayezid ordered Lazar’s execution. He also had his brother Yakub put to death, securing the throne for himself.

Key people

Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic (c. 1329-1389) ruled the largest of the Serbian successor states from Krusevac. He was a patron of monasteries, including Ravanica, where his body was first buried, and was soon venerated as a saint.

Murad I (reigned c. 1362-1389) greatly expanded Ottoman power in the Balkans and is the only Ottoman sultan to have died on a battlefield. His internal organs are said to have been buried near the site, where his tomb, or turbe, still stands.

Bayezid I (reigned 1389-1402), nicknamed Yildirim, “the Thunderbolt”, turned the outcome of Kosovo into lasting gains and later defeated a western crusade at Nicopolis in 1396.

Vuk Brankovic (died 1397) survived the battle and resisted the Ottomans for several more years. Epic poems later made him the great traitor of Kosovo, a charge with no contemporary support.

An uncertain outcome and its consequences

The first news to reach western Europe presented Kosovo as a Christian victory. Tvrtko of Bosnia reported it as such, and Florence and other states congratulated him. Losses on the Ottoman side were heavy, and Bayezid withdrew to Anatolia to secure his position.

Serbia, however, had lost its ruler and much of its nobility, while the Ottomans could replace their losses. By 1390 Lazar’s widow Milica and their young son Stefan Lazarevic had accepted Ottoman overlordship, paying tribute and providing troops. Stefan would fight for Bayezid at Nicopolis in 1396 and at the Battle of Ankara in 1402. For this reason most historians describe Kosovo as tactically inconclusive but strategically an Ottoman success.

Lazar’s own family adapted to the new order. His daughter Olivera was sent to marry Bayezid, a common way of binding a vassal dynasty to the sultan. Vuk Brankovic held out longer in Kosovo but was eventually forced to submit, and he died in Ottoman captivity in 1397.

Serbia survived as a vassal principality and later as the Serbian Despotate, which enjoyed a revival under Stefan Lazarevic. It was finally annexed by the Ottomans after the fall of Smederevo in 1459. A second Battle of Kosovo, in October 1448, saw the Hungarian regent John Hunyadi defeated on the same plain.

The collapse of Serbian resistance opened the way for Ottoman expansion into Bosnia, Albania and towards Hungary. Within a century, the Ottomans had captured Constantinople and become the dominant power in south-eastern Europe.

Memory and the Kosovo myth

Soon after the battle, Serbian churchmen wrote lives and hymns of Lazar presenting his death as a martyrdom. In this tradition Lazar chose the “heavenly kingdom” over an earthly one, accepting defeat in this world for eternal salvation. Over the following centuries oral epic poetry developed the story further, with heroic figures such as Milos Obilic, the mother of the Jugovici and the traitor Vuk.

Lazar’s body was taken to his monastery of Ravanica. When Serbs fled north during the great migration of 1690, monks carried his relics with them; from 1697 they rested at the monastery of Vrdnik, known as Vrdnik-Ravanica, in the Fruska Gora hills of today’s Vojvodina. In 1989, for the 600th anniversary of the battle, they were returned to Ravanica. On the Ottoman side, a tomb, or turbe, for Murad I was built near the battlefield and was cared for by the same family of custodians for centuries.

This body of tradition, often called the Kosovo myth or Kosovo covenant, became central to Serbian national identity in the nineteenth century. St Vitus’ Day, Vidovdan, which falls on 28 June in the Gregorian calendar, acquired strong symbolic weight: the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 fell on Vidovdan, and the first constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, adopted on the same day in 1921, became known as the Vidovdan Constitution. The Gazimestan memorial tower was erected near the battlefield in 1953, and the 600th anniversary in 1989 was marked by a large gathering there. Kosovo’s later history, including the conflicts of the 1990s, has kept the battle politically sensitive.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Kosovo was a crushing Ottoman victory that ended Serbia at once. Fact: the battle was costly for both sides; Serbia lasted as a vassal state until 1459.
• Myth: Vuk Brankovic betrayed Lazar by leaving the field. Fact: this comes from later epic poetry; contemporary sources do not mention it.
• Myth: the name and deeds of Milos Obilic are fully documented. Fact: the killing of Murad is certain, but the killer’s name appears only in later sources.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1371, 26 September: Ottoman victory at the Maritsa breaks the southern Serbian lords.
• 1386: the Ottomans take Nis; Lazar defeats an Ottoman force at Plocnik.
• 1388, August: Bosnian forces under Vlatko Vukovic defeat the Ottomans at Bileca.
• 1389, 15 June: the Battle of Kosovo; Lazar and Murad I are killed and Bayezid I becomes sultan.
• 1390: Princess Milica and Stefan Lazarevic accept Ottoman overlordship.
• 1448, 17-20 October: the Second Battle of Kosovo ends in defeat for John Hunyadi.
• 1459: the Ottomans take Smederevo, ending the Serbian Despotate.
• 1953: the Gazimestan monument is built near the battlefield.

Why it matters

The Battle of Kosovo marked a turning point in the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans and the end of Serbia as an independent medieval power. Its greater importance lies in memory: few medieval battles have shaped the identity, literature and politics of a nation as deeply.