The Life of the Holy and Right-Believing Stefan the Tall, Despot of Serbia

straits and invasions of foreigners, until they turned back even my wretched soul from the gates of death, and by their prayers life was granted to me a second time by the Creator and Master of all, until it shall so please in the future my Creator and God, who rules over life and death." Having thus been delivered from danger, Stefan ruled his land in subjection to Bayezid, and that part of his rule was truly stormy and hard. Here is what the biographer Constantine says of it: "After this this proud and haughty sultan (Bayezid) resolved to set out to war against the Ugro-Vlachs (i.e. the Hungarians and Romanians). And rising up with all his armies he came to the Danube (in 1394), and having crossed it he clashed in battles with the great and sovereign Vlach voivode John Mircea, where an untold multitude of blood was shed. Then King Marko (i.e. Prince Marko) and Constantine (Dejanović) perished there. And there in this battle with these lords was found also this Prince Stefan (as a Turkish vassal), of whom we speak. For all these were with the Ishmaelites, if not willingly then of necessity (as Turkish vassals), so that they say of the blessed Marko (Kraljević) that on that occasion he said to Constantine: 'I say and pray the Lord to be a helper to the Christians, even if I should be the first among the dead in this war.'" And so indeed it was, for Marko did in fact perish in the battle of Rovine (which took place on May 17, 1395). Bayezid's army was defeated there and he turned back to the east. From then on he attempted to conquer the strong imperial city of Constantinople, but in this he did not succeed. Then he turned again to the west and clashed with the Hungarian and many another Western army. For the Luxembourg ruler Sigismund, who was also King of Hungary,15 gathered many armies from the west, from Germany, Italy, England and France, and wished first to punish the Serbian army "for having been on the side of the unbelievers," and then to strike at Bayezid's army and overcome and destroy it. Setting out through the northern regions of the Serbian land, this Western "crusader" army slaughtered and killed all before it, even the innocent and peaceful Serbian Christian population in those regions, so that Prince Stefan went out against them, on the side of Bayezid. The clash of Bayezid's army and the Western "crusader" army took place near the city of Nicopolis, in northern Bulgaria, on September 25, 1396. At the beginning it seemed that the Hungarians would defeat Bayezid, but when the Serbian cavalry under the command of Prince Stefan arrived, it "charged straight at the Hungarian royal banner and threw it to the ground," and thus Stefan and Bayezid were victorious and took captive a great number of soldiers and magnates. By Bayezid's order the Turks began to kill these captives, but Stefan begged him to grant him many of the captives as spoils of war, for he wished afterwards to release them to freedom. For among the Greek and Serbian Christian rulers it was the custom that after a victory the captives were set free. The righteous Serbian Prince did so on this occasion too, and he did so many times later as well, for indeed he ransomed foreign captives from the Turks with his own money and set them free. That Stefan at this time, out of wisdom, needed and was obliged to remain submissive to Bayezid is best seen from the following event. In the Kosovo region, after that glorious battle (i.e.