Medieval Serbian army

The medieval Serbian army was well-known for its strength and was among the top Balkan armies before the Ottoman expansion.

Prior to the 14th century the army consisted of Byzantine-style noble cavalry (Vlastela) armed with bows and lances (replaced with crossbows in the 14th century) and infantry armed with spears, javelins and bows. With the economic growth from mining, mercenary knights from other countries were recruited to finalize and increase the effectiveness of the army. The army fought predominantly from the Balkan mountains.

History

Main article: Serbia in the Middle Ages

Early

Main articles: 9th century in Serbia and 10th century in Serbia

Between 839 and 842 the Bulgarian Khan Presian invaded Serbian territory (Bulgarian–Serbian Wars) although prior to this both peoples lived peacefully as neighbours and shared a common frontier. The cause for that decision was the growing Byzantine influence over the Serbs which was against the interests of Bulgaria. The invasion led to a 3-year war but Presian was unable to make territorial gains. He was heavily defeated and lost many of his men, he was driven out by Vlastimir.

In the mid 850s the Bulgarians under Boris I made another unsuccessful attempt to subdue the Serbs. In the beginning of the 10th century Simeon I launched several campaigns against the Serbs who were acting as Byzantine allies and by 925 he managed to conquer Serbia completely but the Bulgarian rule was short-lived. Samuel of Bulgaria subjected the Serbs for a second time in 998 after he defeated their ruler Jovan Vladimir.

11th century

The Byzantine army led by Emperor Constantine Monomachus was destroyed by the army of Vojislav in 1042/1043 which resulted in brief independence from the Byzantine Empire.

The Serbian states of Rascia and Duklja were united to form a powerful Serbia under Stefan Nemanja's rule, 16 years of war against the Byzantine Empire resulted in full autonomy for Serbia in 1172, although Serbia continued to be an important ally of the Byzantines.

12th century

The writings of John Kinnamos and other contemporary Byzantine sources (Anna Komnene, Niketas Choniates, Eustathios of Thessalonica, Michael of Thessalonica) of the twelfth century, gives substantial data concerning Serbian armament and tactics.^[1]

• As primary weapons of the Serbs, Kinnamos mentions spears and long shields. The terms he uses for these weapons (borata and aspibaz) are the words which, in Kinnamos' writings and contemporary Byzantine sources denote spears and shields in general meaning; so, it is not possible to determinate from Kinnamos the type of spears and shields that were used by Serbs of twelfth century. Michael of Thessalonica attests Serbian usage of spears and shields in twelfth century, also by terms of general meaning. Kinnamos mentions Serbian usage of sword. The term he uses for sword (xifoz) is the word which in his writings denotes sword in general meaning; because of that, it is not possible from this term to determinate the type of sword which was used by Serbs of twelfth century. But, in one of his orations, N. Choniates uses word romfaia to name sword used by Serbs. Since term romfaia in Byzantine sources usually denotes one-edged sword, and since Choniates calls sword in general meaning by word xifoz, it is reasonable to suppose that some Serbs of twelfth century used one-edged sword. Surprisingly Kinnamos doesn't mention Serbian usage of bow and arrows, although Serbian usage of arrows is known from the previous epochs. This circumstance may be attributed to fragmental character of Kinnamos' data concerning foreign nations, or to Kinnamos' impression that arrows don't play vital role in Serbian warfare.^[1]

• Kinnamos doesn't mention armor among Serbs, but, when talking about battle of Tara (1150) he says that Serbs were well armed using word katafraktoz which usually means 'armored'. Presence of armor among Serbs of twelfth century could be attested by Michael of Thessalonica who mentions Serbs using mail face-coverings, and we know that such mail masks were usually integral part of mail hauberks. Kinnamos mentions Serbian 'hoplites' in fortress of Galič; since, in Kinnamos writings, term 'hoplite' denotes heavy armed and armored infantryman, this mention of 'hoplite' could also indicate presence of armor among Serbs of twelfth century. Eustathios of Thessalonica also mentions hoplites in Serbian army.^[1]

• Concerning Serbian tactics, Kinnamos also offers interesting fragments. One part of Serbian army fighting in battle of Tara, Kinnamos shows fighting as infantry. Serbian infantry of twelfth century is attested by Eustathios of Thessalonica, but it is important that Eustathios also mentions Serbian cavalry, led by Nemanja. Describing battle of Tara, Kinnamos shows some parts of Serbian army using ambush and sudden strike. Serbian use of ambush is attested by Eustathios of Thessalonica, who mentions Nemanja's ambushes.^[1]

14th century

Serbian knight

Emperor Dušan’s Serbia, ca. 1350

Serbia defeated the Bulgarian Empire in the Battle of Velbazhd in 1330. Serbia became, briefly, a military superpower during the middle part of the 14th century under the dynamic Stephen Uroš IV Dušan (1331-55), who succeeded in conquering an empire - largely at the expense of the Byzantines - that included Macedonia, Albania, Epirus and Thessaly, reaching from the Drina and Danube rivers as far south and east as the Gulf of Patras and the Rhodope Mountains by 1350. He set his sights on Constantinople itself, dividing his lands into 'Serbia' and 'Romania' and, after 1345, calling himself Emperor (Tsar) of the Greek Lands of Romania; he even modeled his court on that of Constantinople, calling his officials by Byzantine titles such as caesar, despot, sebastokrator and logotet (logothete). However, following his death this empire disintegrated under his successor Stephen Uroš V (1355-71). One Byzantine chronicler noted with evident satisfaction that the Serbian nobility were soon divided into' 1 0,000 factions', while John VI Kantakouzenos wrote that Dušan’s empire fell 'into a thousand pieces'. The principal individual Despotates, as they were called, that resulted from this disintegration were based on Serres, Prilep, Skopje, Trikala, Ioannina, Epirus, Kosovo and Kyustendil (Velbazhd, held by a Bulgarian dynasty). Prilep took pre-eminence in the south, until the defeat and death in 1371 of its despot Vukašin Mrnjavčević (made king and co-ruler of Serbia by Uroš V c. 1365) at the hands of the Turks enabled Stephen Lazar to take control - to a greater or lesser degree - of most of the country, especially after the defeat in 1373 of his most powerful rival, Župan Nikola Altomanović. It was Lazar who led the Serbs in one of their only major victories over the ottomans, in 1387, though he was spectacularly less successful at Kosovo Pole in 1389, which engagement he lost along with his life. His son Stefan Lazarević succeeded him, but as an ottoman vassal acknowledging the suzerainty of the sultan. He reigned until 1427, to be succeeded in turn by his cousin Đurađ Branković, whom the sultan distrusted to the extent that several punitive expeditions were launched against the Despotate, including that which all but liquidated it in 1439. The final conquest of Serbia dates to June 1459, when its last capital, Smederevo, fell to the Turks, upon which its despot went into exile in to Hungary.

Organization

The Serbian army was feudal in nature, though its system of military landholding was inherited from the Byzantine pronoia rather than the Western European fief. The pronoia itself - hereditary by some accounts, non-hereditary by others - is only first recorded in Serbia under that name in 1299 (the Serbs spelt it pronija, or pronya, and called its holder a promjar), but even from as early as Stefan Nemanja reign (1186-96) every able-bodied man possessing a bashtina (a grant of hereditary freehold land, the holder being called a bashtinik or voynici) had been obliged to attend the army whenever required, only monastic tenants being exempted in exchange for performing part-time garrison duties in local fortresses and fortified monasteries. The building and maintenance (gradozadanje) of such fortresses, and equally the maintenance of their permanent garrisons (gradobljudenlje) was an additional aspect of the feudal responsibilities of the population of each Župa (district), who were also responsible for guarding their own frontier. The holders of both bashtinas and pronijas constituted the nobility (though many of the former were only upper-class peasants), and these were the principal native element of every Serbian army, serving as heavy cavalry (the proniiars) and infantry (the voynici), In fact most armies included only the nobility (the vlastelini, or 'holders of power') and their retinues, maintained at their own expense, but in times of emergency the arriere-ban, called the Zamanitchka Voyska ('All Together'), would be summoned. As elsewhere, this comprised all the nobility and every able-bodied freeman.

In border regions all land-grants appear to have been called krayina and their holders vlastele krayishnik ('border lords'), whose duty it was to guard the frontier. The 'Code Dušan' of 1349 (the Zakonik, extended and completed in 1354) actually states that any damage inflicted by an invading army had to be compensated for by the border-lord through whose lands the enemy had entered, another article stating that similar pillaging committed by brigands had to be repaid seven-fold, The Byzantine chronicler Gregoras, as ambassador for Andronikos III to Dušan, encountered some krayishnici (men of a border- lord) on crossing the frontier. He wrote: 'When we passed the Struma River ... and came into thick woods, we were suddenly surrounded by men clad in black woolen garments, who darted forth from behind trees and rocks like devils out of the earth. They wore no heavy armor, being armed only with spears, battle-axes, and bows and arrows.

From the 11th century on the commander-in-chief of the army was the king (kral), a veliki vojevoda or 'high military chief, equivalent to the Byzantine Grand Domestic, being appointed in his absence. However, since any call to arms had to be approved by the Sabor (the National Assembly) the king actually had limited military power, in effect being no more than a glorified Grand Župan, or elected tribal leader. Although Dušan stripped the Sabor of much of its power, the crown's dependence on a permanent nucleus of mercenaries that was not subject to the assembly's whims had by then already evolved, constituting the core of all Serbian armies throughout this period. Under Stephen Uroš II Milutin (1282-1321) these mercenaries included such diverse elements as Cumans; Anatolian Turks (some 1,500 were employed in 1311 from amongst those who had been allied to the Catalans in Thrace and Macedonia); Tartars from South Russia; and Christian Ossetians (Jasi in Serbian and Russian sources) from the Caucasus. However, it was Western European heavy cavalry which soon came to predominate. As early as 1304 a certain Francisco de Salomone is mentioned in an inscription in Trevise as having distinguished himself in the service of 'Orosius, rex Rascie' (i. e. Uroš, king of Serbia). Mercenaries in Stephen Uroš Ill's army that defeated the Bulgarians at Velbazhd in 1330 were 1,500 Aragonese, Spaniards, and Germans, and it was the latter who seem to have predominated during Dušan reign. The papal legate to his court reported seeing 300 German mercenaries there under the knight Palmann Bracht, who held the rank of capitaneus. In addition we know that the Serbian troops supplied to the Byzantine Emperor, John VI Kantakouzenos, in 1342-43 were Germans, and that the troops garrisoning Beroia in Macedonia in 1341-50 were German mercenaries too. Even at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 it is significant that many of Lazar men were German and Hungarian mercenaries according to a Florentine account, while a mid-15th century Ottoman source reports that his army included Wallachians, Hungarians, Bohemians, Albanians, Bulgarians and Franks, doubtless chiefly mercenaries. Another says he employed many mercenaries from among the Serbians themselves as well as the Hungarians, Bosnians and Albanians. Serbian documents indicate that as well as Germans the other predominant European mercenary elements comprised Spaniards (possibly as many as 1,300-strong at one point) plus Hungarians, Frenchmen, Italians and Swiss. One prominent name to appear in their ranks was that of Philippe de Mézières, in later life Chancellor of Cyprus and one of the last protagonists of the Crusade. Inevitably, in the 15th century Ottoman auxiliaries were also used, for example by Vuk Lazarević against Stephen, 1409-13. In addition to the king or despot, the larger cities also employed some mercenaries of their own to back up their militia.

When the Ottoman hold on Serbia weakened after the Battle of Ankara, Stephen Lazarević took advantage of the situation to establish his independence from the Turks. Recognizing the king of Hungary as his overlord he built up a small regular army, on the basis of a newly imposed levy known as the vojstatik, which was stationed in the country's 11 major fortresses as well as several of its small walled towns. This army included many Hungarians and was well-equipped with cannon and handguns; for example, there were 2 cannons in the fort guarding the large silver mine at Srebrnica in 1425, and in Belgrade, Lazarević capital, there was a large bombard (called Humka, meaning 'Knoll') captured from the Bosnians the same year. In 1455 there were as many as 3 large cannon, 5 other guns and 55 handguns in the fort guarding the great silver mine at Novo Brdo.

Field-armies

Serbian armies were composed of lance-armed light and heavy cavalry, plus infantry (armed with spears, axes, and above all bows and, later, crossbows) and a baggage-train (komora) manned by shepherds and cattlemen referred to as Vlachs, probably indicating that they were Pindus Vlachs and Albanians, and perhaps Wallachians too. Most of their armies tended to be small because of the difficulties involved in supplying them in the field, and on the whole they could probably raise only about 12,000 men in the late-Lath century, the army at Kosovo probably numbering at most 20-25,000 men even including allied contingents. The majority were cavalry. The largest Serbian army on record in this period was that raised by Dušan in 1355 for his proposed attack on Constantinople, which numbered 80,000 men according to later Ragusan chronicles. Modern authorities, however, give this figure little credence.

Serbia became an Ottoman tributary after the decisive defeat of Vukašin at Chernomen in 1371, and a vassal state, with her nobility individually swearing loyalty to the sultan as his vassals, as a result of Lazar catastrophic defeat at Kosovo. According to most authorities it was from 1390 on, as a result of this latter humiliation, that the despot of Serbia was obliged to pay an annual tribute of 1,000 lbs of gold and to provide the sultan with a contingent of 1,000 cavalry when called upon. Finlay and Creasy, however, maintained that it was 'the treaty of 1376' that first imposed this obligation, while Gibbons says 1386; certainly there were Serbs as well as Bulgarians and Byzantines in the Ottoman army that fought against the Karamanli Turks in Anatolia in 1387 (the Serbs being promised booty in return for their services), and there were even Serbs, and Greeks too, in Murad's army during the Kosovo campaign, under Constantine Dragaš of Kjustendil and Marko Mrnjavčević of Prilep (though they were not actually involved in the battle - probably Murad did not trust them). Finlay says in one of his books that Sultan Beyazid actually demanded the service of the same number of Serbians as the Byzantines had called for after Manuel's subjugation of Serbia in 1150, i.e. 2,000 to armies serving in Europe and 500 to armies serving in Asia; but in another book he says that the figure was only 'subsequently increased to 2,000 men' when Beyazid was gathering his forces to confront Tamerlane in 1402. Bertrandon de la Brocquière, in his 'Travels' of 1432-33, recorded of the despot of Serbia that 'every time the sultan sends him his orders, he is obliged to furnish him with 800 or 1,000 horse, under the command of his second son.' Elsewhere he adds how he had heard that 'in the most recent army [supplied to the sultan] from Greece, there were 3,000 Serbian horse, which the despot of the province had sent under the command of one of his sons. It was with great regret that these people came to serve him, but they dared not refuse.' (This army was probably that which campaigned against Albania in 1430-31, in which Serbs are known to have been present.) Konstantin Mihailović reports that when the treaty with Serbia was renewed under Mehmed II the obligatory tribute was set at 1,500 lbs of gold and a contingent of 1,500 cavalry.

Amongst the battles in which Serbs fought for their Ottoman masters were Rovine, against the Wallachians and Bulgarians, in 1395; Nikopolis in 1396, where apparently their contingent comprised 5,000 cavalry; and Ankara in 1402, where Doukas says there were 5,000 'encased in black armor' and Chalkokondyles that there were an unlikely 10,000 (though the Ottoman chronicler al-Anwari says that there were 10,000 Serbs and Wallachians altogether). George Branković even supplied an unwilling contingent (of 1,500 horses under the voivode Jaksa Brezicic according to Mihailović) for the final siege of Constantinople in 1453, plus some silver-miners from Novo Brdo whom Sultan Mehmed employed as sappers. In 1473 the army that marched against Uzun Hasan included 'many Christians - Greeks, Albanians and Serbians - in their number.'

Artillery

Serbia had adopted gunpowder artillery from Dubrovnik (Ragusa), where a centre for the manufacture of wrought-iron cannon existed by 1363. (The first gun foundry in the Balkans, casting bronze cannons, was also established at Dubrovnik, in 1410.) Neighboring Bosnia had cannon by 1380, and they were in use in Serbia by 1382-86 at the very latest, probably served and certainly made by Ragusan engineers. In fact Mavro Orbin claims that Despot Lazar used guns against Nikola Altomanović even as early as 1373. Guns were apparently employed in the field by the Serbians as early as 1389 at the Battle of Kosovo, being clearly mentioned in one later Ottoman chronicle (Mehmed Neşrî) and alluded to in a contemporary Serbian source which says that 'fiery explosions thundered, the earth roared greatly, and the air echoed and blew around like dark smoke'; we know too that King Tvrtko of Bosnia (1353-91) brought one gun, a gift of the Italians, with him to the battle. The Serbian contingent in the Ottoman army defeated at Ankara in 1402 also had artillery, but as at Kosovo it failed to affect the outcome, probably for the same reasons on both occasions - i.e. the guns were too small to be effective in order that they might be maneuverable on the battlefield. In siege work trebuchets and ballistae remained in service alongside gunpowder artillery for a long time.

Navy

In addition to her land forces, Serbia occasionally also had a very small fleet, provided by the communes of Dulcigno (modern Ulcinj), Budua (Budva) and Cattaro (Kotor), sometimes by Ragusa (in exchange for a year's tax-exemption), and briefly by Venice (which provided 4 new galleys, the galee domini imperatoris, in 1350, the subsequent fate of which is unknown). King Tvrtko of Bosnia too later constructed his own small fleet, with a Venetian as its admiral, and was similarly given a galley by Venice, this time fitted with a cannon.

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} Drašković, M. 2010, "Serbian armament and tactics in writings of John Kinnamos", Vojno-istorijski glasnik, no. 2, pp. 9-19.

• Ian Heath, Armies of the Middle Ages, Volume 2: The Ottoman Empire, Eastern Europe and the Near East, 1300-1500, Wargames Research Group, 1984.