XII
To assure to the Osmanlis their preponderant position in the Balkan peninsula, the possession of three cities was necessary. The capture of Sofia meant the extension of Ottoman sovereignty over Bulgaria to the Danube. Nish was the key to Serbia. Monastir was indispensable, if the Osmanlis intended to be more than raiders west of the Vardar.
In 1380, Murad ordered the advance to the Vardar. Istip was captured, and colonized in the same thorough way as had been done at Drama and Serres. A large army under Timurtash crossed the Vardar, took Monastir by assault through the marshes, and pushed north to Prilep.[372] Monastir and Prilep became frontier fortresses of the empire. The conquest of Macedonia was now complete. These cities were excellent bases of operation against the Albanians to the west and the Epirotes to the south-west.
During the reign of Murad, the Osmanlis did not attempt a subjugation of Albania and Epirus. They were, however, invited into these countries by native princes.
Thomas, despot of Janina, used Ottoman mercenaries against the Souliotes in 1382.[373] Two years later, after the assassination of Thomas, the Albanians besieged Janina with Ottoman aid.[374] The civil war that arose around the widow of Thomas prepared the way for the Osmanlis to extend their rule to the Gulf of Arta.
In 1385, Khaïreddin pasha, who had occupied Okrida, the ancient ecclesiastical seat of the Bulgarians, a day’s journey west of Monastir, was invited by Charles Thopia, lord of Durazzo, to aid him in his war against Balsa, the most powerful Frankish prince of Albania. Khaïreddin was glad of the opportunity afforded by this overture. He crossed the mountains to Elbasan, and then turned southward to meet Balsa. The first battle of the Osmanlis in Albania was fought in the salt-wastes of Savra, on the left bank of the river Devol. The Osmanlis faced fighting men who were fully their equals in courage, in resourcefulness, in strength, and in willingness to engage in a hand-to-hand struggle to death. The issue was long in doubt, and the victory costly. Balsa and his ally and guest, Ivanitch, son of krai Vukasin, were killed.[375] The Osmanlis gained one important result from this battle. Albanian renegades joined their army in great numbers.[376] From that day to this the Albanian element in the Ottoman army, especially among its officers, has been a source of strength which cannot be over-estimated.
It is doubtful if the Osmanlis withdrew from Albania, even temporarily, after the battle of Savra; for in 1388 the princess of Valona (Avlona) was so hard pressed by the Osmanlis that she put her domains under the protection of Venice.[377]
In northern Albania, the invaders captured Croia and Scutari in 1386. Scutari was given back by Murad in exchange for the addition of a member of the ruling family of Zenta to his harem. From Croia, also, the Osmanlis withdrew. Murad did not want to excite and alarm Venice at the moment when Philippe de Mézières was preaching so vigorously and successfully a new crusade.[378]
The plain in which four tributaries join the Isker is the very heart of the Balkan peninsula, almost equidistant from the Adriatic, the Aegaean, and the Black Sea. Here the three great ranges of the West Balkan, the Central Balkan, and the Rhodope Mountains converge, and three important rivers find their source. The Struma flows south through Macedonia, the Isker north-east through a canyon of the Balkans into the Danube, and the Nisava north-west into the Morava. In the middle of the southern border of this plain, under the shadow of a lofty mountain, lies Sofia.
The way to Sofia had been opened by the battle of Samakov. But its occupation was not the next logical step to Murad until the valleys of the Vardar and the Struma had been conquered. The occupation of Sofia was a temptation splendidly resisted in 1371. In 1381 it was a necessity. For it opened the path to trans-Balkan Bulgaria and to Serbia, and Murad was now ready to extend his conquest to the Danube by way of the Isker and the Morava.
The Slavic chronicles are silent concerning the fall of Sofia. From the late Ottoman accounts, it would seem that the city was intermittently besieged for several years. Then a young Osmanli, who had entered the city as refugee, and had become the confidant and falconer of its commandant, betrayed him. He urged his master in a chase some distance in front of his followers, and fell upon him in a mountain gorge. The commandant was bound to his horse, and taken a prisoner to Ishtiman. Indje Balaban, son of the general of Osman who had besieged Brusa for ten years, brought his army from Philippopolis, and paraded the commandant, garrotted, under the walls of Sofia. The Bulgarians, discouraged and despairing of aid, surrendered.[379] We can be certain neither of the name of the Bulgarian commandant nor of the date of the surrender. But it was probably in 1385.[380] Bulgaria up to the main Balkan range was now Ottoman territory.
The fall of Nish, in the summer of 1386, marked the next extension of Murad’s empire.[381] The Serbians did not yield without a struggle, as the Bulgarians had done. Nish was taken by assault. Lazar secured peace only by increasing the amount of his tribute and adding one thousand cavaliers to his contingent in the Ottoman army.[382]
Nish was sixteen days by carriage from Constantinople. Murad was now master of four-fifths of the great Roman highway from Belgrade to the Bosphorus; for Tchorlu, Demotika, Adrianople, Philippopolis, Ishtiman, Sofia, and Nish were in his hands. Nish was also the point where the road from Belgrade to Salonika turned southward. Practically all but the last day’s journey of the road across the Balkan peninsula from Constantinople to Durazzo on the Adriatic was Ottoman territory. In Asia Minor, Murad held the ancient highway from Constantinople to Trebizond as far as Angora, and the road which the pilgrims and Crusaders, Jerusalem-bent, had travelled as far as Ak Sheïr. From Angora to Nish took twenty-five days; from Constantinople to Durazzo seventeen days.[383] Twenty-five years before, when Murad came to the chieftainship of the Osmanlis, the Ottoman dominions could have been traversed in any direction in three days.