[458] Sherefeddin, iii. 256, who is the only contemporary authority, says that Bayezid put him to death. This was one of the charges made by Timur against Bayezid.
[459] The earliest possible date could be 1393. Perhaps the Osmanlis first appeared near Sivas at this time. But Bayezid would hardly have undertaken so long and perilous an expedition before his position was secure in Karamania. Sherefeddin gives the more likely date 1395, while Ibn-Hedjir places the death of Burhaneddin in 1396.
[460] So d’Ohsson fils, vii. 442, says, but gives date 1390. Hammer more correctly puts it in 1391. Xénopol, in his authoritative and carefully documented history, gives a little different account of Mircea’s early relations with Bayezid, and attributes to Mircea a larger influence in the calculations of Murad than he deserves. But the exposition of Mircea’s policy in relation to Poland, Hungary, and the Osmanlis, as given by Xénopol, cannot be overlooked or disregarded by the student of this period.
[461] ‘Pierre Aron fut le premier des hospodars qui paya un tribut aux Turcs’: Costin’s Hist. de la Moldavie, p. 367, in Notices et Extraits, vol. xi.
[462] Phr., I. 13-14, pp. 58-9, and 26, p. 82; Bonfinius, iii. 2; Chron. Anon. de St.-Denis; Chron. of Drechsler; Campana, fol. 8 (but gives date 1393). Leuncl., Annales, p. 51, following Ottoman sources, speaks only of Sigismund’s defeat. This earlier victory and the disastrous retreat are mentioned also in several of the French chronicles which relate the expedition of 1396.
[463] Engel, Gesch. von Ungarn, ii. 368, who draws on all the earlier Hungarian authorities.
[464] Russian source cited by Muralt, vol. ii, No. 10 n.
[465] Cf. Baedeker, Konst. und Kleinasien, 2. Aufl., p. 46.
[466] Jireček, Gesch. der Bulgaren, pp. 347-9, gives Slavic sources for this date, and quotes Camblak’s graphic description of the terrible sacking of the city, the massacre, and the destruction of the churches.
[467] In Czech, the word jazyk signifies language as well as nation (cf. Lützow, Life and Times of Master John Hus, p. 239). This illustrates the Slavic conception of nationality, and explains in a nutshell the Austro-Hungarian and Balkan problems. To the Slav, there can be no other test of nationality. The Bulgarian propaganda in Macedonia, carried on through the church and the schools, has been the resurrection of the nation through the language. The Greeks have used the Orthodox Church to combat and stifle this movement. They claim as Greeks all members of the Orthodox Church, while the Bulgarians claim that Bulgarophones, even if not attached to the exarchate, belong to the Bulgarian nation.