A diminished Serbian principality lingered on for another seventy years. Bayezid recognised the late ruler’s eldest son, Stephen Lazarevich, with the title of “Prince” (exchanged in 1404 for that of “Despot,” thenceforth borne by the Serbian princes) on condition that he paid tribute and came every year with a contingent to join the Turkish troops, and gave him the hand of his youngest sister; while Vuk Brankovich received the reward of his treachery by holding the old capital of Prishtina as a vassal of the Sultan. For a time the Turkish defeat at Angora by the Tartars in 1402 enabled the Serbian Despot to play off one Turkish pretender against another, while he purchased domestic peace by making Brankovich’s son George his heir. Thus he could devote himself to organising his country and patronising literature in the person of Constantine “the Philosopher,” who repaid his hospitality by writing his biography. He appointed a species of Cabinet, with which he discussed affairs of state, founded the monastery of Manassia, obtained Belgrade by diplomacy from the Hungarians, fortified it and adorned it with churches. In his time Venice began her colonies in Albania and what is now Montenegro—at Durazzo in 1392, Alessio in 1393, Drivasto and Scutari in 1396, Antivari and Dulcigno in 1421 (the former, however, not definitely till 1444), while in 1420 Cattaro placed herself under the protection of the Lion of St Mark, then master of most of the Dalmatian coast, save where the Ragusan Republic formed an enclave in his territory.
Serbia under George Brankovich, who succeeded as “Despot” in 1427, was thus practically a Danubian principality. The new Despot, a man of sixty years, was an experienced diplomatist; but there are times in the Balkans when force is more valuable than the subtlest diplomacy. A warlike Sultan, in the person of Murad II, sat on the Turkish throne; and he soon showed his intentions by demanding the whole of Serbia, and invading that country. Brankovich had to move his capital from Krushevatz to the bank of the Danube, where at Semendria he built the fine castle with the red brick cross in its walls which is still a memorial of Serbia’s past, while in order to secure himself an eventual refuge in Hungary, he handed over Belgrade to the Hungarian monarch, notwithstanding the protests and tears of its citizens. Brankovich in vain tried to purchase peace by giving his daughter with a regal outfit to the Sultan. Ere long, however, the Sultan, incited by a fanatic who accused him of sinning against Allah by allowing the Serbian unbeliever to bar the way to Hungary and Italy, demanded the surrender of Semendria. Brankovich fled to Hungary, thence to his last maritime possessions of Antivari and Budua, and thence to Ragusa; but the victories of John Hunyady, “the white knight of Wallachia,” induced Murad in 1444 to restore to the Despot the whole of Serbia, on payment of half its annual revenue.
Brankovich by his “enlightened egoism” managed to maintain a precarious autonomy till after the capture of Constantinople (1453). Then, Mohammed II resolved to end what remained of Serbian independence, and to capture the famous silver mines of Novo Brdo, which, as his biographer, Kritoboulos, remarked, had not only largely contributed to the splendour of the Serbian Empire, but had also aroused the covetousness of its enemies. Indeed, the picture which the Imbrian writer draws of Serbia on the eve of the Turkish conquest is almost idyllic, with her “cities many and fair,” her “strong forts on the Danube,” her “productive soil, swine and cattle, and abundant breed of goodly steeds.” But the flower of the Serbian youth had been drafted into the corps of Janissaries to fight against their fellow-Christians, the prince was a man of ninety and a fugitive, while Mohammed, like the Germans of to-day, had marvellous artillery. Still Belgrade, then a Hungarian fortress, resisted, thanks to the skill of Hunyady and the fiery eloquence of the Franciscan Capistrano. But the nonagenarian Despot was wounded in a quarrel with the Hungarian governor, and on Christmas-eve, 1456, died. Of his sons the two elder had been blinded by the late Sultan, so that his third son, Lazar III, succeeded him. His speedy death resulted, at this eleventh hour of Serbian history, in the union of both Serbia and Bosnia by the marriage of one of his daughters with the Bosnian Crown Prince, Stephen Tomashevich—an arrangement which even Dushan, in all his glory, had never achieved. The Bosnian Despot of Serbia took up his abode at Semendria; but the inhabitants, regarding their new master with disfavour, as a Catholic and a Hungarian nominee, opened their gates to the Turks; before the summer of 1459 was over, all Serbia had become a Turkish pashalik, except Belgrade, which remained a Hungarian fortress till 1521. Four years after the fall of Serbia her last Despot, then King of Bosnia, was beheaded at Jajce, and his kingdom annexed by the Turks. Twenty years after Bosnia, the Duchy of St Sava, the modern Herzegovina, met with the same fate.
Thus the history of mediæval Serbia was closed. But members of the Brankovich family continued to bear the title of Despot in their Hungarian exile, whither many of their adherents had followed them, till the extinction of their house two centuries ago; the Serbian Patriarchate, abolished in 1459, but revived by the Turks in 1557, existed till 1767; but from the time of Mohammed II to that of Black George in 1804, when Danubian Serbia rose from her long enslavement, the noblest representatives of the Serbs maintained their freedom in the Republics of Ragusa, “the South Slavonic Athens,” and Poljitza, “the South Slavonic San Marino,” and among the barren rocks of free Montenegro.
AUTHORITIES
1. Geschichte der Serben. Von Constantin Jireček, Erster Band (Bis 1371); Zweiter Band, erste Hälfte (1371-1537). Gotha: Perthes, 1911, 1918.
2. Serbes, Croates et Bulgares. Par Louis Leger. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1913.
3. Les problèmes serbes. Par Stojan Novakovich. In Archiv für slavische Philologie, Bände XXXIII.-IV. Berlin, 1912.
4. Listine. By S. Ljubich. In Monumenta spectantia historiam Slavorum Meridionalium. Eleven vols. Agram, 1868-93.