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The Balkan Peninsula: Part III. The Turks Take Territory

© Carey Goodman

Turkish invaders advanced, and Byzantine authority diminished. Sensing it was trapped in a very tight and uncomfortable corner from which it desperately wanted to escape, the Empire and with it the Balkan Peninsula stumbled into another series of multi-front wars. The Empire battled the Turks, and the Empire battled itself.

The rugged mountainous terrain of the region sometimes aided and sometimes impeded their efforts. Raiding parties sought shelter in deep secluded mountain caves and dense forests. The complex terrain gave the indigenous peoples a clear advantage: They knew the mountain trails, the safest caves, the forest paths, the craggy ravines, and the forbidding slopes of the steep and rocky cliffs that line portions of the coast. Cartography was an undiscovered science; many Turkic soldiers found Eternal Paradise at the end of a Serbian sword or in the depths of a cold, dark, damp cave.

Refusing to surrender without equal challenge, Turkic soldiers relied upon what they regarded as their supreme weapon: Rather than making war against Balkan Slavs, Turks tried to convert their enemies to Islam. These efforts yielded partial success, but conversions were tangibly assured only after Turks captured the territory and mandated belief in Allah.

This process of conquest consumed more than 500 years. Constantinople was besieged several times; Turks mobilized their operations from various bases in the Adriatic and Aegean Seas; portions of Serbia fell long before Constantinople. At the 1389 battle for Kosovo, Serbian defenders lost a strategically vital bit of territory to the Ottoman Turks. Although they later regained Kosovo province, the loss caused Serbs centuries of bitterness and angst.

By 1450 the political situation was as divided as the Balkan Peninsula itself. Ottoman Turks controlled approximately half the peninsula. Alliances with converts to Islam and the long-enduring Bulgar rivals of Byzantine Emperors helped Turks seize many Slavic districts. Areas such as Slovenia and Croatia that lie near the Istrian Peninsula (which includes Italy) sealed alliances with Venetian and Milanese princes and the Habsburg dynasty that governed the Holy Roman Empire. After Constantinople fell to Turks in 1453, the Russian ruler proclaimed his capital at Mosco "the Third Rome" and took the title of Tsar which nearly translates as "Cesar". The symbols and treasures of Constantinople were sent to Moscow, but except the treasures and the title of Tsar, nothing substantive came of the declaration. Moscow never achieved the grandeur of empire that captivated Rome and Constantinople.

As an immediate consequence of the Russian declaration, Eastern Orthodox Slavs found a new cause to unite them. Insurrections erupted in Serbia, but Turks beat them down. Serbs eventually proved formidable albeit inadequate opposition as Turks continued their march towards the gates of Vienna. Turks were the bane of Western European feudalism: The perceived threat of the marauding victors from the east troubled princes and emperors. As distraught and besieged as they were, no strategy of warfare was capable of breaking the Turkish enslaught. To their benefit during the early battles, the armored shields Western legions bore reduced casualty rates. As time progressed, the Christian warriors shed their armor and sustained significant fatalities. The days of fighting with no one slain ended. Tactical formations evolved, and as the armies roamed the mountains and fields, a style of combat emerged that later generations of military historians would regard as total war.