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During the two weeks following the fall of Nish the three commanders of the invading armies began, and continued, a great converging movement on the Kossovo Plain, their object being to completely encircle the main Serbian armies. Kövess was advancing his forces toward Mitrovitza on the north side of the plain from Kralievo up the valley of the Ibar, branching out of the Western Morava.

Then almost the whole people had set out in flight for Monastir, near the Greek frontier, where the Bulgarians had not yet closed in. On its retreat from Kossovo Plain the Serbian army caught up with the rear of this fleeing throng. Winter had set in unusually early that year.

He could give you off-hand the genealogy of each of the families which had, after the defeat of Kossovo, taken refuge in the Bielopolje, the central valley of the principality, from the defeat of Dushan down, and he knew all the traditions of their early history.

Lazar the Serb threw down the gauntlet to Murad. On the memorable field of Kossovo, in 1389, the opposing forces met Murad supported by his Asiatic and European vassals and allies, and Lazar with his formidable army of Serbs, Bosnians, Albanians, Poles, Magyars, and Vlachs.

Few battles in the world have produced such a deep and lasting impression as this battle of Kossovo, in which the Christian nations after long and stubborn resistance were vanquished by the Moslems. The Servians still sing ballads which cast a halo of pathetic romance round their great disaster.

Invasion of Amurath. Battle of Kossovo. Death of Lasar and Amurath. Fall of the Servian Monarchy. General Observations. I cannot present what I have to say on the feudal monarchy of Servia more appropriately than in connexion with the architectural monuments of the period.

And there was not a Serbian boy in those ranks who did not realize what a winter's march through that country would mean. From the fall of Nish, in fact, the Serbians had been fighting with their backs to a wall, and grim and bloody were the struggles between Serb and German in the wild tangle of hills that surrounded the Plain of Kossovo.

In the north-west the Austrians were pressing on from Ushitza down by the Montenegrin frontier towards Mitrovitza, threatening to crush the Serbians on the Kossovo plateau between them and the Bulgars. To save the main Serbian force and keep open a retreat through Albania, a stand had to be made at Katchanik against the Bulgars advancing north from Uskub.

After the overthrow of the great Servian Empire on the field of Kossovo, Montenegro became entirely independent of outside suzerainty, and from the year 1389 to the present day, is the only Balkan state which has successfully defied the invasions of the Turk.

The author here introduces a dissertation on the history, laws, and customs of the ancient monarchy; but as our own business is rather with Servia as it is, than Servia as it was, we shall pass unnoticed the glories of the house of Neman the warlike trophies of Stephan Dushan the Powerful, at whose approach the Greek Emperor trembled within the walls of Constantinople and the tragical fate of Knes Lasar, with whom Servian independence fell on the fatal plain of Kossovo, June 15, 1389.