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Updated: June 1, 2025
The defeat of Vladislav, king of Hungary, and of Hunyady, at Varna , caused by the rash onset of the king upon the janizaries, was succeeded by another Turkish victory at Kosovo, four years later. The city had seven thousand defenders, comprising two thousand Genoese and Venetians, who were commanded by an able man, the Genoese Justiniani.
A great Power, they hoped, was now coming to their Rescue. All were aware that they owed their misery to the Greco-Serb combine. All knew of the martyrs of Fostivar and of Kosovo. I shall never forget the inspired enthusiasm with which one of the headmen of Valona cried, as he raised his hands to heaven: "God is about to avenge the innocent! The Serbs will be punished for their crimes!"
The whole guilt rests with Serbia, for it was she who broke her pledged word and threw down the glove. Kosovo Day was a melancholy spectacle. Nothing is more dolorous than a people forced "to rejoice" by an army of occupation. All shops are shut, and the population summoned to church to celebrate the "freeing" of the land. Once how pleased I should have been. Now I have seen and know too much!
For close upon the heels of the demonstrations and unrest which they evoked, came the dramatic events of the Balkan War, the crushing victories of the allies, the resurrection of the lost Serb Empire, the long-deferred revenge for the defeat of Kosovo.
Look at Dulcigno a purely Albanian town, threatened by the warships of the Great Powers, torn from us by force. How could we resist all Europe? Our people were treated by the invading Serb and Montenegrin with every kind of brutality. And the great Gladstone looked on! Now there is an outcry that the Albanians of Kosovo ill-treat the Slavs. Myself I regret it. But what can they do?
He was an Ipek man, and knew too well what those crimes were. A letter came to me from England from a man versed in military matters, suggesting a line of attack, and urging the Albanians to hasten at once to Kosovo and take the Serbs in the rear, should Austria attack in the front. No official news of any kind or sort came through.
Meanwhile neither Greeks, Bulgars, nor Serbs were allowed any peace by the Turks. In 1389 was fought the great battle of Kosovo Polje, or the Field of Blackbirds, a large plain in Old Serbia, at the southern end of which is Skoplje. At this battle Serbian armies from all the Serb lands, including Bosnia, joined together in defence of their country for the last time.
Their success was once more rapid and astonishing: Salonika passed once and for all into Ottoman hands: the Frank seigneurs and the despots of Greece were alike humbled; and although Murad II failed to crush the Albanian, Skanderbey, he worsted his most dangerous foe, John Hunyadi, with the help of Wallach treachery at the second battle of Kosovo.
But Putin is not Boris Yeltsin, his inebriated predecessor who over-played his hand in opposing NATO's operation in Kosovo in 1999 only to be sidelined, ignored and humiliated in the postwar arrangements. Russia wants a free hand in Chechnya and to be heard on international issues.
That he, too, expected war was evident, for he appointed the military commandant Hussein Riza as Vali. The Albanians of Kosovo again rose in revolt. Ise Boletin again led them. They triumphed everywhere, and this time entered Uskub, where their conduct was admitted to have been exemplary by the Foreign Consuls.
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