Elegy for Kosovo

I

Never before had rumors of impending war been followed by rumors of peace. Quite the opposite — after hopes for peace, suddenly war would be declared, which was practically routine in the large peninsula.

There were times when the peninsula seemed truly large, with enough space for everyone: for different languages and faiths, for a dozen peoples, states, kingdoms, and principalities — even for three empires, two of which, the Serbian and the Bulgarian, were now in ruins, with the result that the third, the Byzantine Empire, was to its disgrace and that of all Christianity declared a Turkish vassal.

But times changed, and with them the ideas of the local people changed, and the peninsula began to seem quite constricting. This feeling of constriction was spawned more by the ancient memories of the people than by their lands and languages rubbing against each other. In their solitude the people hatched nightmares until one day they felt they could no longer bear it.

This usually happened in the spring, when, along with the whispers of war or peace, there was a feeling of inexplicable tension in the air. In fact, both the good and the bad prophecies never ebbed in the low-lying regions, particularly in the towns. But they tended to become a flood when they mingled with the anxiety of the mountain people. And this happened in the spring, right after the first signs of the snow melting. The explanation was simple enough: the predictions of the city people were based on information and rumors spread by itinerant merchants, consuls’ coachmen, spies, epileptics, and harbor prostitutes, and on the rate of exchange of Venetian ducats in the Durrës banks. Nonetheless, however reliable these sources of information might be, another dimension was necessary to authenticate such rumors, a dimension that was mysterious and intangible — in other words, irrational. This dimension was provided by the mountain people.

For the mountain people, everything from the Cursed Peaks of Albania and Montenegro to ancient Mount Olympus and the Carpathians was linked with snow. Just as the city people imagined a world that was basically flat, the people of the mountain pastures made the opposite mistake; they believed in the supremacy of the mountains. So even if somebody swore a solemn oath that he had seen with his own eyes an army ready for war, the mountain people would look up toward the snows and shake their heads. As long as the cherished snow still lay up there, no army was on the move, no war was about to begin.

In the spring this conviction was shattered, and with the melting snow thoughts changed.

This is what happened in that spring of 1389 when, right after the news that there would be a very special peace, there came other news that there would be war, and that this war would be very special indeed.

II

That spring the world was rife with rumors. No caravan transporting cheeses, no consul passing through could fill the emptiness — it filled itself spontaneously. People had also realized in recent years that where the roads were blocked by snow or plague, the whispers, instead of dying away, became even stronger. The reason seems to have been that the lack of fresh news made people turn to the past. The news of what had gone before, like old clothing, was easier to slip into.

In remote taverns they spoke of the Turks moving their capital from Bursa to Adrianople, as if the event had occurred the day before and not some twenty years earlier. And that the Turkish monarch was moving the capital, some said, in order to shift his empire to Europe. Others either refused to believe this or shook their heads in horror. Can one move an empire as if it were a house? Not to mention: Where would poor Europe find enough space for such a huge empire? The Turk doesn’t give a damn if it fits or not. “Move over!” he says. “Make room for me, or I’ll kick you out!”

Others, who did not want to believe that this calamity could come about, said that if the sultan was moving the capital nearer, it was perhaps so that it would be easier for him to keep an eye on the quarrels of the peninsula’s princes. “To keep an eye on our wrangling?” others objected incredulously. “Our wrangling is so deafening that there is no need to come closer — in fact you can hear it better from afar!”

The discussion about the quarrels of the native princes turned spontaneously to their secret alliances, particularly their bondage to the Turk. Of all the rumors, these were the most unsubstantiated. No sooner did word go around that King Tvrtko of the Bosnians had bowed down to the sultan, than other news came that it wasn’t King Tvrtko, nor Mirçea of Rumania, but Sisman, czar of the Bulgarians, who had knelt before the sultan. “I am not surprised about the Bulgarian czar,” an unknown man said, “but my soul aches when I call to mind Emperor John V!”

“Ah, Byzantium!” others sighed. “Byzantium, my friend! You have sinned and now you must pay the price.”

The news that people were wrangling not only here in this godforsaken part of the world but everywhere, even among the Turks themselves, was a consolation. Everyone was talking about the affair of the two princes, the Turk Cuntuz, son of Sultan Murad, and Andronicus, the heir of John V. While the fathers had formed an alliance and were busy waging war in Asia, the sons were conspiring to overthrow them. The fathers clapped them in irons, and Sultan Murad, in order to reaffirm his friendship with his Christian ally, had his treacherous son punished with the official Byzantine torture — blinding. And, needless to say, the Christian monarch reciprocated with his son.

Talking about the savagery of these two fathers reminded people of their evils and caprices. Many of these monarchs’ actions, which seemed to defy reason, were beyond understanding not because they were inscrutable but because of their inherent madness. The idea of moving the capital, for instance, might well have had a sound motive but was more likely the outcome of one of the sultan’s whims. With an empire of such boundless proportions, such whims were to be expected. Too often the great are permitted what lesser men are not. The Montenegrins might have liked to move their capital, Cetinje, but where would they have put it? Two miles over, and the wretched city would have landed in the talons of the Albanian eagle. The same goes for Skopje, and as for Sofia, God knows where it would have ended up! In Russia, probably, or in the Black Sea!

Twilight fell, and before the taverns closed and everyone wished each other a good night, the conversation turned to the latest piece of news — the Turkish monarch’s change of title. Until recently, he had been called “Emir,” but now he was going to be called “Sultan,” This was definitely a bad sign. The last time there had been a change was on the threshold of a war. Besides which, the title “Emir” sounded tender to all ears — in the languages of the southern Slavs the word mir means peace, while in the language of the Albanians it sounds like i mirë, good man, or e mirë, good woman.

“And yet, did he not slash us all to pieces under that title at the battle of Maricë?” someone asked as he put on a skullcap. “Slashed us to pieces, by God!” said another, scratching his head. “And not only the Serbs and the Hungarians, but also we Albanians who had rushed off to help them, and even the French king, Louis d’Anjou. It is where my lord Count Muzaka fell, may he rest in peace!”

“Sultan.” The people muttered the new title to themselves as if they were trying to fathom its secret.

It was clear as the light of day that the Turkish monarch wished to adopt a new title, just as he had invented new weapons in the last couple of years, just as he had modernized the shape of the yataghan sabers and their curved blades.

In other words, new war, new name, the people said, and put a curse on him then and there: “May he not live to enjoy it!” and “May the title swallow him up!”

III

Ever since the Venetians began using mute couriers, political rumors, particularly those emanating from roadside inns, had fallen off considerably. But as is often the case when greed incites an individual or a state to foolish deeds, the Venetians were not satisfied with simple secrecy but strove to go even further. And since the only courier more secretive than one whose tongue has been cut out is a dead courier, the Venetians’ quest moved in an unexpected direction. Their new couriers were not deaf-mutes and not blind mutes, as one would have expected, but normal couriers with eyes, ears, and tongues — in fact, tongues that wagged far more than usual. In short, the often gloomy and taciturn couriers of the past were replaced by talkative couriers who were eager to sit down for a good chat with any traveler they came across at wayside inns.

It wasn’t all that difficult to guess that they had two types of information: true information, which they guarded carefully, and falsehoods, which they dropped in fragments over the course of an evening by the fireside, as if by a slip of the tongue or from too much drink.

That spring the false news was often enough injurious to the opposition, as was to be expected, but it often also came back to haunt those who had spread it. The road from the Turkish capital to Venice was long, and to carry both truths and lies at the same time was not easy. At times the truth and at times the lies would color each other, adding to the surrounding fog, which was heavy in the month of March.

It was common knowledge that letters were exchanged that had been written in six languages and four different alphabets. But what was written in these letters, the Lord alone knew. “Islam will come face to face with the Christian cross,” the sultan had been said to proclaim in his message. “One or the other will succumb.” But another source maintained the opposite: “There is no need to raise your weapons, my children! On earth as in Heaven, there is room enough for all — for your cross and our crescent.”

Other rumors hinted at newly sealed alliances among the princes of the peninsula, and then, as was to be expected, newer rumors immediately announced their rupture. Envoys of the pope arrived in Durrës from Rome every week. Messengers set out from Belgrade to Walachia. “I am bringing with me my two sons, Yakub çelebi and Bayezid,” the sultan was said to have written in his letter. “Bring your sons as well. Either you will extinguish my line completely, or I shall extinguish yours.” “What about your third son, the one you blinded, Cuntuz? Why will you not bring him too?” “I would love to bring him, upon my Faith! But what am I to do? — Allah has called him to His side.”

It was said that the Albanian princes had allied themselves with Lazar of the Serbs and Tvrtko of the Bosnians. Emperor John V was wavering, and there was still no word from Prince Constantine. Nor from Mirçea of Rumania. As for the other Serb, Marko Kraljevic, all the omens showed that he was preparing for a new betrayal.

“My greetings to you! I hope that we shall come to an agreement!”

“So come, and may you never leave again!”

“I shall come, I shall find you, and I shall cover you with earth!”

“It would be better for all concerned if we could reach an agreement about where we are to meet. Why tire ourselves out by hunting each other down in vain? On the Plains of Nish, or on the Field of the Blackbirds, Kosovo, as you call it.”

“Go to the devil, Sultan Murad!”

IV

The Turkish capital was bustling with preparations. The army’s vanguard had already set out, and the sultan’s younger son, Bayezid, begged his father to take elephants along, but the monarch refused. His other son, Yakub, was expected to arrive any day now with vassals gathered from far and wide. More than forty honey merchants were beaten with sticks in the market square for having tried to cheat during the weighing of the honey destined for the army. “Shame! Shame!” the crowd shouted. To swindle with the honey that will give soldiers strength as they go to battle, and that might very well turn out to be their last meal in this world, was truly an infamy. The royal chief historian was dismissed for having begun his war chronicle with the very same words that he had used some years earlier for the military campaign against the emir of the Karamans: “Our illustrious Grand Sovereign Light of the World, was in his garden harking to the song of the birds when the message came unto him that the infidels were preparing an insurrection.” His rival, who had waited twenty years to supplant him, spent a sleepless week contriving his introduction, which differed only slightly from his predecessor’s: “Our superbly illustrious Grand Sovereign the Light of our Universe, was in his garden harking to the murmuring of the fountains when the message came unto him that the infidels were preparing an insurrection.” He, too, was dismissed, and even beaten with a stick, as were all the other candidates, while everyone waited for a Jewish historian from Erzurum, of whom it was said that he had lost his mind one day but that it had come back and was even more brilliant than before. In the meantime, in his gigantic chamber, Sultan Murad stood before a map of Europe, listening to the explanations of his pasha of the seas: “Europe is like a bad-tempered mule, Grand Sovereign, and these three peninsulas dangling down there are like three little bells. Once we have silenced the first, the Balkan lands, we shall attack the second, Italy, land of the cross and the infidel. And then we shall strike the third bell, the land of the Spaniards, where Islam once reigned but was driven out.“

The peninsula was preparing itself to confront the onslaught with just as much commotion. Weapon forges and taverns stayed open late into the night. Dignitaries tied and untied allegiances. Bellies were eager to be impregnated. The last weddings were held, and, as the war could start at any moment, the procession of the groom’s family coming for the bride would march with banners so that the men would be ready at a moment’s notice to change course if there should be a call to arms.

The minstrels had already begun to compose their songs, each in his own language. They resembled the ancient songs; even the words were not that different. The Serbian elders chanted: “Oh, the Albanians are preparing to attack!” and the Albanian lahuta¹ minstrels sang: “Men, to arms! The pernicious Serb is upon us!“

“Are you out of your minds or are you making fools of us?” the people asked. “The Turks are marching on us, and you are singing the same old songs — The Serbs are attacking, the Albanians are attacking!’” “We know, we know!” the minstrels answered. “But this is where we’ve always turned to find parts for our songs, and this is where we will always turn. These parts are not like those of weapons that change every ten years. Our models need at least a century to adapt!”

In the meantime, the Ottoman army had already set out, and truths and untruths were spawned. But there was something that unsettled the people of the peninsula even more than the approaching army: the word Balkan. Before the Turks even set foot on the peninsula, they baptized it and its people with this name, and this name stuck to them like new scales on the body of an aged reptile. The people were at their wits’ end. They twisted in their sleep as if they were trying to shake off this name, but the result was the opposite — the name clung to them all the more forcefully, as if it wanted to become one with their skin. They now realized that, divided as they had always been, they had never given their peninsula a name. Some had called it “Illyricum,” some “New Byzantium”; others had opted for “Alpania” because of the peninsula’s alps, or “Great Slavonia” because of the Slavs, and so on. Now it was too late to do anything, and so, without a common name but with a name bestowed upon them by the enemy, they marched to battle and defeat.

Footnote

¹ A bowed, single-string northern Albanian instrument with an egg-shaped body and long neck.

V

The imperial Turkish army did not surface in Nish, as had been expected, but headed for the Plains of Kosovo. The Balkan princes rushed there like wild torrents that change their course after a storm. When they arrived, the Turks were already waiting. The Balkan army positioned itself across from them on the side of the plain that the Turks had deliberately left open for them. Tvrtko of the Bosnians was the only king among them, but Prince Lazar of the Serbs was elected commander in chief, as he had the greatest number of troops. To his left were the battalions of Mirçea of Rumania, and to his right the Albanian counts Gjergj Balsha and Demetër Jonima with their soldiers. There were also other battalions, which had arrived over the past few days. Some thought they might be Croat, others Hungarian, but like so much else in this war, no one was certain what they were.

Facing the Balkan army, alongside the Turks and their Asian vassals, were the troops of Prince Constantine and the traitor Marko Kraljevic. Absent — though no one knew why — was John V of Byzantium.

It was late June. The day seemed to last forever, the afternoon even more so. When it seemed that the waiting would never stop, the Turks lit wet straw in front of their tents, creating a wall of smoke. The Balkan troops did the same, each side to shield their opponents from view, showing that they could no longer bear the sight of each other. Or, they wanted to hide something.

When night finally came, it seemed darker because of the long wait. Now that the two sides could no longer see each other, they grew increasingly anxious instead of calming down. Everything their eyes had seen that long afternoon became larger and more frightening: the expanse of the Turkish encampment, the myriad banners of the Balkan troops, the conjectures in the ubiquitous darkness as to where the sultan’s tent might be.

As if to precipitate an answer to this last question, Mirçea of Rumania lit a fire next to his tent. The other princes followed suit, but the sultan’s tent remained steeped in darkness. Nor did the shouts of the Balkan troops provoke a response on the other side. Except for the wailing voices of the muezzins, which the Balkans now heard for the first time and which seemed to them like a deadly lullaby, no sound came from the Turkish camp.

Provoked by this, the Balkan soldiers, who had sworn before their council that they would not drink wine, especially on the eve of the battle, broke their resolve. First the princes, then the other commanders, sent each other gifts of wine, and then, after the exchange of wine, they took their guards and their minstrels, which each had brought from his own land to sing his glory on the morrow, and went to visit their allies in their tents.

They did not hide that they were certain of victory, that they could not wait for the sun to rise; some even wanted to attack before the break of day. A few of the commanders were already busy calculating how many slaves they would each get and at which market they could be sold for the greatest profit — in Venice or Dubrovnik — and all the while the minstrels sang their ancient songs without changing anything, as was their custom. The Serb prince, Lazar, and the Albanian count, Gjergj Balsha, laughed out loud when they heard the Serbian gusla² player — “Rise, O Serbs! The Albanians are taking Kosovo from us!” — and the Albanian lahuta player — “Albanians, to arms! The pernicious Serb is seizing Kosovo!”

“This is how things come to pass in this world,” one of the princes is supposed to have said. “Blood flows one way in life and another way in song, and one never knows which flow is the right one.”

Footnote

2 A Montenegrin bowed string instrument.

VI

Prince Bayezid could not fall asleep. Finally he got up and went outside his tent. From far away the wind brought waves of boisterous din from the Balkan side. “What a horror!” he said to himself and tried to make out in which direction his father’s tent lay.

“You are not tired?” It was the gentle voice of Anastasios, his Greek tutor. Wrapped in a heavy woolen cloak, he sat to the left of the sentries like a tree stump. “Besides the soldiers who are really asleep, there are those tonight who are merely feigning sleep.”

“You think so?” the prince said. “I did manage to catch a few winks; I even had a mad half dream. This cursed clamor seems to have awakened me.”

“Hmm,” his tutor said. “It has come to my attention that the young officers, even some of the viziers, have been somewhat unsettled at the sight of the Balkan troops.”

“That is to be expected.” Bayezid said. “Many of them have never come face to face with a Christian army.”

“Perhaps the order to raise the curtain of smoke was given too late,” the tutor replied.

“Much too late!” the prince said. “To tell you the truth, even though I was fully aware it was only a Christian army, I myself felt somewhat disconcerted.”

“I know what you mean,” Anastasios said. He coughed several times, as if he wanted to give his voice the unwavering resonance of the bygone days when he had recounted ancient tales and legends to the young prince. It was a distinctive way of speaking that flowed with conviction, not allowing for the slightest interruption. “You are unsettled by the wild jumble of their troops, my prince. All those banners and icons and crosses and multicolored emblems, and the trumpets, and the long and resonant names and titles of their dukes and counts, and then the musicians and poets poised to sing the glory of each and every one of them for generations to come. I fully understand you, my prince, especially when you compare that wild jumble to the dusty monotony of our army. I understand you, but let us wait till tomorrow, my prince. Tomorrow you shall see that the real instrument of war is not theirs, but ours — dusty and drab like mud, with a single banner, a single commander, and no emblems or flamboyant poets, no commanders thirsting for glory or sporting long titles, names, and surnames. Obedient, sober, mute, and nameless like mud — that is the army of the future, my prince. The day before we marched off I happened to look through the rosters of our soldiers. The majority were listed only by their forenames — no distinguishing features, not even a surname. More than thirteen hundred Abdullahs, nine hundred Hassans, a thousand or so Ibrahims, and so on. It is these shadows, as they might appear to an onlooker, who will face those strutting Balkans and slash their names, their long peacock-tail titles, and ultimately slash their lives. Mark my words, Prince!”

He went on speaking for quite a long time, and Bayezid, just as when he was a boy, did not interrupt him. The Greek said that the Ottoman army was uniform, that it had an unfathomable face, he said, like that of Allah. The Christians had lost their future ever since they had given a human likeness — Christ — to their God. There were times when the Christians tried to mend their error by melting away his face and transforming it into a cross, but it was too late.

Anastasios sighed. After so many years he had earned the right to show his regret at the defeat of Christianity, his own faith. He wanted to tell the prince that if there was a power in the world that they should be afraid of, it wasn’t foolish Europe but the Mongolian hordes. They were even more nameless, and therefore even more apocalyptic. It would be like being attacked by the wild weeds and thorns of the steppes. But Anastasios said nothing, because he did not want to demoralize the prince on the eve of the battle.

“You must rest now,” he told him, peering at the horizon for the first signs of dawn. “If I am not mistaken, tomorrow — that is to say, today — you will be leading the right flank of the army.”

“That is true,” the prince replied.

The prince turned around and walked to his tent, but before entering it he turned back again and, with a low, timid voice, almost like when all those years ago he had confessed his sin and spoken of his first temptation with a woman, he said to his tutor:

“Anastasios, why. . despite everything, am I entranced by. . their madness?”

His tutor did not answer immediately. He stood for a moment with his head bowed, as if a heavy rock, not a thought, had entered his brain.

“This means that new ideas are being generated in your head,” he said in a muted voice. “But tonight is not the right time. Prince. You must rest at all costs. Tomorrow. .”

He did not manage to finish his sentence, as Bayezid had already slipped into his tent.

VII

The day was coming to an end, and with it came the end of the Balkan troops. Several times fate appeared to smile on them, only to immediately abandon them. They followed all the rules: they had invoked spells, made ancient signs of death, blown trumpets, chanted hymns to Christ and the Virgin Mary, and then sung praises to Prince Lazar and maledictions on Kraljevic the traitor, and then again praises to the other princes, to the Rumanian chiefs, the counts, and King Tvrtko, and curses on those who pretended to be more heroic than they. Finally, when they saw that all this was of no avail, they began to cheer on holy Serbia, glorious Walachia, Bosnia the immortal, Albania begot by an eagle, and so on, but it was too late for all of this, too. The Turks facing them, who had never seen anything like this before, charged, shouting only the name of Allah, in the simple conviction that they had come here to take this evil region, which was a blot, a scandal on the face of the earth, and bring it back to the right path; in other words, to make it an Islamic region.

In the boundless confusion, it was the Balkan troops who faltered. One after the other, banners with their crosses, lions, one-headed and two-headed eagles fell, and finally the banners with white lilies fell, as if they had fallen on a graveyard. Torrents of Christian and Turkish blood mingled more forcefully than they would have in a thousand years of intermarriage.

In the twilight, when victory was certain, Sultan Murad decided to rest a while. He had not slept for such a long time that even the taste of victory was as acrid as a bitter potion.

Outside, cheers of triumph came from afar.

“I shall doze a little,” the monarch said, and when the viziers told him that his soldiers wanted to see him, even just for a moment, he cut them short. “Send them my double.”

They gazed at their sovereign with flashing feverish eyes, not like his eyes, which were hazy from lack of rest.

The sultan immediately fell asleep. He had a dream in which an officer or a cook who had been dead for some time was complaining to him about something.

“I don’t understand what you are saying,” the sultan said. “You are dead, dead and gone, it’s all over and done with!”

“I am not asking you for anything important, no,” the man answered. “It’s just the wound that I have, bad and crooked as it is — how am I supposed to bear it throughout death? I wanted to fix it, but you didn’t take me along with you to the Plains of Kosovo.”

The sultan wanted to tell him, “What strange ideas, my dear fellow!” But the man continued, “Be that as it may, the best have died. They have also killed your double. Be careful, my lord!”

He spoke the last words in a different voice. The sultan opened his eyes. He heard the words again, but this time not from the dead man but from his viziers.

“Your double has been killed. Grand Sovereign. A Balkan infidel. . hurled himself on him. . onto his horse, like a wild cat.”

The sultan shook his head to wake up. It was true, there they were, dragging the body of his double to the entrance of the tent. He was wearing the sultan’s heavy wool cloak, his plumes and emblems, and right in the center, the dagger planted in his heart.

The sultan looked at him, taken aback for a moment. “My death,” he thought, “but outside myself.” He raised his eyes and looked at his viziers, amazed that they did not congratulate him on his escape. He wanted to ask them: “Why are you standing there like that? Are you so distraught at the death of my double?” And he looked back down at the corpse. He remembered an ancient proverb that when the oak tree falls its shadow falls with it, and he wasn’t sure whether the proverb had conjured itself up in his memory or if he had just heard one of his viziers say it. For a split second he thought that the officer or cook was reappearing in the drowsiness that was once more overpowering him, Before he lost consciousness, he heard the grand vizier speak: “Bring his son, Prince Yakub! Tell him that his illustrious father wishes to see him.” He struggled to open his mouth, and with his entire strength and with all his impatient fury and rage wanted to howl, “Why Yakub? Why my eldest son?”

REPORT OF THE SECRET ENVOY TO THE

PLAINS OF KOSOVO.

TO BE PLACED SOLELY IN THE HANDS OF

HIS HOLINESS THE POPE.

As you will already have been informed, the Battle of Kosovo Is over. Charles VI of France was in too much of a hurry to sing the victory Te Deum in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The defeat of our Christian allies was total. Within ten hours the Balkan wall fell, and Christianity has been left open to the wrath of the Ottomans.

The greatest defeat was suffered by the Serbs. Their Prince Lazar and his sons were taken captive. The other allies, the king of Bosnia, the Walachian lord, the Albanian counts, and the Hungarian and Croat boyars were completely routed.

It seemed as if fate wanted to offer a consolation to the defeated by murdering Sultan Murad I, but Heaven’s intervention came far too late. All it did was make the river of blood flow more strongly. Before the sultan’s martyred body they held a kurban — that is what they call sacrifices — the like of which has never before been seen. They slaughtered thousands of prisoners like cattle, among them Prince Lazar of the Serbs with his sons and dozens of other boyars.

Yakub Çelebi, the sultan’s oldest son, was also killed, and his younger brother Bayezid was declared sultan.

A great enigma is connected with the Turkish sultan’s death. It arose right after the murder, even before night had fallen. There are two versions of how he was killed. In the first, he died in his tent during the last moments of the battle, struck by a Balkan dagger. In the second, he was killed after the battle, while he was on horseback surveying the bloody battlefield, again struck by a Balkan dagger. Both versions are quite suspect. The first, the one with the tent, is extremely implausible; anyone with even a perfunctory knowledge of Turkish customs would be aware that no one could possibly approach the sultan’s tent, especially not during battle. As for the second version, in which he was murdered as he rode his horse — this is no less suspect. First, how could a Balkan soldier lying among the dead get up and approach the sultan, who was on horseback, surrounded, as everyone is aware, by a great number of guards? Another even more difficult question is how the killer could have leaped up from the ground with lightning speed, reached the sultan’s horse, and with the single stab of a dagger manage to strike the sultan’s heart or throat, when it is obvious that even the simplest breastplate, let alone the breastplate of a sultan, would have made that impossible. But all the aforementioned suspicions are dwarfed by a much graver question. In that blood-drenched twilight, right after the death of the sultan, the viziers convened to avert a struggle for power between the two princes and cold-bloodedly killed one of them. The following question remains: Why did they kill the sultan’s older son, Yakub Çelebi, his legal heir, and not his younger son, Bayezid?

All the evidence points to the fact that the Turkish sultan was probably not killed by the Balkans but by his own people under mysterious circumstances, possibly as the result of a secret conspiracy that had been hatched some time previously. This seems to have resulted from two factions that had recently surfaced in the palace: one faction insisting that the empire center itself in Asia, the other that it expand westward. Since, according to facts already verified, Prince Yakub, like his father, supported the Asian faction, both his murder and that of his father point to political intrigue. From this standpoint, the assassination of the sultan and the heir apparent has been to our disadvantage, because it has opened the way for Ottoman aggression against us.

SUPPLEMENT TO THE REPORT

The above statement is further validated by the symbolism behind the sultan’s partial interment on the Plains of Kosovo. The bizarre decision that the monarch’s body be taken to the Ottoman capital but that his blood and intestines should be buried in the Christian soil of Kosovo has a clear significance. As is commonly known, the ancient Balkan people believed that everything linked with blood is eternal, imperishable, and guarded by fate. The Turks, who had at that point interacted with the Balkan people for over half a century, had apparently assimilated some of this symbolism. By pouring the monarch’s blood on the Plains of Kosovo, they wanted to give that plain, just as they had done with the invasion, a direction, a fatality, both a curse and blessing at the same time; in other words, a “program,” as one would call it today.