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Lazar Hrebeljanovic versus Murad I: A smaller but bolder Serbian army under Lazar strikes an Ottoman army under Murad across a stake-implanted ditch. Can Murad rally his young army and win the day or will Lazar’s heavy infantry slash it to pieces? Also known as the Battle of Kossovo, Kosovo Polje and Kosovo Field.
This battle was fought rather unimaginatively by each commander, although Lazar used shock tactics Serbian armies were accustomed to, namely a great cavalry charge backed by heavy infantry. Murad meanwhile did not exactly use nomadic tactics Ottoman armies were accustomed to, namely luring the enemy into a rash attack and then ambushing them when they broke formation. Uyar & Erickson attribute this and the infancy of the units involved as the reasons for the Ottomans’ poor performance (2009: 26). Murad did however allow the Serbians to attack into the teeth of their defensive position, weakening the momentum of their charge, eventually winning through attrition.
I had originally planned on animating the second Battle of Kosovo which took place in 1448 but was overcome by the vast literature on the first battle and its celebrated stature in Serbian history. It is always a welcome challenge to animate a nationalism-charged day of battlefield and be able to confidently show others how my research interprets the battle.
Casualties were impossible to precisely state as usual. Primary sources list casualty figures greater than the strength of the armies present and Sedlar vaguely describes bother armies being “largely annihilated” (1994: 244). It is hard to believe any medieval army could lost more than 50% of its force unless pursued by the enemy, enveloped or fighting a desperate rearguard action which provides at least a limit. Based on how the battle was decided primarily based on attrition, I reckon the Florentine chronicler Mezieres’ conviction that each side suffered equal casualties even if his raw figures are impossibly high (Heath, 1984: 88).
Map of the world: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_map_projections
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