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The Serbian Despotate (Serbian: Српска деспотовина / Srpska despotovina) was a medieval Serbian state in the first half of the 15th century. Although the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 is mistakenly considered the end of medieval Serbia, the Despotate, a successor of the Serbian Empire and Moravian Serbia, lasted for another 70 years, experiencing a cultural, economic, and political renaissance, especially during the reign of Despot Stefan Lazarević. After the death of Despot Đurađ Branković in 1456, the Despotate continued to exist for another three years before it finally fell under Ottoman rule in 1459.
After 1459, political traditions of the Serbian Despotate continued to exist in exile, in the medieval Kingdom of Hungary, with several titular despots of Serbia, who were appointed by kings of Hungary. The last titular Despot of Serbia was Pavle Bakić, who fell in the Battle of Gorjani in 1537.
After Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović was killed in the Battle of Kosovo on June 28, 1389, his young son Stefan Lazarević succeeded him. Stefan's mother, Princess Milica, ruled as his regent until he reached adulthood. A wise and diplomatic woman, she managed to allay the Ottoman threat by marrying her daughter, Olivera, to Sultan Bayezid I.
After the Battle of Kosovo, in 1390 or 1391, Serbia became a vassal Ottoman state, and Stefan Lazarević was obligated to support the Ottoman Empire in battle. He did so in the 1395 Battle of Rovine against the Wallachian prince Mircea I and the 1396 Battle of Nicopolis against the Hungarian king Sigismund. Sultan Bayezid awarded Stefan with the majority of Vuk Branković's lands, as Branković sided with the Hungarian king at Nicopolis.
When Timur's army entered the Ottoman realm, Stefan Lazarević participated in the 1402 Battle of Ankara, in which the Ottomans were defeated and their leader, Bayezid, was captured. Returning to Serbia, Stefan visited Constantinople where the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos granted him the title of despot. In previous years, this title would mean that the despot would rule some vassal state; however, as the Byzantine Empire was too weak to assert such a rule, Stefan Lazarević adopted the title as monarchical.
While in Constantinople, Stefan argued with his brother Vuk Lazarević. As they were returning to Serbia from Constantinople, Stefan's armies attacked Vuk at Tripolje near the Gračanica monastery. Stefan's army was victorious and Vuk allied himself with the new Ottoman sultan Suleyman (I) Çelebi.
In 1404, concerned about unrest in the Ottoman Empire (Ottoman Interregnum), Stefan allied with Hungarian king Sigismund, who awarded him with Belgrade, the Mačva region, and the fort of Golubac. Stefan made Belgrade his capital city. He made peace with his brother Vuk, who remained an Ottoman vassal.
In 1405, he married Caterina Gattilusio, daughter of Francesco II Gattilusio, ruler of the island of Lesbos, and his mother, Milica, died.
In 1408, the two brothers again argued, and Vuk, accompanied by Ottoman forces, attacked Belgrade in early 1409. Besieged Stefan agreed to give the southern part of Serbia to Vuk and to accept Ottoman vassalage. However, Suleyman's brother Musa soon rebelled against Suleyman, and Stefan sided with Musa in the 1410 battle of Kosmidion. Musa's army was defeated and Suleyman sent Vuk to claim Stefan's territories; Vuk was captured and executed by a Musa vassal. Through Emperor Manuel II, Stefan confirmed his despotic rights and returned to Belgrade and annexed Vuk's lands.
In 1411, King Sigismund of Hungary rewarded Stefan's loyalty with a gift of Srebrenica and its surroundings.
Musa's forces attacked Serbia in early 1412 but were defeated in Kosovo. Stefan then invited Sultan Mehmed Çelebi to attack Musa together. Together with Hungarian troops, they defeated Musa on 5 July 1413 at the Battle of Çamurlu, near the Vitosha mountain (modern Bulgaria) and Musa was killed on the battlefield. Stefan gained the town of Koprijan near Niš and the Serbian-Bulgarian area of Znepolje. For the next twelve years, Stefan remained in good relations with Mehmed, which made the recovery of medieval Serbia possible.
On 28 April 1421, Stefan's nephew and ruler of Zeta, Balša III died without an heir, leaving his lands to his uncle. With this and territorial gains from the Kingdom of Hungary, Serbia restored most of its traditional territories.
In 1425, the Ottoman Empire invaded Serbia, burning and pillaging across the Southern Morava valley. At the same time, the King of Bosnia attempted to conquer Srebrenica back from the Serbs, but failed. Stefan fought back the invasion and initiated negotiations with the Sultan, after which the Ottoman troops left Serbia. However, this attack was an ominous sign of things to come.
The rule of the poet, thinker, and artist Stefan Lazarević was a period of renewed artistic development in Serbia. Stefan wrote one of the major medieval Serbian literary works, Slovo ljubve ("The word of love"), and he amassed one of the largest libraries in the Balkans at that period.
Apart from political stability as a result of Stefan's ability to keep a distance from both the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary, the Serbian economy was also helped by the very rich silver mines, Srebrenica and Novo Brdo, some of the wealthiest in Europe at that time. Belgrade became one of the largest cities in Europe, numbering over 100,000 people. The rule and deeds of despot Stefan Lazarević were described by his contemporary, the learned writer Constantine of Kostenets, who wrote the "Life of Despot Stefan Lazarević" (c. 1430).
As Despot Stefan had no children of his own, he bequeathed the despotate to his nephew, Đurađ Branković, who succeeded him upon his death on July 19, 1427. Đurađ was confirmed as despot by the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus in 1429.
As an immediate result of Stefan's death, Serbia had to return Belgrade to the Kingdom of Hungary, leaving Serbia without a capital city. With the wealthy southern cities dangerously close to the Ottoman border, Đurađ constructed a new capital city, the magnificent fortress of Smederevo on the Danube, close to the Hungarian border. Constructed 1428–1430, Smederevo was a source of many future misinterpretations of history, especially concerning Đurađ's wife Jerina. With Jerina's Greek nationality and the influence her brothers had with the new despot, people began to dislike her and attributed to her many vicious and evil characteristics, including building Smederevo for capricious reasons. In folk poetry, she's been dubbed Prokleta Jerina (the Damned Jerina).
Immediately after becoming the ruler of Serbia, in the summer of 1427, Đurađ was faced with the challenge of an Ottoman invasion. The Ottomans occupied Kruševac and Niš, the Dubočica region including Leskovac, and most of the Toplica region. They withdrew after unsuccessfully besieging Novo Brdo for several months.
King Tvrtko II of Bosnia came into conflict with the Bosnian noble family of Zlatonosovići in November 1430, over alleged cooperation between Vukašin Zlatonosović and the Serbian Despotate. This conflict ended with the death of Vukašin and the complete annihilation of the Zlatonosović family, but directly led to another conflict with Serbia itself. In the spring of 1433, Despot Đurađ annexed parts of Usora, together with the trade outpost Zvonik (Zvornik) and fortress Teočak.
Đurađ married his daughter Katarina to Ulrich II of Celje in 1433, a close cousin of the Hungarian Queen, in an effort to secure better relations with Serbia's northern neighbor. He was forced to give his other daughter Mara to Sultan Murad II. The marriage was arranged in 1433, but Đurađ delayed it until 1435 when the Ottomans threatened him with invasion. After the marriage took place, Sultan Murad swore to continue the peace between the Ottoman Empire and Serbia.
However, this oath would be broken two years later. The Ottoman Empire invaded and started pillaging inside Serbia's borders in 1437. Đurađ negotiated an unfavorable peace with the Sultan by giving him the town of Braničevo. In 1438, the Sultan attacked again. This time, the despot had to let them seize Ždrelo and Višesav: the peace that followed was not longer than the previous one.
In 1439, the Ottoman army, headed by the sultan Murad II himself, again attacked and sacked Serbia. Despot Đurađ fled to Hungary in May 1439, leaving his son Grgur Branković and Jerina's brother Thomas Kantakouzenos to defend Smederevo. After three months of siege, Smederevo fell on August 18, 1439, while Novo Brdo resisted conquest for two entire years, falling on June 27, 1441. At that point, the only free part of the Despotate that remained was Zeta. The latter, however, was soon attacked by the Venetians and by Voivode Stefan Vukčić Kosača. The last of Đurađ's cities in the region were conquered in March 1442.
The first Ottoman governor of Serbia was Ishak-Beg, who in 1443 was replaced by Isa-Beg Isaković.
In Hungary, Đurađ Branković managed to talk Hungarian leaders into expelling the Ottomans, so a broad Christian coalition of Hungarians (under John Hunyadi), Serbs (under Despot Đurađ) and Romanians (under Vlad II Dracul) advanced into Serbia and Bulgaria in September 1443. The large Christian army that crossed the Danube in early autumn of 1443 was made up of around 25,000 soldiers from Hungary and Poland, over 8,000 Serbian cavalry and foot soldiers, and 700 Bosnian horsemen. Serbia was fully restored by the Peace of Szeged on August 15, 1444. Its borders were the same as before 1437, with the exception of the southern part of Zeta, which remained under Venice, and Fort Golubac, which was returned to Serbia even though it was lost much earlier, in 1427.
King Thomas of Bosnia started another war with Despot Đurađ in 1446 and managed to take Srebrenica. However, in September 1448, the Bosnians were defeated by a Serbian army led by Thomas Kantakouzenos, who reconquered Srebrenica and also took Višegrad.
The difficulty Despot Đurađ had in maintaining balance between two strong powers can be illustrated by the fact that in 1447–1448 despot Đurađ provided funds to the Byzantines to repair the city walls of Constantinople, but being officially an Ottoman vassal, he had to send a thousand soldiers to help Sultan Mehmed II conquer Constantinople in May 1453.
The new Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed II, who would later be called the Conqueror, returned the regions of Toplica and Dubočica to Serbia in 1451 as a token of good will. On that occasion, Mehmed II and Đurađ negotiated the prolonging of their peace treaty.
Without formally declaring an end to the peace treaty, Sultan Mehmed II invaded Serbia in mid-July 1454. Much of central Serbia fell, but the capital was well-prepared and the Ottomans, upon hearing that Hunyadi would cross the Danube to reinforce the Serbs, soon lifted their siege of Smederevo. The Sultan retreated back to Sofia with loot and slaves, leaving most of his army at Kruševac. A smaller Serbian army under Voivode Nikola Skobaljić, which was in Dubočica, cut off from the north, defeated an Ottoman army near Leskovac on September 24, while the main army under Đurađ Branković, together with Hungarian force led by Hunyadi, crushed the Ottomans at Kruševac, capturing their commander, Firuz-bey.
But these successes only bought a little time. Nikola Skobaljić's resistance, which, due to his army's low numbers, came to be respected by the Turks themselves, was crushed by another Ottoman force on November 16 and he was executed. In the early spring of 1455, the Sultan continued his invasion of Serbia. This time, the Ottomans focused on taking southern Serbia first. Novo Brdo was besieged with heavy cannons and fell on June 1, 1455, after forty days of resistance. The rest of southern Serbia was occupied soon after that. At the same time, Despot Đurađ was trying to convince the Hungarians to launch another crusade, but returned empty-handed to Smederevo. In early 1456, he accepted a peace treaty with the Sultan, and southern Serbia remained in Ottoman hands.
A few months after the peace treaty, the Ottoman Empire attacked again. Both Smederevo and Belgrade, which were the primary targets of the Turks, successfully resisted, but the countryside was devastated even further. Despot Đurađ Branković died on December 24, 1456.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Serbian Despotate”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.