Page:Destruction of the Greek Empire.djvu/139

REIGN OF MUEAD 105 the Serbians, and his own people, the Eomans, had been completely ruined. Amid his lamentations over the evils dieted by the invaders, his saddest thought and gravest source of complaint is that the victories gained by the Turks had been won by men who were the offspring of Christian parents, by Janissaries who were of Eoman, Bulgarian, Serbian, Wallachian, or Hungarian origin. It is in the hopelessness of further resistance to such overwhelming forces that the only explanation of John's acceptance of the position of a tributary prince is to be found. The ruin of the South Serbians and Eastern Bulgarians of which Ducas speaks had really taken place. They had each ventured to declare themselves empires. With the indifference which characterises the Greek writers in regard to the conduct of other nations, they allude to rather than mention how that ruin had been brought about. In 1371, a Battle of great battle took place on the plains of the river Maritza w?™ nh which sealed the fate of the Eastern Bulgarians and of the Serbians who were in Macedonia. The three sons of the kral took advantage of the absence of Murad in Asia and, having collected an army of sixty thousand men, marched almost as far as Adrianople without opposition. While they were feasting in front of a bridge over the Maritza near Harmanli, fully assured of their safety by reason of their superiority in numbers, suddenly a night attack was made upon them by a small division of the Turkish army. It was soon joined by the entire army of seventy thousand Turks. Wild confusion was followed by a terrible slaughter. One of the three sons of the kral was killed and the other two were drowned in the Maritza. Hundreds of soldiers perished in attempting to cross it. The army was simply annihilated. 1 To assist him in his conquest of Hungary, Serbia, 1 Du Cange, Familiae Dalmaticae, 230, Venetian edition. The story of this battle is fully described in Die Serben und Tiirken im XIV. und XV. Jahrhundert of S. Novakovich (Semlin, 1897) and also in Irecek's History of the Bulgarians (p. 430). Irecek states that as late as the seventeenth century the stone monument of the despot Uglisha's tomb still existed. Uglisha was one of the three brothers.