For a few years after Kossovo the Serbs resisted; but their efforts,
now at Belgrade, which was made the capital and fortified by Stephen
the chivalrous son of Prince Lazar, now at Smederevo on the Danube,
were spasmodic. Bands of Turks and also of Magyars were terrorizing
the country; and the sagacious old despot George Branković was the
last to offer opposition to the Turk at Smederevo. Meanwhile in
Bosnia, the Bogomiles, driven to despair by persecution, had been
calling to the Turk. Constantinople fell in 1453, Serbia laid down her
arms in 1459, while in 1463 Muhammed II. appeared before Jajce,
Bosnia's capital, where one can still see the skeleton of Stephen
Tomažević, the last king, who was executed by the Sultan's
order. And now in this land of heresy, which had become so hostile to
the established Churches, hundreds of those who professed the Bogomile
faith went over eagerly to Islam; they hoped that in this way they
would triumph at the expense of their late persecutors. Those who had
worldly possessions were the first to embrace Islam, in order to
safeguard them. Those who had neither wealth nor much accumulated
hatred remained Christians. One would expect that people who had
adopted a religion under these impulses would be even more
uncompromising than the usual convert, and indeed, as a general rule,
the ex-Christian begs and aghas displayed until recent times not only
a more than Turkish observance of the outward forms of Islam but a
tyranny over the wretched raias, their slaves, that was much more than
Turkish.
Fortune had turned her back upon the Southern Slavs. In the north the
Slovenes were imprisoned in the Holy Roman Empire, while the
Croats--save for the time when they were under Tvertko--had a
succession of alien rulers, such as the aforementioned Ladislas, whom
they naturally disliked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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