The Serbians despaired of their cause before the battle. The enormous number of the enemy dismayed them.[414] Rumours of treachery were current in the allied camp. Their lack of courage, and the spirit of distrust of each other’s good faith, is strikingly voiced in the oration of Lazar at a banquet the evening before the battle. He pleaded for a courage and confidence which he himself did not feel. He openly accused his son-in-law, Milosh Obravitch, of treason. Gloom and hopelessness had settled over the Serbian camp, reflected from leaders to the common soldiery. The battle was already lost. For victory is never won by those who feel that they are going to lose.[415] The battle was begun by the Osmanlis. Murad sent forward an advance guard of two thousand archers.[416] The allies responded with a charge in which the left wing of the Ottoman army was broken through by Lazar. For a while the issue seemed in doubt. Bayezid held out against the impetuosity of the Serbians, but the Osmanlis made no attempt to take the offensive. At this critical juncture, when the battle was by no means decided, Vuk Brankovitch, another son-in-law of Lazar, quietly withdrew from the field with twelve thousand men. This desertion, which had probably been arranged for with Murad, so weakened the Serbians that they broke and fled. Lazar and many of his leading noblemen, and thousands of his soldiers, were taken prisoners. It was not a fight to the bitter end.[417] Murad won the battle of Kossova at the cost of his own life. From the story which Clavijo de Gonzáles heard fifteen years later, one might infer that Murad was killed in the course of the battle, and that the fighting was renewed around his body.[418] It was then that Bayezid cut down Lazar with his own sword. Pray declared that the two sovereigns were mortally wounded in a personal combat.[419] The Ottoman historians believed that Murad met his death when walking across the field after the battle. A wounded Serbian soldier, who was believed to be dead, rose with a supreme effort to his knees and thrust his sword into Murad as he passed.