Both armies withdrew after the battle. Murad’s fate made him a martyr to the faith, and he is one of the Sahibs or Elect of Islam. Even the Greeks praise his character as being benevolent towards the conquered, whom he understood how to win over to his side after he had conquered them by the irresistible force of his arms. He laid the foundations of the Moslem state, adapting it shrewdly for rule over conquered populations. They were accepted as tenants of the new owners of the soil, paying tithes. The Sultan himself received the Kharadsch or tribute money. At the same time the subject races retained their faith, their customs, their church, their courts, and their aristocracy. The warrior class was made up of native Turks and some renegades. These became the sole owners of the land and had to take their place in the regular yearly campaigns. There was, besides, a standing army of young foot soldiers composed of captives taken in war, the Janitschar class, who looked up to the Sultan as their father. For administrative progress there was a corps of officials, whose functions descended from father to son, composed of “Begs.” At the top of this bureaucracy was a Beglerbeg for each half of the kingdom, one for Asia and one for Europe, and a Wesir or Pascha, the equivalent in Turkish of the former word, which is Arabic. The administrative divisions under the Begs were called Sandjaks (flags) because these were carried by the Begs as emblems of their authority. The battle of Kossovo, in which both opposing armies lost their leaders, became in Servian folklore and poetry a source of inspiration of the kind that among Romance peoples gathers about the defeat of Charles the Great in the Pyrenees and the death of Roland. The incidents of the heroic theme take up the tragedy of the battle; Slavic improvisers sing of the death of Lazar, of his father-in-law, the aged King, and his nine brothers-in-law. Mulasch, the slayer of Murad, who met his death in the flight, is not passed over, nor the 12,000 infidels who perished. Like Murad, Lazar, the “Servian crown of gold,” is celebrated as a martyr of his faith, a hero who went voluntarily to his death. The legend tells how St. Elias, in the form of a falcon, came from the Holy City of Jerusalem, bringing him a letter from the Mother of God, in which he was offered the choice of the heavenly empire or dominion over the earth. Lazar made the choice which gave him the spiritual kingdom. III BAJESID