Tvertko did his utmost to make of Bosnia the kernel of another great
Slav State. The death of Lewis of Hungary freed him from his most
redoubtable adversary; Dalmatia, Croatia and other lands were joining
him--but then in 1389 came Kossovo, the fatal field of blackbirds,
where a disloyal coalition of Serbian, Croatian, Albanian and
Bulgarian chieftains went down in irretrievable disaster. Milos
Obili['c], who is now one of Serbia's popular heroes, had been
suspected of lukewarmness; he answered his accusers by gaining access
to the Sultan's camp and slaying the Sultan. Not only did the Turks
put him to death, but they decapitated their prisoner, Prince Lazar,
and all the other chiefs.
The Slavs along the Adriatic were now also on the eve of dire
misfortune: protracted wars of succession, in consequence of the death
in 1382 of Lewis of Hungary, had ravaged that country and Croatia, so
that in their enfeebled condition they could give no assistance to the
towns and islands of Dalmatia which for so long had been struggling to
elude the grip of Venice. But even so--and with many places handing
themselves over voluntarily, in disgust at the almost incredible
treason of their elected monarch, Ladislas of Naples, who, after long
bargaining, sold his rights to Venice for a hundred thousand ducats,
and with many places, in dread of the Turks, placing themselves under
the protection of Venice--even so the Venetians had a great deal of
trouble in occupying Dalmatia, and a hundred years elapsed before they
had the whole of it. As for the two ports, Triest and Rieka (Fiume),
they had passed through various episcopal or aristocratic hands.
Triest had been in a position to set her face against falling to
Venice, of whom she had had, from the tenth to the twelfth centuries,
an adequate experience. Both Triest and Rieka were now to pass into
the power of the Habsburgs.