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The Ottoman advance and conquest of South-Eastern Europe was a defining process in the history of the region. It secured Ottoman rule over the Balkans for the following five centuries, also shaping the political and territorial structure of many neighbouring European states. This book presents a selection of the most important texts and contemporary sources which show how the Balkan Christians responded to the rising power of the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Around 200 documents, originally written in Latin, Italian, Old Slavonic and German, now appearing for the first time in English translation, illustrate the character of the struggle between Christians and Ottomans in the Slavic speaking areas south of the Danube and north of the Greek peninsula, from the momentous battle of Chernomen in Bulgaria in 1371 to the death of Pope Pius II in 1464, when it eventually became clear that it would take more than crusade to achieve the reconquest and reintegration of the region into Christendom. The chosen sources, complemented by notes and commentary, demonstrate how those who bore the main burden of Ottoman attacks presented their struggle to the rest of the Christian world, and will thus allow certain events and processes to be analysed from the perspective of the people who experienced the Turkish threat on an everyday basis. In this way they expose the internal and external mechanisms of conquest offering an insight into tribute, ransom slavery, the spreading of fear, restrictions of trade, and the policy of divide and conquer, as the fundamental aspects of Ottoman expansion. The collection also provides extensive documentation on the preparation and execution of crusades against the Turks in the Balkans, making it useful for historians of the later crusades in general, and indispensable to any serious researcher studying the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans.
