556 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE seized some strongholds at Gallipoli on the European shore of the Hellespont. Under Amurath or Murad I (i359~i3 8 9), they began to extend their power into the Balkan peninsula and to emigrate and settle there in considerable numbers. They took Adrianople in 1361. In 1371 they defeated a Serbian prince at the head of a coalition of Roumanians, Magyars, and Bosnians. Another ten years and they had taken Sofia, the present capital of Bulgaria. Just before his death Murad I defeated the alliance of the Balkan States at the bloody battle of Kosovo ("the plain of the black- birds"). Under Murad's son, Bajazet (1389-1403), the conquest of Macedonia and Thessaly was completed; the independent Kingdom and Church of Bulgaria were blotted Bajazet I & _ , . fe . _. . out; and many Bulgarians were transplanted to Asia Minor. Bajazet also forced the Princes of Serbia and Wallachia to recognize his overlordship, and sent punitive expeditions into Bosnia. Bosnia in the later Middle Ages was a land weakened by incessant local warfare, and by religious strife between the Roman Catholics, the Greek Christians, and the heretical Cathari. It consequently of- fered slight resistance to the Turks. Hungary was now endangered and at Sigismund's request the pope preached a crusade in which French, English, Germans, and Poles as well as Hungarians participated, but they were crushed at Nicopolis in 1396. Bajazet next turned his attention to Constantinople, which already had been forced to pay trib- ute, and it would probably have fallen at this time had he not been called away from its siege to meet a new conqueror in Asia. Timur (1336-1405), or Tamerlane, — which, however, means Timur the Lame and was really an insulting epithet Tamerlane a PP ue d to him, — had renewed the terrible in- vasions of the Mongols. He had made himself master of central Asia, had conquered Persia, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and Armenia, and had penetrated south- ward to Delhi in India. The Golden Horde also owned his sway and he made expeditions to the Volga. Indeed, he
