The “Battle of Marica”, the first armed conflict between a coalition of Balkan rulers and the Ottoman invaders, took place in Bulgaria. After the fall of Adrianople in the hands of the Ottomans and after the intensification of surprise attacks towards the interior of the Balkans, in order to avoid the risk of further Ottoman expansion, an army of Serbian, Macedonian and Bulgarian feudal lords faced the Ottoman army in the river valley Marica”, in Thrace. Among them was the ruler of Vlora, Alexander, with his forces. The coalition army reached a strength of nearly 60,000 under the command of the Serbian rulers Vukashin and Uglesha, while the Ottoman army had no more than 15,000 under the command of Evrenos Bey. The Ottomans, taking advantage of the tactic of surprise attacks against the heavy feudal Balkan army, took it by surprise before daylight. The battle ended with the defeat of the Balkan rulers, many of whom were killed, among them Alexander of Vlora. With this victory, the power of the Ottomans in the Balkans was finally consolidated and the continuous series of surprise attacks and invasions towards the western countries, among them the Albanian lands, began. (In the photo: Map, “Marica” river, Bulgaria.)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 1 , Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2008, page 229.
Graphic processing: AHCF
