Video - The Battle of Serbian Shelter: Ottoman Triumph in the Balkans

With the encouragement of Pope Urban V, Serbs and Bulgarians, Hungarians, Bosnians and Wallachians prepared a large crusader army and took action against Edirne. The crowded Crusader army was advancing, very confident of their victory, and was plundering all the towns and villages they passed through, both Christian and Muslim. The Crusader army, numbering one hundred thousand, came near Edirne. It would now be very easy to expel Muslims from the Balkans. They were drinking and having fun where they were staying, very confident of themselves. They all passed out around midnight. Hacı İlbey, one of the Ottoman commanders, entered the Crusader camp with his army of five thousand people to observe the situation of the enemy. When he saw that all of them had passed out drunk, he did not miss the opportunity and immediately divided his forces into three and made a night raid. The Crusaders, who could not understand what had happened, began to hurt each other. Most of them died by being buried in the swamps of the Meriç River. The Bulgarian king barely escaped with his life. (1364). With this victory, which went down in history as the 'Battle of Serbian Shelter', Turkish domination in Rumelia was finalized and the first Crusader Army was neutralized. Ottoman troops entered Bulgaria after the Battle of Serb Sındık and conquered upper Bulgaria. Realizing that he could not resist, Bulgarian King Yuvan Şişman accepted Ottoman rule and gave his sister Maria to Murad Hüdavendigar (1369).