Medieval Serbian Army

Medieval Serbian army
Organization of the Serbian army in the Middle Ages
Active	839 – 1540
Disbanded	1540 (Ottoman annexation)
Commanders
Commander-in-chief	The Serbian monarch

The medieval Serbian army was well known for its strength and was among the top Balkan armies before the Ottoman expansion. Prior to the 14th century the army consisted of Byzantine-style noble cavalry armed with bows and lances (replaced with crossbows in the 14th century) and infantry armed with spears, javelins and bows. With the economic growth from mining, mercenary knights from Western Europe were recruited to finalize and increase the effectiveness of the army.

Between 839 and 842 the Bulgar Khan Presian invaded Serbian territory, the two having lived peacefully sharing a common frontier up until that point. The cause for the invasion is unclear. It led to a war that lasted three years, in which the Bulgars were decisively defeated. In the mid 850s the Bulgarians under Boris I made another unsuccessful attempt to subdue the Serbs. In the beginning of the 10th century Simeon I launched several campaigns against the Serbs who were acting as Byzantine allies and by 925 he managed to conquer Serbia completely but the Bulgarian rule was short-lived. Samuel of Bulgaria subjected the Serbs for a second time in 1009 or 1010 after he defeated their ruler Jovan Vladimir.

10th-century Byzantine military manuals mention chonsarioi, light cavalry, recruited in the Balkans, especially Serbs, "ideal for scouting and raiding".

The writings of John Kinnamos and other contemporary Byzantine sources (Anna Komnene, Niketas Choniates, Eustathios of Thessalonica, Michael of Thessalonica) of the twelfth century, gives substantial data concerning Serbian armament and tactics.

Serbia defeated the Bulgarian Empire in the Battle of Velbazhd in 1330. Serbia became a military superpower during the middle part of the 14th century under the dynamic Stephen Uroš IV Dušan (1331–55), who created the Serbian Empire. It included Macedonia, Albania, Epirus and Thessaly, reaching from the Drina and Danube rivers as far south and east as the Gulf of Patras and the Rhodope Mountains by 1350. A large part of this expansion was at the expense of the Byzantine Empire. Dušan set his sights on the Byzantine capital of Constantinople itself, dividing his lands into 'Serbia' and 'Romania'. Dušan was crowned Emperor (Tsar) of Serbs and Romans in 1345. He modeled his court on that of Constantinople, calling his officials by Byzantine titles such as caesar, despot, sebastokrator and logotet (logothete). However, following his death, the Serbian Empire gradually disintegrated under his successor Stephen Uroš V (1355–71). One Byzantine chronicler noted with evident satisfaction that the Serbian nobility were soon divided into '10,000 factions', while John VI Kantakouzenos wrote that Dušan’s empire fell 'into a thousand pieces'.