Military history of Serbia

The military history of Serbia spans over 1100 years on the Balkan peninsula during the various forms of the Serbian state and Serbian army.

The Serbian army during this period was primarily consisted of light cavalry and infantry force armed with spear, javelin or bows. With the increasing wealth from mining, mercenary knights were recruited to complement noble cavalry armed with bow and lance. This enabled the Serbs to fight effectively outwith their mountain strongholds. The core of the army consisted of noble cavalry (vlastela) armed with lance and bow in the Byzantine style in early medieval time. These were increasingly supplemented by western style knights. Mostly Germans in Dušan's reign. Dušan's military tactics consisted of wedge shaped heavy cavalry attacks with horse archers on the flanks. Many foreign mercenaries were in the Serbian army, mostly Germans as cavalry and Spaniards as infantry. He also had personal mercenary guards, mainly German knights. A knight named Palman was the commander of this unit and was the leader of all German mercenaries. Light horses were provided by Hungarian and Cuman mercenaries. Later in the period Serbian lance armed Hussars took over this role. The infantry still included lightly armed javelin troops although the bow and crossbow became the most important infantry weapon in the 14th century. A western style charge by the armoured cavalry and knights was the main tactic with the infantry used to follow up. Unable to gain any Bulgarian territory after the defeat of the Bulgarian Empire in the Battle of Velbazhd in 1330, the Serbs expanded their state to the south conquering most of Macedonia, Epirus and Thessaly from the Byzantine Empire which was in the midst of a disastrous civil war. Without major field battles, the Serbian tactic was based on seizing towns by siege.

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