Even the best laid plans for an assassination can go awry, as one of the most famous military commanders of the Middle Ages, Vlad III, realized when he attempted to cut off the Ottoman Empire at the head. The Night Attack at Targoviste came at the end of a particularly violent struggle between the …
The murder of the queen had been represented to me as a deed lawful and meritorious. — Anthony Babington, executed for his part in the Babington Plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England It’s a strange turn of events that when assassinations are discussed, the discussion rarely includes the Hungarian Queen Elizabeth of Bosnia; …
- June 4, 2021
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First Jelena Branković lost her father. Then before four months could pass, in 1459 at the age of 11, she was married to the son of the King of Bosnia. Stjepan Tomasević had not even met Jelena, but they were married on 1 April 1459. Given that Tomasević had been casting around the Balkans for …
- April 28, 2021
- History
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Empires have to begin and end somewhere, and in Europe the Balkans are the beginning and ending of East and West, and North and South. Within the Balkans, it is Bosnia where everything comes crashing together. As Saint Sava said in the thirteenth century, “…we are doomed by fate to be the East in the …
- June 23, 2020
- Bosnia and Herzegovina
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If a church is corrupt enough and gives little enough care to its adherents, at some point its followers will be tempted to follow something else. This was the case in tenth century Bulgaria, where the Orthodox Church provided a breathtakingly rich pageantry full of jewel encrusted costumes, but gave little care to the …
- June 22, 2020
- Bosnia and Herzegovina , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Bosnia and Herzegovina , Bosnia and Herzegovina
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“At first we were confused. The East thought that we were West, while the West considered us to be East. Some of us misunderstood our place in the clash of currents, so they cried that we belong to neither side, and others that we belong exclusively to one side or the other. But I tell …
- June 18, 2020
- Bulgaria
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Throughout Europe the Middle Ages are synonymous with kings and courts and conquest. Every king in the medieval history of Great Britain was proven on the battlefield. Charlemagne rode over huge swathes of continental Europe and added it to his empire – including parts of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia. Frederick I Barbarossa fought through no …
- June 2, 2020
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Od Kulina Bana i dobrijeh dana — Since Kulin Ban and the good old days There has been enough upheaval in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina that a saying about the best of times could be expected as a simile in any story (and if there is one thing Bosnia is full of it …
- June 2, 2020
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“Hard times create great men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And weak men create hard times.” G. Michael Hopf The golden age of Bosnia is generally accepted to center around one particular man – Ban Kulin. Certainly he didn’t come to power in easy and posh world-circumstances – when he …
- June 2, 2020
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