Turks Arrive
In an effort to expand their empire, the Turks under their leader Sultan Murad I invaded and won a major battle on Maritsa River in 1371 to begin the gradual process of taking control of the Balkans. The Battle of Kosovo Polje in June 1389 between the Ottoman (Turks) and a force made up of Serbs, Bosnians, and Albanians ended in a draw and the retreat of the Ottoman army. This set back for the Turks was temporary as they returned to gradually take the regions of the Balkans a part at a time until they had control by the late 1480s. Bosnia fell in 1463 and Herzegovina fell in 1482 to the Ottomans, leaving only Montenegro outside Turk control and free until the end of the First World War in 1918.
Although the Balkans were controlled by outside powers like the Turks and the Hungarians the Slav people continued to have very strong ties to their own groups as an identified groups. Added to these feeling were the new ideas of Liberalism, which developed in the eighteenth century promoting political equality, rights to freedom, and representative government. Added to these were ideas of nationalism supporting the formation of nations defined by ethnic identities. All these ideas came together to begin national movements in the nineteenth century in the Balkans as the people wanted to free themselves from outside governments that controlled their lives to form nations of their own.
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