1395: Ivan Shishman, falling to the Turks
June 3rd, 2010 Headsman
On this date in 1395, Bulgarian tsar Ivan Shishman was beheaded in Nikopol by the Ottoman Empire then engaged in absorbing his crumbling empire.
The mythical (though not quite literal) last emperor of Bulgaria, Shishman is ungenerously judged by Wikipedia “a vacillating politician whose inopportune choices speedily guided him to his violent end and the subjugation of the country by the enemy.”
The guy ruled a waning state under the shadow of a neighboring expansionist superpower. Only inopportune choices were available.
Shishman’s sister, Maria Thamara Hatun, had been married off to the Ottoman Sultan Murad I in a token of Bulgaria’s vassalage.
In 1389, said Murad smashed the Serbians at the Battle of Kosovo. Even though Murad died in combat, the Turks left the Field of Blackbirds with the Balkans by the throat and the Bulgarian Empire (or rather, Empires: Shishman and his brother had split the kingdom) nicely encircled.
Murad’s son Bayezid “the Thunderbolt” struck soon enough.
At the Siege of Tarnovo in 1393, the Turks essentially destroyed Shishman’s realm, while Shishman bugged out to be captured at a later mop-up operation.
The Ottomans took his head, but left Bulgaria a martyr whose iconography is still good for the nationalist metal audience.
The clips in this video are from the 1969 Bulgarian flick Tzar Ivan Shishman.
On this day..
- 1453: Loukas Notaras, Byzantine - 2020
- 1861: Melchor Ocampo, liberal statesman - 2019
- 1946: Chen Gongbo, puppet president - 2018
- 1594: Michael Renichon, impoverished assassin - 2017
- 1898: James Fleming Parker - 2016
- 1691: William Fielding, scammer - 2015
- 1850: Five Cayuse, for the Whitman Massacre - 2014
- 1886: Twenty-two Uganda Martyrs - 2013
- 1918: Aloïs Walput, grenadier - 2012
- 1955: Barbara Graham, of "I Want to Live" fame - 2011
- 1098: Yaghi-Siyan, commander of Antioch - 2009
- 2004: Nam Cam, Vietnamese crime lord - 2008
Entry Filed under: 14th Century,Beheaded,Bulgaria,Execution,Famous,Heads of State,History,Martyrs,Myths,No Formal Charge,Occupation and Colonialism,Ottoman Empire,Popular Culture,Power,Royalty,Summary Executions,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1390s, 1395, battle of kosovo, bayezid i, ivan shishman, june 3, murad i, nationalism, nikopol, siege of tarnovo
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