The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

To most of the Bosnians who turned out to greet or simply to stare at — their presumptive future monarch and his wife, the date marked a quite different sort of anniversary. June 28 — actually June 15 by the Serbian Orthodox calendar — is the Vidovdan, the Feast of St. Vitus. To the Slav peoples of the Balkan Peninsula it is a holiday unlike any other. For centuries it was a national day of mourning because it commemorates the battle of Kossovo in 1389 when the Turks destroyed the medieval kingdom of Serbia and enslaved its Christian subjects. Since 1912 it has been the symbol of a glorious resurrection — the defeat of the Turks in the first Balkan War that led to their virtual expulsion from Europe.