Late one night in the late autumn of 1448, Ahmed, the former de facto ruler of Rumelia and the eldest son of Ottoman Sultan Murad II, was frantically fleeing with his few remaining subordinates from South Serbia to his stronghold in the heart of Rumelia.
This young prince had just suffered a massive defeat, losing almost all the resources he possessed.
"It's all over, it's all over!" These were the words Ahmed couldn't stop muttering in his heart at that moment.
He had originally thought he could unite with the Serbians in Kosovo to sandwich and destroy the Roman main force, but he never expected that those accursed infidels would actually persuade the Magyars and Bulgarian Slavs, making him and his ally, George Branković, Despot of Serbia, the ones who were sandwiched instead.
As a result, under the Romans' cunning and military might, the thirty thousand allied troops of Rumelia and Serbia proved to be so fragile that they were completely defeated in just three days.
Neither he nor his in-law Branković had anticipated that their enemies, in order to completely annihilate them, would deploy fifty thousand troops in ambush in Kosovo, all for a potential battle opportunity.
Had he truly lost everything?
Ahmed painfully clutched his head, but as if thinking of something, he forced himself to regain his spirits—
No, he hadn't lost yet!
His loyal Isa Pasha and other subordinates still held nearly ten thousand garrison troops in cities like Sofia and other Rumelian regions; as long as he could return in time, he still had the capital to rise again!
"As long as, as long as I can reach that place…" Thinking of this, the light of hope rekindled in Ahmed's eyes.
This time, he would make his old enemies regret daring to oppose the future Ottoman Sultan!
But this faint light of hope soon faced the crisis of being extinguished.
When Ahmed led his troops to the mountain pass east of Kosovo, he and his subordinates were horrified to discover that a group of fully armed cavalry seemed to have been waiting there for a long time.
"I apologize, Your Highness Ahmed, but this place is already occupied." The general leading this force smiled pleasantly upon seeing the approaching figures, "By the command of the Basileus, I, Kristo Balin, have been waiting here for a long time.
Please surrender, Your Highness; we may still grant you a way out."
Upon hearing the other party's shout, Ahmed immediately felt a rush of blood to his head, almost falling from his horse in anger.
"How dare these infidel bastards!? I am an Ottoman prince," seeing his path blocked by the newcomers, Ahmed was furious deep down.
But out of concern for the current situation, he dared not act rashly, so he suppressed his anger, trying to use words to delay time and seize an opportunity.
"Balin, cavalry… Your Excellency wouldn't happen to be a Tatar, would you?" Ahmed began to probe, while also searching for a way to escape under the cover of night.
"Yes." Balin did not deny this point.
As the earliest Tatar tribal chief to pledge allegiance to Manuel when he was still the Crown Prince, upon Manuel III's ascension to the throne, he was trusted by the Emperor.
He was not only granted a large hereditary territory north of the Tauris Peninsula and the title "Lord of Yedishkul," but also received the powerful position of Stratopedarchestou Mourtatoi (General of the Converted Troops, a position held by those who converted from another religion to orthodox Christianity; mourtatoi comes from the Arabic-Turkic word murted/murtat).
In the recently concluded Battle of Kosovo, it was he who, with his Tatar light cavalry, destroyed the supply lines of the Rumelian and Bulgarian allied forces.
Ahmed did not know much about these matters, but he clearly realized that the Tatar general before him was by no means an easy opponent.
Moreover, after confirming that this man was leading Tatar cavalry, the cold sweat on Ahmed's face intensified—he might truly not be able to escape.
"May I ask you to come closer for a detailed discussion?" Despite this, the Ottoman prince still tried his best to show goodwill to the Tatar general with a humble tone.
He believed that as long as he could find a way to kill the general on the spot, he could seize the opportunity to create chaos and escape.
The other party seemed to agree to his request.
"Very well, then I shall presumptuously come over and briefly explain to you." With that, Balin, accompanied by only a few trusted guards, rode closer to Ahmed's position.
The Ottoman prince, believing the time was ripe, sharply spurred his horse when he could clearly see the Tatar's aging face, and, with a few attendants, charged forward, raising his sword, intending to cut down his opponent on the spot!
But to their utter surprise, the opponent not only reacted quickly, drawing his sword to parry the Turk's attack, but also, in just half a minute, managed to counter and pin down these enemies who were trying their best to hide their fatigue.
Soon, all the guards who had charged with Ahmed were killed by the Tatar personal guards, and even Ahmed himself had a scimitar held to his neck by the opponent.
Knowing escape was hopeless, in despair, he suddenly let out an extremely harsh sneer, "You Tatar kuffar (Note: in Islam, refers to apostates who have committed great sins) who betrayed and became dogs for the Romans, you will definitely…"
Before he could finish his sentence, a flash of steel cut through the night, and Balin coldly and precisely swung his scimitar, instantly decapitating the Ottoman prince Ahmed.
Before Ahmed died, he only heard his enemy calmly tell him, "Ahmed Osmanoğlu, His Majesty's orders to me were to take you, dead or alive."
Thus, Murad II's eldest son, along with his ambitions, died in the mountain forests of the Kosovo region on a late autumn night.
On October 17, 1448, the Hungarian army led by Hunyadi, the Bulgarian army led by Fruzhin, and the Roman army led by Manuel III jointly attacked the allied forces of Rumelia and Serbia in Kosovo.
After three days of fierce engagement, the latter were almost completely annihilated and utterly defeated.
Prince Ahmed, who had carved out Rumelia, was pursued and beheaded on the night of the 20th by the pursuing cavalry, dying on the battlefield.
After this battle, Serbia, recognizing the situation in time, chose to submit to the Roman Empire independently.
It ceded the North Macedonia region to the Roman Empire and paid enormous reparations to both Rome and Hungary, thereby escaping destruction.
As for the territory of Ottoman Prince Ahmed, called the State of Rumelia or the Beylik of Rumelia by Christians, it completely ceased to exist by the end of the same year following the death of its ruler: the land south of Emos Mountains was annexed by the Roman Empire; the land north of Emos was handed over by Hunyadi to the vassal state, the Bulgarian Tsardom.
From then on, the land called the Balkan Peninsula by the Turks settled, and the power of the infidels was completely expelled from Europe.
And after eliminating Ahmed, Roman Emperor Manuel III once again turned his attention to the Asia Minor Peninsula to the east.