Today in History: June 15-17 (plus an announcement!)

King John signs Magna Carta, "Dracula" defeats the Ottomans in battle, and more

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June 15, 1215: King John of England signs Magna Carta at Runnymede, under pressure from a group of rebellious barons. The document included provisions protecting church prerogatives and establishing protection from illegal imprisonment, a right to a speedy trial, and limitations on taxation (for the barons, not in general, though it’s since been interpreted more broadly). Instead of ending the rebellion the charter inflamed it, as John and a council of barons created to oversee its implementation quickly fell out and John had the document declared null by Pope Innocent III. This led to the First Barons’ War, in which the rebels and their French ally were defeated but young King Henry III (John had died during the war) and his regent, William Marshal, issued a revised Magna Carta as a concession to help end the unrest.

June 15, 1389: The Ottoman Empire defeats a Serbian army in the most famous of several historical battles of Kosovo. Ottoman Sultan Murad I was attempting to intervene in a dispute between one of their vassals, Đurađ II of Zeta (more or less modern Montenegro), and Tvrtko I of Bosnia, but in order to get there his forces had to cross Serbian principalities ruled by Lazar Hrebeljanović and his vassal, Vuk Branković. The two armies were probably evenly matched and the fighting seems to have been fairly inconclusive until Lazar fell and the Serbian army began to rout. The Ottomans emerged victorious but suffered heavy losses—none heavier than Murad himself, killed by a Serbian knight who pretended to defect in order to gain an audience with the Ottoman ruler. His son, Bayezid, became sultan on the battlefield and, in a remarkable demonstration of imperial efficiency, had his brother Yakub executed then and there to fend off any potential succession dispute.

This painting of the battle, done around 1870 by Serbian artist Adam Stefanović, depicts among other things Prince Lazar’s demise, just left of the dashing horseman in the center (Wikimedia Commons)

Lazar’s son and successor, Stefan Lazarević, subsequently submitted to Ottoman vassalage. The battle opened much of the Balkans up to Ottoman conquest (though Bayezid’s decision to go to war with Timur delayed imperial expansion for a while), but its most profound effect was on the development of a Serbian national and historical consciousness. Kosovo became foundational to Serbian identity, and suffice to say that has had effects that reverberate to the present.

June 16, 632: Yazdegerd III is crowned ruler of the Sasanian Empire. He ruled for 19 years, much of it in a fairly nominal sense, and was the last Sasanian emperor. He fled his capital, Ctesiphon, after the Persians’ catastrophic defeat to the invading Arabs at Qadisiyah in 636 and spent the rest of his life alternately running for his life and raising armies in a futile attempt to hold on to what was left of his empire. A miller assassinated Yazdegerd at Merv (near modern Mary, Turkmenistan) in 651, though it’s unclear whether he did so in an act of simple robbery or at the orders of the regional governor.

June 16, 1407: Ming Chinese forces capture the emperor of Đại Ngu (northern Vietnam today), Hồ Hán Thương, as well as his father and predecessor, “Retired Emperor” Hồ Quý Ly, thus bringing the 1406-1407 Ming-Hồ war close to its end. The conflict’s roots lay in the Hồ dynasty’s overthrow of the Trần dynasty, a Ming vassal, and the breakup of Đại Việt (Vietnam) in 1400. Hồ Quý Ly resisted a Ming demand for the reinstatement of the Trần and the rest, as they say, is history. The Ming annexed northern Vietnam, calling it Jiaozhi province, but that only lasted until 1427, when a rebellion led by Lê Lợi drove the Ming out and reestablished an independent Vietnam.

June 17, 1462: Wallachian ruler Vlad III—variously known as “Vlad Țepeș,” “Vlad the Impaler,” and the inspiration for the character “Dracula”—leads a daring night assault on an invading Ottoman army near the city of Târgovişte (in modern Romania). The Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (“Mehmed the Conqueror” if you prefer) had invaded after Vlad refused to pay proper tribute (in money and slaves) as an imperial vassal and had defeated two smaller Ottoman incursions. Unable to match the Ottoman army in manpower or materiel, Vlad opted to harass it in a guerilla campaign. This attack was intended to be the climax, a decapitation strike that killed Mehmed himself and drove his army to flight. The Wallachians emerged victorious in the sense that they killed a lot more Ottomans than vice versa, but the attack failed to take out Mehmed and the losses were at a level that the Ottomans could easily absorb. They wound up retreating anyway, after Vlad lined the road to Târgovişte with the impaled bodies of Ottoman soldiers. Mehmed dealt with his Wallachian problem in a different way, by engineering Vlad’s ouster in favor of his more pliant brother, Radu.

June 17, 1631: Mumtaz Mahal, the chief consort of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, dies in childbirth in the Indian city of Burhanpur. According to Mughal chroniclers her death caused the emperor tremendous grief and he withdrew into the palace for a year to mourn her loss. When he emerged he was, we’re told, clearly diminished. Shah Jahan had her body temporarily buried in Burhanpur then moved to an also-temporary tomb in Agra. In the meantime he ordered the construction of a monumental tomb—the result, the Taj Mahal, was finally completed in 1653 and today is one of the most heavily-visited tourist sites in the world.

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In the headline above I promised an announcement, so here goes: I’m very pleased to announce that this newsletter, in cooperation with the John Quincy Adams Society, is going to be piloting a new feature we’re calling Foreign Exchanges: New Voices. We’ll be publishing pieces by young writers who are trying to establish themselves in the foreign affairs field and need opportunities to hone their craft and create a portfolio of work. I’m very grateful to JQAS and especially Patrick Fox for identifying FX as a suitable partner for something like this, and for the support they will be providing to the project.

Our focus, at least initially, will be on covering think tank and other events where US foreign policy is being discussed—often by other “new voices”—to help readers get a better sense of the conversations that are being held around the topics that FX deals with regularly. There’s real value in knowing what people are saying at events like this but it’s simply not something I can do on my own. Our plan is to start by covering heterodox events and institutions that I think most FX readers would generally appreciate, but as the project grows and our contributors find their sea legs I can envision critical coverage of events that fit more neatly into the DC “Blob” structure as well. Down the road we could even branch into commentary but our plan is to take things slow and let it build out over time.

This is a brand new venture and I expect we’ll need some time to really fine tune it and build a group of contributors, so I hope you’ll give it a chance. Our initial offering should be available in the next week or two if all goes well and will appear under a new vertical on the FX website. As with our other features, if you’d rather not receive emails about these pieces you can always adjust your notification settings in your “manage subscription” page. Pieces will be free to the general public so please share them if you’re so inclined, and comments will of course be open to paid FX subscribers. I would ask folks to be as constructive as possible with any criticisms given the intent behind this project. We’ve never really had a problem with mean-spirited comments, thankfully, so I don’t anticipate this being an issue.

If we’re able to expand New Voices to the point where we feel like it can stand on its own I could eventually envision it becoming its own standalone newsletter, which would allow for some greater flexibility. If we get to that point I’ll be asking you all to sign up at the new site but that’s some ways off.