Belgrad

After the defeats at Maritsa in 1371 and Kosovo in 1389 the Serbian lands to the south fell to the Ottomans, and Belgrade became the capital of the Serbian Despotate that survived in the north. It flourished under Stefan Lazarević, who built a castle with a citadel and towers and refortified the ancient walls, and the city sheltered refugees from across the Balkans, its population thought to have reached 40,000 to 50,000. In 1427 his successor Đurađ Branković returned Belgrade to the Hungarian king and moved his capital to Smederevo. The city, which the Hungarians called Nándorfehérvár, withstood Ottoman sieges in 1440 and 1456; in the latter John Hunyadi held it against a vastly larger army under Mehmed II, and Pope Callixtus III ordered a noon bell rung across Christendom to mark the victory.

Suleiman the Magnificent finally took the fortress on 28 August 1521. Most of the city was razed and its Orthodox people deported to Istanbul, yet rebuilt as the seat of the Pashalik of Belgrade it soon became the second largest Ottoman town in Europe after Constantinople. In the wars that followed, Habsburg armies occupied it three times between 1688 and 1791, and each time the Ottomans won it back and largely razed it. Serbian rebels held the city from 1807 to 1813, and after the second uprising of 1815 Prince Miloš Obrenović made it the centre of the new Serbian principality.