Tvrtko I of Bosnia
Early in his personal rule, Tvrtko quarrelled with his country's Roman Catholic clergy but later enjoyed cordial relations with all the religious communities in his realm.
He gained control of the entire Primorje region and the major maritime cities of the area, established new settlements and started building a navy, but never succeeded in subjugating the lords of the independent Serbian territories.
The death of King Louis and the accession of Queen Mary in 1382 allowed Tvrtko to take advantage of the ensuing succession crisis in Hungary and Croatia.
Following the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, his tenuous claim to Serbia became a mere fiction, as the Serbian rulers he sought to subdue became vassals of the victorious Ottoman Empire.
Following her return, Jelena held an assembly (stanak) in Mile, with mother and son confirming the possessions and privileges of the noblemen of "all of Bosnia, Donji Kraji, Zagorje, and the Hum land".
[7] Louis posed a more direct threat as well; he was determined to enlarge his royal domain, and throughout his realm he ardently reclaimed all lands that once belonged to the monarch.
[2] Taking advantage of the precarious situation early in Tvrtko's reign, Louis moved to claim most of Donji Kraji and western Hum up to the river Neretva, including the prosperous customs town of Drijeva.
The death of the bishop of Bosnia—Peregrin Saxon, a supporter of both Stephen II and Tvrtko I[8] and acknowledged by the latter as his "spiritual father"[9]—led to the appointment of Peter Siklósi to the episcopal throne.
By April, the King had begun amassing an army; and in May, officials of the Republic of Ragusa ordered their merchants to leave Bosnia due to an imminent clash.
[16] Tvrtko returned to Bosnia in March and reestablished control over a part of the country by the end of the month, including the areas of Donji Kraji, Rama (where he then resided), Hum, and Usora.
[11][16] In order to secure the loyalty of the noblemen he had subjugated, as well as to win over those still supporting Vuk, Tvrtko bestowed a number of grants;[16] in August he invested Vukac Hrvatinić with the entire župa of Pliva for his part in the 1363 war with Hungary.
[7][17] Ragusan officials made an effort to procure peace between the feuding brothers,[17] and in 1368, Vuk asked Pope Urban V to intervene with King Louis I on his behalf.
Lazar, too, swore fealty to Louis, after which he and Tvrtko were given 1,000 horsemen to counter Nicholas,[21] who was completely defeated in the autumn of 1373,[21] his lands being divided between the victorious allies.
A genealogy published in Tvrtko's newly conquered Serbian lands emphasized his Nemanjić ancestry, derived from his paternal grandmother, Elizabeth, daughter of King Dragutin.
[36] Although he presented himself as the heir to the Nemanjić crown, Tvrtko decided to assume the royal title of his great-grandfather, rather than continue Dušan's unpopular claim to an imperial style, thus becoming "by the Grace of God king of the Serbs, Bosnia, Pomorje and the Western Areas".
[46] The failure to seize Kotor, the damage to the Bosnian economy from the Ragusan embargo, and the need for easier access to maritime trade led Tvrtko to found the youngest medieval town on the eastern Adriatic coast.
[47] Kotor and the merchants from Dalmatia and the Italian Peninsula looked favourably on the development, but the Ragusans were very displeased at the prospect of losing their salt trade monopoly.
[48] They argued that Tvrtko, as king of Serbia, should respect the exclusive rights to salt trade granted by his Nemanjić predecessors to Ragusa, Kotor, Drijeva, and Sveti Srđ.
Without a male heir, the Hungarian crown passed to Louis's 13-year-old daughter Mary and the reins of government to his widow, Tvrtko's cousin Elizabeth.
The great unpopularity of the queens led to rebellions and presented an opportunity for Tvrtko, not only to reclaim Drijeva and other lands lost to Louis in 1357 but also to seize Kotor.
Already in the spring of 1383, Tvrtko started building a navy: he bought a galley from Venice, ordered two more to be built, and employed a Venetian patrician as his admiral with the consent of the republic.
[51][52] The incorporation of the trade centres of Drijeva and Kotor did not result in a significant expansion on the coast, but it was of great importance to the Bosnian economy and the King's finances.
[54] The neighbouring countries took sides: Venice opted for the queens and Sigismund,[54] but Tvrtko chose to support their opponents and Ladislaus's claim to Hungary,[54][55] thus tacitly renouncing vassalage that had in any case been only nominal since c.
[52] Elizabeth was strangled in prison, while Sigismund's coronation as King of Hungary in March 1387 and subsequent liberation of Mary prompted Tvrtko to act more resolutely.
[58] 15 June 1389, the date by which Tvrtko had intended to complete his conquest of Dalmatia, was also the day when the Ottoman army met the forces of a coalition of Serbian states at the Battle of Kosovo.
Tvrtko, feeling it is his duty as king of Serbia, ordered his army to leave Dalmatia and assist the lord's Lazar Hrebljanović and Vuk Branković.
[60] Tvrtko, in turn, informed various Christian states of his great triumph; the authorities of the Republic of Florence responded praising both the Kingdom of Bosnia and its king for achieving a "victory so glorious that the memory of it would never fade".
[64] In May 1390, the cities and the Dalmatian islands finally surrendered to Tvrtko,[65] who then started calling himself "by the grace of God king of Rascia, Bosnia, Dalmatia, Croatia, and Pomorje".
[5] Tvrtko I is considered one of the greatest medieval rulers of Bosnia, having "left behind a country larger, stronger, politically more influential and militarily more capable than the one he inherited."
[5] Vladimir Ćorović noted that, compared with Dušan, who had also left a considerably extended state, Tvrtko was not an overly ambitious conqueror as much as he was an able statesman.
